I seem to recall you can enter this mode with the console, but the engine crashes if you are not in an exterior zone. Combat is next to impossible (but you can enter VATS and possibly survive) due to the controls still being geared to your FPS or over the shoulder view. As I mentioned above, there was an RTS mod that used this mode exclusively for building bases and it tweaked the controls a bit.

Here's the mod: http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/7070/?

The images give you some idea of the view (it's not that bad). The mod basically makes FO3 a different game and I'm thinking some of the FO4 settlement features come from this mod.

Nice pictures but I'm glad beth went the 1st/3rd route as you lose so much with the isometric style.

Reminds me of the Ultima games!

Did Todd Howard say there was a top down mode available for PC only? I guess I've been reading too many speculation threads and some wires got crossed or something.

Like what?

It was neat (the few months) when he used to post here; he did those models and animations himself; but it was shortsighted parody IMO; as they all seemed designed from a perceptive of missing the point... unless that was part of the joke, but I don't think so. See, he's got another video that tries to do the same lambasting of turn based mechanics, but ~to look at it, he clearly never got the point of turn based mechanics, or that what he was chiding was not relevant, or really an issue.

No thank you. I have no problem with isometric view when I play F1 and 2 or Baldur's Gate I/II, or the newest Shadowrun game. But for immersion reasons I prefer F4 in first/third person view. I get more of a "I'm there" feeling. Fallout 1 will always be one of my absolute favorite games ever, the atmosphere in that game <3

But compared to the scary feeling I had with Daggerfall in the first dungeon, it can't beat that. I felt more like I was actually there, rather than looking at someone being there. However I still prefer third person view to first person, so in a way it's a little in between I love, I guess.

No isometric now that we're in a FPS/TPS environment and need to look through the scope or down iron sights. However, a far out zoom without mods would always be welcome by me. Honestly, I'm just glad Bethesda actually produces games with a clickable 1st/3rd person perspective.

I really wish someone would make a good AAA isometric Sci-Fi ARPG. I mean the Diablos, Titan Quests, Path of Exiles, Grim Dawns, etc. are all OK but haven't the fantasy themed ARPGs been done to death? Van Helsing was Steam Punk sort of but was still heavily fantasy themed.

Space Siege was a major cut back, let down and the best one I've seen was an Indy title called Shadow Grounds. Maybe Krater was in there too but that one is very strange but in a good way. There's some decent turn based Iso RPGs like Shadowrun and Wasteland but no ARPGs. A Fallout ARPG would be awesome and I'd also be all "Shut up and take my bottle caps!" as well.

It would kill the series. Lets be honest. Sales would be down considerably

For a roleplaying game in this day and age? Thanks, but no thanks...

But! ... If you make an xcom'esque turnbased tactical game based around e.g. rileys rangers or brotherhood of steel squads getting sent out in the wasteland? Sure...

Firstly, "shooters" isn't related to a camera. You can have FPS, TPS, top-down shooter, shmup, whatever. Secondly, please stop with the random capitalization.

Anyway!

I agree that first person camera definitely helps in "I am the character" approach. Too bad Bethesda is making steps away from that with cinematic dialogues and voiced protagonist. Although you can still assume the role of a character in isometric/top-down (especially if that's a one you make), it's just not as direct. But yeah, as I said earlier (I think I did), first person perspective is probably better for a game where you don't directly control any other actors. Unless you're looking for tactics, obviously.

Twitch-gaming is something else . It's abour reaction time and precision, neither of which is all that important in Fallout/TES games.

Are you serious or just living under a rock? Pillars of Eternity and expansions for one, localizing Skyforge, a MMO, some mobile card game, and an unamed crpg. I doubt they have room on their plate for another Fallout even if they wanted to, and I suspect they'd be especially hesitant since Bethesda didn't make good on some financial terms with NV. Which contributed to them almost going belly up, if it wasn't for their success with the Pillars of Eternity Kickstarter.

Don't forget Armored Warfare. But I'm pretty sure they still have the capability to start working on Fallout: Seattle/Portland/Phoenix/whatever. As for them being hesitant because of Bethesda's metacritic terms, they have stated multiple times that they would like to cooperate in the future despite of that.

