And the same objection could be applied directly to most of Bethesdas games as well. Except for Morrowind which had a pretty decent UI even if it didn't look very pretty, which really followed the function over form. UI mods are some of the most common and earliest mods released for Beth games since Oblivion. That is if you decide to play their games on the PC with a Mouse and Keyboard. Because for some reason Bethesdas developers seem to like to neglect that part a little to much. I could not imagine to play Skyrim without SKY UI for example. Or any of their games past Morrowind without UI modifications for that matter.

Fallout 3 in particular had in my opinion a convoluted and wasteful UI that required a lot of navigation, clicking and it comes with large fronts more suited to the TV screen and without any visual clues for the items. Morrowinds UI is definitely superior to it. At least as far as usability on the PC goes.

In fact Bethesda had to take so much criticism with their userinterface even from die-hard fans that I am baffled how anyone could actually describe it as good. And after 3 games it would be about time that they actually take the nudge from fans and modders serious for once.

Skyrim Mod Sanctuary - Part 7 : SkyUI (Skyrim User Interface)

Their games sure have a lot of quality in many areas, no doubts abou tit. But the UI is definitely not among them.

A small quote from the video above:
"It feels now like it should have always been there, I can't imagine playing without it (...)"

And that definitely describes my experiences with Skyrim and previous games as well.

So as far as Fallout 1/2 goes, even if the UI was not perfect, it still did a decent job for the game. I am sure certain things could have been more streamlined and improved, like the use of skills in particular. But we really should not forget that we are comparing games here with almost 20 years of difference between them. And much to my surprise Fallout 1/2 UI couldl be seen as useful even today with a few small improvements here and there simply because it was made with Mouse/Keyboard users in mind.

It's about visuals and story telling with images/graphic, it is not so much about the power of graphic like improving visuals from F3 to F4 or from Crysis 1 to Crysis 2 etc.

With new games everything is made in 3D and only very little is left to your imagination, simply because everything has to be modeled and rendered in game with high enough details so that the player can immediately recognize it. Dragons, Machinery, Enemies everything is modeled and rendered in such quality that it is sometimes borderline to being photorealistic which isn't a bad thing for it self but it can sometimes be a problem with storytelling. At least with some games. When you have an open world game like F3/F4 in particular than every location has to be modeled and made accessible with high details. That has pros and cons. Pros, well it can look awesome. Cons, you have to model everything, even the smallest information. What is completely left out here is the players imagination. Games made on the Infinity engine for example (like Baldurs Gate, Icewind Dale etc.) would be less refined, more abstract in their imagery and with their rendering. However they would still offer you artistically enough quality to give you an image of every object, like a Bed for example.

So for example when you encounter creatures and NPCs or other objects in the world the player could imagine something here. Particularly if the game gave you clues. If you encounter a bed in Fallout and you decide to use it for sleeping the game tells you "You see a bed filled with lice" and "you probably won't be sleeping alone here tonight" or something like that, your head immediately creates that image in your mind and you know what is going on. In a game that works on a level like Fallout 3 you would have to actually model a bed with small lice crawling on it to create the same idea, for this one situation. A lot of work just for small bits of story telling. In that sense old RPGs based on the PnP idea are very comparable with literature or books. A lot of it happens in the mind of the reader/player. And that works best when you have abstractions rather then perfectly rendered models with photo realistic graphics.

Before someone gets the idea though, it doesn't mean that you can't use the latest technology to make it work! Like full 3D, high quality textures, lighting etc. As seen by Pillars of Eternity, Wasteland 2, Shadowrun etc, or even the popular Diablo 3 which all look decent enough in my opinion. We are talking about a pure design decision not one of which technology can be used to melt your graphic card faster. But it certainly works better in top down views.

I'll have to install FO3 again to check, but I was pretty sure that I could not exit the merchant menu with a loss'; it's been a long time though.

Spot on.

I'm traditionally a traditionalist myself.

But I gotta say these changes are specfreakintacular.

I dont know what you guys do, but I have these character build sheets for F3 and NV that I've been refinining for years.

They also have other hard to remember things like key equipment, tips for important quests and DLCs or hard to find things.

Anyway, they are complex because of the tags, skills and SPECIALs needed for the various perks.

Taking some of that complexity out sounds like a good thing to me.

It's still complex with a perk at every level, but less hair pulling.

I've played maybe 1200 hours of Skyrim. I do have a character build sheet, but it's pretty thin in comparison.

And the crafting/modding system that NV got rolling, boy they ran with that! Right out of the park, Forrest Gump style!

We can build whole towns, populate them, equip them, munition them, proprieterize them! (is that a word?)

Everything has purpose, not just random junk anymore.

That's certainly going to slow your bottlecop flow. But hey, that's what your own caravans are for!

And there was another thing too, but I've forgotten while dreaming about the second thing...

Agreed

I never had that much a problem with the vanilla UIs in Bethesda's games. They were designed for consoles, but for their simplicity I never felt like they were confusing, or that I had to go through K&M gymnastics to get around. And on Bethesda specifically, their UIs have only improved in that regard (mostly; I still think Fallout has a better barter menu than Skyrim, since you can queue up a transaction before executing it). I don't see what the big deal is with Morrowind's UI; the inventory categories aren't that great, and I much prefer a list to thumbnails on a grid, or click-and-drag movement. The magic menu was even worse; it separated spells, scrolls, and items and it was alphabetical, but that was it.

