Fallout Fallout 2 is way worse than I remember it.

[Ryzer]

FedEx, chore. Someone's been playing games with quest markers on.

The quest marker is enabled by default and cannot be disabled ( in the options menu).
I don't mod my games ( bugfixes aside). A good game doesn't require mods.

 

[Sykar]

New Vegas is a good game with just bug fixes. Not wanting to use mods is your personal decision though and not an argument. It is easy to install and the game functions well enough without quest markers. Same with dialogue chests and container tags.

 

[Roguey]

Feargus's lack of involvement with Fallout 1 is also supported by simply looking at his credit list for where his focus was in the '96 - '98 time frame.

It was incredible to work on Fallout and I'm really proud of what we were able to do - and for the things that I personally did right (get the Hub working and the .223 pistol quest) and the things that I did wrong but learned from (the Turbo Plasma Rifle).

 

[wishbonetail]

FedEx, chore. Someone's been playing games with quest markers on.

The quest marker is enabled by default and cannot be disabled.
I don't mod my games ( bugfixes aside). A good game doesn't require mods.

Ini file has markers on/off option, from Oblivion to F4.
Game is a chore only if are going through a checklist.

 

[agris]

Feargus's lack of involvement with Fallout 1 is also supported by simply looking at his credit list for where his focus was in the '96 - '98 time frame.

It was incredible to work on Fallout and I'm really proud of what we were able to do - and for the things that I personally did right (get the Hub working and the .223 pistol quest) and the things that I did wrong but learned from (the Turbo Plasma Rifle).

Oh interesting, I didn't know he did *anything* on the game. Got a link to the interview?

Still, I think my theory holds: sounds like he did minor, low-level work. Fallout 1 doesn't reflect any vision he had. Whereas by the time Fallout 2 rolls around, he's head of Black Isle and producing the entire game.

 

[Butter]

The game was designed around quest markers just like Oblivion and Skyrim.

Could you give example of a quest that requires it? Because I look up through quests and each of them points out NPC at SPECIFIC LOCATION when you need to talk to person, or OBJECT in SPECIFIC LOCATION in quest objectives.

What is a quest that is impossible to figure out without quest markers?

Bleed Me Dry requires you to travel to unmarked locations to recover fire gecko eggs and cazador eggs. Nobody tells you where these places are, and you'd be completely fucked without the quest marker.

Talent Pool requires you to find and recruit 4 performers. This one actually can be done without the quest marker, but the quest giver doesn't give you any idea of where to locate these people. It was designed around the quest marker telling you where to go.

 

[Roguey]

Oh interesting, I didn't know he did *anything* on the game. Got a link to the interview?

Still, I think my theory holds: sounds like he did minor, low-level work. Fallout 1 doesn't reflect any vision he had. Whereas by the time Fallout 2 rolls around, he's head of Black Isle and producing the entire game.

All these old sites are a mess https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/gamebanshee-interviews-feargus-urquhart.188798/ https://www.duckandcover.cx/forums/viewtopic.php?t=24254&view=previous

Fallout 2's issues were the result of a lack of oversight. Everyone was more or less left to their own devices. As McComb put it http://archive.nma-fallout.com/article.php?id=35156

Anyway, when I showed up, there were three Planescape games in the pipeline. Mine, Zeb Cook's, and Avellone's. Zeb's turned into Stonekeep 2, Avellone's became Torment, and mine got canceled because our managers couldn't justify having three Planescape games. I got shuffled over to be the second designer on Torment, and I was working away happily on that when I got the call to go do dialogues and areas for Fallout 2 (specifically, Broken Hills and San Francisco, so if you hate those areas, you know who to blame now).

I got a fifteen minute introduction to the dialogue editor, and then was shoved forth to spew greatness from my brow. I probably should have asked a few more questions along the way.

 

[Valdetiosi]

That's not a praise. There is a lot of post-apocalyptic games doing better mainly Stalker games. Tell me do you only play Bethesda games?

It is a praise cause so far it is the only game that I know that has such things. STALKER doesn't have Remington that can spew incendiary or plasma buck shots.
I've played STALKER games and their selection consists of TOZ, Mossberg, SPAS and Armsel. Pretty decent ones, but with revolvers. Though a game I played recently called Hunt: Showdown does have very excellent lever-action repeaters and revolvers, seems like its the second game to have nice cowboy guns.

I don't find any other post-apocalyptic game with shotguns and revolvers, and to be frankly, game doesn't need to be post-apocalyptic to have a good shotguns and revolvers.

 

[agris]

Fallout 2's issues were the result of a lack of oversight. Everyone was more or less left to their own devices.

Heh, you know the position in charge of making sure that doesn't happen?

