Preview The Fall Diary #2 at RPG Vault

[Spazmo]

Tags: Fall: Last Days of Gaia; Silver Style

<A HREF="http://rpgvault.ign.com" target="_blank">RPG Vault</a> have the <a href=http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/509/509520p1.html>the second developer diary</a> from <b>Carsten Strehse</b>, the one-man hype machine, about the upcoming RPG, <a href=http://www.the-fall.com>The Fall</a>.
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<blockquote>Each character has 14 skills: Pick Pocketing, Engineering, Driving, Survival, Medicine, Sniper / Light / Heavy Weapons, Throwing Grenades, Speech, Close Combat, Stealth, Explosives and Lock Picking. Why did it have to be these 14? Well, we wanted the system to offer variety and yet not lack accessibility. We also tried to avoid the redundancy a bloated approach tends to suffer from.
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For each skill, there is a set of five talents. You get to pick a perk whenever the level of a particular skill reaches 75, 85 and 95 in order to specialize. You'll always get to choose from a set of three talents at a time, and as you may have noticed, you can learn three talents per skill altogether. Enough potential to up the replay value.</blockquote>
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Skills taken right from <a href=http://www.interplay.com/fallout>Fallout?</a> Perks? Who does Carsten think he's fooling? Newsflash to Silver Style: YOU'RE NOT MAKING FALLOUT 3!

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

75, 85 and 95? That seems way too late, and its not exactly well spaced. I'd prefer if said specialization perks were placed earlier, and possibly more separated. Something like 25, 50 and 75.

 

[Fireblade]

Are you upset that he is reusing the concepts from Fallout, or just the terminology from Fallout (ie "perks")?

Personally I think it's cool that the concepts are being re-used, but I don't know why he couldn't have come up with new names for them.

 

[Ortchel]

Just seeing that they're even INCLUDING a speech skill is enough to get me excited.

 

[Grifman]

Heretics!! Anything related to The Fall must be bad. Do not contradict orthodoxy or the received wisdom contained within the Codex.

Grifman

 

[Spazmo]

Fireblade, the point is that Carsten & Co. seem to be marketing The Fall with a "It's Just Like Fallout Except It's Called The Fall!" tagline: hiring Puuk and that other BIS janitor dude, blathering about buying the Fallout license and generally saying The Fall is inspired by/in the style of Fallout all seem like ploys to make people connect The Fall to Fallout. Hell, look at the damn game's name. Ripping off much of their ruleset from Fallout is just a bit much.

 

[Shevek]

I seriously doubt this game will be able to stand on its own if they have to try so hard to identify with another title.

 

[StraitLacedDeviant]

Why put so much effort into something that is essentially a rip-off. No matter how good it is it will never be remembered as anything other than a poor substitute. The thing is i'm probably still going to buy this game because its supposedly so much like fallout in the slim chance that it is. I guess his annoying hype worked on me, or maybe i'm just a hopeless romantic at heart.

 

[Anonymous]

Play Gorasul and see the future!

But also, I bet a good chunk of those skills will get rarely used.

 

[Dhruin]

I think you're over reacting. Of course they referenced Fallout: it's arguably the best character development system ever and it's a similar setting. And?

 

[DarkUnderlord]

... and Carsten's sole purpose of buying the Fallout license was to slap it on "The Fall". Can you say bad clone?

 

[Smiffus]

75, 85 and 95? That seems way too late, and its not exactly well spaced. I'd prefer if said specialization perks were placed earlier, and possibly more separated. Something like 25, 50 and 75.

Further on in the article he mentions that skills will start on an average of 50% (max 100%) The numbers make more sense in that light.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

I think you're over reacting. Of course they referenced Fallout: it's arguably the best character development system ever and it's a similar setting. And?

He has a tendency of mentioning Fallout in pretty much every interview he gives. Hey, i know its easier to say "Fallout" than saying "a skill-based system with specialization elements", but at some point, the constant pimping of Fallout's name will undoubtely have mass amounts of witless idiots go "It's just like Fallout", when until now, it doesn't seem to be, in any way.

 

[StraitLacedDeviant]

I think you're over reacting. Of course they referenced Fallout: it's arguably the best character development system ever and it's a similar setting. And?

Referencing is one thing, this guy is trying to shove his game so far up fallouts ass he hopes you wont be able to see where the fall ends and fallout begins.

 

[Dhruin]

He has a tendency of mentioning Fallout in pretty much every interview he gives. Hey, i know its easier to say "Fallout" than saying "a skill-based system with specialization elements", but at some point, the constant pimping of Fallout's name will undoubtely have mass amounts of witless idiots go "It's just like Fallout", when until now, it doesn't seem to be, in any way.

Does he? I don't really care what Carsten says - the game itself is the thing I'm interested in. Since the claim has been made, though, let's see...nope, he doesn't pimp Fallout in every interview he does - I've read them. A couple of interviews have one reference, a couple have no mention of Fallout from Carsten at all.

Interestingly, the Akella guys do mention Fallout in every Metalheart interview. Hmm.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

The two German interviews have the fair chunk of name dropping. Then there's the whole ex-BiS staff she-bang that mostly occured in various forums.

I'm interested to see if his claims of a super-duper fantastic game world live up to anything near the hype though. The story sounds linear and his great interactive NPCs are either really highly advanced, or just vending machines which choose to spout a different line of dialogue depending on what time of day it is. Whoopee.

