:shrug: which is true for many of the 'traditional' RPGs that fans of FO3 don't like (including FO1&2) Bethesda's games are neither unique nor pioneer in that aspect.

The fanbase primarily changes because of time. The point is that a group of people will always complain, and you can't really take that to mean that any abnormally large group of fans has been turned away. The uproar over Diablo 3's art is much more noticeable than the complaints about TES, but I think most of us understand that most of those complainers won't reject Diablo 3 based on the artwork alone. Although it's also safe to say that a good chunk of the original fans won't be interested in another Diablo game >10 years after they played the first for a variety of reasons.

Well, you say that you aren't just interested in one game, but then you bring up Fallout as your example. Fallout is a special case. Between 2 and 3, ten years passed and the franchise went to a new and more successful developer. Like I said, there were big changes in some games back in the 80s and 90s (like Ultima), but most sequels are rehashes. Have you noticed the sports games, music games, action games, sims, and strategy games that permeate the market? I really don't see how you can possibly believe what you are saying. I don't know anyone that is pining for more rehashes. If anything, I'd say that series were undergoing more changes 10-15 years ago because of the 3D revolution. By the late 90s, my King's Quest series had turned into a Tomb Raider clone.

If anything, I'd say that TES has been pretty steady considering its longevity. People are always going to complain, and there will always be a decent amount of fan turnover if a decade passes. FO3 had a big change between the 1998 game and the 2008 game, but we can see the underlying circumstances. And the degree of change, if not the circumstances behind them, are far from unprecedented. I think you are suffering from a bit of nostalgia, so you can't notice that things were actually pretty tumultuous from 94-99. Also, you are conflating the spread of internet access with the spread of discontent. In the 90s people were complaining like crazy on usenet, and before that, they were just muttering to themselves because no one in real life wants to hear about stuff like how Cyrodiil is supposed to be a jungle.

How would one describe a 'hardcoe' Fallout fan? The 'hardcoe' to me seems to imply a stickler to the gameplay style of the originals, hence an automatic dismissal of Fallout 3.

Not necessarily. The same person could be drawn to simply both gameplay styles, like with me, but I just think Fallout 3 was rushed and it has nothing to do with the actual gameplay style.

How exactly? Does Morrowind allow you to join every guild no matter what your skills, hold your hand until the next action-packed dungeon with a GPS, or have a really simplified skill system which is even more hindered by everything being leveled? Morrowind restricts you depending on your skills and affiliations which is the exact opposite of power gaming. You can't become a Godly master of everything in Morrowind without mods, it's just not possible.

In Oblivion and Fallout 3 your characters become Gods whether you want them to or not, and they can easily become masters of every guild and faction. A warrior can become the head of the Mage's guild even if he or she doesn't know anything about magic; that is the essence of power gaming. It doesn't help that everything is leveled so your skills don't make a lick of difference.



Not all of them, no.



True, but you have to work at it in most RPGs. In Oblivion you don't have to work for God status as it's handed to you on a silver platter right at the beginning.



Which is true for every non-Japanese RPG I've played, not just TES and Fallout 3.



That's a good question.

'Power gaming' in Oblivion to me involves getting +5 modifiers each level up to get all attributes (and skills) to 100 as fast as possible... that does take a lot of time & dedication..

Yeah Fallout is way easier.

:foodndrink:
"City of Lost Angels", is my #1 favorite as well (Boneyard track)

Mark Morgan has a CD quality version on his website...
http://www.markmorganmusic.com/
In the Music Section.

Fallout's http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5RsgMo_i3A&feature=PlayList&p=0095E406D6D3C700&index=14 (The Vats) which plays in the Mariposa Military Base is still my favorite track. Whilst all of Fallout's tracks brought about a feeling of desolation, this one was foreboding, frantic, yet still eerily calm and consistent (went quite well with the Mariposa Military base being one of the "final areas" yet still going through everything with a turn based combat system).

I enjoy the Cathedral theme as well. It has mood to it, but at the same time, it remains consistent, haunting. I felt Fallout 2's newer tracks drifted a bit too far from the original FO1 feeling (as did the game itself, using what many call a "propser in the Wasteland" theme instead of Fallout 1's "survive in the Wasteland" theme).

