Just this- loaning TES out to another company wouldn't be quite the same as "loaning Fallout out" to Obsidian. See, Fallout was designed by Interplay's internal Black Isle Studios. Many of Obsidian's employees are former Black Isle Studios people. Obsidian doing New Vegas was basically a sizable chunk of the original Fallout/Fallout 2 team doing Fallout again.

It wsn't bringing in "new" people, it was the "new" people letting the creators who made the series to begin with give the new people a clinic on how it's done. :thumbsup:

Indeed. Well, maybe a little less in the Writing. The stories in New Vegas were a little better, but I thought the actual world of the Capital Wasteland was better written. It's hard to explain without assuming you have spent a ton of time in both, let's just say Writing doesn't have to yield text or audio.

Give us better, more consistent lighting at charter creation. Something NV and other Beth RPGs have lacked.

fallout new vegas has spears and throwing weapons.............its not even a fantasy game.

Maybe in terms of telling the story of the world that once was, the world that existed before the bombs fell. But the current world? Terrible. No thought was given into how any population has been sustained for so long in the Capital Wasteland. Everyone, by all appearances, is living off of scavenged goods. No one's growing food, no one's producing anything of value, and no serious trade is going on, except largely by four eccentric caravaners. Slaves are rounded up, but who the hell are they sold to? How about the Super Mutants, what's their story, and how come we never deal with it? What are all these Raiders here for? What the [censored] is Talon Company exactly? What in Harold's name does the Enclave and Brotherhood want with this entire [censored]-hole? And the less said about Little Lamplight, the better.

But what's funner than spending an hour on the Reflectron only to come out with some orange monstrosity?

Anyway;


New Vegas did a lot right mechanically that I hope BGS isn't too prideful to take a look at.

-Damage Threshold, but more importantly, how it relates to differentiating the weapons strengths/weaknesses.

-Overall Weapon Feel. There is a noticable difference between a 9mm SMG and a 10mm SMG, despite them both being Submachine guns. Skyrim will likely have many more weapons overall, so expecting a Glass Dagger to feel different from a Mythril dagger might be a bit much. But at the very least, weapon types, and the diametrically opposed Materials (Glass is lighter, and thus faster, than Daedric, but more Fragile)

-Economy. New Vegas actually has one of the better RPG economies I've seen. There are exploits sure, but not as many as most, ironically. Giving the in-game currency a sense of actual value.

-Crafting. Not so much the actual process or yields, but how it changes the world, especially on hardcoe. What was once "Junk" is now valueble. For example, Scrap metal and wrenches when making general repair kits.
-> We know crafting is in Skyrim, and I'm looking forward to it. At first I wasn't so much, but after going through Morrowind, particularly the Tribunal expansion, it's actually kind of fun spelunking the Old Mournhold area looking for lodes of Adamantium ore, and bringing those up to be crafted. (No, I didn't install the Adamantium Armor DLC thing). Taken full-swing, crafting could really give an amazing level of incentive and reward to exploration.



Well, that's pretty much what I meant. Not just "Before the bombs fell", but more also "Before the player got there". Everything happening in present-time is pretty lame.

Just one comment on "Growing Crops though", out in Rivet City, It's implied they are, but it's Hidden to be protected. But yeah, Megaton wouldn't exist. They sacrificed reason for cultural flavor and size.

I find Fallout 3 really shines the further away you are from major population centers. Places like Agatha's shack (At least the traders stop there) and that crazy old lady by the Potomac.

You found the world more plausible, atmospheric and fun to explore?

I found myself using a lot of creative language when I realized that, once *again* I couldn't climb a hill or take a sniping position on top of/behind a rock/boulder because of the invisible fences. You don't want my character to be able to go that way? Fine. Pile a rockfall or debris or make the hill too steep to climb; something that allows me to see that, not an invisible fence/wall/magic force field out in the middle of the Mojave.

We learned that random encounters are really worthwhile considering they were nearly absent in NV. I did like how they placed creatures in big groups, they just needed more "filler" in the world. I felt like the really interesting points in NV were more interesting then FO3, but they put virtually no effort into the areas in between, creating a bland landscape. From a design standpoint, Bethesda is leaps and bounds ahead of Obsidian. Oh, and getting rid of generic "Goodsprings Settler". If you aren't going to name them, don't have them.

