Obsidian making Fallout: New Vegas

[Promethean]

I think comparing Fallout 2 to Fallout 3 is incorrect. Fallout 2 was purposely zany. A comedy RPG if there ever was one. However Fallout 3 tried to emulate Fallout's black humor and general sense of realism. Thats why I find FO3 worse in regards to immersion, to making sense. They clearly didnt think **** through, as opposed to FO2, where that was the whole point. The world wasnt suppose to make sense.

 

If FO3 was as crazy as 2, I wouldnt be complaining. Then again maybe it is in a way thats totally not funny, like how they transplanted all the major factions from the first 2 games over to the East Coast, cause apparently they could think of their own ****.

[Tagaziel]

I think comparing Fallout 2 to Fallout 3 is incorrect. Fallout 2 was purposely zany. A comedy RPG if there ever was one. However Fallout 3 tried to emulate Fallout's black humor and general sense of realism. Thats why I find FO3 worse in regards to immersion, to making sense. They clearly didnt think **** through, as opposed to FO2, where that was the whole point. The world wasnt suppose to make sense.

 

If FO3 was as crazy as 2, I wouldnt be complaining. Then again maybe it is in a way thats totally not funny, like how they transplanted all the major factions from the first 2 games over to the East Coast, cause apparently they could think of their own ****.

 

I disagree, Fo2 wasn't comedy. It was inconsistent in tone, yes, but it wasn't deliberately zany, just came off like that due to various discordant elements.

[Gizmo]

I think comparing Fallout 2 to Fallout 3 is incorrect. Fallout 2 was purposely zany. A comedy RPG if there ever was one. However Fallout 3 tried to emulate Fallout's black humor and general sense of realism. Thats why I find FO3 worse in regards to immersion, to making sense. They clearly didnt think **** through, as opposed to FO2, where that was the whole point. The world wasnt suppose to make sense.

 

If FO3 was as crazy as 2, I wouldnt be complaining. Then again maybe it is in a way thats totally not funny, like how they transplanted all the major factions from the first 2 games over to the East Coast, cause apparently they could think of their own ****.

I sort of disagree. As I see it (and if I'm correct), Fallout 1 was the original "vision". A GURPS simulator with a retro 50's past, but set in their present.

 

The world was a changed place after all that time, and the wastelands might well have had a note on the map saying, "Here be Dragons".

 

It seemed to me that nothing that was not left over from before the war was actually 50's themed at all... No greasers, no Elvis or bee-hive hair , no "leave it to Beaver" NPC's (like in Vault 101). It was about a man that came out of a steel womb and knew nothing of the outside world, and found in it the wrecked remains of someone else's dreams, someone else's paradise ~lost. (and he was not the first ~there were others sent before him).

 

The wasteland was an alien place with "gawd knows what in it now", and sparse, separated patches of what was left of humanity scattered across the land. The towns were mostly normal (for Fallout), Ghouls were a fact of life, and all folks struggled to stay alive. Things like the Godzilla foot were out in the wild; possibly even hallucinated ~possibly not, or even just not what they appeared to be... It didn't matter ~it was out in the wastes and could be tongue in cheek. But you didn't find that stuff in town (back in the world)... Fallout 1 had two kinds of weird (wasteland oddities and humans gone nuts). Fallout 2 was different (and perhaps wrongly so... but I liked it well enough).

 

Fallout 2 brought the wasteland oddities into town ~that seemed sort of wrong to me; That made them absolutely real. I would guess that there was a misinterpretation? I can't know this... but it would seem that the wasteland strangeness was accepted as universally real and after that, anything goes... and things like the chess playing scorpion appeared as "OK" (at least at the time).

 

There may be a pattern here. Fallout had nuts in the towns and strangeness in the wastes, Fallout 2 had strangeness in town and absurdity in the wastes; Fallout 3 may have fallen into the same trap [mistaken assumptions], only it went a step further, and put absurdity in the town.

 

Though I disagreed, you are right in that F2 was purposely zany ~I just think it was made so due to a misunderstanding ~and F3 also.

 

*Of course I may well be totally off the mark, but that's how it has always appeared to me since I first played F2, and absolutely when I first played F3.