IMO, everything throughout the series drifts away from the source atmosphere, attitudes, gameplay, music, art, design.. you name it. Each followup was a little more distant than the one before it.

I have the soundtrack running on a Winamp playlist (with Torment, Giants, and Homeworld, and Tron 2.0 ~as well as several others)
Necropolis and the Glow themes are tough to ~enjoy~ the first few times through, but they eventually grow on you...
(and cause the strangest dreams if you happen to fall asleep while they're playing :shocking:)

In a good sandbox game the player is able to do anything, but this is not the case in Fallout 3 and Oblivion. In these games the player is able to do everything because they have been so simplified. You can be a genocidal maniac who's tales of slaving are broadcast for all to hear, yet the guards of the ultra secure Rivet City will let you in. There's no consequences whatsoever, which is a real shame when you look back at this game's predecessors.

You can join every single guild in Morrowind except for the great houses which all play out the same with yoou killing the leader and becoming in charge.



Actually yes it was simplified compared to it's predessor Daggerfall. Also the game did have level scalling with Daedra ruins and Bloodmoon was completely scaled to the player.



I would agree with you if this was actually true. However there are infinite trainers in Morrowind allowing you to master all skills making those supposed requirements that were already fubar completely pointless. Also the supposed rivalry between guilds in Morrowind was a joke anyway I could be the leader of the Telvanni for example and still walk around Hlaalu or Redoran towns without any one attacking me or any one refusing to barter with me.




Haye you even played Morrowind?

Seriously by the time your level 20 in the core game your going to have a ton of powerful weaponry and Dagoth Ur is complete and utter joke. The time you hit level 30 you can kill every god in the game about as quickly as you can say hello to them. Not to mention being able to have to 2 rings of restore health 3pts. per second an amulet of restore health 3pts. per second and a Daedric shield of restore health 3pts. per second. You can have armies of enemies come at you and you can just sit there wiith bowl of popcorn and watch there futile attempts to kill your character. I'm not going to go into all the exploits you can do in Morrowind or how being level 60 just makes the game pathetic.




It also doesn't help you can get to level 20 with in few hours of playing Morrowind and you have essential beaten the game because there's nothing left that will challenge you. In Fallout 3 at least you can still possibly die fighting enemies unlike Morrowind.




Anyway were going way off topic.

What? FO3 was basicly FO1+2+ tactics stories shoehorned together. With weak explanations that didn't really mesh with established canon thrown up to try and hide the gaping holes.

I played through the core FO3 game (I don't have any DLC's) I can safeely tell you that you have about 2 "real" choices for any given quest. That effect the ending. So in reality by your second playthrough you've seen and done everything there is to see. You certainly will see the same ending cutscenes over and over again.


Wow not changed? Not only does it not use the previous installments mechanics it doesn't have the same gameplay, art, or lore as the others. While yes, it does use the previous lore, it also adds things in that "streches it's truth" so to speak. For example, SM in D.C. If you go by the lore in previous game you know that FEV was in one place and was destroyed. However in FO3 now we are to al of a sudden believe that Vault tec, not west-tec where doing experiments too with FEV? See what I mean? they sorta first added in the enemies then thought up weak reasons that could barely hold up to lore to "excuse" there existance.


Oh, I'd say it was greatly tempered from previous games. Not only does it not have the same elements of six, drugs, desperation, and despare you see in the previous games, it's missing componets all together. IT also try too hard in some other cases. and is too generic in other places. Most definately in the C&C areas and dialogue. Quests are pretty black and white too.

Haha... I started typing a reply to that earlier today but I suddenly realized that I'd been fooled! (though unintentionally I suppose)
In fact what you are saying here is pretty much the point I was trying to make: Fallout is a special case since it changed substantially more than most sequels do.
My post where I claimed that series don't change so much usually, was a reply to a post that assumed that sequels as different from their predecessors as FO3 where commonplace.
But then somehow Ultima was mentioned and I got all confused arguing something completely off the point.
So we're actually pretty much on the same side here it seems

I'll just reply to a couple of little things just for the sake of it:

Fallout was not an example: it was the topic... (we are in the Fallout forums discussing Fallout after all)



Maybe I didn't, but what I did noticed is that none of those are RPGs (or at least action RPGs)
And in fact most of these genres have games that always keep the same em... premise(?)
I mean... I wouldn't expect a football game to have a sequel that would change the actual rules of the game or anything.



