get rid of that [censored] batman avatar, then maybe ill change for you. deal?

I did; (and still I do ~given the series design, and origins). That's what I was expecting before June '08. Not 8-bit 2d (of course), but certainly something http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wf_2V7wLkI than like what we got (not counting the superb *and very "Fallouty"* artwork).
One could not sell dairy if 95% of the world became lactose intolerant.... Isn't it better to just not sell milkshakes, than to make milkshakes without any milk in them? IMO if there is no market for a game, better not to make it than to make something else and brand it with the old label. (The majority doesn't care, and the minority doesn't get hurt disappointed).

As you say your not a ff fanatic neither am I but I have played and enjoyed most of them ff4 the most tho paladin cecil ftw but the changes to the ff series have been huge like in 13 it's very linear comoared to ff4 for example so that means no town or npcs or airships which are staples of ff and ff13's story was flat out meh I couldn't give a crap about cacoon or pulse by the end of it and it has a shockingly bad cast I liked vanille and fang and shaz but hope n snow where aids in terms of characters and ff13 had no real dungeons.

I couldn't last more than 3 hours with FF13, so bad. Its true people actually enjoyed 13 though. but i dont get it, its not even a game! oh well people liked batman gameplay.....

And what's the deal with people saying FF4 is thier favourite? I played that game from beginning to end, then never wanted to play again. 5 & 6 were much better.

I totally get all that, but the crux of the thing is still that after all the waiting, what they got was totally different animal than what they knew, wanted and were expecting. All the aggravating circumstances served to do was to compound that.

I don't blame old Fallout fans at all for being put off by the direction the franchise has taken, and will almost certainly continue to take. It'd be rough to be strung out like that, and when the "payoff" finally came, it would be something completely different than what you had been waiting for. On the other hand, some of these people have to realize they aren't able to objectively look at what Fallout has become because of all that.

I personally love Bethesda's Fallout, but I wasn't indoctrinated on the originals, either.

I think that the thing that irks me most is, if you're not going to pander to the fans of Fallout 1/2, why make your game 'Fallout' at all?
Why not call it 'Capital Wasteland' or somesuch?

I'm not that put out at FO3... it's success gave us FONV, which (story wise) is a great follow on to 1/2.

I'm an oldschool Fallout fan and I was very disappointed when I saw my first screens of Fallout 3 and realised it wasn't a top-down isometric view but in playing the game I enjoyed quite a bit, aside from the massive holes it left in Fallout lore. New Vegas was perfection to me though (I don't mean better than Fallout and Fallout 2) it just nailed the Fallout feel perfectly and the writing was superb. So I don't see what the huge problem is. I would love it if Obsidian were the only one to make the future Fallouts, it wouldn't happen but still.

So far I'm liking NV, though I wish it were more like an evolution of FO1. The problem (IMO) is rather like this.... If I was to paint a 3rd panel of someone else's fresco, I would match it to the existing work ~even if that was totally opposite to my usual style. I would want the addition to blend nicely from panel to panel to panel; (and it wouldn't matter if I'd bought the wall and the whole thing was in my own back yard.)

As an 'old' fan, I liked the series for what I found in it... and I just don't find enough of it carried over to the recent ones.

That is fair enough. I myself feel that what wasn't carried on was replaced with something else that I enjoy, not the first person perspective just something, I can't quite put my finger on it. I respect your opinion Gizmo because it isn't as objective as other peoples.

Maybe Bethesda simply liked the lore/universe, but wanted to re-imagine Fallout in their own way? Maybe they saw a franchise languishing, with previous devs crapping the bed, and saw an opportunity to cash in without having to create a whole new IP? Who knows, but does it really matter at the end of the day?

The sad truth is that there wasn't much reason to cater to the desires of the remnants of a cult/niche fanbase. I'm willing to bet that many of the 7+ million people who bought Fallout 3 had never even heard of Fallout, and the overwhelming majority of them had never played a Fallout title.

You raise a point, but I think keeping to some semblance of reason must be key. Take Lord of the Rings. If you just watched the movies, you're still missing out on a large chunk of the inworld lore and even parts of the story from the books cut from the movie. I mean, granted a good portion of our society likes to play the ignorant chimp and just briefly dabble in one thing because it's a trend, but the people that generally love one particular fan base shouldnt be pissed on for the sake of money. At the same time however, a fan of a series should not be so stubborn and naive to believe the universe revolves around them specifically and demand it remain precisely the same as the original product from a decade plus ago.

Ultimately both sides are at fault. Bethesda for neglecting the core fans in favour of a broader audience, and the 'original fans' for acting like man children and throwing a toddler style hissy fit when something isnt catered to THEIR whim.

Yeah accept my apologies here. The title was meant to be "Fans of the old fallout games". Never mind im sure most of you are old anyways
But like i said i think fallout made a grand transition into modern gaming, just name one old series that turned out acceptable with the industry advances of the past 6 years....?

I agree with most of this. Both sides are at fault, but I think that many old Fallout fans need to adjust their expectations. We may see Bethesda be more sensitive to the original fanbase and adjust the narrative style and tone to something more in line with the originals, or at least F:NV (which would be nice). But huge setting/node map/turn based/isometric Fallout is as dead as a doornail. That much is all but certain. If people are waiting or calling for an end to the "TES with guns" style, they're pissing into the wind. Bethesda will make more Fallouts, and they will certainly be much more like Fallout 3 than Fallout and Fallout 2.

It would be nice if Bethesda is more considerate to the old school fan, but there are limits. Fallout 3 eclipsed the sales totals of all previous FO titles in it's first month after release. Any thought that Bethesda would back way off of what they and Obsidian did with Fallout 3 and F:NV to the older and much less successful format to assuage the angst of what amounts to a tiny part of the fan base is, well, a pipe dream. Bethesda would have to be insane to even consider it.

Both sides should compromise, but make no mistake over who will end up compromising more.

And in the end, die hard fans of the originals will be left with two options: compromise with themselves and accept the new direction or pretend Bethesda's installments don't exist. Well, that or play the games and wail and cry foul the whole time, which would just be obnoxious.

Resident Evil from 1996 to 2011 it's still got a lot going for it.

ok it turned out acceptable-ish. but the story is now completely uninteresting and the survival horror design is completely gone.
dead space done survival horror better than 4 and 5, better story too.

I don't think anyone is expecting an ISO/TB Fallout anymore. But I do think many people are expecting at least a half decent RPG (both narratively and gameplaymechanically), and hoping for biggest possible difference between TES and Fallout within the context of the circumstances. That's not unreasonable, nor would it be to criticise it if it still didn't happen.



Civilization, and HoMM series' are doing fine with sticking to the original context while reaping the rewards of the current tech (and those series' date back to the early to mid 90's).

The question isn't whether or not Fallout was successfully brought back onto the scene. That much is clearly beyond question.

The debate is more about whether it shares enough of the original identity to retain and placate the fanbase of the originals. The "which games are better" aspect of the debate is a bunch of bluster, opinion, sophistry and hurt feelings. They're too different to compare in that way.

And my question was "name one series that turned out acceptable". ya'll can carry on with your discussion i just wanted that answered. but yeah imo fallout and resident evil are the only old series that turned out acceptable imo.

I hear what you're saying, but I think if people are expecting anything substantially different than Fallout 3 in terms of mechanics and gameplay, they're setting themselves up for a massive disappointment. Realistically I think we might see an alteration in narrative style (to something like we saw in New Vegas, with more moral ambiguity and divergent narrative paths) and more nods to the originals, but that's as far as any return to original style will go.

You reference Civ and HoMM, but there is much more of a steady continuum with those titles. Fallout was essentially in limbo for years, Bethesda plucked it, reinvented it, and hit the big time with it. You're just not going to see Bethesda risk losing any of the massive new fanbase they've grabbed by trying to placate the relatively tiny old fanbase.

Metal Gear Solid, SMB too. And LoZ. And the "Tales of" franchise is still pretty good. And while I'm disappointed with it, Final Fantasy is still acceptable.

I'm sure I could think of a few more.

metal gear has lost its balance of gameplay and cutscenes (too many cutscenes in the old ones too but just enough balance)
legend of zelda skyward sword i cant comment on haven't played, but loved the old ones. new final fantasy is not acceptable in the slightest, never played Tales of series but if you like the new final fantasy then i wont even bother trying it. whats SMB? super mario bros? dont like the new games myself, been milked dry. galaxy was meant to be good though but never tried.

Not "substantially" different (it will remain as an FPS exploration game, that much is a given), but with varying degrees of changes in the inner, and less in the outer, mechanics. It might be road towards disappointment (and likely is too), but I do not think that the final nail is struck to the coffin before the next game (given the feedback to both Fallout 3 and New Vegas). The stretch between previous and upcoming no longer exist (at least not as wide as between Fallout 2 and 3), so there is a decent chance of getting improvement to the existing (which is really all that's being asked for anymore).

And Beth is risking losing something with every game it makes. Just look at the transition from Morrowind to Oblivion and from Oblivion to Skyrim (and from Fallout 2 to Fallout 3).

Nope. for it's own merits, BoS was a very fun Action-RPG for the PS2.
Bear in mind: Just because you don't like a certain genre it doesn't make it necessarily *lousy*
How anyone with a half-intact brain could expect that to be like the PC iterations is beyond my imagination.



For me, FNV is the best Fallout ever made, no matter what the ISO-Fundamentalists are saying. It's easily there in terms of the writing(in my eyes it surpasses 1+2), and way better in the gameplay department.
What many traditionalists are trying to ignore in such discussions are the huge amount of flaws and imbalances the first 2 games had to struggle with:
Half of the skills were basically useless, the weapon and armor balancing were downright horrible, the combat system itself wasn't all too deep, and favored the *close in and execute from point blank*-method too much.
For me, what made Fallout wasn't the so-so combat mechanics(I really love turn-based strategy, but i just never found Fallout -combatwise- could keep up with X-Com 3 or Jagged Alliance 2 at the time), but the plot, writing and interaction with the NPCs.
All of that is there in FNV, plus we get a well balanced game here, even if it's not turn based anymore.





RE4 is a true masterpiece, and a way better game than the first 3. 5 however, is just an uninspired copy of 4.



I'm totally fine with that. Obsidian has proven that it is totally possible to create a real Fallout game with the Gamebryo engine.

Resident Evil 5 was awful, even worse than Resident Evil 4.
Resident Evil 4 was fun, but still felt very alien as a REvil game.
And Umbrella Chronicles was a kick to the groin because it was console exclusive. (Every studio that does console exclusive games should be pissed on and then crucified.)

Yeah, it still sells, but it's main series has become very alien.

Oh yeah, I totally agree with you. I started with FO3 but after playing New Vegas for a while I went and bought the FO3 DLCs, thinking I'd do another FO3 playthrough with all the DLCs. But I found that I couldn't get into it at all. I was luckier in that I played Fallout 3 before New Vegas, so I actually have fond memories of exploring the Capital Wasteland.

I was actually being (mostly) facetious in my comment you quoted.