Fallout So, Fallout 1....I'm raging so hard now.

These little problems don't annoy me per se, and I can also look over them, but as you said, they build up, and even though I enjoy a game, in the end I feel that it could have been so much better. And there are games which don't have these small flaws, so when I finish them, I don't just say "yep, this was good", but I say "holy cow this was one of the best games I've ever played".

 

Well, I wonder what Computer Role-Playing Game means to you.

 

I don't think a digital environment with programmed NPCs is very good at handling an imagined experience between a completely flexible human storyteller and worldbuilder and 6 people who have all possible interactions they can think off.

cRPGs were made way back from this premise, but they have grown into their own concepts now. I believe cRPGs should implement as much of the good stuff from P&P as they possible can, but aping them completely seems like a fruitless affair that will bring nothing but misery and sorrow.

The digital environment also has its share of advantages over P&P, it would be foolish not to abuse those.

 

Well, yeah, it has its limitations but the freedom on pnp is always exaggerated a lot. The fiction, the rules and the prepared adventure limit what you do, so I don't think it's such an incredible task to emulate it in a computer enviroment. Just that people don't try. Well, they did, when video games were very primitive but then CRPGs have gone in a shitty direction.

 

We can quickly agree that cRPGs have been moving away from P&P to a harmful extend.

 

I wouldn't that be exclusive about it (there are other kinds of CRPG) but it's why I enjoyed Fallout and it's one of the paths I want CRPGs to go down. Basically, to stretch the scope of the old P&P solo adventures they'd put in RPG books as semi-tutorials as far as they can possibly go. I definitely saw clear continuity between the solo adventure in the GURPS book (you're a robber burgling a house) and Fallout when I played it.

 

good luck achieving that before your 20th playthrough where you metagame like a boss for higher-than-maximum efficiency. In practical terms, you'll be fighting often.[/quote]

There are some moments where you have to sneak by or run in combat mode (Temple of Trials), some quests where you have to kill someone, but can use dynamite or superstims, and some quests that just can't be done without fight, so you have to skip it. But otherwise, main quest and most of other quests can be done with empty kill list (except for final boss), and with very little time spent in combat mode.

 

You're right that torment is more scripted or rather linear and overall different than Fallout/Arcanum. But Torment did indeed have C&C, stats did open up solutions and you could roleplay within the dialog (which changed your alignment dynamically over the course of the game). It shares some design philosophy with Fallout and Arcanum in those aspects, although truth be told they're overshadowed by the masterpiece that is its writing. Quite frankly torment could not even have dialog choices, have the worst combat ever but if the writing quality and plot stayed the same it would still be at least a cult game.

Grunker, well sorry but that's how it looks. You're criticizing the codex for not being able to tolerate criticism of holy cows but you yourself don't want to post a list of examples because it would be criticized (vulgarly and with ad-hominems as is customary on the codex). Also I want to add that I don't see an alternative to aping PnP, the only one is popamole, hack and slash and dungeon crawling romps. Now sure there are good ways to emulate PnP and bad ways, but what Fallout tried to do was a sane compromise. Give the player a fairly open world, give him many possible ways to define his character via stats/skills/perks/traits, give him multiple solutions to quest based on his stats and actions, give him dialog options based on the PCs characteristics, track his choices and have their consequences visible and meaningful within the game world.

 

I always thought Fallout 2 was a lot better than the first. In fact, I like NV more as well. Fallout 2 still has very mediocre combat and other problems, but it fixed a lot of the issues from the first too.

 

DARKLANDS

FAGGOT





ALSO THIS THREAD IS VERY HOMOSEXUAL AND YOU SHOULD ALL CEASE PARTAKING IN IT

 

Darklands doesn't. I'm sorry bro.

*sigh*

I haven't called it a bad game. Go back and find the quote I pulled from my comments from the Top50 thread. It says pretty much what you say above.

That makes it good, but it has way too many flaws in my eyes to consider it a candidate for one of the best.

I think we're going in circles here.

 

DARKLANDS WAS SO GUD IT GAVE ME PNP IDEAS OF MY OWN. YOU ARE RONK. SORRY BRO

 

ALSO HOLY SHIT BROS, YOU WANNA TELL ME THAT A GAME FROM '97 IS NOT PERFECT AND HAS FLAWS THAT COULD BE IMPROVED?

DIS IS SOME AMAZING EPIPHANY

 

Fallout showed the beginnings of what possible. It was a combination of several tricks on macro- and micro-levels of the gameworld designed to give a convincing illusion of freedom. Some of them weren't even tricks. Others bordered (is it still a limited illusion, if it gracefully blends into surrounding framework without jarring jump in narrative?). Either way it was a far cry from Mass Effect where every choice leads to the same outcome except with a different NPC skin.

Using a fraction of time and budget studios waste on cutscenes in order to feed more content into that modular framework, would bring unspoken marvels to the genre.

This sentiment usually leads into the usual decline where no innovation is pushed in RPGs and predictable easy-to-conceptualize mechanics become the meat-and-potatoes of them, i.e. COMBAT.

COMBAT COMBAT COMBAT

WORDS

COMBAT COMBAT COMBAT COMBAT

TRAVEL

COMBAT COMBAT

I don't want to be railroaded into an experience where I have no choice but to kill hundreds of shit, because that's all the game does even remotely well.

Fuck combat.

 

Well if doing that better than the vast majority of titles within the genre is not enough to be considered one of the best than what is? What should a best RPG look like exactly? What goals should the game design have in mind if it is supposed to be one? Is combat with more tactical depth more important than C&C? Are minor flaws of the UI or dumb AI enough to invalidate the branching dialog trees and choices that depend on player stats and allow roleplaying to some degree?

 

Fixed. Same goes for interface.

Looks fucking broken. How do you play this game? Which button do you use to make buildings?

 

New Vegas could've been excellent had it had even remotely similiar gameplaydesign as Fallout and Fallout 2; alas, now it mostly only excells in writing, narrative structuring and C&C. It's a well structured game, but I can't stomach much of that sandbox FPS bullshit scrapped together from the Fallout 3 leftovers (even if it is compiled for a better experience than that piece of shit).

 

New Vegas, what a fucking joke.

 

New Vegas was awesome.

 

Damn, 15 pages in 1 day?!? WTF is going on in this thread?

reads...

Edit:

, you guys crack me up.

 

Here's another awesome RPG:

 

Shoving your gun inside someone is way manlier than just shooting them. It also makes the phallic imagery stronger.

Many NPCs initiate combat on sight and you can't do much about it. And using super stimpacks to silently kill someone is a silly exploit of game mechanics so nah (and by the point you have enough superstimpacks to consider using them as a "weapon", you're at endgame already).

The fact you can solve many quests via non-violent means (both legit and "please sir, stay put and don't cry for help while I inject you with a dozen syringes" ones) doesn't mean the game as a whole is not full of combat. And that's not really a problem, only that the "but the game doesn't have much combat!" thing is flat-out incorrect and I wish people would stop saying that.

 

Fallout's influence is so great that even Hitman Absolution adopts the VATS targeting system for its Instinct Shooting Feature.

 

Couldn't you also reprogram the turrets and talk the idle Enclave soldiers (plus your companions) to do the combat (and killing) for you against Horrigan?

 

Yes.