Grandpa Gamer
Scholar
- Joined
- Oct 27, 2006
- Messages
- 190
Predictions are pointless but fun, and since I'm one of those still looking forward to Fallout 3 with some hope, let's see what we can reasonably hope for. I'm basing these predictions not just upon wishful thinking, but on what I would have done if I were Beth. (Understanding that being Beth I could not be entirely myself. :twisted
Here goes:
Gameworld.
We can expect a huge and open post apocalyptic gameworld based on the visual style of the original Fallout, where you are prettty much free to go where you want and do what you want. This is almost inevitable, since huge open worlds are what Beth is all about, and Fallout had one too, albeit not as huge. The atmosphere of the gameworld is crucial, and Beth thinks that she can nail this. Beth thinks that if she gets the world right visually, she is halfway to the bank with the money. And she could be right. Being the sucker I am, I will probably buy the game just to go sightseeing in that world, even if almost everything else about the game is wrong.
Getting the world right might not be as easy as it seems, though. If Beth fails, we get something like a more repetitive version of the world in STALKER with lots of pointless fifties references.
Chance of success: 85 percent.
Perspective.
It will be first person, probably with a rather useless third person option, just like in Oblivon. You can't go wrong with first person. Beth knows this, and wouldn't dare or care to mess with other perspectives, since it's too hard to get the camera to behave anyway. She never even considered a static view like in the original Fallout. (I woud have, but this is Beth, not me.)
Chance of success: 99 percent.
Travel.
You can walk or run all over the gameworld in real time, but there will of course be fast travel - with random encounters. Beth is happy with how fast travel worked in Oblivion, and Fallout had fast travel too. Hopefully Beth understands that random encounters makes fast travel more exciting, and will put in a lot of work on those encounters. Since you will travel all over the gameworld a lot, those encounters could be the highlight of the whole gaming experience.
I hope for much variety, from simple traders and robbers to occasional unexpected hilarious encounters. (Remember the wizard that fell from the sky in Morrowind? Come on Beth, you know you can do this!) If Beth fails, we get level scaled rad scorpions and level scaled bandits jumping at us around every corner.
Chance of success: 65 percent.
Vehicles.
Well. You could drive a car in Fallout. You could ride a horse in Oblivion. The car in Half Life 2 worked pretty well. Far Cry had wehicles that worked well too. The Mad Max movies had lots of cars and other vehicles. Hell, the very successful Grand Theft Auto games (surprise) all feature vehicles. Also, the huge cars of the fifties are integral to our understanding of what the fifties were all about. There is no getting around it. Beth will try to give us at least one car, possibly more cars and other vehicles too. Don't forget the easy opportunity for quests involving getting spare parts and skill checks for repairing the vehicle when it breaks down. Could be great. However, there is a possibility that Beth finds incorporating vehicles in the game too much work, in which case she might just drop the whole idea, like the developers of STALKER did. If Beth fails, we get to drive a car that is as realistic and fun do drive as the horse in Oblivon is to ride.
Chance of success: 45 percent.
Player character.
Visually, we get all the bells and whistles and the opportunity to look really ugly. Perhaps there will be an option to play as a mutant, but I seriously doubt it. Beth likes to save some things for later, like playing as a warevolf in Morrowind. Other than that, there will be plenty of options to be who ever you want. Beth knows how to do this.
Chance of success: 97 percent.
Stats and character progression.
Ok. It's a role playing game. Most people seem to equate this with stats and levels, so we will get stats and levels. However, Beth wants to make Fallout 3 appealing to the FPS-crowd, so it will be possible to put this shit pretty much on aoutopilot and just get on with the shooting. Beth knows that many players just want to jump in and get on with the action. (As does the developers of Bio Shock and Hellgate London.) But Beth also knows what the old Fallout fans want, and will go to some lengths to provide just that. There will be a system of traits and perks, all represented by funny drawings on a yellow background. (And I bet Beth thinks that nothing spells Fallout like funny drawings on a yellow background.) There will probably be "peaceful" skills of social and technical nature. The huge problem is how they will work in the game. Beth looks to games like Deus Ex and System Shock, but probably can't figure it out. In the best case scenario we get dialogue options for talking us out of situations and persuade NPC:s to do our bidding, as well as options to use technical skills to rig and fix stuff in the game to get ahead without too much fighting, though that's probably too much to hope for. If Beth fails, we get useless stats like mercantile in Oblivion and pointless mini-games like the lockpicking and (shudder) persuasion in Oblivion. We have to realise that it's really difficult to implement stuff like this well, and even developers with the best of intentions, like Troika with Bloodlines, have a hard time getting a good balance.
Chance of success: 14 percent.
Combat.
