Had an idea. If this is stupid, tell me:
If Bethesda has the time and resources, maybe cater to both the Fallout 3 fans and the old Fallout fans by putting in both combat modes. You know, if you want turnbased, you can get turnbased, but if you prefer the VATS style combat, then you can do that. Obviously you can't change in battle (for the reason that switching to turnbased from VATS may save your [censored], and vice versa), but I think, if both modes are tweaked, the world map is a mixture of both 1-2 and 3's systems and the graphics and such are as good as Fallout 3, everyone will (well, hopefully) be happy.

It's not a matter of money so much as time. You can't just hurriedly add turnbased gameplay with real time, you have to properly balance AI, level design, item availability... In short almost make a parallel game, otherwise on or the other is going to be shoddy and useless. And ultimately it's not really worth the effort just to please what's really a minority of the customer base. Personally, I'm a old fan myself, and would rather have had Van Buren than F3. But real time vs TB is really a totally minor gripe for me, I'd much rather see more respect for the canon, proper dialogues and a meaningful SPECIAL.

I agree, im gonna be pulling my hair out until then but when it comes to the moment i sit down and play iit for a week i dont wanna say "hay is fallout 3 in the xbox by accident?"

I really want to see some new features that arent just tacked on and useless

I played on very hard on fallout3 and i gotta say, its not very hard. I'd have a huge supply of stimpacks at almost all times and enought 10mm ammo to kill a behemoth

I like the idea of a bigger game world and zone maps and "the world map"

and can we please have more customization?

and also, I was just playing fallout 3 and i realized something, seems like once you can wear power armor, theres really no reason not to no matter what your character does, sneak, energy weapons, whatever, I think they need to implement some kind of penalty and bonus system for what armor your wearing in fallout4

I don't know about that. I have regular clothes that boost my Personality and Charisma for use in settlements and towns. However sometimes I wander out without changing. Anyway, I was sneaking around and came across some enemies and they did not detect me, at all. I actually bumped into a Super Mutant while sneaking and he did not see me. I always get detected when I am wearing one of the flavors of Power Armor that I have when I get too close.

However I do agree that there does need to be more of a trade off on armors. Maybe not have negatives that completely offset the better protection, but perhaps one set of armor has one weakness, like not being able to sneak as it sparkles and flashes, like the Tesla but it gives you better sniping, and one that reduces Aglity, but increases strength. That kind of thing. This could be done for each class of armor for the various types in each class.

There are some differences now in the various armors and the effect they add or remove, but there is not enough of a difference.

well your agility goes down.. you move slower when you have power armor on.

i like the ranger armor more cause if the skills it adds without any detractors..

also power armor weighs a heck of a lot... why not save some inventory room?
i got plenty of caps qand whatnot, but its ncie to be albe to pick up heavier items for repair and not have to worry aobut those extra pounds from armor

ya the way the did it was one of the stealth factors was weight of worn apparel, but once i was at 100 sneak and had silent running it didnt make much of a difference

fallout 3: best game ever

I wish the DLC's had a greater effect on the game, rather than just being isolated to certain areas.

dude i agree 100% im all for DLC but they couldve of done something alot better

The inanity of FO3's writing & voice acting surprises me when there are open-world games like the Gothic trilogy & more recently Risen, that are fully voiced with solid voice-acting without suffering from any silly 80-character limit, yet made on a far smaller budget than either Oblivion or Fallout 3. Another recent example is Divinity 2: Ego Draconis, a game that even uses the Gamebryo engine too.

All aforementioned games also have a coherent gameworld & quests that can be solved in multiple ways, which Fallout 3 lacks, plus plenty of exploration to boot.

Imo Bethesda can keep the exact same engine, graphics & combat system in FO4 if they just try to improve on the writing & game setting a bit more.

Just an observation. I've been playing Gothic 3 recently - and it's the only one of those I have played - the superiority of its writing over FO3s is perfectly obvious, yet it seems to me that its dialogs are extremely restricted in terms of choices... well... the only choices that you most usually get in dialog are whether you want to say something or not and in what order... nothing more sophisticated.
I don't know if quantity and variety are somehow auto exclusive (ie whether having more choices means having 'fewer words')
And I definitely don't mind either approach... I'd be perfectly happy with completely linear dialog as long as it was well-done - but I don't think that that would be the best approach for a Fallout game.

Still, in any case, the writing of FO3 is in desperate need of improvement, that's certain.

To me the karma and reputation systems need reworking. Writing and VOing needs to be improved (while few of the actors in FO3 can be called great, none were bad, but most were overused) and the combat system needs a few tweaks. Other then that, very little I'd change.

I've never played any of the Gothic games, however I do know that Gothic 3 is considered to be the entry which ruined the series and is quite loathed by the original games' players for the most part. Nonetheless, I do suppose this might all be subjective to the tastes of the individual player as much as anything else :shrug:

I don't find that the writing in Fallout 3 was any worse or any better than comparable to the original Fallout games, at least taken in general terms. I would certainly agree that Fallout 3 has limited to virtually non-existant variety of choice in the PC's dialogue tree, particularly when compared to the originals. However I do not find the writing in the game to be of any lower standards or poor in general; what I feel Fallout 3's writing needs is to be fleshed out and made deeper. One of my main issues with F3 was that gameplay was put at the forefront of the devs while story took a backseat and thus found many great ideas in F3 which were capable of getting the job done as far as telling the story but they lacked profound elaboration to make the player connect with it and the characters on a greater level.

To be clear I don't dislike the writing in Fallout 3 at all, in fact there were many stories told here that I thought were very interesting, however I do wish that they had been made more complex and deeper.

It is my hope that for Fallout 4 story is given more importance than an afterthought or just being the basis of the tasks needed to be completed in a quest. I would hope that Fallout 4 incorporates storytelling that goes beyond the goals of the protagonist, to make an actual living world filled with factions with their own agendas and their own stories that lie outside of the Main Quest. I would love to see some actual political intrigue manifested among the existing factions of the world, both internal strife and against each other, I would like to see characters also fleshed out more with deeper concerns than just whatever sidequest they can offer the player and I would definately like more elaborate characters within the main story on all sides of the action; allies, enemies and neutrals. Perhaps I expect too much :hehe:

But then again I have never found overt layers of complex storytelling in Bethesda games, even in Morrowind which I was led to believe was something out of this world on this department really was exactly like Oblivion and Fallout 3, so I suppose I shouldn't hold my breath for anything like this to grace Fallout 4. If I want characters and storylines which are multi-layered then I go to Bioware who emphasizes story and characters on a bigger scale.

I believe it was 'loathed' because of its notorious bugs and technical problems that made its official release almost unplayable, and not because of its gameplay, story etc.
All that is fixed by that impressive community patch, and people's reactions towards the game are considerably more positive.
The actual choices I think are a lot less and not as significant in that game as people made me think - sure you can choose sides and all, but the quests don't change too much - ie you need to do most orc quests whether you take their side or not. & the dialogs are, as I said, very linear. Yet the game somehow succeeds in creating the illusion that you do things your way and not following a predefined path.

And BTW...
Games like that as well as the Elder Scrolls seem to somehow "cheat" when it comes to choices.
For example, any Elder Scrolls game has so many quests that the player wont feel like missing out if he wont do all of them.
+ one can do many quests and visit most places in any order, without being forced to follow some kind of continuity.
So ultimately, what passes as 'choice' in such a case, is the fact that it allows you to do quest x before or after the unrelated quest z, or not do one of them, or both, at all.
When that happens in such an extend as in the Elder Scrolls, the illusion of an open-ended game is successful.
Yet it's not what I would ideally want.

I wound personally want a game where choices wont be limited to two 'paths' that will just result in a small alteration in reputation, or a few more bottle caps for instance.
I'd rather have choices with several paths where each one of them would result in as important a reward or consequence as any other, but considerably different at the same time.
+ I'd like to have a game where choices would be somehow 'interconnected' where each one would depend on previous ones and have a considerable impact on later ones
ie not being able to complete a quest by being a sociopath and the next one by being a saint.

It's not asking too much I think. Most RPGs do that already in character creation and development - if you choose a wizard character you can't just choose to become a master sword fighter later, but you can choose from a selection of powerful magic abilities a master swordfighter can never have access to.

One game that comes to mind that really features the kind of thing that I'm talking about, though in a completely different context - not an RPG, is Civilization (I've only played 1 & 2 so I'm talking about #2 here). That game is full of choices and consequences... in fact it pretty much is only choices and consequences. You can run your nation any way you want and the game will react accordingly - for example, if you focus in producing huge a army to take over the world you can't from one minute to the next just decide that you now want to be a peaceful diplomat instead, the other nations just wont trust you.

In FO3: if you've done good whenever you go and threedog keeps talking about how great a guy you are, if you then go and talk to mr. Burke for the first time, will he try to convince you to blow up Megaton? Does it make any sense that he does?
If he does so it's because otherwise you'd be punished for playing a good guy, which would be unfair.
But wouldn't it be nice if your saintly reputation would open up an alternative way of receiving and resolving that quest?
Like (a simplistic for example) if someone who was away of Twopenny's plans would trust you enough to tell you about them and ask you to stop him - something that he wouldn't do if you didn't have as good a reputation, in fear that you might be tempted to accept Burke's reward.

I don't see why a wizard wouldn't be able to learn some combat skills - as long as there is a trade-off namely that his overall magical abilities will suffer. This is how Drakensang handles it. In Elder Scrolls games, there is no such penalty and given time one can become proficient in everything.

We agree: There's a big difference between 'some combat skills' and 'master swordfighter' which is what I said - and what happens in ES.
I like the overall 'you can make a mage wearing heavy armor philosophy' of the ES, but if you do so, you shouldn't expect that your character would be as effective when not wearing heavy armor.

The TES system has an easy solution for it: after choosing major skills at character creation, make all other skills impossible to develop so that one is forced to "stick to one's trade"... like in other RPG systems....

And of course, such a drastic overhaul of the TES system should necessarily be accompanied by a higher focus on the storytelling/writing department...

hey.. so will F4 use Havoc or tech 5 engine?

sorry if its been sicussed, but im really curious about this

do you mean FO4? they haven't even release that they will be even making the game so who knows.

no, but todd has said that they bought the franchise with the idea of making more than one game.. since theyre handing off NV, it is safe to say he is referring to 4 (at the least).

True. And that's why this thread has been going on for so long. It's a pretty safe bet that there is going to be a Fallout 4. But nothing has yet been officially announced. If they've even started thinking about making plans for starting pre-production, it hasn't been mentioned by anyone yet. Todd's said they bought the franchise because they were interested in making a series of Fallout games, but he's also never exactly said (that I'm aware of) "Hey, we're going to be making Fallout 4."

So at this point pretty much everything is up in the air.

For all known info about Fallout 4, see:

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_4_FAQ

It's not set in today, it's a futuristic 60 years ago. The clothes are very up to date and very stylish...although slightly dirty.

Fallout is set in an alternate timeline that diverged from ours in the 1950s. In the 21st century, it looked like the future as imagined in the 1950s pulp science fiction. E.g. instead of transistors you have huge vacuum tube-based computers with artificial intelligence and monochromatic terminals, robotic servants, a pseudo-utopian society based on 1950s values, black and white TV, music from the 1950s considered all-time classics, and most modern musical genres never appearing, etc,. Weapon development was also different from ours and thus plasma and laser weaponry was introduced, 10mm became the most common ammo type, etc. The modern high-tech weapons were never created - instead, weapons based on how people in the 1950s thought 21st century weaponry would look like are used.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Divergence
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_world