Obsidian making Fallout: New Vegas

[Ausir]

People saying Fallout & Fallout 2 had huge maps are deluding themselves.

 

They didn't have huge maps, but they showed a wider variety of locations and covered a wider area of the game's world, even if in less detail, while Fallout 3 shows a very detail view of what would amount to one map square in Fallout 1 or 2.

[Tagaziel]

People saying Fallout & Fallout 2 had huge maps are deluding themselves. You had a little dot slowly creeping from one square to another without ANY interaction with the map whatsoever. Once in a while you might get a random encounter, but they were the same over and over and they were (for the most part) totally uninteresting (and often seriously imbalanced).

 

Point is, Fallout is a world after a nuclear holocaust and SHOULD be sparsely populated. Fo3 is compressed way too much, losing that wasted feeling. That's the main problem, in my opinion at least.

[Wombat]

Hmmm... How did that quick-travel turn out in FO3? It may have random encounters, too, which might not kill the sense of survival totally. I wonder if I can call it "hybrid" of Fallouts, though.

[Nightshape]

*snip*

 

Mkreku could you knock togeather a quick list of all the elements of the FO3 engine which you think are impressive from a tech point of view so I can place them along side a negatives list and we can then find the clashing points and discuss those?

 

It's a little more analitical to approch consensus on what we think it does nicely/well, than to go "I play crappy animation", HA! "I raise you streaming world".

[Rostere]

I don't give a **** about how big the game world is, I don't think it's possible for Obsidian the fail there. I just care about how well made the content in the game world is.

[Slowtrain]

It's like Bethesda has ten different teams writing quests and dialogue trees.. and for some reason these ten teams are not allowed to interact with each other until the game is shipped. The individual quests are actually not all bad (well, some aren't), but the way they're shallowly just laid out on the playing field without ever affecting anything is.. sad.

 

 

I would only add that I do think some of the quests had potential, but such potential is never developed. They never go anywhere or lead to anything that has ramifications for your character. The quests just kinda...end. And leave me with a real sense of how utterly pointless that just was.

 

 

Bethesda definitely believes in quantity over quality: they throw out a bunch of things, but instead of developing those things to the point where they have significance, Bethie instead just throws out a bunch more things, and then more and then still more.

 

I guess their thinking is that if they throw out enough ****, people won't realize how utterly devoid of meaning and conseqence it all is.

Edited April 22, 2009 by CrashGirl

[TwinkieGorilla]

There are a lot of Beth haters. I would disagree with them, but that's just personal opinion, hopefully we are civil enough to agree to disagree. As with the Beth haters, some people don't seem to like Fallout 3. Understandable!

 

yer, i'd be one of 'em. but i don't really hate Bethie, i just hate their style of gaming and i hate what they're doing to the RPG genre. they're turning it more toward the LARPing and away from the rolling, skillchecks and choice/consequence. in Bethie's world, everybody wins! you can be a furry cat person playing house and dress up and drinking mead and wandering around aimlessly for days! wheeee!

 

what i truly HATE with an all-caps attitude, is that they've dragged my favorite game into their world. now...i'd be fine with this world if all the rest of Fallout wasn't sacrificed in order for it to fit. which it was. i'm hoping very much our old BIS friends can lend some justice. if not, oh well...we already lost.

 

Why do people call Fallout 3 puny? I hit location 164 on the map after 90 hours of gameplay.

 

true, i've still not seen all the areas. though i'm not exactly loading the game up very frequently. i haven't really seen people say that. do people say that? maybe it's the lack of varying content in every single area which tricks them into thinking they're all in the same claustrophobic janitors closet with batteries and scrap metal.

 

*shrugs*

[Axier]

Okay, as for the Fallout 1&2 made you feel like it was big, it didn't... Also, as for the every office building is the same statement, you obviously don't actually look around and read the terminals, find the little letters, and really get a sense of what happened when the bombs dropped. Focusing the game in a tight area like the DC/Maryland area, instead of sprawling the west with few actual maps, allows you to build more focus, and more depth into one place. Fallout 3 captures the scope of a wasteland with its walking... And people who hate the constant walking obviously don't go sightseeing, try entering random buildings. Believe it or not, you can go do a lot more than just the main quest areas. Also, the size of the area is just fine. If you don't like quick travel, don't use it. I never tried not playing with quick travel... Hmm... I'm going to make a new character that doesn't quick travel. Great idea there.

