Goekhan

Join Date 09/2008

Fallout 3 discussion

by BS

Greetings fellow game lovers. I'd like to give some info about Fallout 3 and discuss about it.

Little bio:

Fallout 1: Developed & Published by Interplay

Fallout 2: Developed by Black Isle Studios, Published by Interplay

Cancelled Fallout 3: (Codename Van Buren) Developed by Black Isle Studios, Cancelled by Interplay at 75%

Fallout 3: Being Developed & will be Published by Bethesda Softworks

Ah, the game that thought me English, when I was at my childhood...

You can get the Van Buren photos if you search a little, or just ask me and I can post some of the Van Buren photos here. Van Buren was finished by 75% when Interplay disbanded the BIS team and fired them. Game mechanics and anything else than maps, story was the only ones left to finish. But Interplay handed the Fallout title (not Fallout Online title) to Bethesda Softworks. Van Buren was intending to keep original gameplay, with same camera angle but this time all 3D, but Fallout 3 by Bethesda Softworks is going to ALTER the gameplay completely.

Alter?

Have you ever played any of the Elder Scroll series? The first I was played was Daggerfall (Elder Scrolls II), then I played Morrowind (which was a HUGE world for me, I was playing it day and night. Watching sky in-game and enjoying it!!!). Then Oblivion came out and took my expectations for the next Elder Scroll game to another dimension! But, when I heard that BS (Bethesda Softworks) is going to make Fallout 3, WITHOUT using any previous Van Buren codes (meaning: developing from start, taking only Fallout world to adopt). Then a battle started inside me...

Battle?

Yes, a battle. I'm a GAME LOVER, for example, I play Civilization 4, Galactic Civilizations 2, HOMM 5, Doom III, FEAR, CS, Red Alert 2, this and that, nearly every title that you can see on the game markets. But some games have a special place for me. Especially RPG games, and among RPG games, all of the Black Isle titles (Fallout, Lionheart, ...), Elder Scrolls Series, all of the Bioware titles (Baldur's Gate, ...). In short, the battle within is a fight caused by the 2 joining games, gameplay of Morrowind-Oblivion travels to Fallout dimension. But I'm lucky a bit that I will play Fallout 3 aswell, because I like Fallout, I like Morrowind-Oblivion, so it'll be great for me to see everything 3D with immense graphics on Fallout world... But;

But?

Many of my old comrades are saying that they never liked Oblivion, or Morrowind, and transferring Fallout world into a Elder Scrolls kinda place is a reason for them not to play that game. They don't like FPS, and you know, Oblivion-Morrowind is kind of a FPRPG (first person role playing game ???)

Your opinions.

What do you think? Is it a great thing to do (joining 2 games (gameplay + world))? First question should be this, do you like Fallout and Elder Scrolls? Then answer previous question.

And lastly, if you havent, check Fallout 3 videos. There are 5 gameplay videos. And if you would like to see how Van Buren was going to look, I can post links here.

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+454

Honestly, what made Fallout so great was not the isometric perspective, or the turn-based combat. To me, it was the story, atmosphere, dialogue, etc. So as long as Bethsoft's attempt at the series maintains those aspects of the game, it has a chance to be pretty good (despite recycling the same oh-so-familiar voice actors from TES...).

But then again, I also thought the TES games were pretty good (Morrowind moreso than oblivion, due to the latter's console UI and stupid level-scaling system).

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Personally I liked a lot of the changes Oblivion made. The 'console UI' was mostly sensible streamlining - Morrowind had an attrocious UI. You had to pause to pick a spell for crying out loud. The new physics and combat mechanics were a lot of fun too. However, I do think it lacked a bit of soul compared to Morrowind. I modded out the scaling, but yes that was a bad feature. Rare daedric artifacts should not be two-a-penny. The auto-generated dungeons were a bad move as well, and the terrain and towns were very samey. Compared to Morrowind's beautiful ashlands, strange architecture and all around weirdness it just wasn't the same. Even the Imperial City was somehow dull compared to Vivec looming up out of the mist. Radiant AI was disappointing too. Lastly, it lacked the factions. I mean obviously it had guilds, but you didn't have the same situation where doing a quest for one annoys the rest, so that element of choice was removed.

It did however contain little bits of hand-sculpted brilliance. The Ancester Moth temple, the Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood quests the ending sequence. The bit where you have to turn on your own cabal was one of the best twists I've seen in a game, beautifully written, completely out of the blue and quite disturbing. And for that reason I have a lot of hope for Fallout 3: the setting is interesting like Morrowind, and I think that the people at Bethesda can probably get a handle on the dark humour. But they do need to either ditch or significantly improve their procedurally generated content. I'd prefer them to ditch it and have a shorter game in a smaller world.

As for Van Buren: it's dead, it's almost certainly never coming back, forget about it.

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I may be one of the few, but I actually liked the scaling. It made sure no matter how you went through the game it would remain challenging. True there were some icky side effects, such as god-like rats in the rat kingdom. But then again, I never liked in other RPGs that you can do side quests and such and level up/gear yourself up and then the rest of the game is no challenge.

