Fallout, B. I. the hate, the love

[cronicler]

I guess it is inevitable that even if we just agree to disagree we will be irritating each other; so lets try to blow off steam here.

 

Let me just do a quick recap on my gamer profile first then explain my feelings about the games.

I started "really" using Pc at around 1998-1999 period when I was finally allowed to buy a new computer to replace my secondhand 286. I didn't have much cash and I didn't really have a stable internet access (too costly) and didn't have a clue either so it was more of a luck and taste about choosing my first titles (from a second hand shop no less) ; Monkey Island 3, Pandemonium, Jagged Alliance 2 and another secondhand title with a cracked plastic box called fallout.

After such titles I got onto the gamer wagon with other titles like Baldur's Gate, KKND, C&C, Commandos...

 

These games created my standards for looking at new games. Despite liking good graphics I don't think I'm too much of a graphic slave:

An adequate graphical representation, A solid gameplay and system coupled with average to good writing is what I want from games.

(On stories themselves: I am a bookworm especially on SF and Military. I have seen that it is really hard to create something new that other people haven't done like this. But this doesn't stop people from using over-used concepts and creating very enjoyable and very good books as in this one )

 

Fallout 1 was a pioneer B side title. Somehow its whole world was balanced in itself and everything fit without too much trouble.

Fallout 2 was more of an expansion pack or quest DLC than a new game. After creating the fallout engine and system from ground up, the maniacs at interplay sunk a whole year of creativity and about a month of bug fixing into the second title. The result was a big, good but extremely buggy game. It had its brilliant moments and its good sides but there were a lot of places that lacked polish or didn't fit in like New Reno. I guess New Reno is the best example of this: The place was like a beautifully crafted ultra complex swiss watch. the whole city and Npc reactions changed as you did more and more stuff. It was like playing the GTA4 story on fallout engine. And it was Neon colored while everything else was dust dirt or earth colored. And the whole place was just a side show in the main game/story...

 

Most of the new Fallout fans only see us bashing Fo3. Actually we bash every fallout game, spin our wheels to find out how we can make them more polished and better.

 

Anyway around this time Interplay had a change of ownership. Despite their good games Interplay was in the negative due to sub-par financial management. So came in Herve Caen. Now I am not going to say much for fear of being slammed a fee for insulting him but his vision (or the lack of) for making mainstream cash bundle making games and the changes in company atmosphere started to push developers to leave for other places.

 

Anyway lets look at the B. now;

I wasn't really interested in the FP-RPG side of the RPGs so I never really looked at Arena or Daggerfall real closely. The closest I came to is when I tried Morrowind on a friend computer. It was a suprisingly robust title with lots of materials to find and explore. The graphics were so-so but my computer didn't have the power to handle it so i forgot about it.

 

Then came the Oblivion (Near my new machine) Man the game was stunningly beautiful and seemed incredibly well constructed. Sure If you left the path of the main quest the game suddenly lost most of its polish but I shrugged as I didn't expect them to create a totally working world this size on the first try. (I had accepted that O. was bigger than M. without thinking or knowing). Anyway after my second deadric gate and some boring attempts to sandbox, I left the game.

 

Then I tried Morrowind. and I was suprised to see how many things had been cut out of the game and/or been made console friendly. The game had gone after shinny bits and left most of its brainy bits like long books, detailed crafting... It was also sad to see that the M. fans were just ignored and had become their own clan is some ways.

 

Anyway lets move onto Fallout 3 from an old timer's perspective:

The first thing that made me uh-oh was the escape. The tutorials up to this point had been ok, and I was really looking to spend some time in the vault's corridors doing some fetch quests and see other parts of the vault. No such luck. Call me weird but I was trying to find a way to sneak past the guards and get out without violence... Well unless you bug abused there wasn't a way to go out without killing people. and 9 guards on duty were a bit overkill for 1000 man vault with 3 shifts... (And how the hell did ****roaches the size of labradors get into the living quarters??)

 

Anyway you get out, the vista is beautiful and you arrive at Megaton. Uh oh, why did they copy paste this from FO:T? and the quests... I mean at least open up some of the other quests after I do some quests in the town and become a new but known figure...

 

Most of the rest of the game was like this. The main story was lifted out of FO2; Enclave trying to kill all unpure and FO1; Mutants dipping everyone. Locations didn't make any sense, they just existed to be quest hubs for player. How hard is it to insert a few random lines at Arefu cursing Megaton for buying so cheap and at Megaton cursing Rivet City for driving prices up...

 

The good creative parts of the game also suffered from the New Reno problem. They were nice to excellent but they didn't really fit is. Hot did those guys get Vault 106 suits? Why are there 5 vaults in 1 city? Who puts a military project in a civilian vault.

