Obsidian making Fallout: New Vegas

[Promethean]

"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.

 

 

I'm trying to understand if he actually played Arcanum with the content patches and why he think story and combat was the point of the game. Not to mention what the **** was going with this top 5 characters thing.

[Promethean]

Troika games were unpolished, but they were also ambitious. And no one is being that ambitious in RPGs today. And I can deal with some lack of polish for something different.

Edited May 6, 2009 by Promethean

[Morgoth]

Arcanum had a cool setting and some decent writing, but was utterly destroyed by the horrible gameplay and unbalanced combat. I mean when I'm shooting a gun 6 times at a fat orc in front of me and every shot misses, I'm gonna be pissed.

[Promethean]

Mediocre gameplay. Reminds me of another RPG dev I like...

 

[Aristes]

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.

 

Yeah, but that's a Fallout Standard. There is no way, even a short amount of time after the war, that folks would not have built better dwellings. The human race would have **** or gotten off the pot by then. Either humans would be in more or less thriving communities a few decades after the bombs fell, they'd be extinct, or they'd be worshipping at the feet of their glowing green ape overlords.

 

Fallout is the wasteland. It doesn't matter if they set the damned thing a thousand years after the fact. ...And, frankly, by the time a thousand years have come and gone, they might as well call it the second post apocalypse.

 

This has always been an area where folks were forced to accept the idea and play with it.

[Hurlshort]

I got the impression that the Rivet City folks were just trying to stay hidden away from all the hostiles. That can probably be used to explain a lot of the lack of progress in building, people do not want to attract attention.

[CoM_Solaufein]

I like that campy 50's humor in F3. The older games could have had more of it.

[Gizmo]

Arcanum had a cool setting and some decent writing, but was utterly destroyed by the horrible gameplay and unbalanced combat. I mean when I'm shooting a gun 6 times at a fat orc in front of me and every shot misses, I'm gonna be pissed.

That never bothered me... If it happened... then he missed, nobody is perfect, and flukes do occur; If my PC fired all shots but one and they all missed, then the last shot jammed... Its memorable as amazingly bad luck... but I'm not going to curse the game as being broken just because I wanted the shots to hit. ~That's the point of the dice, it reflects an impartial reality, unaffected by personal wants, and feelings about what is "right", and what "should have happened".

 

There's a video on youtube of that guy shooting his lawyer 6 or seven times at near point blank (he did hit the guy, but he mostly missed, and the lawyer walked away from the incident to get medical assistance). I've seen posts from players in shocked disbelief that they missed at point blank ~but it happens.

Edited May 6, 2009 by Gizmo

[Gfted1]

There's a video on youtube of that guy shooting his lawyer 6 or seven times at near point blank (he did hit the guy, but he mostly missed, and the lawyer walked away from the incident to get medical assistance).

 

Heh, I think I remember that, with the lawyer shucking and jiving behind a tree right?

[Gizmo]

There's a video on youtube of that guy shooting his lawyer 6 or seven times at near point blank (he did hit the guy, but he mostly missed, and the lawyer walked away from the incident to get medical assistance).

 

Heh, I think I remember that, with the lawyer shucking and jiving behind a tree right?

A slim tree not big enough to hide behind. The man was VERY lucky to be alive, much less walk away from it.

Edited May 6, 2009 by Gizmo

[Morgoth]

Arcanum had a cool setting and some decent writing, but was utterly destroyed by the horrible gameplay and unbalanced combat. I mean when I'm shooting a gun 6 times at a fat orc in front of me and every shot misses, I'm gonna be pissed.

That never bothered me... If it happened... then he missed, nobody is perfect, and flukes do occur; If my PC fired all shots but one and they all missed, then the last shot jammed... Its memorable as amazingly bad luck... but I'm not going to curse the game as being broken just because I wanted the shots to hit. ~That's the point of the dice, it reflects an impartial reality, unaffected by personal wants, and feelings about what is "right", and what "should have happened".

 

There's a video on youtube of that guy shooting his lawyer 6 or seven times at near point blank (he did hit the guy, but he mostly missed, and the lawyer walked away from the incident to get medical assistance). I've seen posts from players in shocked disbelief that they missed at point blank ~but it happens.

And what if you have no bullets left and no other weapon profiency? That's right --> STUCK!

 

Being stuck is soooooo fun!

[Gizmo]

Arcanum had a cool setting and some decent writing, but was utterly destroyed by the horrible gameplay and unbalanced combat. I mean when I'm shooting a gun 6 times at a fat orc in front of me and every shot misses, I'm gonna be pissed.

