Fallout 4 Obsidian Petition

[Majek]

Sheesh i didn't think this thread would actually still be alive at this point.

 

Anyway i don't care about Fallout anymore. I didn't finish F3 nor F:NW ( and i even bought all the DLC). First person RPGs like this are just not my thing not matter how good they are to some.

 

And internet petitions never worked , those that "did", only seemed that way.

[Farbautisonn]

 

I liked F3 in spite of its flaws, but its flaws are many and glaring.

I cant really disagree here but for new players it was a good introduction to the IP and for oldtimers it did bring back both memories and a promise of something better. Some of us fans have the equvalent of a Ph.D. in the lore and have religiously read any post on NMA and from the creators. I didnt expect that level of dedication from Bethesda. So I wasnt too dissapointed.

 

The atmosphere and world design really carried it.

Ill agree with that. Entering DC was eerie yet homely.

 

The combat was... passable as an FPS (sniper rifle scope still bugs me, you have to aim high with a hitscan weapon,) but gained a lot more novelty fun through VATS, albeit in exchange for challenge.

I personally never liked VATS much. Too much "I win" feature. But it was a nice touch for some. As I tend to play as a sneaky pete with stealth and sniper kit up close, the mechanics were decent. I wasnt expecting anything epic.

 

But, ME3 was an original IP in the hands of its creators, creators who had already fumbled narratively on the second outing, so it was to be expected.

I was a fanboi for a very long time. Too long in retrospect. I hated the DAO DLC and DA2 I never even bought out of advice from other mates. ME2 was decent only because the storyline for the companions was deep. The main questline was too short and not that well told. I wasnt extatic. And when the ME3 demo came out... and I saw the "emperors new clothes" esque peniswhipping from both devs, magazines and the fps console attention deficit crowd I litterally flipped over and became an outspoken antagonist of anything Bioware.

 

Bottom line is that I expected alot more from the company that had brought me so many good stories only to see them burn the storyline on the sacrificial alter of "streamlining" *cough* FPS console easy to digest Idiocy *cough*. I wasnt the only one. The people left on the bioware forums are the trolls, malcontents, and MP fanbois. And even if DA3 turns out to be an epic game that makes LotR seem like infantile crap, its going to have to stand up to such massive sceptizism that I dont think it will float.

 

F3 was one company buying up another IP they had no history with and changing it irrevocably. Now, I learned from Oblivion was that whatever writing talent they had at Bethesda during the Morrowind dev cycle is long gone or suffered severe brain damage, but I was still surprised by just how bad the writing got at points in F3.

Again the Arena setting is different and caters to a different crowd than us. Some overlapping ofcourse. I loved Daggerfall, and I loved Morrowind. Havent played Skyrim yet. And personally I think the writing has gotten progressively better. And I still think that "The Pitt" is a diamond in storytelling. Its rare that I dont see things comming a mile away. I didnt at all in the pitt. Plus I really hated ulysses. Everything about him went on my nerves. So... my subjective taste dictates that not even Obsidian can get it right all of the time.

[WDeranged]

I found that Morrowind had much more interesting writing compared to Fallout 3. The way the lore in the books intertwined with the main quest, the political situation in Vvardenfell, the meta-aspects of Kirkbride's writing.. I don't think there's anything in Fallout 3 that matches that, thematically Bethesda's post-apocalyptic take was very heavy-handed.

 

Agreed, once you get nuts deep into Morrowind you realise that some of the team members (Kirkbride especially) were breaking new ground, the history of the world is just so damn haunting, it sticks with you long after you've uninstalled the game.

 

Fallout 3 certainly doesn't match Morrowind's narrative but I would argue that it's a far better game and the closest Bethesda have come to making a true RPG, it's a pity they couldn't go the extra mile but as AGX-17 said it seems like all the real story writing talent has gone. Having said that I think Skyrim is a major step up in the writing department and it's got to be the most well realised Elder Scrolls world so far, it's just a shame most of the dungeons and quests were dumbed down and railroaded, they didn't give the level and quest designers enough mechanics to work with...Fallout 3 had a rube goldberg device ffs.

 

As for Fallout 4, I'm not concerned if Bethesda are making it, I got 300-400 hours out of Skyrim so regardless of my criticism it must have done something right and if they decide to farm out another Fallout spin off I suspect that they wouldn't choose anyone other than Obsidian...hopefully with a slightly better contract.