 

Then we have the gameplay issues and bugs. I think most of the design decisions were made to capture a more robust FPS-Shooter feeling into the game but all they did was making the game taste weird. What makes an Oblivion player like me angry is the little fact that most of these bugs stayed over from Oblivion. Any bug that is related to physics engine or deep code that wasn't accessible to the modders and weren't fixed by modders is still in the new game.

 

The saddest part is probably the mud smearing campaign: Oh those old sticks just can't evolve with time. They just want the same game. Lamers....

None of the guys and gals at NMA or other fallout communities wanted that game to be bad. We went to the boards and asked normal questions like "Don't you think radiant AI needs some more tweaks?" or "Isn't combat a bit too much on the highlights?"; we were told to "STFO" and driven off the boards.

 

We have been chewing on these games for a long time all we wanted to give was some input but from day 1 we were seen as public enemy no1.

 

Yes I guess I am jaded and Cynical towards B. now; they just used the fan made material from oblivion in their new title and didn't even bother the fix its bugs. They just reused the concepts and stories from the first two games for the main story and didn't even make them fit. They just created a single player game based on MMO gameplay and I am the evil guy when I point this out.

 

 

Ah well. I have blasted my rant. lets roll with yours against mine guys.

Edited April 29, 2009 by cronicler

[HoonDing]

Anyway lets move onto Fallout 3 from an old timer's perspective:

The first thing that made me uh-oh was the escape. The tutorials up to this point had been ok, and I was really looking to spend some time in the vault's corridors doing some fetch quests and see other parts of the vault. No such luck. Call me weird but I was trying to find a way to sneak past the guards and get out without violence... Well unless you bug abused there wasn't a way to go out without killing people. and 9 guards on duty were a bit overkill for 1000 man vault with 3 shifts... (And how the hell did ****roaches the size of labradors get into the living quarters??)

What do you mean with 'bug abused'? It's been a while since I played Fallout 3, but I simply ran past everything the first time I played it.

 

I'm new here, BTW, so hello.

[cronicler]

The couple that gets killed in the entrance door: Bump the female onto the male and sometimes they just run away instead of running to the door and getting killed (or making you kill the guards to save the civies).

At the interrogation chamber draw your bat and hit the window. The girl will escape and the guard will come looking for you. you can hide from him in the computer room if you are lucky and he will go back to the interrogation chamber and threathen an empty chair

At the Vault door run into the room then run back out and close the door so the girl hits the closed passage and stops. that way she wont be beaten after you flee or her idiot ai wont kill the guards

[Gorgon]

Fallout isn't about realism, it never was.

[cronicler]

It was not but it was consistent. Sure the game used lots of "Hand Waveium" in it's explanations but there weren't many things that breached the fourth wall except the easter eggs. Fallout world had its rules: Long term medium Radiation exposure on a guy who was exposed to few makes mutations like 6th toe. There are healing and antidote potions i mean drugs. It had its own rules and it stayed in them.

[Promethean]

Fallout isn't about realism, it never was.

 

But it did have concrete rules and reality in Fallout. The series gotten worse in this regard since 2.

[HoonDing]

At the Vault door run into the room then run back out and close the door so the girl hits the closed passage and stops. that way she wont be beaten after you flee or her idiot ai wont kill the guards

First time I played the game, I accidentally bugged the ending by something like this. I entered the Jefferson Rotunda *without* the Brotherhood girl who was unconscious. But once inside, the doors get locked and you're completely stuck.

[cronicler]

weird, she should have spawned next to you after reloading a couple of times or force changing levels...

[mkreku]

The saddest part is probably the mud smearing campaign: Oh those old sticks just can't evolve with time. They just want the same game. Lamers....

None of the guys and gals at NMA or other fallout communities wanted that game to be bad. We went to the boards and asked normal questions like "Don't you think radiant AI needs some more tweaks?" or "Isn't combat a bit too much on the highlights?"; we were told to "STFO" and driven off the boards.

Wow.. This amount of self denial is almost mind blowing. The NMA/Codex guys came in and politely asked a few harmless questions (totally without prejudice and full of hope for a good game), and in their innocence they're blasted by profanity and unfair accusations.

 

Yes. I've been a member of the Bethesda boards too. That's exactly how it happened.

 

Just wow.

[TwinkieGorilla]

in before lock?

 

also, about this:

 

Fallout isn't about realism, it never was.

 

i've been having this argument since the beginning of time. i even saved a screen of a post so i didn't have to keep writing it up. [blues voice]wanna see it here it goes[/blues voice]

 

Edited April 29, 2009 by TwinkieGorilla

[cronicler]

Mkreku: I was banned 4 times from B. boards and I never went further than saying "are you sure going in this direction this far is a good idea?"

Sure there were a lot of flamethrowers but anytime someone tried to criticise something, s/he was buried under the rubble at B. boards.

 

On another note please don't deny that the game was given a whole mountain of PR. Heck B. even hosted the reviewers on a Hotel to experience the game before the release.