Damage threshold, more emphasis on dialogue, more grey choices, and the faction system are all things that should definitely be noted by Bethesda.

Bethesda already used generic nameless NPCs in Fallout 3.

I just made a http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1195762-how-are-you-going-to-make-gold-in-skyrim/page__st__40__gopid__17775699 about how tedious scavenging is to me. It's interesting to see people defending it here. I guess I'm glad some people like it, but man, I really get sick of it. Agree with you, GoddamnHippie; scavenging is downtime. So is time spent reorganizing your inventory to make sure that everything you're carrying is either something you're actually using or has a sufficient value:weight ratio. Talk about dull.

Apart from the bugs, which were mostly fixed, I liked FO:NV a bit more than FO3.

My absolute favorite features above FO3/Oblivion were:

1. Factions and more choices!

2. hardcoe Mode. I really liked this.

3. Much harder enemies, I remember when a huge Deathclaw 1 shot me.

4. No disjointed areas that require sewers to get to. Felt more open, because it was more open.

So is this tpic still going for what certain parts of fallout 3 and new vegas, might help shape skyrim, and we break into "well new vegas svcks because.." and " fallout 3 svcks because". Bad form people, bad form. Anyway I liked how fallout build ruined town and cities in a way. I reckon that through travels in skyrim we should have some locations which are resently destroyed villages, or even finding bits of building stones buired in a grassy field. Finding things like that would be intresting to find.

Indications are, though, that Skyrim is going to have similar generic NPCs.

I did, in fact, yes. And I really have to be one of the luckiest guys in the forums because I still haven't bumbed into excessive amounts of those invisible walls that all the other people seem to find everywhere, not up to them wrecking all the 3 aspects I mentioned anyway. Or maybe I'm just a bit more tolerant about these things and look both the enjoyment and the problems elsewhere, from matter which I consider mattering more (because I don't see a technical thing like those "IW"'s affecting any of the 3 traits I mentioned). I dunno. I used my fair share of ill humor, but never because of technicalities (I didn't even find the game all that buggy initially).

Whereas the "idle exploring" is the main thing I do in the Beth games (Oblivion, FO3). And the various FO3 "dungeons", I found much more interesting than gamesas's quests.... the terminal texts, interesting layouts of "junk" (like seeing the stories in the random skeletons and the items around them)... all those places are my favorite parts of the game. They show the best writing and design, far better than the main and side quests.

I keep my story-driven questing & RPGing for the more linear JRPGs and Bioware-style games.

people seem to forget that fallout 3 had tons of walls all over the place as well. bethesda just did a better job of disguising them. they put u piles of debri or a rusty shed with a door that didnt open. fallout 3 had entire areas of DC that were unexplorable.

But it was just downtown and thats becasue of the level design to make the tunnels mandatory for certain part. NV had invisible walls for no real reason in some places and in other places so they could add DLC later.

To each their own, I guess. I just find excessive amounts of the "idle exploring" to be extremely tedious -- in the long run. Hence I'd really like the writing department (quests and NPC's) getting as much love from the devs as the rubblepiles, skeletons in tubs and random disconnected dungeons seem to be getting as they're not mutually exclusive.

The single most important lesson to be learned from NV is importance of De-bugging before the games release.

The lesson has been already been learned ... skyrim is not gamebryo
It still feels good to remember that

Idle exploring is the hallmark of an Elder Scrolls game. Maybe not a Fallout Game, which are much more story driven. That's why I feel Oblivion so much weaker than both Fallout 3 and Morrowind, because "Idle Exploring" wasn't rewarded the same way, but it was so integral to the experience of an Elder Scrolls game. (It even says so in the Developer's introduction in the manual). However, I don't feel New Vegas was at much a loss comparatively. Though the world of New Vegas was laughably small. Almost a third of the map itself is inaccessible, where as Fallout 3 uses pretty much every piece of Real Estate, even Rivet city sits very close to the southeastern edge of the map, even further than the Legates camp relative in New Vegas, which isn't even accessible without 5mm Box stairs or endgame.

Also, one thing I really admired about Fallout 3, was the level design, particularly with Downtown DC. Capturing a sort of "External" Dungeon feel, by using the metro tunnels. Sure, there were invisible walls, but they served to better the level design, rather than detract from it.

But supporting your point, excessive amounts of anything is tedious.