There are many design flaws in Oblivion that were not even touched in Fallout 3. The difficulty of the game is still absurdly easy, as well as a plethora of other things (Combat AI anyone?)



Yes, if Bethesda can continue to have commercial success while putting in little effort in the areas such as gameplay (Fallout 3's was pretty weak compared to RPGs of past), storyline and dialogue (both are weak and shoddy at best), etc. then they will continue to follow the same pattern. Why would they fix what is not broken?




And for those who like to have a "sandbox RPG where you can create your own story", there's this infinitely more flexible pen and paper game called Dungeons & Dragons.

Hmmm... Would it change anything had the game offered multiple choice dialogs that affected the path, and or companions? I still would not be pretending to be the prince. I think it boils down to two views... One camp Role-plays third person (regardless of view), and the other camp role-plays first person. The difference is in the meaning of the word to each. One side treats it as 'getting access to the abilities of the PC', while the other treats it as 'getting the ear of the PC' (IE. to suggest a course of action). Myself I consider the first to be more of an interactive simulation, and the latter to be IMO an RPG. Perhaps a distinction should be made considering that a person might pretend "role play" to be a fireman, or might pretend "role play" to be their dad the fireman (their dad who is afraid of rats and cannot swim).

*Edit: Oddly enough, Arx Fatalis does not come off as anything but an RPG (and its first person). But your PC has a pre-defined name, and fully voiced dialog that takes place third person (and sometimes FPP). Despite the FPP view, I never view it as me being the PC.



:foodndrink:

Imagine The Nameless one, in Planescape. You are given a definite past that has happened. You can decide his current incarnation's outlook on life, and attitudes towards others. As you do you begin to define his "role". Unless you are playing a Chaotic Neutral (IE. a nut), your PC should develop a set of beliefs that they generally adhere to. A benevolent PC will not find it acceptable to bully & betray the innocent, while the evil and conniving sort would not understand why you shouldn't. A PC that is not a thief at heart should not break into an NPC's house, and should not choose to loot their property. This means that yes you don't get to see what's in the pretty mansion unless invited.

When I play a game like Planescape or BG1&2, I shift from PC to PC and the attitudes that go with them. Imoen is a thief, she'll justify theft in her head, and I've often left the group downstairs at an Inn while I have Imoen sneak upstairs to see what she might find. Imoen is at it alone, and should she find trouble, she's on her own in the fight. It doesn't make sense to drag a lawful paladin along as protection on her midnight thieving adventure (even though I have that option). ~Ideally the paladin should protest, and eventually leave ~or pester the thief to abandon their ways [IE. consider changing class]. She might only share what she steals with PC's that would not refuse.

Of playing a "role", consider the Cleric PC sent to retrieve the parties reward, that returns round about by way of the church, after donating a bit (or all! ) of the reward money in the names of the saints & scoundrels he adventures with. Its not something the thief or mercenary would likely have done, but it could be in keeping with the "role" of a Priest ~or this priest, doubly so depending on their stats.

Personally I think RPG's should restrict possible actions based on Player alignment with option to break alignment with the consequential alignment change (Planescape does this somewhat). This would leverage a bit more control over things like ~like the Player beating Amata to death then accepting her help to escape through the tunnel. Its nuts that FO3 has a 1:1 karma system that tells you when you've done a good deed, or bad; And lets you make immediate amends and all is forgiven. FO3 does not have "Alignments", but the game should have kept an internal accounting and had the NPC's react to it.

Read the PM. Also if anyone else for some reason wants to keep talking about that let's take it to PMs okay.

I was one who bought FO3 because I liked FO2, and yes I was surprised how good it was and how worthy it was of the title Fallout 3, keeping all the essence of Fallout 2 and all the type of content that 2 had. Yes I like Fallout 3 with it's GOTY quality.




N0-no-no. The hardcoe description comes from way-back. A description of games (role-play) that were full of stats considerations and weaponry considerations that the player needed to take into account in developing a good playing character, a lot more than your run-of-the-mill RPG. A hardcoe player relishes getting stuck into weighing up all those stats and developing a character of their choice and judgement to get a challenging and more enjoyable game. Fallout is considered to be such a game.

And where are you getting "dismissal" of Fallout 3 from, it's only a minority few.

What exactly is it in FO3 that reminds you of FO2, and what are you common enjoyments?
Agreed ~quite.


A lot do; Though less from those that found FO3 first ~though there have been members here that learned of Fallout through FO3, then played the originals, then "understood" and mentioned in their posts.

For what other reason would one seek out a sequel?
~and that is the one reason I picked up the GECK as a hobby.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wf_2V7wLkI
The assets in FO3 are incredible, its only the gameplay that fails to live up to FO2
(though it lives up to and vastly improves on Tes4 ~Which was the surely the prime intent).

And you would be wrong to make this assumption. A role is not necessarily predefined by a set of established choices, in fact let's explore a bit and you will in fact find that roles are quite often reinterpreted in different ways from backstory to skin color to nationality to function within a previously established story.

You could very well make a blonde and blue eyes Othello who is a pacifist who lets Desdemona go away with her life. Why you ask? Because like it or not characters and stories are not static, they fluxuate constantly as different people interpret them. Why was the Kingpin black in the Daredevil movie? Why is Nick Fury a black man in the movieverse? Why is Professor Xavier english in the films instead of from the US like in the comics? Why did Watchmen get rid of the absurd flying spaghetti monster plot in favor of Dr. Manhattan's frame up? Why was the entire fundamental essence and message of the book I am Legend abandoned for ridiculous popcorn munching finales in 3 film adaptations? Why was every single character established in X-Men and its sequel ruined in the aberration that is X-Men: the Last Stand? Why was the Joker in TDK a chaotic methodical psycho versus some perverse meglomaniac? Why did Obsidian completely abandon the choices that players made in the original KotOR with a shallow masquerade of choosing Revan's six and alignment passing off as if it was considering everything that happened before into account to shape its own story when it most obviously did not? Why are there 3 different fates for the character of Achilles in Greek mythology, each with its own different set of variable circumstances?

These are just a couple of silly examples from the top of my head, I can list so many different interpretations from comics to books to movies to games that it would make your head spin. Reinterpretation is a constant when it comes to storytelling and the building of characters is never set in stone, as much as I wish some of them were.

Characters like people should be much more dynamic than the background the built them; although this has shaped the person they are up to this point in time, it by no means defines the person they will continue to be for the rest of their life. Otherwise good people wouldn't do bad things, people who did bad things could never find absolution and redemption, everyone would be exactly the same person they have always been until their death.

I most certainly agree with Gizmo's statement that any game, particularly RPGs not just Fallout 3, should have a deeper system which affects character's choices and consequences of such. But you often have to balance gameplay versus reality; if say I blew up Megaton in F3 and become a well known scourge for what I did and the entire group of "good" wastelanders went completely hostile to me then the devs would have had to implement a completely different game for me to be able to continue playing through quests that take me through good guys; basically you would have to have a unique reaction to every single action you take in the game by every character in the game and conitnue to react as you continue to act accordingly. So basically this new game would take 30 years to develop, require 6 DVDs for installation and your very own Skynet in order to run properlly.

Even in the original Fallouts you couldn't do the whole anything anytime trip, though there were certainly more pronounced examples of choice/consequence. In Fallout 2 I smacked around every kid in a town who steal my crap when I pass by them because it stops their stealing, no one in town gave a damn that I abused these children in plain sight of everyone in broad daylight. I killed the owner of the bar without repercussions from other members of the town, I rumage through people's houses and take their stuff without so much as a word from them and they're standing right there (Like 2 exceptions with this one such as the doctor that would kick me out of the house), I stole Power Armor from BoS base by looting the CO and trading with a tech for the armor and not one person questioned me when I walked around in it even though no one officially gave me a power armor, etc.

My point is that no game can emphasize moral systems with accurate precision which then is relfected properlly across the world, otherwise devs would have to implement magnificent acts opposite to your current karma in order to redeem or condemn yourself and continue quests. Also there would be no way to properlly role play certain character archtypes anyway as many wouldn't care about the quests that occur in the game to begin with.

@Gizmo: I seek out sequels to continue to be immersed in either a world I really love or to continue following the adventures/lives of characters who I have grown attached to. Specific gameplay mechanics is secondary as long as the sequels remain within the same genre as their predecessors. But this is just me :wacko:

It has been said (assumption/ guess/ rumor ??)... I've read that some believe that had Tim Cain had a blank check for Fallout's development, that he likely intended to allow the PC to continue the game after being dipped.

I dunno about the six DVD's (though that's just 1 DL blue-ray disc )
Games like Fallout worked hand in hand with the mind's ability to fill in the gaps. Being abstract has that advantage. FO3 fills in so much that what it does not ~Stands out like a smashed toe, and can't be overlooked. Being so defined has that disadvantage.

If given the choice between two 7GB games, where one used most of the space to hold video, voice & textures ~and presented a fantastic view of the sandboxed world, and the other used only 1/20th of the space for graphics, and the rest was interpretive AI code and text dialog for a state of the art Chat 'bot that keeps a database of all significant player actions and tempers the NPC's attitudes with it... where the world was Diablo 2 quality, but algorithmically generated per game like Dwarf fortress... Where breaking a dam floods a nearby town, and forgetting a landmine might cause a kid's funeral 6 weeks later, and you can accept the job to investigate it.....
I needn't tell you which one I'd prefer. A Fallout 3 like that would trump anything I've seen in 10 years, and should the developer wish to churn out DLC's and expansions... I might rarely buy another game from anyone else.

I am the complete opposite :shrug:, I buy a sequel for incremental improvement to the base game; new lands, new campaign, new twists with mechanics perhaps, but a new system doesn't qualify as a sequel to me. I have several forgotten realms games, and Warhammer 40k games, all remain within the same [respective] genre as their predecessors, and continue the setting. New threats, new characters ~old characters, new locations, new gameplay... but these are not sequels to one another in any way. Gameplay defines a game IP. There are exceptions ~namely character dependent IP's like Tombraider, Mario, and Duke Nukem; Such IP's are franchise games for simply having the character... regardless of gameplay (but Manhattan Project is hardly a sequel to Duke3D, and Lara Croft Dragracing would not be a TombRaider sequel).

Fallout, W40k, Most D&D games, and the like are not represented by a single character (or group... like the X-Men or Brotherhood of Steel).

Recent example of a sequel that changes gameplay = Divinity 2: Ego Draconis... first two games are Diablo-like dungeon crawlers (very great games, btw), most recent game is third-person over-the-shoulder game like The Witcher with a very flexible skill system. This gameplay change does not make it void as a sequel -- as the story from previous games is continued, old characters return & the same setting is explored again, but more thoroughly. I see Fallout 3 in the same light..

What kind of gameplay changes? I may have had one of those... Was it about two minds in one body? The one I remember seemed very BG/Planescape like in the graphics.

Haha! Your examples are fine and I would agree 100% with you: roles can (and it is often a good idea to) change.
Yet I have one crucial objection - so let me play with words a little:
what you're talking about is not playing a role, but rather (re)defining or (re)writing or maybe even choosing a role.
Playing a role is the job of the 'actor' while defining the role is the job of the writer and director.
If you're an actor and you're given Othello's script, if it says you have to kill Desdemona then you have to kill Desdemona.
And you can't just decide not to, in the middle of the play.
(You may be able to improvise in some cases - but that too should be allowed by the script and/or director...)


Let me also note that I'm not trying to give a definition of the term 'RPG' - Tags don't often have the mean the exact same thing as the words they consist of (ie 'Rock music' is not music made with rocks or music made for rocks(!) or anything like that)

+ RPGs usually allow the players to keep re-defining their 'role' throughout the course of the game (multiple dialog options, level-up choices etc.)
Playing a role as I 'defined' it begins when I have to 'survive' with the role I chose to play
i.e. If I pick a character that has abysmal small guns skill then I have to 'play the role' of someone that misses 9 times out of 10 when using a rifle.
Thus Fallout3 features less 'playing of a role' since it allows me to hit if I can aim straight regardless of my character's skill while I still have to aim straight even if my character's skill is 100%.
And I don't see that as 'playing a role' but rather as 'being myself' (heh... it's like Orson Welles not bothering to put on makeup when he played Othello! - well ok maybe it's not like that but I really wanted to say it )






And btw "absurd flying spaghetti monster plot"? The giant 'flying spaghetti monster' was holding the story together... it was a practical joke - so it was supposed to be 'funny', to have that 'What the f...!!' factor ... and they ruined it.

This is a fair enough explanation.

There is one wildcard given to actors when given a role however which may change a character's dialogue or on some very very rare occassions even something they do within the film and that is improvisation. Some actors such as Jack Nicholson are famous for improvising lines and even what they do in a scene, sometimes a bit different that what was on the page originally, however I realize that this isn't a standard practice.





I get your point and I agree with the fact that the translation of skill progression and improvement didn't fully occur into the first person perspective gameplay. Still F3's weapons have ridiculous spray at lower levels of small guns or what have you, so much so that there are tons of mods making F3's vanilla weapons more accurate. Similarly, in Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines I would miss with characters at point blank range because my guns skill was too low and while from an RPG perspective it might have been more true to the original isometric RPGs which rely on character skill, from my own perspective as a player it was just frustrating because it would take me out of the game. Of course this is part of the problem of being in FP view in the first place, no matter what kind of gameplay design you decide to feature you will have players that didn't like that choice because they wanted the other.

I know I will be in the very minority by saying this, but something I really liked about Oblivion was its skill progression system. I liked the fact that if I wanted my character to learn to shoot the bow better then I would have to actively use the bow and raise it little by little, the same for jumping, running, lockpicking, etc. Probably had they put this into F3 though the fans would have been even angrier :shrug:

Want to know a something strange? The best game to reflect choice and consequence that I have played isn't even an RPG but an adventure game, the old PC Blade Runner game. So far I've seen like 8 different endings reflecting the choices I made throughout the game. I love this game and wish there were more like it.



I get the point of the satire, I just didn't like it; kind of how the Scouring of the Shire didn't work for me in the Lord of the Rings. The movie's interpretation was much more to my personal tastes as it was more dramatic and somber, it impacted me more than when I read the graphic novel.

I was sad to say that the effect this had on me was more reminiscent, though not as bad as I did get the point of the FSM of Watchmen, of the ending of Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes. It wasn't a good WTF? (Like The Game's ending), it was a bad WTF? like seeing Return of the Jedi and having a bunch of Care Bears defeating a "Legion" of the Emperor's finest with slingshots and rocks

This one isn't actually originally from the movieverse, but based on the Ultimate Marvel universe, where the artists actually based Fury's appearance on Samuel L. Jackson's.



Because Patrick Stewart didn't want to fake an accent for the role and other than that he's perfect?

I read the first 2 pages of this post and decided to skip to the last couple of pages. Some How I get the vibe the argument was more concerned with it not being on the West Coast instead of the East Coast. I love story lines and I read a lot and no I do not mean some Wiki on this thing called the net. you know books? I'm not sure if many people have heard of them but they do exist. Any way.....I went through and read the FO Bible I got all 4 games including tactics. To Me I think Bethesda did a decent not good or excellent but decent job of connecting the games. I also went out and bought the FO pack. Ive played 1 and 2 and tactics to see what the cannon police was talking about.

Now before I give my view I would like to say you do not know what true turn based and roll/role........playing is until you have played D&D. I,m talking the original or a home made one where you make everything from the cards to the board. Setting up point system and applying the rules to dice....to which decided what happens what points and so forth. Hmmmm maybe that's where Roll/Role playing came from. Now after playing both 1 and 2 and Tactics. I was impressed with how much everything really did affect your chars abilities and so forth. Cut scenes reminded me of C&C "the original". However I still had some things I really thought killed the game.



1.The tribal thing went way..... to far. " The great pasture in the sky?" seriously?? was the DEV on drugs? oh yea must have been the Jet.

2.Dialog svcked to no end. to me it was more boring then anything in Tactics the first opening scene where you meet the village idiot er... elder they immediately agree to basically join the BOS.

3.The point system I think was way......out of balance. Which to any roll/role playing freak is half the game itself, sorry a spring fed BB gun? What you going to do shoot my eye out? Fo3 continued this lunacy.

My final thoughts are 1 and 2 was ok.... Tactics was better and Fo3 is just fine while in it self I think some holes need to be plugged before moving to Fo 4 or Vegas.

Overall I think FO3 has an unfinished quility about it. For example the Devs understood that diffrent dialog options based on things like stats are good, but forgot they are only good if it is more than just a diffrent way of saying the same thing and actually leads to multi branching dialog and soulitions. It is an issue that is plaguing a lot of modern games, by not closing branches off and allowing new ones to open and making everything accessable to all player reguardless of stats and character development, it takes away the ability to have a living world.

Would players be that upset that things they choose to do in one playthrough takes them down a diffrent path?

The insistance of adding hope and having so many up beat NPCs to me ruined the PA feel of the game.

And lastly there was no need toshoe horn in everything from FO1 and 2 I wish they had just made the east coast diffrent to the west with its on factions and so on.

... that remove much of the reality and realism of hitting moving targets. When trying to swing and point a weapon at somebody on top of you, it should be noted that the cross-hair is your eyeball point of view when looking at their heads, and not the gun-site's view.

Accuracy is also affected by your stance, crouching being more accurate than standing, along with other factors, and should be taken into account. Note also that not all guns have the same in-built accuracy, some guns are more accurate than others, just like in real life.



That last bit will get the canon police down on you!

I know where you're coming from Atredies, but I think I should mention a few things.

Video game sequels almost always build off of their predecessors, there are very few that change the gameplay to the level of Fallout 3 and are not labeled as "spin offs". To clarify what I'm getting at here I think it's important that I mention a likely surprising fact about my opinion on Fallout as a whole: before Fallout 3 I wouldn't have even called myself a Fallout fan. I bought the dual jewel case pack Interplay released in their final days because I heard good things about it. I played them, I liked them, but I never really got into them on the same level as some other folks because the whole Post Apocalyptic setting never really interested me. I didn't really start to appreciate Fallout 1/2 until after I played Fallout 3.

Now why should you care about all of this you ask; well my point was that even as someone who was only slightly interested in Fallout prior to Fallout 3 I thought it was ridiculous that Bethesda was changing the gameplay mechanics completely. You see, the thing is that you view video game sequels in the same light as book sequels, or film sequels. Book sequels and film sequels work with your philosophy because books and movies are all about story, setting and characters. Video games however, are not just about story, setting and characters; those things are just fluff and flavor material to make the experience more interesting. Even in RPGs story, setting and characters are just window dressing; the core component of a game is the actual gameplay and thus if a sequel doesn't resemble its predecessors at all from that perspective then it's not a genuine sequel.

I do not, and never will see Fallout 3 and any future Bethesda Fallout as a genuine sequels because they do not fit my philosophy for what video game sequels should be; which also happens to be the same philosophy of most developers and publishers in the video game industry. Bethesda can try to sell their Fallout games off as sequels as much as they like, but even if they legally hold the license they didn't create Fallout, Interplay/Black Isle did, and it's Interplay/Black Isle who set the standard for what a Fallout game should be... not Bethesda.

this needs to be locked it just seems like one long argument i think we've answered the guys question by now.

Try mentioning something like that on the BioWare forums. :foodndrink:

The essence of the game, the canon (general rule and principle of which something is judged :dictionary) of Fallout, note the word general.
As I remember Fallout 2, great though it was, at the time, Fallout 3 surpasses it. I would not want to revisit 2.
And as for Fallout 3 improving on Tes4, I'm afraid you are mixing your canons up - Fallout 3 is canon to Fallout 2, Fallout 3 is not canon to Oblivion (that thought would need some immersion therapy).

The skill system used in TES is one of my favorite too - and especially because if fits the general philosophy of the series perfectly (the you-can-do-whatever-you-want thing). And in fact I also think that FO3 would benefit substantially from an equivalent system (the SPECIAL as used in it feels to me week and a bit forced or 'foreign' to the game)... Of course that would be dropping all pretense that it is a FO1/2 sequel as only the setting would remain... but yet, I believe I, at least, would have enjoyed the game a bit more.
BTW have you played earlier TES games? I believe the skill system in Oblivion is in fact severely weakened by the addition of 'perks' and strict limitations that, although they do make sense they go against TESs traditional 'no limits' spirit.


Very true. Yet the annoyance begins when you have supporters of each side throwing around pointless arguments such as "that choice is old and unpopular" and "you're fanatical crazies" and claiming they're being 'bashed' when the opposite opinion is expressed. In this case there are thankfully the few FO3 supporters, such as yourself, that are willing to take "the other side's" opinion into careful consideration and present coherent and eloquent arguments that I can't but respect - which is what makes such discussions a pleasant work break for me :foodndrink:





Very interesting and maybe quite 'extreme' opinion that I expect it'd be highly controversial.
The truth is I agree with that 100% and I actually wonder how many other people do.

I more than respect that Talonfire though I disagree. There was a recent "expose" (Fancy word for article lol!) on Gamespot on using video games as a medium for storytelling; the impact of this, how it has changed and evolved over the years, if it really is a medium to accomplish this at all?

You are absolutely right in your observation of how I judge sequels, although as far as game sequels go I do want proper sequels to be in the same genre as its predecessors, I just am not as bothered by changing core gameplay mechanics as you noted.

I think video games are prefect platforms for rich storytelling, terrific characters, perhaps even more than movies to the extent that you can provide various outcomes both for the overall story as well as for individual characters or specific plots. Also games have the capacity to be much longer and contain higher amount of detail so in essence I could play a game based on a book and have it be much more closer to the book than seeing a film adaptation. I think any form of art is apt to tell stories: be it books, games, movies, sculptures, paintings or poems, etc.

The aspect which always drew me to RPGs from the beginning was the fact that the RPG genre was the one which actually crafted intricate storylines and deeper characters, it is what makes me want to play RPGs more than anything else. I understand however that other players like other aspects of RPGs such as d20 systems, character based gameplay, etc.

Personally I enjoy games in the form of an interactive movie or story, it is I who am living these experiences through the character's eyes. As you said very well, a different philosophy to gaming than yours

I also don't see Fallout 3 as a true sequel even from my own viewpoint, as it doesn't take place in the same setting as the originals nor does it continue the legacy of previous protagonists. I only see Fallout 3 as a sequel in the sense that it is a canon continuation of the events that exist in the timeline and in game terms a reintroduction of the series with a new style of gameplay.



Yes I have and finished Morrowind and all of its expansions (I bought the GOTY edition a month before Oblivion was released in order to get to know the world and lore because I was planning on buying Oblivion but never played a TES game before). Oh and I have to say this every time I mention or see the name of Morrowind anywhere: DAMN YOU Cliff Racers!!!!! :swear: :ahhh:

I know what you mean about the system change, but it's kind off damned if you do and damned if you don't, when it comes to making changes in gameplay. It's a tough act to follow up a previsouly established franchise such as Fallout because the expectations of fans will always clash with whatever design changes are made for whatever reason.



Thank you so much, I really enjoy offering these exchanges with vets such as Gizmo, Ausir, nu_clear, Talonfire, yourself and others. While we don't see eye to eye on our opinions, I think this is in fact a good thing. God can you imagine if everyone was a little robot like Orson Wells' 1984 and liked and did only the exact same things always :wacko:

I always value the input of any gamer and learn a lot about things which might have escaped my own tiny attention span. Funny enough I was like Talonfire, I wasn't even interested in Fallout 3 when I saw the vids for it because I have never liked the post apocalyptic setting but when I tried it I became enamoured with the lore, the places and the characters...so much so that it made me purchase Fallout Trilogy which I never even wanted to play before. The result? I love all the Fallout games each for what they bring :fallout: Well...except BoS...that one doesn't exist...nope, never did...



Yes I know that Sam Jackson was the basis for Ultimate Nick Fury, I only meant to dislplay how a previsouly established character could be changed into something different; same thing with Stewart whom I agree was perfect for the role...sorry my examples were meant to be rhetorical in nature

Storytelling in video games is another topic entirely, and it seems I gave the wrong impression in my post. Just to clarify something I have no problem with deep story telling in video games (Planescape: Torment is one of my all time favorites).

Hah.

Hahahah.

Do you mean you don't like sport games, or sport as in real life?

What exactly is that supposed to mean?