The exploding heads, mini-nukes and all that "omg kewl sh1t" stuff probably truly only accounts for a small amount of the fans of the game. At least I hope so. Would svck if this game's fanbase has morphed into a bunch of sploshun lovin' rednecks. You can have a SPECIAL that's unforgiving, and meaningful, you can have a variety of premade characters for players to choose that represent a play archetype and make sure the SPECIAL is explained. Mind you, I dunno how SPECIAL could be off putting for anyone. A longer main quest would probably go over well with the console crowd - I've seen [censored]ing about the quests length.

They could easily make a game that appeals to the "NMA crowd" (heh, there you go again..) and the console folk. It might have taken work though.

I think there must be more than one NMA because I've never seen anybody making such a claim as an entire website. Not only that but I've not seen any single person (who wasn't made to look a fool by the community) even at the Codex make such a silly claim. All I see are disappointed Fallout traditionalists.

(Oh I do so like my newly-inspired turn of phrase.)

Yet they didn't. It's not because they are stupid, you know, no matter how popular that argument might be in some quarters.

I've always gone with lazy. Or just think we're all morons that are terrified by having to think a bit in the game. I'll have to check with the local NMA Chapter Master though.

Do you honestly think that?

Well if I didn't would I have written it down ? Well, maybe not the part of about the audience being stupid - I do feel that some underestimating went on, re: SPECIAL, some of the dialogue. There was a lot they could have done, and should have, but for some reason just didn't - see the Gauss Rifle issue, heh.

I keep telling you why they didn't.

Now I'm done with that, at least for now.

Well if you're actually correct, then my opinion of them is far lower than it is right now. A lot of the things wouldn't make an impact on their precious revenue. Would be an interesting poll though, to see how many would be negatively influenced by those changes to the game. You claim the console people would be turned off by that, I think that most wouldn't give two bits.

Care to put up 50 million on what you THINK?

In that scenario ? I would. My thinking that isn't just hand-waving, it's an educated guess given on what I see of you TES fans all over this board. You seem to be alongside with Bethesda in believing that console gamers are this complexity-averse hicks that'd turn away from a game because it had dialogue that required them to pay a modicum of attention and a SPECIAL system that again requires a little bit of attention. Neither of those has to present an obstacle to this "console gamer" anyway, the dialogue system can have a default option for the lazy, and the SPECIAL can, in character creation anyway, accommodate with premade characters that allow the user to choose for an archetype he wants. And in any event, EVEN IF a fan is repulsed by this perceived difficulty or will whine to the almighty Internet about the game because its "hard"- maybe an RPG isn't for that player.

That poll would be interesting to run. Course who would vote truthfully that they're turned off by dialogue, heh.

That sounds more like YOUR argument than mine, or BETH's for tat matter.. OMG, they DUMMIED down the game for consoles, IMMERSHUN, Sploding, BFG NUKZORS....stuff like this is all over NMA and in your posts as well....Bnet kiddies don't want to read...too lazy to play PROPERLY, are inferior to our mighty fallout playing SKILLZ!. Makes me want to barf, and it has since Beth purchased this franchise.

Don't pull your Limbaughesque propaganda technique of accusing me of the argument YOU MAKE.

Now, I'm really out.

Well at least you didn't compare to me to Goebbels. I have actually been saying that the console gamer ISN'T some sort of borderline retard, here and in the other thread. Your response was that it was a market decision and seemed to imply that strong SPECIAL, rich dialogue would somehow damage sales on the consoles hence the binary choice in appealing to the "hardcoe" fans and the console gamers, if you could somehow generalize amongst those two groups.

Hmmn, isn't that true though? Hasn't the game been dumbed down to some extent? When you emphasize graphics, gameplay/fun/, freeform exploration over solid dialogue, compelling main quest and a believable world, aren't you runnin the risk of making you game less, sophisticated, so to speak?

I mean, Duke Nukem was a dumb game. It was as dumb as they come. And I loved it. Every single bit of it. I own the whole collection of Duke Nukems, except Forever for obvious reasons. Fallout 2 was dumbed down in my opinion, with all the pop references and breaking the fourth wall. Yet, I enjoyed that, in particular because the game made for it where I crave for quality, mainly the points on the above paragraph.

