» Sun Sep 13, 2009 2:43 am My main issue is how much I love the amount of free open sand-box-like play that is available in Oblivion and Fallout 3. However, Fallout 3 fell way short of Oblivion and is more comparable to Shivering isle in its content, which to me makes the game less than Oblivion. I mean the open space is not the issue, although I think they should have added more in Fallout 3, but it's the amount of things you do in this open space. It's like you have a huge amount of area to cover with nothing really significant to it other than killing the bad guys and bloodthirsty creatures or finding the occasional radio signal. There needs to be more creativity of stuff to do out in that vast open space. There needs to be some weird things like what you find in Vault 106, and some other completely unexpected stuff, not just areas with special bad-guys, but areas with weird things like that one thing I can never seem to find, but I've read about it. But with more to it than just finding it and then waiting for the expansion to explain it better. Maybe a sudden hole in the ground that leads deep into an underground cavern that has openings throughout the wasteland similar to the subway station in the city. Maybe another place with a giant tower, like the one's out there, but with some weird experiments that have monsters we don't normally encounter in the wasteland. Right now I'm trying to uncover some sore to plot, but I haven't found any more evidence other than what's in that one tower. I mean I get access to that kind of weapon system, but I have nothing I can do with it except see a cute little explosion or kill myself. I'm hoping beyond hope that there is more about it that I have yet to discover, but seeing the pattern of "the-same" throughout the wasteland I'm guessing that what I found was all that was to it. Maybe that hole in the ground that I spoke of earlier has some underground labyrinth with some giant ants, some secret chambers, and a few weird creatures, and maybe a small group of people with some needs. I mean you did all of that, and it was great, but those events were way too few. And there was way too little to do with them. Also, feel free to mix some people living in another chamber with missions attached that actually help them to find something or benefit their society. Also, I find it very difficult to believe that everyone I fight will do one of two things always and without exception, run to an easily findable location or fight me to the death unless of course they run a shop because that, for some reason, means that they won't want to kill me. Maybe some of them actually could surrender, i.e.. when they are the last one or couple left and all they have is club to fight my flame thrower or something. Maybe I could actually make slaves of them without losing Karma, after-all they are bad-guys and there is no prison system with which to bring them to justice. Slavery would be the only justice system other than killing them. That was annoying because making slaves of them was actually a mercy rather than just blowing their heads off tediously all of the time and without exception. There needs to be more that we can do with NPCs in these games, and I know that you, Bethesda, would be the people to pioneer the freedom of choice in gaming because you created Oblivion, Morrowind, and Fallout 3 three of the freest games I've ever played, and actually they are the freest other than some others like X3 and freelancer that also use freedom of choice concepts very much like yours . I also wish that there was more to do with it, to change the landscape somehow. So that what we did, such as at the one area, if we make a certain decision, over time we actually see it starting to spread, or that we see it shrink, or that we see something actually happen like with the bully or maybe even more than that.
Another issue is that there wasn't much intelligence in the Oblivion missions, and only a hair more in Fallout 3 missions, because they were almost entirely cut out and simplistic relying on the fun of actually doing them rather than the fun of following the clues and using reasoning to figure them out. Missions should have both of these challenges in varying degrees throughout the game. Sure you did have the reasoning part in varying degrees, but come on, the reasoning was so easy a monkey could do it or a computer with a simple AI could reason it out, and AI's aren't even alive. The missions were mostly cut out and dry as far as reasoning is concerned, and as far as that is concerned, they were boring, leaving the only fun to be found in killing the baddies, thus making it nothing more than a more elaborate first person shooter with only one way to go to accomplish the mission. In Fallout 3 it does seem that you allowed a little more reasoning and other ways, although I wish you'd of warned me about the possibility of that in the manual because then I would have been more careful about finding Rivet City before I was supposed to.
