Fallout 3 is like getting hit in the head with a slice of lemon... wrapped around a solid gold brick.

So how do they - the boogeymen, I'm sure you mean - stop, heh, mistreating this crowd you're speaking for, exactly ?

I agree. Which is why I don't oft weigh in on these debates at all because I trust game developers to make their games the way they choose then enjoy it or use it for target practice. I am not of the belief something will change because I debated it on a forum. But then again...I saw changes in many games because of what was said on forums so I guess you never know.

The reason I came into this discussion was merely because so many were once again saying what "old skool" fans wanted and didn't want and what is and isn't important to them as if they can be a spokesman for all Fallout fans who played the first two when they came out. They can't and I came to say once again (I don't say it anywhere near as often as I think it) that they don't speak for "all Old Skool" fans.
That was my point, that was all I wanted to say so...that said, I'll be gone back into the rear observation seat.



Ah, doesn't matter. You just happened to pick something near and dear to my young years. And none of us from that era remember anything anyway.

I find that old school thing incvredibly annoying, and equate it to people appointing themselves as representing me when they don't want what I want. I got Fallout 1 the day it came out. I played Wasteland. I'm about as old school as it gets, yet I ahve to constantly separate myself from the self proclaimed guardians of the franchise.

Fact is, there are plenty of people like me who enjoyed the earlier Fallouts, arts and all, AND enjoy FO3, warts and all.

Ah, okay. I see what you mean now, Summer. Apparently though, this page is full of people who enjoy all three numbered games. =p

I couldn't agree more with above statement, that is exactly my feelings. I love all the Fallout games I have played(no spinoffs).

Those that loved the first two, and the third, are IMO quite like those that might visit a restaurant for its famous desert, and have no problems being served jello and marshmallows instead. <_<

*Jello and marsh mellows taste good, no argument, but you can get that anywhere; It's not what you waited so long at the door for, and the other customers shouldn't scoff at you for being disappointed.
(and the staff should have known better.)

I personally would prefer getting jello and marshmallows to getting a desert, considering the latter is rather dry and sandy. Not a delicious consistency. Good-sized portion, though.

To be frank, your anology was bad I fixed it as much as I could, the problem with the anology is that you're trying to use one industry to bring light to an aspect of another, and they don't at all work in the same way. The appeal of an album is not the same as the appeal of a game, both are two very different sensations, and are percieved and recieved in completely different ways.

You've also just pidgeon-holed alot of old fans again, by assuming we (in my case, me) bought FO3 so I could "be angry at how different it is from how the series used to be". I'm not going to explain the series of events of my life upto and during the point at which I heard about, bought, and played FO3, but I definitely wasn't out for blood, and was actually expecting an awesome comeback, I hadn't joined the Beth forums or discussed the game in any way with anyone during the month I spent playing that game on a very solid, very daily basis. I then joined the forums to vent my frustration, and try and gain some clarity on why FO3 was what it was. And here I am. Your opinion of 'people like me' is quite innacurate.


Who has actually proclaimed themselves guardians of the franchise, though? On this forum at least? That coining comes from the opposite side of the spectrum, who try and undermine voices like mine to being 'self-proclaiming' 'righteous' and 'nostalgic'

I think if we all had our way we wouldn't be thrown on a band-wagon on either side. But that's the way things go on a forum.

Why thank you for your fleeting generalisations. I suppose nothing is subjective, only your opinion is correct. I'll remember to ask your opinion on everything, oh so great guru.

There is more to that quote.

*And its figurative...

Also the entire blood ties quest can be done without killing anything, save maybe two or three mirelurks.. Also saving the kids from paradise falls can be completed without shedding blood, and those are both pretty big parts of the game...

I really shouldn't get involved But I wonder what you would've said IF the original devs would have made an FPS style game set in a P A world and called it Fallout, would you argue with them and tell them that it isn't a fallout game??

If it were billed as a spin-off, it would be accepted as such (and if it svcked, it would be labelled as untouchable, like POS). If it were billed as a sequel, then we're back to the Fallout 3 arguments. It doesn't necessarily matter who makes it.

As has been reiterated more times than I care to remember. It's not an issue of perspective. A superficial design choice is hardly whats got so many people riled up.

If they kept the ruleset true to gameplay, and the writing to the high standard of Fallouts past, I don't see how they could go wrong. Reading what was planned for Van Buren, FO3 would have been more than a worthy sequel had it not been for Iplay selling the franchise.

Ditto with Fred.

*Oddly enough, one of the original devs was asked their plans for Fallout 3, and here is what he said.


There is no great guarantee that original devs would make the "definitive Fallout 3" ~but the odds are higher I think.

