Also, you can never go back home again. For those of us who fell in love with Fallout 1, too much time has passed for anyone to be able to "capture the magic" again. Even if they put together every single person from the original development team, I have a feeling it still wouldn't feel the same. Times have changed, and even we ourselves have changed in the past ten years. I don't look at things the same way I used to a decade ago; and I'm probably looking for different things now. If that makes any sense.

For example, I'm a bit of a Browncoat - I used to be obsessed with the TV show Firefly. I was one of those people struggling to try and get it back on the air after Fox cancelled it. Nowadays I've sort of come to terms with it, though. They wouldn't be able to put together another season, even if they brought back all of the original cast. That show was one of those rare occasions where everything just came together in just the right way; and you simply can't recreate something like that on purpose. Another season would likely pale in comparison to the first one - you simply can't live up to yourself in situations like that. The moment's passed, and it's highly unlikely you'd be able to get back to the same set of circumstances. And that struggle would probably show in the end result - people would be trying too hard (or not hard enough) to recreate something that had once come together naturally.

Just look at all the times actors have tried to spin themselves off after their show has gone off the air. I actually became a bit of a fan of Friends, for example. I thought it was a pretty funny show, and Joey always cracked me up. But then when he tried to do his own show based just off of his character, it didn't work. The chemistry just wasn't there.

I have my gripes about Fallout 3 based on it's own merits (just as it's own game, there are things that I don't like about it so much.) But I feel it's also about as "Fallout" a game as anyone was ever going to make. It never really had a chance of bringing me back in time to nearly a decade ago, and making me feel the same things the first one did. That was simply never going to happen in the first place.

And the script was absolutely horrendous to begin with anyway.
But since you got in that direction...
Just a few days ago I watched an interview where John Cleese was talking about Fawlty Towers, and in some point he explained why it would be a bad idea to do another season, or a movie, after all these years. He said that when people like something, in time, they tend to idealize it, by focusing and remembering only the points that made them like it in the first place, while completely forgetting/ignoring any faults. Ultimately, if he was to make a new season after all these years, people would notice faults, criticize it heavily because of them and it would never achieve as much success and/or popularity as the originals - even if these faults were the same back then and even if the new stuff was overall 'better'... it's a lose/lose situation (<--my clich? for the day )



I admit that, even though I am a supporter of the "FO3 isn't a proper sequel" argument, I understand that it could have been a bad idea if it was.
It still bugs me though... In that interview Cleese didn't 'apologize' for making a 'bad' new Fawlty Towers, he explained why he would not do one.
Personal story time (without a moral!): A while ago an amateur photographer asked me to give him opinions on his work.
Sometimes his pictures would have elements that would leap forward destroying the composition or obscuring the subject or simply being annoying, ugly or irrelevant - such as electric wires, plants etc. At first when I commended on that, saying for example that one photo wasn't good because of an annoying wire on the background, he would protest by telling me that he can do nothing about it being there. My reply was pretty much always the same: I don't care if it was there or not, the picture is bad because of it, and that's that... it's now part of the picture and you can't ask me to just ignore it!

So what I'm saying is: if you can't go back home again and if you can't capture the magic etc. then you'd better not do it at all.
Then again FO3 has pretty much seen universal acclaim ... which obviously shows that they knew what they were doing... (still, popularity in such a fast-moving market is a treacherous thing.)
Nevertheless, whatever 'glory' the first games have achieved because of their old age isn't nullified simply because it's that old age that caused it. After all not all 10 year old games stand the test of time so well, do they?

Ignoring the obvious technical differences, Fallout 1&2 had better quest/level design and writing. FO3 had better exploration. I'd also say that FO3 had better combat, if only because I find simplified real-time combat to be less tedious in the long run compared to simplified TB combat. Also, FO3 was probably less simplified relative to dedicated shooters than FO 1&2 were relative to dedicated strategy games. Even in the 80s, I don't think I played any single-character strategy games.

Also, the first game was obviously much more original than the other two, so it gets a lot of points for that.

Now, are you people talking about Fallout 1 as the first game, or Wasteland?

Fallout 1 as in the first game that was called Fallout. Came just before Fallout 2

Yeah, I know when it came out, obviously. It just seems to me that the first game in the series was Wasteland circa 1988, that's all.