Edited May 6, 2009 by Gizmo

[Slowtrain]

Just to add another perspective: I feel like Bethesda DID make Fallout 3 intentionally silly. Far sillier than either FO1 or FO2. I know Grommy would disagree, saying that FO1 and FO2 were both silly as well, and in a way he's right.

 

But Bethesda seemed to use FO3 as a dumping ground for any idea they could come up with for the game, regardless of how ludicrous they might be. I recognize that they've admitted that such is sorta their design method: just throwing things at the gameworld and seeing what sticks, And whikle it does end up with a lot of ideas in a game; it also tends to lend a discordant note due to a lack of a unified vision for the gameworld.

 

 

Comparing FO3 to ES games, it seems to me Bethesda treats their ES world with a lot more respect than they treat the FO world. ES games aren't nearly so goofy or over the top.

[Gizmo]

But Bethesda seemed to use FO3 as a dumping ground for any idea they could come up with for the game, regardless of how ludicrous they might be.

They had an internal developer's thread [loosely] called "Silly **** you'd like to see in the game". Edited May 6, 2009 by Gizmo

[Gorgon]

I don't think realism comes into any of the fallout games. It's all pretty cartoony.

 

I can still enjoy fallout 2, fallout 1, it's just too old and too much of an eye strain. Good for it's time though.

 

Weapon and armor degradation have been a source of annoyance with every Bethesda game I have played. Mainly because of the huge impact on damage. I mean a warhammer is a warhammer right, it doesn't have any pointy bits that can be dulled with repeated usage. At least in Morrowind and Oblivion you could play as a caster character and not have to worry about it too much, whereas in Fallout 3 you do indeed have to carry around 3 or 4 of everything you are currently using.

[Gizmo]

Sledge hammers degrade? ~seriously? ~Ouch

 

I hadn't thought to look or notice. That... that's just weird.

[Promethean]

Just to add another perspective: I feel like Bethesda DID make Fallout 3 intentionally silly. Far sillier than either FO1 or FO2. I know Grommy would disagree, saying that FO1 and FO2 were both silly as well, and in a way he's right.

 

But Bethesda seemed to use FO3 as a dumping ground for any idea they could come up with for the game, regardless of how ludicrous they might be. I recognize that they've admitted that such is sorta their design method: just throwing things at the gameworld and seeing what sticks, And whikle it does end up with a lot of ideas in a game; it also tends to lend a discordant note due to a lack of a unified vision for the gameworld.

 

 

Comparing FO3 to ES games, it seems to me Bethesda treats their ES world with a lot more respect than they treat the FO world. ES games aren't nearly so goofy or over the top.

 

Yeah but you could call Deus Ex an idea dumping ground, the gameworld is still unified and hell most of the mechanics are too. It seems no effort was made to sort things like that in Fallout 3.

Edited May 6, 2009 by Promethean

[Oerwinde]

One thing that really got me with Fallout 3 was that this was what? 2-300 years after the bombs? Why is there not a single piece of actual construction that wasn't just a bunch of scrap thrown together? I mean Shady Sands had some half decent clay brick abodes. Also why was the largest city composed of like 15 people. I mean Rivet City had the whole flight deck of that aircraft carrier to build on, but it wasn't touched. I hope in New Vegas we see some actual civilization starting.

[HoonDing]

Comparing FO3 to ES games, it seems to me Bethesda treats their ES world with a lot more respect than they treat the FO world. ES games aren't nearly so goofy or over the top.

Well, Morrowind did have some really goofy stuff too - 4 or 5 random quests involving naked Nords, the corpse of "Indie" in a tomb, and the infamous "Eltonbrand" sword.

 

As for Bethesda respecting the ES, a lot of long-time ES fans on the Bethesda boards are as virulent about Oblivion as the FO1/2 fans about FO3 after Bethesda completely overhauled Morrowind's system and butchered the lore (Cyrodiil endless jungle? ha!). To make matters even worse, now there's talk about an ES fantasy book set in Cyrodiil after Oblivion involving a flying city creating undead. It's actually amusing browsing through some of the loremasters' reactions.

