Gromnir

battlestar galactica: embittered sex-bots destroy humanity... again. old yeller: gun wielding minor slays dog hero. HA! Good Fun!

If there is Lake Mead, I guess it should be there if it is not destroyed by the vicious hands of Obsidian designers atom bombs. am hoping they destroy... least partial. no lake mead and the remains o' the partial destroyed dam? got some nifty potential. one thing to keep in mind is that if we wanna keep true to original fallouts, then the joinable npcs gotta stay crap. most memorable jnpc from fo were a dog? mad props to the interplay/black isle writers who handled dogmeat's dialogues. am actual not so concerned 'bout the critical path story... am more concerned with individual characters and the tangential side-quests stories. keeps world big and open AND has a compelling critical path? sadly, we expect that obsidian, likes every other recent developer, will try to unravel the gordian knot. just sever the damn thing and be done with it. am curious to see how obsidian addresses antagonistic demands regarding illusion o' freedom and a tight and compelling critical path storyline. don't expect both. HA! Good Fun!

suggestions: 1) retool special. it were broken in fo3 and it were just as broken in fo 1 and fo2. players can max all but 2 skills by end of game? wacky unbalanced feats? how many fallout games has we seen and special ain't improved much. d&d has even gone through multiple revisions since late 90s. 2) abandon the notion that limited ammo result in balanced weapons. is amazing how tenacious the developers hold onto this one. how did you use the lincoln repeater? ever really ran out of ammo or did yous simply use ol'painless for the ghouls and pathetic stuff and then whip out the lincoln for the giant rad scorpions and deathclaws. 3) vats? less than 50% in small arms vats were more than enough to waste virtual enemy... seems wrong to Gromnir. 4) more Danny Kaye, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald... and if you can get some early Etta James. 5) hoover dam is such a kewl (if over-used) las vegas location just for starters HA! Good Fun!

This is probably the best post we're going to get with regard to explaining the two sides of this particular argument in one succinct line. (FWIW, I'm in mkreku's camp. Gameplay in Fallout had its charms, but said charms got old pretty fast, often leaving frustration in their wake.) the hardest thing 'bout discussing fallout at codex and nma: pointing out gameplay shortcomings. sure, you can gets some leeway if you criticize plot or character development, but suggest that fallout and special were a woefully unbalanced system and you is in for a long battle. point out that there were obvious more efficacious skills, abilities, weapons, perks and feats and you gets attacked like rangers at omaha beach. Gromnir thinks special is a nifty system, but is flawed... also agree with fergie that the fallout tb combat could be soul numbing. ... while toee were a wretched game on many levels, we thinks it actually did an admirable job in streamlining tb combat... even large numbers o' combatants didn't result in the kinda tedium that were common in fallout. HA! Good Fun!

10s of thousands? was told by a md friend o' ours that the swine flu is being referred to as an infodemic by the vast majority o' doctors. 'course anybody who has been to a md for a tough to diagnose condition is aware that medicine is more art and less science than we would all like to believe. HA! Good Fun!

I disagree. It started out as a GURPS experiment that grew into the Fallout experience/setting. But I believe the Fallout setting grew bigger than that archaic game system. Of course, there's no way of proving either for or against in this case. Funny though that I played Fallout despite its combat/gameplay system, while you seem to have played it because of its combat/gameplay system. our recollection is that josh sawyer were pretty dismissive of the gurps & fallout connection. sure, he ain't a conclusive kinda authority, but he did suggest that those folks who wished to take credit from cain and give to GURPS were being ridiculous. seems that mkreku would have sawyer support on this issue. mark the calender? HA! Good Fun!

need chemicals? probably not... but shouldn't the player's health be paramount? use ibuprofen to bring down swelling. use anti-biotic to stave off infections. use steroids to help recovery from serious injury. sure, makes an effort to distinguish healing medications/chemicals from performance enhancers is understandable, but as has been pointed out already, sometimes the line 'tween the two is... fuzzy. HA! Good Fun!

Troika tried, and failed. am thinking you give too much credit to troika. they failed 'cause they were crappy at managing their projects and not 'cause o' romantic ideals. HA! Good Fun!