[Rostere]

It's like Bethesda has ten different teams writing quests and dialogue trees.. and for some reason these ten teams are not allowed to interact with each other until the game is shipped. The individual quests are actually not all bad (well, some aren't), but the way they're shallowly just laid out on the playing field without ever affecting anything is.. sad.

 

 

I would only add that I do think some of the quests had potential, but such potential is never developed. They never go anywhere or lead to anything that has ramifications for your character. The quests just kinda...end. And leave me with a real sense of how utterly pointless that just was.

 

 

Bethesda definitely believes in quantity over quality: they throw out a bunch of things, but instead of developing those things to the point where they have significance, Bethie instead just throws out a bunch more things, and then more and then still more.

 

I guess their thinking is that if they throw out enough ****, people won't realize how utterly devoid of meaning and conseqence it all is.

 

Those are exactly my thoughts on Fallout 3. A lot of times there were quests, or details in quests, which spawned some curiosity in me but every single one of them ended without really making some kind of impression. The quests in F3 felt just like reading random Twitter posts, or playing Starcraft matches which ends with your opponent lagging out, or something like that. It's never concluded or tied together in a way that doesn't feel clich

[Zoma]

Wouldn't the lake be radioactive poisoned after a post-nuclear war?

[Slowtrain]

Wouldn't the lake be radioactive poisoned after a post-nuclear war?

 

 

Sure, but you can still drink out of it to restore health while increasing your radcount.

 

 

Its a "tactical" decision. lol.

[Sannom]

Sorry to bother everyone, but I've read multiple times on this boards that JE Sawyer exposed some thought about VATS somewhere, anybody knows where would that be?

[crakkie]

The letters and story telling skeletons seem contrived to me. It's been 200 years. All that should be there is dust and scattered bones, not complete skeletons tragically illustrating their owners' last moments.

 

You didn't find much pre-war information in 1 or 2 unless it was on a holodisk or told to you by an NPC, usually with errors and inconsistencies. Everything was being reused or had disintegrated, this after 70 years. I wouldn't mind a Fallout set 1 or 2 decades after the bombs dropped, which might (sparsely) feature some of this pre-war evidence, factions still coming together or in flux, raiders forming out of pre-war organizations like gangs or police forces, etc. But in Fallout 3, the prewar stories seem to break immersion, not reinforce it.

[Ausir]

Yup, it doesn't make sense for unlooted, functional computers to still stand undamaged in deserted office buildings.

[Pidesco]

Sorry to bother everyone, but I've read multiple times on this boards that JE Sawyer exposed some thought about VATS somewhere, anybody knows where would that be?

 

Do a search for VATS of Sawyer's posts. Basically, he doesn't like VATS because of its potential for exploits.

 

VATS is game breaking because of its disruption of F3's basic real time mechanics.

[TwinkieGorilla]

Yup, it doesn't make sense for unlooted, functional computers to still stand undamaged in deserted office buildings.

 

i agree with both these posts and have had this discussion countless times (the Bethie people seem to just love this style of storytelling tho) but to be fair, those magically functioning green-screens contain the best writing (i.e. most Fallout-y feeling) in the game.

[Wombat]

I don't give a **** about how big the game world is, I don't think it's possible for Obsidian the fail there. I just care about how well made the content in the game world is.

Basically, I agree but the setting is in Nevada. How do you manage to express a vast and waste desert in a game without boring the players, then?

 

It's like Bethesda has ten different teams writing quests and dialogue trees.. and for some reason these ten teams are not allowed to interact with each other until the game is shipped. The individual quests are actually not all bad (well, some aren't), but the way they're shallowly just laid out on the playing field without ever affecting anything is.. sad.

