I agree with all of your points except this one. What was the point of joining factions in Oblivion? So the faction can give you a bunch of quests ranging from annoying to passable, allowing you to work your way up in the faction's ranks until finally...nothing happens. No change to the game world, no benefits vis-?-vis said faction, very little difference in the way your character is treated by the faction, etc.

To be honest, if all the factions are going to be are simple quest pumps is there any reason to join them? :shrug:

Most people want to join factions for role playing purposes.

To be honest, the switch to real-time kind of WAS a bit of a gripe for me, with Fallout 3. I didn't start playing Fallout 1 so much because I loved the setting so much (though that helped,) but because at the time I was really in the mood for a nice turn-based RPG; and Fallout fit the bill. I'm not going to say the series HAS to be that way for everyone, but that's quite simply the main reason that I started playing Fallout 1 and 2. I don't think that makes Fallout 3 a bad game, but for me it could just as well have been a point-and-click adventure game, or a squad-based shooter; set in the same setting, for all that it has really any of the main aspects that drew me to the series in the first place.

When Fallout 1 came out, I would have bought that game if it was a fantasy game with Orcs and Elves, or set in space fighting aliens - what I was into was the ruleset and how the game played, just as much as it was for the "immersion" and setting.

Can anyone explain why the guns deteriorate so quickly? When I go target shooting and fire a couple of hundred rounds of .45 ACP I don't need to bring 2 .45's (one to shoot, one to cannibalize parts to repair the other). Modern weapons are built to be fired thousands of times with no loss of effectiveness. And PLEASE don't reply that the background radiation is at fault. That kind of radiation would kill anything living in seconds.

So you have to worry about the gun your using? I like the idea that my gun may become useless untill I can repair it. Makes up for the fact that your character is a god the second it steps out of the vault.

It would seem they were expanding... but the officer you get on the switchboard was genuinely surprised at finding you on the mainland ~had they established mainland bases (and not just the rig and the coast), would he have been so surprised? He says [while still thinking of you as Enclave], "this can't be right".

What if the survived by not being a target (out on the rig), and eventually extended their reach to that first [unfinished] base at Navarro, and began patrolling the surrounding area while they strove to complete it, with plans for more ~as yet unrealized.

Indeed the primary Enclave network, that of Pasodion Oil or whatever didn't even have listed any thing in the D.C. area. So how might I ask Eden was even in contact with the LEadership of the whole Enclave?

Sure, but if joining the faction does nothing (or next to nothing), doesn't that mean that the role-playing involved is mostly imagined? Imagination is fine, but couldn't I just imagine that I was a member of the faction as well? It just seems like a useless thing for the game to even bother keeping track of. :shrug:

Since this is generally a comparison topic between Fallout 3 and the first two games, I have moved this.

-That there aren't many ways to solve a quest. Taking on the Master, for example, .

-Secondly, the way people in FO3 are either good or evil. So unrealistic, so mediocre. Taking the Master again as another example, .

-And the fact that FO3 and especially some of the DLCs look and feel nothing at all like a Fallout game. I'm not saying this is a 'FO3 in always wrong!' way, I've long passed that stage, but yes, it shares nothing with the previous Fallouts except the setting, and now I can attest to that for sure. You really have to be naive to believe they're the same. Different in every similar way, and I haven't read any other argument convincing me otherwise, though usually written by people who didn't really like the Fallouts, so it's redundant, they don't know what the Fallout feel feels like.

-The SPECIAL system really is 'special'.

That's it really, apart from the third point which will always stay, they could improve upon the first two. I doubt it since they don't really need to focus on them when you've got an army of people who will buy your game regardless.

Hm, if has to be one, it had to be the way everything felt like a MMOG the way everything felt so disconnected, like the quest hubs were in a vacuum. Some of the treatment of the canon was bothersome as well.

-Characters are uninteresting (think cardboard cut out design quality. Hell, my alcoholic father had more character than James.)
-Story is full of plot holes and a good amount is rehashed from Fallout 1 & 2 (save Vault 101 get thrown out, find the G.E.C.K., stop the enclave.)
-Brotherhood of Steel are good samaritans and the Enclave is the main antagonist again.

-Dialogue svcks (I fight the good fight with my voice, [INTELLIGENCE]So you fight the good fight with your voice?)
-Lack of real C&C (there are no 'shades of grey' Todd.)
-VATS is underwhelming (SO MUCH more could have been done i.e. moving at the cost of AP, crippling an enemy's leg while running causes them to fall over, head shots are easily performed.)

If you say so. [Gizmo:- Turn based play.. complex results] Some players find the mathematical play of turn-base to be easy and so are adept at it, others find it hard and feel it to be complex.


Nothing I said could be interpreted as disdain .....


NO, not when you are talking about involvement in an activity or thought. ONLY a deep level of involvement of action or thought (dictionary) is immersive.
Anyway, you are not interested in immersion in Fallout, as you said.



Rubbish, and you don't know what games I prefer.


You have the Freedom to play Fallout any way you wish [to a point]. If you perhaps immersed yourself in the game you might realise this, but as you have said, you are not interested in doing so, so why half-play a RPG and then gripe about it.