It's one thing to put out a PR statement to not completely burn bridges and whole other thing to actually sit down to negotiate a new contract with a company that previously left you in a very serious bind. Also I thought Armored Warfare was the name of the MMO they were working on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbcCwfAstyQ

Seems to be no bad blood between them, atleast according to Saywer who wants to work on another Fallout game. Great interview, check it out.

"a PR statement" != "said multiple times"

"not burn bridges" != "would like to do it again"

And Armored Warfare isn't really an MMO, although people will call anything an MMO nowadays. Wasn't the unannounced MMO Skyforge?

Yeah, Urquhart also said something along those lines if I recall correctly.

I don't. I've never thought that the camera perspective mattered when it came to making the player feel like they're role playing a character - what's mattered for me in the past is the quality of the writing, something Bethesda generally fails to deliver on. The Baldur's Gate series made me feel like I was role playing a character in its world more than any TES ever has, and Fallout 1 and 2 more than Fallout 3.

Of course I seem to be in the minority there.

It appears they are being treated as proper names.

This seems to me to be far more in keeping with the series (in this one aspect) than it was last time.

If only it were so. , but combat in FO3 is reliant on fast point & shoot; with the VATS minigame as largely negligible, and a bit of a cheat if used extensively.

I'd say that it does, and I consider FPP quite detrimental for an RPG...

*For this very reason.

Note that the tools for making isometric 3D games are readily available for very little today (Unity). However, as many of the more recent ISO RPGs made with those Engines (Pillars of Eternity, Shadowrun Returns, etc.) show, they are kind of limited in scope (but AMAZING mods have been done with both games).

I've always felt that the old Traveler RPG or even some variation on the Buck Rodgers RPG series (does WoC still own that franchise?) would make great squad based, isometric games with relatively deep RPG elements.

Some of the BEST ISO games out there (tho not true RPGs) are the XCOM games (both old school and the new remake(s)).

It's not as if ISO games are not available, but you guys have to face the fact that you are NOT going to sell +20 million copies of this type o game (you'd be lucky to sell 1 million) so you are NEVER going to get a major studio to make one. ISO games are a nitch market that the larger (more casual) gamers are just NOT going to buy.

What bothered me most moving from isometric in FO1 & FO2 and going to FO3 was the missing turn based combat. There are plenty of FPS out there and they can be a lot of fun, but I always find it hard to swallow that the FPS can also be a deep RPG due to the dependency on my personal 'real life' abilities being added to the combat system and other systems. In FO1 & FO2 my character's still dictated nearly every action, be it shooting accuracy, lock-picking, hacking, etc. To me that's much closer to real role-playing, playing someone else, someone whose skills you may or may not have in real life, than the action RPG FPS. And, since FO is supposed to be a RPG (IMO) ... I'd really like to play it as a isometric if given the chance. To me FO3 is a FPS with some RPG elements, but I can't get into my character development nearly as much as I could in FO1 & FO2 since my real life skills come into play too often.

Granted FO3 and FONV were a lot of fun in their own right, but they are not the deepest RPG's by any stretch.

That's the shame of it. The gameplay of something like the Fallout series should never have been allowed to be of the kind that could sell that much.

(Because of the mainstream compromises that that entails as conditions of being salable to that many consumers.)

Hey bro!

Yeah, if given the chance, no doubt they would jump on the chance to do another FO game. I think Bethesda should enlist them long term, that way we keep a FO game coming every few years...with a slightly different west coast spin.

Sorry, can't share your sorrow and certainly don't have any delusions that MY opinion should dictate what is "allowed" in the game industry....that's a bit presumptuous, IMO.

When I think of first person RPGs that made me actually feel like I was role playing a character, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines and Fallout: New Vegas come to mind. Both had the right amount of good writing, and reactivity to make me feel like I was playing a role in their respective worlds, and that the world was responding to the role I was playing. I never once thought that either of these games made me feel like I was playing a role better than Baldur's Gate and the first two Fallouts did, though.

Camera perspective just isn't important to me at all when it comes to role playing.

This kind of comes across as "its popular now it svcks", Fallout new vegas has shown that fallout can can be distilled into a new format, and still retain much of what made it great.

At anyrate it has less to do with it being popular and more to do with what bethesda wants to make of it. I don't think they bought fallout for the gameplay, or even really the story. I think they bought the games because of the setting.