Needless to say, there will be lots of fighting. Beth will implement all sorts of guns and it will play mostly like any first person shooter. Think Half Life 2 or STALKER. Beth will incorporate stats in some way, though, like in System Shock or Bloodlines, but she will make sure that the numbers shit doesn't get in the way of pure FPS happiness. Probably we get some simple system where different skills affect damage and not much else. Maybe we get stats and skill requirements for using certain weapons, like minimum strength for heavy weapons. Easy to implement and easy to understand even for the most retarded player. The original Fallout had melee, and so will Fallout 3. Beth thinks that the melee system in Oblivion worked fine, and since there is so much else to work on, she won't bother to change that. Expect to be able to run around bashing and blocking like in Oblivion, but expect the guns to be so much more effective and interesting that you won't want to. Unless Beth goes for some survival horror style dearth of ammo, in which case you'll have to. But Beth thinks lack of ammo makes game boring, so that's not very likely to happen.
Chance of succsess: 60 percent.
Followers.
In the original Fallout you could recruit followers. Beth has tried to incorporate followers in games before, but it never worked very well. Beth will try again, but are cautious about it, and won't let the gameplay rely on it too much. In the best case scenario, followers will behave like they do in Half Life 2, and not be too much trouble. If Beth fails, they will behave awkwardly and get stuck like in Daikatana, or maybe even spray the player with bullets, trying to kill a rat with an automatic weapon, like in the original Fallout.
Chance of success: 8 percent.
Compass.
There will be a compass. It will work like the compass in Oblivion, and be explained as some sort of GPS system. You might choose to activate it or not in the game. Perhaps you will have to find it before you can use it, probably in the initial "tutorial" section. It might even require batteries or recharging within the game. (Nah, that could put people off.)
Chance of success: 97 percent.
Story and quests.
Beth knows that Fallout contained story and quests with more choices and consequenses than any game Beth has ever made, Daggerfall included. Beth will try to make story and quest more to the liking of Fallout fans. Beth can make interesting quests, like the paranoia quest in Oblivion. But Beth usually thinks this is too much work. The broken quest with the barbarian and the witch (perfectly good idea on paper) in Morrowind shows how easy these things can be botched. Bet will make some effort, but don't expect too much. Also, not to confuse FPS-players, every quest must be solvable by shooting. Yet I dare hope that Fallout 3 will be less linear than Oblivion. But not by much.
Chance of success: 23 percent.
Sex, drugs and rock'n'roll.
The original Fallout games had some mature themes. However, Beth would like to go for a teen rating this time. That strategy didn't work with Oblivion, though, as the game ended up with a mature rating anyway. Also, the Grand Theft Auto games sell very well despite, or perhaps even thanks to, their mature rating. And Beth could probably not get away with a "bloody mess" perk within the constraints of a teen rating, and as we all know, "bloody mess" is Beth's favourite Fallout perk. As for drugs, Beth likes drugs. Morrowind got away with a teen rating, even though it contained illegal substances that the player could both trade and use. But that might have been due to the fact that the drugs had funny names like Skooma and Sujamma. As for nudity, Beth likes nudity. In Daggerfall Beth had nude women hanging around for no apparent reason. But Beth knows she can't get away with that sort of thing now. After all, there is a difference between a one pixel nipple and a bumpmapped one. And you could get burned on your coffee if it's too hot. Expect some mild innuendo here and there, in order not stray too far from the mood of the original game. Nothing too explicit, though, as the game is intended for the American market. Expect also to be able to trade and consume substances with amazing effects. Just don't refer to them as "drugs" - as countless fantasy games have proved, "potions" are ok. Nah, that is just silly. Might have to let go of that teen rating after all. If Rockstar can, so can Beth.
Chance of success: 42 percent.
On the whole.
Gears of War consists of perhaps 10-15 hours of linear mindless shooting in a visually stunning post apocalyptic setting. (I played through it all, but didn't bother to beat the final boss.) Beth wants Fallout 3 to offer an equally visually impressive post apocalyptic setting with guns galore to satisfy any trigger happy gamer who thought Gears of War (or Half Life 2 or STALKER for that matter) was any good. But this world will be large and open, and thus offer so many more hours of free roaming and shooting. Grand Theft Auto III consists of an open environment where the player can follow a linear story through missions as well as cause all sorts of mayhem on the side in a rather immersive environment. Beth wants Fallout 3 to offer a similarly thrilling experience, where you can do missions called "quests", generally behave like a badass and possibly drive around in the occasional stolen rusty fifties Chevrolet. The Fallout games gave you lots of dialog options an choices and interesting NPC:s to interact with. Beth wants Fallout 3 to offer some of that too. In the best case scenario, there will be just enough interesting role playing to be done, and the game will offer an explorable environment with enough atmosphere and detail to compensate for all the inevitable shortcomings. If Beth fails, the game will be an open mess of a sandbox with a linear story and lots of uninspired side quests tacked onto it, a broken stats system and lots of boring fights against bandits and rad scorpions. An it will probably sell well enough anyway, if the visuals are up to par.
