I'm not so worried for FO:NV. It's using existing technology and lore and I'm guessing it also has a different Dev. team. I got Alpha Protocol for the PS3 and I wouldn't say it's bad. I haven't completed it yet but so far it's pretty bland. As others have said, it just seems to have elements from existing games and blends in with the crowd.
Obsidian would really have to drop the ball to mess up FO:NV and from what I've seen so far I think it'll be fine.

Don't really care since AP did not turn out to be as bad as the reviews said it to be.

Well I've read one review of Alpha Protocol and they thought it was a terrible game.

The Plus point is that since Alpha Protocol was still being made while New Vegas was in production, it suggests Obsidian have a seperate development house for New Vegas with different designers, artists etc so while thats no guarantee that the New Vegas team are going to make a great game it does give them a clear field to start in.

I don't think there is any credibility to the argument that because AP was at quality level X, that New Vegas will also be at quality level X - I think people are trying to find comparisons where none exists.

AP certainly had many of the same people on it from Obsidian as New Vegas does, but I think the similarities end there. Remember that this is a Bethesda game as much as an Obsidian game, and Bethesda has to approve the whole smash before it hits the shelves. This is a HUGE difference between a team working independently and a team working independently but also under the scrutiny of other fellow game creation experts.

Mentally thats a big deal when your working on a team and you know that your work is going to be judged by peers Before you get to release it, the pressure goes up to perform and to impress - on a human level. AP also did not have Anywhere near the hype and built-in fan base that Fallout has, the resulting reputation benefit or bane will be equally huge when New Vegas comes out - and they are very well aware of this. I feel very similar things in projects at work, which also has large and small teams working different projects, sometimes under scrutiny, sometimes under great pressure and sometimes not so much. Pressure really does raise the level of output in people, and I think its safe to say that the AP folks working on NV are definitely feeling more outside pressure than they did on AP. This gives me great hope.

Also one must bear in mind that everyone evolves as we age, people learn from past mistakes and experience, and in general people improve over time. Companies Usually follow the same course if they are run well. In this case, we have a very experienced company at making quality content (Obsidian) making a game for another very experienced company with making games on This engine (Bethesda) - we're getting the review/pressure of 2 companies instead of just one.

All of this from my own perspective and experience with running and being on big teams and dealing with people interaction for the last 30 years - so its all arguable and the nay-sayers are going to spew negativity about New Vegas no matter what happens with the game. For me however, I think it Highly likely that we will get a high quality game with few crash issues that Most of us will love and enjoy.

Miax

Do you have a link to those performance increasing mods? I'm getting a new computer and if fallout 3 doesn't work properly on it those mods could be really handy.

Agreed. For me, the more I played AP the more I liked it. And I never experienced any of those dreaded technical issues apart from the sometimes wonky AI (granted I have only one 25h playthrough so far /sarcasm).

And despite the rants on how shooting works there (with which I disagree, since most of the reviews don't seem to take the RPG side into account when combat is involved "OMG no hedshot fragfest, stoopid dicerulls interfere", I do hope F:NV represents a somewhat similiar system where the skill actually does make a difference to ones accuracy.

Cereally, so many of the criticisms about AP I read in reviews applied directly to FO3 as well, and these same reviewers just carpet-bombed that game with tens.

Very true, and I can't figure out why. Money? Doublestandards? Both?

An all ready established setting a year or so apart! Reviewers are temperamental hypocrites at the best of times.
And lastly James Bond and Jack Bauer. The two big names in the spy market no game could ever compete with the average mans imagination when it comes to make believe spy games with a cordless drill imo.

Gee, ya think?

I personally thought AP was a very good game and most of those reviews are throwing out hyperbolic statements which just simply aren't true. I didn't think AP was great, but far more enjoyable than Fallout 3, imo and the best stealthy/action/rpg I've played since Bloodlines and Deus Ex. My guess is after a patch and a few years this game will go down in cult history just the same as those two aforementioned games.

p.s. the C&C element has raised the bar pretty high. I think they spent so much time developing this portion of the game that a lot of loose ends were left in other areas.

Yeah, I just got to play Alpha Protocol yesterday. Granted, I'm only two hours in, so I can only go on first impressions, but I don't think it's really looking like there's so much to worry about. There was at first a rather annoying (and admittedly, nearly game-breaking) framerate stutter on my PC, but it was nice to be able to go to their support page in the forums and see that it was a known bug with an unofficial fix (that adequately fixed it, if not exactly completely) until a patch comes out. And it certainly seems made for console play - it didn't take me long to decide to play with an XBox controller plugged in.

Other than that, though, it seems like a pretty solid game. I was a little bit underwhelmed at the onset, to be fair. But the more I play it, the more I'm starting to get addicted - I think I'm going to like what they've done, here. The dialogs in particular seem like they're of a quality you don't see in too many games these days. It doesn't control the best, for what's still ostensibly an action game, but really no worse than Fallout 3 did, so no worries there.

