These debates are just getting broader and broader...
The black and white has become mashed into a shade of grey!


Here is a more linear argument;

The 50's setting/theme was gratuitously overstressed and downright saccharine.

So... is this a problem with the FO series in general or of FO3? If it's a specific problem with FO3, then we need to remember that the world at that time was more-or-less based off of the 50's "future style" and that the whole game world takes place in DC and surrounding suburbs. It'd be weird if there weren't 50's sci-fi memoribelia everywhere. FO and FO2 had large empty deserts between settlements; many of which (I presume) were built up post-war from junk, which would explain the semi-lack of 50's style.

FO3 I am referring to.

Everything was pretty tastefully done in FO1&2

Given that there was an alternate history (to actual history), I can understand the use of the 50's theme in the first place. But given that many years have passed since the 'great war' (over a hundred years? Considering the distance between FO1&2 is over 80 years...), it didn't make sense to me that you could walk around and still find the world in the state that it was. It felt as though only a few months had passed since the bombs dropped...

Edit: To the post above me, your just picking holes in 3 and ignoring the others, how is the chick in charge of NCR in two when she was at least 16 in 1 as you say it takes place 80 years later, so in a post apocalyptic world a women lives to be 97ish? Also 1 has an alien ship crah with an elvis poster and godzilla in it, and I know"They are obvious jokes/easter eggs" to me an easter egg are the cave men that do nothing in Halo 3 or the credit scenes in Warcraft 3 you unlock, not things that you can find/get/ and use (Alien Blaster and Stealth Boy) like in Fallout 1, and dont even try to defend the hokeness (Which I love ) in Fallout 2

Ahhh a refreshing and new thread with refreshing and new ideas.

I played Fallout 1 shortly before 2 came out, and been a fan since.

I wish there was away I can play Wasteland really.

I love them, however heres how I see this whole debate.

I compare them to the Warcraft RTS series.

Warcraft 1 and 2 were traditional dune style RTS's, in fact 2 was much like Fallout 2.

Actually slightly more advanced, it tuned up the graphics engine (Fallout 2 uses 1s) and expanded the complexity with little true inovation, hey air units and sea units!

Then came Warcraft 3, not only did it scrap the graphics engine it scrapped the Dune RTS model, favoring squad based mechanics and hero units.

Fallout 1 2 and 3 are the same.

Except of course old school Fallout fans are bitter, because Interplay was no Blizzard, and are nerd hurt because Betheseda came in.

I see Fallout 3 as a worthy sequel that gave the series a breath of fresh air, and though it is flawed its as flawed as the other titles of the series.

Fallout 3 did go WAYYY overboard with the 1950s stuff. Andale, Tranquility Lane, etc. Way to take a theme and ram it 10 feet into the ground.

Yes, it was pretty disappointing that there wasn't a Fonzie easter egg.

But of course, there is Butch.

Personally I don't have anything against different companies buying the rights and developing other series. I think its dumb to dislike a game just because of who made it. Games should be enjoyed/criticized based on their content..


And yes, I was picking holes in FO3, but they were huge holes. Actually just one hole. One hole so large that the entire game sits in it.
There were lots of glaring anachronisms in FO1&2, but as a whole I felt that there was a pretty good transition between the two games on the bigger scale. They "felt" like sequels. And I don't just mean because they are both developed by the same people.

FO3 offers zero transition... Nothing new or surprising (besides graphics).. Its like Bethesda got the rights to Fallout, and were like "Ok! Lets remake the entire fallout universe by summing up a few cool parts of the first two games!"
It wasn't a sequel IMO- When I played it, it didn't feel that way at all. I just felt like I was experiencing a watered down taste of all the things that made the first Fallout's cool, all smoothed over with some pretty graphics.

Is this a bad thing? Not entirely. I still enjoyed experiencing the FO universe in the first-person and killin' dudes with VATs for a few hours. Its just the difference between a good game and a great game.
If I could sum up the Fallout franchise in one word- that would be 'potential'
There was so much that could have been done with this universe- yet Bethesda chose to revisit old themes... The Enclave and supermutants are the big-baddies once again, you have the brotherhood of steel taking on a more major role to help things seem more black & white- and even a bunch of the locations felt as if they were recycled... Not to mention plot devices and the like.