And as has also been reiterated more times than I care to remember, mostly by yours truly, the ruleset appeals to a certain audience, namely the ones who enjoy PnP RPGs. That doesn't mean that particular audience has some divine right to define the concept of an RPG.

And exactly what is it that was so fantastic about the writing? I found the dialogue options to be silly and to be constantly forcing my character to feed the NPCs some stupid piece of conversation pie, as Croshaw put it, ironically enough in his review of Oblivion, that completely ruined the immersion for me. I'm not saying that Fallout 3 was any better in that respect, but it didn't exactly strike me as much worse either.

'tis actually quite funny, the way in which these exact same debates popped up when C&C3 was released. It was shunned by some people who felt that there was one, unt precisely van, way to make a C&C game, and anyone who deviated from that sacred path was a heretic.

When Bethesda got the job to make Fallout 3, they had a very simple choice; do they make a game along the same lines as the first two, or do they just use the setting and style of those games and let the rest follow their creative ambition?

Do they do it the old way, or do they do it the new way?

Old, new?

They chose the latter, and made a unique gaming experience.

I fail to see how that can ever be a bad thing.

As it the basis of the series. This argument goes back and forth. Beth could have created their own PA, Beth couldn't have created their own PA, Beth did buy a PA, Beth reinvented that PA. Fallout didn't need this treatment, to anyone that hadn't heard of the series prior, it wouldn't have mattered to them if this was Fallout or Nuclear Cream-Bun Death-Run, it would have been a PA title, that Beth's market would have clearly appreciated without one mention of Fallout.

Ironically, you've pretty much been the dynamo behind this debate today. Not that it's a bad thing, but your comment is quite odd, as if it's 'typical' that this happens, when you've been at the forefront of most of it in the last 48 hours. But you're the only one using words like "gospel" and "heretic" as a coining of us the "guardians" that you still seem to think we so are. Self-proclaimed? You're the one putting us in that light. [sarcasm]Oh my god, I like the originals more than FO3, hold the press, I am the messiah [/sarcasm].

Old, new. Black, white. And, or...Grey? A curious shade of orange...Best of both worlds, pro-choice.

[Intelligence]So you're saying you found the dialogue options to be silly?



When the quality, frankly, svcks, it's a bad thing. It a bad thing when they shun a lot of the original fans for new ones. Go for both crowd, hmm?

In fact, I've seen the sentiment that's been expressed from various individuals in the Fallout fanbase from the TES fanbase, in terms of quality. Oh, here's the best example. How about that Shadowrun game? Yeah, lets take an extremely rich roleplaying setting and turn it into a bloody counterstrike with magic game. BRILLIANT. Granted, Fallout 3 wasn't THAT bad, but it illustrates why many people were not happy with the direction of Fallout 3.

If all their other games were so "worthy" why did they go out of business? Any company that caters to a niche is not going to do well, and alot will go under, that is the way of business.. They could be the best games in the world, to a handful of super hardcoe gamers, but that that is catering to a niche and it is not good for business..

I don't fault Beth at all for where they took the franchise because they know how to sell games, and that is the only way for a company to stay afloat.. While I agree that FO3 needs improvement, it was a hell of a first round for them, and now they will be able to go forward and hopefully imporove the game, but they can't be faulted for taking the business end of things into account when making games....

I would just like to point out that despite being an avid PnP gamer myself (for about thirty years, now), I am not one of those who think that a game must be as direct an emulation of PnP gameplay as possible, to be a "proper" RPG.


Just because he's surprised, and doesn't understand ... does not mean he cannot or does not respect the opinions of others. Merely that those opinions surprise him, and that he does not understand those opinions.


** HUG!! ** I don't do that often, but ... you just described me to a T, except the "don't spend much time in debate" part.

(I'm a forum junky, I admit it; there's nothing I enjoy quite the way I like a nice, close debate between intelligent people who feel passionately about the topic, yet aren't close-minded fools. I know, it's rare to fulfill that desire, but ... I keep lookin', and I keep tryin', and so far around here, I've come pretty darned close, in several threads. Hence (in addition to being a Fallout fan) why I've stuck around.)


Pan-Galactic Rock-It Launcher ...? :rofl:


Seeing as I'm one of the rabid Shadowrun-PnP-[censored] who is most thoroughly incensed at the travesty that is the (Not-Really)-Shadowrun PC and Xbox game ... I'll weigh in on this one.

Unlike Fallout 3, the Shadowrun game in question didn't even pay the barest lip-service to the established setting. All it did, was slap the logo onto an otherwise unrelated head-to-head shooter.

