Interview GameSpot brings another FO3 Q&A

[POOPERSCOOPER]

"that's only your own insignificant opinion"

No shit sherlock. Want a medal for the ingenius deduction?

"...many others including myself enjoyed their games..."

Good for you. Your enjoyment of Bethseda's games while allw ella nd good doens't exactly make me view this predicament any more favorably though. LOL

you're a sad case...bitchin' and whining...oh oh it's the end of the world...bethesda is making fallout...i didn't like their other games and only my opinion matters...get a fucking grip dude

Actually if you didnt have your head up your ass, you would notice that most people at the codex dont like their games BUT WHATA DO I KNOW I FALLOUT FAN LEWL.

 

[corvax]

"head up your ass" ...is that your favorite saying?

i realize that some people here don't like their games...but they take it way too far with their complaining...

 

[FrankHorrigan]

"do you really think Beth will mess up this bad?"

Yes. Absolutely yes. I point to the crapiness of every single other crappy Bethesda game. In 20 years of existence, they have yet to make ONE game I enjoy. Not one other devloper has such a shitty record. Not one.

Which reminds me, their is one worse developer who could have got the licence, derek smart, Derek Smart, DEREK SMART

 

[Volourn]

Who?

 

[FrankHorrigan]

Who?

Thats a little somethingawful.com joke, tradition has it if you type his name 3 times he will appear, surprised you havent heard of him though. Owns 3000AD, made the battlecruiser series of games. He's quite, unintentionaly, funny.

Look at this picture and it will tell you everything you need to know about derek smart

http://www.3000ad.com/images/photo_dsmart1.gif

 

[Volourn]

Heard his name; but I forget so often because I haven't even tried his games. He's unimportant to me.

 

[FrankHorrigan]

Heard his name; but I forget so often because I haven't even tried his games. He's unimportant to me.

Im not even sure its possible to play his game's.. they are that bad. His 2nd last title was *published* by electronic botique and his last game went straight to the bargain bin, dreamcatcher released it for $20, i dont even know how he is still in business.

 

[voodoo1man]

This quote is telling:

The platform is 100 percent irrelevant.

Ignore technical considerations, modding options, multiplayer options, and everything else. What you can't ignore is the fact that the console is <i>hooked up to the TV and has no mouse or keyboard</i>. You can't read half a page of text in a quarter of a screen of a TV. How are you going to do effective interactive fiction with those constraints? How about the interface? If anyone hasn't noticed, making an effective TB tactical combat interface with a console controller is still an open development problem.

 

[Seven]

"head up your ass" ...is that your favorite saying?

i realize that some people here don't like their games...but they take it way too far with their complaining...

Complaining? Well lets see... they've gotten the rights to one of the most beloved game worlds out there, and they've already summed up their position: which is they plan to TESize it and yet you seem to think we have no reason to complain. This begs the question, WTF is wrong with you? The benefit of the fucking doubt? Yeah, I got news for you buddy this community has been screwed over one too many times to give any thing a way on faith. Not only that they're already starting to make excuses about the fanbase, so in conclusion DON"T be a DINKY little FANBOY, got it?

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Not to mention nearly everything Bethesda has said has only echoed what's been said in the past about disasters dealing with Fallout:

• (2000AD) Ed Orman of Micro Forte: We're huge fans of Fallout. That's why we're looking forward to developing Fallout Tactics.
  (2003AD) Chucky Cuevas of Interplay: We're all huge fans of Fallout. We'll take great care in the setting to make sure Fallout Enforcer's a Fallout game in every way.
  (2004AD) Pete Hines of Bethesda: Everyone here at Bethesda loves Fallout, that's why we bought the development rights out from under the original creators of the setting who now work at Troika Games. We'll take great care in making Fallout 3 a great CRPG just like Morrowind. It's what we do best.

 

[plin]

Not to mention nearly everything Bethesda has said has only echoed what's been said in the past about disasters dealing with Fallout:

• (2000AD) Ed Orman of Micro Forte: We're huge fans of Fallout. That's why we're looking forward to developing Fallout Tactics.
  (2003AD) Chucky Cuevas of Interplay: We're all huge fans of Fallout. We'll take great care in the setting to make sure Fallout Enforcer's a Fallout game in every way.
  (2004AD) Pete Hines of Bethesda: Everyone here at Bethesda loves Fallout, that's why we bought the development rights out from under the original creators of the setting who now work at Troika Games. We'll take great care in making Fallout 3 a great CRPG just like Morrowind. It's what we do best.

I thought it was established that interplay fucked FOT, NOT the developers. That one dude who did the FO dev profile recently (I thought I read this, maybe it was a dream, forget it if I'm wrong) talked about this. If so, knock that down, and all we have is chucky, and that whole project was a disaster, every fucking thing about it.

 

[dunduks]

making an effective TB tactical combat interface with a console controller is still an open development problem.

