Power armour is a wearable VEHICLE which is why you had to be taught to use it by BOS NCOs. I always thought that power armour should be better than the tinfoil versions in FO3 and NV. I mean, going up against super mutants who just have hunting rifles should have been the same as hunters shooting at a M1A1 tank... that is to say, the tank should just shrug off the damage but in FO3/NV the armour got shredded.

I read a lot of books that have power armour in them and they all point out that the suits are basically walking tanks. Their weakness is always power, power, power. and occasionally joint shots. The classic powered armour suit was Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers (not the crappy film that did away with the main feature of the book). Those suits could walk through a nuclear blast. Another of my favourite author's (John Ringo) has power armour users taking a knee, putting their fists to the ground and firing rock jacks to stop them blowing away in the nuke blast.

OK it's not Fallout but it just shows what an Armoured Combat Suit should be like. It's a tank that you wear, not just an extra suit of clothes. Something that could look into the face of a nuclear explosion and go "Cool, I won't have to clean the blood off my suit now!" ...

Oh and the AID in the quote above refers to an Artificial Intelligence Device... basically a personality that helps the suit user... a bit like the prototype Medic Power Armour assistant.

Character skill being more important than player skill is generally considered to be a basic RPG concept. Yeah, this isn't generally well-represented in "action" RPGs (especially not actual ARPGs like Diablo/etc), but Bethesda has had some aspect of this in their other games - from Morrowind's dice roll systems ("hey, I saw my sword hit that guy, why didn't it count as a hit?"), to later TES games giving you better weapon damage or special attacks based on skill level, to Fallout 3's character skills effecting gun steadiness & bullet spread/accuracy.

Of course, if we truly don't have numeric skills in Fallout 4, there's obviously going to have to be something else going on. Guess we'll see.

edit: obviously, there's always some sort of "player skill" involved, otherwise the game would be playing itself . But in, say, turn-based games it's filtered through the characters. The "skill" is in picking good stats & selections of skills/gear, and then in giving the characters orders ("stand here. attack that guy. use Defensive posture."), but the results are based on the numbers & statistics of the character/enemy. Not on how fast you twitch your mouse. Not that this one thing by itself is what defines "RPG", but it is a common feature. Different games fall at different points on the scale between 0% player skill and 100%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connotation is not definition.

The OP is expressing a connotative meaning of RPG. He states that in Fallout 4 "there are no classic role-playing elements to speak of," and it is telling that two of the elements he neglects to mention -- role-play and game -- are the only two elements relevant to the literal meaning of RPG.

Prior to FO4, I think the best PA suits I've seen in a game [behavior-wise] were the PA suits in Chronicles of Riddike; though of course, they were a bit heftier than the Fallout power armors.

(I'd link to a video of it, but there is too much language in those clips.)

I kind of liked the suits in Section 8. I'm probably in a minority here though. The way you jumped into the battlefield from high up was really awesome.

1. As opposed to the boring uninteresting numerical system? I leveled up, 5 points in guns, YIPPIE.

2. No random crit UNLESS you get certain perks, increases challenge and replayability.

3. Yeah? Games nowadays are about PLAYERmode...NOT GODmode... thank the game gods.

4. Again thank the game gods... no sleeping/eating/sitting/falling down in power armor thanks, it ruins that immmersiasion factor.

5. Doesn't really bother me as long as the context of what will be said is explained before-hand. Might not be 4 options only, time will tell.

6. Modders will have to adept, many things are different in F4... for the better.

7. Yeah its called essential mode, always been there.

8. Not confirmed, the game mechanics are present AND power armor has to be maintained.

9. Mods... moving on...

10. GTAV and Minecraft are 2 of the most popular and most succesful games ever made... so... yeah.

This is a good thing, until applied to a game that was never about player mode. When you take away all of the core aspects of a game, calling the result by the same name is deceptive and disingenuous.

Fallout games only permitted the player access to what the PC was personally capable of accessing; to control only what the PC was personally able to control.

If they were not able to manage a thing, then the player was not entitled to have access to it.

*That's a sad deviation of premise in the recent games.

>Because Megaman is no longer Megaman if its not a 2d side scroller, and split into 8 stages + a final boss.

>Except for the fact neither Megaman Legends, Battle Network, Starforce, or ZX do this and still remain Megaman games.

This argument is fallacious because it is ignores that series adapt and change over time, even to the point of throwing out "core" things about the originals, and yet still remain perfectly valid parts of said series. This is, and has been, true of not only games, but of all other media including TV, movie series, and books, since forever.

You can keep posting this argument from now until Ragnarok, but it won't make it any less false, nor have you ever actually disproven anyone who has countered it.

Not at all. (Why postulate that?)

I have never seen it countered.

Because of your claim of

Ad the fact that being a 2d side scroller, split apart into 6-8 stages, with a final boss level, were core aspects of the megaman series for a LONG period of time until the games mentioned came along, and threw out basically everything that defined the originals besides the fact you play as a blue robot with a gun for an arm.

So you don't agree with it?

[You don't agree that if one takes away all of the core aspects of a game, and calls the result by the same name that it is deceptive and disingenuous.]

** Myself, I would say that FO3 is a farcry from Fallout.

In the way you are using it in relation to games? No.

Because you grossly try to simply games like Fallout into something like chess, and then claim changing the gameplay of chess, which exists as nothing but gameplay, is aching to changing the gameplay of Fallout, which exists as a multimedia franchise across various platforms, developers, and gameplay types, and has a complex narrative and lore to back up the gameplay.