Has the game been dumbed down on purpose? Was it laziness? Was it different standards in today's market? Underestimation of what the old guard wanted? I believe its a combination of all of them.

So far, this discussion has took the unhealthy direction of another NMA vs Beth fan debate, which is not what I want. Nobody has actually attempted to refute any of negative the points I have made, and many consider it nitpicking. Hell, if you say im nitpicking then you are basically agreeing that my points are valid yet it either does not body you or you don't care enough to consider it a problem. I don't personally hate Beth, I just hope they can take onboard the criticism as much as they take the praise to improve their next Fallout game. A lot of old guard fans are disapointed however, because, given the 'success' of Fallout 3, they will be little inclined to change what they consider a winning formula.

My three biggest gripes with the game are my last three points, the rest im willing to overlook as I did with previous games of the series, which also had their problems, as long as they compensate where it matters. With Beth's deep pockets, I don't see how hiring writters, which would eliminate the problem of both lousy dialogue and main quest, and making the game more belieavable would be a problem for them. They already have the voice actors to simply read out better dialogues (should they chose to do that) and as to verisimilitude, heck, I just showed above its not too hard to do. The previous two games did it very well. Beth has little excuse not to have done it for Fallout 3, and even less to continue their mistake in future releases.

Of course the game has been made LESS COMPLEX, because that is what the current market is buying these days, like it or not. Successful companies serve market demand. Fact is, we RPG players always did represent a small percentage of the game market, and we still do. Now it's even worse because the console market is now larger than the PC market.

The argument I've been here, and in the other thread which is almost exactly like this one, is that no matter how disappointing FO3 might be, there is a reason why, and that reason is economic. FO4 may be incrementally better, but don't expect it to be any closer to FO1.

You can read my post in the other thread if you eant mor business slant.

Your posts are an enjoyable read.

I found after playing the previous Fallout games and really enjoying them, is that I had certain expectations and hopes on what the next one in the series would be. But then Fallout faded from memory as no true sequel was released. The when I heard Bethesda were producing the next in the series I had new expectations and they changed due to the time delay, the current market of games and the new developer. My hopes for the game changed little.

After looking at screen shots and then watching the trailers I can say the game is what I expected, I have no problem with it as a Fallout game and I like it a lot. I was hoping though for something else, something new. I would have liked a lot less fighting random raiders/mutants/creatures but a world that gave a pretty good representation of a post apocalyptic world. I don't think Fallout 3 is anything close to that and hopefully I'll never get to truly finding out.

I love Sci-Fi movies and books; especially the older ones where the focus is less on special effects, battles and intense emotions but worlds in which you can believe and imagine yourself in. I'm really enjoying reading H. G. Wells books at the moment, I find his descriptions bring to life his story and play well to the imagination. Fallout 3 though, doesn't spark the imagination as Fallout 1 and 2 did and it doesn't create a world in which I believe could even be possible.

I hope their are some modders who share this desire and modify the game to have 1/4 the opponents but work on building a stable and believable fantasy world. A start would be a living tree or two

I did do that the other day, read nearly every article.

Well, asking for everything would have been nitpicking. Asking for what has already been included in previous games and that was essential to make it believable is a reasonable demand. So I draw the line where the woorld broadly makes sense; where settlements do not simply enjoy an underpopulated, static relationship, but a dnamic and realistic relationship. For me that would have been enough.

I disagree it would have taken ages to make. Fallout 2 was done in a year. Fallout 3 had four years of development. There is really no excuse.



Can you direct me to it please?

Thanks.



Thanks. It could have been worse, I mean, Fallout Tactics, which I actually enjoyed, wasn't all it was meant to be, and Brotherhood of Steel was just pathetic. But I would have expected more from the true sequel to the series, especially where writing is concerned, as that was the trademark of the series.

Reading is definitely an enjoyable experience. I hope to read H.P Lovecraft's fiction soon enough if I have the chance. Some creepy stuff there.

Nice post, I think I agreed with most of this, I'll just respond to a couple points of interest here.

I think you have a point, here. This is a missed opportunity on Bethesda's part, I think. We're dealing with a very harsh and unforgiving world - one element that would have gone a long way towards driving this point home would have been some more complicated factions than "Good Guys vs. Bad Guys." That's something I very much liked in Fallout 2, for example, was that no one was really all that "good." You can sort of choose to support NCR, or Vault City - yet neither of them exactly represent the paragon of ultimate virtue. Most of the moral choices in Fallout 3 are very clear-cut, and the main conflict in this game is sort of a symptom of this design philosophy on their part.

Yeah, I liked them at first - I thought it was very creepy and decidedly in keeping with the atmosphere the first time I went to Super-Duper Mart and saw all the dead bodies draqed around, etc. But it would have been nice if they weren't ALL essentially Bethesda's take on Firefly's Reavers. I mean, I appreciate a nod to my favorite TV series as much as anyone, but it would have been nice to have some variety. If all the Raiders were going to be like that, then maybe some Gangs would have been nice to see.

I didn't have a problem with the Feral Ghouls, myself. They're more numerous than they were in the original games, but they serve a useful enough role in the game, I thought. (And it really creeped me out at times hearing them scampering around in the dark.) That's kind of a subjective thing, though - you either like them or you don't and it's hard to objectively discuss whether or not they work in the game.

I kind of feel the same way about the Family, as well. Personally, I rather enjoyed that quest. I'd heard about it ahead of time, but I thought it was interesting seeing it all play; and it wasn't what I was expecting. For one, they're aren't Vampires, but Cannibals trying to live by a strict (though admittedly not very clearly defined) moral code. Contrast them with the residents of Andale, and I think you can see some of the reason why they're different. And frankly, in a world where food is supposed to be so scarce, there really is some qualification for seeing something like this happen.

Also, I think the Arefu Quest also represents one of the few times where there actually is is some moral grey areas with resolving the issues. Sure, they're certainly not anything close to what I'd consider "good people," but they can provide a much-needed service to the residents of Arefu. Again, it's a pretty subjective thing, though. To each their own.

I think it makes sense given the setting, at least. I mean, one very valuable resource with all these isolated communities is going to be news of the outside world. I think it makes sense that one thing every town has is a working ham radio to keep in contact with the outside world. If you look at any pre-industrial society, before mass communication, anyone who travelled from town to town (merchants, the Pony Express, Travelling Minstrels and Entertainers) were valued not only for the products they peddled, but also the news they might bring of what's going on in the world. (But yeah, it did seem a little odd that people were thinking the Enclave Radio was a recording when it's talking about events from after the war.)

That's a good point that I hadn't really noticed. Yeah, there seems to be a booming business in slavery, as evidenced by Paradise Falls. But it does seem odd that there'd be enough demand for you to see Slavers at all - when absolutely no one in the area makes use of them. Kind of a one-way business deal, isn't?

Step 1: Collect Slaves
Step 2: ?
Step 3: Profit!!!

It is starting to push things a bit, I think. Fallout 2 got away with advancing things more because it actually did show some advancement in the region, something of a rebuilding effort as compared to the status in Fallout 1. Fallout 3 is even further in the future, and yet things still aren't any better. I sort of rationalize this in my own mind by thinking that we are dealing with a much smaller area this time around, and that fighting in the area looks to have much heavier than you had in California. It's a very highly contested spot, and no one faction has been able to gain enough of a foot-hold to really establish dominance and clean the place up.

Yeah, this could have used a bit more work, I think. Really, just a bit more thought in how things are working out for the various settlements. In Fallout 2, especially, you had a sense of the interconnectedness of the settlements in the Wasteland. Each place relying on each other for something important, for example. You don't really see any of that in Fallout 3, which would have gone a long way to explaining how these places are able to survive at all.

No arguments, there.

I do think it came out a bit too disjointed many times. My biggest gripe about the MQ is that the events just don't lead themselves naturally to each other as much as I'd like. It felt more like a number of vignettes that started out as neat ideas and then were stapled together to make a story. You have to die at the end, because they decided they wanted you to - not as a direct result of a number of insurmountable events, or a natural growth of the underlying themes.

