Fallout

[bhlaab]

i never really spent much time in the tunnels, i avoided the dc area like the plague since it didnt seem very wastelandy to me. i liked the vast stretches of radscorpion filled badlands, pockmarked with dens of raiders or bloodthirsty mutants. i liked finding little messages from people in the past or whatever, basically playing wasteland archaelogist for the first 5-10 levels. i just wish that the few settlements you did find had the kind of meatiness to them that could be found in f1 or 2. lots of people to talk to, a smattering of quests to accomplish, maybe help them with their crops or fix their well etc etc

 

fighting in tunnels has been a weakpoint in many a game

 

Yeah but instead of helping with crops or fixing their well you find retarded stuff like "girl who is obsessed with soda wants you to find 100 sodas"

[TwinkieGorilla]

Yeah but instead of helping with crops or fixing their well you find retarded stuff like "girl who is obsessed with soda wants you to find 100 sodas"

 

man! i'm getting angry just remembering how insipid this idiot-child of a game was!

[vault_overseer]

I really liked walking around DC after it's been cleared out, especially areas around the hotel and rangers' base. That definitely gave me creeps - walking through a dead, deserted town with nothing but the sound of the wind, imagining how grand it all looked before the war...

[Slowtrain]

I'm not sure if MW is more complex or textier than Daggerfall. Daggerfall had a lot of unique content, despite the randomness.

 

 

Complex in terms of world building and factions and stuff? No way, I agree. Daggerfall was amazing in that regard. The character creation alone was epic. And the story was fairly complex also.

 

But MW and Daggerfall both had a lot of text and I would say MW had generally better and less generic text. but I'll certainly grant you it's close between the two.

[entrerix]

Yeah but instead of helping with crops or fixing their well you find retarded stuff like "girl who is obsessed with soda wants you to find 100 sodas"

 

 

exactly, presumably obsidian has heard this complaint loud and clear!

 

" i know its a wasteland and i should be worried about crops, clean water, raiders, repopulating - but i just can't get enough of this soda!"

 

there WAS a guy obsessed with soda in either f1 or f2, but he lived in either the blades' hangout or new reno (i cant remember), both of which were populated, protected, and stocked with enough supplies to allow him to be living well enough to worry about his damn soda

 

not to mention he was butnuts insane and mostly just wandered around muttering cola related things

[Slowtrain]

Yeah but instead of helping with crops or fixing their well you find retarded stuff like "girl who is obsessed with soda wants you to find 100 sodas"

 

 

To me that falls in Bethesda's "lets just throw every weird idea we can into the game without worrying about any unified approach to the world."

 

I'ts a problem, I agree.

 

However, I would also say that Nuka Cola Quantum search DOES work in terms of Bethesda's approach to exploration and wanting to make it worthwhile. Something they were unable to do in Oblivion. FO 3 works best as a giant scavenger hunt for quantums, schematics, books, bobbleheads, unique items, etc and so forth.

 

That's the game's strength.

[TwinkieGorilla]

it also falls into Bethesda's "lame as all heck" sense of humor.

[HoonDing]

But MW and Daggerfall both had a lot of text and I would say MW had generally better and less generic text. but I'll certainly grant you it's close between the two.

What was amazing about MW is that even random NPCs that were not related to any quests at all could have very unique dialogue.

[jaguars4ever]

Yeah but instead of helping with crops or fixing their well you find retarded stuff like "girl who is obsessed with soda wants you to find 100 sodas"

 

 

To me that falls in Bethesda's "lets just throw every weird idea we can into the game without worrying about any unified approach to the world."

 

I'ts a problem, I agree.

 

However, I would also say that Nuka Cola Quantum search DOES work in terms of Bethesda's approach to exploration and wanting to make it worthwhile. Something they were unable to do in Oblivion. FO 3 works best as a giant scavenger hunt for quantums, schematics, books, bobbleheads, unique items, etc and so forth.

 

That's the game's strength.