Even the original Fallouts had this problem. I remember right after getting the car going driving around San Francisco in FO2, to catch the mobsters and yakuza fighting, then loot all of their G11s with caseless ammo. Similarly, find a few mutants vs. fights, and then loot all of their rocket launchers and miniguns. Then go back to continue the main story where everyone is still wearing leather armor, and you've got a minigun. That's just no fun.

The scaling in Oblivion might've been a bit heavy handed (humanoids should've scaled, misc animals not), but on the whole it tried to maintain a level of challenge throughout the whole game.

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+454

It made sure no matter how you went through the game it would remain challenging.

Only if you just took levels as they came, rather than powerleveling. Which I don't think much of anyone did once they realized how levelling works in TES.

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I never power leveled But yeah.. you've got a point there

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Well, my problem with the scaled leveling is that I COULDN'T find a challenge after a while. My gear was such that I could take anyone down in a couple of hits. While a lot of fun (I put over 100 hrs into it), I never actually finished the game.

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But at least in the case of FO3, the leveling system remains the same as the previous games, so it's going to be xp based

Broken edit button makes me a sad (closest to a panda face..)

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Fallout 3 being turned into "Oblivion with Guns" makes me sad.

To me, a part of what made Fallout such a great game was the isometric turned based combat system. It was one of the best turn-based combat systems since X-Com, and I loved it. Part of me is very sad to see that part of the game be thrown out by Bethesda, as if it wasn't at least a part of the appeal of Fallout.

The thing is that I think Bethesda has this "Oblivion" mold, and they're trying very very hard to make Fallout fit into that mold. In some ways I think it might work. The open-ended-ness will go well, as will quests, reputation, gore, and other things. However, other aspects of the game from what I've seen so far look like it's a bit of a stretch.

And the level scaling in Oblivion was horrible.

Add to the fire that Bethesda basically develops for the XBox and then does crappy ports of that version of the game to all other platforms. As a PC Gamer, I've been appalled at the utter crap that I've had to deal with on the PC from them in terms of interface, control, GUI, and enironments.

This is a game I'll want a demo of before I buy it. I paid $50 for Oblivion and I regret it.

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This is a game I'll want a demo of before I buy it. I paid $50 for Oblivion and I regret it.

They've said that there won't be a demo for FO3

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Voqar

Join Date 03/2003

+21

I dunno, the turned based combat is one thing, but if you totally alter a game's perspective it just isn't the same.

f Diablo III was FPS-style like Oblivion, it wouldn't be Diablo. Period.

Same with Fallout. Without isometric (or rotatable 3D similar to iso) it just won't be fallout. Period.

Fallout III might end up being a good game (doubt it for me, since I can't stand Oblivion or Morrowind and don't care for how Bethesda does games) but it won't really be Fallout.

And that's just how it is.

PS - I'm really sick of these forums. Do they no longer work well with IE6 or something? I type my reply, get ready to hit reply, and the page finally finishes loading, obliterates my text, and usually scrolls me to the middle of the page. It's really annoying.

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All those games were forced into those views because of technology. The view has NOTHING to do with the feel of the game other than basic feel (i.e. clastraphobia in first person etc). Fallout is about the world, the comedy and the dark fictional representation of a retro-postnuke world.

Stalker actualy did a good job of captureing that kind of feel.

Diablo 3 in third person would be great (it would be sorta like God of War but with more blood and stuff). Diablo is diablo because its world is bleak and full of dark caves filled monsters basicaly.

To think that limited technology somehow was the reason why a game is good. LMAO!!

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Its the same with crusader, to harp on about the point, I'd love to play a crusader game updated with a third person 3D engine. Crusader is about blowing things up (puzzel solving with explosive barrels lol).

Crusader would turn into an excellent cover and fire shooter. (Think Gears of War or Rainbow 6 Vegas mixed with Mercs 2 (for blowing stuff up) and then add in the blood red crusader and puzzels to solve with guns - volia!).

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I would give the game a chance before you crush it down without even playing it only by watching videos or looking at screenshots.

Yes, it look a bit different compare with the first two games. It is different. Who knows maybe we get a very good be-in-the-world-feeling or maybe we don't.

The only problem would have is trusting opinions of game magazines or sites. They hype games too often, so they only way to get a good opinion about Fallout 3 is by yourself ...

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Nice replies guys. I forgot these things that you've mentioned and not;

-Level scaling system and console from Oblivion

They are trying to get a different level system on FO3 but if they intend to keep something similar with mob-scaling system, it'll definitely ruin the game. On Oblivion, it was really bad, I was level 12 then I focused on main story, and finished it at level 21. Then finished Knights of the Nine, so I'm in my Crusader armor. But my enemies, oh god, save me please... The only cheats I've did are +10 str and +10 endurance (after I saw that The Warrior birthsign only gives +10, do not raise the cap of those to 110), insta-killed some minions to save my comrades (come on, I'm only a warrior, killing 3 at the same time is a pain for me- yes I do but still I'm no 6 armed beast that chopping heads of others). So I hope they disable the console, or mark you as a cheater or something, because my friends were boosting themselves all along, where I only did cheating when I needed to save someone...