I expect most people here would be too young to have played Wasteland.
I missed it back then, and now it's too much of a bother to even figure out how to play...
heh... One thing that definitely improved since them is the directness and accessibility of the controls and overall interface.
(although admittedly lately Bethesda seem do their best to keep theirs indirect and inaccessible - at least on the pc)

On the subject of old Post-Apocalyptic games:

Bad Blood.

http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/dos-games/156-1.jpg

:lmao: I don't know that game, but "Are you mutant enough?" has to be one of the dumbest slogans ever... golden!

Ninjas have kidnapped the President! Are you a Bad enough Dude to save him!?

Yes, I was much too young but my Dad told me all about it.

Fallout was the first, but Wasteland must have been on their mind. You can see it throughout the game (not just Tycho being an ex ranger).
http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/example2.jpg
http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/example1.jpg

The Text box is a direct reference to the text box in Wasteland, and it prints out the same style descriptions, one liners, and play by plays of the fights, and even the overland map is similar. But Wasteland gave control over your characters. Fallout's combat was closer to SSI's goldbox engine with a 10 year update (and their own rules under the hood) ~at least as far as how it looked and behaved.

Fallout 3 Compared to Fallout 1 is not the same sort of update that FO1 was to Wasteland (though I think the studio's intentions seem the same in both cases ~with relatively similar results, IMO).

That's pretty much my thoughts on it - I tend to figure that if Brotherhood of Steel didn't dilute the "awesomeness" of Fallout 1 and 2, then nothing's really going to take that away from it. I have some gripes about Fallout 3, but they could have done a whole lot worse. It's at least not an obvious shovelware cash-in like it could have been. I get the feeling playing Fallout 3 that it was by and large put together with a lot of well, love, who had a great deal of respect for the series (and just didn't happen to agree with me on what direction the franchise should go in.)

As far as not even trying, however - you're never going to be able to make another Fallout game, that's like the old Fallouts; but that exceeds our every expectation. But that also doesn't mean that you can't something entirely different with it and end up something pretty decent anyway. That's kind of how I feel about the Star Wars franchise, really. I'm still not a huge fan of the prequel movies - they weren't what I was looking for from a Star Wars movie. But I fell in love with Knights of the Old Republic, because I couldn't hold it up to the same criteria I would another set of movies. (ie, trying to make 3 movies that were as loved as the first three was always going to be a mistake - but that doesn't mean there's not plenty of room to play around with the vibrant world that was set up by the franchise...)

For Fallout 3 - I actually think I'd have had more respect if they'd really showed some cahones and just completely threw out all resemblance to the original games beyond the basic setting. With that game, I think (to me) it's greatest downfall is that it ended up being somehow not quite exactly what they really - in their heart of hearts - wanted to make; and neither is it exactly what most of any of the "types" of fans were looking for either. I feel like they held back a bit in trying to offer even a minor amount of "fan service" to the original Fallout fans. Given that I was probably never going to accept most of their changes anyway - I actually think that my own preferences probably shouldn't even have been considered expect for where they happened to coincide with what they wanted to do anyway.

Oh, I used to love that game at the time it came out!

I think I'd have flipped for it had they shipped it just as designed, but set in the year 2160. Done that and there would be no comparisons.
It would have removed the need for http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Harold, any awkward ties to the previous series, and would have IMO made the game and the gameworld they created, a lot easier for them to make plausible; While at the same time stripping the need for canon accuracy after 2061, and removing odd things like the two styles of antique Mr. Handys' (by legitimizing both as a separate models), and explain why none of the FO3 weapons match those pre-existing in the series). Best of both I think.

Yeah, Fallout 3 would have worked a lot better, I think, had they not only moved the series to the East Coast but also made it a Prequel. I mean, it's a rough pill to swallow that the Capital Wasteland has been nigh-but-uninhabitable up till 50 years ago. And that's not even counting places like Little Lamplight.

Besides, if the Enclave had a Pre-War Installation to fall back to, why in the world would they bother fleeing to the Oil Rig in the first place? Seems like that'd be the place to run AFTER your initial base went boom.

Oh man, come on, this is computer game. Whole FO universe is fictional and you can't look at it as something real and static. Besides whole that creation holds only loosely together. If you start criticize details it will fell apart. I remember exactly the same type of criticism as FO2 was published ...not to mention FO Tactics. Whole that world was created along two games as they were developed, you should grant some free space to developers of FO3 too.