But there's no real reason to scavenger hunt for quantums, schematics, books, bobbleheads, unique items, etc and so forth.

 

That's the game's weakness.

[TwinkieGorilla]

But there's no real reason to scavenger hunt for quantums, schematics, books, bobbleheads, unique items, etc and so forth.

 

That's the game's weakness.

 

re: Pointless filler pt 1.

 

yes, it certainly is a major weakness for most fans of the series, but when you combine the psychology of an individual inclined to play virtual-house with console kiddie achievement-whorery, you are talking about these peoples' wet dream realized as a video game. trust me, hang out at their board long enough and you'll see that for the overwhelming majority, this exact game is exactly what they've always wished for.

 

re: Pointless filler pt 2.

 

and we haven't even addressed the mundanity via perpetual repetion of finding this exactly identical pointless filler everywhere you go. the same goddamn safe with the same goddamn worthless l00t! in it. sure, it's a very pretty game.

 

pretty pointless, that is.

 

Edited January 6, 2010 by TwinkieGorilla

[Nepenthe]

re: Pointless filler pt 1.

 

yes, it certainly is a major weakness for most fans of the series, but when you combine the psychology of an individual inclined to play virtual-house with console kiddie achievement-whorery, you are talking about these peoples' wet dream realized as a video game. trust me, hang out at their board long enough and you'll see that for the overwhelming majority, this exact game is exactly what they've always wished for.

 

I dunno, I didn't find the 'buying stuff for the decrepit shack' thing satisfied my nesting instinct at all. I mean, even ME's Pinnacle Station scored a lot higher on the virtual crib pimpin' department.

 

Of course, this from a guy who has max achievements/trophies in exactly three games (Monkey Island SE, Mass Effect and DAO) and is getting a bit long in the tooth to be described as a kiddie...

[TwinkieGorilla]

well then you'd be in the minority, Dr. Longtooth.

[Syraxis]

I dunno, I didn't find the 'buying stuff for the decrepit shack' thing satisfied my nesting instinct at all.

 

"Virtual housing" should come with management duties like crossroad keep

[mkreku]

I think Fallout 3 has excellent exploration. I loved just walking around, avoiding the wildlife enemies and seeing stuff left over from the war. I managed to find a lot of unique weapons, notes, odd things and just stuff to see and do while exploring. Compared to Fallout/Fallout 2's nonexistant exploring, it's a walk-over win for Fallout 3. The only thing that bothered me was the arrows pointing me in the direction of the nearest unexplored settlement and the fact that the map was way, way too small for the 150 odd special places that were on the map.

 

I really hope Obsidian gives the game the room it deserves. I mean we who like to wander aimlessly for hours get to do that on large maps and the ones who don't like that/prefer Fallout/Fallout 2's overhead map clicking has that quick travel option. Although I suspect that the ridiculous NMA crowd will cry about that one too, only because you don't see a dot creeping slowly over an ugly map..

 

Strangely enough, I also enjoyed a lot of the side quests in Fallout 3. Like the soda girl you're making fun of in this very thread. I had fun with that quest. It was optional, so if you didn't feel like finding 30 bottles, you didn't have to. Of course, I was hoping I'd get to nail her in the end instead of that guy outside, so that was a disappointment.

 

Oh, and about the Bobbleheads: I liked them too. They are a sign of the time, not Bethesda being evil and doing you "hardcore Fallout fans" any disfavours. I'm pretty sure we'd see them in Fallout/Fallout 2 if they had been made today. In fact, I'm pretty certain there will be something exactly like them in Fallout: New Vegas too. But it's so easy to whine just for whining's sake, right?

 

Fallout 3's biggest weakness was its main plot and Bethesda's disability of creating an overhead plan, tying their side quests together with the main game more. I'm hoping this is where Obsidian will shine.. together with better dialogue, of course.

[Malcador]

I don't agree that the exploration gameplay was very fun. You go around and find, what exactly? More subway tunnels? A little settlement with nothing in it but more super mutants to kill?

 

 

Me neither. Granted, the subway tunnels were fun when I decided to play the Quake 2 soundtrack while running around in them, but any delight I gleaned from wandering around in the map faded pretty quickly. But some people go ga-ga over this, so *shrug*

[TwinkieGorilla]

I think Fallout 3 has excellent exploration. I loved just walking around, avoiding the wildlife enemies and seeing stuff left over from the war. I managed to find a lot of unique weapons, notes, odd things and just stuff to see and do while exploring. Compared to Fallout/Fallout 2's nonexistant exploring, it's a walk-over win for Fallout 3. The only thing that bothered me was the arrows pointing me in the direction of the nearest unexplored settlement and the fact that the map was way, way too small for the 150 odd special places that were on the map.

 

i thought the environment design was pretty cool and exploring was fun, but after awhile it became very unfulfilling and pointless. if the game advertised itself as an arbitrary exploration simulator and i bought it for that reason, hell...i'd give it two thumbs up. but there's just not enough throughout the game which is worth anything. too much repetition, too many goddamn pointless toolboxes with pointless fission batteries and some really uninspired side-quests, imo. there are a few which i thought did a good job of story-telling (the hp lovecraft, android and the zombie wig in the dlc for instance) but the game as a whole suffered from too much nothing. and no, i don't mean "empty wasteland" i mean arbitrary refuse forcing boring dungeon crawls or low-reward adventuring (oh wow! yet another safe with a stimpack, wrench, and crappy rifle inside!).

 

Although I suspect that the ridiculous NMA crowd will cry about that one too, only because you don't see a dot creeping slowly over an ugly map..

 

given that just about everybody there considers Bethesda's ****ty engine to be ****ty and Fallout in FPS to also be annoying, and given that knowing that we *have* to accept these facts if we want another Fallout game, Obsidian is just about our only chance at something playable.

 

Strangely enough, I also enjoyed a lot of the side quests in Fallout 3. Like the soda girl you're making fun of in this very thread. I had fun with that quest. It was optional, so if you didn't feel like finding 30 bottles, you didn't have to. Of course, I was hoping I'd get to nail her in the end instead of that guy outside, so that was a disappointment.

 

you're also the same guy who got really excited about the promise of vehicles in the recent newstroll. go figure. and being optional doesn't mean it's not ****ing retarded.

 

Oh, and about the Bobbleheads: I liked them too.

 

not that i'm surprised...but why? what is there to like about them? collecting? getting stat-cheat bonuses?

 

Fallout 3's biggest weakness was its main plot and Bethesda's disability of creating an overhead plan, tying their side quests together with the main game more. I'm hoping this is where Obsidian will shine.. together with better dialogue, of course.

 

this was part of it's biggest weakness. i'll agree that much. but nothing is going to change the fact that they are, like Crashgirl says in my sig, a pretty "meh" group of writers with a very polarized idea of what Fallout really was.

Edited January 6, 2010 by TwinkieGorilla

[Slowtrain]

But there's no real reason to scavenger hunt for quantums, schematics, books, bobbleheads, unique items, etc and so forth.

 

 

I agree there is no real reason (ie quantums save the world or something) but what else are you (as a player) going to do in a sandbox world that has no real plot characters or story?

 

Bethesda sacrifices everything to exploration and wandering. That's what they do. In Oblivion they failed, because there was no reason to explore becuase there was nothing to find since the WHOLE WORLD was 100% level-scaled to your character. There was neither risk nor reward in exploration.

 

In Fallout 3 they at least put stuff in the world to go find, if for no other other reason then to say: "I found it"

[Slowtrain]

Strangely enough, I also enjoyed a lot of the side quests in Fallout 3. Like the soda girl you're making fun of in this very thread. I had fun with that quest. It was optional, so if you didn't feel like finding 30 bottles, you didn't have to.