Not surprising, he's also listed as a Lead Designer. Finally, his true self shows itself again and he has the gall to list himself as part of the "SPECIAL game system design". You know, the system that they pulled from Fallout 1 that he didn't design.

 

[wishbonetail]

Bleed Me Dry requires you to travel to unmarked locations to recover fire gecko eggs and cazador eggs. Nobody tells you where these places are, and you'd be completely fucked without the quest marker.

Talent Pool requires you to find and recruit 4 performers. This one actually can be done without the quest marker, but the quest giver doesn't give you any idea of where to locate these people. It was designed around the quest marker telling you where to go.

It not as bad as it sounds. As you travel, you'll talk to everyone eventually. Now, i have played Might and Magic 2 not long ago and that game was specifically designed for you to comb every tile of the map for clues. Gamers are too sissified nowadays.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

new vegas is a bad game because the first time I played it I was spooked by invisible nightkin in the basement of the one quest area

 

[Valdetiosi]

Bleed Me Dry requires you to travel to unmarked locations to recover fire gecko eggs and cazador eggs. Nobody tells you where these places are, and you'd be completely fucked without the quest marker.

Funny about that one, since you can collect about 10-20 eggs of the creatures and it turns into pile of eggs that you can turn into, instead of having to waltz into specific egg container.

 

[agris]

snip

Full text of the gamebanshee interview can be found here if anyone else cares.

https://web.archive.org/web/2009061...mebanshee.com/interviews/feargusurquhart1.php
https://web.archive.org/web/2009061...mebanshee.com/interviews/feargusurquhart2.php
https://web.archive.org/web/2009061...mebanshee.com/interviews/feargusurquhart3.php

I can find the Beth dev diary with Urquhart in the wayback machine as well, but the stupid bethsoft interstitials for age/country screw up retrieving it and I can't pass the INT check to get around that.

https://web.archive.org/web/2010110...t.com/eng/vault/diaries_diary12-06.08.10.html

 

[Roguey]

Heh, you know the position in charge of making sure that doesn't happen?

Not surprising, he's also listed as a Lead Designer. Finally, his true self shows itself again and he has the gall to list himself as part of the "SPECIAL game system design". You know, the system that they pulled from Fallout 1 that he didn't design.

Fallout 2 was a mess because the marketing department was calling more and more of the shots so the people technically in charge were mentally checking out.

While Fallout was in production, I was unhappy at how development worked at Interplay. People who didn’t play games, or didn’t even seem to like games, were making decisions about how to market the game, what features it should have, and when it should ship.

Worse, decisions were being made that changed the game and required us to do substantial changes, and these decisions could and should have been made months earlier. For example, the UK office said no children could be harmed in the game, but children had been in the design for years. Another example: Interplay spent a lot of money for an external marketing agency to develop treatments for the box and ad, and they were terrible.

My artists produced better work on their own time, but marketing did not want to use them. However, when Interplay’s president, Brian Fargo, saw their work, he liked what he saw, so the art was used. My role as producer appeared to consist of arguing with people and trying to defend the game from devolving into a lesser product.

In July 1997—Fallout would ship three months later in October—I had decided that I did not want to work on Fallout 2. I submitted to my boss, Feargus Urquhart, a review for my line producer Fred Hatch that recommended he should be promoted to associate producer and assigned Fallout 2. Although the review was not processed, Feargus gave Fred the game to see how he would perform. When the first designs were submitted, I really didn’t like them. Neither did Feargus, nor did Brian Fargo.

Leonard Boyarsky and Jason Anderson, who were the two artists and designers on Fallout with whom I would later start Troika, didn’t feel any different either. So, Leonard and Jason wrote a different storyline for the game, which Brian liked more, but he told me he’d like to see what I could do. When I asked Feargus about Fred’s promotion—his review was now long overdue—he told me that while he wouldn’t make me do Fallout 2, the promotion wasn’t going to happen, and Fred wouldn’t get the sequel.

Feargus planned to give Fallout 2 to the producer of Descent to Undermountain if I didn’t take it. While I personally liked that producer, I hated Descent. I thought the sequel would suffer under similar direction. I told Feargus that I would do the sequel and began working on a design.

Before leaving for Thanksgiving, I informed Feargus that I was thinking of quitting. I wanted him to know how I was feeling about development and how deeply I had been affected. I was worried that the same problems I had experienced during the development of Fallout would persist during the making of Fallout 2. Feargus said he understood.

When I returned, he asked if I had made a decision. I had not, and so I began work on Fallout 2. I worked out a new design and made an aggressive schedule to get the game out by the end of October 1998. I then started working on the game as lead designer and producer.