(And it's alll wrapped up in that cheesy 50's coating)

Imagine if Bethesda had created an entirely original cast of creatures / places / things with SOME reference to the first two games... (As opposed to the opposite of this...) You get the idea.
Of all developers, I think they probably could have done it better than most others... Should they have chosen that [longer] path.

I am being very critical here- keep in mind I am being critical of the game in the context of the series. Fallout Old vs New... IMO This probably should have been made as a spin-off rather than slapping a '3' on the end (which is probably just done for commercial reasons anyway... Playstation 3, Xbox 360, etc. If they called it Fallout: SUBTITLE, then people probably would confuse it with the older games. Calling it FO3 ensures that it is received as a new product)

To say that Bethesda developed this game without caring about ratings or commercial viability is ridiculous. FO3 was marketed towards a massive, varying audience- and they had to make sacrifices to do this. With that said, its sad to say most of the buyers would have been long since finished with the game and would have moved onto other things. The majority of remaining players I would say are mostly the usual Bethesda fanbase (followers of TES, Nexus modding community etc)- very presumptuous to say, I know... But does anyone agree with this statement?

Apologies if my ideas are too crudely stated to make sense.




My 2nd character in FO3 was The Fonz.
Eeeyyyy

One of the biggest problems with Fallout 3, was that it almost entirely relied on your character to be a violent psychopath, and had no rewards at all for investing in science, speech etc.

The Original Fallout's & Bloodlines, gave you the option of solving quests through ways other than slaughtering everything you encounter. Also, by far the worst element of Fallout 3, aside from the extremely wooden acting, and the flat storyline, had to be the fact that no matter what course of action you took, you ended up getting the water purifier going, and you ended up helping the BOS. I think, had the creators of Fallout 3, truly wished to preserve the total freedom models of Fallout 1&2 then they should have allowed the player to sabotage Liberty Prime, take out Lyons and walk away from the purifier.

Also, I do agree that when games are made to cater to people who own the latest Nintendo or Sega or whatever...the quality of games generally drops, and instead of getting exciting adventures with great stories like the classic KGB Conspiracy, you get boring crap like Fallout 3.

I think the summing up of some elements of previous Fallouts was the point of Fallout 3. It was meant to introduce the current generation of gamers to the Fallout universe.

Fallout 4 could/should/would then be a game set in the Fallout universe with an entirely new story & ideas.

Do you consider the Final Fantasy 2-12 unworthy to Final Fantasy # title?

Because they all share similar elements, and hell the storylines run close together how many of The Empire has been destroyed in the FF series?, but have different ways of being RPG's look at the turn based systems to the RTS system to the gambit system of FF12.

Fallout 3 made the Enclave a believable bad guy, that you could sympathize compared to the worthless stereotype in F2, and as far as the Master enough sythesized audio playings can make anything cool, look at most new rap/pop music, I kid I kid.

And the rubbish about the many different ways you could resolve stuff in the others, you could sneak, speak, or shoot for a few of the final events. But in reality there were few evil courses of action and there wasnt a neutral path!

I don't really see how they're more believable or less stereotypical in FO3 than in FO2.



There were less clear cut "evil paths", "good paths" and "neutral paths", but more choices that were all shades of grey, with none of them being "right" or "wrong".

I'm not entirely sure, which part made the Enclave more believable? Colonel Autumn wearing a trench coat reminiscent of the East German Stasi...not exactly believable. The Enclave Officers dressed in uniforms that look like reject props from Captain Scarlet...not sure how that was believable either. The evil computer/President was just a silly Wizard of Oz style cliche, and generally the demeanor and actions of the members of the Enclave were both clownish and made them more of a boogey man than a shadow government. If anything, in Fallout 2, it was easier to sympathize with President Richardson, as he more accurately reflected the ideals of the day, then that of a computerized President who claims to be a Southerner and yet speaks with a strong British accent....

Or that Col. Autumn and Pres. Eden disagreed on how to fix the wasteland, with Eden being cold and logical and wanting to wipe out everyone like in 2 and Autumn wanting to actually help the people of the wasteland. When you get captured, to me it came across that the Enclave really did see themselves as the good guys as opposed Horrigan iceing people for no apparent reason, what the hell did that farmer know?

Or the Holotape in Broken Steel from the Brother to his sister telling her to look out for herself etc.