[NOK222]

Most of these so called "plot discrepancies" made sense if you did some digging.

One thing that did piss me off was the obvious aborted storyline with the super mutants. PC: "Hey, Vault 87 is their home." Lyons: "Cool"

 

Edit: If the rumors on the next game are true, expect Dr. Li to show up again.

It's likely going to feature the Commonwealth/Institute (MIT) and an uprising of androids against humans. Main character might even turn out an android.

 

That would be...different.

[Farbautisonn]

That would be...different.

Thats one way of putting it. However if youve seen the artwork for the synths in Wasteland two, it might work. At least as an option.

[WorstUsernameEver]

Fallout 3 certainly doesn't match Morrowind's narrative but I would argue that it's a far better game and the closest Bethesda have come to making a true RPG, it's a pity they couldn't go the extra mile but as AGX-17 said it seems like all the real story writing talent has gone. Having said that I think Skyrim is a major step up in the writing department and it's got to be the most well realised Elder Scrolls world so far, it's just a shame most of the dungeons and quests were dumbed down and railroaded, they didn't give the level and quest designers enough mechanics to work with...Fallout 3 had a rube goldberg device ffs.

 

Morrowind was all over the place in terms of systems design, but then again, I think their intentions with the design were different compared to Fallout 3. As much as it can be fun to note the similarities and call the latter "Oblivion with guns", looking at the quest design, etc., you can see that they attempted to differentiate it from their previous work. Not always successfully, but I appreciate that they at least tried.

[Lexx]

Why is it silly? If you take one game that people love and drastically change it to appeal to a different audience, of course it's going to ruffle some feathers.

 

It's fine to hold on to old things, but you cant shut your eyes and say "NEW IS BAD" and make death threats at Behesda Devs, which they did.

 

What are you talking about? NMA never posted death threats at Bethesda devs. What you probably mean are random people posting on the internet, but this happens all over the place and not only at NMA. Besides, NMA always killed such posts and sometimes even issued warnings. Also the fuzz was never about "NEW IS BAD" but "Bethesda takes an orange and makes it a banana."

 

Unjustified NMA hate from your side. Better inform yourself before posting silly stuff.

Edited November 9, 2012 by Lexx

[Måndagsbarn]

"Who makes it" really is a question that should be subordinated to "will they drop that abomination that is Gamebryo down an abandoned mine and then nuke it from orbit before filling the mine with concrete".

 

I liked FO3 and FONV despite of the use of Gamebryo.

[AGX-17]

From a writing/dialogue aspect it was quite a step up from Morrowind/Oblivion in my opinion.

 

I'll agree that it's strengths are things I didn't so much consider strengths in the original games (wandering the wasteland without a necessarily specific purpose), but I still sunk a lot of time into it. I fast traveled everywhere in Oblivion, but not Fallout 3.

 

Plus, what I thought they did very well, was the idea of telling a narrative without using any words. Walknig into a burnt out house and being able to piece together what it must have been like before the world went to **** was pretty well done IMO.

 

Never did finish main narrative. FONV though has 160ish hours invested, and is basically the typical iterative process (with some excellent creative design behind the process) of keeping what I liked about FO3 and improving on all the stuff I found lacking.

 

Morrowind was vastly superior to Oblivion in terms of writing, Fallout 3 is inferior to Morrowind but on the same level as Oblivion (strict black & white morality, with the black morality option for the main quest being a tacked-on last minute addition.) The entire endgame of F3 was a joke. The ending was just Ron Perlman making a vague appraisal as to whether you made the wasteland a better place or not, there were no ending slides for characters or locations, (one of the staples of classic Fallout.) There was no end boss, it was just a poorly armored officer guy and two goons of the same variety you'd killed dozens or hundreds of on your wasteland travels. Bethesda couldn't figure out how to make a good boss fight if they had bomb collars set to go off if they shipped a title with bad boss fights.

 

In Fallout 2, Enclave soldiers were a relative rarity and a deadly threat to any but the highest-level, combat centric player characters equipped with the same gear as the Enclave (Advanced Power Armor, Gauss or Pulse weapons.) Even then they were a legitimate threat, especially the ones carrying Gauss weapons.

 

In Fallout 3 they're comically numerous pushovers, little more than regularly placed loot containers. Enclave soldiers should have been rare and a terrifying thing to encounter, requiring copious use of chems and all the player's wits to take down. It gets worse with the Broken Steel DLC, where they become even more numerous and despite having vastly superior tech they drop like Orcs in Orcs Must Die before a squad of 4 BoS knights/paladins.

 

And that's without even questioning why, narratively, the Enclave should be back at all. It was a clean cut, pure B&W moral situation in F2 and the player's only choice was to destroy the Enclave oil rig. The Enclave represents moral simplicity, Fallout started out with moral complexity.

 

 

Again the Arena setting is different and caters to a different crowd than us. Some overlapping ofcourse. I loved Daggerfall, and I loved Morrowind. Havent played Skyrim yet. And personally I think the writing has gotten progressively better. And I still think that "The Pitt" is a diamond in storytelling. Its rare that I dont see things comming a mile away. I didnt at all in the pitt. Plus I really hated ulysses. Everything about him went on my nerves. So... my subjective taste dictates that not even Obsidian can get it right all of the time.

 

The Pitt was Fallout 3's peak in terms of writing (still not comparable to New Vegas' middle of the road "good" writing because of its myriad plot holes.) The main game was dismal for the most part. The Replicated Man was the best quest in both design and writing in the main game, and it was still pretty middle of the road. The best "found narrative" was probably the computer logs at the germantown police station. The quests that were just flat out unacceptably bad were ones like "Those!", every line of dialogue was terribly written and the writer/s made numerous continuity errors. Example: the annoying brat has no idea what a computer or a robot is, despite their being omnipresent in the wasteland, but he knows what a TV dinner is (one of his idle barks while hiding in the personal fallout shelter is "Now I know what a TV dinner feels like!")

 

Bethesda focuses so much on world/level design that they let that world be filled with irritatingly shallow characters and quests. Do I need to mention Little Lamplight, the most intellectually offensive idea in the entire game? Sure, it's fine if you're a pedophile or Michael Jackson (no comment on whether those are the same thing,) but anyone with half a brain will start to wonder how a village of all children survives and produces more children ad infinitum for centuries while somehow forcing their physical and intellectual superiors out to die in the wasteland. Without breaking the fourth wall and saying "bethesda kids is immortal lol."

 

I mean, what, do they go out and murder other childrens' parents and kidnap/brainwash them? How did they develop these brainwashing techniques? Where are all these wasteland random encounter mooks living? I've checked every random hole, cistern, sewer and cave on the CW map and never run into individual families eking out a living in the wastes, yet here they are in random encounters wearing their buckskins and getting murdered by the lowest level enemies at level 1 and the highest level enemies while still equipped with the same buckskins and .32 pistols while I'm level 20.

 

"Who makes it" really is a question that should be subordinated to "will they drop that abomination that is Gamebryo down an abandoned mine and then nuke it from orbit before filling the mine with concrete".

 

I liked FO3 and FONV despite of the use of Gamebryo.

 

Gamebryo, or rather Bethesda's franken-gamebryo version they upgraded themselves (civilization 4 and 5 are gamebryo games and I've never had any stability or memory problems with them,) is a terrible engine, yes, but it is not the root of the problems. If they changed to a different engine, i.e. Unreal Engine, that would not make their quest designers and writers better.

Edited November 9, 2012 by AGX-17

[Farbautisonn]

 

The Pitt was Fallout 3's peak in terms of writing (still not comparable to New Vegas' middle of the road "good" writing.)

Im not sture I agree here. Whilst I liked OWB and loved the Sierra Madre, I found the pickup on the burningman to be trivial at best, and Ulyssus to be downright offensive to my intelligence. The main storyline for NV was great, no question, but I hold Obsidian to a bit higher standart than Bethesda. Obsidian had an engine and a framework delivered on a platter, and they are the FO lore gurus. They had to deliver. And they did. But it wasnt something where I thought : "Wow... didnt see that comming". Its something I prize in RPGs and CRPGs. The moral and ethical conundrum that instantly faces me with a decision that isnt black or white. But my favorite colour: Gray. And with Lonesomeroad I felt pidgeonholed and attributed motives and actions I dont have a bat****e influence on, to the point where I felt like it was breaking submersion of disbelief. I have made a point of killing Ulyssus off in every game because his incessent pseudo intellectual musings and presumptions annoy the **** out of me. I suppose that could be labelled a storytelling success as well (getting that kind of rise out of me), but its not the kind I enjoy.