Personally, I don't think I've yet seen any real signs that New Vegas is going to be of any lower quality than Fallout 3 was, judging by this game. Sure, there's some hurdles I encountered already, and I'll eat my words if this game starts crashing all the time; but it's within the level of what I usually expect to encounter when buying a PC title and playing it on release day, before the first patch. (Heck, at least it ran right out of the box - which is more than I was able to say about Black and White 2, or Civ IV, for example...)

I'm curious, and this isn't meant to be argumentative, if New Vegas has the same issues as Fallout 3 (i.e. bad animations, clipping issues, poor a.i.), yet gets the same great scores Fallout 3 got, how will those of you who hate Fallout 3's good scores react? And lets not kid ourselves here, Obsidian and Bethesda aren't known for their bug free games, there are going to be issues. It would be extremely hypocritical to say Fallout 3's good scores simply couldn't be possible without paid-off or biased reviewers, and then say that New Vegas deserves the same high scores despite the same bugs. Even if New Vegas has a better story, and it most likely will, that wouldn't suddenly make it worthy of the high scores FO3 somehow isn't worthy of, especially considering the thing most reviewers liked most was the huge world to explore and all the side quests to do.

Not to be a jerk or anything but guys seriously when was the last time you've EVER played a game that did not have a single glitch/crash. I cannot think of one game that didn't have a glitch or crash and was flawless in its programming and considered "perfect" nothing and nobody is perfect. Plus you also have think that fallout 3 is kind of a first of its kind, a sandbox RPG with all your RPG elements (leveling skills stats items) with first person shooter elements unheard of until fallout 3. Most shooters are just shooters and you don't level or add skills. Most RPGs you add skills and bring up stats and the such but don't have any First person shooter elements.

The only thing that comes close is oblivion, and that's not even the same.

I have found there are three types of Reviews, and I only pay attention to one of them.

1. Hyper Critical Reviews - The reviewer will slam each and every game unless it meats some ideal that is unattainable, or it is not exactly like their favorite game. These people only review to see themselves in print.

2. Hyper Love Reviews - The Reviewer will love the game because it is just like one they love, or they love the company or they never have anything bad to say about a game.

3. My Review - I play the game, and decide if I like it as a game. I am pretty low level on what pleases me for a game. No game breaking bugs and a UI that I can figure out and come to terms with. And, the most important thing, is it fun to play. Do I want to spend an hour or three on the couch of chair playing this.

Note, there are a few reviewers out there that can give a nice balanced review of a game and remember the most important part of a game. Is it fun to play, even with the warts and flaws. No game is wart or flaw free, but most games are not fun to play. When a game is fun to play, then I can overlook, or really, not even see any negative issues. I don't want perfection in a game, I want fun.

Sad but true, I've come across very few reviewers who will notify the player of all the good, all the bad, and make an unbiased opinion on the game. But of course, nobody can play every game and decide for themselves, so sometimes all you have to go on are potentially questionable reviews.

Well if I was going to go with my own review, I do respect people's hard work and I know people put their hearts and soul into these games, but Alpha Protocol is too much looks like a metal gear solid clone to me, and there's so many console games out there like it, I could see why it didn't get a good review. I'm sure it has a different story unique features but third person shooters like that were crazy innovated when ps1 came out, since then there's been so many special forces third person view games released that it just cliche.

Metal Gear Solod
Siphon Filter
Duke Nukem
Prince of Pursia

Those are just a few games off the top of my head that are like Alpha Protocol. From my opinion I think reviewers are looking for something new, innovated and something that hasn't been done before, you play one 3rd person shooter game you've played them all. These are my opinions and my review.

And yes I also agree with you CCNA about reviewers, there's always going to be a bias people, and people who love to bash and get off being negative and love harsh criticism. The only thing I expect from a reviewer is, if the game is so horrible and crappy and a complete waste of money and makes people react like a gamefly commercial then that's when reviews are useful. But for the most part everything has moderation sometimes there's good ideas in games but it lacks in other areas. I notice with games is this:

Sometimes the game has a great mechanics but a [censored] story.
Or sometimes a game has a really great story but really bad mechanics. There's always moderation and balance. I think instead of writing entire reviews of whats just good, or whats just bad they should write whats good about the game and whats bad not go just go one route. Even with this in mind sometimes what one sees as a bad feature others see it as a good feature and love it. While some what are good features others might hate it.

To be fair, Alpha Protocol is a "3rd person shooter" in pretty much the same way Fallout 3 was. (Well, I played F3 in third-person mode, at least - but otherwise we could say Alpha Protocol is a "3rd person shooter" in the same way that Fallout 3 was a "first-person shooter.")

