I HOPE YOU REALIZE THAT YOUR WRONG IF THE WEST COAST left the united states the east would be cut off from almost all its food supplies as well as more than 75% of its population look it up!(it also has the largest cities and isn't anywhere as polluted and scarred as the west)(PS the old west is the cornerstone of American culture and has its hands firmly on American culture!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The above statement is full of a lot of holes, and inaccuracies. The US food supply, predominantly comes from the MIDWEST, and not the West Coast. Secondly, the West Coast, does NOT have 75% of the population(I have no idea, where you came up with that figure). Overall, what you are saying, has no basis in reality or even in the Fallout Universe...secondly when we think of the "Old West", the idea of Dodge City, in Kansas comes to mind. The 'Old West" can be summarized in one quote: "Get out of Dodge".

California is by its self is number 7 in the world economy we have thee most people of any state we also have THE LARGEST COUNTIES in the world San Bernadino and riverside we also have the old west spirit and new age glow. Riverside has on a mountain or hill if you want to be a pain the friendship tower a tower given to us by the emperor of japan in 1938 it also has the distinction of being the site of the first sunrise service in the us. with route 66 snaking its way through the west it brought many mid westerners to the fertile central valley a place that now grows over 50% of the nations crops because of said fertile land. the old west image is in fact that of the real western half of the country that the Apache and Comanche tribes attacking wagon trains on their way to the coast it is also the image of western border towns were the country had yet to expand to the coast not Kansas but Texas,California,as well as Nevada where all us testing was conducted,Arizona and all the true western states were most of the us population resides. just to let you know, look it up.

First Person Shooters are designed for action games, not roleplaying games.

The issue with Fallout 3 is that it lacks what a turn based game is about to do: portray a story. In Fallout 3 you shoot until your enemy is dead. In Fallout 1 and 2, there are some instances where combat stops to initiate dialouge. You just don't get that in Fallout 3.

So no, I hope to god they don't make Van Buren with Fallout 3's gameplay. I'd prefer to have Van Buren, as Van Buren, made by interplay. I want this for 2 reasons.
1.) Seems Bethesda only wants to make an FPS Fallout, which I'm not a big fan of since it ruins the story elements of the game by providing too much twitchy action.
2.) Van Buren was going to have multiplayer, but Bethesda shys away from Multiplayer games opting for a more 'player' experience. I'd love to talk my Vault Dweller online for some combat.

Oh, and Van Buren also had the option to play in real time.

Personally I prefer the isometric camera rather than first person, but once again, we can't have everything.

you've got you're opinion and i have mine i love fps the show more depth to the game and let you see all the small little things you cant see with a top down view and dialogue during game play just doesn't mix to me

First person shooters are first person shooters, RPGs are RPGs. What are you trying to say?




I seem to recall Butch yielding to me while I was trying to kill him with my fists....





No one is going to make VB, so forget it.

Yep; you win the prize. Your right on all 3 counts.

what to win?

Fallout 3 is a First Person Shooter, not an RPG. But the Fallout genre is supposed to be an RPG. All Fallout 3 is is an open-world shooter.

And that only happened because you decided to put your weapon away and say, ''forgiveys?''. In the game they just run away if they are done with you, you don't have the feeling to make combat stop. There are instances in Fallout not many but still there, where combat is literally STOPPED, as in you can't even move the camera as you watch both your character and the rival converse over something trivial.



LOOLZOZOLZ U GEIOT ME! kljasdkajsjk. No [censored] sherlock, a man can dream.

Fallout 3 is not a shooter. Stalker is a shooter.
I stopped reading there.

Fallout 3 is like a spork - neither a fork nor a spoon. It doesn't function as a fork as well as a fork nor does it function as a spoon as well as a spoon.

Fallout 3 is one darn good RPGs of today. It's not as hardcoe as some RPGs that came before it, but it does domonstrate the state of the RPG market.

the great game god athoes told the gamies to give f3 a awesome score and they did plus its a awesome game.

I'd rather you be shooting yourself, as well.

your a funny guy did your mommy tell you to write it or did you muster up the brain power to do this your self?

That made me snicker.

Thanks

What follows is NOT to be taken as a PC vs Console argument. If I had the money, I'd own one of each console and a few PC's. However, I feel certain patterns have evolved because of the nature of the machines. What follows is only my own interpretation of what I've noticed in the decades of gaming I've been a part of.