 

 

The main game was dismal for the most part.

Lacking perhaps... I wouldnt go so far as to say "dismal" but thats semantics and subjective opinions.

 

The Replicated Man was the best quest in both design and writing in the main game, and it was still pretty middle of the road.

I thought that was one of the better done quests too, and whilst I agree it wasnt "Pitt esque" It wasnt bad.

 

The best "found narrative" was probably the computer logs at the germantown police station

.

Those were quite decent, I agree. But I found several DC entries at museeums etc to be rather interesting as well.

 

The quests that were just flat out unacceptably bad were ones like "Those!", every line of dialogue was terribly written and the writer/s made numerous continuity errors. Example: the annoying brat has no idea what a computer or a robot is, despite their being omnipresent in the wasteland, but he knows what a TV dinner is (one of his idle barks while hiding in the personal fallout shelter is "Now I know what a TV dinner feels like!")

No arguements here.

 

Bethesda focuses so much on world/level design that they let that world be filled with irritatingly shallow characters and quests. Do I need to mention Little Lamplight, the most intellectually offensive idea in the entire game? Sure, it's fine if you're a pedophile or Michael Jackson (no comment on whether those are the same thing,) but anyone with half a brain will start to wonder how a village of all children survives and produces more children ad infinitum for centuries while somehow forcing their physical and intellectual superiors out to die in the wasteland. Without breaking the fourth wall and saying "bethesda kids is immortal lol."

I see your point however I liked the outcasts as an Idea pretty much and I rather loved their "go bang rocks together local" quotes and attitudes, as it epitomizes the "original BoS" attitude toward the locals. Overall it wasnt great, but then they were trying to find their ground in the new franchise. I can forgive alot for that. At least they revived it.

 

And yes, Lamplight was not the brightest moment of storytelling. It also broke my suspension of disbelief more than a bit. It was not thought out and it made you wonder what the hell was happening.

 

I mean, what, do they go out and murder other childrens' parents and kidnap/brainwash them? How did they develop these brainwashing techniques? Where are all these wasteland random encounter mooks living? I've checked every random hole, cistern, sewer and cave on the CW map and never run into individual families eking out a living in the wastes, yet here they are in random encounters wearing their buckskins and getting murdered by the lowest level enemies at level 1 and the highest level enemies while still equipped with the same buckskins and .32 pistols while I'm level 20.

 

Again I agree. But I think thats something (I hope at least) its something they will have learned from.

[Gorth]

Do I need to mention Little Lamplight

 

No >_

 

(That's where Is topped playing FO3 and never finished the game)

[WDeranged]

On a side note, I remember an interview where Kirkbride and Rolson cited PS:T as a major influence during Morrowind's development, I love the fact that three of my all time favourite games (PS:T, Morrowind & New Vegas) are so interconnected.

 

Do I need to mention Little Lamplight

 

No

 

(That's where Is topped playing FO3 and never finished the game)

 

Little Lamplight was dumb but it didn't ruin my enjoyment, I liked the fact that you could kidnap one of the little buggers and sell them into slavery

Edited November 10, 2012 by WDeranged

[Lexx]

One should have been able to lead the evil Supermutants into Little Lamplight, to bring them what they deserve for living right next to evil Supermutants.

[Felithvian]

Bethesda's Fallout 3 was ridiculous. The quasi-religious organization "Brotherhood of Steel" was EVERYWHERE!

[NOK222]

Why is it silly? If you take one game that people love and drastically change it to appeal to a different audience, of course it's going to ruffle some feathers.

 

It's fine to hold on to old things, but you cant shut your eyes and say "NEW IS BAD" and make death threats at Behesda Devs, which they did.

 

What are you talking about? NMA never posted death threats at Bethesda devs. What you probably mean are random people posting on the internet, but this happens all over the place and not only at NMA. Besides, NMA always killed such posts and sometimes even issued warnings. Also the fuzz was never about "NEW IS BAD" but "Bethesda takes an orange and makes it a banana."