Oh, please, grow up or something. Sheesh. Its a game. The purpose of a company is to make a product that makes them money and Bethesda had the rights to do anything they want with Fallout if that makes them money. Crying about it on the Internet isn't going to change a damn thing. Also, hoping is a waste of time. Crap in one hand, hope in the other, and see which one gets full first. is absolutely nothing wrong with fans trying to convince developers to make games that satisfy said fan... regardless o' the economic realities. is all kinda stuff that show up in games that not help the bottom line. after working the 5th straight 80 hour week, you better find some way to make game design more than a projected profit margin. that being said, vis is complete correct that ignoring business realities is all kinds o' foolish. hope that a developer ignores economically prudent in favor o' the True Believer's manifesto is, at best, silly. have never understood the fans that seems to think that they gots proprietary rights to a game 'cause they played many times and spends hours of free time on a game message board. even so, asking not hurt. 'course, Gromnir has seen vis ask for some pretty wacky stuff. Gromnir has asked for wacky stuff. *shrug* as have noted before, our curiosity is peeked 'cause am not sure why the true believers would choose to use the "true fallout" argument to create change... still ain't got an answer to that one. not seem to be a compelling argument save for when used to convince other true believers. HA! Good Fun!

"I am confident that they will create something akin to KOTOR2's upgrade system" eh? ok, we agree with you. kotor and kotor2 had same basic combat and same basic character development... added some prestige classes and feats, right? story telling and dialogues was similar from a mechanics perspective... am s'posing that thematically kotor2 were arguably darker, but as it were still lucas/star wars is tough to say how much o' the pap consistency o' the story were obsidian choice or publisher choice. personally we were not impressed with the influence system and have criticized it numerous times... but it were a new feature and if you liked then we s'pose it were a good thing. obsidian fixed loads o' little things... like interface issues and some o' the persistent bugs... though they did create a few additional problems with their tweekage. regardless, there were loads o' little things wrong with kotor, so fixing many such little things were a big task. item creation were a big change in kotor2... though it were kinda busted and unbalanced. am not sure if item creation in kotor2 deserves to be in the win column. other than the last 1/8th of game, we thought that kotor2 were noticeable superior to kotor... better story telling, characters, and being a sequel kotor2 the game simply had more... stuff. last 1/8th o' game... well, that is better left in past, right? *shrug* is tough to figure out True Believers. we witnessed first-hand how troika gots a free pass from many of the faithful. perhaps obsidian is now the successor to the birthright of cain. would be nice for obsidian. HA! Good Fun!

@ ziggy "No, your point that " "we"(who?) want The Return Of Ye Olde Fallouts and it's not happening because fallout3 sold millions of copies" is pointless for the same reason, i just reversed your logic." don't put something in quotes if Gromnir didn't actually say. is a kinda lying. also, am not sure what you think the peter hines quote means... more than we suspect peter hines meant. the infinite monkey theorem is always good for a laugh. wanna a neato quote from chrisA wherein he observes that gameplay is more important than story/writing? "a game's story should always be secondary to gameplay". can also dig up a quote where the lead developer for iwd2 admitted that he had virtual 0 time to come up with the story for that game. am not sure you know what you think you know. @ gizmo sure they is gonna tinker and fiddle with stuff. listen to josh sawyer talk 'bout how illegitimate vats combat were makes us think that he would like to do tweaking... but how much? 'nuff so that it no longer resembles fo3? doubt it. HA! Good Fun!

am recalling that uncle fergie once admitted that fallout's tb combat could be soul-numbing. don't hold your breath on the tb combat. hey, if troika had done a better job with toee it mighta created a tb crpg renaissance... but as toee were a big-fat failure... regardless, am still not seeing what is motivation for obsidian to substantial deviate from what bethesda did. yeah, as many o' the obsidian guys worked on van buren and probably feels like they got cheated out of an opportunity to finish, they may wanna try and incorporate some o' their vb ideas into their new fo game. that being said, they is making a follow-up game to bethesda's extremely successful fo offering. am still not seeing what is obsidan motivation to make wholesale changes... which is what the True Believers seems to want. HA! Good Fun!

similar to vols point, steroids and the steroid/hgh combos is a great way to speed up the healing process. given the length o' the baseball season, virtual everybody plays hurt, so the steroid stuff has a use other than hitting ball farther. is our understanding that for years the most popular baseball drug were amphetamines... need something to function on last couple o' days o' a road trip. friend o' ours who played pro ball in the early 90s mentioned that montreal games were some o' the worst for visiting greenie usage. have never personal been to montreal, but am understanding that their pr0n industry is quite active, and young players would rarely get a full night rest before a game in montreal. Gromnir were a bench warmer in college... played football. probably coulda' been a starter in the pac ten, but we were more concerned 'bout grades as we knew we had no shot at the pros. that being said, if somebody offered us a drug that woulda' made us a NFL caliber player but would shorten our life expectancy by 15 years, we woulda' taken in a heartbeat. now, as we is on the doorstep o' 40, am not so sure how we would decide... but at age 19-20... no-brainer-- take the 'roids. lose some hair, get back acne and die of cancer in 30 years? sure, why not? HA! Good Fun!

am not recalling which sportswriter pointed out that to get caught by the mlb's current drug testing policy you gotta be a complete idiot. haven't actually watched a baseball game since the strike year... which is a real shame since the white sox finally won the series a few years ago. HA! Good Fun!