Most of the weapons match those in previous FOs. SMG, assault rifle, all plasma and laser weapons, miniguns, flamers, rocket launchers. They just doesn't look exactly the same as those in FO1-2, which doesn't bother me at all. And I like they removed all that stuff which could not have existed in FO universe in the first place like G11, FN Falls and so on.

The problem is that the world they created doesn't even have internal consistency (external consistency being in regards to the other 2 games). Their wasteland doesn't make sense in it's own context, nor does the plot, really. Most of those problems came IMO from their attempt of being at the same time a sequel, a prequel and a reboot. Had they made F3 taking place in say 20-50 years after the war, and not reusing old factions, a good deal of those problems would be solved.


They neither look nor play the same, so that qualifies as not matching in my book.... Energy weapons being of course the best example, as they were originally game-breaking weapons, while in F3 they're really just slightly if at all more powerful. The small guns\energy weapons dichotomy was supposed to be a trade-off system: have an easier time in the first half (by investing on SG skill) but being underpowered in the late game, or struggling in the beginning (by investing in EW) but breezing through the game after you get access to EW. F3 got rid of it, and I'm okay with that, but for some reason still kept SG and EW in different skill categories, which made it kind of pointless. :shrug:

fallout 1 and 2 are no where near 3... they are like thousand years old games with not much to do in ... fallout 3 is way better in graphics and everything why do you even compare lol

Some compare because they have never seen the previous games of the series.

Others compare because they see what's missing in the new game and greatly prefer the older ones, because those have what they want (and /or expect).

While I like Fallout 3 on its own merits.. I definitely fall into the latter group that prefers Fallout 1 & 2.

*Stuck on an Island for 8 months, with only one of the three, and I'd choose FO2 (even though I like FO1 better), but FO3 is not one I'd pick in that situation.

[The fact that I'd be playing Fallout on an Island retreat, tells you more about me than I'd like. ]

Is that one of those islands that are about 5 square meters large with nothing but a coconut tree on them and a bunch of sharks constantly circling it?
Because if so... I'd also like to have Fallout with me there.

Yep, that's the ones.
(and Fallout would run on a laptop with solar charger ).

I think it was the same in the earlier games as well. One would raise SG to around 100 as quickly as possible and then start on EW and hammer that through the rest of the game. One can "breeze through" all of these games, with the only difficult aspect, if any of it was difficult, was the first few levels.

This is turning out to be yet another FO3 sux thread. Haven't we had enough of this?

edited for typos

I kind of wish they had that textbox thing in Fallout 3. I mean, little of the stuff you find is ever really properly explained, it would be nice to have descriptions of items and such as a "Piip-boy anolyser" or something.

I agree,even as a newbie to the series, it would seem to have made much more sense to set it earlier, with the "just after the war" feel of Fallout 3, the way everybody seems to know about stuff that happened 150 years before they were born. Hell, logically, there shouldn't evem be a capital wasteland after 200 years, just green fields with a bit of rubble. I suppose that's down to the artistic license though. I think the problem is, Bethesda wanted to make a city wasteland like in I Am Legend, rather than the bartertown style new civilisation from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, like Fallout 2.

I think though, they were afraid of upsetting the fans if they did a prequel, a la Star Trek Enterprise.

I played Fallout 1 and 2 as far back as I can remember. I was very supportive of Fallout 3 and continue to be be, I also thought it was a worthy sequel. With that said, the first two were superior games.

Fallout 3 had better graphics and I can't stand TB, but Fallout 1 and 2 were much deeper, much more clever, and way more atmospheric.

I thought Fallout 3 could have been a lot better, maybe in the future Bethesda will make a sequel that lives up to the first two games.

Yes, you *could* raise both SG and EW, but that would mean tagging two ranged weapon skills and spending a considerable amount of skill points at them. That would be a hefty (and IMO unjustified) opportunity cost. After all, both F1 and F2 (though mostly F1, admittedly) had plenty of equally fulfilling non-combat approaches, which would be relegated by tagging and investing on those two skills at the same gameplay.

At any rate, I actually didn't like that differentiation system (SG vs EW) very much, I'd much prefer categories based on how they are used and wielded as opposed to the ammunition they use. My point was exactly that F3 didn't change it *enough*.