 

Unjustified NMA hate from your side. Better inform yourself before posting silly stuff.

 

Incorrect, not only have they threatened them a few times, one even said something about raping a dev's wife.

 

"Bethesda takes an orange and makes it a banana."

ha ha yh ok

I like GTA 3 more than the top down GTA II

Edited November 10, 2012 by NKKKK

[Lexx]

Why is it silly? If you take one game that people love and drastically change it to appeal to a different audience, of course it's going to ruffle some feathers.

 

It's fine to hold on to old things, but you cant shut your eyes and say "NEW IS BAD" and make death threats at Behesda Devs, which they did.

 

What are you talking about? NMA never posted death threats at Bethesda devs. What you probably mean are random people posting on the internet, but this happens all over the place and not only at NMA. Besides, NMA always killed such posts and sometimes even issued warnings. Also the fuzz was never about "NEW IS BAD" but "Bethesda takes an orange and makes it a banana."

 

Unjustified NMA hate from your side. Better inform yourself before posting silly stuff.

 

Incorrect, not only have they threatened them a few times, one even said something about raping a dev's wife.

 

Again. What you mean are random people on the internet. This can happen everywhere and is not a NMA-only thing. "NMA" is not one character and it is not a hive-mind.

 

Plus, I challenge you now to show true examples.

Edited November 10, 2012 by Lexx

[rjshae]

Do I need to mention Little Lamplight

 

No

 

(That's where Is topped playing FO3 and never finished the game)

Yes it's a odd little circumstance, but I'd like to encourage you to keep playing. The fact that several of the kids were taken by slavers indicates that they've survived through luck and being well hidden, but their days are numbered.

[alanschu]

Example: the annoying brat has no idea what a computer or a robot is, despite their being omnipresent in the wasteland, but he knows what a TV dinner is (one of his idle barks while hiding in the personal fallout shelter is "Now I know what a TV dinner feels like!")

 

 

Are you going to nitpick an easter egg comment? (that line is from the movie Die Hard)

Edited November 10, 2012 by alanschu

[alanschu]

Again. What you mean are random people on the internet. This can happen everywhere and is not a NMA-only thing. "NMA" is not one character and it is not a hive-mind

 

I'll agree that my time on NMA during Fallout 3 was usually filled with a good chunk of vitriolic nonsnse.

As you say, the NMA is not a hive mind. WHy is it surprising that someone feels NMA is rather antagonistic towards Fallout. It's not like there aren't people that were on NMA that were that way. If it was seen a fair bit (even just by bad luck), someone will attribute that to the group.

 

 

Unless you're particularly concerned because you identify the group, it's neither really here nor there.

 

NMA is a place where old schoolers of Fallout congregate. It's entirely likely that you'd get more "random people on the internet" that have those opinions on NMA.

Edited November 10, 2012 by alanschu

[WastelandShadow]

A few things about Fallout 3

 

1. The writing: There are a lot of points in the game in which the writing is just juvenile and at other times restricting. The entire game is also very black and white which leads to the game being very linear in regards to story progression. This is my main gripe with the game.

 

2. The game play: I really don't mind it all that much, but they DID turn a turn-based, isometric RPG into a first person shooter based on stats. They allowed you to get 100 in all skills and 10 in all stats by the end of the game which is totally contradictory to the point of an RPG, and the difficulty levels just raised global health values which doesn't increase difficulty at all, just makes combat last longer.

 

3. The lore/story: Vault 87, The Enclave, and even project purity don't make any sense. According to the computers in vault 87, the vault acquired FEV before it was ever made. The Enclave was destroyed in FO2, everyone saw it. They may have had 'members' in remote locations, but obviously not enough to rebuild the huge army that was present in FO3. The whole premise behind project purity is just ridiculous. The amount of bombs it would have taken to irradiate the entire Atlantic ocean, or just that around DC, Pittsburgh, and PL, would have obliterated everything in the area. Oh and DC itself still standing makes no sense either. Apparently the White House took a direct hit and yet the buildings across the street are just barely affected?

[anubite]

Don't even try to analyze FO3's story. None it makes any sense. Epsecially the ending.

 

Considering Bethesda made FO3, it's... okay, it's bad. The vampire thing really hurt. It was like, they didn't know what to do with the IP they had purchased. And a lot of other things really hurt. Like, I wanted a root canal I think, very briefly, during some of the dialogue and questing.

 

But FO3 was a success in spite of all that. And I think I know why.

 

The majority of people who bought FO3 had never played FO2 or FO1. Not only that, but they wouldn't have liked those games anyway. What they wanted, was a first/third person shooter sandbox game. And that's exactly what they got. It had a weird setiing that maybe clicked with them too. 1950's sense of morality vs the edgy mass murderer who listens to old songs on the radio while he hacks and slashes and jingles them jinglies

 

Fallout 1/2 may have had substance, but most consumers probably don't care about that. Since when has the average person cared about art? Most don't. Any attempt at art is a waste, publishers have shown. FO 1/2 were also too tactical, that doesn't appear to be something the average console consumer wants. So it's probably better Bethesda made it easy to max your attributes and easily get more ammo than you could ever need.

 

And the gunplay was... different enough. I mean, I can admit it's satisfying to kill things in FO3, even if most of the guns felt like cheap air pistols. Or that VATS and other mechanisms made it all feel a little awkward.

Edited November 12, 2012 by anubite

[HoonDing]

[NOK222]

 

Lol, so true in regards to fallout 3.

 

Still people are right, Bethesda didn't know what they were doing, you could tell as you played the game. They seem to have been trying to get better with the DLCs (Zeta no included)

 

Still doesn't make it a bad game.

 

I think they'll have a better grasp of plot elements with Fallout 4. They can create interesting characters like Serana in Skyrim, the first real fully fleshed companion they've made.

[Tick]

The majority of people who bought FO3 had never played FO2 or FO1. Not only that, but they wouldn't have liked those games anyway. What they wanted, was a first/third person shooter sandbox game. And that's exactly what they got. It had a weird setiing that maybe clicked with them too. 1950's sense of morality vs the edgy mass murderer who listens to old songs on the radio while he hacks and slashes and jingles them jinglies

 

That was certainly the case for me - that I never played the first two. In fact, when I first was given Fallout 3, I wondered where the hell the other two were, expecting they were more recent releases that I should have noticed in a T.V. ad or E3 (especially since, by then, I vaguely knew that Bethesda was a pretty big/well known company). The two games came in the '90s, and I wasn't even paying attention to what games were out then, I just played the ones I got from family.

 

Fallout 3 was one of the earlier, "darker," "smarter," (I know that probably sounds ridiculous, thus the quotation marks) and more expansive games I began playing around then. I was then and am now a nerd, so I obsessively enjoyed the concept of doing this alternate universe based on the concepts, science, sci-fi, etc. etc. of the '30's-'50's. It was one of the first RPG's I ever got to play, or where I was given any -real- sense of freedom or choice. That I could remember. It's atmosphere was amazing, exploration was ridiculously fun, it had more story, character, and dialogue than most of what I knew of, etc. etc. It was so comparatively better to what I was used to that it was among my favorite games for a good while, and certainly my favorite universe. It was also why I tried to play Oblivion, before being annoyed by it's more noticeable flaws (comparatively) and my gut hurting too much from laughting at the (comparatively) awkward voice acting, dialogue, and animation of faces.

 

Two things make Fallout 3 unplayable for me, even with its nostalgic value, however. One was it's system, despite what I just said, didn't have enough variety to make a whole new playthrough worth it. I had (again, being very obsessive) already done everything the first time, or 96-98% more likely. When I tried again, a good while later, I was so frustrated by the sameness that I restarted with a character consisting of 1's and 10's in S.P.E.C.I.A.L. and similar extremes in skills. This still wasn't enough - the differences in combat were minor, and the differences in story/RPing/dialogue were virtually and essentially absent.

The other reason was that Fallout: New Vegas raised the standard, and became (and still is) my favorite game - maybe my favorite thing. Suddenly, Fallout 3's world looked much more shallow and empty, the writing too simple, the ethics much more glaringly problematic, the conflicts and plot much less interesting. I still have a soft spot for Fallout 3, and I appreciate that it got me into other games - indirectly, into older games and RPG's - but I don't think I could play it at all without another couple decades to forget everything in it (and I'd have to try very hard to forget everything, too). If then.