That never bothered me... If it happened... then he missed, nobody is perfect, and flukes do occur; If my PC fired all shots but one and they all missed, then the last shot jammed... Its memorable as amazingly bad luck... but I'm not going to curse the game as being broken just because I wanted the shots to hit. ~That's the point of the dice, it reflects an impartial reality, unaffected by personal wants, and feelings about what is "right", and what "should have happened".

 

There's a video on youtube of that guy shooting his lawyer 6 or seven times at near point blank (he did hit the guy, but he mostly missed, and the lawyer walked away from the incident to get medical assistance). I've seen posts from players in shocked disbelief that they missed at point blank ~but it happens.

And what if you have no bullets left and no other weapon profiency? That's right --> STUCK!

 

Being stuck is soooooo fun!

Then that PC is a casualty...

Have you never seen a film where the hero is vilely wronged by the villain, family slaughtered, and him burning with hatred, and spends the whole film in revenge, and at the last moment when he has the villain right where he wants him... he gets hit by a train or something and the villain gets away with it all.

 

*Come to think of it... "The Crow" started out a bit like that ~minus the return from the dead...

 

I find it far more satisfying knowing that I completed the game against very real odds of losing, and not just coasting through it with the illusory risk of failure.

 

*Also... Not being able to finish the game means always being able to pick it up again. I've played Arx Fatalis for years and have never completed it ~I started up a new game last week, and am looking forward to seeing how far I can get this time.

Edited May 6, 2009 by Gizmo

[Morgoth]

Arcanum had a cool setting and some decent writing, but was utterly destroyed by the horrible gameplay and unbalanced combat. I mean when I'm shooting a gun 6 times at a fat orc in front of me and every shot misses, I'm gonna be pissed.

That never bothered me... If it happened... then he missed, nobody is perfect, and flukes do occur; If my PC fired all shots but one and they all missed, then the last shot jammed... Its memorable as amazingly bad luck... but I'm not going to curse the game as being broken just because I wanted the shots to hit. ~That's the point of the dice, it reflects an impartial reality, unaffected by personal wants, and feelings about what is "right", and what "should have happened".

 

There's a video on youtube of that guy shooting his lawyer 6 or seven times at near point blank (he did hit the guy, but he mostly missed, and the lawyer walked away from the incident to get medical assistance). I've seen posts from players in shocked disbelief that they missed at point blank ~but it happens.

And what if you have no bullets left and no other weapon profiency? That's right --> STUCK!

 

Being stuck is soooooo fun!

Then that PC is a casualty...

Have you never seen a film where the hero is vilely wronged by the villain, family slaughtered, and him burning with hatred, and spends the whole film in revenge, and at the last moment when he has the villain right where he wants him... he gets hit by a train or something and the villain gets away with it all.

 

*Come to think of it... "The Crow" started out a bit like that ~minus the return from the dead...

 

I find it far more satisfying knowing that I completed the game against very real odds of losing, and not just coasting through it with the illusory risk of failure.

Dude, I don't know how you like to play your games, but I know when I've no meaning to advance, then I get pissed and quit. No weapon, dead PC. Have fun!

[Gizmo]

Dude, I don't know how you like to play your games, but I know when I've no meaning to advance, then I get pissed and quit. No weapon, dead PC. Have fun!

At a guess, I'd say most of my Fallout 1&2 characters were melee specialists... Often times I'd not raise Small guns beyond 60% (unless I had the books for it.), My PC was never without a weapon...

 

*Fallout 1 & 2 were designed such that your PC was picked for a mission; If he died, you start again, and your next PC is the next guy picked for the mission, given the same speech, and put outside on his way.

You can plausibly play it "forever" that way.

 

Fallout 3 cannot be played so smoothly, as it was designed around family relations and specific events that don't make sense again unless you discard all previous characters as having not happened.

 

*Yeah... Your character could kill off town personalities in F1 and they'd be back for the next PC's game, but that's deconstructing it beyond its elegant mechanics, and is not really beneficial.

 

(Although that would have been interesting if Fallout had kept a dynamic world and your next PC could visit a town that had been attacked by the previous guy wearing a V13 suit )

Edited May 6, 2009 by Gizmo

[Cl_Flushentityhero]

Well, the guns were pretty borked in Arcanum, to the point where somebody went to great lengths to make a mod specifically rebalancing them.