 

[S4ur0n27]

And the game looks like shit?

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Does he? I don't really care what Carsten says - the game itself is the thing I'm interested in.

I wish i could feel the same way, however, i can't. I've had my fill of developers promising me the world and giving me a shotgun-blasted shack.

Since the claim has been made, though, let's see...nope, he doesn't pimp Fallout in every interview he does - I've read them. A couple of interviews have one reference, a couple have no mention of Fallout from Carsten at all.

I thought stating "pretty much every one" was a somewhat easilly recognizable form of indicating a generalizing statement, different from afirmatively stating "every one"? Guess i was wrong. I'll be sure to properly use a more correct aproach in the future, then, to avoid confusions.

As for interviews themselves, i'm only aware of these:

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/the-fall-last- ... 825p1.html

http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/456/456967p1.html

http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/457/457656p2.html

http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/504/504512p1.html

http://www.gamingxp.com/reports/main/au ... nks&ID=305

http://www.gamigo.de/preview_detail/pc/998/

http://www.krawall.de/artikel.php?s=&artikel_id=10007

http://www.rpgdot.com/index.php?hsaction=10053&ID=750

Now, these likely aren't the only interviews (if they aren't, i'd appreciate if someone could point me to others), but there's a mention of Fallout in every one of those, and wheter mentioned by Strehse himself or interviewers, he seems to be fine with the mention and subsequent comparison.

Interestingly, the Akella guys do mention Fallout in every Metalheart interview. Hmm.

Probably, i don't know. I haven't been tracking their game as much as i should; but in the event of them doing so, its a wrong thing to do, anyway. I loathe developers who have to draw comparisons to promote their own product, so if Akella is doing the same, boo. Boo, indeed.

 

[S4ur0n27]

We wouldn't even have heard of TF in the first place if Carsten hadn't compared it to FO. It's his only type of marketing worth for he and his team : Graphicly, the game looks like shit. Storywise, it's post-apoc like FO. System/Skills, nothing revolutionnary, it's just like FO.

Plus Cartsen is a dork. When he mentions FO, he says his game will be like it or better. I wouldn't care if he hyped FO and told us how it influenced him and how great it was.

 

[Thorndyke]

Just seeing that they're even INCLUDING a speech skill is enough to get me excited.

Yeah, they added it in late in production, because the people didn´t stop bitching about the dialogues being based on charisma alone. Just like Reflexive did it with Lionheart. Whee.

 

[fnordcircle]

I don't care about graphics. I'm only interested in how the game plays. If the game is fun, I don't care how often he fucks Fallout's corpse. That's what you people seem to be missing in your little anti-The Fall crusade.

If Derek Smart made a game that was fun, I'd play it even if he sued me. You people draw a line in the sand over the most unimportant issues.

 

[Spazmo]

You, see, moron, the thing is that independent of Carsten's disgusting efforts at hyping The Fall, it independently looks like shit. For Chrissake, Silver Style are the assholes behind Gorasul and Soldiers of Anarchy, which are two really shitty games that tanked HARD. Is it any wonder that Carsten can't find a publisher for this shitfest? Granted, he's suckered some poor companies into putting it on store shelves in Russia (not that legitimate Russian sales actually matter... or exist) and France, but he's self-publishing in Germany and hasn't found anyone silly enough to touch his game for North America--that'd be the market that actually matters.

Conclusion: The Fall is ass.

 

[plin]

Talk about over reaction.
You blow this stuff way out of context. "The Fall, it independently looks like shit. For Chrissake, Silver Style are the assholes behind Gorasul and Soldiers of Anarchy, which are two really shitty games that tanked HARD. Is it any wonder that Carsten can't find a publisher for this shitfest?"
Just take it easy, it's only a game.
And he barely ever compares the fall to fallout, though I don't doubt that his trying to get the liscense was to shepard some fallout 3 fans. You call him an asshole, but he only acts like this after people in these or DACs forums talk shit to him and his game. Which I don't see much of a reason for the shit talking either, other than all of you convincing yourself that carsten and his game are the anti-christ.
Take it easy, if it comes out and it's ass, then don't buy it.
And I'm sure I'll get my post disected and analyzed and quoted for some quirky little comebacks you guys are so good at, but oh well, if it makes you feel good, all the power to you.

the conclusion: the fall might be ass, we'll see when it comes out.

 

[Spazmo]

"It's only a game"? There's the most worthless argument possible. When you're on a site devoted to discussing games--and a site known for being really anal about it, too--it seems really stupid to me to say that it's only a game.

And no, I will not "take it easy". Carsten Strehse is an ass. I am a (amateur) journalist and I have a duty to my readers to tell them that Carsten Strehse is an ass. If they get the impression that the RPG Codex endorses the purchase of the crapfest that The Fall will doubtlessly turn out to be, I've failed at my job.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I think the problem with speech skills in CRPGs is when you have to convince a developer why they are needed in the first place. If they don't get the dynamics of what makes them good in that first place, I can't see how their implimentation will be any better. Basically, if you don't have the design foresight to understand why that feature is good, I doubt you'll have the foresight in the implimentation of that design either. Fallout had one isn't a good reason to impliment a speech skill, and given that it was only recently added because of fan demand, I question how well it will be implimented.

Hell, NWN had a speech skill, and it was very poorly implimented.