Fallout 3

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Fallout 3 is the salvation of the Fallout series. It is selling fantastically. Fallout was a dead series before it came out.

 

If you want to argue that it wasn't a huge commercial success at the time, that's fine; even if it falls on the twisted logic that, unless it becomes a market anomaly like Baldur's Gate, then no other cRPG was selling well at the time which simply isn't true. But if it was dead as you said, there wouldn't be any interest in reviving it. To put your Beatles example to better use, if Fallout hadn't turn a profit, you wouldn't have Fallout 3 right now.

[Hell Kitty]

I thought the whole "[series] is dead" thing referred to nothing good being done with the franchise for x amount of time, not that nothing good was ever done with it. Of course plenty of folks use the "[series] is dead" line to dismiss a new entry in a series because they don't like it.

[Walsingham]

Well Battlestar Galactica was certainly dead. But I think we can agree the 're-imagining' was a great way to revive it.

[GreasyDogMeat]

I think Hurlshot is right, not based on the past 'true' Fallouts, but on the spin-offs that came after Fallout 2 like Tactics & BoS. I'm not sure how well Tactics sold but from everything I've read BoS did absolutely abysmally, both in fan reaction and sales.

[newc0253]

it's kinda academic whether the Fallout franchise was successful or not. the fact is once Interplay went under, it was for all intents and purposes dead until Bethesda revived it.

[Gromnir]

Sales - while often treated as being an objective evaluation of a product - is ultimately a subjective evaluation (an perhaps not of the product, but of the advertising/marketing of the product).

 

 

sales is one of the few readily available objective measures we got. is not a measure o' quality, 'cause quality is inherent subjective, but sales IS an objective measure... of sales.

 

*shrug*

 

btw, folks who scoff at sales numbers is being foolish. developers make and sell games to make money... and unlike cheese (HA!) or cars or other stuff, you can't survive in pc publish/development by making a specialized product with a limited clientele. makes a more quality game is possible? sure, but unlikes other products, pc games has a relative fixed price.

 

given the fact that all games is pretty much sold at same price, sales is a pretty damn important indicator in guaging success... as 'posed to quality.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Diogo Ribeiro]

I thought the whole "[series] is dead" thing referred to nothing good being done with the franchise for x amount of time, not that nothing good was ever done with it.

 

The whole "[series] is dead" can be many things; I just went with my gut feeling on what he may have meant. My apologies to him if he meant otherwise, but still, he seemed to be using financial success as a measure of sorts.

[Volourn]

"the fact is once Interplay went under"

 

Except, the fact is, Interplay never actually went under.

[Hurlshort]

"the fact is once Interplay went under"

 

Except, the fact is, Interplay never actually went under.

 

Uh...you are grasping at straws here.

 

It was forced to close its doors for a few days, the majority stockholder filed for bankruptcy, and they went into a receivership status. I'm not sure how else you want to qualify "going under".

 

Going under doesn't mean dead.

[Aristes]

The point I was making about sales, and I took Hurlshot to mean the same thing, isn't that numbers equate to quality. As Walsingham and Gromnir say, quality is in the eye of the beholder. The point is that commercial success has made Fallout 3 the continuation of the series. Like Amentep says, Fallout 1/2 and Fallout 3 might not be the same game, but both might have good sales and critical acclaim. However, sometimes the later version dwarfs the original, either in sales or acclaim, and becomes the flagship. I enjoyed the original Fallouts more than Fallout 3. ...But I think Fallout 3 will increasingly become the Fallout franchise. Don't come after me with flaming brands and pitchforks for saying that. I don't contend that it should, and I didn't make it happen, but I think it's the case. The worst you can say about me is that I'm enjoying Fallout 3 a lot and that I'm glad that it's continuing the series because I don't think it would have continued otherwise.

 

It might seem like a grave injustice to some of you, but sheer numbers have finally broken the back of what has been an incredibly vocal and active fanbase. There will always be some who rail against this turn of events, but I don't think developers really need to take the ol' skool fans as much to heart going forward.

[Volourn]

Technicality. They still existed. They weren't wiped out ala Troika. They were forced to close their doors 'for a few a days'; but they never actually 'went under'.

[Hurlshort]

Technicality. They still existed. They weren't wiped out ala Troika. They were forced to close their doors 'for a few a days'; but they never actually 'went under'.

 

Yes, lets argue over the definition of the vague phrase 'went under'.

[newc0253]

Technicality. They still existed. They weren't wiped out ala Troika. They were forced to close their doors 'for a few a days'; but they never actually 'went under'.

 

Yes, lets argue over the definition of the vague phrase 'went under'.

yes, maybe 'went under' has a legal definition in podunk town, northern ontario but most people would say being forced to sell all your assets, lay off all your employees, & close all your offices (except for a shoebox in Irvine) doesn't really count as 'staying afloat'.

 

applying volo's magical definition, bear stearns never went under either. neither did merrill lynch. or fannie mae or freddie mac. no sir, they're all doing fine - nothing to see here, move along please.

[Amentep]

Sales - while often treated as being an objective evaluation of a product - is ultimately a subjective evaluation (an perhaps not of the product, but of the advertising/marketing of the product).

 

 

sales is one of the few readily available objective measures we got. is not a measure o' quality, 'cause quality is inherent subjective, but sales IS an objective measure... of sales.

