» Sat Jun 27, 2009 6:50 pm
Actually, the two part about the first three FO's that I liked the most was actually the combat, and character development. Sure FO1 and 2 had a really good story (I think FOT had a decent story to though), and the diverse way's you could solve your missions etc was awesome. But it is the combat system and character development in FO1/2/T that keeps me coming back for more. That is probably the reason why everytime I have started a new game in either FO1 or FO2, I have start 5-10 New Game's in Tactics. Tactics is the only one of the FO games that I replay atleast 1-3 times a year, where as FO1/2 probably gets one replay every 2-4 years.
I really like turnbased combat combined with full character development. For me it started back in 1996 with regular (Swedish) pen and paper RPG's, where even though I really liked the roleplaying aspect of it, it was the combat and character development that I liked the most and found the most interesting. Then my love for turnbased gameplay (plus character development), outside of pnp rpg's, came on the PS1 back in 1997 with Final Fantasy VII (granted, you don't have that much controll over the character development in those games). And for PC it was roughly around 1998-99 that it started for me, by watching a friend, and then later me, playing "X-COM: UFO - Enemy Unknown". It was roughly around 2000 that I came across Fallout, and instantly fell for the combat system and character development of that game.
Turnbased combat can work in an mmo. Have a look at Atlantica Online for example, where they use turnbased for both PvE and PvP. The combat in Atlantica Online feels very Final Fantasy like, which works really well for me. They do have a turn timelimit though, which increases slightly for each npc party member you have (your char + 8 more as max). With 9 characters, each turn has a 30 second timelimit, and if you have not used all your characters within your timelimit the turn ends. The way Atlantica Online deals with partying with other people, is that you can go 3 players (with up to 9 characters in each player group) vs up to 3 groups of enemys with up to 9 npc in each group.
Granted, the Fallout styled turnbased combat would probably be a bit slower, which a huge amount of gamers these days seem to have a problam with. And I think it would lose some of it's tactical thinking if you had a to short timelimit. But I would personaly love to see FOOL be turnbased... although, I doubt it will be. Unfortunatly these days the kind of games that do best are the quickpaced twitch based ones. Which for me usualy only gives me enjoyment for the 10'ish hours they last, befor they are permanently confined to the shelf, to most likely never be played again.
Turnbased combat, character developing, and simmilarly slower paced games tend to not sell as well as the twitchbased ones, which is unfortunate... since those are the kinds of games I really love and enjoy to play. I guess that is why you see all these hybrids around which claims rpg, but usualy is very lite in the rpg department. For example, as much as I love the Mass Effect games, the character development of thoser games are extreamly lite in rpg terms. I would have LOVED to see Mass Effect with the character development of a pen and paper rpg (like Fallout has). That was why I loved Fallout so much, because it felt like I was playing a pen and paper RPG in pretty much all apects, and that is something I miss very much so in most (if not all) of todays games.