Well, they *are* the xenophobic and angry bunch, insulting wastelanders and just walking around, trying to scavenge what tech they can find. Basically the original BoS, which wasn't even that extremely closed in F2, mind you, they even got their very own district of the NCR.
Anyway, I don't think that this split between a goody-two-shoes faction and the Outcasts is such a strange thing. They have traveled the whole width of the North American continent, somewhere in all the mess they must have seen, those steel-clad tech-loving hearts of some of them might very well have opened up to the general fate of humanity. Not such a strange thing, and it's nowhere against the lore, as even the base of the BoS in Lost Hills stopped supporting Elder Lyons after that decision. Since, as usual, he might bring home something useful, so they allowed him to call himself Elder still... Well, sly bastards at the Lost Hilld bunker. ^_^

When I say "ALL TRADITIONAL FANS", you can take offense.

That's not really shades of gray either. That's more plot twist..unforseen consequences. When I think of gray, i think of no one winning...on no good answers...of someone is going to get screwed no matter what decision I make. There isn't much of this in any of the Fallouts, or in any computer game, for that matter. You can't be a hero when everyone loses.

Try The Witcher.

Actually, it was shades of grey. And it's not as clear cut as OnlyToast presents it. An orderly but small town with harsh justice vs. a prosperous town run by a corrupt mobster. I wouldn't say the first one is entirely bad or that the second one is entirely good either, unlike the endings in the published game.

Sometimes I wonder if the mechanics you hate so much actually kept you from playing long enough to see some of the best content. Not saying your opinion is invalid(It certainly isn't, and I agree about some aspects as a long-term fan), but I do wonder if you're giving Fallout 3 a harder time than if you'd taken more time with the product.

I guess I misinterpreted that, then. (That and the "Fallout 2.5" digs must have served to give me the wrong impression. And really, the relative level of offense is fairly minimal when we're talking about something as trivial as a videogame...)

I'm just saying that I don't see why these little debates always have to become so polarized. It does nothing at all to elevate the level of discussion, and often has little import on the topic at hand.

Even my all-time favorite games have areas with plenty of room for improvement; issues I have with the decisions the developers made. I don't see Fallout 3 as any different in that regard. Just because someone starts a topic about areas of dissapointment doesn't it mean it's a categorical failure - I've seen few people actually argue that side. There is such a thing as reading too much into what is being said.

I can't remember who, but someone around here once said that possibly the most dissapointing thing about F3 was just how close they got to something that was a combination of the best that Bethesda had to offer with the best of the series overall.

Back to the topic:

I do feel that while there's plenty of room for expansion in the Fallout Universe, that it doesn't mean you would have to "break" existing canon to do so. Like I've said before, I'm not at all suprised that a lot of Fallout 3 was lifted wholesale from the originals - this time out the game is re-introducing the game to a new audience. The next iteration can take some new elements and run with it, but if everything was new, with all new factions, etc - then the argument could easily have been made that this game didn't need to be a Fallout game so much as just another post-apocalyptic game. Take out everything that makes the Fallout series unique, and you're going to lose what it made it a Fallout game in the first place.

If this were Interplay's third Fallout game, and a direct continuation of the existing series, then I would have expected more new elements. As F3 is essentially a series reboot, then my expectations were different. (Like how Batman Begins retreads Bruce Wayne's origin story, even though that was already covered in the first Batman movie.)

That said, I'm still a stickler for continuity. I'm not going to like a sequel as much as I could have if it contradicts what has gone before, even if in very minor ways. To their credit, I really didn't come across very much in Bethesda's go at the game that struck me as directly contradicting existing canon. Where it did so, I felt it was often for lack of proper explanation than faulty thinking. (ie, I could rationalize any number of reasons for Vault 87 and the FEV - but without proper in-game explanation it's only ever going to be a rationalization. There could be a very good explanation for such a thing, but it's now up to Bethesda to fill in the gaps - a responsibility they took upon themselves when they decided to make a new game.)

I don't know either! It's frustrating and selfish Then again you 'could' assume then when people say "I want" they mean "as well as all the other stuff I don't particularly care about, as long as I get my little bit"


I don't think they will. Call me a cynic, but I don't think this is something they care for at all. Black Isle, like a few companies still in circulation, were a team of passionate gamers that loved what they did, and everything else that came with it. The fans wanted answers, and Chris Avellone devoted much of his time to that end. The closest Bethesda would get to anything remotely similar is Pete Hines making some formal announcement that would leave no opportunity for feedback. And I even doubt that would happen either.