And we don't even need to talk about the UI in Daggerfall. Bethesda really has come a long way, and I don't have that much issue with the console designed UI. I never thought it was that important to cram as much information as possible on the screen anyway; just as long as what I need is easy to find.

Of course mods make it better. You wouldn't install a mod if you didn't think it was an improvement. The whole "modders do it better than the actual devs" attitude exists with any game that has a modding community, though, so it's a moot point.

I didn't like the old fallouts

You are right that good art doesn't require the latest in graphics. Bethesda doesn't drop the ball, though. Tim Cain said that he loved how much story was told through Fallout 3's art: http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=8416

This is a series I'm invested in and I look at the changes and I think they're pretty minor. I'm just grateful they didn't change the whole gameplay perspective like suddenly turning it into a sidescrolling platformer. A perfect example would be the Bioshock series. Sure transitioning from Bio 1 to 2 was hard the way they changed the controls completely but the foundation of it being an FPS at the end of the day was what mattered. In about 6 hours I got used to the controls and finished the game without having to switch to normal difficulty. Now transitioning to Bioshock Infinite was even tougher as suddenly it's a fast-paced, one shot can kill you shooter. Repeated the first few sections a few times and managed to beat the game again on highest difficulty.

The changes they brought are considerably minor. You still have VATS, companions, the same factions...It's still the FPS-RPG hybrid that FO3 and NV was.
I played the FO series in order so don't tell me about the "immersion breaking/ anti-lore, anti roleplay" bullf#cckk that I've been reading about ever since day 1 of signing into this place.

Yeah, while some of the UI mods did have improvements, the only vanilla UI issue I've had with a Beth game was Skyrim's.... the scrolling & selecting of items in lists was pretty clearly designed around shoving a thumbstick back and forth, so it was a bit clunky with the mouse.

(I've still never felt the need for a UI mod in Fallout 3 or NV, honestly. I do use SkyUI for Skyrim and DarNified for Oblivion.)

If anything, it's the lack of changes and new features that should bother you.

I'm also invested in the Mega Man series. Played everything from MM1 to MMX to every gameboy game. After years of waiting they finally made a spiritual successor that is Mighty No. 9 and it turned out to be basically just a re-skin of Mega Man X on PSP with a small mechanic change. It looks like sht to me but I don't go hating on the creators in their forums.

Valid point.

Lol, I love the Mega Man franchise and all of it's sameyness. I've learned that if you don't change anything, people will complain. And that if you do, others will complain. So the devs should just make the game they want to make.

I thought Fallout 2 was okay but honestly I liked Arcanum better as a classic RPG

Just not really exciting for me. I don't feel any "immersion" staring at a little guy walk around a mostly meaningless platter of pixels. I liked ShadowRun when I was like 10. I get some people like that kind of stuff but personally it's not for me. But neither is sitting around rolling dice playing D&D lol

Oh, Bioshock. The first game had brilliant story and gameplay. The second one had better gameplay, but a weaker story. The third had an even better story, but I wasn't a fan of the gameplay.

And keep in mind that Bethesda DID change the whole gameplay perspective with Fallout 3. Also, I don't argue that's inherently bad. Look at the transitions Mario and The Legend of Zelda went through. Mario even had its entire gameplay overhauled for Super Mario RPG and the Paper Mario series. Sometimes changes can really spice things up.

But...

Change in and of itself isn't a virtue. If a doctor decided to disinfect your cut by rubbing Tic-Tacs into it, that would certainly be a change in medical procedure, but I'd rather go to the doctor who uses the tried and true methods.

People love to rag on things for being similar to a previous installment or being unoriginal, but plenty of changes and original ideas are not good. If Bethesda introduced microtransactions into Fallout 4, it would be a change. A horrible one. But I bet we'd still find people on this forum hailing it as for the better because "at least they're trying something new."

Change for the sake of change is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It's led to established franchises turning out lackluster games because somebody decided that the they had to do something new (Final Fantasy XIII and Resident Evil 6 are two good examples). Sometimes you need to look at what was done earlier and realize "It just works."

MM is an example of a game series best kept simple.
The Battle Networks and the full 3D one (I think it was MMX8) were horrendous.

Good points. Come to think of it, I actually contradicted myself mentioning the MM series lol since the best ones turn out to be the simplest jump and shoot ones.
I guess my problem with Mighty No. 9 was it's basically a copy of a game that was bad to begin with.

My problem with FO4 from day 1 (before I found out about sole survivor story) was that you leave a Vault at the start of the game. I had immediately assumed that you would be another Vault-dweller (which you technically are except you didn't exactly actively live your life there.) and that they would go with the Water Chip/life-saving tech story again.

I listen to records that are 10-30 years old, daily.
This does not mean that nostalgia does not come into play. On the contrary, while the music is actually superb in its own right, nostalgia has very much to do with why these tunes are in heavy rotation. They remind me of a time when recording was done in a very different way than it is today, with artists who have completely different sensibilities music wise from what we see today.