 

As for FO3, if Bethesda really made it as a sort of 'testing board' to see what players like and don't like about it, then that can only be a good thing for the sequel. THey might even learn a thing or two-(hundred) with Obsidian's F:NV.

[skuld1]

the fact that you don't see this as what could be at best described as a faulty exploit and at worst a complete negligence for cRPG'ing complexity and realism is exactly what's wrong with the current picture.

 

I have no idea what your problem is here... tell me, how many fights could you get into and how much stuff could you collect in FO2 if you just continually wandered the wastes?

[skuld1]

Even stuff as simple and fun as the Witcher's Yatzee.... or Poker... or whatever it's supposed to be, and that's one of the best of the bunch. On the other hand, as you said you'd like the lock picking mini-game to be, the dice game in Witcher is entirely optional.

 

I'm trying to understand the love for Witcher dice poker... the AI was completely brain dead and would throw away winning rolls for no apparent reason.

[Tigranes]

The entire Fallout franchise has always had a little bit of sillyness. With FO2, I think it was more of a particular brand of sequelitis that compels the designer to think of new, 'spicy' things that hadn't been done in the original - combined with the well-known fact that all the areas were put together with only a few weeks of dev time left. With FO3, once again, I think it was trying to give player all sorts of 'cool' things to do (which Emil explicitly stated as one of Beth's driving design perspectives).

 

it seems to me Bethesda treats their ES world with a lot more respect than they treat the FO world. ES games aren't nearly so goofy or over the top.

 

Oblivion broke a huge amount of lore, so perhaps not.

[Slowtrain]

Oblivion broke a huge amount of lore, so perhaps not.

 

 

You won't find me defending Oblivion, that's for sure.

 

I just think that in the ES games you wouldn't find things like drinking out of urine troughs or launching cows from ballistas. But in FO3, you most definitely could (and did).

 

But who knows, maybe ES5 will have bnoth of those. And more. That has certainly been the Bethesda trend at the moment.

[Tigranes]

You could launch cows from ballistas?!

[HoonDing]

I'm trying to understand the love for Witcher dice poker... the AI was completely brain dead and would throw away winning rolls for no apparent reason.

The punching minigame was equally trivial, but strangely satisfying. And at least you could get an amazing reward in the end.

[TwinkieGorilla]

Just to add another perspective: I feel like Bethesda DID make Fallout 3 intentionally silly. Far sillier than either FO1 or FO2.

 

EXACTLY! i don't get why the FO3'pologists keep ragging on FO2 as if that's the "be all, end all" of the debate. imo, Bethesda took the theme of the 50's influence way too far, made it corny (re: funny in a bad way) and made it their primary focus. i know Gizmo's brought this up...but in both FO1 & 2 those references weren't constantly in your face. things were more focused on how people had been evolving on the outside instead of "get ready kids, here's another wacky 50's reference/joke!"

 

I don't think realism comes into any of the fallout games. It's all pretty cartoony.

 

well, it's a video-game. i can't think of even the most realistic videogame which isn't cartoony, inherently. but i didn't feel that FO1 was "goofy" at any point. and, gol-dang-dammit man...the realism argument...AGAIN?! i can't even do it. not enough coffee, too much straw.

 

I can still enjoy fallout 2, fallout 1, it's just too old and too much of an eye strain. Good for it's time though.

 

good for it's time? name 10 games since those two which have lived up to that kind of role-playing experience in terms of character-building, choices/consequence, innovative and original dialogue & story, and overall atmosphere without be completely linear-driven. i'll give you two: Planescape and Arcanum. now you only have to come up with 8.

 

the fact that you don't see this as what could be at best described as a faulty exploit and at worst a complete negligence for cRPG'ing complexity and realism is exactly what's wrong with the current picture.

I have no idea what your problem is here... tell me, how many fights could you get into and how much stuff could you collect in FO2 if you just continually wandered the wastes?

 

what? ok, first off...you were limited because everything had weight. you could dole things out to yr NPC followers but you couldn't have an endless supply of guns, armor and ammo. those things have weight and you eventually have to get a bit specific about what you really need.

 

I'm trying to understand the love for Witcher dice poker... the AI was completely brain dead and would throw away winning rolls for no apparent reason.