I do think some of that is unfair. Looking at Oblivion, they really could have copy-pasted it over, and made Oblivion with guns. I don't think they did, and the differences are fairly distinct, given the engine. I'm certain that they could have done far, far worse to the Fallout franchise to just "cash it in", and I'd say they did fairly well under the circumstances.

However, I must agree, their customer relations? Possibly the worst I've ever seen. I honestly feel like pulling out patches of hair at times from the lack of communication or community management.

That's fair, I retracted that last bit I suppose I get what some people are saying, about the 'rebooting' of the franchise. I just really, really, really hate the watered down ruleset. I know I comment on alot of things that bug me about FO3, but the ruleset is the one that annoys me to no end. It was a very dynamic ruleset, and there was no reason to strip it of its core values. It would have worked beautifully, even if it only needed a few tweeks for the FPS changeover, it would have worked beautifully. Which is why I'm still somewhat interested in an FO4, to see what Bethesda can do with the extra time, now they have the foundation.

I very much hope that New Vegas will at least rebalance the ruleset a bit.

I honestly cannot agree with you more when it comes to the ruleset. I love so much else about Fallout 3, but the balancing of SPECIAL alone almost ruins a lot of it for me. These are the defining aspects of your character, and they mean so little in terms of how you play.

Agreed, I think. Anything else I might criticise sort of pales in comparison. I'd likely be a bit more forgiving in this area if Fallout 3 wasn't ostensibly a sequel to a game whose ruleset I enjoyed, of course. I mean, I'm not overly impressed with Mass Effect's system, but I'm not going to subtract points because it works well enough for what it needs to do.

I really wouldn't have minded a more streamlined ruleset here if it also meant a more elegant system at the same time. I just don't see that this time around.

This may be so... but the mechanics are something that I can't get past. It is oddly similar to what so many others here post about when they see a game with graphics like Wasteland and say they can't be bothered to play a game that looks like that. ~The difference is, that Fallout's mechanics are not mere ornamentation as the graphics are in most games. Some buy games for the graphics, I buy games for the gameplay ~Fallout 3 doesn't have it*, but the rest of the series does ~even Tactics.

*Its not that what it has isn't good, or fun; Its that what it has is inappropriate to the packaging ; As if one had bought a bag of kidney beans and found almonds in it instead ~this isn't what I wanted, nor expected of the product.

I never liked Tactics, which I'm sure must seem somewhat backwards to you, but it just lacked something that the originals had. Fallout 3 falls short of the first two, certainly, but I generally think of it as a great game with value to it, and I think there may be greater value in sequels as Bethesda irons out what they want to do with Fallout 3. I think there's merit to a lot of what they've done here.

Is it just turn-based that bothers you? Or the ruleset? I modded the hell out of this game to weight SPECIAL more heavily, give less skillpoints per level, and make the enemies tougher and more plentiful. The mechanics were otherwise something I felt like I was wading through to get to the content I enjoyed.

Of course, if it's turn-based and isomteric that define Fallout for you, then I suppose there's not much that can be done, and I am sorry for that.

Tactics is not a sequel to the others, and not strictly an RPG either... but it does have the combat down pat ~if you disable RTC.

TBC is ? of the game. I can get RTC in almost any game on the market. The Fallout series was one of the last bastions of that kind of gaming experience... and despite their accomplishments with FO3, they removed that core component of play, and that effectively severed it from the series for me ~(its not the sole reason that did it, but it was enough on its own).

I can sympathize with that. I sort of ran into that problem with Bioshock, actually. I've heard it's a really spectacular game, and what I played of it was really quite compelling.

But I just couldn't get past the gameplay. Even with a more thoughtful bent to the tactics you used in the game, it still got way too frenzied for me to deal with. I'd been playing Mass Effect at the time, and that at least let you pause the action and get your bearings, to allow you to think your actions through a bit more (which is a reason I tend to prefer turn-based whenever possible.)

I tried real hard to be open-minded and not let my own preferences get in the way of enjoying a quality game, but I just couldn't get past the gameplay and never got very far into it.

I do run into that problem with F3 at times, as well. I don't mind so much the move to real-time (wasn't really suprised by that, actually - and since you only directly control your own PC, it actually sort of made sense to me on a game design level.) But the ruleset is something I have trouble with. I didn't even really notice it so much when I first started playing, but after a number of hours I started to figure out how things worked, and I was quite a bit let down by that.