It isn't to say that is the case for you and FO particularly, but that isn't what you've said here, either.
"It's never nostalgia when you..." is a pretty defining set of words, indicative of this being some constant, when it isn't.

I think he meant to discount nostalgia in the "rose-tinted glasses you think you like it but just forgot it svcks" sense.

Neither did I ever really felt the "need" for UI mods in any of the games, up to the point when I decided to use one because that is the point when the design errors actually become very noticeable. Is it something that breaks and destroys the game? Of course not. But it can be for many people a serious nuisance, at least enough that UI mods like SkyUI become some of the most downloaded mods for Skyrim ... so that alone should tell us something.

The devil like always, is in the details. For example Skyrims UI (and Oblivions and Fallout 3s as well) is wasting a hell lot of space on your screen for what is my guess to show you those neat 3D models and effects in the window next to the list. There is also a very big absence of icons. Icons to distinct between items so you can easier spot them. For example items that can be either worn or consumed by the player, items that are purely junk items like those that can't be worn or used by the player, ingredients for alchemy/crafting and so on. Particularly the crafting in Skyrim can be extremely tedious because of it.

Fallout 1/2 and many other rather traditional RPGs can be used as example because they had easy to read icons in your inventory where you could clearly discern ammunition, from stimpacs and other items like chems. Our mind in particular is extremely efficient in reading shapes. Something that artist and designers very often forget. And I know why they do it, because it takes someone to do those little high quality icons and that's money. But it is money spend well in my opinion if you consider how much time players have to spend in the inventory with RPGs.

But the biggest issue with their UI. You have to scroll and click way, way, way to much, getting trough to many menus and spending to much time in something that should actually require only as little time as possible. I am pretty sure that Bethesda could have cut the time players spend in the menu by half if they would have followed more on function rather than looks. The same for their skill/perk system. While those symbols and zodiac-idea in the sky look pretty awesome, I will admit that gladly! It is after some time extremely tedious to navigate trough it. Constantly rotating trough the skills and perks just to get to that one description. And if they simply allowed the use of a mouse here it would have already been a great relief ...

As UI designer I can tell you that Bethesda has ignored a lot of principles here that are a standard. If they did it because of consolification or because the lead designer was more interested in pretty looks, I can't tell. But they are not the only company doing it.

Well, I believe that depends on your observation and what criteria you use.

If you compare two different tunes than I would guess that you're right. If enough time has passed and you are comparing two different classics than you have to compare each on it's own ground. Just as how you don't compare a car from the 1920s with a car from 2015 and declaring the 1920 design as winner for reasons.

But Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 are created as direct sequels to the previous games this has been several times mentioned by the Beth developers by now. So it is fair to compare and anolyze it directly to each other - except for the graphics of course because it is obvious that we have more horse power in our computers today. But where was or well where is the strength of Fallout 1? What was the intended design by the developers, their goals, what direction had they in mind, what was their ultimate vision before they started developing and what was their inspiration. Those resources are still out there. Everyone can find those quotes and interviews. And they can be directly compared with the quotes and interviews of developers like Todd, Emil and all the other executives of Bethesda.

So it really is not nostalgia in this case.

To say it bluntly, both teams the one behind Fallout 1 and the one behind Fallout 3/4 have completely different goals and directions. And it shows with the game design and the general looks. Fallout 1 was closer to a PnP RPG. And Fallout 3/4 are closer to shooters. By design. And principle.

This is precisely why I don't assume anything until I have actual information. I don't want to get upset over something that I'm not even sure is official or not. But the vault/prison start is how all of Beth's original IP's start out. Even in FO4's case it still gives you a fresh start so you can roleplay your character...and yes you can still rp a character with FO4. It's true your character has an established history, one that is a bit more in depth, but that doesn't stop you from putting your own interpretation on it. People forget that your character was also given a sort of backstory in Skyrim AND Fallout 3. You were caught trying to get into Skyrim and captured and in FO3 you were born in the Capitol Wasteland and brought into Vault 101 to be raised in safety.

I know you didn't harp about the "FO4 isn't rp friendly" gripe I've seen. But I took your vaguely similar comment to segue into my answer to that common complaint. Sorry!

Of course the original makers of fallout are very proud of how great the series have become. They have often said how good fallout 3 is despite this angering some people.

Wait, who's upset?

I still have a problem with it. It made meta-narrative sense for the first and third games, as it was a way for the developers to introduce players to their versions of the universe and treat you as someone for which all of this is new.

But beyond that? It feels kind of like a cheat. Yes, in New Vegas your Courier could ask about the NCR despite being from California, which is an example of making concessions for the player that don't quite make sense in universe (though they could be asking as a clarification that the NCR they know is the same one being talked about rather than going "What's the NCR?"), but at this point I prefer the Wastelander approach. You can only do the Fish Out of Water thing so many times before it starts to feel like a cheat. I liked that the Chosen One and Courier were both Wastelanders. It helps make the world feel more alive, rather than "starting" when we appear on the scene.

You should read more accounts, and in between the lines.

Indeed.