 

I have a couple other things I wanted to say here, but I'll put it in another post later.

Edited November 14, 2012 by Tick

[WastelandShadow]

 

How creative.

 

Lol, so true in regards to fallout 3.

 

Still people are right, Bethesda didn't know what they were doing, you could tell as you played the game. They seem to have been trying to get better with the DLCs (Zeta no included)

 

Still doesn't make it a bad game.

 

I think they'll have a better grasp of plot elements with Fallout 4. They can create interesting characters like Serana in Skyrim, the first real fully fleshed companion they've made.

 

I never said Fallout 3 was a bad game, but it is a bad Fallout game for reasons already mentioned.

 

I've never encountered that companion, and of the NPCs I encountered in Skyrim were hollow shells compared to hundreds of other RPGs. So they were able to create one NPC that actually had some depth to it? Excuse me if I don't break out in applause.

 

As for them learning how to write and what not, look at how TES has progressed over the years. Look at all the stuff they removed and stream lined between Morrowind and Skyrim. They don't give a rats ass about plot elements.

 

The majority of people who bought FO3 had never played FO2 or FO1. Not only that, but they wouldn't have liked those games anyway. What they wanted, was a first/third person shooter sandbox game. And that's exactly what they got. It had a weird setiing that maybe clicked with them too. 1950's sense of morality vs the edgy mass murderer who listens to old songs on the radio while he hacks and slashes and jingles them jinglies

 

That was certainly the case for me - that I never played the first two. In fact, when I first was given Fallout 3, I wondered where the hell the other two were, expecting they were more recent releases that I should have noticed in a T.V. ad or E3 (especially since, by then, I vaguely knew that Bethesda was a pretty big/well known company). The two games came in the '90s, and I wasn't even paying attention to what games were out then, I just played the ones I got from family.

 

Fallout 3 was one of the earlier, "darker," "smarter," (I know that probably sounds ridiculous, thus the quotation marks) and more expansive games I began playing around then. I was then and am now a nerd, so I obsessively enjoyed the concept of doing this alternate universe based on the concepts, science, sci-fi, etc. etc. of the '30's-'50's. It was one of the first RPG's I ever got to play, or where I was given any -real- sense of freedom or choice. That I could remember. It's atmosphere was amazing, exploration was ridiculously fun, it had more story, character, and dialogue than most of what I knew of, etc. etc. It was so comparatively better to what I was used to that it was among my favorite games for a good while, and certainly my favorite universe. It was also why I tried to play Oblivion, before being annoyed by it's more noticeable flaws (comparatively) and my gut hurting too much from laughting at the (comparatively) awkward voice acting, dialogue, and animation of faces.

 

Two things make Fallout 3 unplayable for me, even with its nostalgic value, however. One was it's system, despite what I just said, didn't have enough variety to make a whole new playthrough worth it. I had (again, being very obsessive) already done everything the first time, or 96-98% more likely. When I tried again, a good while later, I was so frustrated by the sameness that I restarted with a character consisting of 1's and 10's in S.P.E.C.I.A.L. and similar extremes in skills. This still wasn't enough - the differences in combat were minor, and the differences in story/RPing/dialogue were virtually and essentially absent.

The other reason was that Fallout: New Vegas raised the standard, and became (and still is) my favorite game - maybe my favorite thing. Suddenly, Fallout 3's world looked much more shallow and empty, the writing too simple, the ethics much more glaringly problematic, the conflicts and plot much less interesting. I still have a soft spot for Fallout 3, and I appreciate that it got me into other games - indirectly, into older games and RPG's - but I don't think I could play it at all without another couple decades to forget everything in it (and I'd have to try very hard to forget everything, too). If then.

 

I have a couple other things I wanted to say here, but I'll put it in another post later.

 

Responding to what is in bold:

 

This is the biggest problem with Bethesda developing a Fallout game, or really any other RPG imo. For some reason they have the idea stuck in their heads that you should be able to do anything, go anywhere at any time, and obtain every weapon and item in the game. One of Fallout's biggest driving features is choice and consequence. Like you said, if you're able to do everything in one sitting, what is the point of playing through the game again? (Other than experiencing the masterful plot of Fallout 3 again)

Edited November 14, 2012 by WastelandShadow