Newer Mario, Megaman, Metal Gear, Final fantasy, and Fallout all remain games in their series, despite having wildly different gameplay, because of themes, symbols, and lore. Gameplay is secondary, and basically meaningless, in defining them as a series.

oh ffs

Forget about the old games for a moment. How does Fallout 4 compare to other action RPGs, which are incidentally the kind of games Bethesda's been making since Arena? All of the things mentioned in the OP do not preclude the game from qualifying as an RPG. And I don't want to argue about what RPG means.

You've got to want to enjoy something to enjoy it at all in the first place.

Of course I do. I see games as their core elements; I see all TES games as the same game.
(I look at the meat & bones, not the fashion draqed on them.)

I disagree.

*Almost every one of my favorite games (including Fallout and Witcher) I had great misgivings about. I went from Baldur's gate to Fallout.

Games I'd given up on for lack of interest (like Diablo, Homeworld, Myth, and Disciples), all took second and third attempts; not because I wanted to enjoy what I saw, but because I was looking for anything else I might be able to enjoy.
... But what happened in all of them, is that I started to understand, and then looked back on the each with a changed perspective; and came to appreciate what I'd written off at first. In many cases this was unexpected for me. I had no idea that once it all clicked, that I'd play Disciples 2 for an 18 hour stint.

I remember the Daggerfall fans saying the same thing about Morrowind. And the same was said about Oblivion. And fallout 3. And Skyrim.

Today's New Guard will be tomorrow's Old Guard.

Drama. Drama never changes.

Meat and bones only applies to how good the game is, not if it qualifies as a game in that series or not. Which is why no game dev holds that opinion, and why every long last game series has eventually changed its gameplay in radical ways, even while still under the lead of the original devs, and still remained true to the series regardless.

The idea that Fallout can only be Fallout if its plays like Fallout 1 is the equivalent of saying "there is literally no other way to experience this universe", which is objectively wrong, and has been stated as such by even the original game devs, and has been proven such by all the countless media spinoffs of all other forms of media from comic books, to movies, to video games. Batman is still Batman if viewed in comic books, TV, movies, or video games, and Fallout is still Fallout regardless of the genre of video game it is presented in, so long as it retains the same themes and lore of its universe.

Whats more, is that things like lore ARE a core element to any series that has them. Which is why you more often then not hear people talking about a series lore between games, rather then its gameplay. D&D is defined by its universe, which is why all the D&D games, many of which have played VASTLY different to each other, and even the D&D boardgame, are still D&D products.

Your argument literally flies in the face of how media series have worked since before either of us were born. To imply that is how things are, or ever were, now that is quite deceptive and disingenuous.

And TES's core elements have changed vastly itself, and still remained TES regardless, because of the shared universe of the games.

The aesthetic approach is one that complements the core mechanics - and vice versa. Besides that, the meat & bones of Fallout are still there in Fo3 onwards. The core elements that drive those games have changed from character driven into player driven. Everything cycles around those concepts.

I understand though, you don't like the change of direction with Fo3/4 in comparison to Fo1/2 - which is fine. But, Fallout -doesn't- have to be a cRPG in order to be Fallout and that's why your assessment falls short.

That cycle will forever continue.

Pun intended?

At least the ever present Old Guard is always a vocal minority.

http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120526085506/masseffect/images/c/c2/Catalyst_kid.png

Understand that it is like crafting a new design ~for a hammer; and boasting of all of its improved functionality over the old design.

*The http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/Gizmojunk001/SetRatioSize600550-RW18-HighRes_zpsyok4ijyj.jpg is also painted red.


I think that you intentionally persist in purposely choosing to misunderstand for sake of argument; as you (without fail) select the the most insulting way to interpret an argument, and you make assumptive assertions to aid in picking them apart.

I do not agree with your interpretation of my arguments; and your examples don't demonstrate accurate parallel points ~to then be lambasted by you.

Not surprising.

However, it is simple fact that video games exist beyond just their gameplay. The majority of people, even the games devs themselves, treat games this way, as do the makers of all other kinds of media besides video games. Fallout literally cannot stop being Fallout simply because it stopped being a turn based, isometric, character skill, RPG.

Any game, from a RTS, to a racing game, to a team based multiplayer game set in Europe during the resource wars, with gameplay blended from Motocross Madness pacing, Battlefield: 1942 foot and vehicle combat, and slightly longer-than-CS duration rounds, aka the game J Sawyer wanted to make, would all still be a Fallout game, so long as they are set in the same universe as the other Fallout games, and follow the lore of Fallout.

Series are defined by their universes, and narratives, not gameplay. In fact, gameplay defines very little, as it should. If it was the defining element, most games of the same genre would all be part of the same series, due to having the same, if not very similar, gameplay. Especially due to the ever increasing numbers of games in the same genre.

Fallout is Fallout due to its quirky, 1950's retro-futuristic, atomic paranoia, post nuclear war, setting, not because of any specific gameplay element.

OP: totally agree with the general idea of your rant. I'm not going to go point by point but Bethesda is good at making big worlds that are slowly becoming ever more vapid.

The GOOD NEWS is that Kickstarter has enabled other companies to start making real games like Pillars of Eternity, Wasteland 2 etc. and while they can't match the bells and whistles of $$$$$$$$ that Bethesda throws at a game - they are slowly helping people realize that we don't NEED Bethesda - we can directly fund a game ourselves.

Fallout New Vegas showed a group of devs who "got" the Fallout world and RPGs regardless of its flaws. Fallout 3 was a fun game if you enjoy survival gameplay and exploration but offered little else (and how many times can you explore the same types of buildings and kill the exact same foes......)

You have every right to state your opinion - and many agree with it..... but, let's face it, most will buy FO4 (myself included) even if for some of us it's because we hope (know?) modders will "fix" the product and make it much much better.

As an aside, I would totally play a Fallout kart racer.