If Fallout 3 had the animation of the character on the same level of quality and realism as in Mass Effect it would tremendously uplift the entire game, you would never even think about going to 1st person again. And the entire game was meant to be played like that anyway with all that armor and clothing options and VATS kills.
It was just a joy to watch your character move in Mass Effect, never has the animation been so good and fluid, it takes into account even the momentum of movement.

It's such a shame that this didn't happen in Fallout 3, that both the animation and shooting mechanic in 3rd person view were sub-par.

I hope this never happens again, support this topic if you agree and let Bethesda know to not make such a huge mistake again.

Which perspective someone likes is personal opinion. And personally, I prefer 1st person to 3rd person every time.

I agree that Mass Effect 2 character animations are great. Very fluid and realistic.

But keep in mind that the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games are very much free form with many more aspects to them. So it's a matter of resources. Effort spent on animations means less effort on other things, like quests or stability. Better animations would certainly be good, but there are other things in Bethesda games that I think are even more important.

Well, ME2 uses what, UT3.5? Compare that to a modified version of Oblivion's engine, which is probably five+ years older.

I don't understand how it is possible to not have minuscule resources to create superb animation for a single object in the entire game --> your main character.
It seems like a complete rubbish argument.

Who cares about animations? I play 1st person so I don't see them anyway. I'm guessing Mass Effect doesn't even have a first person view, which is why they devoted more energy to the artwork. While I'm not sure of the numbers, it wouldn't surprise me that most people play Fallout in 1st person view anyway, so why bother making things ultra smooth and sleek?

Mass Effect does not have a First Person view (at least Mass Effect 2 doesn't, I haven't played the others).

Also most of the best animations occur during "cut sequences" which are pre-defined at certain game points. With a free form game like Fallout 3 that would not be as easy, I think.

Nor does it need to, such is the quality of it. Going from it to 1st person view feels quite substandard. That was my point in the first place.

Way back I was too of the deeply held notion that first person shooters will always be better than 3rd person.
This notion was obliterated with Resident Evil 4, Gears of War and finally disintegrated with Mass Effect 1,2.

Now seeing only a gun as your interaction with the world and depiction of your character looks extremely flimsy and underwhelming, especially for such a game as Fallout 3 which is more about equipping and visually tweaking your character than Mass Effect is.

Also the animation of guns and shooting mechanic are quite superior anyway in those games, and you can always zoom in further with right click. There is not a single flaw or compromise in such 3rd person games, this cannot be said for gimped 1st person shooters.

That's simply your opinion. For me it's about immersion. I want it to feel like I am the character that I'm playing, that it's me that's interacting with the game world and I'm not just manipulating some game figure. I really don't care what my character looks like since there aren't any working mirrors in the game, and I never even get to see myself anyway. How my avatar looks is completely irrelevant. And there's a lot of players who feel the same way. That's why mods that require the player to eat and drink are so popular. It wouldn't bother me in the least if the next Fallout game, or Elder Scrolls for that matter, dropped the third person view altogether. I actually find it an annoyance when I accidentally roll my mouse wheel and end up in third person view. If I had my way, I would disable that ability completely.

It is not simply my opinion since I gave it sound factual foundation. Stop using such rhetorical inanity.

And stop being so narrow minded that you think your approach to playing the game is the only justifiable one. I don't share your view at all, but that doesn't make my playing style wrong. Just different. There's nothing factual about anything you've mentioned, it's strictly a matter of personal preference. There's nothing inane at all in the way I want to play the game and frankly, your comment there is bordering on a personal insult. Continue acting like a troll and I'll have to report you, with this thread most likely being closed down.

Dont hurt your brain.

The game world that im playing in is visually stunning enough that I dont want my huge bulky tincan armored self blocking the view, to put it simply for you.

The animations certainly could be a lot better. Even if you play 1st person all the time you still notice the clunky animations of every NPC you encounter. And personally I like to switch from 1st to 3rd person once in a while because I actually care how my avatar look.

I don't know if those type of animations can be done effectively in a gamebryo engine but Mass Effect is a pretty good looking game graphics and animation wise (Unreal Engine)

I thought the animations in ME2 were wonderful. I loved vaulting over crap, lifting people and whipping their asses against walls... I love how my character interacts with the world. I don't love how my female character rarely smiles.... but I digress. That, though it had RPG elements, was more of a shooter for me. There are only so many avenues of approach to your next objective. With what I would call a relatively closed environment, there is no need to push resources towards a larger world; what I'm trying to say is, with this closed environment, they could really concentrate on the character and her/his interaction with their environment and how cinematically-oriented the experience is.

Fallout 3 is a massive (though not as large as Oblivion imho,) open world. You can do more things, in more ways, than ever imaginable. I read these forums and see how people did some things... so opposite of what I did... to have all these possibilities available, I would gladly have not-so-fluid player-character animations, in return for getting a world where I can do whatever I want, whenever I want and however I want. Or perhaps... I do not want.

I love both games. Both are fantastic in their own rights.

The words were ripped from right my brain....exactly how I feel. I don't go through life watching myself from over my shoulder...I go through it looking through my eyeballs...Thr "R" in RPG is "Role"...hence, immersion is what it's about.

False dichotomy.

Not quite. While the animations certainly could be better, they are harder to implent well in Fallout 3 compared to Mass Effect due the open nature of the game and the differences how the game world is handled by the game engines.

The Unreal 3 engine that Mass Effect use is a "special purpose" engine. The areas are all pre-calculated and optimized, nothing ever changes in them, etc. Whereas Fallout 3 is coded for the general case. Basically, Fallout 3 is sort of like Microsoft Word, and the master file is a document. The program has to handle the general case for everything -- terrain, buildings, statics, items, NPC's, animations etc. But a game like Mass Effect can have specific code to handle specific areas, they can optimize paths and collision to help with animations, etc.

For example, if the player stand on a slantwise ground in Mass Effect, the game will "know" that and adjust the legs accordingly. While Fallout 3 have to "guess" it and then try to adjust the legs accordingly. And the technical differences between "know" and "guess" are huge, and involve a lot more manhours of work. Not impossible by any means though, but it's not a piece of cake.

I would say let id Software have a go at Fallout....

Of course, everyone says Rage will have a whole new level of animation quality and fluidity.

They have a new engine that completely blows away the engine that Fallout 3 and NV currently have. It would be great to see such an engine used for Fallout as well. Then far greater possibilities open up.

We can forget about any improvement, even the sequel to Oblivion will have the same engine.

I find it funny when people starting complaining about the engine. Mainly because animations don't really bother me, I mean hell I still like some animations from Morrowind

So you want a company that mainly made linear corridor shooters with barely any story or dialogue, to make a complex open multi-choice RPG?


That's an odd statement, considering they improved the animations between Oblivion and Fallout 3 even though they used the same engine.

Nope, TES:V will use a completely new engine, according to this: http://pc.ign.com/articles/113/1136343p1.html

"...title would not be using id Software's Rage engine, id Tech 5. Instead, Bethesda has created an entirely new game engine."