WastelandShadow

It's silly to believe that Bethesda would actively sabotage a title they were spending big marketing and development money on. Heck, I'd need to dig through old-ass archives, but I remember there being some controversy about them apparently making a site pull a negative review... hardly sounds like they were sabotaging the metascore to deny Obsidian their bonus (I don't know the contract specifics by the way, and it should be noted that they only missed it by one point with the PC version, the console versions were both a few points under 85). Of course they didn't do it purposefully, that isn't the point.

It seems to me the low metacritic score was a direct result of the bugs at launch which was a result of the unreasonably short development time on that horrible engine, and Bethesda's complete lack of QA on the project. So yeah, **** them.

Do you know how? Was it moderated by the site which it was on, did ZeniMax find it or did the guy close it down? Oh well... We should instead start a petition for Bethesda to focus more on storylines and characters for F4 and to hire back writers like Michael Kirkbride and generally every good writer that left the company over the years. I don't know. I don't think the people of that site take down petitions like that and ZeniMax couldn't do anything even if they did find it.

The petition has closed.

Don't get me started Funny that turned out to be one of the best quests in the game though.

I understand that, but it came off as if they wanted the thread removed specifically because its against a company they like. What I'm talking about isn't the lore continuity, but mostly the characters and dialogue. There isn't one NPC in Skyrim that I gave two sh*ts about and do you know why? They are a bunch of lifeless shells that are just there to provide filler while you run around in the world killing random animals. The dialogue has little to no thought put into it and in some cases can rope you into things you might never want to do on that character. The whole game is just focused on running around killing stuff while you hunt for items to throw into your house or display on the walls. To me, that isn't an RPG, it's a simulator and they have that mindset for every game they create.

*GASP* Someone said something bad about Bethesda! CENSOR THEM! If you don't like this thread just don't read it, simple as that. However, if any of the mods or devs wish this topic to be closed I have no problem with that. I don't want to cause any problems for Obsidian because of this. From earlier posts asking "why the hate?" I don't know if I outright hate any member of BGS personally, but like a lot of others I am extremely worried about the future of the series. When New Vegas came out it was like a breath of fresh air, the game was so much more deep and involved than Fallout 3 was. Up until Skyrim was released I was excited about Fallout 4 because I had thought that maybe, just maybe BGS had learned a little bit of how important writing is in an RPG, but after playing that god awful game, I have my doubts. Frankly, I couldn't care less if Bethesda employees are in any way offended by this thread or any like it. They NEED to be knocked off that pedestal so many people put them on. Oh, and this petition is only stupid if you make it that way. Believe it or not, numbers matter, and the more signatures it gets the better. If you actually care about the future of Fallout and you aren't doing everything you possibly can to fix it, you aren't helping anyone including yourself. /rant

Still, I would greatly prefer Morrowind with guns, over Oblivion/Skyrim with guns. Also, I have this feeling that they're gonna do a "choose who you side with" MQ, because they're really trying to copy Obsidian. Have you heard about the Dragonborn DLC? It's about the first Dragonborn, and he has a temple, and presumably he hates the PC. Ring a bell? Good unoriginality is better than bad unoriginality imo, just a weak version of NV's MQ would be better than the terrible F3 MQ. He simply means you are too harsh on Bethesda. It's not really the average dev's or even Todd Howard's fault that Obsidian got screwed over, it's the higher officials', the people who make such poor decisions like hiring that Vogel dude who is responsible for TORtanic, from what I've heard. Now, take a look at Bioware, they're basically EAware now, that's an example of a developer team that needs to get wiped off the face of this Earth. Bethesda can still change, they just have to resist the higher-ups' bullying. Bethesda will only become a true "villain" if they stop modding support and things like that. That is where I disagree. For me it's either Fallout or not. If they do another TES with guns I just won't buy the game. It's probably because I just don't like TES games. Oh, and that isn't ringing any bells... Could you explain? It's both. I do feel that Zenimax is the biggest problem we have here, but the team at Bethesda is still not right for a Fallout game. From random interviews you can tell where their mindset is. Those posts are from Roshambo, famed grumbly old man who once cameod in Fallout: Tactics. He was never the owner of NMA, though he was an admin, and has been gone from the site since before Fallout 3's release. Using posts from him from 5 years ago to reflect on NMA now seems a bit of a stretch. I'm an admin from NMA, and while not the owner I am in charge of the site right now. I can't answer for every singly post made by every singly user but we do have very strict rules against any kind of threats. It, like piracy, has a zero-tolerance policy. No threat has ever been uttered from NMA itself and any user uttering threats on the forums are given strikes or banned, with their posts removed. No doubt such posts have been posted at times, but NKKKK can't find them because they're gone, because we do not allow that behavior. We do have a more critical tone and that no doubt brings in some folk who think that kind of behaviour is ok, but they don't last, because we as mods are not ok with that behaviour, and have fostered a community that knows the limits of good behaviour. Just like we rooted out any kind of cross-community trolling. It's really that simple. Everyone is welcome to join our forums. We have plenty of users who like Fallout 3 and/or New Vegas better than the classics. If you opt to base your opinions instead on spurious claims like "NMA issued death threats", then I probably can't convince you to give us a fair chance, and we'll go our merry ways. What do we do? Post news and discuss it? Write articles? Doesn't seem so over the top. Also, the devs of Bethesda actually do read NMA, from lower down to higher up, and devs from Obsidian even more so, since many of them really like the site. But the function of the site is not really to try to convince Bethesda of anything, it's why we don't do or back petitions like this one. Bethesda will do what they want to do, we have never been their target audience and that's fine. But we do like to give fans of the old games and of certain "old-school" RPG styles a place to call home, and have been having a lot of fun supporting Wasteland 2. It's a good time to be an NMAer, really. There, that's the NMA topic closer, I'm sure this thread will get back on topic now. Thanks for clearing all that up.