 

Now after so many years Gotys and Praises the so called rewievers are finally saying Oblivion was good but I hope they fix this or that in Tes5... People who said those things when the game was fresh were booed off remember?

 

I am not talking about abstract concepts or things ahead of current capabilities; the games were not polished, their parts didn't fit and they weren't consistent in themselves. They were enjoyable but they were not as good as they could or should be.

Edited April 29, 2009 by cronicler

[Promethean]

Bethesda PR is pretty bad with overselling features or outright lying, like with the number of endings in FO3. Yet they like to ban people that dont conform to their views. They really dont deserve everything their mod community does for them. Those guys are awesome.

[cronicler]

For Justice Ceasar's rights should be given to Ceasar.

 

B. has a very good highly capable and easy to use editor that they have released to the modders. Despite hating their policies and pr and all I have to concede that the editor makes it nearly worthwhile to get the TES4.

I remarked it on the other thread before; I played Oblivion a lot; sure I disabled every vanilla part of the game with 2+ gigs of mods but having that ability does justify the games price in my eyes, not the game itself.

[Hurlshort]

Without doing anything odd, I made it out of the vault after only killing one guard, and that was the guy doing the interrogation. I found it was pretty easy to sneak through the other parts.

[cronicler]

It was probably my OCDness. I didn't want to let the couple get killed or kill the guards at the inner door.

And after the Vault door closes if you stayed near the door you can "see" that the guards beat up Amada. If you wait enough she will kill them all between being unconscious.

Heh you might get shot by a guard who sticks his arm around the Vault door's seams now and then too

Edited April 29, 2009 by cronicler

[Oerwinde]

Bethesda PR is pretty bad with overselling features or outright lying, like with the number of endings in FO3.

 

Hey, yeah, I didn't even realize that... didn't they say there was like 150 endings, when it turned out there was like 4?

[HoonDing]

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

 

But it seems this lie seemed a bit too big.

[Kjarista]

Bethesda PR is pretty bad with overselling features or outright lying, like with the number of endings in FO3. Yet they like to ban people that dont conform to their views. They really dont deserve everything their mod community does for them. Those guys are awesome.

 

No, they ban people who are abusive to other posters. I almost got banned myself, and I keep getting accused of being a Beth fanboi.

[TwinkieGorilla]

No, they ban people who are abusive to other posters. I almost got banned myself, and I keep getting accused of being a Beth fanboi.

 

No, they're hyper-sensitive and have very hyper-sensitive rules determined by the personalities of the mods and their interpretation of said corporate rulesets. most of the time i got warnings i was completely caught off guard. at one point i was temp-banned for making a joke about Canada (while having made it known i was actually dating somebody from Toronto and couldn't possibly have been disparaging). some times it's obvious, but they've got some insanely strict bid'ness over there. it actually became an incredibly difficult game trying to figure out just HOW to post critically without getting warned to death.

 

*drumroll.......and here we have the eyeroll*

[Deadly_Nightshade]

No, they ban people who are abusive to other posters.

 

[Kjarista]

No, they ban people who are abusive to other posters. I almost got banned myself, and I keep getting accused of being a Beth fanboi.

 

No, they're hyper-sensitive and have very hyper-sensitive rules determined by the personalities of the mods and their interpretation of said corporate rulesets. most of the time i got warnings i was completely caught off guard. at one point i was temp-banned for making a joke about Canada (while having made it known i was actually dating somebody from Toronto and couldn't possibly have been disparaging). some times it's obvious, but they've got some insanely strict bid'ness over there. it actually became an incredibly difficult game trying to figure out just HOW to post critically without getting warned to death.

 

*drumroll.......and here we have the eyeroll*

 

Ya, well I got warnings for abusing you, and a couple of NMA personalities, when I figured I was just giving what I got, and I did some heavy complaining to the mods about how you guys were getting away with murder, so I guess perception is everything. I still don't much care for the way they mod their forums, but they gave you guys a lot more leeway then they should have done, IMO.

[TwinkieGorilla]

Ya, well I got warnings for abusing you, and a couple of NMA personalities, when I figured I was just giving what I got

 

lulz. same here.

 

I still don't much care for the way they mod their forums, but they gave you guys a lot more leeway then they should have done, IMO.

 

well, you certainly got your wish!

[Aram]

Bethesda who

[Malcador]

Oddly enough I've never been warned by the forum mods - and I've been as cutting to people and Bethesda in general - other than some useless "hey, be nice" PM. Some of them are too far up Bethesda for my liking, the rabbit one is one example. I'm surprised Kjarista got warned though, heh.

Edited April 30, 2009 by Malcador

[mkreku]

Bethesda keeps a log of whatever you did to receive a warning/get banned. It's very easy to show proof that you were wrongfully banned if you really were. Look:

 

 

I'm innocent!