I do understand you perfectly. If you want ot be bad, you would like to see how the world would react to you. And if you are good, the same thing. The thing is that you do not need to build different characters in this game to experiences both approaches. That is all I am saying. You can experience everything, every type of combat, every type of archetype, and all types of behavior with only one character. Why build a second character, when there is nothing in the game to prevent you from being the good, the bad and the ugly and everything in between with only 1 character?

Good and bad isn't what I mean. I play to the stats of the characters I create...beyond the impact they have on game mechanics. i suppose I could dramatically shift how I play a character, but then it wouldn't be the same character I created.

That is fine, as long as the stats are important to the game play. Unfortunately in F3 they are nor really that important. So unlike F1 and F2. And this is the sad part. F3 could have been soooo much more.

And this is the idea of the OP distilled into 1 sentence. Stats are not really important in F3

The only aspect I was disappointed with was that it was relatively easy to get to level 20. And that's without the perk that adds 10% to whatever EXP you get.

yup. The impact of stats on gameflow is minimal. I would expect it to be improved next game, but I don't think they will get to the point where the player can gimp their character...for better or worse

This.

i disagree...........the amount of time you spend in combat in those games directly impacts the enjoyment factor. the example i gave was final fantasy 7 which i loved and almost finished when it came out on playstation. couple of years ago i installed it on my pc and i played for a couple of hours before getting sick of the TB combat. if the combat system is so bad that it interferes with ones ability to appreciate the story then it is a fair criticism. i still play plenty of old school games. shadowrun, new horizons, i have 2 might and magic games i play once in a while 6 and 7.....8 and 9 svcked. i have arcanum, baldurs gate 2, planescape, kings field 1 and 2 (talk about graphics....ugh!). these were all old games with craptacular graphics, but are still enjoyable cause they had at the very least decent combat system.

i do understand the frustration people who actually enjoyed the first games might have since i felt the exact same way over the debacle that was shadowrun last year. howerver, fallout 3 is still at least a good game while the new shadowrun was crap.

@serdicus. i agree there. the only thing that might prevent someone from finding all locations is if you didnt major in science or lockpicking. other than that there are no restrictions.

This is what I said at GameSpot, "Complex game that if you do not understand the game you will find this game disappointing fast!". If I new before hand what was required I might not have bought the game, but when I was finally going to through this game on my trash bin, were there are a lot of other games, I decided to try again. That was when I found L.O.B. Enterprises and that changed the game around. Am I enthralled with the game no, but it is still not a bad game you just have to understand the game. It takes a lot of learning to play this game and that means a lot of playing time. :banghead:

I felt let down by the fact that I was comparing it to a much better game: Oblivion.

When Oblivion came out people complained that it was too small because they had played Morrowind. Not having played Morrowind, I had no issues with the games size and thought that they were crazy.

Now, moving from Oblivion to Fallout 3 I can see exactly where they are coming from. The main quest is over too fast and there are precious few side quests. And being on the 360 I cannot use the creation kit.

I fully hope to see Bethesda release an expantion that extends the map area a significant portion.

Fallout is Good.
Oblivion is Better.

Well, fine. You have something there.

I still think that if Beth did that I would be just as immersed in this game as I currently am. But that's just me.

As it is, the game is full of enough Fallout for me so the only thing I feel could be improved upon would be the graphics. And I'm not even currently utilizing the graphics of the game because I'm playing on a 360 on your average non-HD TV, so improving the graphics wouldn't even do much for me.

But as far as graphics go, it's the modernized free-roaming first person exploration style of play that really does it for me. I always wondered what Fallout games would look like in first person, and Fallout 3 did that for me.

If they toned the graphics down and further developed the NPC's and the increased the immersion of the game in that regard, I would still enjoy it every bit as much as I am now. But at the same time I would undoubtedly long for the old Fallout, namely in reference to NPC dialog and interaction. Because as it currently stands, that's one of the only aspects of gameplay that really feels like the old Fallout when you're wandering the wastes.

But man, I tell you what...the beginning of Fallout probably annoyed a lot of players out there who never played the original Fallout games and jumped right into the series with Fallout 3.Because before Fallout 3, you picked your traits, stats, and skills from a menu. Fallout 3 does this interactively. So if you never played Fallout games, you don't know what you're missing.

Now somewhere there is a parallel in here. Because you need the original Fallout games to remind you of how things used to be yesterday, so that you may realize how great things are today.

In a similar way, you need the familiar NPC dialog and interaction found in previous Fallout games to keep the game from being absolutely dissimilar to the spiffy new version.

