The flaws of Fallout

[Lumpy]

Since there's plenty Fallout 3 bullshit around here, let's try something actually constructive for a change.
In my opinion, Fallout was not as perfect as the fans portray it today. Sure, it beats most RPGs today by far, but nevertheless, it could be improved at certain points.
For one thing, many quests don't have that many ways to be completed. Save Tandi is an example of quest freedom, but besides it, were there that many choices in other quests? Another dumb thing was having forced combat. If they allowed the player to complete 70% of the game with diplomacy, why should they have forced combat in the other 30%, making diplomacy nothing more than a cosmetic option, since you have to have combat skills anyway.
The skill system was pretty fucked up. You had combat, speech and stealth skills as useful, but the rest were crap, and only useful for some abstract form of role-playing without actual in game consequences. In a high tech post-apocalyptic gameworld, there should've been many more uses for Science, Repair, Doctor, Outdoorsman, etc. However, they were quite useless. Not to mention how dumb splitting up a barely used skill (Tech) into two subskills which will be even more useless (Science and Repair).
And lastly, the main plot was underdeveloped and cliched. It's cited as an example of nonlinearity, but there weren't as many events - basically, 4-5 main ones and 2-3 misc, the main ones being more or less forced. So you had 2-3 things you had the option to do or not to. Big fucking deal.
I hope AoD will deal with those issues, and from what's been said, it will. How good it will actually turn out is another story.

 

[Texas Red]

Personally Ive never clamed FOs to be perfect. As I said before I dont rate any game with even a 9, like the idiotic Gamespot/IGN?Gamespy who hand them out to anyone having enough ads over the internet. And thus every game, every RPG, as I see it, lacks something.

Bethesda *could* improve it. But they are of the opinion that isometric view and turnbased combat is too 90s. This has been already stated indirectly by Pete "Full-of-Shit" Hynes. Knowing Bethesda's history do you really think they can pull off a decent RPG? Have they ever done dialogs? Is not Oblivion a perfectl example of how a company goes mainstream?

Basically, FO wasnt perfect and neither will it be improved.

 

[suibhne]

A pity you started the thread with a straw man (viz., that "the fans" all think FO is "perfect") - especially since three or four of the criticisms you mention have often been cited by FO fans around here. :wink:

 

[Lumpy]

But... that's not a straw man - I didn't try to win an argument with one because there is no argument so far. And by fans I'm referring more to the NMA crowd.

 

[Brother None]

And lastly, the main plot was underdeveloped and cliched.

That really was intentional, the cheap use of McGuffins. If there was kind of "threading", story-telling plot like, say, in Planescape: Torment, it would've been a lot harder make the game as open as it was. It isn't perfect, but it's nearly if not completely impossible to do both, you have to make a choice. PS:T chose one, Fallout the other, is either game worse for wear because of it? I don't think so.

As for the "multiple answers for a quest"-philosophy. It was there, paths between speech and violence almost always there, "thief"-paths often added and occasionally science too, though very limited. It might be because of time constraints, but it was only there in major quests.

Is that wrong? You're saying that no matter if you choose CombatBoy, SpeechBoy, StealthBoy or ScienceBoy, you should be able to solve every quest. Isn't that the opposite of Fallout's philosophy, though?

That said, there's a lot wrong with Fallout 1 (and a bit more with Fallout 2, though it works away some original flaws too), a few bits:

- Fairly badly balanced combat system. A problem with turn-based combat is that it's hard to make opponents that'll match the NPCs skills, especially on higher levels. Once you got to three normal shots/two aimed shots turbo plasma rifle hardened power armor, you were basically done with any and all opponents, 'cept maybe the Master.

- Badly balanced skill system, like you said. And let's be honest here, it was *really* bad, some combat skills (unarmed, throwing) being all-but useless, some skills (doctor, first aid, outdoorsman) being completely useless

- The faction and reputation system was pretty badly designed. Why did a whole town decide to turn on me because I missed the raider and shot the hooker? Intent doesn't matter to them? And why are bums reacting to it since they have no reason to care? There were some unclear splits between factions in towns, and how things influenced your reputation could be odd.

- Some choices really needed more consequences, or more that made sense. The whole Necropolis thing was not that well-designed. I guess less bugs would've made a difference here.

