This is sort of why I feel F3 will suck

The problem is exactly that. It's a personal quest in a sequel to a couple of games where the player has the majority of the authorship over what is personally important to them. So maybe it isn't a good enough reason, depending on character.

Nobody complained, because nobody who valued character freedom actually bothered to play the game. Instead they complained that you had to be The Nameless One and couldn't create your own character. I'd say that would be one of the more critical reasons why Torment failed commercially.

There's another crucial difference between the quest of the Nameless One to discover his past and Fallout 3's protagonist finding his father - the past is already written, but the Nameless One doesn't have to behave like his erstwhile self. Fallout 3 is forcing you to adopt certain attitudes in the present and future. It makes a big difference.

For those reasons, you won't hear too many KOTOR fans complaining that they're Revan with amnesia - it's an accepted piece of backstory. However, you will get people who complain about being forced to join the Sith when you're playing as a Jedi.

And lastly, the whole "prologue" of Fallout 3 exposes you to your father, so you're not just chasing a shadow, there's a personality that you may or may not warm to. Saving the princess in the tower works on the character's assumption that she's either a wonderful person that will bring you happiness, or at the very least earn you a hefty reward from the King.

If you'd spent the first couple of hours of the game in the company of the Princess and found her repulsive, what motivation do you have to save the day if there's no king promising riches beyond measure?

 

Hey, at least they're not sewing an amulet on you; the guys at Bethesda are making progress.

Whatever, I say: we all know the plot is gonna suck anyway and we're gonna go straight for the endless hours of staring at the bloom coming off a Brahmin's udder.

 

I am not with thee we.

My personalized, old school boycott starts NOW.




FUCK the manipulative mainstream media monopolizers and their big budget FPS eye candy clickfests.

SALUTE and SUPPORT the CRPG innovators, the indie CRPG underdogs and the CRPG modding community.

 

There was some oblivion fan interview as reported by NMA.

I don't recall swearing being all that prevalent in Fallout. But I can see it in F3 now.

BoS Guard: ITS ALL THESE FUCKING SUPERMUTANTS FUCKING EVERYTHING UP, YOU KNOW? MOTHERFUCKERS JUST DON'T LEARN!

Vault Dweller: YEA I'D LIKE TO CARVE THOSE SHITHEADS ANOTHER FUCKING ASSHOLE.

Raider: HANDS UP MOTHERFUCKERS, THIS IS A RAID! DOWN ON THE FLOOR BITCH! POW POW KABLAMO!

BoS Guard: ARRGH... THAT NIGGA SHOT ME! MOTHERFuc....

 

swearing was very common in fallout 2

 

Todd is to Jar-Jar what Jar-Jar was to C3PO.

TNO is gradually slipping towards being a brain-dead zombie. His resons for trying to find out who he is and what is happening to him are nearly on par with reasons vast majority of characters have for trying to stay alive.

 

Maybe Liam Nilson was raping his kid, and the motivition for going after him is revenge.

 

Now there's a bizarre love triangle waiting to happen. Someone Rule 34 me.

 

Both love and hatred are attractive forces, but how about character that doesn't fucking care?

 

Yes. There was hardly any swearing in Fallout 1.

I thought Bethesda was preferring Fallout 1's style to later iterations. At least that's what they said.

 

God, I really want to be hostile about this notion that Fallout 3 by Bethesda Softworks somehow represents more limitations on characterization than Codex Approved by FapFap Studios, but I just can't. Not when Keldorn is so much fucking worse.

edit: because even on the Codex I don't feel warm and cuddly about yelling at someone

 

To be honest, I didn't give a shit about the vault in FO1, but my game was still over after 150 days. Of course that's no excuse for beth, but still...
Personally, I think the game will be worth a download just for the part where you kill Liam Nilson!

 

He's unkillable, you silly!

 

'Immortal' you mean? :wink:

I'm pretty sure, that that in the end you will have a chance to kill him. He might turn out to be a big evil guy, so the game will have a great emotional impact on the player, and beth will get huge praise, or he'll be a good guy, and you, on your quest to avenge the abuse you endured under him, you kill him, and beth will get huge praise for having the balls to let you do something so drastic.

 

I think we can all agree its going to end up in 1 of 3 ways.

1) Liam Neason is creating the super mutants and has gone super-bad-evil

2) Liam Neason has been turning into a mutant (and thusly a slavering mindless beast) and the player must put him down (least likely as having to kill the father figure you had no choice about loving in order to save him from a life as a mutant could be something approaching a moral grey area)

3) Liam Neason has been killed by the mutants ZOMG! This establishes them as pure evil and cements the characters moral gooditude in slaughtering them and erasing their kind from the wastes.

Personally i'd love it they used Liam Neason as a red-herring which other characters use to manipulate you into doing what they want, with the eventual reveal that instead of leaving to save the world or anything, Liam Neason just stole a whole heap of Vault-tec and legged it and is now living it up in some backwater town rolling around in a bathtub full of rum and hookers.

 

4) Liam Neeson is not your father, but it's actually you from the future! You tricked yourself into believing you are your own father (thus the resemblance), when in fact you were engendered by the Chosen One's son, who traveled to the East along with Marcus, Harold, and Ian's head in a life-suspension jar. He got into the vault using the hidden passage.
The secret to time-travel lies in radcrab juice. They are hiding, and can only be found by removing the water chip from 50 vault gates. You can enhance your flaming swords using the water chips' unique properties. Unknown forces will be observing your progress. The plot is lost somewhere in between.

 

have anyone noticed that wherever Neeson appears his character always dies?

 

He didn't die in Rob Roy.

 

Why did Darth Maul have to kill the only guy in the movie I really thought was awesome?

 

He didn't die in batman begins.

 

Bold individualism and abrasive rhetoric runs RAMPANT on the Codex... even among the most cliqueish of hyper-sensitive conformists. You are free to do your own thing, and be oblivious to the collectivist reaction it may bring. You are also free to get your panties in a bunch-crunch.

But ignorance can be bliss as well, and there indeed exists a leftside button for said reprieve. Push it for repression, avoid it for enlightenment : Keldorn *commands* thee.

 

Rob Roy is dead, isn't he?

QED.

Now that would be Fallout.

 

It's not a good enough reason, it's a no-reason. TNO's hunt for himself was forced on him by external factors (namely that he wouldn't leave himself alone). The roleplaying consequences of that circumstance was entirely in the hands of the player.

The Daddy thing is utterly senseless. Your reaction to a missing person should be yours in a roleplaying game. It shouldn't be up to the game to decide. It's metagaming in precisely the same manner that it's metagaming if you & I play a game together and I suddenly start describing the actions of your character.

If you mean story-wise, I completely agree. Emergent storytelling might be great, but I've never really seen anyone pull it off. What that has to do with questing for Daddy though, I can't guess.

 

I will be shocked, SHOCKED!!! if your father isn't either the bad guy or a toadie for the bad guy.

Even then, rather than chalking it up to a burst of creativity, I would guess that when the creative masterminds presented their "your dad is really the bad guy!!!!" twist, the suits balked at the potential devastation to player psyche.