Ha!... I was wrong... (I guess my mind is too finely tuned*) * no sweat... and am secure enough to admit that we enjoyed douglas adams' books... in spite o' fact that admitting appreciation of his works carries similar stigma as babylon 5 geekdom and monty python quotes. HA! Good Fun!

Brios is who you're thinking, not Briareus, which is what the link puts on top. i have no clue who the guy who the link goes to is. he were a Developer for black isle... you not see title o' thread and follow back to origin? perhaps now you is seeing the point o' the post? a black isle developer speaks to the questionable commercial success o' fallout. bad 'cess to twinks, zigs and gorillas. oh, and chrisA has gotten plenty o' millage from ps:t... but that were kinda the high water mark for him. sorry, but unlike aristes, we were pretty damned unimpressed with the motb joinable npcs. each character were a cliche-- with a hook. 'stead o' the textbook cleric/paladin that questions faith... we gets a winged chick who literal only sees in black n' white. make the character a male-human paladin and who gives dove a second thought, eh? gann... a jolly-rogue womanizer... with mommy issues? makes an elf and how quick you thinks we hear "cliche"? worst of all, we never made no connection with the titular character... can't even recall his name. is not that motb were horrible, but am not thinking it were particularly great work for chrisA. at some point somebody should pull chrisA aside and tell him that characters should be profound, rather than trying to make 'em say lots o' profound stuff. maybe has chrisA read children's books like "the phantom tollbooth" or gaiman's "coraline". heck, gaiman's adult characters not go 'round vomiting forth coffee shop grade existential philosophy... 'cept for maybe in American Gods. kids books is great for beating the excessive introspection habit out o' young authors, 'cause young readers simply don't get such stuff. make chrisA write his characters as if they is speaking to a 10-year old. ravel weren't profound 'cause o' what she said, but 'cause o' how she were used to advance story. kreia were an excellent character as well, though she got a little preachy... but in a star wars jedi that kinda goes with the territory to some degree. don't get us wrong, chrisA has produced some fantastic work... his targos stuff in iwd2 were high point o' the game. even so, he is miss almost as often as he is hit. HA! Good Fun!

"i don't see why Fallout: New Vegas has to be a mindless boom-fest, in order to be successful." what is it with you people and logic? never asked for such or suggested such, so your point is... pointless. regardless, if you wanna follow obsidian career, we is game. kotor2 followed same basic model as did kotor... just added more stuff. used same basic rules and character development choices and you still gots same kinda epic save-the-galaxy scenario. all npcs stay on ebon hawk and you chat up between missions. the influence bit was added to kotor 2, but again, it were hardly a complete change in npc interactions were it. folks who were expecting kotor2 to be similar to kotor were not disappointed. nwn2 made some substantial changes to nwn2, but it were still recognizable epic fantasy, and unlike kotor, the sp aspect of nwn took some considerable criticism. the fallout faction as aristes labeled you folks, is hardly similar in numbers to the folks who complained 'bout the nwn sp aspect. even so, with nwn2 you got nwn... but with a functional party. used many o' the existing prestige classes but didn't make lots of wholesale changes. many of the changes obsidian made to nwn2 were stuff that the modding community had already done to nwn themselves... kinda likes how ad&d was little more than a codification o' the most popular house rules for d&d backs in 1978. is understating the value of obsidian input as they did not simply utilize fan-made mods in nwn2, but nwn2 were recognizable as nwn. is actual amusing to recollect iwd2. iwd were a black isle game, but in spite of super-speed development cycle, black isle tries to bootstrap iwd2 from ad&d to d&d 3e. am actually thinking they did a pretty good job with that, but is probable one o' the more dramatic changes we seen by the obsidian/black isle folks for a sequel or expansion project. oh, and HoW... is perhaps one o' the more laughably misguided crpg expansions we seen in a decade. you wanna reference the small number o' talented fo folks who is current at obsidian? well how 'bout the HoW folks. HoW were an expansion o' iwd and 'cause it were so short and so underwhelming, the black isle folks created totl, a free supplement to HoW... and a pretty darn good one. even so, is not as if obsidian/black isle has a irreproachable record with expansions and sequels... throw Torn into mix (ain't gonna blame that on interplay, is you?) as an example o' the work o' the talented folks now at obsidian? *shrug* as for literacy o' obsidian... am s'posing you is making a dig at bethesda--- suggest that fo3 turned out the way it did 'cause their writers were... illiterate? yes, very amusing. still not a particular convincing argument though, is it? HA! Good Fun!