 

[dagorkan]

There is a lot of bullshit about Fallout being "DA BESTEST GAEM LIKE.. EVAH!1" especially when Fallout 3 comes up. I think people need to back that up because otherwise it makes the RPGCodex look like the retarded fanboy Codex.

I think Fallout 1 was a good game... yes definitely one of the best RPG of the late 90s, but it suffered from some problems. Combat was badly balanced and hardly strategic at all. NPC control was awful enough to make people almost avoid taking followers. It was only slightly improved in F2. Travelling between locations was completely undeveloped and pointless. Random encounters were annoying, repetitive grind combat.

The character generation/development system was not that great. It can only appear remarkable in comparison to how poor it is in other RPGs.

I would not give it more than 8.5 out of 10.

 

[Zomg]

The NPC followers are obviously terrible, and the game would give a better impression if they weren't even implemented.

The combat is largely atactical and low in gameplay value. It appeals mostly through slapstick gore.

The open character design system tends to obfuscate the basic quest design of the game, which is mostly about the three archetypes of sneaker/combat wombat/talker. The character design system itself is very unbalanced.

The range of sensical narrative roleplaying is pretty narrow. You can go from vault loyalist saint to vault loyalist cutthroat without the narrative falling apart. Past that, nothing hangs together (Why do I even care about the water chip? et cetera) with the notable exception of taking the Master mini-ending.

Less Monty Python references than a Monty Python episode.

 

[kingcomrade]

I agree, Fallout was not the best game ever, Halo was better.

 

[Lumpy]

Is that wrong? You're saying that no matter if you choose CombatBoy, SpeechBoy, StealthBoy or ScienceBoy, you should be able to solve every quest. Isn't that the opposite of Fallout's philosophy, though?

Of course, it would be unreasonable for every quest to be solvable by every class. But in practice, a CombatBoy could do every single quest, a SpeechBoy could do 60% and either use combat or avoid the others (which would lead to annoyance), a StealthBoy could probably do a large part (I don't know, never played one) and a ScienceBoy could do nothing, really, except for the Glow and the odd science misc dialogue.
A game should have a main plot solvable by a large number of classes (and those should preferably be pointed out at char creation, the player shouldn't have to guess whether ScienceBoy or DoctorBoy are supported), and side quests evenly distributed among those classes, with some extra quests solvable with misc skills.

 

[Woetohice]

__

 

[Brother None]

A game should have a main plot solvable by a large number of classes (and those should preferably be pointed out at char creation, the player shouldn't have to guess whether ScienceBoy or DoctorBoy are supported), and side quests evenly distributed among those classes, with some extra quests solvable with misc skills.

Well, this, and what Zomg says, is fairly interesting. Because you're now even calling them classes, but they're not, really. Check DaC for a big discussion on whether or not Fallout 3 should be a classbased game.

Is it the case that Fallout knows de facto classes by adapting its quests to archetypes?

I think it tries to avoid that, for instance I could easily combine a CombatBoy with high Science. A lack of over-specialisations would not ruin the game, unlike in class-based games, where you have to specialise and focus on a narrow group of skills or fail at the game, Fallout did allow you to mix and match as you will.

Did it succeed completely? No, but it came fairly close.

 

[Lumpy]

I called them classes for convenience. I would consider Science, Mechanics and Traps to be part of the Science class, but that shouldn't mean that they should be tied together. The game should allow you to play a Fighter-Scientist if you want, with Energy Weapons, Mechanics and Traps as tagged skills, and still succeed.

 

[dagorkan]

Is it the case that Fallout knows de facto classes by adapting its quests to archetypes?

I think it tries to avoid that, for instance I could easily combine a CombatBoy with high Science. A lack of over-specialisations would not ruin the game, unlike in class-based games, where you have to specialise and focus on a narrow group of skills or fail at the game, Fallout did allow you to mix and match as you will.

Yeah if you're LARPing it. If (like most gamers) your motivation is to 'beat-the-game' then the issue is that there are only a certain number of game strategies and combinations that are effective. You can evenly split your points into fighter/talker categories but you will do worse than if you specialized in one of them - I don't know if that's actually true, just defending Zomg's point.

In a truly open - play whatever you want! - game the difficulty should be approximately the same for any reasonable combination of skills. F1/2 did not provide for that.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

THERE ARE NO FLAWS IN FALLOUT, BAN THIS FAGGOT.



The only thing that might be called flaw by a faggot is the entering of text to talk to NPCs which didn't really work because it wasn't really developed.

 

[Dire Roach]

1. CRPAPY GRAFX (FF7 WAS BETER)

2. NO MOUNTS

3. NO CHEAT COEDS

4. O MULITPLAYER

5. IAN KILLD ME LOL WTF O AND BOTTELCAPS??????


But seriously, the thing I liked least about the FO games was the relative uselessness of more than half the traits, skills, and perks available to the player.

And, this is just nitpicking, but the whole setting seems to be a bunch of cool-sounding concepts slapped together on the fly. "It's like, Mad Max, but with lasers and with an American 1950's motif! Totally radical!"

 

[Zomg]

The Mad Max stuff is schlock, but the broken retrofuturism is golden and I can't think of many comprehensive aesthetics nearly so good in games before or since.

 

[dagorkan]

Why is Mad Max schlock?

I don't love it myself but it's not a bad setting for the time/place it was made. Nowadays it is kind of unimaginative and bad for scifi. Why are there no 90s and 00s influenced post-apoc settings?

 

[Greenskin13]

Poops always says what's on my mind before I do. I think I might just give him power of attorney.

Something that bothered me about FO was the ranged combat. They could have benefitted from Jagged Alliance's use of actually showing the bullets and their trajectory, so that misses can still hit something and make sense doing so. Buckshot to the eyes might not make a hit, but it should at least turn the guy's face into mystery meat.

 

[Cthulhugoat]

Because they suck?

 

[suibhne]

In a truly open - play whatever you want! - game the difficulty should be approximately the same for any reasonable combination of skills. F1/2 did not provide for that.

I'm not defending FO or FO2 on this score, since some of the skills were crazy imbalanced, but your assertion in general seems pretty unsupportable. Just because a game supports, say, 45 different permutations of character traits and skills (e.g.) doesn't mean it should be burdened with equalizing the challenge between all of those possible choices. It's pretty much impossible from a game design perspective, but I don't even think it's desirable.

 

[Claw]

But seriously, the thing I liked least about the FO games was the relative uselessness of more than half the traits, skills, and perks available to the player.

That criticism is <s>relatively</s> absolutely useless.

In a truly open - play whatever you want! - game the difficulty should be approximately the same for any reasonable combination of skills. F1/2 did not provide for that.

Ah, bullshit. That may be an ideal a game should aspire to, but not reaching an ideal cannot be considered valid criticism. Of course the difficulty wasn't the same for any reasonable - whatever that means - combination of skills, but at least it provided a large range of alternative solutions to ingame obstacles and challenges, more so than any other game by a fair margin.

You're debasing an unparalleled gameplay achievement by saying "OMG! NOT PERFECT!"

 

[Elwro]

There were quite a few things which seemed unfinished. First, the "tell me about" option. Second, the Thieves Guild. You do 2 quests and... what? Nothing. Not even "Yeah, thanks, kid, we ain't got no more work here". Also, almost every time I play I fuck something up in Junktown so that I can't deal with the Skullz gang properly, and it just seems that there are some dialog options missing.
Also, I think it'd be better not to include any followers than to do it how it was done.

 

[Dire Roach]

That criticism is <s>relatively</s> absolutely useless.

Your mom is <s>relatively</s> absolutely useless!

 

[Jasede]

Fallout was a GOOD game, not more, to me.
Also:
Arcanum > Fallout + Fallout 2

 

[bonch]

I played Fallout for the first time quite recently and thought it was boring. When I found myself fighting giant rats in a sewer, I realized this game was nearly exactly the same as every other RPG I had ever played.

Online hype made me expect an RPG that was going to blow me away with its awesome skill system, branching quests, and freedom of play. Instead, it's a slightly above-average 1997 computer RPG, not some classic worth having fond memories over.

The only thing that seems to set it apart is the setting, but post-apocalyptic is so overdone. And the grainy graphics give me a headache.

So fuck Fallout.