 

heh. that's not happened to me a single time (perhaps it was a bug fixed in the Enhanced edition?)

[Promethean]

I can still enjoy fallout 2, fallout 1, it's just too old and too much of an eye strain. Good for it's time though.

 

good for it's time? name 10 games since those two which have lived up to that kind of role-playing experience in terms of character-building, choices/consequence, innovative and original dialogue & story, and overall atmosphere without be completely linear-driven. i'll give you two: Planescape and Arcanum. now you only have to come up with 8.

 

Unfair. Planescape doesnt live up to some of those (its a linear game) and it kicks Fallout's ass in dialogue and story. Hell Bloodlines, KotOR II, MotB and Anachornox all do as well. Fallout had extremely dry dialogue. Overall atmosphere is completely subjective. Fallout has nonlinearity, C&C and character building as its forte.

[TwinkieGorilla]

Unfair. Planescape doesnt live up to some of those (its a linear game) and it kicks Fallout's ass in dialogue and story. Hell Bloodlines, KotOR II, MotB and Anachornox all do as well. Fallout had extremely dry dialogue. Overall atmosphere is completely subjective. Fallout has nonlinearity, C&C and character building as its forte.

 

ok, well scratch Planescape off that post then. i was thinking more of a game like M.E. which keeps pushing you through the door until the end of the game. also, now we're going to teeter on the edge of subjectivity as i don't particularly think those 4 games you listed have better dialogue than FO1&2. but really, did you just kinda miss my point? it wasn't so we could actually go on making lists, man. the point was that FO1&2 are games which are not "good for their time" but still more complex and innovative than most of what we've seen since then.

[Zoma]

The Fallout series were GREAT at its time of release. First and foremostly, the success was contributed to that the game was released at a time when people are very interested in the apocalyptic setting. This was stated in one of the Fallout dev interviews made some years ago though I cannot remember which one unfortunately.

 

Secondly, the graphics were at its time, very impressive. There were lots of animation on the sprites, the background was beautiful as well as the immersive looking user interface and the iconic character design of the Pipboy. Additionally, it was the numerous ways of dying animations in the game that was unseen at its time was most often referred to as well as remembered for. The other such game I know that had ridiculous amount of kill animations at the time was the Crusader series. Remember that the nicest looking RPG graphically during Fallout's release was Diablo. So comparing the two games side by side, you can see that Fallout is pretty much on par with it.

 

Unfair. Planescape doesnt live up to some of those (its a linear game) and it kicks Fallout's ass in dialogue and story. Hell Bloodlines, KotOR II, MotB and Anachornox all do as well. Fallout had extremely dry dialogue. Overall atmosphere is completely subjective. Fallout has nonlinearity, C&C and character building as its forte.

 

C&C wise, I like to think that BI's Fallout series is thus far the most extensive kind I've ever known. So at this point, I'm inclined to agree with Promethean's points.

[Promethean]

The Fallout series were GREAT at its time of release. First and foremostly, the success was contributed to that the game was released at a time when people are very interested in the apocalyptic setting. This was stated in one of the Fallout dev interviews made some years ago though I cannot remember which one unfortunately.

 

Secondly, the graphics were at its time, very impressive. There were lots of animation on the sprites, the background was beautiful as well as the immersive looking user interface and the iconic character design of the Pipboy. Additionally, it was the numerous ways of dying animations in the game that was unseen at its time was most often referred to as well as remembered for. The other such game I know that had ridiculous amount of kill animations at the time was the Crusader series. Remember that the nicest looking RPG graphically during Fallout's release was Diablo. So comparing the two games side by side, you can see that Fallout is pretty much on par with it.

 

Unfair. Planescape doesnt live up to some of those (its a linear game) and it kicks Fallout's ass in dialogue and story. Hell Bloodlines, KotOR II, MotB and Anachornox all do as well. Fallout had extremely dry dialogue. Overall atmosphere is completely subjective. Fallout has nonlinearity, C&C and character building as its forte.

 

C&C wise, I like to think that BI's Fallout series is thus far the most extensive kind I've ever known. So at this point, I'm inclined to agree with Promethean's points.