... and how the game played, Fallout 3, feels very much to me as did the early Fallouts. It doesn't need a replication of the old turn-base play to make it so. There is a variation of TB that can be used to achieve a turn-base style of play, if one must have it.

Horrible animations, making it impossible to play a male character seriously. They run/walk ? la Morrowind, like they downloaded in their pants.

Immersion is deep involvement of action or thought (dictionary). Instinctive action or thought is not deep. A contemplative mind can be deep, so only one is right.
Anyway:-
Seems to make it (immersion) irrelevant.

Like I have said before, I don't really have anything to gripe about. Fallout 3.
I'll sign off for some time.

-Vats being overpowered. Luckily this was somewhat fixed with point lookout but it's still way too overpowered.
-Linear main storyline.
-No real shades of gray or other options for evil. Just "i don't care" for neutral and "MUST KILL EVERYTHING" for evil.
-Only two towns in game worth the time to visit.
-enemies who eat bullets.
-crappy level scaling. It's an improvement over oblivion but still pretty bad.
-Bugs, bugs, and more bugs.

Right. Heh. Also one can know something to be complex, but not find it hard. Complexity and difficulty aren't synonymous.

:lol: that wasn't a statement... It was incredulous questioning.

Is there a dictionary with the word "Immersive" in it?

I stand by my statement that Immersion exists at many levels; and I will further it with an example.
Several years ago I happened to recognize a man on the bus that I'd gone to grade school with. We talked for a while, and I decided not to remind him that he owed me lunch money :rofl: ~but that's beside... What was interesting is that I'd just come from seeing a movie adaptation of a popular book, and we talked about that. He asked me if it was good, and I said it was incredible ~but not as good as the book, his jaw dropped, and he had a vacant stare for a ? second. He then said, "How can a book be better than a movie? Books just sit there; Movies move, and have sound!"; I wasn't sure if he was serious ~but he was. What followed is too long to relate verbatim, but essentially, he was sharp, and certainly knew how to read, but what he knew as the experience of reading, is what most us here know as the experience of reading an accounts ledger. He could not "immerse" himself in a book unless it danced and sang before his very eyes; Which never happens, so he thought reading svcked.

Immersion of the mind does indeed exist on many levels, even if you cannot see it differently. For me, I can play a game with very crude representational graphics, and envision a scene better [and more personally meaningful] than any game could depict it on the screen; The locations and essential events are all I really need, So I can be EQUALLY content playing http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/pool-of-radiance/screenshots game or http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/pool-of-radiance-ruins-of-myth-drannor/screenshots (the second game is based on the first).


I didn't say that I did.

Not really... They made it impossible to play in TPP and still fight effectively with anything but a flamer.
I will concede though, that I can play the game as you likely do, and it works well (its what they expect ~though why they expected it... is a mystery).
I cannot however play the game as I would in any other Fallout game in existance ~and that is the problem.

Minute to learn, lifetime to master. :foodndrink:

On the other hand, the Captain of the Vagrants had never been on the Oil Rig. If the Navarro base was unfinished where did he come from.

I'm not saying it hasn't got it's plot holes, but I can see the basic idea of it working. Besides there are few stories without at least some plot holes, especially in gaming.

Has this turned into a turn-based is better than real time thread again? I thought we all agreed it was up to preference. Or did we?

Anything SCI-FI can be made plausible (even Dr. Who), but why would anyone want it so? In FO... only those that remember the Enclave would care, and many would prefer something new in their new purchase ~Those that never encountered the Enclave before would have thought them just as awesome had they been called something else, and instead of the remnants of government, been the remnants of Walmart in well stocked bunkers and having a fleet of armed fusion powered cargo helicopters to salvage the wastes and decimate the BOS when they found them steeling their prize.


It has always been player preference... The question of "which is better", should be, "which is better appropriate for a consistently TB series"

As I see it, players usually exercise preference by buying in the game series that suits them ~only this time the series was bought and [regrettably] changed to suit.

I'm not talking about made plausible.
I found the fact that some had survived and with the aid of a computer, that was built to ensure the enclave's continuation, had reforged themselves to be quite possible. In the context of the games it worked reasonably well. No fancy science fiction mumbo jumbo-ing needed. Just a few things that are somewhat inconsistent.

As for their use of the Enclave and BoS over something new. Well they probably had a misguided sense of "we should put elements of the first two games in there".
Sure it is not original and it is not what many would have wanted, but it is what it is and to my eyes within reason in regards to the Fallout universe.

But my point was not plausibility, it was that regardless of any extrapolated situation, the Enclave should never have had the lead in the third game ~no matter what. Remnants yes ~Allies possibly; Exploiters of the PC, more likely.. but the main threat should have been entirely unexpected (I know that's not the best way to put it... because in this case it was just that ). The new menace should have been fresh and unique; A new enemy in the new setting.

Painfully true and equally seen in the use of Bottle caps and VATS.

Oh well, than, I guess we can see eye to eye on that. Not saying I absolutely disliked it, but they could have done better on them, whether as main bad or not.