If they can make a good TES game it doesn't mean they can make a good Fallout game. I don't see them getting any better in the future but I do hope I am wrong. Yes I am a fan of Fallout... Isn't everyone on this thread?

The first two aren't anything to get excited about imo. "****suckers" is obviously not literal, and I actually wish Bethesda as a company would just die off as well. I see no problem with that. The other is obviously a joke based on actual evidence of developers paying off reviewers to give their games good reviews. A LOT of developers do this and IGN is one of the biggest culprits on the reviewer side. I wouldn't put it past Bethesda. The last 2 are from a guy that looks like he has a huge superiority complex. If he's the owner of NMA, so what? His actions don't reflect the entire user base. Oh, and once again, WHO THE **** CARES? If you want to make a thread about dissing NMA, go ahead but keep that irrelevant **** off this one.

If you aren't enjoying discussing the topic at hand, you are more than welcome to GTFO.

How creative. I never said Fallout 3 was a bad game, but it is a bad Fallout game for reasons already mentioned. I've never encountered that companion, and of the NPCs I encountered in Skyrim were hollow shells compared to hundreds of other RPGs. So they were able to create one NPC that actually had some depth to it? Excuse me if I don't break out in applause. As for them learning how to write and what not, look at how TES has progressed over the years. Look at all the stuff they removed and stream lined between Morrowind and Skyrim. They don't give a rats ass about plot elements. That was certainly the case for me - that I never played the first two. In fact, when I first was given Fallout 3, I wondered where the hell the other two were, expecting they were more recent releases that I should have noticed in a T.V. ad or E3 (especially since, by then, I vaguely knew that Bethesda was a pretty big/well known company). The two games came in the '90s, and I wasn't even paying attention to what games were out then, I just played the ones I got from family. Fallout 3 was one of the earlier, "darker," "smarter," (I know that probably sounds ridiculous, thus the quotation marks) and more expansive games I began playing around then. I was then and am now a nerd, so I obsessively enjoyed the concept of doing this alternate universe based on the concepts, science, sci-fi, etc. etc. of the '30's-'50's. It was one of the first RPG's I ever got to play, or where I was given any -real- sense of freedom or choice. That I could remember. It's atmosphere was amazing, exploration was ridiculously fun, it had more story, character, and dialogue than most of what I knew of, etc. etc. It was so comparatively better to what I was used to that it was among my favorite games for a good while, and certainly my favorite universe. It was also why I tried to play Oblivion, before being annoyed by it's more noticeable flaws (comparatively) and my gut hurting too much from laughting at the (comparatively) awkward voice acting, dialogue, and animation of faces. Two things make Fallout 3 unplayable for me, even with its nostalgic value, however. One was it's system, despite what I just said, didn't have enough variety to make a whole new playthrough worth it. I had (again, being very obsessive) already done everything the first time, or 96-98% more likely. When I tried again, a good while later, I was so frustrated by the sameness that I restarted with a character consisting of 1's and 10's in S.P.E.C.I.A.L. and similar extremes in skills. This still wasn't enough - the differences in combat were minor, and the differences in story/RPing/dialogue were virtually and essentially absent. The other reason was that Fallout: New Vegas raised the standard, and became (and still is) my favorite game - maybe my favorite thing. Suddenly, Fallout 3's world looked much more shallow and empty, the writing too simple, the ethics much more glaringly problematic, the conflicts and plot much less interesting. I still have a soft spot for Fallout 3, and I appreciate that it got me into other games - indirectly, into older games and RPG's - but I don't think I could play it at all without another couple decades to forget everything in it (and I'd have to try very hard to forget everything, too). If then. I have a couple other things I wanted to say here, but I'll put it in another post later. Responding to what is in bold: This is the biggest problem with Bethesda developing a Fallout game, or really any other RPG imo. For some reason they have the idea stuck in their heads that you should be able to do anything, go anywhere at any time, and obtain every weapon and item in the game. One of Fallout's biggest driving features is choice and consequence. Like you said, if you're able to do everything in one sitting, what is the point of playing through the game again? (Other than experiencing the masterful plot of Fallout 3 again)

A few things about Fallout 3 1. The writing: There are a lot of points in the game in which the writing is just juvenile and at other times restricting. The entire game is also very black and white which leads to the game being very linear in regards to story progression. This is my main gripe with the game. 2. The game play: I really don't mind it all that much, but they DID turn a turn-based, isometric RPG into a first person shooter based on stats. They allowed you to get 100 in all skills and 10 in all stats by the end of the game which is totally contradictory to the point of an RPG, and the difficulty levels just raised global health values which doesn't increase difficulty at all, just makes combat last longer. 3. The lore/story: Vault 87, The Enclave, and even project purity don't make any sense. According to the computers in vault 87, the vault acquired FEV before it was ever made. The Enclave was destroyed in FO2, everyone saw it. They may have had 'members' in remote locations, but obviously not enough to rebuild the huge army that was present in FO3. The whole premise behind project purity is just ridiculous. The amount of bombs it would have taken to irradiate the entire Atlantic ocean, or just that around DC, Pittsburgh, and PL, would have obliterated everything in the area. Oh and DC itself still standing makes no sense either. Apparently the White House took a direct hit and yet the buildings across the street are just barely affected?

I've added the petition page to Stumbleupon with various Fallout 1,2, and New Vegas tags. I noticed some new signatures so thanks for signing . If you have a Stumbleupon account please check out the petition on there and like it so it will spread around to more fans.

I said this earlier but I'll say it again. Even if this doesn't work, it would still show Zenimax that a lot of fans out there want better writing and such. From Skyrim we can gather that they obviously think none of that matters.