They COULD have kept the existing canon, and even made it still a head to head shooter - something like a blend of TF2's classes, and CoD(4 & WaW)'s level-advancement scheme. Give the "shadowrunner" side certain objectives to achieve, and lots of ways for various classes to do interesting things to the map (especially using SR4's Wireless Matrix model). The "CorpSec" side plays defense, trying to prevent the Shadowrunners from achieving their objectives. Set up different maps - office buildings, industrial parks, rundown neighborhoods, wilderness areas, etc.

In other words, it could have - irrespective of actual mechanics of gameplay - been something that really was a Shadowrun game, if not the best Shadowrun game possible. (Which would be an MMO, and if I had $100M, I'd be trying to secure the rights and start developing it right now. Yes, I have some pretty good, solid ideas for just that sort of game. But that's another matter entirely.)

The Shadowrun game in question lacks all reference to the Sixth World. It lacks any mention of the signature Corporations and Nations that I am aware of. It lacks the atmosphere of shadowrun.

Flipside: Fallout. It references the Vault Experiment. It has Supermutants, the Enclave, the Brotherhood, and Ghouls - all the major players in the franchise. It has the same retro-50's-futuristic aesthetic, albeit slightly-differently incarnated (difference beween 2D faux-isometric and fully 3D rendering). It has radiation hazards, it has many of the same objects from previous incarnations (Psycho, Buffouts, Mentats, etc). It even has the right kind of music. The story is, at the outline level, pretty much a recap of FO1 and FO2, transplanted to the east coast and played out by new characters. It has a version of the old mechanics - SPECIAL, etc - albeit, a changed one.

In every way that counts, Fallout 3 is MUCH more "a Fallout game", than that detestable piece of excrement is "a Shadowrun game".

Fallout 3 truly tries to be a Fallout game. Whether it succeeds or fails, I seriously doubt anyone with a halfway-open mind could refute that it TRIES to be a Fallout game.

Shadowrun-the-execrable doesn't even PRETEND to try. And that's the key difference.

(The irony is, having tried the demo - if they had simply NOT attached the Shadowrun logo and name to it? I'd probably have thought it a decent-enough game.)


Gross mismanagement of funds, not because the games weren't selling well. If He Who Should Never Be Named hadn't torpedo'd his own ship, Van Buren would have BEEN Fallout 3. And we'd've likely seen a 4, and a 5, and maybe a 6, in the meantime.

Unfortunately, that is fairly true. Fallout and Fallout 2 did sell rather well, but the company fell for different reasons. By Gamers For Gamers only goes so far, and I don't think Fargo was a great businessman. I think that Van Buren would have kept Interplay from going bankrupt, but Caen thought it would be a good idea to go for POS, and it didn't pay off.


As I said before, I think that Bethesda is a great business, even if I think that as game designers their hearts are set in the wrong place. Besides, there is nothing to say that a TB isometric Fallout 3 would not have made a profit. Stands to reason that it wouldn't be as large as the current Fallout 3's, but I've made my opinion on that quite clear.

Absolutely true, except that most good CRPGs are (e.g., Torment and BG). But yeah, I agree there.


Super Mutants are nothing like in the first two games. They almost explain it by saying it's a different strain of FEV, but why is it called that then? It's these small inconsistencies that Fallout didn't have. The Brotherhood is nothing like in the originals, and the Ghouls are different (these guys are just burn victims). The Enclave is pathetic. I think that the prevalence of radiation was a decent idea, considering the lack of it in the first two games, it just doesn't work so well for a 200 years after scenario. Also Jet has no reason to be on the east coast. As for the rest, more or less.


I'm not refuting that claim. It clearly tries, and I feel it sometimes tries too hard (namely the prevalence of the Vault Boy EVERYWHERE).

The games weren't the undoing of Iplay, you should probably do a little more research before you slate the originals as being coffin fillers than coffer fillers. They appealed to a niche market, or rather, not to a mainstream one, but the development costs stacked against sales profits put them in the green (black, whatever). Bethesda may have sold 4.7million units of FO3, but they put alot into high-risk, high-yield ethic, such as hiring big name actors like Liam Neeson. Stack sales against development costs in instances like this and you see a different outcome. From a business standpoint, that's still not very clever.

I'm sure that you are right and they would have made a tidy profit, but ultimately they don't put out enough games to make small profits off of each one they invest a ton of time in eact game and therefore NEED to sell as many as possible.. I hope that in the future someome can come up with an engine that can cater to both playing styles so players can have the option of an iso turn based play and at the same time be able to have an fps run & gun and be able to switch back and forth.. I rather enjoy both styles and would love the option to switch during a playthrough.. I'm sure this can be developed I just hope someone does..