Like I've said, I wouldn't have minded a simpler system if it was also a more elegant one that perhaps worked even better than the original ones. But a lot of choices they made in that area don't really make much sense to me. They might have their reasons, of course. But until I come across some info in an interview or something - it just seems very counter-intuitive to me. I'm not left with the impression that some of this stuff was really properly thought through - and a lot of the streamlining decisions don't seem to make for a better game, IMHO.

In my case, its series specific... I enjoy FPS, RTS, and Arcade, as well as puzzle games.
Thankfully (so far), reflex heavy game play is not a problem nor undesirable.

Fallout was just never intended as what they have made it into and this is not a good thing IMO, but the art and level editing is good, so if it can be modded into a good thing, I might have some fun trying .

I don't see how that works out, though. Would Fallout 3 be "better" if it were called "Fallout: DC Wasteland" rather than "Fallout 3"? If so, what's in a name? If you can enjoy that kind of play, then why exactly can't you enjoy Fallout 3?

...by the way, this isn't being snarky or contrary. I'm actually curious.

The name carries with it certain expectations. I'd have much lower expectations for a spin-off than for a sequel, not to mention a game totally unrelated to my favorite game of all time.

yeah and it then still hold the possibility of a "real FO 3" to be made that is "better" in regards to the lore and story continuity of the series. since spin-offs "don't count" for canon for the most part. But now FO3's is canon even though it's pretty messed up.

[quote name='I'm Glad I'm Not No Orc' post='14260222' date='May 4 2009, 03:35 PM']I don't see how that works out, though. Would Fallout 3 be "better" if it were called "Fallout: DC Wasteland" rather than "Fallout 3"? If so, what's in a name? If you can enjoy that kind of play, then why exactly can't you enjoy Fallout 3?

...by the way, this isn't being snarky or contrary. I'm actually curious.[/quote]



~What they said is mostly what I would have said :tops:, but...

I would also add the following awful parallel

In 1985 two guys each came up with ? a name over a coffee table and sketch pads ~based on that name, within a few years, they were millionaires. Years later they licensed the rights to their creation for everything from a few tv shows to several action series of figures, and four feature films. Over that time the image of their icons was horribly warped form its cool beginnings, to its laughable existence today; For some, this ways the intention ~to make them cute and distance them for their past incarnation to suit the new market. They had learned their lessons well, and were targeted not at the teens and twenty somethings that made the a hit, but at the two to ten crowd whose parents would spend a boat load of cash on cheap toys and distractions. One movie saw its sponsors sued by an irate soccer mom for exposing her child to HTH violence ~so the next film had that bit removed in exchange for slapstick stunts with chairs and banana peels. So in the end, the original fanbase that collected the comics and played the RPG (which was amazingly good ~but suffered puritanical censorship of the material in later printings), those fans were shamelessly alienated to the point on not mentioning the name in mixed company for it was a given that those that knew nothing of the beginning, would associate the speaker with the later incarnations of the... Well... can't you guess? Two guesses for anyone... its so easy its sad.

TMNT?

I had seen the original FO game way back while a friend had it, but didn't have the sheer number of hours needed to devote to playing it at the time. Yesterday, I picked up the FO collection at Best Buy, and started a character.

Within a couple of hours, I can already understand why the dedicated FO fans are saying what they do.

Bethesda is taking the same direction as it took when it went from making RPG games such as Daggerfall and Morrowind to making Oblivion, where RP was secondary to fast-action combat, and none of your choices had any REAL consequences. It became a mass-market "action-adventure" game, not a RPG.

The old FO series needed an overhaul: they'd never sell enough copies in today's market to justify developing a "new" iso-view 3rd person tile-based game. Gutting the SPECIAL system and making your character a "master of all" (without even trying) would be inexcusable to the original fanbase, though. They had it half-way right, but turned it into another Oblivion mistake, with the player's skills trumping the character's.

It's still a pretty good game, but certainly not a great "RPG".

:foodndrink:

*But it needn't be tile based (I'm guessing you meant "turn based though...").

Still 3rd person ISO (style) is viable and desirable for many reasons... (see the Witcher and NWN series.)
~As is TB combat. See the upcoming Disciples 3 TB/RPG/Strategy
A 2009/10 release DX9 class game (*just like Fallout 3 should have been In Many Opinions).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB60ZAhNeQU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWLadljR1_4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLye2jLIOOQ