FO was a very good looking game for it's time, 'specially the 2nd. The talking heads were cutting edge, man. Only FMVs were better. Anyway, there's nothing wrong with them, they've aged nicely and the patches provide a flawless experience. Beth has already made an average spin off, no need for them to taint the old 'uns.

Sigh, darn kids and their darn 3-d graphics...

Now there's nothing wrong with having an extra dimention, it just shouldn't be used as a compromise for mediocre gameplay I've always imagined being able to run through the Fallout wasteland in a 3D interactive environment, and travelling the wasteland in FO3 does have that initial breath-taking factor. It's just a shame the game itself wasn't upto scratch.

But no, I don't think a gamebryo representation would bring something to us 'old-timers' (I'm 21 dammit), it would be reaching out to the new generation of gamers, that's where the money's at afterall.

What i'd really want is this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzYmQyHl2bc

And not by Bethesda 'cause right now, they seem to employ the least talented people in the industry.

Daggerfall's Beth is a whole 'nother story..

I was waiting for that pop up here.

Yeah, if I had my druthers I'd rather see a completed Van Buren than a remake of the original games. (Though it doesn't sound like either is terribly likely as a realistic proposition.)

QFT! Quite simply.

While i agree, you do know this isn't vb , huh? You probably do.

Fallout was released in 1997, the same year as several of the first full 3D games like Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, and of course there was Quake which came out a year earlier. Perhaps they're not as "advanced" as what is out today, but full 3D was very much a reality when Fallout was released even if it was still in its infant stages. The 2D isometric view was likely a design choice on Black Isle's part, and I don't see why this bothers some people.

This feels like a new BOS...

Now that's just mean.

Maybe for the same reason FP/RT bothers some people?

Even back then I preferred the first person point of view, even if it was 2D like the Gold Box games.

Indeed.
There is also a tremendous similarity to the game before it (Oblivion)...



I would say that the Heads in http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/heads.jpg and http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/GHOULS.jpg. They have more style & character (even if they have less animation frames). That said, I love the art in FO3, I absolutely love the feral ghouls, and "Glowing ones" [And DeathClaws too]... But I don't understand why they chose not to use a more detached dialog interface, but with vastly enhanced NPC heads (in somewhat the same ratio as FO1 had with the combat sprites and their dialog heads).

I agree they did they job, but you realize that the job was to be classed archetypal generic (and still cool). They had to be reused, so they had to be of an appearance that was so "classic" that the same "bum" sprite in one town could reasonably pass for a different bum in another (in the same way as a grunt SpaceMarine in Warhammer looks like any other) ~too much detail and its clearly the same guy, perhaps with the same scars. ~I think the artists did an incredibly good job with the details (and under harsh limitations too).


Agreed.

Well, I'm personally not of the opinion that the talking heads from the originals really hold up all that well to modern standards (they have that sort of "claymation" effect that was common of FMV at the time, I was just never a fan of that.) Though, looking back I do agree there was a bit more "character" to them than you often see in Fallout 3. (All faces in F3 are created with FaceGen - while it's a lot of fun to mess around with and you can get a nice consistency with it; you just don't have that individuality you can get with making them from the ground up.)

That said, I'm not really sure how much added value you'd get with implementing higher-res talking heads for the main characters. For starters, I don't think most players beyond fans of the originals would have understood why they were doing that; I don't think most people would really notice that much of a difference. The whole "zoom in to the NPC you're talking to" is a pretty standard and natural interface for a game like this - it could have been done differently, but I'd have to see it in action to be able to really say if it was such a better choice.

Not to mention that the "talking head" characters would have had one head for when you see them out in the world, and another one that they change into when you talk to them. It worked really well in the originals, but no one had any other head for you to look at. With F3 when you're exploring in first/third-person, it might be a bit jarring to talk to most NPCs in a certain way, and then to see something different when you talk to the main NPCs. I mean, for better or worse, every NPC you talk to in F3 already is a "talking head" of sorts.

I think possibly a good compromise might simply be more of a focus on the animations of the main NPCs when you're talking to them. One thing I do sort of miss from the originals is how you could affect their mood through dialogue choices and see that visibly represented on the NPC. Just adding that might be a good step in the right direction. Most NPCs seem to use pretty stock animations that are shared over all models (idle animations, etc.) If the main NPCs had more individual animations, maybe if they were rigged in a more complex manner than other models, you might get a lot of the same effect from the original games.

You could probably even get away with having the faces of the more important NPCs built by hand rather than with FaceGen to give a bit more character to them - it likely wouldn't result in any more polys for the game to render, and if done correctly wouldn't look out of place in comparison to the other models - they'd just stand out a bit more.

That's to be expected though... The Heads in Fallout were sculpted in clay, then digitized, and animated with a 3d modeler.

That's a problem... Its those little details that make a thing special ~Regardless of whether most don't perceive them.

IMO its worse, but the better alternative just would not fit the design of their game. (This is somewhat remedied in that Megaton Settlers don't engage in close up conversation ~Which is good enough I suppose).

This is what I meant, and exactly what I miss.

This is also close to my meaning... The head models could have had another http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_detail_(programming) for extreme close-ups and a more refined set of animations for their main NPC's.

Fallout 1's graphics aren't that bad, to be honest. In regards to quality, I'd say it's on Starcraft level, but the talking heads and beautifully-done gore animations are what make it so memorable.

Also, does anybody else think Fallout 1's talking heads were prettier than Fallout 2's?

I'd go so far as to say that I prefer the gore animations from the originals, even as fun as it was to blow limbs of people in F3. There was just greater variety in the originals (I loved blowing chunks out of people or riddling them with bullets. Obviously, it's a little harder to do that in real-time 3D, but I do miss that. All you ever really do in F3 is blow limbs off regardless of what you shoot them with, as fun as that is to watch.

For the next iteration, I hope they continue to improve on that aspect.

I wouldn't buy it. I already have the originals and see no point in buying them again only to see the landmarks in first-person 3D. And I have large doubts that Bethesda would not touch the original's SPECIAL or any other aspects.

I find Fallout's 2D Graphics to be very, very good. Not the best I've seen yet, but one of the best.

What if a fan of those old games were to build a mod (total conversion, really) for F3, that faithfully recreated the locations, lore, story, and other non-mechanics elements of F1 and F2, expanding upon the old content only insofar as the new mechanics indicated as necessary (hackable computers, for example) ...? What would you think, then? Presuming that such a thing even could legally be sold ... would you buy that sort of "update" ...?

They're both ripe for psp and DS ports

You're kidding, right?

Of all the classic psuedo-ported PC games on DS, they've all been piss poor in execution.

Worms: Open Warefare is a perfect example. The game shouldn't be very complicated or demanding, but gameplay is painful at best. You'd think the DS's touch screen would further enhance the experience, but that too is completely nerfed.

Fallout would be practically unplayable as a handheld port. And I can't imagine what laughable workaround system the PSP would have for a point and click interface.

An important point people need to remember is that Fallout and Fallout 2 had much larger game worlds. The capital wasteland is about the size of four Fallout 1/2 world map squares at most. Unless Bethesda pulled an Assassin's Creed by making locations unrealistically close together (which admittedly they did in Fallout 3), then it just wouldn't work.

Most of the F1 and F2 gameworlds was empty, though. A LITTLE condensing wouldn't hurt too much - and I wonder if the size of the Capital Wasteland is an engine limitation ... or a matter of the developers simply not wanting to try and CREATE enough minor places to fill in a much larger area.

It's that way because its hard to make a sandbox any other way and...they just make sandbox games. But I'm sure they'll come up with BS vision reply, if they were pressed, heh.

Dude, you can't have a turned-based first person game. You need the overhead view otherwise the gameplay will be completely changed and it will svck.

You could very easily have the exploration bits in first/third-person, shifting to a free-cam once combat is engaged.