But the same problems resurfaced. For example, to save time and money, I had decided to have the same internal artists make the box for Fallout 2. Feargus was upset that I had made such a decision without consulting him, but when I talked to Marketing, they were fine with the idea. But then Sales decided to change the box size and style, which would create problems for making the second box look similar to the first. In a meeting with Sales where Feargus was present, I was told that the decision was made and “there will be no further discussion on it.”

I decided I had enough. Leonard and Jason, who could tell I was unhappy, had told me weeks earlier that they were unwilling to work on the sequel without me. Rather than simply quit, I remembered that Brian had told me years ago, after a programmer had quit under bad circumstances, that he wished people would come and talk to him rather than quit.

I went to Brian in December and told him that I was unhappy and wanted to quit. I decided to be frank and honest, and told him that other people also weren’t happy and might resign with me. He wanted names. I told him about Leonard and Jason. Other people declined to be mentioned.

Throughout December and January, the three of us met with Brian to discuss the problems and see what solutions might be found. We wanted to meet with Brian as a group to prevent any misunderstandings that might arise from separate meetings. In fact, I wanted Feargus there, too, but Brian only included him once toward the end. Brian seemed surprised that I was getting resistance to doing Fallout 2 my way. His attitude was, “You did well on the first game, so just do it again on the second.”

Unfortunately, this meant running to Brian whenever anyone tried to force their own ideas into the game, which didn’t seem like a good working environment. We discussed this problem and raised other issues at these meetings, such as converting our bonus plan to a royalty-based plan. Brian did not like the idea of royalties. As for how to handle creative control, Brian said I could divide the responsibilities with Feargus, so I could handle Marketing and other departments directly, and they would have to effectively treat me as a division director. This seemed unsatisfactory to me, but Feargus seemed very unhappy that his own authority and responsibilities concerning Fallout 2 would be greatly reduced in this plan.

It was unclear how some issues would get resolved, such as budgeting for equipment and maintenance, since I didn’t have a division director’s budget. Brian handwaved these issues, saying that we’d work them out.

At that point, I regretted not abiding my original instinct to walk out and trying to work things out with Brian. In mid-January, I decided to leave the com-pany. I told Feargus, who accepted my resignation and asked me to work until the end of the month. We went to talk to Trish Wright, the executive producer, who was unhappy to see me leave but accepted it. She warned me that Brian might be very upset, but I wanted to tell him that day. I returned to my office and told Leonard and Jason that I had quit, effective at the end of the month. Then I went and told Brian.

As expected, he was not happy. We talked for an hour, but the meeting was cut short because I had a dental appointment. While I was at the dentist, Leonard and Jason also decided to tender their resignations. I didn’t speak to Brian after that day, and I finished out the month with my team.

My team was surprised and unhappy, having heard nothing of my months of meetings with Brian. I met with them to make sure the design for Fallout 2 was up-to-date. And I met with Feargus; my replacement, Eric Demilt, who would produce Fallout 2; and other designers, such as Chris Avellone and Zeb Cook, who would assume my design responsibilities.

 

[agris]

Roguey you read that very, very differently than me. I see where you get "marketing department was calling more and more of the shots", but did you catch where Tim said

I could handle Marketing and other departments directly, and they would have to effectively treat me as a division director

And who was the division director that marketing was managed by? Feargus Urquhart. Your quote of Cain is telling you he was unhappy with Feargus without saying his name.

Unfortunately, this meant running to Brian whenever anyone tried to force their own ideas into the game, which didn’t seem like a good working environment.

Who could do that? Urquhart, and those under his management; not Cain's.

I don't see how you can say that production was a mess and quote Cain above without fingering Urquhart.

 

[Roguey]

And who was the division director that marketing was managed by? Feargus Urquhart. That quote is telling you he was unhappy with Feargus without saying his name.

Fearugs was just as powerless as he was. If he had a problem with him, he never would have joined Obsidian and stayed there for years.

 

[agris]

And who was the division director that marketing was managed by? Feargus Urquhart. That quote is telling you he was unhappy with Feargus without saying his name.

Fearugs was just as powerless as he was. If he had a problem with him, he never would have joined Obsidian and stayed there for years.

I don't know how you can say that, he's literally the director of the division Cain was working under. Cain complains about his decisions not being respected by people under direct management of Urquhart, and Urquhart is clearly part of these discussions yet Cain's problems aren't resolved.

Cain is telling you that people managed by Urquhart keep interfering with his game, and he is also saying that people with power over him are also meddling with the game and Brian Fargo is confused by this concept because it it isn't Fargo doing the meddling.

Brian seemed surprised that I was getting resistance to doing Fallout 2 my way. His attitude was, “You did well on the first game, so just do it again on the second.”