 

 

I think it depends what you are looking for as a player,

 

As a player I found the idea of finding 30 quantums to turn in to get something somewhat fun. problem is though: money is never an issue after about char level 3-5, so getting paid for the quantums isn't much of a payoff. There are other nuka-grenade schematcs in the wasteland, one of which you can pretty much buy the moment you exit the vault on day 1, so getting the Ultimate Reward from her is also pretty much worthless. So there isn't really much POINT to gathering the quantums, however it does add a purpose to all the random wandering.

 

 

However, if a player you are lookign for some sort of unity to the game, so sort of logic, then the whole concept fails because it is so silly. The whole idea of a radioactive soft drink is pretty freaking silly. But again, is Bethesda the only developer to do something like that? No. Look at Fallout 2. Remebering having to bury the ghost in the den. WTF? A ghost? I thought this was Fallout not Paranormal State. But again, some developer said, hey, our Stealth Boy animation looks liike a ghost! Let's put in a ghost! Cause its cool! Who cares if it MAKES NO SENSE!

 

Fallout 2 and Fallout 3 are pretty similar in a lot of ways.

[mkreku]

...boring dungeon crawls or low-reward adventuring...

Gee, it didn't reward you with ph4t l00t every fifteen seconds? Hey, there's this game called Halo that might suit you better.

 

given that just about everybody there considers Bethesda's ****ty engine to be ****ty and Fallout in FPS to also be annoying...

Yes. Everybody. If you include everyone you just pulled out of your ass. In the real world, though, Fallout 3 probably sold more in the first week than all the other Fallouts together in their lifetime. Maybe "everybody" of those buying it thinks it's ****ty, but I doubt it.

 

I also bet that if it had been isometric, it wouldn't have sold one tenth of what it did as an FPS. Luckily we'll never know. I thought it worked great as an FPS.

 

you're also the same guy who got really excited about the promise of vehicles in the recent newstroll. go figure. and being optional doesn't mean it's not ****ing retarded.

Yup. And I still hope they'll have bigger maps and vehicles. If there's racing involved I'll be even happier. Not Fallout-y enough for you? Tough luck. At least I'm closer to getting what I want than for you to ever manage to convince anyone back into the nineties. But keep living in the past, makes for some fun/tragic reading. Abouut the retarded thing: do you think it's difficult to find something "retarded" in Fallout or Fallout 2? Debating opinion.. real clever.

 

not that i'm surprised...but why? what is there to like about them? collecting? getting stat-cheat bonuses?

First you whine about not enough rewards in the exploration and then this? Like a ****ing goldfish, you can't remember what you wrote fifteen seconds ago.

[Malcador]

Well he's right about everyone in the NMA folk and their opinion of Beth's engine and so on, the "there" is a key word The bobbleheads were kind of silly, added to the whole MMOG feel of the game now that I think of it (and all the varied locations jammed right next to each other too).

[Spider]

Oh, and about the Bobbleheads: I liked them too. They are a sign of the time, not Bethesda being evil and doing you "hardcore Fallout fans" any disfavours. I'm pretty sure we'd see them in Fallout/Fallout 2 if they had been made today. In fact, I'm pretty certain there will be something exactly like them in Fallout: New Vegas too. But it's so easy to whine just for whining's sake, right?

 

There were similar things in FO/FO2. The books in both games to a degree, but more specifically the surgery things in FO2 are pretty much exactly the same.

[Killian Kalthorne]

Well, I am about to go through Fallout 3 again but this time instead of the vanilla game with the Official DLCs I put in a sload of mods. Fook2, FWE, Weapon Kit Mod, MMM, Exnem and clothing mods, Greenworld mod, and a host of others.

 

Best of all ITS WORKING!

 

[Tigranes]

I had an interesting experience yesterday. Friend of mine likes games and is generally good at them, but has never had time to play them a lot or keep up with anything. I saw that he had been playing Oblivion for quite a while, and got up to level 22. Of course, he had only completed about 3 or 4 quests (he called them 'missions', I guess he treated it as a fantasy GTA), wasn't quite sure how to use most of the spells or how to enchant things, but maintained that the game was quite fun for just wandering around doing whatever he liked and ignoring the stupid-sounding dialogue... he just wished the world wouldn't scale. Yeah, he couldn't tell how to kill a ghost but he could tell the world level-scaled.