 

*shrug*

 

btw, folks who scoff at sales numbers is being foolish. developers make and sell games to make money... and unlike cheese (HA!) or cars or other stuff, you can't survive in pc publish/development by making a specialized product with a limited clientele. makes a more quality game is possible? sure, but unlikes other products, pc games has a relative fixed price.

 

given the fact that all games is pretty much sold at same price, sales is a pretty damn important indicator in guaging success... as 'posed to quality.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

I generally agree with your point, but high sales doesn't determine "why" something sold. Its a solid number, but the interpretation of why the number exists is subjective. But the fact it sold is objective, yes.

 

What I was trying to get at, though, is for example that Game X might sell a lot of units, but beyond saying it sells a lot of units, and therefore is a good selling game, you can't really argue much about the numbers without moving into the realm of the subjective ("Game X sold well because...")

 

That said, you make a good point in that sales are numbers that developers are creating games for and the gauge they use for success, so the subjective interpretation of why the game sold well is a moot point in some respects (although probably a question the developer will try to determine so as to recreate the success).

[Dark_Raven]

I don't understand why there are radscorpions in the East Coast when scorpions are native to the desert regions like out west.

[Maria Caliban]

I don't understand why there are radscorpions in the East Coast when scorpions are native to the desert regions like out west.

 

Scorpians are all over. Deserts, tropical rainforests, temperate environments, mountainous, or cave biotopes. As long as it's not cold year round, they're there.

 

Here's species that lives in Maryland now:

Edited November 17, 2008 by Maria Caliban

[Gorgon]

We don't have scorpions here. A shame, they look really cool.

[Gorgon]

If we are being realistic however, gravity makes enormous exoskeletons unfeasible.

[Pop]

If we're being realistic, how and why does everyone use bottlecaps as currency? What gives a bottle cap worth? There certainly isn't a Central Bank of the Wastes.

 

Hell, if we're sticking to canon, how is it that there are several dozen chinese soldier ghouls hiding out in the snack factory? I'm pretty sure the Fallout Bible (which Emil had said was law for Fallout 3) specified that something like .002% of people exposed to deadly radiation became ghouls. Did they have a hundred thousand undercover chinese insurgents packed into that factory before the war?

 

Picking nits is fun!

[Dark_Raven]

We don't have any here thankfully. Disgusting looking creatures.

 

Lets see, in the game I am wandering aimlessly in the wastes. I left that whiney dog at home. He almost died too many times fighting those Talons and their laser weapons.

[Maria Caliban]

Hell, if we're sticking to canon, how is it that there are several dozen chinese soldier ghouls hiding out in the snack factory? I'm pretty sure the Fallout Bible (which Emil had said was law for Fallout 3) specified that something like .002% of people exposed to deadly radiation became ghouls. Did they have a hundred thousand undercover chinese insurgents packed into that factory before the war?

 

Picking nits is fun!

 

My first image of Fallout was the recording of the American soldier executing a

[Pop]

The computers at the factory explicitly state that the soldiers are there covertly.

 

The Chinese hadn't invaded the mainland anyway.

[Slowtrain]

I don't understand why there are radscorpions in the East Coast when scorpions are native to the desert regions like out west.

 

Scorpians are all over. Deserts, tropical rainforests, temperate environments, mountainous, or cave biotopes. As long as it's not cold year round, they're there.

 

Here's species that lives in Maryland now:

 

 

I hadn't realized that scorpions were that widespread in the US. I checked wikipedia and your statement appears to be slightly misleading. Scorpions are only found in 31 of 50 US states. Maryland does in fact happen to be one. I wonder if Bethesda knew this or if they just got lucky.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorpion

 

 

edit: I hasten to add that 31 of 50 is way more than I thought. I had thought them to be restricted to the desert SW/Texas of the US.

Edited November 17, 2008 by CrashGirl

[GreasyDogMeat]

We don't have scorpions here. A shame, they look really cool.

 

They are neat to find out on a lonely road but they aren't fun to find in your shoe.

[newc0253]

okay, of all the complaints re Fallout 3 continuity, this has to be one of the more anal.

 

the chinese in the factory were spies. yes, only 0.02% of the population exposed to radiation became ghouls, but that don't mean that it's a uniform distribution. how do we know that it's not some special high concentration of gamma rays that does it? and that one of those special high concentrations hit the processing plant? seems reasonable to me...

 

i thought locations like that were a nice touch: there weren't any NPCs or associated quests, but it wasn't a cookie-cutter location either - it was something distinct with its own little backstory instead of yet another metro with ghouls and molerats.

 

i think my main complaint about the Fallout continuity was that the destroyed world of Fallout 3 seemed somehow less futuristic and arcane and more recognisably our own world than the destroyed world of Fallouts 1 & 2.

 

maybe it was the closer attention to real world locations e.g. despite the skewed metro map, the metro stations in Fallout 3 are strikingly similar in design to the ones in real life, whereas when i went to the Boneyard in Fallout 1, i wasn't looking around thinking "hey, i've actually been here". or maybe it's that DC is inevitably more steeped in historical monuments and classical architecture than California. yes, there were robots and lasers, etc, but one of the things about the original Fallouts was the disparity between the retro-50s 'world of tomorrow' that existed before the war & the radioactive rubble that followed. whereas Fallout 3 felt more like it was a cheesy 50s version of our world that was nuked, not an especially futuristic one.

 

i dunno, it's hard to put one's finger on the tonal shift. i think Bethesda did an excellent job of trying to recapture the feel of the original Fallouts but i don't know if they completely succeeded.

Edited November 18, 2008 by newc0253