labels is a convenience, the application o' which inevitably leads to some misunderstandings. *shrug* "Then explain what makes a "true" Fallout game, and why Beth's FO3 isn't one." am not so much concerned with labels, but like hell kitty, the "true" fallout stuff perplexes us. fo had plenty o' flaws. fo were a pc game made in the late 1990s. fo were only a moderate good seller (if that). fo were just a game and the notion o' canon for a game seems misplaced. am not certain why staying "true" to fallout is seen as a positive. sure, as genuine and potential customers, the True Believers got considerable interest in attempting to convince the developers that fallout canon is worthy o' protection. fine... am all for trying to sway developers... to influence change. am simply not understanding how a "true" fallout argument is persuasive... 'less the developer in question is already a True Believer, in which case the argument need not be made. if a feature or idea is worthy it should survive on its own merits rather than 'cause o' the imagined consanguineous relationship 'tween parent game and its progeny. those folks who speak o' the "true fallout" is the ones we typical throw into the fallout faction bin... though that probable ain't fair... not that we feels any genuine remorse. HA! Good Fun! "I think your post is probably too long-winded to incite true flames, only increasingly long-winded replies." am gonna observe that while Gromnir's post count ain't near as high as some folks 'round here, our total word count would probable be in the top 10. brevity is no prerequisite for flame war tinder... not that we thought that aristes post was particularly... charged/loaded?

am not gay, but we likes cooking and gershwin tunes... renoir prints makes all warm and fuzzy, and we has seen Guys and Dolls 'bout a dozen times. ... if Gromnir didn't look a bit like an ambulatory fire hydrant, and if our home were decorated better, it would be tough to convince folks that we is straight. btw, the oed explanation makes sense. am gonna go with that one. HA! Good Fun!

quick observation: don't assume that Gromnir thought that fo3 were a great game. truth-to-tell, we Did enjoy paying through fallout, but we liked in spite of the obvious flaws. character development choices become largely meaningless if you can become highly proficient in a majority o' the available skills... no genuine costs. many o' the design choices and writing flaws we hated in oblivion were present in fo3. nevertheless, Gromnir devoted considerable hours playing fo3, and we not feel as if we were cheated. end were a bit abrupt, but we had fun. 'course, the reasons we thought fo3 were flawed has nothing to do with fo canon. HA! Good Fun! ps bethesda earned big bonus points with their Danny Kaye & Billie Holiday songs in fo3.

(self-pruned/edited... 'cause we is all about the love) HA! Good Fun!

just trying to figure out what position you're playing, homer. catcher in baseball. strong safety or fullback in football usually play prop or flanker in rugby. *shrug* is few things more useless than a list, but you is welcome to it. wanna figure out our culinary leanings from our most recent shopping list? onions, carrot, celery root, short ribs (english cut) ketchup, etc. HA! Good Fun!

is a new group of nma/codex refugees at obsidian... so you gotta expect the deja vu. HA! Good Fun!

game we thought were good. panzer general 2, shadow of the horned rat, dark omens, mechwarrior 2, bg2, mdk2, iwd, battlezone, grim fandango, silent hunter 3, tie fighter, madden football franchise, total annihilation, ps:t, half-life 2 (not Gromnir's kinda game, but it was good even so) fo2, pong... and others am not certain what you thinks such a lit reveals, and is not complete by any stretch o' the imagination, but you asked... *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

lulz. ok, yeah. i always forget about that abortion of a game. In it's defense, they copied almost word for word the original written PnP game, so the blame for quality writing/story telling goes elsewhere. They could be held accountable for not changing, or improving it. But then it would not remain true to the source. It was hard for them to win. am gonna call bs 1) is not almost word for word... pick up actual copy o' toee 2) vol deserves an apology there were a couple o' folks on the toee boards pre release (including vol) that noted that toee were a big module, but a crappy one. beyond general crappiness, it were noted that if troika didn't flesh out the skeleton, toee would be a damned lifeless and dull experience. the troika faithful (and even a troika developer) responded that of course toee would be fleshed out... the old modules were simply a framework upon which the clever and imaginative dm would add his own personal touches to bring to life. the troika faithful had supreme confidence in the ability o' tim cain to be the dm who would breathe life into toee. after toee release THEN we start hearing excuses 'bout how troika simply followed the old ad&d module and how they couldn't be criticized for being faithful. what a crock. the apologists and revisionists really changed their tune after release. don't buy the line o' bull 'bout faithfulness o' toee. HA! Good Fun!