In short, the main theme of the ending of the game is actually about sacrifice. And yet that's not a recurring theme throughout the whole of the game. It's foreshadowed with Father in an abrupt and in-your-face manner, but that's about it. This should have ideally been a theme you dealt with through the whole game instead of something that was just forced into the game.

I rather like the Main Quest, in concept. It's the execution I wasn't terribly impressed with. If Project Purity is frakking important, then every opportunity should have been taken to show me, instead of making me rely on believing it just because my Dad said so, or because you see some bums sitting outside of the settlements. (They didn't do too bad, here, really. But it's another thing that should have run through the whole game, so there was no doubt as to how important your mission was.)

You know, I was going to comment on this - but then realized that I probably have no idea what you mean by "die-hard Fallout fans". For all I know, the definition might include the requirement that they are disappointed in Fallout 3. Anyways, I would just like to take issue with the statement about "nearly all of the websites dedicated to gaming who have no purpose or gain from advertising who've basically panned Fallout 3 worse than (you) have". I think your assessment of that is way off the mark. I've been following then NMA Fallout review round-ups sporadically, and the've covered hundreds of reviews - with a very large fraction being significantly more positive than anything I've ever seen from you. Unless, of course, I'm misinterpreting "nearly all" or "worse".

I lol'ed. Good points, guys. I actually never even thought of that.



You're right, that was a bit of hyperbole. Most of the sites I trust though, like Brainy Gamer, 20-Sided and The Escapist, are filled with people from the golden era of PC gaming and don't pull their punches. I put much more faith in them than somebody like Gamespy. But even IGN (if I'm remembering correctly) were harping on the shoddy dialog and voice acting.

I think much of what happened for the reviews to look like they were positive was the lack of any decent competition in the RPG genre in the past few years. Many reviews I read admitted as much. Also, many of those positive reviews were made by people with little to no experience with the original games...which I take with a very large grain of salt.

Umm, I don't know if you noticed but your first "The Bad" point about the Megaton Crater was refuted http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?act=findpost&pid=13.

How do Vault 106 and 108 still have survivors? SPOILER!!! Well there is that one guy. You know the one, in the labcoat - some sort of scientist type - possibly some sort of leader. Did you also notice that the remaining Insane Survivors don't attack one another - they kinda work together, almost like an organized group. I dunno, maybe the handful of holdouts figured something out. As for Gary, who knows how the cloning Vats were set-up. Perhaps every twenty or thirty years, a new batch of Garys is "born" or maybe it's due to Magic! Seems to me like much less of a jump than a town filled with Robert Service references.

I could go on. Your next point about "Size of Settlements" is something I feel FO3 did really well (because they contribut to the characterization of the Game World - because it's internally consistent for those settlements to be tiny - and because all of that is basically the story being told in FO3) but I'm sure no one wants to hear me break out the purple prose again.

Well, does this mean that I should assume that whenever you talk about "90%" of anything, that you are "exaggerating" or engaging in hyperbole?

NMA did a great job with that Fallout 3 Review Round-up (last I checked they were closing in on number 100!) - they clearly were not cherry picking bad reviews, because there are so many good ones linked. But let's look at the people you singled out as sites you trust. Brainy Gamer obviously has issues with FO3, but at the same time, his review was significantly more positive than anything I've seen you say. 20-Sided Tale? Some very strong criticism there - quite well reasoned. But Escapist? You know that Yahtzee gave Fallout 3 a rating of Branston Pickle. I don't think the scale goes higher than that.

Edit: typo, also here's http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2008/11/fable-2-and-fallout-3.html.
Long review shortened: Fallout 3 is amazing. Brainy Gamer prefers Fable 2 even though he concedes Fallout 3 is the better game. Money quote for the "Should have been more like previous Fallouts" crew:


I guess you trust him enough to cite him, but not to believe him.