[Promethean]

They fixed a **** ton of stuff in Arcanum. They've even started tackling the interface issues.

[Gizmo]

I need to buy that game again, and try the fixes.

[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!

 

you must be from the internets.

 

 

I'm trying to understand if he actually played Arcanum with the content patches and why he think story and combat was the point of the game. Not to mention what the **** was going with this top 5 characters thing.

 

a crpg where combat AND story is incidental? is that what you are suggesting?

 

character development options not count for anything if is so unbalanced or pointless as is not matter how you develop.

 

multiple paths not mean squat if the multiple paths not lead anywhere interesting.

 

and ambition... HA! ambition is not inherent good or bad. applaud troika ambition if it makes you feel better. however, their failure and our boredom were not in anyway diminished by a sublimated recognition o' troikan unfulfilled ambitions.

 

...

 

am not knowing what content patches you reference or how such is relevant. Gromnir played arcanum. when game were initial unplayable 'cause o' technical problems we waited for patch... then game were unplayable 'cause iArcanum characters and combat weren't very interesting. is you referencing geekling fan-based patches that has been released over the years? lord knows how you rate a game based on such stuff... 'less that were the point o' the game (e.g. nwn).

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps before this thread spins complete off-track, am gonna repeat 2 points:

 

1) Fallout 1 & 2 were FULL o' camp humor.

 

2) arcanum as an example o' gaming goodness? HA!

Edited May 6, 2009 by Gromnir

[Promethean]

Right because the only good patches are official patches. I find that rich given this is an Obsidian forum and RPG centric. The world of Arcanum was plenty interesting especially since it did a better job of reacting to your background, race, gender, profession and actions then any game I know of. And it actually made you play a role unlike plenty of other games that call themselves RPGs.

[Aristes]

I actually really enjoyed Arcanum, although I've never downloaded a patch for it. I haven't played it for years. I wonder if I still have the CD around here somewhere.

 

I vaguely remember Virgil, but I don't recall the other NPCs very well. That's probably because I played it so long ago. I thought the premise was quite promising, and the amount of choices during level up was impressive as well.

 

On the other hand, while some player created patches are good, they are also irrelevant in judging a game. Hell, half the time official patches are irrelevant. The game as folks play it is all that really matters. Yes, if the game has a lot of promise and there is a patch quickly available, then a bad game can become good. Still, a lot of gamers never even give a game a second chance. Hell, I don't even think NWN is an exception. As a stand-alone, I don't think NWN would have been saved by player patches. Using the tool-set, player created content is what saved the franchise, and it's still thriving.

 

I think Troika's best work was Bloodlines, and that came too little and too late as it seems to me. It's too bad, since I really want a Bloodlines sequel.

 

So, the discussion is now comparing Troika games to FO3? lol If Troika had made FO3, it would not have been nearly so successful. I also happen to think it would have been an inferior product, but that's a different discussion.

[Gromnir]

"Right because the only good patches are official patches."

 

never said that. did observe that it is pretty tough to judge game base on fan content, no? am sure you will see the problems o' such a silly approach if you considers. maybe talks with the bg community o' modders and try to figure out what game they is actually talking 'bout when they says they likes bg. Ajantis is the Best npc evar... if you gots v.5 o' the super secret mod pack by the Narflings 6 Group. huh?

 

and yeah, the world o' arcanum were interesting... on paper. arcanum were far more interesting before you actually played the game. the world were relative unique and it were big. sadly, when actually played, all those little details didn't add up... game were less than the sum o' its parts 'cause it were put together so poorly. is no different than all the pointless and inane dialogue choices they tried to force into toee. sure, you gots a dozen different dialogue options that would change based on your character development choices, but all the choices led to same place: dullsville. offering choices just so that you can say you provided choices is bad design.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[TwinkieGorilla]

*pretentious affected nonsense*

 

you are so from the internets it hurts.

[Tagaziel]

I got the impression that the Rivet City folks were just trying to stay hidden away from all the hostiles. That can probably be used to explain a lot of the lack of progress in building, people do not want to attract attention.

 

On a side note Rivet City is said to be the remnants of the Navy Research Institute that claimed the aircraft carrier in recent years. Which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, given that its 2277.

 

To be honest, the West Coast wasn't a honeymoon - gangs, craploads of mutants and then some, radiation, dust storms... and yet in 80 years it managed to progress to a point surpassing anything the Capital Wasteland came up in the past 200 years. Hostiles in the area or not, there is no excuse for the lack for development, since humans will develop no matter the circumstances.