This actualy has been done and works quite well, just look at the Final Fantasy Tactics, but there are other problems such as making interface nice and usable, just look at fuckup that is Deus Ex IW

 

[Second Chance]

This quote is telling:

The platform is 100 percent irrelevant.

Ignore technical considerations, modding options, multiplayer options, and everything else. What you can't ignore is the fact that the console is <i>hooked up to the TV and has no mouse or keyboard</i>. You can't read half a page of text in a quarter of a screen of a TV. How are you going to do effective interactive fiction with those constraints? How about the interface? If anyone hasn't noticed, making an effective TB tactical combat interface with a console controller is still an open development problem.

Actually the quote tells us something else: if the platform is irrelevant, it means the game most likely won't have multiplayer, which also means they will be seriously concentrating on making it an enjoyable single player experience. Think positive!

 

[plin]

]This quote is telling:

The platform is 100 percent irrelevant.

Ignore technical considerations, modding options, multiplayer options, and everything else. What you can't ignore is the fact that the console is <i>hooked up to the TV and has no mouse or keyboard</i>. You can't read half a page of text in a quarter of a screen of a TV. How are you going to do effective interactive fiction with those constraints? How about the interface? If anyone hasn't noticed, making an effective TB tactical combat interface with a console controller is still an open development problem.

My tv and the tv of most people I know are bigger than our Comp Screens. So why would we not be able to read the text?

No mouse or keyboard, that's why they optimize it for the X-box controller. It's very possible.

How are they going to do effective interactive fiction with those constraints? They aren't much of constraints. Tv's are fine for reading, and they can optimize fallout controls for an x-box controller. It isn't an open development problem, it's just nobody has taken the time to do it right yet. Maybe beth will, who knows.

I can only see graphics being hurt going from PC to X-box, which if Beth keep artistic integridy and make a good fallout, it won't matter much at all.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I thought it was established that interplay fucked FOT, NOT the developers. That one dude who did the FO dev profile recently (I thought I read this, maybe it was a dream, forget it if I'm wrong) talked about this. If so, knock that down, and all we have is chucky, and that whole project was a disaster, every fucking thing about it.

Chris Taylor is who you're talking about, and he was only saying that Interplay is only partially responsible for the problems with FOT. He's also said several times that they should have spent more time governing the development of the setting within the game itself. Micro Forte does get heaps of credit for screwing up a lot of major points with the setting, like the fact Mission 12 takes place in a working oil refinery which shouldn't exist at all in Fallout because there is no oil left really. No oil is the big reasons the Great War started. That was laid out several times in both Fallout and Fallout 2.

 

[plin]

I thought it was established that interplay fucked FOT, NOT the developers. That one dude who did the FO dev profile recently (I thought I read this, maybe it was a dream, forget it if I'm wrong) talked about this. If so, knock that down, and all we have is chucky, and that whole project was a disaster, every fucking thing about it.

Chris Taylor is who you're talking about, and he was only saying that Interplay is only partially responsible for the problems with FOT. He's also said several times that they should have spent more time governing the development of the setting within the game itself. Micro Forte does get heaps of credit for screwing up a lot of major points with the setting, like the fact Mission 12 takes place in a working oil refinery which shouldn't exist at all in Fallout because there is no oil left really. No oil is the big reasons the Great War started. That was laid out several times in both Fallout and Fallout 2.

here's a quote from him: "MicroForte wasn't responsible for nearly as many problems on FOT as Interplay was."

I don't see FOT as much as a God-awful atrocity as some here might, it's certainly not up to FOOS. But I see a pattern here. Iply screws up developement on FOT. IPLY is about to die and commands chucky to make some shitty action game based on fallout in a very short time, he answers.

Beth isn't plagued by financial problems like IPLY was on those games. I don't see why they'd say "yep, we're great fans, yup yup" then go fuck with the liscence. FOT and FOOS had motive from IPLY breathing down their neck.

But then again, I'm a simple young man, I have no idea how this works. But some of this "beth/FO3=shit" logic is shit in itself.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

He was talking about QA and certain gameplay problems, I was talking about setting problems. Though, Micro Forte is responsible for the implimentation and design problems as well.

 

[voodoo1man]

My tv and the tv of most people I know are bigger than our Comp Screens. So why would we not be able to read the text?

Have you actually ever hooked up your video card's TV out to your television? The screen size may be bigger, but all televisions share the same low screen resolution of approximately 500x300 pixels. This is too small to comfortably read even half a page of text. If you want to do something like Fallout or PS:T, you'll have to fit that half page in half of the screen! This is why TV out stopped being used on PCs with the C64-class machines, even though it is much cheaper and simpler to do. HDTV makes things usable, but nobody seems to be giving a shit about FCC's 2008 (or was it 2006?) cut-off date. The current penetration of HDTVs is less than 10% of the North American public. Things are much better in Japan, though.

It isn't an open development problem, it's just nobody has taken the time to do it right yet.

That's exactly what "development" means.

I can only see graphics being hurt going from PC to X-box, which if Beth keep artistic integridy and make a good fallout, it won't matter much at all.

Sony will show the PS2 at E3 2005, and Microsoft is rumored to be doing the same with the X-box 2. Considering that Bethesda is hiring staff for next-generation console work and the time it took them to develop Morrowind, I think it's a safe bet that we won't have to worry about the X-box.

 

[plin]

My tv and the tv of most people I know are bigger than our Comp Screens. So why would we not be able to read the text?

Have you actually ever hooked up your video card's TV out to your television? The screen size may be bigger, but all televisions share the same low screen resolution of approximately 500x300 pixels. This is too small to comfortably read even half a page of text. If you want to do something like Fallout or PS:T, you'll have to fit that half page in half of the screen! This is why TV out stopped being used on PCs with the C64-class machines, even though it is much cheaper and simpler to do. HDTV makes things usable, but nobody seems to be giving a shit about FCC's 2008 (or was it 2006?) cut-off date. The current penetration of HDTVs is less than 10% of the North American public. Things are much better in Japan, though.

It isn't an open development problem, it's just nobody has taken the time to do it right yet.

That's exactly what "development" means.

I can only see graphics being hurt going from PC to X-box, which if Beth keep artistic integridy and make a good fallout, it won't matter much at all.

Sony will show the PS2 at E3 2005, and Microsoft is rumored to be doing the same with the X-box 2. Considering that Bethesda is hiring staff for next-generation console work and the time it took them to develop Morrowind, I think it's a safe bet that we won't have to worry about the X-box.

Oh bullshit. I and millions of other people have comfortably played jap console rpgs and read everything fine,and some of those have just as much, if not more text than fallout or planescape. And that text isn't in fucking baby letters, most of the time it's small. Your constraints aren't very constraining. Nothing that can't be handled by a dedicated design team with no time/money hassles to worry about.

And Sony will show the PS3, not the ps2.

edit: And fallout had this miracle of text handling where it showed about a paragraph or two of text, then you could go to the next page. Amazing...

 

[mr. lamat]

it'll be on the x-box2 by the time it gets out. so use those stats as a reference when determining on what system specs the game will be made for.

was it ever confirmed that derek wasn't actually a doctor? i always wondered about that. after '99 or so i've only even seen him refered to as derek smart.

he used to freakout on fans on his development boards and create troll accounts to flame them. dood was a fucking gem!

 

[plin]

He was talking about QA and certain gameplay problems, I was talking about setting problems. Though, Micro Forte is responsible for the implimentation and design problems as well.

Oh well. I'm sure everything had an effect on everything in a giant chain reaction of crap.

 

[taks]

was it ever confirmed that derek wasn't actually a doctor? i always wondered about that. after '99 or so i've only even seen him refered to as derek smart.

it has been confirmed that he received his "PhD" from a degree mill... at least an institution listed as a degree mill. his quotes (from what i've seen) tend to revolve around the concept of "some schoolwork and extensive background experience" as a reason for being granted the degree. rather humorous... there's a website for the whole deconstruction. DS really pissed some people off

taks

 

[Gromnir]

"his quotes (from what i've seen) tend to revolve around the concept of "some schoolwork and extensive background experience" as a reason for being granted the degree."

ever hear the story of how vonnegut finally got his masters degree? never managed to get an undergrad degree and the university o’ chicago is no mill… which kinda makes it more disappointing that they would just hand even vonnegut a masters degree despite having unanimously rejected his thesis years before. vonnegut submits “cat’s cradle,” as a work o’ anthropology as ‘posed to literature if you can believe it, and gets awarded the degree.

*shrug*

degrees not mean much anyways… Gromnir is proof o’ that, eh?

HA! Good Fun!

 

[taks]

hehe, i got a few, too. a third on the way. no past experience is counted except for maybe a pass on the GRE... vonnegut is hardly comparable to DS but i do find that little tale rather funny. not everything is what it seems today

taks

 

[voodoo1man]

Oh bullshit. I and millions of other people have comfortably played jap console rpgs and read everything fine,and some of those have just as much, if not more text than fallout or planescape. And that text isn't in fucking baby letters, most of the time it's small. Your constraints aren't very constraining. Nothing that can't be handled by a dedicated design team with no time/money hassles to worry about.

Hey asshat, now even J.E. Sawyer is saying the same thing.

Did you like the green-on-black text in Fallout? Ever wonder why almost all console games have white text on blue backgrounds? Well, you can say bye-bye to the former, because the latter is a visual trick to get the fonts not to look like shit that only works because most people can't focus on sharply defined blue things.

And fallout had this miracle of text handling where it showed about a paragraph or two of text, then you could go to the next page. Amazing...

Yes, scrolling four lines of dialogue for paragraphs on end is definitely my definition of good controls.