Slowtrain

The atmosphere does seem very strong. Is the game going to have no outside levels at all? Just tunnel fighting? If so some should PM Monte. He'll be thrilled.

I didn't notice any problems. Maybe I was just expecting less, but the VA didn't stick out as particularly poor like it did in the DA trailers.

It looks interesting at this point, but I can't tell if its going to be on par with STALKER or with Far Cry 2. Which is a pretty big difference, though FC2 was a decent game.

I haven't seen Josh around much lately. I know he was on vacation a few weeks ago. Is he back? Is he hard at work? Is he overhauling VATS and changing the repair system? Inquiring minds want to know.

Not alone. I enjoy it, as long as I feel there is worth to doing it. Which I didn't in Oblivion, but did in FO3. Like you, I also wish the Fallout 3 map was much larger, while keeping the same number of locations, to increase that sense of empty space and desolation. I also wish there was a simple option to toggle map markers on and off, so I could turn them off and not always see those markers in my compass handily pointing the way to the next locatiom. I would support some sort of drivable vehicle if the map was HUGE, but driveable vehicles wouln't work on a small mapo like that of the DC wasteland. It already feels small enough on foot. I woudl alos like to see fast travel removed from the game. So as you can see, I iver much do enjoy the exploration aspect of the game and would like to see a variety of changes that would heighten that aspect of the game. That is what the game does best.

Is being critical about a game, whatever that game might be, for whatever failures I perceive in the game, bashing that game? I always get confused about this. I think you can go overboard with criticism. I typically will post my criticisms of a game and then move on, only bringing it up again if it is a natural part of the discussion. Some of the Fallout 3 bashers are a bit one dimensional, it's the only song they sing. For awhile it seemed like NMA was stuck reporting on a game they didn't really like. It was an odd time. They've moved away from it, but I never understood why they were posting Fallout 3 news just to add cynical little comments. Seemed like a waste of time. So much of conversation on the internet involves countless repetition of oft-statated beliefs, theories, opinions, stories etc, that it is hard to know when something is overboard, I think. The natural flow of the internet dialogue tends to be overboard by its very nature.

As far as viliians go I was always partial to Queen Deidranna from Jagged Alliance 2.

Let's just get rid of the rats altogether and call it a day. CRPGS no longer need rats, wolves, or spiders or any sort of subvariant or offshoot. Enough is enough.

Is being critical about a game, whatever that game might be, for whatever failures I perceive in the game, bashing that game? I always get confused about this.

I agree. I play with a mod that cuts combat XP by about 50% and its still not enough really.

I felt that a problem with the quest design in general in FO3 was that completing them rarely meant much to your character's development. No matter how well a quest is designed while you are playing through the quest line, if it amounts to nothing when the quest is over, then it always leaves me feeling prety unsatisfied. I think FO 3 quest payoff generally failed in 3 areas: 1) There was little sense of impacting the gameworld or opening up something new at the end of most quests 2) Most time the actual physical rewards for completing a quest is pretty minor. 3) Even the XP payoff for completing the quests is pretty minor compared to the amount of combat XP in the game. When I combine all three of the above it does leave the whole quest aspect of Fallout 3 somewhat lacking. Completing a quest should at least pay off strongly in at least ONE of the above ways.

I think it depends what you are looking for as a player, As a player I found the idea of finding 30 quantums to turn in to get something somewhat fun. problem is though: money is never an issue after about char level 3-5, so getting paid for the quantums isn't much of a payoff. There are other nuka-grenade schematcs in the wasteland, one of which you can pretty much buy the moment you exit the vault on day 1, so getting the Ultimate Reward from her is also pretty much worthless. So there isn't really much POINT to gathering the quantums, however it does add a purpose to all the random wandering. However, if a player you are lookign for some sort of unity to the game, so sort of logic, then the whole concept fails because it is so silly. The whole idea of a radioactive soft drink is pretty freaking silly. But again, is Bethesda the only developer to do something like that? No. Look at Fallout 2. Remebering having to bury the ghost in the den. WTF? A ghost? I thought this was Fallout not Paranormal State. But again, some developer said, hey, our Stealth Boy animation looks liike a ghost! Let's put in a ghost! Cause its cool! Who cares if it MAKES NO SENSE! Fallout 2 and Fallout 3 are pretty similar in a lot of ways.

I agree there is no real reason (ie quantums save the world or something) but what else are you (as a player) going to do in a sandbox world that has no real plot characters or story? Bethesda sacrifices everything to exploration and wandering. That's what they do. In Oblivion they failed, because there was no reason to explore becuase there was nothing to find since the WHOLE WORLD was 100% level-scaled to your character. There was neither risk nor reward in exploration. In Fallout 3 they at least put stuff in the world to go find, if for no other other reason then to say: "I found it"

To me that falls in Bethesda's "lets just throw every weird idea we can into the game without worrying about any unified approach to the world." I'ts a problem, I agree. However, I would also say that Nuka Cola Quantum search DOES work in terms of Bethesda's approach to exploration and wanting to make it worthwhile. Something they were unable to do in Oblivion. FO 3 works best as a giant scavenger hunt for quantums, schematics, books, bobbleheads, unique items, etc and so forth. That's the game's strength.

