Cleary its not the only factor, but a big one. And for FO3, i consider it to be of high quality, and the modding feature just add much more content that fans make for the game. It has nothing to do with being good, its about the fans making a lot of content for a game they love. And this is one more proof that FO3 is a great game and a huge success.




I dont understand what you refer as 'those people', could you clarify please?

From the backstories I read in the design documents it went something like this: President Tandi assassinated, the NCR itself bombed the Congress to push towards the war, Caravan Houses now are the real power players behind the scenes in the NCR, the NCR literally annexing other areas to impose "Order and civilization". Sounds like the bad guys to me.

I don't understand, are you saying Hoover Dam are the villains? If anything Dodge is about one of the only righteous men left in the NCR who has been abandoned by his superiors and left to fend for himself. Hoover Dam is in a struggle because of depleted resources mixed with broken morale. The player could in fact broker peace between Hoover Dam and BoS, outside of the peace he/she can make with NCR proper and BoS to end the war itself. The only villain in Hoover Dam is McLafferty or whatever her name is that is dealing weapons to both sides.



I understand and agree that joining the BoS should have been optional in order to add more variety to the choices players had to complete the game. Of course that would mean that they would have had to develop additional ways for the player to reach the end game via other allies or by him or herself and that would have also helped a lot.



Well that depends, is the Enclave that now faces extinction the kind that maintains its xenophobic principles just to maintain their pure blood? Or like the Nazis, do they find a way to form alliances with others they deem similar to them (Such as occured with Germany and the Japanese Empire in WW2) or maintain their xenophobia but utilize "lesser" conquered species of sub-humans, as they view it, for indoctrination to do their dirty work and fight their wars.

Even as far back as the ancient civilizations of Perisa, Babylon and Macedonia...not to mention Greeks and Romans...often would conscript their slaves to fight for them, despite not valuing them as equals.

My guess is that the Enclave would adopt a similar philosophy, recruit "lessers" into their cannon fodder ranks and just wipe them out along with the rest of the riff raff once their plans were seen to fruition. It's a more elaborate and devious plan than simply allowing all your own people to die in isolation because you don't want to have contact with anyone else, same thing with how the BoS is progressively more open to hiring wastelanders as the years go on. This is how I would see the Enclave return to being a powerhouse.

Then again Germany was left a devastated wreck following the first World War in 1918, yet they managed to become an even more powerful force threefold by the time 1935-1939 had rolled by and saw the rise of the Third Reich.

Another possible interpretation is that similar to the BoS, the Enclave had numerous outposts spreading throughout the wasteland and the oil rig was simply their headquarters. I got no impression in F2 that Navarro and the Oil Rig were the only 2 active Enclave locations so who knows how much man power they had on the mainland. And as time passed, 80-90 years, new leadership emerged and moved their operations to a place where supposedly they would have much less opposition than the fortified and developed areas of the West Coast featuring the Shi, NCR and BoS all as potential enemies. :shrug:

I mean that Hoover Dam is the NCR. And in the NCR-BOS war, both sides are equally guilty and neither are the "villains" or "good guys". Just like in most wars.

Certainly. I'm refering to these people:

Thanks for the clarification, I misunderstood your post.

I agree with your statement; however it also depends who exactly began the NCR-BoS war and what was the reasoning behind that war that would dictate my perspective on who was more morally bankrupt, or "evil" if you'd like, of the two sides. Every impression I got from the design docs pointed at the NCR having descended to a point of commercial greed with the Caravan Houses being the NCR's puppet masters, assassinating their President, invading and conquering new towns sometimes by force in order to civilize them and abandoning their outer colonies such as Hoover Dam; as such I think they generally qualify for the role of "bad guys" more than a grey dispute between 2 parties.

Of course since the full story was not really flushed out in its entirety, I probably am making assumptions without all the intended facts the devs were going to use such as full storyboards and deeper detailed background information on both the setting and factions.

:)

So Jeremy Maxson wanting to wresting all advanced tech from the hands of "lesser people" by any means necessary is any better?

Sure, the BoS crew of Maxson Bunker is mostly friendly, but so is the NCR government in Hoover Dam. And in the meantime, in the Core Region both sides are doing pretty nasty things.

I don't consider Hoover Dam NCR anymore seeing as NCR proper abandoned them; maybe NCR came back to them after the war ends but Hoover Dam feels like it becomes its own sovereign territory and more independent. The good ending is them with BoS troops carrousing the streets mingling with Hoover Dam's NCR troops and civvies.

I got to re-read Jeremy Maxson's bio and potential story, but I see the BoS more overall good-ish than how the NCR is represented ingame. Just my impression from all I read of them :shrug:

We don't know if the rest of the NCR abandoned them, actually. It's very much possible that there is no NCR proper to speak of anymore.

OK so i was refering to the people that bash very much FO3 in praise of an probably van buren that never happened.

Didn't the NCR thump the BOS and expand...? It seems likely, just due to the size of their standing army, that the NCR could have eventually taken a victory over the Brotherhood. That being said, obviously there may have been some opposition from NCR citizenry in The Hub.

Like it or not, Van Buren's graphics would certainly exclude it from being a top tier game in the industry. We'll probably see elements of future Fallout games inspired by Van Buren concepts, but I don't think it would really work out to release it.

If it was released with the engine largely as-is then it would have to be a budget title. This not only seems like an ignoble outcome for the game but it also means the budget for finishing it would be small. While the game is mostly complete there's still plenty to do and a small budget would probably insufficient to really do the game justice.

Alternatively the Van Buren design document could be used as the grounds to a full title in its own right with a modern engine. However this route almost guarantees gameplay more like Fallout 3's than the original games (that is real time gameplay, and possible even a first person perspective).

One interesting possibility, although equally remote, would be Van Buren released for mobiles. As far as mobile gaming goes Van Buren's old graphics aren't an issue, and the lower sale's price isn't as much of a problem since Bethesda would probably sell more units on a mobile Fallout game than a budget one. Text becomes a big problem though, since even the best smart phones have limited screen space.

Finishing it as it was is pretty much out of the question anyway. Most of the code is likely lost.

van buren was actually 3d, contrasting many peoples opinions. the game utilized the jefferson game engine, and i myself like fallout 3 a lot, but i would have like to see van buren finished and released. its sad that the game has had so much work done on it, but still remains unfinished. it is also sad that graphics are everything for many games now. i like graphics, but i dont have an hd tv, or hdmi cables and it doesnt bother me much. civilization 3 was released in 2001, and did great. i think van buren 2 years later could have made it in the rpg community, but fallout 3 appeals to rpg gamers as well as fps players.

It was also said to be "spaghetti code", and very difficult to work with. (Where I read that I can't even pretend to remember) ~and I suppose I have no clue of its truth.

Here's the question I have about it... If they would (hypothetically) hack it to work on a PC then port it to mobiles... Why not forgo the porting and just sell it for the same price as a budget PC title? (downloadable only if need)
*The same if they were to start from scratch.

double post ~please delete.