 

 

 

 

He is right though about Arcanum. Its might even have more C&C and character uniqueness than Fallout, its just, like all Troika games, extremely unpolished.

 

Fallout 1&2 and Arcanum are really the only two rpgs of their kind I can think of. Planescape, KotOR II, MotB and Bloodlines all fall into a different subgenre. Anchornox is basically a JRPG with really good writing and humor.

[skuld1]

what? ok, first off...you were limited because everything had weight. you could dole things out to yr NPC followers but you couldn't have an endless supply of guns, armor and ammo. those things have weight and you eventually have to get a bit specific about what you really need.

 

I'm not sure what version of FO3 you've played, but you cannot carry an 'endless supply' of guns or armor around with you. "Realistic" inventory has never been a staple of any FO game... go ahead and load up one of your FO2 save games (or I can do it).

 

Pop Quiz: How much ammo could you store in the car trunk in FO2?

[Gromnir]

"EXACTLY! i don't get why the FO3'pologists keep ragging on FO2 as if that's the "be all, end all" of the debate. imo, Bethesda took the theme of the 50's influence way too far, made it corny (re: funny in a bad way) and made it their primary focus. i know Gizmo's brought this up...but in both FO1 & 2 those references weren't constantly in your face. things were more focused on how people had been evolving on the outside instead of "get ready kids, here's another wacky 50's reference/joke!""

 

if you not get that fo1 and fo2 had loads o' camp value humor, then we played a different game. the whole setting were dark and gritty... and funny. even the over-the-top death animations were funny. fo weren't post apocolyptic so much as it were a tounge-in-cheek recreation o' the 1950s pulp sci-fi mag and b-movie imaginings o' the post apocolyptic landscape. if the engine coulda handled, we got no doubt that they woulda' got a 50' chick in a bikini into fallout.

 

also, arcanum were a waste o' hd space from start to finish. had loads o' potential (like most troika games,) but characters and plot were poorly developed and the combat were unbalanced an mindnumbing tedious. list your five favorite characters from a crpg... then list favorite ten or even favorite 15. arcanum, for all the characters in the game, had no genuine meorable characters. sure, some troika apologist will mentions virgil as cracking their personal top 10, but for honest folks there just weren't much character in the arcanum characters... and without character you not gonna have a story worth mentioning.

 

turn our back for five minutes...

 

HA! Good Fun!

[TwinkieGorilla]

"EXACTLY! i don't get why the FO3'pologists keep ragging on FO2 as if that's the "be all, end all" of the debate. imo, Bethesda took the theme of the 50's influence way too far, made it corny (re: funny in a bad way) and made it their primary focus. i know Gizmo's brought this up...but in both FO1 & 2 those references weren't constantly in your face. things were more focused on how people had been evolving on the outside instead of "get ready kids, here's another wacky 50's reference/joke!""

 

if you not get that fo1 and fo2 had loads o' camp value humor, then we played a different game. the whole setting were dark and gritty... and funny. even the over-the-top death animations were funny. fo weren't post apocolyptic so much as it were a tounge-in-cheek recreation o' the 1950s pulp sci-fi mag and b-movie imaginings o' the post apocolyptic landscape. if the engine coulda handled, we got no doubt that they woulda' got a 50' chick in a bikini into fallout.

 

also, arcanum were a waste o' hd space from start to finish. had loads o' potential (like most troika games,) but characters and plot were poorly developed and the combat were unbalanced an mindnumbing tedious. list your five favorite characters from a crpg... then list favorite ten or even favorite 15. arcanum, for all the characters in the game, had no genuine meorable characters. sure, some troika apologist will mentions virgil as cracking their personal top 10, but for honest folks there just weren't much character in the arcanum characters... and without character you not gonna have a story worth mentioning.

 

turn our back for five minutes...

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

you must be from the internets.

[Cl_Flushentityhero]

I found Arcanum both fascinating and frustrating. While I miss Troika, I do admit they were a little hit and miss.

 

I think the main problem in Fallout 3 is that, while the writing and quest design is amazing by Bethesda standards, it's weak by Black Isle and Obsidian (and maybe even *gag* Bioware) standards. Obviously they realized that on some level, which is why they're moving on to other stuff.