Complex in terms of world building and factions and stuff? No way, I agree. Daggerfall was amazing in that regard. The character creation alone was epic. And the story was fairly complex also. But MW and Daggerfall both had a lot of text and I would say MW had generally better and less generic text. but I'll certainly grant you it's close between the two.

IIRc Julian LeFay was the mover and shaker on both Arena and Daggerfall. I've heard he had a limited role in MW and left during or soon after development because he didn't like the way things were going. Whether that is true or not, I don't know. But regardless, MW, which had a lot of problems, was still, I think, a much more complex and interesting game than what came after. I think Ted Peterson was the writer of all the best stuff, though. LeFay is a programmer (and designer?). Possibly. Peterson has credit on all three, though on both Arena and MW it's "additonal design" credit, whatever that means, while on Daggerfall he gets "design" credits along with Lefay and Nesmith. Regardless of who did what though, Todd Howard IS credited as "Project Leader" on MW and MW is the most complex and text-heavy of alll the ES games. Make of that what you will.

IIRc Julian LeFay was the mover and shaker on both Arena and Daggerfall. I've heard he had a limited role in MW and left during or soon after development because he didn't like the way things were going. Whether that is true or not, I don't know. But regardless, MW, which had a lot of problems, was still, I think, a much more complex and interesting game than what came after.

Part of it, I think, is simply that the current design paradigm for A games is one that attempts to limit text as much as possible. Partially because now that full voice-over is pratically a requirement is would be too expensive to have large amounts of in-game text, partially because, imo, devs and publishers believe that most current gamers don't want to be bogged down by too many words. So I don't really blame Beth, but rather just the current climate of game design. I installed Morrowind again a few days ago, after many years away from the game. One can certainly criticize aspects of the MW style dialouge system, but its quite amazing to see what a huge amount of text there is in the game. I mean it has massive quantities of text on par with PS:T. It just reminded me how staggering the shift from MW to Oblivion was. SO Bethesda can do text and dialogue and complexity if they want to, they obviously just don't feel that such will make a game that sells. And I guess they must be right sionce Ob and Fo3 have apparently done better than MW in sales.

The fixed reduction comes before the percentage reduction IIRC. I remember it as this way as well. On a 2/25 leather armor incoming 10 points is reduced by 2 to 8 first, then 8 is reduced 25%. Been at least a couple years since I played it though.

My argument would be that while there are things in the game, such as dialogue, that are poor, there are other things that are quite well done. This is in sharp contrast to Beth's last effort Oblivion where pretty much everything was awful, the dialogue in Oblivion was even worse than in FO3. SO for me, the (very) few positive aspects of Oblivion weren't enough to balance out the horrible aspects and it left me with a very numbing and tedious game to play. In Fallout 3 though the positives are more than enough to outweigh the negatives. For me personally. Was it is an enjoyable rpg experience as Fallout 1? Of course not. But no game has been as an enjoyable an rpg experience as Fallout 1, so I really can't hold that failure against Bethesda.

When I noticed that I thought it was pretty cool.

I would tend to agree that the more intuitive a TB system is and the less about the numbers, the easier it is to play. However, I do enjoy building different sorts of characters and taking them through the gameworld and seeing how they fare and what options become open to them and not to others.

Maybe. But since I don't feel anyone has equalled the experience of Fallout as far as a crpg goes, it becomes hard for me to say no one is trying. I've been critical of Bethesda for a long time, ever since they took a cyber-dump on the ES series, but I can't really say they don't try. IMO, the current crpg design philosphy of Bethesda can be summed up as "More" rather than "Better". Rather than take a small number of ideas and develop them and make them work well; they take a huge number of ideas and throw them all out there in a half-developed state and figure that some have to work. That's just my opionion based on what I have seen in the progress from Morrowind to Oblivion to FO 3. Fallout 1 was the antithesis of that approach. It was a small, tight game that had a whole lot packed into a small package. I personally think Bethesda tries very hard. I just personally disagree with where they put forth their efforts. Otoh, I think in Fo3 they came the closest yet to making their approach work. edit: I would also add that these large numbers of ideas tend to suffer from a distinct lack of unity and are just there because someone thinks ther are good ideas, not because they work well in an overall concept. Beth's crpgs have been gettign increasingly disjointed since MW. In my opnion, of course,

*shrugs* Its a different sort of combat from more freeform rt stuff. I enjoy both, but I like the fact they are different. TB combat does tend to be more about the numbers, but I don't find anything inherently less enjoyable about that. Tb is more about learning systems; RT more about developing facility with the controls. I like both personally.

I agree that trying to find the balance between offense and defense is pretty impottant to the combat. I've had builds that could hit anyone anywhere at any time but couldn't avoiding being hit. They could deal a lot of damage fast but went down quickly to a coule high damage hits since they couldn't avoid them. I've had other builds that were virtually untouchable by the opponent, but couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with their weapon. They tend to last a long time in the battle, but ultimately still fail becasue they take so long to do damage that they eventually get killed anyway.