Chance of success? Depends on how you define it. Could be 100 percent. :shock:
Here goes:
Gameworld.
We can expect a huge and open post apocalyptic gameworld based on the visual style of the original Fallout, where you are prettty much free to go where you want and do what you want. This is almost inevitable, since huge open worlds are what Beth is all about, and Fallout had one too, albeit not as huge. The atmosphere of the gameworld is crucial, and Beth thinks that she can nail this. Beth thinks that if she gets the world right visually, she is halfway to the bank with the money. And she could be right. Being the sucker I am, I will probably buy the game just to go sightseeing in that world, even if almost everything else about the game is wrong.
Getting the world right might not be as easy as it seems, though. If Beth fails, we get something like a more repetitive version of the world in STALKER with lots of pointless fifties references.
Chance of success: 85 percent.
Perspective.
It will be first person, probably with a rather useless third person option, just like in Oblivon. You can't go wrong with first person. Beth knows this, and wouldn't dare or care to mess with other perspectives, since it's too hard to get the camera to behave anyway. She never even considered a static view like in the original Fallout. (I woud have, but this is Beth, not me.)
Chance of success: 99 percent.
Travel.
You can walk or run all over the gameworld in real time, but there will of course be fast travel - with random encounters. Beth is happy with how fast travel worked in Oblivion, and Fallout had fast travel too. Hopefully Beth understands that random encounters makes fast travel more exciting, and will put in a lot of work on those encounters. Since you will travel all over the gameworld a lot, those encounters could be the highlight of the whole gaming experience.
I hope for much variety, from simple traders and robbers to occasional unexpected hilarious encounters. (Remember the wizard that fell from the sky in Morrowind? Come on Beth, you know you can do this!) If Beth fails, we get level scaled rad scorpions and level scaled bandits jumping at us around every corner.
Chance of success: 65 percent.
Vehicles.
Well. You could drive a car in Fallout. You could ride a horse in Oblivion. The car in Half Life 2 worked pretty well. Far Cry had wehicles that worked well too. The Mad Max movies had lots of cars and other vehicles. Hell, the very successful Grand Theft Auto games (surprise) all feature vehicles. Also, the huge cars of the fifties are integral to our understanding of what the fifties were all about. There is no getting around it. Beth will try to give us at least one car, possibly more cars and other vehicles too. Don't forget the easy opportunity for quests involving getting spare parts and skill checks for repairing the vehicle when it breaks down. Could be great. However, there is a possibility that Beth finds incorporating vehicles in the game too much work, in which case she might just drop the whole idea, like the developers of STALKER did. If Beth fails, we get to drive a car that is as realistic and fun do drive as the horse in Oblivon is to ride.
Chance of success: 45 percent.
Player character.
Visually, we get all the bells and whistles and the opportunity to look really ugly. Perhaps there will be an option to play as a mutant, but I seriously doubt it. Beth likes to save some things for later, like playing as a warevolf in Morrowind. Other than that, there will be plenty of options to be who ever you want. Beth knows how to do this.
Chance of success: 97 percent.
Stats and character progression.
Ok. It's a role playing game. Most people seem to equate this with stats and levels, so we will get stats and levels. However, Beth wants to make Fallout 3 appealing to the FPS-crowd, so it will be possible to put this shit pretty much on aoutopilot and just get on with the shooting. Beth knows that many players just want to jump in and get on with the action. (As does the developers of Bio Shock and Hellgate London.) But Beth also knows what the old Fallout fans want, and will go to some lengths to provide just that. There will be a system of traits and perks, all represented by funny drawings on a yellow background. (And I bet Beth thinks that nothing spells Fallout like funny drawings on a yellow background.) There will probably be "peaceful" skills of social and technical nature. The huge problem is how they will work in the game. Beth looks to games like Deus Ex and System Shock, but probably can't figure it out. In the best case scenario we get dialogue options for talking us out of situations and persuade NPC:s to do our bidding, as well as options to use technical skills to rig and fix stuff in the game to get ahead without too much fighting, though that's probably too much to hope for. If Beth fails, we get useless stats like mercantile in Oblivion and pointless mini-games like the lockpicking and (shudder) persuasion in Oblivion. We have to realise that it's really difficult to implement stuff like this well, and even developers with the best of intentions, like Troika with Bloodlines, have a hard time getting a good balance.
Chance of success: 14 percent.
Combat.