 

 

I would only add that I do think some of the quests had potential, but such potential is never developed. They never go anywhere or lead to anything that has ramifications for your character. The quests just kinda...end. And leave me with a real sense of how utterly pointless that just was.

 

 

Bethesda definitely believes in quantity over quality: they throw out a bunch of things, but instead of developing those things to the point where they have significance, Bethie instead just throws out a bunch more things, and then more and then still more.

 

I guess their thinking is that if they throw out enough ****, people won't realize how utterly devoid of meaning and conseqence it all is.

 

Those are exactly my thoughts on Fallout 3. A lot of times there were quests, or details in quests, which spawned some curiosity in me but every single one of them ended without really making some kind of impression. The quests in F3 felt just like reading random Twitter posts, or playing Starcraft matches which ends with your opponent lagging out, or something like that. It's never concluded or tied together in a way that doesn't feel clich

[crakkie]

I'm not sure if anyone has posted this yet, but there is a F3 mod that adds a F1/2 style world map, taking you to different worldspaces at different locations, car, foot, and water travel, random encounters. It's more of a modders resource, so I'm not sure if anyone has actually put it to use yet, but it's nice to know that it's possible.

 

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3157

[Gorgon]

Aha, so this was why Sawyer as posting so frequently in the Fallout 3 thread and playing the game through on both PC and Xbox.

 

 

Basically, I agree but the setting is in Nevada. How do you manage to express a vast and waste desert in a game without boring the players, then?

 

You know what would be cool, replacing the mounts, which are still in the engine, with a beat up motorcycle or something like that. You could have a travel map in between larger areas a la Fallout 2 and 3.

Edited April 22, 2009 by Gorgon

[Gizmo]

Basically, I agree but the setting is in Nevada. How do you manage to express a vast and waste desert in a game without boring the players, then?

An overland map that behaves a bit like Google Earth, where you set your destination on the Pipboy, and the camera backs away from the PC in a rising arc towards the new location. The player sees a red line tracing the 3d topography of the land (and a traveling PC at first ~and in the end), while a day counter rapidly ticks off the hours of the trip. (This would pause and shoot straight down to the current location if a random encounter occurred, and the PC will have a fight/sight/or passive encounter).

 

*This would be as smooth a transition from FPP to TPP to FPP as I can come up with.

Edited April 22, 2009 by Gizmo

[Zoma]

Aha, so this was why Sawyer as posting so frequently in the Fallout 3 thread and playing the game through on both PC and Xbox.

 

 

Basically, I agree but the setting is in Nevada. How do you manage to express a vast and waste desert in a game without boring the players, then?

 

You know what would be cool, replacing the mounts, which are still in the engine, with a beat up motorcycle or something like that. You could have a travel map in between larger areas a la Fallout 2 and 3.

 

Its cool. So long as Bethesda doesn't sell DLCs that involves an upgraded bike armed with missle launcher with nuke warheads and lazer beamz with twin miniguns that shoots $400 dollar worth of a single .50 caliber bullet.

Edited April 22, 2009 by Zoma

[Slowtrain]

Sorry to bother everyone, but I've read multiple times on this boards that JE Sawyer exposed some thought about VATS somewhere, anybody knows where would that be?

 

 

We had some discussions in our most recent Fallout 3 thread, which has fallen back a few pages by now.

[Rostere]

I don't give a **** about how big the game world is, I don't think it's possible for Obsidian the fail there. I just care about how well made the content in the game world is.

Basically, I agree but the setting is in Nevada. How do you manage to express a vast and waste desert in a game without boring the players, then?

 

By creating content that makes you want to explore.

[Purkake]

I haven't read all the 65 536+ pages, but will it be possible to bring Traits back? They were pretty awesome and a lot better than the Bethesda's "+5 to two skills" crap.

[TwinkieGorilla]

hey Sawyer, go get MCA and a tape recorder.

 

create a wav file of the two of you simultaneously saying, in calm voices "don't worry. it's going to be alright this time" and i guarantee we'll all stfu for the rest of the year.

 

no srsly. c'mon.