Personally, I'm not too worried about what score any of these games get on review sites. Occasionally, they're useful for a game I'm undecided about buying - but once I've already purchased the game, it's all kind of irrelevant. I already know I'm going to be buying New Vegas, and I already have Fallout 3 and Alpha Protocol. It's not like I'm going to earn more Gamerscore or something if the games I'm playing all have "scores" within the range that I feel appropriate. I mean, I know what I'd probably score these if I were a reviewer, but I don't even know what either games was rated by any of the reviewers I trust.

Plus, it's not like there's some inherent metric involved in a reviewer rating a game. They're not going to take x amount of "points" out of a review for every bug - it's usually more to do with to what extent any existing bugs diminish their experience of playing the game. For example, a game can get 5 stars or a 10/10 and still have bugs, even if it's not an absolutely perfect game.

Anyway, back to the point. If I start seeing a ton of really detrimental bugs, or excessive lack of polish, in Alpha Protocol, I guess I might be a bit more worried about New Vegas. But personally, my mind was already made up about NV. I'm going to be buying it either way. Plus, AP is a new IP they've built from the ground up, and with NV they're using (what I'm assuming is a separate team, in the first place,) an existing framework upon which to build the game. Fallout 3 ran just fine on my rig - I'm expecting the same rare non-fatal error here and there that I had then, but overall I'd bet that it's going to be the same experience in terms of technical quality.

I like that CCNA. Most already have made up their minds, So untill WE play it, We wont know its faults and decide if its still worth playing it regardless of them.

don't worry, obsidian and bethesda will use the f3 engine, the main problem in Alpha Protocol was the engine, but obsidian part in the game was to make the rpg system, ang they succeeded:

* Your choices have lasting impact on the story and gameplay
* Lots of ways to approach missions and develop your character.

:mohawk:

Yeah bad example... Its a 3rd person view game not really a 3rd person shooter like the other game's I've stated.

Better examples:
Tomb raider
Max Payne
Gears of War

Now Fallout 3: Is there anything like it? Any clones?
Morrowind?
Oblivion?

Well of course those are made by the same company, but there's not a single game out there that has guns and explosives with a morrowind/oblivion sandbox type play while having RPG elemets such as raising statistics and skill points, finding items. I mean some games have bits of pieces of these features but not all in one like Fallout 3. Who's honestly played a shooter where you can go do RPG style quest for people and go off and explore like you could in morrowind/oblivion. Thats why fallout 3 got game of the year and got such great reviews because there was nothing like. If metal gear solid didn't exist or Alpha Protocol was the first of its kind I bet it would have gotten better reviews. Me personally I get bored of games if they all have the same style. PS1 really killed the 3rd person shooter because there was a butt-load of games then that were like that. And plus since Alpha Protocol was put off for a year that probably didn't help matters any. Honestly that's why I got bored with console games because of how cliche game mechanics become.

What the hell was the name of that one game where the guy was part demon or something and he could have power ups but they went around shoooting with guns... If anybody can think of what I'm trying to think of I'll give you a cookie.

Gaming journalists rely on exclusives and advertising from developers and publishers for profit. The bigger the name the more valuable their exclusives and advertising. At the end of the day when you're reading reviews for RPGs by BioWare or Bethesda from "professionals" you're probably reading what BioWare and Bethesda want you to read. This is not to say that the reviews are completely untrue; they just tend to conveniently avoid many of the flaws in the game and give the final product a score that it may not (and usually doesn't) deserve. For smaller companies like Obsidian who are often saddled with horrible publishers like Atari and SEGA reviewers tend to be more honest.

... this time, they will prevail well I think. And it doesn't hurt that they have Big name advertising now.

You know I've notice on all the game sites that there's been a lot of fallout 3 adds lately... Bethesda seems to be the only company that doesn't advertise their games on T.V. and yet they still have good marketing and a lot of people buy the games they publish.


To tell you guys the truth I honestly think Fallout : New Vegas is going to be even better than Fallout 3, so I'm not worried about New Vegas being a bad game. Fallout 3 got game of the year, and to me from what I've read New Vegas sounds like it has a better story than fallout3, a lot of new and great features on top of what fallout 3 had to offer so I'm not worried in the least bit.

There's only 1 thing that worries me, that they're going to keep the fallout 3 guns and not put in any of the old school guns from fallout 1 and 2 in their game. I don't want to see new guns added on top of fallout 3's guns, I want to see classic fallout guns along with fallout 3's guns. But that's a whole other story and belongs in a "what I want in New Vegas thread" but still that's the only thing that worries me.

Sounds so fishy that it is likely true.



Hmm, there were TV adds when Fallout 3 was coming out.

I saw adds for FO3 almost constantly for less than a month on release, Same for FO3 GOTY addition. In England on sky.