And you can compare the overseer in Vault 13 that kicks you out for a diablo ex machina vs the 101 Overseer who has good and evil motivations/actions.

And morally grey areas?

Tell me the quest that has them. At worst they put arbitrary karma values, the best case is when you help the one gang kill the other gang at the Den, you gain karma for helping one group of thugs take anothers job.

As opposed to the main quest of 3 where you can wipe out most mutated life and help rebuild a mutation free world or allow life in the wasteland to be its typical short brutal exsistance.

And if the story for the Pitt wasnt morally grey I dont know what was.

Fallout 3 had as much moral ambiguity as the original game (i.e., not much at all), but Fallout 2 was different. In some circumstances, there was a bad result for good actions (upgrading the reactor in Gecko), and in other places, the choices were not obviously good or bad (like the big quest in Redding). So, I'd say that this is more of a Fallout 2 vs. Fallout 1&3 comparison.

Well, until you got to Holobrook Hotel, anyway.



They have the exact same gameplay as Final Fantasy, the only difference is the planet they're set on. For the record, there's a lot of Final Fantasy fans upset about 11 and 14 being MMORPGs.



Considering that Colonel Autumn was likely a member of the Enclave during Fallout 2, no... that's not very believable at all. Also, Autumn killed a lot of people for no reason, he tries to kill you for no reason if you give him the correct Purifier code. He's just as sadistic and senseless as Frank Horrigan.

I agree with you about Fallout 3 not selling the 50's theme as well as the originals, I also found that to be true, but I don't believe a game is required to be as good as the originals in order to be a sequel and not a spin-off

That's just a case of Fallout 3 not being as good a game as Fallout 1 and 2, I would have loved it if Fallout 3 lived up to the originals, but then it would be my favorite game of all time, and exceeding the originals does not make a game a sequel or not

Also, the fact that it was more difficult to play through Fallout 3 investing in speech and science doesn't mean it's a spin-off, in Fallout it was difficult, you had to run away from at least a few battles to play through the game that way, it was just watered down design, that's allowed for a sequel

Fallout 1 and 2 have been my favorite games since I was a baby, Fallout 3 didn't live up to the originals at all, but I don't like this stuff about it not being a true sequel because it wasn't as enjoyable.

For example the whole NCR vs. Vault City storyline, with New Reno's involvement.



He was an Enclave deserter. And in FO2 you had Sgt. Granite that can help you kill Horrigan.



He kicks you out to protect the vault from outside influence.



How is the main quest in FO3 morally grey in any way? You either help people in the Capital Wasteland get water, or you kill them. Pretty much good vs. evil. If anyone was morally grey, it was the Master in FO1.



FO1 would have had much more moral ambiguity if not for the intervention of the marketing department that told the devs to change the original endings for Junktown, and for time constraints that didn't allow them to let you continue playing as one of the Master's super mutants.

No, Bloodlines devolved into simple kill-everything quest solutions in the first act (e.g., Slashterpiece and Bad Blood). The main quest was consistently inconsistent until the last third, where it became consistently bad.

Autumn was a bad dude, but he wasn't genocidal. The fact that you can't side with the Enclave is one of the bigger problems with FO3's endgame. Eden was the only irreconcilable antagonist. Autumn just wants the U.S. government to control the source of clean water. He could have been more of a Little Bill type character.

What game were you playing? Oblivion? Morrowind? It would have to be anything OTHER than Fallout 3, because that's not my expereince.

Using science to hack terminals gives you EXP, at the very least, opens up quest objectives you wouldn't otherwise get, allows you to re-program turrets, unlock doors, activate Security Protecterons. Speech can give EXP, and you can do neath things. Like walking into Paradise Falls with a good character with only a "donation" of 500 caps, rather than going into slavery or shooting the Doorman. You can talk down major badguys, make Col. Autum walk away at the end. You can get the Ghouls to (briefely) coexist with the people in Tenpenny with speech. You can convince Moira to stop working on the Wasteland Survival Guide. Heck! You can even convince people to give you more caps in a reward!

All of this without you pulling out your gun and wasting ammo.

Again, I don't know what you played, but it wasn't Fallout 3. And if it was, you missed out. Biiiig time. The only times I can imagine when you would be a "violent Psychopath" would be when dealing with Raiders, Super Mutants, the Enclave, and local creatures, since they tend to try and kill YOU!