The resistance was from Urquhart and those under him, outside of Tim's management. If it was executive meddling (i.e. Fargo), the quote above would make no sense.

 

[Roguey]

I don't know how you can say that, he's literally the director of the division Cain was working under. Cain complains about his decisions not being respected by people under direct management of Urquhart, and Urquhart is clearly part of these discussions yet Cain's problems aren't resolved.

Cain is telling you that people managed by Urquhart keep interfering with his game, and he is also saying that people with power over him are also meddling with the game and Brian Fargo is confused by this concept because it it isn't Fargo doing the meddling.

Feargus didn't control the marketing or sales department. He just had more leverage with which to make arguments.

 

[agris]

Feargus [ed: the Division Director] didn't control the marketing or sales department. He just had more leverage with which to make arguments.

I could handle Marketing and other departments directly, and they would have to effectively treat me as a division director

¯\_(ツ)_/¯


So let's see, in summary you think the reasons Fallout 2 was botched are:

• Lack of oversight of individuals contributing to the project
• Tim's decisions regarding the game being overruled by marketing

And despite Urquhart being a FO2 producer & designer, division director/president of BIS, and Fargo having no clue about the resistance Cain was facing, we can confidently say it was not Urquhart's fault and instead was... someone in marketing? Also, how does marketing art choices influence the coherence of the game's towns and writing? Maybe you know something not public and don't want to say it, but what your putting forth isn't convincing.

I do appreciate you engaging though because it's been a long time since I read some of this and it's helpful to sharpen my position with Cain and Urquhart's own words.

 

[Roguey]

So let's see, in summary you think the reasons Fallout 2 was botched are:

• Lack of oversight of individuals contributing to the project
• Tim's decisions regarding the game being overruled by marketing

And despite Urquhart being a FO2 producer & designer, division director/president of BIS, and Fargo having no clue about the resistance Cain was facing, we can confidently say it was not Urquhart's fault and instead was... someone in marketing? Also, how does marketing art choices influence the coherence of the game's towns and writing? Maybe you know something not public and don't want to say it, but what your putting forth isn't convincing.

I do appreciate you engaging though because it's been a long time since I read some of this and it's helpful to sharpen my position with Cain and Urquhart's own words.

They were dictating things that were in the game. Like the opening cutscene where the Enclave kills those vault dwellers for no reason, marketing department. The very existence of Horrigan, marketing department. The Temple of Trials, marketing department.

 

[agris]

They were dictating things that were in the game. Like the opening cutscene where the Enclave kills those vault dwellers for no reason, marketing department. The very existence of Horrigan, marketing department. The Temple of Trials, marketing department.

I don't think cutting the part of my post where Cain says that marketing (edit: for Fallout 2) was effectively controlled by Urquhart really helps your argument that it wasn't Urquhart's meddling, or if we're being generous perhaps, incompetent management.

Also, did you already change your mind regarding the botched production of the game? Or is it just outside the marketing narrative so we're not talking about that part?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

FO2 originally had unskippable ads when the game started until they reduced the image compression ratio until there wasn't enough size to get them to fit on the disk because the marketing department wouldn't let them remove the ads.

 

[Ryzer]

Truth is, agris is Chris Avellone from the start.

 

[Roguey]

I don't think cutting the part of my post where Cain says that marketing is effectively controlled by Urquhart really helps your argument that it wasn't Urquhart's meddling, or if we're being generous perhaps, incompetent management.

Feargus was the director of Interplay's RPG division. He was not above Interplay's marketing department. Fargo wanted to give Cain the power to argue with those guys (since Feargus was too much of a dummy to argue with them himself; he was either unconvincing or didn't see the problems Cain did) but it didn't work out.

Also, did you already change your mind regarding the botched production of the game? Or is that just outside the marketing narrative so we're not talking about that part?

I don't quite understand what you mean. The ripple effect of marketing getting far more hands-on than they were on Fallout led to the leads (Matt Norton, Eric DeMilt) mentally checking out and not caring about what individual designers did. Feargus also served as a lead but he was very likely being spread too thin given all his other duties and certainly had no time (not the brains really) to enforce standards.

 

[agris]

since Feargus was too much of a dummy to argue with them himself; he was either unconvincing or didn't see the problems Cain did

What are you basing this on?

I think this is probably the crux of the question as to if Cain's complaints about marketing were a veiled jab at Urquhart or not.

Your point about marketing not being under the RPG division is likely true, but it doesn't change the fact that, per Cain's own words, Urquhart's position let him dictate what marketing could and could not do with the production of Fallout 2.

So the difference in our takes regarding Fallout 2's issues is: Urquhart, incompetent or meddling? Or, I guess, both?