It's not nostalgia - it's that I haven't seen a good focused pure RPG made in the last years. NWN1 was the closest (the new one has this awful messy camera... I just can't bring myself to play it, same with Drakensang)
But I still have plenty of good games yet to play from the 'golden age' so I can hardly be nostalgic :shrug:
(and you never know, Dragon Age might be worthwhile -I still do have some trust in Bioware... at least they didn't name Mass Effect 'Baldur's Gate 3: the Space Years' or anything)

It is indeed, to an extent, a throwback to the main plot lines of previous games...most notably Fallout 2's main arc of dealing with the Enclave. However I find that aspect of the story in Fallout 3 to be more of an extension rather than a cheap copy/paste. The other aspect of the main storyline which involves the search for the PC's father and project purity was, while certainly not as deep as I would have hoped for, enough to stand on its own from Vault Dweller's single man war against the Master or Chosen One's plight to save his village.



This is true that in the original games (F-F2) there were more variations in the endings, particularly because they expanded more on each township's outcome as opposed to F3's more general overview ending. However while the voiced epilogues may be different, you only ever see one of 2 snapshots anyway so visually there is only 2 outcomes per city.

Nonetheless, I very much wish that F3 would have had more variety with choice and consequence as the previous ones did, or at least I would have been happy to have also have the game focus an ending on each one of the major locations of the game: Megaton, Rivet City, Paradise Falls, Big Town, Oasis, Little Lamplight, Underworld, Tenpenny Tower, Raven Rock, Canterbury Commons (Which should have been much bigger like the Hub of the original game to begin with imo).



Gameplay is radically different as has been discussed ad nauseum but I actually like this change.

Outside of other lore infringements I am not familiar with at the moment, the Capital Wasteland FEV experiments are explained in content which was cut from the final game (Sadly) which involves a researcher who was sent to Maripossa. Ausir found this log entry.



Also agreed, but I also have to argue that for the most part quests in the original games were black and white as well, save for 1 or 2 exceptions.

As far as F3 goes, the most morally ambiguous quest imo relates to the one in the Pitt and to this moment (While the game does divide between good karma and bad karma for it) I haven't a clue which is really the better decision.

It is really beyond me why did Bethesda bother to buy the franchise if they were to change it so much. The way I see it, the only justification for buying a franchise is to scoop the old fans, but the only thing they did was to alienate them by removing or toning down everything we liked in the original games in the first place. I understand that F3 wouldn't be as successful and profitable if they didn't most of the changes, if they didn't mainstream it so much. But they could have just made their own post-nuclear Oblivion, with no relation to Fallout, and be just as successful. And hopefully F3 would have been picked up by a more niche company which would have delivered what we old school fans wanted all along, Bethesda would have made their money (probably more since they wouldn't have the cost of purchasing the franchise), and the mainstream would have their straight-forward, hand-holding post-apocalyptic FPS.

IOW, since it's the mainstream audience they really care about, why the hell did they bother to acquire the rights to a NICHE franchise? I'd really like to know that.

I've played Morrowind, and I never encountered any of the problems you seem to have. A good deal of the reason is likely because I lose interest long before I reach level 20.

Regardless Oblivion and Fallout 3 still encourage power gaming much more than Morrowind ever did since they essentially take your points concerning power gaming with Morrowind and make them much easier to achieve.

You indeed haven't played much of Morrowind then if you truly believe this because everything I said you could do in Morrowind could be done in about 2-3 hrs of starting a new character. Someone a while ago even made a video he put on youtube were he started a new character beat Dagoth Ur with in 16 mintutes completeing the main quest. You can't beat the main quest or become powerful enought to survive through Raven Rock in 16 minutes of playing Fallout 3 so I seriously fail to see your point here with power gaming be easier to achieve in Fallout 3 also I fail to see how Fallout 3 encourages powergaming more than Morrowind.



Anyway we've gone completely off topic now. So if you really want to discuss this further for some reason let's take it to PMs.

As a Fallout Fan, I have to say that I welcome Fallout 3 with open arms and don't consider it 'Oblivion with Guns'. To say it's Oblivion with guns would be to say that it's of the same quality as Oblivion. But I feel it is all but glaringly obvious that Fallout 3 is much, MUCH better. The morality is more ambiguous, the difficulty is higher, the NPCs are much more interesting than Oblivion's or Morrowind's, the quests can't all be done through one playthrough, which adds to the replayability, a quality which is only available in the expansions for Oblivion, and even then, it's a minimal difference. Not to say that I hate Morrowind or Oblivion, I think it's just that Bethesda learned so much from making Oblivion that they ended up with the next game being greater than the sum of its parts.

Fallout 3 is currently my favorite game of the series. The change in perspective and combat, while a hard pill to swallow at first for many die-hard Fallout fans, proves to be more immersive. It allows for the situations you find yourself in to hit you harder, you have to be quicker on your feet (or fingers, rather), so it really places you in the role of the character. Not to mention that the big band music (although there were fewer tracks than I hoped), really drew the looks, feel, and sounds of the game together, it made the themes of survival more real, the hopeful golden era tunes emanating from the PIP-boy as you travel the depressing wasteland, creating a contrast that just IS Fallout.

Plotwise, I'd have to give it to Fallout 2, but overall, Fallout 3 is my current favorite. Here's hoping New Vegas will be just as great.

Was that ever a goal with the Fallout series? ~Ever at all?

I never once pretended to be the vault dweller ~and never wanted to. I was "immersed" in the world well enough, but never as though I were living in it, and that's something I liked about it. I'd have likely lost interest in them had they been done FPP. As for 'shoe-horning' me into a 19 year old kid (with no other option ~unlike the rest of the series), I consider it a decent game, but an "epic-fail" as a sequel (Its sad, but I bet that word will make into the dictionary within five years).



Side note... I am currently ? way through Prince of Persia "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y5H5X1VhJ4". Its a fantastic game with superb animations and details, and well done PC banter. I'd be interested to know if anyone who has played it (or any other in the series), ever pretended that they were the prince? I would be surprised to hear it. I play the game as an observer, guiding the Prince through the palace, using his abilities to scale the walls and ledges, and swing from the poles.

I think it was more than just an extent, I mean FO1 = Clean water, FO2 = Stop the Enclave's evil plan, Tactics = Main bad guy is a robot. IE What we have exactly in FO3. All they really did was make the Enclave more evil and the BoS Even more good so they have there black and white medievil good vs evil battle. Thats they can't seem to get past putting in there games. While yeah the previous fallouts had good and evil it also was plenty of grey for just about everything besides the mainquest.

So it really comes down to this in my mind:
Story, dialogue, C&C, and mechanics/gameplay take a big step back while the Graphics take a big step forward. To me it isn't worth it.

Even in first-person games I don't pretend to be the character...

BTW, play Beyond good & evil!! It got commercially killed by Sands of Time, but is better.

I don't disagree with you on this. (I've always roleplayed in "third person," myself.) But I think the obvious counter to this particular point is going to be that Fallout is an RPG; and Prince of Persia is not. (Prince of Persia rocks, though...)

Yeah, that's a close call for me, I think. But I do have to agree with that.

To be honest I find it confusing that people seem to insist on the word 'role' so much while they are actually give it a weird inappropriate meaning.
Really... does 'playing a role' means that you can freely choose any of a large number of different options?

If I was an actor and I was to play the role of, say... Othello, would I'd been given the choice to make my Othello blond and blue eyed? Would I be able to choose to play a pacifist Othello and let Desdemona go away with her life?

I'd imagine not.
As I see it, playing a role, means that I have only one possible choice in any given situation: to behave exactly as my character would.
In RPGs I get the extra little luxury of being able to choose & define the 'role' I wish to play... But once I do, I have to deal with the consequences.

Morrowind power gaming requires you to have specific knowledge about the game. In Fallout 3 and Oblivion (especially Fallout 3 with Broken Steel), you can become a God without even trying. Morrowind was at least difficult early on; Fallout 3 is a friggin joke when it comes to difficulty.