 

mkreku's been pretty determined for about two years that all FO1/2 fans who happen to dislike FO3 are all tinfoil nutters, by the way, so I wouldn't mind...

 

There were similar things in FO/FO2. The books in both games to a degree, but more specifically the surgery things in FO2 are pretty much exactly the same.

 

FO3 had books as well, I seem to remember? The bobbleheads were different as they (1) gave you much more significant bonuses, (2) were linked to achievements and (3) colecting one, as opposed to reading a book, doesn't make much sense. It was more a symptom than the illness, though, as far as allegations of pastiche come against FO3.

[TwinkieGorilla]

Gee, it didn't reward you with ph4t l00t every fifteen seconds? Hey, there's this game called Halo that might suit you better.

 

eh, no. i don't care about "l00t", i care about meaningful substance. if i tell you the only games i've ever played through to the end are Fallout 1, 2, Arcanum, Baldur's Gate 2, Planescape, Deus Ex and most likely Dragon Age...do you get the impression that l00t is what i'm after? the reason FO3 fails in this regard is because it forces you to go through situations which give you the impression that there is a reason to be going through them, only to find out that the quests are uncreative, boring or worthless in regards to the game as a whole. why put a location on a map if there's no story to be had and the same copypasta throughout? it's not all the time but it's in the majority.

 

Yes. Everybody. If you include everyone you just pulled out of your ass. In the real world, though, Fallout 3 probably sold more in the first week than all the other Fallouts together in their lifetime. Maybe "everybody" of those buying it thinks it's ****ty, but I doubt it.

 

you said "everybody at NMA" and i said "yeah, just about everybody there". see how this works? it's sort of fun watching you flailing around like a man with a bag over his head bumping into walls...too angry that he keeps bumping into the walls to notice that all he has to do is remove the bag from his head (or cut some eye-holes, convenient!).

 

Yup. And I still hope they'll have bigger maps and vehicles. If there's racing involved I'll be even happier.

 

racing? omg that would be ttly kewl!!

 

Not Fallout-y enough for you?

 

nope. in fact, that's not Fallout-y at all. if you are like me, and you like something for what it actually is it's not very far-fetched to assume that you don't also like it for what it isn't. never once since '98 have i said "God Fallout is so great but i wish there were cars and racing!" i'd imagine there are plenty of other games out there for you if that's really all you need to satisfy yourself.

 

At least I'm closer to getting what I want than for you to ever manage to convince anyone back into the nineties.

 

i keep reading this sentence over and over and feeling braincells screaming out one by one before shriveling up and dying.

 

But keep living in the past, makes for some fun/tragic reading.

 

wanting a game which isn't crap = living in the past? hmmm, it would seem so lately wouldn't it?

 

Abouut the retarded thing: do you think it's difficult to find something "retarded" in Fallout or Fallout 2? Debating opinion.. real clever.

 

yeah. abouut [sic] that...actually Fallout 1 and 2 became my all-time favorite games because i don't find them to contain retarded characters or situations. some over the top in 2? sure. but i'm not talking about over the top. i'm talking about "in comparison to 1 and 2 Fallout 3 really misses the mark and contains some of the worst dialogue, uncreative storytelling and unfunny 'humor' i've seen in the series since FO:BOS."

 

First you whine about not enough rewards in the exploration and then this? Like a ****ing goldfish, you can't remember what you wrote fifteen seconds ago.

 

hahaha. you are really good at misinterpretation, at the least. i already explained this in my first paragraph...if you don't get it by now, just...eh...pass go and do not collect $200.

[Killian Kalthorne]

I think you are remember Fallout 1 and 2 with rose tinted lenses, TG. Also, Arcanum sucked and was boring.