Yes, experience, money, and a paltry amount of quests, some of which are ridiculously easy to do (Autumn comes to mind); wherein almost every quest in the originals can be solved in completely different ways, not just shortening them.

Am I the only who didn't get much use out of hacking turrets and activating protectrons? For me, turning on a usually meant a brief interval where the enemies weren't firing at me, following shortly after the sound of said turret exploding. Kind of the same thing with the Protectrons - they were okay were drawing fire every once in a while, but that was about it. And let's be honest - in Fallout 3 gaining XP was never going to be one of your problems.

I liked that the Repair skill got a much-needed upgrade in FO3, but at the same time there really isn't much "science" stuff to do with your Science skill. For one, a better name would have been "Hacking." And hey, Science has always been one of my Tag skills in the Fallout games, and I didn't regret doing the same for FO3. But I found it rarely opened any sort of alternate paths through an objective.

The fact is, that much of Fallout 3 really is a series of dungeon crawls. Very scenic dungeon crawls, and often with some interesting backstory to uncover along the way. And I'm not even saying that's a bad thing. But the thing with a dungeon crawl is that generally you're going to be killing lots of stuff.

I think there was plenty of use for the science skill for opening doors and discovering clues (possibly more than the previous games), but bots and turrets were too easy to beat in FO3. This is something that Deus Ex and System Shock 2 got right. Mechanical enemies should be practically immune to small arms fire.

I think you are really stretching the definition of what a dungeon crawler is. There is a decent amount of optional dungeon crawling that is available, but the quests themselves don't require much of that. It's really nothing like Diablo or older RPGs like Wizardry. I'd actually say that the quests are less combat obsessed than most contemporary RPGs, like the stuff from Bioware or Obsidian.

Yeah, I think Deus Ex and System Shock spoiled me for that bit. It's hard for me not to expect it work something like that, where it was a viable tactic. Especially when I think you can draw a number of gameplay comparisons between the System Shock and Fallout 3.

And yeah, I'm not saying there wasn't any shortage of computers to hack. I just think that if that's really all you're going to use the Science skill for, then you'd do just as well to call it "Hacking." Just call a spade a spade, really. Not that it would make any real difference. With Science, I'm thinking about not only being able to use computers, but like in the old Fallouts where it opened up whole dialogue paths to go down. Like in Fallout 1, where you go to Modoc and talk to the farmer, and if you have sufficient Science skills you can explain crop rotation to him. Stuff like that.

The thing with Bioware's recent games, and Obsidian's. (Mass Effect, KOTOR, Jade Empire, what we can safely assume Alpha Protocol will be) is that they were all pretty unapologetic about being action-oriented RPGs. Sure, there's some diplomatic options you can take in Mass Effect, but you're primarily going to be engaged in combat - even if you can spend a number of hours at the various quest hubs running around and talking to people.

I honestly don't see Fallout 3 as being so totally different. Most of the objectives still amount to "go here, get through a bunch of enemies, and either bring something back or find what you're supposed to." I'm not saying there aren't any notable exceptions (like how you don't have to slaughter the Family, or you can reach a peaceable settlement at Tenpenny Towers, etc...) But so did Mass Effect and Jade Empire. For every "diplomatic" quest, there's still the "Clear the Supermutants out of Project Purity," "Escape from Raven Rock," or "Go into this Vault and find something while fighting your way through enemies," quest to even it out. All three of which - if there's a non-violent path through any of those I sure I haven't found (and I try to RP my primary character as a thoughtful diplomat.) And all 3 of which (and those are just a few examples off the top of my head) are essentially dungeon crawls.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing. But again - let's call a spade a spade, here. Ostensibly it's possible to get through Fallout 3 without firing a single shot; but I don't think that means not enganging in combat. As far as I can tell, the only way to do that would be to spend a lot of time running away, using a lot of Stealth Boys, and at times letting your companions do all the work while you hide off in a corner.

And hey, Fallout's always been a combat-heavy game. The Wasteland is a dangerous place. I can't think of any RPG that doesn't pretty much come down to "go here and kill lots of stuff," with a couple instances where there's other options. But I don't see FO3 as any huge step forward in breaking away from that.

Planescape: Torment.

Modoc was introduce in Fallout 2, unless you found some super sercet level in Fallout 1 that allow you to travel way up north.