-Perks for EACH level

You get perks for each level from now on. I hope they save some of the best perks in the game (I have a warrior soul, so Slayer... Oh mighty Slayer perk, I hope they keep it )

-Radiation?

Radiation was a weird thing to add, that is adding a realistic side of the Fallout world of course. That brings a question in my mind, on a gameplay video, it is said that it'll kill you if taken much. But like Vampirism in Oblivion (OR MORROWIND... yes there was), could there be a condition that makes you a Ghoul? Long term exposure or FEV. Remember FEV Ghouls.

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"The thing is that I think Bethesda has this "Oblivion" mold"

Bethesda have made other games than just their open world RPGs you know...

I think I got shot in the back by my companions too often to feel particularly enthusiastic about Fallout's turn-based combat. Story and exploration for me.

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The beauty of TES games, and hopefully the beauty of Fallout 3, is that modding can fix nearly anything. it certainly fixed Oblivion's questionable interface, the level scaling problem, and dozens of other issues. It also added reams of new content and bonus stuff. As long as Fallout 3 is as moddable as Morrowind and Oblivion were, I'm certain that it can be turned into a great game even if it doesn't start as one.

Of course, if you buy the console version of a Bethesda product you're just kinda screwed, but I have no idea why someone would do that.

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I wish this modability for Fallout 3, too. If they give us this we will defenitly see mods that will enhanche the game or even bring back the turn-base fight (even if I think that won't be good and I don't want to know who they fix the moving-problem in it).

Back to FO3:

- I thought they said that it wouldn't have level scaling system or did I get it wrong?

- Why do we see only pictures with male charakters, isn't FO supposed to have both sex avaible for the players to chose?

I have never recognised that the voices of the NPC were so similar. Enlish isn't my native language so this could be the reason I never recognised it (even when playing the Englisch version, localised version are oft just ...).

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Diviator;

- I watched videos and read some articles on The Vault (Fallout wiki, google as that), and I don't know, but I really don't want this in FO3. It definitely ruined my gaming experience on Oblivion (a Bear something chases me, when I get down to take it down, it killed my ARMORED horse in 2 hits, and was going to kill me aswell. It was harder than any fight I had)

- You can select both in FO3, the first gameplay video (part 1) shows how you choose your outlook.

And, on Oblivion, you could recognize NPC voices, but I never cared, because it's better than nothing. But I think, it's somewhat easy to add a synthesiser (probably I've written it wrong) to alter the captured voices to make us think as they're all different, instead of hiring many people to do that (except main people).

As for turn-base fight, they tried to (if you watched Part 2 or Part 3 (I think), gameplay video) adopt it as an artistic battle style. You freeze time, and choose where to attack, queue them up and it'll do as you say, in slo-mo (artistic) style

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The only thing I don't like about real-time combat as opposed to the old purely tactical, is that the real-time combat paves the way to kiting (run backwards and shoot at whatever is running at you). This greatly reduces the level of challenge in my experience (you could do this with bows, and even longer reach weapons in Oblivion and it was no fun) and is overall a "meh" thing.

Thankfully, the player gets to decide if he wants to do this or not, and I don't intend to rely on it

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Yes, I know we still have a kind of turn-base. I think they call it V.A.T.S.

Well, we will see how the combat system works in the final game.

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Quoting Annatar11,

reply 19

Except in Fallout 3 allmost everyone is totting a gun. So aside from an occasional mutated monster and luckless raider, kiting won't help you unless you can dodge bullets.

Besides, I kited agent Horrigan in Fallout 2. The poor bastard couldn't knife me since I had broken his leg with my trusty gauss rifle. So you can kite quite effectively in turn based combat... perhaps even better than in real-time since in real-time you can easily make a mistake of stumbling into a wall or an inconvenient second monster, whereas in turn based isometric view you have all the time you need to think things through, and you have a 360 degree vision.

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Eh, I imagine FO3 will have its share of Powerfist using people, but the creatures are usually melee (see crab people in video, where the demo-er does the kiting )

The thing with FO2 though was that you either move or you shoot, you couldn't do both (though there was a perk that gave you bonus move-only APs), and you also had helpers. Now we don't know if you'll have helpers in FO3, but you can move *and* shoot

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Well I could always move and shot in Fallout, but I always hat at least 9 AP and never less. I love agil hero, slow moving hitters are just too slow for. Move and shot was the only ways for me to survive Death Claw Caves.

About the Power Fist Video:

- I know you won't aggree, but I think it was a bit of too much violence. Of cause much of it was cause by Bloody Mess.

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In fallout I just picked the biggest gun and hoped I didn't die before they did... thats kinda how I always play. Really did love double barreled and the leather outfit with the missing arm. Rather than kite, it was move right next to enemy and let them have it hehehehe.

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Most of mine eventually ended up with Sniper using the Gauss Rifle. Shot to the eyes across the screen ftw But I did also enjoy pickpocketing the Bozar off that merchant outside one of the cities, and then staring things (and people) in the face while I tore them to shreds. That was a fun gun.

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