I agree with you, but the statement of mine you quoted still stands. Demonstrating the state of the market today just shows us how the current era's focus on the console and away from the PC have taken RPG's into a sort of "quicker, cheaper and easier" area where you can just play the game without having to do all the reading or strategizing that made cRPG's a decade ago (or thereabouts) so complex, replayable and usually unpredictable. I'm not knocking consoles, just stating a fact. Consoles themselves are a symptom of our world becoming more of a technological Fast Food nation where things happen "quicker, cheaper and easier" in the sense that well, you don't actually have to have the headache that oftentimes accompanies the extra care and maintenence of owning a PC. You just turn it on and go without having to worry about all the boot-up time and other stuff, just the same, people don't want to have to read too much or spend hours leveling up their characters or figuring out the best way to strategize a quest. Just boot it up, hit V.A.T.S, get an easy supermutant head shot kill and move on. Of course the game is deeper than that, or it can be, but the option for getting through that way is certainly there. I've noticed quite a few people on this forum claiming they beat the game in very few hours. I can't even fathom, but then again, I'm from the era of yesteryear it seems. Just look at how "quck, cheap and easy" the main quest is? Even games like Mass Effect are merely giving you the illusion that anything you say matters. Most of those dialog options lead to one and only one answer.

Very few games that are console ports or made for multiple platforms in the RPG genre have much depth to them these days. Really, when have you last seen the type of writing you saw in Planescape? When was the last time you saw the kind of depth in weapon/magic creating in Arcanum? Mask of the Betrayer comes closest but only proves my point, as it is a PC-only game. It's certainly not just a platform difference though. I see it also as a generational issue which is only natural as gaming technology (specifically graphics) has taken humungous leaps since I was a child. Who at age 18 really has any grasp of what it was like to play those text rpg's on the commodore? So without that frame of reference, why would you ever want to read while playing a video game, right? I've talked to many people a decade or so younger than me who 9 out of 10 times seem to find the games that I personally find most enjoyable as "tedius". They simply want to have action shoved down their throats for a few hours and walk away.

Not that any of this is a big surprise or a "wow, I bet you never thought of this before" but I feel a certain lamentable quality to the progression of RPG's to say the least. I hope soon enough companies can get to a place with their engines where they can stop trying to dazzle us with the latest physics or environment and give us more depth where we presently need it.

how is f3 cheap and quick theirs a lot of small details in the game as well as plenty of enemy's to fight.

I'm trying to back off on my rage-a-hol over the "shooter" label, so I am going to try and address only relevant arguments.

Kjarista used a phrase earlier that I think is quite appropriate to bring up here: Roll-Playing Games versus Role-Playing Games.

You (Aqualamb) asked about "depth in weapon/magic creating" - I suspect that WoW now has the title for those types of mechanics. The crafting/talent specializations in WoW are about as deep as you can get in a cRPG. There's a game where the game mechanics have overtaken the game itself. I suspect that most of us can agree that we would not want new Fallout games to be more WoW-like. I totally agree that the SPECIAL system implemented in Fallout 3 is much less deep than in previous Fallouts, with a signifcantly lower impact on the game world/gameplay - but I do not agree that a more robust SPECIAL system would make for a better game. It could, but then again it might wreck the "jump in and start exploring" and the "play any style you like" nature of the game. I believe that catering to min/max powergamers does NOT make a game more of an RPG.

Writing, however is paramount. Not just for RPG's, but (IMO) for video games in general. Having a well-realized game world, sympathetic characters, engaging story lines, good pacing - these facets are important whether you're playing an RPG or a "shooter" or a four-X game. I have a bit of personal disconnect here, because I am personally awed and amazed that Bethesda decided to tell the story they did - and so I am very partial and biased in favor of their writing. Even so, I can certainly see how many aspects of the writing could be improved - deeper (and more branched) dialogue trees for example.

But figuring out better writing isn't a case of just throwing money at it. Although you can hire good writers, it's not like there's a one-to-one direct correlation between resources invested and quality of product. Especially considering that the Fallout RPG's (including Fallout 3) are story-driven, and thus story decisions can have a signifiacnt impact on gameplay.

I believe Aqualamb was using "quick and cheap" to describe the Main Quest storyline. It can be finished quite easily in under twenty hours, there are behavioral inconsistencies in it , lots of people feel (and have quite plainly stated on several occasions) that it is neither satisfying nor engaging.

