Hello,i was a great fan of games like Baldur'sgate 1 and 2,fallout 1 and 2 and i really loved the 2d/isometric3d view.

I would like to know if bethesda is closed to the idea fo making,for example a fallout 4 with isometric 3d.Oh i guess that you would take risks doing so.But at the same time,i think you would be surprised to discover that many young players like 2d.I really was surprised to learn that even today,young teenagers discover and enjoy isometric 3D games and i think tha?t using your skills in a 3d isometric game you could do something great.

Black Isle studios was a very good company and they had a very particular skill to do 2d games.Contact and hire them,or ask them advices ,i am sure there is a future for such an idea.

I think that even "casual players" would be attracted by such a decision.

I personally think that it should be in Isometric 3D. This means there is less detail put into models and textures and it also means that we get a bigger and more falloutish world.

First of all, there is no Black Isle Studios anymore. That's the whole reason Bethesda made Fallout 3. They bought the rights to Fallout when Black Isle went out of business. Anyway, even though it would be a good game, I'd say there's almost no chance FO4 will be isometric. Bethesda would probably want to make FO4 in the same style as its predecessor, so fans of Fallout 3 would buy it. There is always Project V13[Fallout MMORPG], which, considering it's being made by Interplay, will probably be isometric. As for burying and forgetting the genre, I would say no. After all, I am a huge fan of Final Fantasy Tactics.

I wouldn't really care what style of view was implemented in future fallout releases as they all have their pros and cons, but aslong i got a good game it would be redundant to me, and most people i would expect.

I don't see beth adopting isometric games as the way they released Fallout 3 is typically the way all their games are and i don't see it changing in the foreseeable future.

This. ^

I highly doubt Bethesda is making any ISO games, specially after FO3's success. But they should, imo, make their next Fallout more closer to the first two games by other means.

True isometric 3D seems unlikely, but there are many games that use a similar camera view with a polygonal, 3D environment. This gives you the increased flexibility of polygons and the ability to rotate the camera while preserve the feel of the original. NWN, Diablo 2, and several other games have used this (or at least something similar).

I doubt very much that Bethesda has any plans to do this, but it's at least more likely

I highly doubt Bethesda will use an isometric view in Fallout 4, or any other incarnations of Fallout they might make, and certainly Bethesda isn't going to go back to 2D, something they probably see as outdated. If Bethesda DID decide they wanted to make a game closer to the feel of the original, the ideal perspective would probably be like what Hungry Donner described, technically not like isometric, but still offering a similar feeling while at the same time having a more flexible camera angle.

Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter much to me what perspective Bethesda uses, I enjoyed Fallout 3 for what it was, and if Bethesda can continue to make games I can say that about, I will be satisfied, but if Bethesda decides to try a different type of game from Fallout 3 but I still like the result, I'll be pleased too. That's what a game should be, really, something that players can enjoy, if trying something different from previous games in the series might help to make a game more enjoyable, I can live with that.

What i wonder is: What does 2D have to do with Isotmetric?

That's what anyone who wants isometric games today means, even if it's technically inaccurate (but is used even by the devs).

I very much hope InXile's Wasteland 2 will be isometric.

Not necessarily. Some of Fallout's models were 3d ~rendered as 2d.

Character sprites were (at a complete guess) about 70x35 pixels total. The entire game had 640x480 pixels to work with. A modern title would work a 800x600 minimum and usually between 1024x768 to 1680x1200 or higher. The detail could be vastly improved and would likely make use of gigantic source models reduced to suit.
(it would also more likely be full 3D from a high angle like Dawn of War 2 and Diablo3; but could be still be 2D if they wished).



Guffaw! *cough*...

Hardly, that's not it at all.

These days, it seems like it's much more efficient to make videogames in full 3D instead of rendering them down to 2D sprites (not much of an issue these days, but modern computers are set up to deal more efficiently with 3D than 2D.) Like others have said, I could see a game that's fully 3D with an overhead or free cam. I actually prefer that over isometric games, to be honest. Gives it a bit more versatility.

For example, I'm currently replaying through the XCom series, and I'd love to see a new XCom game that was 3D/Freecam as opposed to isometric.

As I said, that (full 3D with an overhead camera) is what people mean when they say that they want "isometric view" nowadays, even if it's not technically correct. That's how Diablo 3 will work, and even its developers describe it as isometric. That's how Van Buren was going to work too.

If it's 2D, it better not be full price. I can see it as like a 10$ XBLA release though.

Nobody wants it to be 2D. As I said, Van Buren was going to be 3D, but still used a (pseudo)isometric view. It's a misnomer, but it's widely used in the gaming industry.

Well the last 3 Beth games have been 1st/3rd person, so the likelyhood of a return to isometric 2d is exactly zero. Play Blizzard games if you still want 2d as Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 are still in that format.

'Full price' o_O

...O_o

What does that even mean? RRP is RRP. Also 2D isn't any 'less' than 3D (unless you're talking about dimensions, of course), it just describes a fixed perspective, which in this day and age becomes a design choice rather than a limitation. Not everything has to be 3D panoramic to be considered appealing and cutting edge.

"2D" isn't the perspective, (pseudo)isometric is. There are (pseudo)isometric games in 3D, and first person games in 2D.

I think it makes an impact on the perspective regardless. Whatever the perspective, isometric, sidescroll, whatever you like. Certain dimensions fit certain perspectives. I don't like the term pseudo when dealing with things like this, because all that says to me is something is trying to be needlessly modernised. Like a pseudo 3D sidescroller, take the 'New Super Mario Bros' for instance, a 2D sidescroller with 3D sprites that gives the game a coined 'pseudo 3D' look. Which looks worse in my opinion, than if they just made some very tasty 2D sprites to fit the scenery. Whilst certain dimensions have their limits, they can do better for the perspective of the game than when certain graphic designs are unnaturally tacked on to make a game look (arguably) more modernised.

Yeah, this topic is confusing.

3D isometric seems like kind of a misnomer, to me. Isometric originally referred to how they would give the illusion of a 3-dimensional space in those sprite-based RPGs and other games. (I'm playing XCom at the moment - it uses the same thing.) The camera is overhead, the method they used to depict height and depth was isometric (which just means that sprites are represented from a 3/4 quarter view instead of directly overhead.) I understand that nowadays people use isometric in regards to videogames as any camera angle that's used to simulate that same type of gameplay (Diablo 3, for example.) But it gets confusing if we're trying to decide whether we're talking about making a sprite-based 2-dimensional game (like Fallout 1) or a fully 3-d rendered game that just happens to have an overhead camera.

These days, it just seems simpler to do everything in full 3D as opposed to 2D sprites, especially for a game like Fallout, XCom, Diablo, etc. Fallout and Diablo, for example, used sprites that were built with renders of 3D models and then translated into a sprite format. At the time, it actually was a technical limitation - I would imagine that if computers at the time could have handled a fully 3D world with the level of detail they wanted in the game, that they would have gone that route instead of taking the extra step of rendering all the models into 2D sprites. If they could have made Fallout 1 look as detailed as it did with all 3D models, they likely would have done it that way (computers at the time would have had a lot of trouble managing all that, though.)

These days, unless you're going specifically for a hand-drawn aesthetic, I don't see much point in making a 2D game as opposed to 3D. Isometric worked very well for a sprite-based game like Fallout 1.

But if we're going to have a fully 3D game world, I think the "isometric" camera angle is a bit limiting. I'd just as soon have that overhead angle as a base, but with more of a free cam so that I can view the action from any angle I want. I think the type of camera used also ties a great deal into the type of game you're going to be making. I'm not such a fan of RTS-style games these days. For myself, if I'm going to have heated real-time action I'd just as soon do it in third-person with a camera fixed behind my character (a la Fallout 3.) It cuts down, for me, on the number of variables I have to worry about.

For a turn-based game, however, I'd just as soon have a free cam with an interface more like Fallout 1. Diablo is sort of one of those exceptions to my own preferences - having too much control over the camera is something I'm not going to be needing in that game - an "isometric" angle works very well for that sort of gameplay. But again, if we were going to have a Fallout more in-line with the type of interface of Fallout 1, then I'd rather have a freely customizable camera to choose my own angles rather than one that's fixed at one angle. (And I haven't been following Diablo 3's development too closely, but they might have something similar as well.)

I use "pseudo" because it's not actual http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isometric_projection at all, but people came to erroneously use it in general for top-down pespective in games, whether they're 3D or 2D.

And pseudo-isometric games in 3D do make sense, since they allow you to zoom and rotate the camera.



Of course, if you see people that want isometric games these days, they do refer to 3D games with a top-down view, but with a zoomable and rotatable camera. It's just a misnomer that came to be used even by developers. It does not usually mean that the person wants modern games to be in 2D. It's about the default point of view and the gameplay style that results from it, not about actual isometric projection.

I'm not sure. I would never refer to a game like DoW as isometric. I'd call it 3D panoramic. But terminology aside, things are what they are regardless of coining. I don't think a fixed perspective akin to the original Fallouts is 'outdated', with a modern engine it could be replicated with fantastic results, and is something I wouldn't turn my nose up at. Doom is probably the oldest FPS that people are still very much familiar with, FPS isn't anything new, along with FPP. But it's still very capable of surviving in the modern day because it keeps getting revised an improved upon. The same can be said for any engine from any era.

Yes, but other people do call such games isometric, even the developers, even if erroneously. Most people who say they want a future Fallout to be isometric want it to be in 3D like Van Buren, not in 2D like FO1 and 2.

Well, I'm certainly not trying to separate myself from 'what most people think'. Neither am I saying I want/prefer an FO4 to be akin to the originals in terms of perspective. But I'd be very interested to see a title in the modern era that glorifies these underrated design choices, as long as they're tastefully done. But in terms of 3D-panoramic-pseudo-isometric-whatever-you-want-to-call-it, I'd accept that as a good settle for a future post-apocalyptic RPG, possibly Wasteland 2.

I love that sort of thing.

IMO, it preserves all the GOOD about an Isometric view ... and more (for one big example: being able to spin the camera view means that you won't miss a door, enemy, or other detail due to being obscured by a wall or other object in the foreground).

That said? 2D, 3D, First-person or third-person ... it's all good. As long as the graphics style supports the intended gameplay type, I'll take what I can get.

There's no way gamesas would ever do this as it would totally alienate their current fanbase, but I would like to see Fallout 4 done in high definition isometric with hand drawn backgrounds... :daretodream: