While yes FO1+2's combatwas no JA it was alright for it's job. It ws certainly better thaan the FPS crap that FO3 gives us. As it made our CHARACTERS abilities matter. What we where looking for was a refinement on those rulesets not FO3's dismissal of them in favor of Oblivionesque ones. In FO2 with the new party orders I never had a Friendly fire incedent, it's quite easy for you to just move one hex over if you spawn infront of a autoweapon using party member. However you could also give them the "charge!" command and they would move to point blank range to unload the full burst into enemies.

Welcome to the club



You forget that the combat is noth everything. And 5 agility would do it for mest, heck i have done a 1 Str + 1 End + 1 Agi character once in F2(the random encounters....)!
If your not going extreme, try to keep every value betwhen 3 and 8, the overall stats become pretty decent in contrast to do several 1's and 10's.



Not required at all. And you always had the "Bonus Move" perk if you wanted a different tactic. A very high agi character was for the combat focused character or the swift runner. The "Slayer" of the waist would have high agi, but the "Silver Tounge" would not be that agile in contrast.

It's pretty damn important IMO. You won't be able to avoid it, unless you already know the game inside and out.


I always take atleast 1 Bonus Move on top of my 8 AGI already. Actions are simply that important.

You already need average AGI to take the Perk and 5 AGI + 2x BM barely cuts it in the late game and you'll have a tougher early game to consider.
I don't relish the idea to do the temple at the beginning of FO2 again with less than 8.

Why would you expect Fallout 1 and 2's combat to be anything like Jagged Alliance or X-Com? Those are turned based tactical squad games, Fallout 1 and 2 are turn based RPGs. Huge difference, folks.

Doesn't follow - for the "nostalgia" argument to work, it needs to be for something that happened in the past. I could just as well discount your preferences by saying that you're nostalgiac for Fallout 3 or XCOM (which would be wrong - because the more realistic view is that you simply have preferences and the combat in F1/2 was not one fo them.) The original games are still available in their original form, they still run on modern computers with a minimum of tweaking (frak, you don't even need DOSBox or anything.)

It's hard to be nostalgiac for something you just played last week. It's kind of hard to see through rose-tinted goggles something you're currently playing. Those of us who enjoyed the combat in Fallout 1 and 2 (though I will admit it's not as "good" as XCom or JA,) simply like the combat - there's no reason to try and discredit it with illogical generalizations.

I wish folks would consider that argument when they compare FO3 with any of the many FPS around.

Because it's much better and because it would work.

UFO and JA is turn-based done right. FO1 and 2 don't have the ingredients that make turn based combat worthwhile: tactical depth.

Yeah, the T-51b Power Armor is a walking tank.

Cept the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood doesn't use T-51bs, they used T-45ds. The armor is even more ancient and offers less protection then the few T-51b capable suits the Brotherhood owns. Theoretically, when Lyons and his team set off to D.C. from California, they were forced to leave their T-51s behind because there's so few left in operational condition. They uncovered the T-45d suits when they raided the lower levels of the Pentagon.



Not all the food was unlooted. Empty Tin cans are testimony to what was eaten. The only thing left are TV Dinners, Instant Potatoes, Pork and Beans, and Candy Apples. Hardly the first picks for nutritional value.

I played Fallout 1 and Fallout 2. I never finished either though, but I never felt the need to once I started Fallout 3.

You should note the difference between Fallout and fallout 3.

Fallout was pure bred cRPG, so needless to say , combat was never the most important feature. They focused on RPG elements and story.

Fallout 3 is a hybrid, partially FPS and partially RPG. So naturally, you should compare it with other FPS games and other RPG games. you cant ignore the combat problems in a hybrid as easily as in cRPG. Also the developers made a big deal about the combat. So it is more natural to compare it to FPS games, with some common sense.

No, it's not. The argument was that Fallout combat shouldn't be compared to a game that features combat, and neither should Fallout 3 be compared to a game which features combat. Combat in both Fallout and Fallout 3 is secondary to the RPG elements.

Not many have been comparing FO3's combat to Gears of War, or I've missed something.

Fallout 3 is heavily based on combat. Mostly quests are "kill something" or "go kill somthing in a bunker". that doesnt sound like a game with combat secondary to RPG elements. The game was marketed (!) with gory headshots. And in combat, it is your skill at aiming the cursor that decides if you hit or not.
The Rpg elements are nonexistant. You have stats and skills that dont mostly matter. You have choices that are pointless and do not effect the gameplay. you can max your skills, thats how well designed the game is. You cant say with a straight face that fallout 3 is mainly RPG focused. in a nutshell, player skill trumps character skill.

Exaggerate much?

Not really.
Stats for example: i can have 10 charisma, but it doesnt effect anything. I can have int 1 and only thing i lose is skill points for skills that dont effect gameplay. Strenght is rather useless. Endurance increses what, hit points , but because in combat you can freely use stimpacks, the Hp increse is not usefull.
Skills: I can have low weapon skills, but still, i will hit as well as with a high skill,albeit i do bit less damage (which is doesnt make any sense).
Non-combat skills are barely used. they are used too few times, and the skill checks dont even really change anything. I can convince someone to do what i want, or ask them normally, but the in end result usually is the same regardless of how i do it. And the dialogues are mostly okay, but at times they are awful, and your stats dont really effect them.
Choices: I can blow up megaton, but i dont lose anything really. Karma loss is easily negated mainly because its broken system ! i still get a apartment, and people wont really even mention the destruction of one of the largest towns. choices mostly do not effect the ending or the gameworld. There are almost no consequences.
Marketing: What you mostly saw in previews was the VATS and the developers talking about VATS, and showing the headshots and vilence. how isnt that marketing with violence and combat ?
The game essentially is combat based. There really isnt a way to play this game without killing many humans. You cant even talk to raiders, they allways are hostile.
You cant really change how things go, and even when you get to talk the supercomputer to death, the dialogue doesnt do its job. it seems like the supercomputer just for no real reason blows itself. great.

And note on the combat itself: combat is non-tactical and easy even on harder difficulties. main reasons being ,A: you can easily hit enemies even with low skill B: in VATS you only take 10% damage C: enemy AI is stupider than a inbread redneck on moonshine.

i wish i could call this game a great RPG. i dont like wasting 50 euros on a game. Either this game is combat based or it is shoddily done RPG.

I can only think of one RPG that's not heavily based on combat, if at all, and that's Planescape: Torment.

This is why I hesitate to reply. If you don't like the game, nothing I can say will make much difference to you. However, I'll post this much:

I'm playing a "Wastelander" character who is now around level 16. She carries an SMG and a rifle, wears wasteland trader garb. She has never completed a quest, never traded in town, has no Megaton or Tenpenny house, no followers except Dogmeat. She doesn't buy stimpacks, doesn't use caps, except on rare occasion to pay the wandering doctor who walks along the south loop highway.

There has been some combat, but she avoids most encounters, unless she decides she needs something bad enough to risk it.

The goal is to uncover all locations and to get to level cap without any quest experience. I am using a slow leveling mod.

So don't tell me that this isn't a roleplaying game, or that combat is the main feature. I'm having a great time avoiding combat and exploring. The only FPS I ahve played is Stalker, and if I avoided combat in that game, thee would be no game.

If you don't like the game, fine, but at least be honest with your critique.

As seems to have become my habit (I played Oblivion, then Morrowind), I have now completed Fallout 1. My main impression was of having to fight the 12-year-old interface every step of the way. How did anyone have the patience to sit there and count out caps one by one? The turn-based combat wasn't so bad - the original X-COM is still a fave of mine - but watching Dogmeat amble slowly across the screen each round before it was my turn again did get a little wearying.