Edit #2: Just noticed your new .sig line. Did you know that there's a follow-up to that post?
http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2008/11/plausible-post-apocalyptic-fairy-tale.html, because it specifically addresses your contention that people who liked FO1/FO2 are generally disappointed with FO3. Because they aren't.

Dude, I couldn't care less what you assume when you read my posts. My life doesn't revolve around what some invisible bloke on the interwebs thinks about my posts. Use your head and make your own decisions about what I write. I'm tired of spelling things out for you only to have you twist them up into confused nuggets of annoyance.



Oh, totally. You must be referring to that Fallout 3 review I wrote. Oh wait...I never wrote a review for Fallout 3. I'm here, as I've gone over with you before, to discuss the things which bother me and I'd expect to be better next time around...NOT to talk about "Which gun is coolist lol". If there is one review that mirrors my thoughts very closely it's the Game Banshee review. As for Yahtzee, he also critiques the game in the same areas I do. He says Bethesda spread the pickle too thin, if you want to be specific and basically says "yeah, it's still Branston" which amounts to the same sentiment that "Yeah, I guess it's good and there's no real competition." Actually, he literally says "Yeah, it's pretty good" which is basically what I feel. Don't forget your aversion to criticism, Waster. God forbid somebody who likes something still has criticisms. I know how hard you work on Fallout 3 fandom, but give it a rest buddy.

Is what you're referring to, guessing by the forum code. And...how is that refuting his point that the crater shouldn't be ? Granted the bomb shouldn't be intact due the that crater size but, I guess it fits with 1950's...cartoons. I'm shocked that you think small settlements is something FO3 did really well. We've been over this, but 200 years after and the people still haven't come anywhere close to Shady Sands or Adytum or any of the other places out west (I bet the DLC locations will be likewise filled with 'grimdark'). While also a disappointment in the reality of the game world, it also reduced the opportunities for some interesting stories. But oh well, half of you seem content to wander around finding phat lewt and playing dollhouse.

Playing Dollhouse and collecting Phat Lewts - that's exactly why I play Fallout 3. (insert eye-rolling smiley)

First, I was pointing out that his very first "The Bad" point about FO3 had some of it's facts wrong, and that even after someone specifically pointed out that he was wrong - and gave an in-game citation for it, he went on to claim that noe one was addressing his points. If perhaps he stuck an edit into the OP stating that he was wrong about this - that would make my comment seem much less relevant. Still, I have no idea what was at the site when the bomb hit. Perhaps the majority of the "crater" was a pre-existing natural feature - the bomb impacted the bottom of a ravine for example.

Second - yes I think the small settlements make sense. A while ago, I gave what I believed was a plausible timeline for the development of the Capital Wasteland. Having talked with Lucas Simms a dozen times in the past few days, I know that Megaton is only "a few decades old". I know that Rivet City was founded not much before your character's birth. Roughly the same time Owyn Lyons came out east. Next time I'm in Underworld, I'm going to spend more time chatting up Carol and friends to get some more background - but the gist of it is that from shortly after The Great War to a few decades before the game takes place (probably around a century and a half) something happened to the Capital Wasteland, something that AFAIK is undocumented. I suggested that this was when the ground water started showing signs of radiation - and that the levels were significantly higher during this period than they are in-game, but who knows what the actual answer is. My point is that assuming that 150 years of development were "lost" isn't a big stretch for a highly irradiated region of a Post Apocalyptic Role-Playing Game. Apparently, you disagree. And that's where the argument finished last time.

Sorry, you, well you play for the deep, well written storylines or something. And you do know there are emoticons for the forum, right ? Heh. Again, the post you cited just said that it was made from planes from an airport, his complaint was about the crater being there. Well in the context of the Fallout games, 80 years after the war, the ghouls in LA managed to get things working and got a settlement better than most of what Fallout 3 has. The radiation isn't exactly the same as we view it either, I'm sure those people drink irradiated water, so they can pretty much eat irradiated food - just not bother to try to recover. Sort of a cheap way to have 'grimdark' I suppose. The game should have had bigger settlements, as it allows for more interesting stories and consequences, as much you can externally rationalize the opposite, heh.