Beth didn't want to completely svck the player out of the Fallout universe, so they accomplished this by giving the NPC interaction a very familiar feel.

So it may not be a parallel, but I think you get what I'm trying to say...heck all you have to do is check out some old-school Fallout game footage on Youtube to see how things used to be, and maybe that will help you accept what you are looking at today.

Specifics aside, NPC interaction is truly the most familiar aspect of gameplay to Fallout 3's predecessors.

Hard to argue with that.

Fallout map isn't smaller than Obl;ivion map, and it's got a lot more locations than Oblivion. I thought Oblivion overland was sort of empty, and many of the places in it were procedurally generated.

Actually it is so dissimilar it is not even funny. All NPC interaction in Fallout depended on your stats, your previous actions and your karma. Not so in F3.

Example - I blow up Megaton and no one reacts differently to me. Counter example - The banker in the Hub in F1 would not deal with you if you have positive karma above certain level. If you insist on talking to him and you have positive karma , he and his goons will attack you.

Example - low intelligence mele oriented character in F3 has the same dialog options as a high intelligence science boy, as well as a high charisma/speech diplomat. Wonder why??? Counter example in F1 similarly build low intelligence mele character has almost no dialog options and he cans solve problems only through combat.

Well, Fallout 3 is quite different from Oblivion. The meat of Fallout 3 isn't the quests, side quests, or any of that. It's the gameworld and all the detailed locations in it. Oblivion on the other hand had a rather empty and repetitive gameworld, but more quests and sidequests.

i enjoyed the fact that the main quest was short, bethesda has lame storylines and oblivions dragged on way to long. i could care less about how many fed ex missions there are. i enjoy exploring in fallout since im still finding nifty locations. with oblivion i spent more time in shivering isles even though it was smaller simply cause it had a more interesting environment similar to morrowind. fallouts environment is far more interesting than the fantasy settings of the elderscrolls universe.

It's going to be interesting to see how the lessons learned in fallout...specifically the exploration aspects..influence the next TES game.

that and getting rid of khajits and argonians......unfortunately that will never happen.

Those two fallouts had a very weak TB implementation. Enemy AI was ineffective to teh point of not being there at all. About all the player could do was select aimed shots. This isn't a function of TB, it's a function of poor TB implementation.

The reason why you can experience so much with one character in one playtrough is cause of the design in Bethesdas Fallout. Something that you could do in the past games was to "cut your self out" from certain aspects of the game. Fallout 1 and 2 were a lot less forgiving compared to Fallout 3, roleplaying whise and with the quest. If you have been rude to Lynet she would not hesitate to throw you out of Vault City and thus you had to find another way to get to Vault 15 (and a few other locations). Another part was that ways in one dierction could lead to results that leave you ... unsatisfied [in a positive way] where you might have the feeling that with a different character specialiced in different skills or more in the diplomatic direction could get a totally different result (which most of the time also was that way). Example would be talking with the Master or the Leutenant and Morpheus about the unity and such things. Or with the Enclave Scientist on the Oilrig to help you and your tribe.

Fallout 3 contains not (or only very limited) such situations cause [as well mentioned in a interview by Todd] they do not like it to leave people with a feeling that they choose a option that cut them out of the game or left them with a feeling that the outcome could have been different. Of course such a design will minimise the difference in the experience of the game with each character you play. A course similar to Oblivion were regardless if you play a mage, thief or warrior your experience inside the factions and with the quests will always be the same. Regardless how many times you play the game.

So what's a good turn-based implementation ? AI doesn't affect how they've implemented turn-based combat, it affects the difficulty of that combat, sure.

NOT ENOUGH CRYING

CivII and Alpha Centauri. Even FO-Tactics was better.
AI doesn't affect the quality of combat? You seem to have low standards if you believe that.

Hm no, the implementation of a turn based system is pretty simple, it's just UGO-IGO. And that's all there is to it. You mentioned the implementation of the system, not the quality of it. Quality of it, then difficulty of the AI (Civ 2 as an example doesn't really help you - it's a classic Cheat AI), combat options, etc, affect that. I figured that while FO and FO2 didn't exactly have a great variety of combat options - cover, stances - the focus of the game wasn't on removing people's heads, so to speak, and it involves a good bit of abstraction.

Same could be said about FO3. Combat is a sideline in RPGs, TB or RT.

Though Fallout 3 is a action RPG and puts a lot emphasis on combat. Which is even indirectly acknowledged by the Fallout 3 devs.