 

Otherwise, we'd still be sitting in caves picking on scabs and fungus, hiding from the hostiles.

 

Sounds like Little Lamplight actually.

[cronicler]

Okay... Nice...

 

Anyway lets dissect the Special and Skills shall we? I will be using FO Crpg as the base (converting it to RT FPS mode like Per part) adding stuff from the other games (except POS i mean BOS) and some stuff from PnP.

 

Strength : Carry Weight, Base Melee and Unarmed Damage, Hp bonuses

Perception : Your Detection Range, Could have been used to determine how much you zoom in when using basic iron-sights, Could have been used as a basis for 6th sense that helps you to spot valuable stuff lying around / enemies flanking you etc.

Endurance : Hp, Your Resistances, Your Recovery Rate, (Fatigue and similar factors that were not used in the Crpg game)

Charisma : The combination of your Good Looks and basic Personality.

Intelligence : This is one of the most misunderstood skills in the game. Despite the name this stat represented how fast you could think on your feet and generally how sharp/cunning your mental grasp was. Affected Skill Point Gain and Speech Options

Agility : How fit and sportive you are. Your basic dodge chance, your tool usage was affected primarily by this

Luck : The most useless and the most useful stat. On paper it did not affect anything other than critical chance. In reality and behind the scenes this effected or could effect every action you did in the game.

 

* Personally I think Arcanum had the better approach to this by splitting your Beauty score and Charisma score. that way you could still be a hideous deformed dwarf and still have the possibility to awe and befriend other people if that made the mistake of listening to you

 

Stats and Skills on the old Fallouts were there to remind you/show you how good your character was at related fields. None of the stats affected your game-play alone; You could be a strong man but only if you were also good at say unarmed or beyond certain experience, you could access some of the special actions associated with that (social or combat) This stopped the game and you from both being a Master of all trades and Insane Combat machine at the same time. Your basic choices did point you in a hgameplay direction but you could overcome the pre-set path in time with branching your skills and equipment.

 

For the sake of simplicity, you can assume that most of the "First" game was balanced for a guy with 4 to 6 in all stats using only the basic options. If you had higher or lower stats/skills then you could access additional choices. The mistake (or what I think as a mistake) FO3 did was cutting off all the checks from Stats and assigning them solely to the skills. That coupled with the... (I would say "console"ided or "streamlined" but those are not right either. Dumbed down, not to be a problem to anyone or any build is what I want to say i think) bad way secondary stats like HP, resistances etc were handled just made all the stats useless. You did not have any need to put points in this or that because you were as good looking as you could use the face generator anyway.

 

I really hope to get an overhaul on the stats in the NV.

 

*Coming soon; stats and their wrong uses.

[Tagaziel]

Arcanum had a cool setting and some decent writing, but was utterly destroyed by the horrible gameplay and unbalanced combat. I mean when I'm shooting a gun 6 times at a fat orc in front of me and every shot misses, I'm gonna be pissed.

That never bothered me... If it happened... then he missed, nobody is perfect, and flukes do occur; If my PC fired all shots but one and they all missed, then the last shot jammed... Its memorable as amazingly bad luck... but I'm not going to curse the game as being broken just because I wanted the shots to hit. ~That's the point of the dice, it reflects an impartial reality, unaffected by personal wants, and feelings about what is "right", and what "should have happened".

 

There's a video on youtube of that guy shooting his lawyer 6 or seven times at near point blank (he did hit the guy, but he mostly missed, and the lawyer walked away from the incident to get medical assistance). I've seen posts from players in shocked disbelief that they missed at point blank ~but it happens.

And what if you have no bullets left and no other weapon profiency? That's right --> STUCK!

 

Being stuck is soooooo fun!

Then that PC is a casualty...

Have you never seen a film where the hero is vilely wronged by the villain, family slaughtered, and him burning with hatred, and spends the whole film in revenge, and at the last moment when he has the villain right where he wants him... he gets hit by a train or something and the villain gets away with it all.

 

*Come to think of it... "The Crow" started out a bit like that ~minus the return from the dead...

 

I find it far more satisfying knowing that I completed the game against very real odds of losing, and not just coasting through it with the illusory risk of failure.

Dude, I don't know how you like to play your games, but I know when I've no meaning to advance, then I get pissed and quit. No weapon, dead PC. Have fun!

 

He's called "The Dog".

 

Look him up when you visit Ashbury.