However, I could get past the lack of reasoning in the missions of Oblivion because of the shear magnitude and variety of where one could go and get missions/quests to complete. I mean the magnitude of things to do in Oblivion as far as quests are concerned, interesting or not, they were what made Oblivion worth the $40. Most games with missions can be done within a solid week of playing them, but not Oblivion. I'd reckon that even if one knew exactly what they were doing, the huge amount of mission/quests that there are would take them a solid 3 or 4 weeks of non-stop playing. That's how I expected Fallout 3 to be, and the futuristic wasteland way of it just excited me to no end, but it's not. The amount of missions there are per area, and then the amount of missions there are spread sporadically throughout the wasteland are minimal at best, something like what one would expect out of an expansion pack like the Shivering Ilse's, not a full game, and especially not after you are the ones who made Oblivion. That was where I was tremendously disappointed. At least if you made simplistic missions in Oblivion for those that would complain that they are too hard, you still made so many of them so as to compensate for the lack of reasoning fun you put into them. However, seeing as how you're the only ones of a few that offer what I'm looking for in a game, (And you are the only ones that offer what I'm looking the most for) I'm still going to buy your Elder Scrolls V, when you finally decide to work on it, and I'm going to buy your Fallout New Vegas as well.
Now, I'm just criticizing in this post, but I do love the little attempts you made to spice it up by having sporadic radio signals appear out of nowhere and one has to locate where it's coming from. I still have yet to find anyone alive in those places, because of time sure, but what if a few of them found an area where they could reproduce and live. Or maybe I could find something completely unexpected, for example, someone answers back on one of the emergency radios or when I click the radio off, instead I hear something or someone else the gives me a clue to find another location, and then another location until I reach the end of the clues to find, for example, a society of whatever where there are even more missions. I'm not talking expansions either, what if you put this stuff in the actual game itself, it would be all that much better. I haven't found all the emergency signals, but something tells me that they're all pretty much the same, and that's my issue. They don't have to be the same all of the time. There can be some unexpected weird thing happen/be there that leads the player somewhere else or something. We need more unexpected things to happen. Maybe they would have left a long time ago, realistically, or maybe, for the sake of fun and missions, they stuck around for some reason that would be explained in the game. I also love the different locations with special baddies to kill. I haven't killed any of them yet, but I'm hoping it will effect the outcome of the wasteland. I love the few places where people live out there, I love running into the peaceful people standing around the campfire, but I wish I was given the option of doing more than just talking to them. I love running into the traveling traders, and I'm talking about the single person traders, not the ones that have the cattle carrying all of their stuff. I love the fact that I have some power given in one area to control the supplies of the traveling traders with the cattle and the guard, but I wish there was more. Maybe some way I could gain political connections with some leaders so that I could personally influence them towards my own creative directions. That would require some special programing, and you'd have to figure out how that would even be possible if you even considered it. Here's another idea. What if the robotics expert perk, or perhaps a programming expert perk, gave me the third option of not just shutting down a robot, but also reprogramming the robot to be my buddy, until he gets destroyed, and then I could just reprogram another when I could finally get close enough and positioned just right to do so. I also like the random locations that one can run into that are locked or sealed off implying that somewhere in the wasteland is the key or code to get in, and I have to find it. Those don't give the player many clues, but if they gave one clue at least, then that would start me off. I love to reason, but without any information whatsoever, there's nothing to reason out, just hope on the dumb luck of running into something. That's not fun either.
One other last issue I have. I don't know if it's glitch or a just a programming absurdity, but I would appreciate warnings of certain things. For example I did the mission with the Hotel and I got the zombie people into the Hotel without violence. But I couldn't leave well enough alone. So after I finished the mission, I went and opened the doors, and when I came back into the Hotel from that location, nothing looked different. However, after I left, did several things I'm not willing to do over again, I came back to hotel to sell something and found it only having the zombie people as though I had chosen the violent way of finishing the mission. This annoyed me since I had specifically finished the mission peacefully. Then, because I didn't know, that destroyed the unspoken mission of finding Argyle. There's no warnings in the manual or the game to warn us that doing one thing may have an effect on whether or not you can do another later on. Obviously the nuke in Megaton does effect what we can do later, but other missions don't seem like they would, and simple warning would suffice so that we know that we should be careful about the missions that we accept and how we decide to do them. Oh yeah, another suggestion, there should be about 3 to 4 ways to do a mission on many of the missions if not most of them. And I like the fact that you expanded on that in Fallout 3, but I don't think you expanded enough on it.
Well, that's what I think. (By the way I copied and pasted this from my previous post in the "General Discussion" location of Fallout 3 forums)