Thats not like saying much. Thats like entering a museum filled with piles of elephant crap and only stepping in the pile of dog [censored]. Thank god you didn't step in the big stuff, but hell, I'd rather have stepped in a field of flowers.

I understand the laments of a passing RPG golden age. I feel it myself. Arguing that "it is what it is" doesn't much help, but there you have it. Unfortunately, it is what it is, and we are here where we are. In the general forum, we were discussing the difficulties of a business servicing niche markets, and at this stage, the market for complex RPGs certainly is niche. If that market gets serviced at all, it's going to have to be by small indys who can survive selling limited numbers of copies. Meanwhile, the large developers, if they do RPGs at all, are going to be making hybrids that will attract nontraditional buyers. If they don't expand the market this way, there won't be any market.

If there are any good news at all over this, the financial success of the Beth titles, and the few other hybrid RPGs out there, may be enough to spark renewed interest for developing RPGs. I i don't think we will ever see the return of AAA hardcoe RPGs until an indy comes out with one that just knocks the industry for a loop and starts the ball rolling again.

First off, I don't think WoW's specializations or crafting systems are as deep as you can get in a cRPG, most of the professions are less than or as complex as the Witcher's alchemy scheme. The game's mechanics overtaking the game itself is more a case of several things, all related to the fact that it's a MMOG and involves massive repetition. So then efficiency becomes everything and the world takes a seat in the back. A more robust SPECIAL, akin to how it is done in Fallout 2 for example - would make the game better especially in the areas of free-play styling and exploration, as you can customize your character a great deal more. It's not catering to min/max powergamers at all by having stats that affect your gameplay strongly, you can easily provide ways for the casual player - premade characters, well written tooltips for the stats, etc.

Your points about writing, are right on. Although with an FPS, most of the time a realistic world isn't -too- important.

Could you explain first what you mean by this and second how it applies to the discussion?



Ok, first off WoW is beyond gaming. That has become a strange new lifestyle and I won't even consider it relevant to my life or the world I reside in. It's like...cosplay or something. It's completely outside what I regard as "normal" in the industry. Anyway, here's the huge difference between what you (and, as it seems much of the Elder Scrolls fanbase) and I seem to want from a Fallout game: I don't want to just jump in and wander around and when you say "play any style you like" I just cringe. I cringe for two reasons: Number one is that I didn't buy this game to play "Second Life" (I know we've briefly touched this point but how else am I to take what you're saying there?) and number two is that NO! You cannot play any style you like in any relevant way. This is exactly my point about the SPECIAL system being completely irrelevant. I can't very well play an evil stealth-based scientist in Fallout 3 in any significantly or specifically rewarding way and that right there is exactly why either Bethesda's take on the SPECIAL system is broken and in desperate need of fixing OR as nu clear day said in the SPECIAL thread earlier, Bethesda will need to (if they want to keep me interested) figure out another way of allowing gamers to create individual experiences that go beyond house decorating or modding.



Interesting that I'd agree with you but not as interesting as the fact that I feel Fallout 3 to be a victim of this.



As generic as the storytelling device of the main quest in Mass Effect might seem (you're the hero, save the world, etc) I felt myself much more naturally engaged if for no other reason than it's execution being handled properly. I found it literally impossible to become immersed in the story of Fallout 3 and believe me, as a Fallout fan, I really did want to like the story and I really did want to care. Just out of curiosity, what exactly awed and amazed you about Fallout 3's story?



Well yes and no. On one hand it's obvious you can have a great product with or without a vast amount of money. There's proof of this in most media and much of the time you'll find that the less money involved, the less pressure to get that money back to the investors and the less pressure to compromise, thus...a less shiny yet less compromised product. On the other hand, if you do have money and you spend that money in the wrong places, it will show. In my (not so) humble opinion it's pretty obvious that Bethesda's will to dump more money into celebrities and voice-acting instead of hiring decent writers and spending more time on story and dialog really shows. I mean, really shows.

If we take a look at MMORPGs over the last several years, we see the same sort of moving away from the hard core as we have seen in the single player RPG genre. WoW represents a fundemental shift form first generation games lin Everquest and UO. Attempts to return to a more hardcoe game (Vanguard, for example) have failed dramatically when compared to WoW.

The interesting aspect of the MMO world is that some of these earlier games are still available. One can still play Everquest and UO, and Simultronics Gemstone is still running, for the very hardcoe. But it's the trend that's interesting here, and the trend appears active over multi9ple genres of gaming.