Needless to say, there will be lots of fighting. Beth will implement all sorts of guns and it will play mostly like any first person shooter. Think Half Life 2 or STALKER. Beth will incorporate stats in some way, though, like in System Shock or Bloodlines, but she will make sure that the numbers shit doesn't get in the way of pure FPS happiness. Probably we get some simple system where different skills affect damage and not much else. Maybe we get stats and skill requirements for using certain weapons, like minimum strength for heavy weapons. Easy to implement and easy to understand even for the most retarded player. The original Fallout had melee, and so will Fallout 3. Beth thinks that the melee system in Oblivion worked fine, and since there is so much else to work on, she won't bother to change that. Expect to be able to run around bashing and blocking like in Oblivion, but expect the guns to be so much more effective and interesting that you won't want to. Unless Beth goes for some survival horror style dearth of ammo, in which case you'll have to. But Beth thinks lack of ammo makes game boring, so that's not very likely to happen.
Chance of succsess: 60 percent.
Followers.
In the original Fallout you could recruit followers. Beth has tried to incorporate followers in games before, but it never worked very well. Beth will try again, but are cautious about it, and won't let the gameplay rely on it too much. In the best case scenario, followers will behave like they do in Half Life 2, and not be too much trouble. If Beth fails, they will behave awkwardly and get stuck like in Daikatana, or maybe even spray the player with bullets, trying to kill a rat with an automatic weapon, like in the original Fallout.
Chance of success: 8 percent.
Compass.
There will be a compass. It will work like the compass in Oblivion, and be explained as some sort of GPS system. You might choose to activate it or not in the game. Perhaps you will have to find it before you can use it, probably in the initial "tutorial" section. It might even require batteries or recharging within the game. (Nah, that could put people off.)
Chance of success: 97 percent.
Story and quests.
Beth knows that Fallout contained story and quests with more choices and consequenses than any game Beth has ever made, Daggerfall included. Beth will try to make story and quest more to the liking of Fallout fans. Beth can make interesting quests, like the paranoia quest in Oblivion. But Beth usually thinks this is too much work. The broken quest with the barbarian and the witch (perfectly good idea on paper) in Morrowind shows how easy these things can be botched. Bet will make some effort, but don't expect too much. Also, not to confuse FPS-players, every quest must be solvable by shooting. Yet I dare hope that Fallout 3 will be less linear than Oblivion. But not by much.
Chance of success: 23 percent.
Sex, drugs and rock'n'roll.
The original Fallout games had some mature themes. However, Beth would like to go for a teen rating this time. That strategy didn't work with Oblivion, though, as the game ended up with a mature rating anyway. Also, the Grand Theft Auto games sell very well despite, or perhaps even thanks to, their mature rating. And Beth could probably not get away with a "bloody mess" perk within the constraints of a teen rating, and as we all know, "bloody mess" is Beth's favourite Fallout perk.
As for drugs, Beth likes drugs. Morrowind got away with a teen rating, even though it contained illegal substances that the player could both trade and use. But that might have been due to the fact that the drugs had funny names like Skooma and Sujamma. As for nudity, Beth likes nudity. In Daggerfall Beth had nude women hanging around for no apparent reason. But Beth knows she can't get away with that sort of thing now. After all, there is a difference between a one pixel nipple and a bumpmapped one. And you could get burned on your coffee if it's too hot. Expect some mild innuendo here and there, in order not stray too far from the mood of the original game. Nothing too explicit, though, as the game is intended for the American market. Expect also to be able to trade and consume substances with amazing effects. Just don't refer to them as "drugs" - as countless fantasy games have proved, "potions" are ok. Nah, that is just silly. Might have to let go of that teen rating after all. If Rockstar can, so can Beth.Chance of success: 42 percent.
On the whole.
Gears of War consists of perhaps 10-15 hours of linear mindless shooting in a visually stunning post apocalyptic setting. (I played through it all, but didn't bother to beat the final boss.) Beth wants Fallout 3 to offer an equally visually impressive post apocalyptic setting with guns galore to satisfy any trigger happy gamer who thought Gears of War (or Half Life 2 or STALKER for that matter) was any good. But this world will be large and open, and thus offer so many more hours of free roaming and shooting. Grand Theft Auto III consists of an open environment where the player can follow a linear story through missions as well as cause all sorts of mayhem on the side in a rather immersive environment. Beth wants Fallout 3 to offer a similarly thrilling experience, where you can do missions called "quests", generally behave like a badass and possibly drive around in the occasional stolen rusty fifties Chevrolet. The Fallout games gave you lots of dialog options an choices and interesting NPC:s to interact with. Beth wants Fallout 3 to offer some of that too. In the best case scenario, there will be just enough interesting role playing to be done, and the game will offer an explorable environment with enough atmosphere and detail to compensate for all the inevitable shortcomings. If Beth fails, the game will be an open mess of a sandbox with a linear story and lots of uninspired side quests tacked onto it, a broken stats system and lots of boring fights against bandits and rad scorpions. An it will probably sell well enough anyway, if the visuals are up to par.
Chance of success? Depends on how you define it. Could be 100 percent. :shock:
