I think Gizmo's definition of a sequel is a bit more complex than yours, here. Look at LSL, you'll find what failed sequels are.

It was 200 years ago, people breed. You take the UK for example: in 1801 our population was just over 10 million now 200 years on it's over 60 million. That's 6x more people and we've had wars, famine's and disease in that time as well.

In the Fallout 3 world, it seems people had given up trying to survive. They didn't band together to fight the roaming beasts, they don't have any agriculture, nobody works, they don't have any water farms, no children, many live separately, no hunters and gathers (of live food) and no real defenses. If it wasn't for the enclave and the BoS, you'd expect everyone to be dead.

Touch?

It was (and IMO it did)

At the time I didn't know if the flak was fair or warranted, but it seemed to me that the flak was mostly the worry that they would have it be a sequel (because they could).

One wonders what might have happened if then, the first thing they had said was that they plan to create a brand new game in the style of their popular TES games, only set in the Fallout universe ~For the first time ever, players will now get the chance to explore the wastelands in first person and play as a Ghoul, Human, Mutant, or even a Prime Normal.

~Not pushing it as a sequel, and leaving the options open for future installments. Imagine...

Both kids and parents can change their names if they don't feel its right for them. Imagine an army brat with the first name Major.

**Also... It is different. A parent cannot [yet] tinker with the mind of their unborn; A developer can make whatever changes they wish with their baby.

Parents see their kids partly as their legacy and want the best for them ~they are not product. If Pfizer came out with a heart pill called Viagra 2 ~would that be a reasonable followup?
(They can call it whatever they want right?)

Hey naming it Fallout 3 is a good idea, sequels having been raking in the money. So by adding a number higher than 1 to the end of a game seems to make it sell well. Sure it MAYBE because it has a fan base, or people may think... "Hey, this game was so good they made a sequel... I'll buy it"

I was walking in Walmart about two years ago, when I chanced by a kid talking with his dad about a game he wanted, and they both seemed to be under the impression that sequels required the first games to play

I think that sequel naming gets folks in the door....gets people to take a look at the game. I'm not sure how many people automatically buy games because of this.

Whilst I was excited/skeptical upto the release of FO3. When it was released I let my excitement get the best of me, and made quite an uninformed purchase. Honestly I had no idea what to expect, I don't keep upto date on previews and content, as that ruins it for me. And to be honest, even if I popped my head in here and read some user feedback, I probably still would have bought it inspite of any negative comments. My curiosity would have got the better of me in the end. But FO3 was an experience, and now I know what to expect, so I'll be alot more careful at FO4s release, even though there will still be a twinge of excitement within me.

Yep, because the name belongs to them. The parents however can't change the kids name after the kid is over 18.

Oh, and better than an army brat son with the name Suzy.

You'd be surprised. Although not so much with RPGs, but definitely with sports games, FPS games and even RTS games (Blizzard drones, I'm looking at you..), people will often get _______ 5 because they liked one of the 4 games before it. Probably not an informed choice, but there you are.

Straw Man - that image, obviously, never occurs in-game. :banghead:


And aside from war-time rationing, the UK has enjoyed a steady, abundant food supply ... modern medicine practised in modern hospitals ... all the benefits, in other words, of a well-established, functioning civilisation.

All of which, in the post-apocalypstic future, people would lack.

'Course not . The image connotes the attitude and absurdity, through exaggeration that is supposed to be perceived as such.

These post apocalyptic hobos have access to micro-fusion power supplies and herds of two headed cows.

Using real world examples isn't the greatest contrast. Real-world global-nuclear devastation would have been far more detrimental compared to the seemingly 'forgiving' aftermath of Fallout's world. Plus numbers can't really come into it. 10mil - 60mil is a 6x increase, but 3x6 is still 18, the maths are trivial when the numbers (of survivors) can only be estimated, and I'd assume not very accurately.

Though Fallout 3's world still makes little sense (as has been argued on more than one occasion, and it would be better not to reiterate such points over) and provided it is Fallout's world, only stands to reason that D.C should be more populated, or at the very least further progressed. But it is what it is, and that can't be ignored, disagree as I might.

If it's the engine that is forcing this lack of population (weak NPC support), then I hope the engine is upgraded in the near future, so we can have believeable communities in future sequels.

I heavily doubt it's an engine issue. Oblivion's towns and cities felt far more populated. Sure, the Imperial City felt sparse for a thriving nation's capital. But for the kinds of settlements Fallout demands, I really think Oblivion's cities had the population necessary. I'm really lead to believe it was a conscious design choice rather than a limitation of the tools at their disposal.

Fallout 3 takes place 31(??) years after Fallout 2? Compare any settlement in Fallout 3 to NCR or New Reno (yeah yeah), or Vault City ~or 120 years back at the Hub. It certainly could be a conscious design decision, but if it was... then I can't fathom the logic.

*If it was though... It could/ perhaps should, have been explained in holo-tapes, or books. (Like if DC suffered a plague or was nearly destroyed in the same way that Supermutants destroyed the Necropolis).

**as a side note: I found it odd that they named an NPC the same as the tribal Elder in the first mission of FO Tactics

I've just read some posts during my stay on these forums (from people who I assume to be more familiar with Bethesda and their gamebryo engine) that the engine doesn't support large numbers of NPCs very well. I'm not endorsing that opinion, as I have no idea how valid it is or not. I made sure to put an 'if' in there, incase it wasn't so.

Even so, I'd like to see a few more larger settlements in future titles. Or at least, more settlements with a greater population than 5-ish (canterbury, big town (had a reason), republic of Dave) and alot more to do within those towns, so you get the impression you're contributing to it effectively (I'd be glad to see the back of never ending fedex quests, for example).

Being a Fallout fan is not easy, one could never really describe the pain of settling for spinoffs (whoever here pretends a spinoff would not get the same hate does not really understand us "old skool". Tactics and FOBOS were spinoffs and they were hated when released), add to that:cancellations, spiritual successors (I avoided Arcanum for years because it was not the same setting, stupid I know). But nothing ever compared to the day I read Bethesda outbid Troika for the rights to Fallout (putting a fork on Troika no less). Seriously that was Fallout hell, nobody outbid Bowie for "Major Tom" and forbid him from singing new stuff about him again, so the anology does not work (copyright laws are broken)

The only bright spot is that it could not get any worse than that day, so I avoided all news about the new Fallout, I just played the finished product and I was not surprised, it was as predicted: Oblivion with... well you know the cliche, thing is I kinda like Oblivion's sandboxed mode, but it is not a Fallout...

Things are so bad though, that the welcome news of Obsidian developing this game are enough to actually make me follow a fallout's development again. I no longer care about isometric, or turn based, or even multiple OS platforms (but I do hope they make it easy to mod turn based as a modder has done for FO3). That said two UI's would be wonderful (one for PC's and one for consoles). A glimmer of hope is better than none at least.

To be honest, Tactics wasn't bad. It never made the claim to be an RPG (even if it used the same RPG ruleset), and did what it set out to do. There are some questionable things they made in it, but I sometimes fire it up from time to time. I really love that one mission with the hummer driving through the streets of that one town.

I really should get around to finishing it to be honest, I always play a ways in, then do something else and forget about the game

I finished tactics a few times it has some fun battles. Thats what it was made for tactics combat. So it works pretty good in that area. There actually some stuff it does that I wouldn't mind being added to a "real" fallout game.

Gonna play it for the first time soon, seeing as how I bought it with the GOG bundle. Of course not before I replay 1 and 2 (already finished 1 yesterday but it was not that long to begin with).

Funny how beggars can't be choosers with Fallout nowadays. I still remember how outraged I was at how it was not a real Fallout, imagine what awaited me.

PS Also it has nothing to do with nostalgia, I played P:Torment 2 years ago and it actually succeeded in going beyond my highest expectations, so obviously games are simply not made like they were used to.

Half the game seems to try and be Fallout 1 again, and the other seems to want the time after Fallout 2 so they could allow the continuation of the Enclave and Brotherhood storylines. You can tell from the people that act like the war was a couple years back that this game wants to be a reboot of Fallout 1, but then can't for story reasons? It's one of my bigger issues with this title. I'm really hoping that this will be fixed in Fallout 4, considering they've introduced newbies to Fallout and they can fathom growth from their starting point now.


I'm sure there is a limitation, otherwise the Imperial City in Oblivion would be more densely populated. But it seems to me that I'm either mis-counting, or the difference is made up in Fallout 3's many nameless and homogeneous NPCs(one of the few problems ADDED since Oblivion). While Oblivion's cities weren't too heavily populous, it seems like Fallout 3's are even less so.

It's pretty easily seen, just try MMM and do increased increased, and see how it will chug even for higher end computers.

On the whole censorship subject, I think they should release an uncensored version in countries that allow it (european for example) and censored for US. Because I don't want to miss out on the great stuff just because the US law doesn't allow it (I don't even live there so why should I suffer from their laws -_- ) . But I feel for the people living there and in Australia (the whole drug subject...), I can see Europe going down that road soon due to politics. Mad world.

Ummmm ... the Fallout franchise has, historically, been more restricted by UK an EU laws, than by US laws.

What "great stuff", exactly, do you think is being excluded because of US law??

Seeing where this is going, the sixual themed things, and australian law has forbidden the real drug names... I don't think the EU laws are more restrictive, the US has a name for restricting media. The only country in the EU that had some weird restrictions is Germany (green blood for some games). But the rest of the EU is more relaxed about it then the US, which is the founder of restrictions.

Edit: and ofcourse the violence against kids. It's just a game...like it is more evil to kill a kid then a advlt or a dog...c'mon.

I'm currently using the excellent MMM mod, which does, in part, create spawns of many ghouls...can be a dozen or more, and that does slow my system down a bit. Just for reference, I'm using a 3Ghz dual core, 4GB ram, and a GX260, so there may be an issue with too many NPC on the screen. Even in Oblivion, there are seldom more than a few NPCs on screen at a time.

As far as the game world, I think it's actually better for the atmosphere that there are such few people around. It makes the place seem more dangerous and desperate, as in, why would anyone be stupid enough to stay in a place like this? It feels like humanity is hanging on a thread. It seems to me that the story of the game revolves around the inability to make anything better. Victories are few and often result in death. The PC can make a difference, one NPC at a time, but still ends up paying the price. The wasteland is a meat grinder, and nothing short of a heroic effort is going to save it. It's a much different feel than in Fallout 2, where there was some success towards creating a society, and there were people who thought it was possible. In FO3, most everyone has lost hope.