I was lucky enough (literally, I guess) to find Bob's Used Cars, and thus the LE BB Gun, before I got to the Hub. Combat became fairly trivial after that, especially when my Small Guns got up to the level where I could reliably put golden BBs into eyes - that part, at least, was pretty much like F3 and VATS.

I did get a little annoyed in the Boneyard; it seems that Razor has a bad habit of disappearing or not offering certain dialogue if you do the wrong thing(s) in the wrong order. I ended up retracing my steps from earlier saves and deciphering cryptic walkthroughs for most of a day, just trying to figure out the exact sequence expected of me for my desired outcome. (And then, because I wasn't doing a speedrun, the poor Followers got wiped out anyway. Ah well, it's not like the other ending for them is actually in the game.)

I was impressed by the voice acting. A lot of names I recognize, as a fan of voice actors from games and animation, and the quality was good overall. But now that I've played it, I don't think i'll do so again. (Still undecided on whether to start F2 next.)

I'm playing FO1 and since I absolutely hate the combat (which makes even killing the first mouse in the game a hassle), I simply run away from all enemies by abusing a run away trick. Since I picked science, speech & doctor as tag skills I'll play through as non-combat anyway. I'll see if it'll be possible to finish the game this way.

The interface in those games, I suppose might be a bit clunky. That's one thing where I probably don't notice it so much because it wasn't that noticeable back when it came out, and I've just got used to it by now. A lot of those old turn-based games have a less-streamlined interface, though. I'm playing through the X-Com series right now, and I have a bit of the same trouble.

You can just type in the number of caps.

... what?

I thought I tried that, and it didn't work...

augh. *headdesk*

If you avoid combat in FO3..there's not much game either. No matter how much extra-game customizing you do - I'm playing through Dawn of War 2 and am just using chainswords to get through...am I roleplaying Space Wolves ? Heh. Combat does seem to be main feature to most of the players, and the developers ("violence is f**king hilarious" -- riiiight..) and to be honest, the other aspects of the game don't stand up well to the shooty-shooty bits. His point about your PC really being divorced from the stats (what should define the character, or else they're just irrelevant) is true.

Well, Fallout in general is a pretty combat-intensive RPG through the entire series. Even playing a more diplomatic character in 1 and 2, I could try to find solutions other than combat, but I wasn't going to get very far without a decent weapon to fall back on. Even if I used running away as my primary strategy, that's still a combat consideration. Fallout 3 is ostensibly possible to get through without any violence, but it seems like it would be quite a bit of work - apparently one of the Devs managed to do it, but I'm also assuming they knew the game inside and out by that point. I would hardly expect the average player to find that a viable option their first time through.

There's quite a bit of combat in all the Fallout games, and it's set up with assumption that the player is going to be doing quite a bit of it. The degree to which you, as a player, decide to engage in it, is of course a matter of opinion and personal experience. But it's still an integral part of the game design. Mass Effect has tons of down-time, as well, where you're engaging in dialogue and exploring around - but it's still heavily combat-oriented.

For my own experience, I play with more non-combat characters. I only tend to fight as a last resort, and I've always got an eye out for thinking of other ways through an objective. Even then, most of my playthrough in Fallout 3 still consisted of finding a location, killing the bad guys, and getting the loot. Even if I primarily try to sneak around my enemies, I'm going to get noticed quite a bit and end up fighting.

I'd say combat is absolutely one of the focuses of Fallout 3. In that, I think it's quite similar to the series as a whole. I feel it's about as prevalent in all the games. Whether the combat/non-combat ratio of the game design is 50/50 or 25/75 - it's still a major element of the gameplay, I've found. The Wasteland is a dangerous world, and not everyone is going to respond to a quick wit - to portrary the right amount of danger, combat is going to have to play some role in the game.

Personally, I think to say that combat is not a focus of the game would be to discredit the work they did in that area.

Didn't see an option for "Played the living hell out of 1 & 2 since the day they were released!" :hehe: