Preview Yet another Fallout 3 preview

[Vault Dweller]

"Fallout 2 is a "mix of everything" game. It's a game designed by a bunch of 13-year olds following the unbeatable "won't it be cool if the game had...." principle. It has huge gangsters with tommy guns running casinos, it has yakuza with samurai swords, it has so many weapons that you can switch to a new gun every 5 min, it has more lulz than the Codex, it has a king-fu fighting town, it has scientologists with celebrities, it has tribals, aliens, drug dealers, talking deathclaws, and even real GHOSTS. The game's a joke.

For exactly these reasons Bethesda aims to make FO3 more similiar to FO1 instead of FO2. They said it a couple of times in some interviews, but can't recall which ones and where, so no link.

They say a lot of things. Some of them may even be true. See my Oblivion review for some enlightening quotes. If that's not enough, ask yourself if behemoth wearing human skulls, harmless radiation, phone booth-like shelters, feral ghouls, 200 year old exploding nuclear cars, the catapult, drinking from toilets, and other crap fit FO1 design?

There are some design choices I like (first person exploration), and some I don't, ie. limited companions, nuclear catapult, cars going nuke. Though I have to admit that as much as that catapult and nuclear cars seem stupid, they perfectly fit into 50's sci-fi.

Well, see, that's what many people get wrong. The 50's sci-fi showed many different futures. The Fallout setting is only ONE of them, so throwing everything that fits the 50's sci-fi is a recipe for something stupid. The new material would have to be cross-referenced with the Fallout setting to see if it fits.

Story and dialogues are way more important for me, but these remain to be seen.

Considering that the game is done and we still haven't seen a single dialogue screen...

Bashing a game that wasn't released yet, based on very limited info and pure assumptions is kinda meh...

Do we have to go through the same shit every time a new game is about to be released? We've seen exactly the same arguments before Oblivion was released. Quite a lot is known at this point. Sure, we haven't seen the dialogues. Well, ask yourself why. Don't you think that if the dialogues were an important feature, Bethesda would have shown something? A few well done dialogue screens would have instantly pacified 90% of the Fallout fans and their absence can mean only one thing.

 

[GeneralSamov]

No but you can go kill the other one smartass having the same ambitious thoughts. Choices!

 

[Brother None]

Story and dialogues are way more important for me, but these remain to be seen.

Considering that the game is done and we still haven't seen a single dialogue screen...

Eh? We've seen two dialogue screens
Dad
Raider dude

 

[MetalCraze]

uh oh what is that?
"facial animations look more realistic than ever - and every conversation has multiple outcomes"
yes you can tell how great those facial animations are by looking at the static screenshot bethesda specially prerendered for the media-whores.
and multiple outcomes of the dialogue with choices "join me / don't join me" are just mind-shaking.

dogmeat idea is also great and mind-blowing. putting the dog in the game that should've died like 100 years ago, because... you know... dogs don't live for the whole century - and then shouting about it "oh it's so canonic!"

 

[Micmu]

"facial animations look more realistic than ever - and every conversation has multiple outcomes"

I think more imortant would be "faces looked more realistic than ever".
Anyway, these faces look better than disfigured, inflated faces from bolivion ALL NPCs had. Unfortunately, faces themselves don't mean shit for the whole, which now definitely seems like BoS+ (and that '+' actually isn't earned yet).

 

[Brother None]

The facial expressions weren't that good, but some of the dialogue appeared to have real different outcomes. Pissing off the sheriff or leaving him alone, for instance. Dad didn't work that way, if you lied to him he just sees through your lie, which is supposed to be skill-based but I don't buy it.

The dialogue with Mr Burke was better. You could choose to try and extract more money, or threaten to run him out of town. Why he proposes to you to blow up the bomb is unclear, but whatever. It's the "% of success" in dialogue rather than absolute skillchecks that annoyed me. So I can just reload to try over and over with Mr Burke until I get the right result, regardless of skill?

PS: it's also not the same Dogmeat. FFS he doesn't even look the same.

 

[MetalCraze]

those faces beth shows us are premade (and something tells me - fake, like it was with guess what game). notice how they never show us PC's head which will be generated using the same facegen from oblivion

Pissing off the sheriff or leaving him alone, for instance.

am I getting it correctly - it's a choice between hearing how sheriff disliked what you've said and that's all or simply... leaving him alone?

nice choices & consequences!

 

[Brother None]

those faces beth shows us are premade (and something tells me - fake, like it was with guess what game). notice how they never show us PC's head which will be generated using the same facegen from oblivion

Regardless, these are the faces shown in the demo as well. They look significantly better than Oblivion. They still don't look good, but better than Oblivion.

A joke compared to, I dunno, Mass Effect.

Bethesda is still really good at environmental art and sucks at character art. Nothing changed there.

am I getting it correctly - it's a choice between hearing how sheriff disliked what you've said and that's all or simply... leaving him alone?

You're in dialogue with him and can either piss him off a bit, but indicate you'll abide by his rules or prod at him ("Nice hat, Calamity Jane!") until you piss him off enough to kill you or be really nice and he'll talk to you about the bomb-in-the-centre-of-town situation that Mr Burke also discusses.

PS: I'm obviously not defending Fallout 3 - duh - but I think there's enough wrong with the game to not make up nonsensical criticisms. The Megaton questline is fine, not particularly great, but fine, and the dialogue trees with Mr Burke and the sheriff are just that - real dialogue trees. Not as good as the ones in Fallout, but they're there, and the Mr Burke one has plenty of real different choices to make, not just accept quest or ignore.

Whether that reflects on the rest of the game? Heh.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Story and dialogues are way more important for me, but these remain to be seen.

Considering that the game is done and we still haven't seen a single dialogue screen...

Eh? We've seen two dialogue screens
Dad
Raider dude

Exactly.

 

[Brother None]

I don't get it.

 

[Vault Dweller]

These are not Fallout dialogues. These are Oblivion dialogues.

 

[Brother None]

I thought this was Oblivion dialogue.

 

[MetalCraze]

@NMA Spy-ninja:
so will he kill you or just go in a fight with you which you may still win like it was in original games? because in the first case it will be really dumb.

 

[Brother None]

@NMA Spy-ninja:
so will he kill you or just go in a fight with you which you may still win like it was in original games? because in the first case it will be really dumb.

Don't know.

 

[MetalCraze]

ah so as I understand it was what Beth was saying not what they actually showed. oh yes oh yes. just like
"we will have a BG2 quality dialogues in Oblivion!"

 

[Brother None]

ah so as I understand it was what Beth was saying not what they actually showed. oh yes oh yes. just like
"we will have a BG2 quality dialogues in Oblivion!"

The NMA preview describes what happens vs what Pete Hines says in distinct detail:
The gate opens slowly by some unseen mechanic, while Pete Hines explains that load times still need optimising but are already better than Oblivion, plus the game has load screens full of information (from which this preview copied some tidbits) and pretty nice art. Inside Megaton, you immediately meet the sheriff:

"I'll be damned, you're from that vault, Vault 101. *chuckles* I ain't seen one of those jumpsuits in a long time."

He introduces himself as Lucas Simms, the town sheriff and mayor when the need arises. It should be noted at this point that both blocks of text quoted above are spoken outside of the dialogue screen, like the greeting texts in Oblivion and unlike Fallout, where floating texts never had such introductory length.

The PC, opening dialogue with Lucas, quickly chose to insult him, going "Nice hat, Calamity Jane." The sheriff is annoyed, but states he's willing to let it slip if the PC shows he understands that "this is my town. So much as breathe wrong and I will fucking end you." Faced with the options to just go "yeah, whatever" or to state that there's a new sheriff in town, the PC picks the former, ending this dialogue.

This conversation also saw another return of something Oblivion-esque. I noted before the dialogues are built from 3-line blocks in which expressions show the same jumpy attitude as in Oblivion. Lucas shows the next step, namely that emotions are again conveyed pretty much only by the face, and that the facial expression and voice tone has the tendency to skip through different emotions during a single speech. To back up this impression, in long speeches like those of the sheriff and of dad, one gets the distinct impression the writing is a bit inconsistent, which is kind of off-putting. This did not look significantly improved from Oblivion, though at least the sheriff had only one voice. The faces themselves look better and less ridiculous than in Oblivion, but don't expect to get blown out of the water by them, especially by their lack of expressiveness.

In the previous wave of previews, the funniest thing for me was how everyone want "and Radiant AI?! THAT'S TOTALLY IMPROVED!!"

Well guess what, you don't see any improved AI anywhere in the demo. All the events are clearly scripted and exactly the same in every showing (and some of these clowns went to multiple showings), none of the NPCs are shown doing anything special.

Bethesda just says the RAI is improved, and everyone just swallows it up.

 

[Micmu]

Bethesda just says <anything>, and everyone just swallows it up.

Secret of their success in a nutshell.

 

[Vault Dweller]

http://www.gametap.com/articles/gamepre ... 0-04102008

What we've seen of combat is pretty straightforward first-person action-RPG mayhem. ...

For those of you who miss the turn-based system of the previous games, there's the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System. VATS uses a combination of your weapon skills, perception, agility, and luck to let you pause combat and target specific parts of your enemy...

One interesting side detail: A Bethesda representative was demonstrating the combat and had power armor equipped. While he was basically a nigh-impenetrable tank, his visibility was cut down, so the perception stat had a significant penalty--one that made VATS nearly impossible to use, which was just one example of the hard tactical decisions you'll need to make.

 

[Brother None]

Luckily, Emil answered those concers

Ohnowaithedidn

 

[MetalCraze]

which perception did he mean? character's or player's?

 

[Brother None]

The perception stat that influences your % to hit in VATS, I think.

 

[Lumpy]

So you can still hit the enemy, just as long as you don't aim carefully.
Wut?

 

[Aditya]

And we don't have enough info to judge the role-playing qualities of Fallout 3 for a Fallout game. The info we have shows a very weak game that pales in comparison to Fallout. This is what i said explicitly and i also said i knew about the quest they have shown us, before you posted that Desslock quote.

So how do you conclude i said we don't have enough info on quests? Because it's better for you to ignore parts of what people say instead of trying to have an intelligent discussion.

Lets see,

This was your original quote:

What *many* people did was to observe that that quest only has two black and white choices and asked for clarification or a better quest example and none were given.

If you knew so much about the quest as you claim, *what* clarification you wanted? What exactly are *two* black n white choices you were referring to? If you read BN's posts above, you would understand its anything but like that, which would only mean u did NOT have enough information about that particular questline. Its no shame if you admit you were ignorant.

Why Oblivion core and not Fallout core?

Isnt that obvious? they will try to refine what they know best of.

I already mentioned a few examples that you ignored.

Yes, you indicated that you are ok with 1st person camera and 3d graphics. How so generous of you. Indeed, there isnt much scope in *improving* FO given how perfect the game already was, no? Where else you want FO to improve?

Do you actually care if Fallout 3 even compares to a Fallout game?

Its a fact that FO3 will NOT match the quality of FO. Its Beth's version of FO and I am looking forward to it. End of argument.

Yes Daggerfall isn't a conventional sandbox or even a sandbox at all and exploration is completely different than any other sandbox. If you can't argue against this don't make retarded posts like that.

So something being 'different' means its not sandboxy? If you cant state it properly why do you even bring this up???

Besides, you don't become the sheriff. You can put on the sheriff's clothes and some people say "howdy, sheriff", but knowing Bethesda, that's pretty much it. I mean, you don't expect Bethesda to change their design dramatically just to help you win an argument, do you?

In MW and Oblivion, the top rank is just a title given after end of particular guild questline. Why are you comparing it to this quest? Its not like you 'earn' the title of Sheriff or something. You just put on his disguise for this small quest. Why it is *dramatic* change in design then?

Good point. I guess that explains why Oblivion was loaded with options.

Maybe they will implement it in FO3? After all, some of the thing they are demonstrating are already an improvement over Oblivion.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

you know, I was never a great fallout fanatic, but I just noticed after reading suchy's post about nuclear cars: If cars are nuclear, and there's so much of the glowing stuff around to even waste as smallish ammo, then what was the war for resources fought for originally?

Most things about FO are fuzzy for me, so if you guys could crarify that for me that's be awesome. Is it really just a Beth fuckup (huge one)?

Nuclear cars were introduced in Fallout 2. The car introduced in Fallout(The Corvega) was gas powered, so one would have to assume that the nuclear cars are in line with hybrids and electric cars today. They'd be rare.

That said, the ideas of nuclear cars going BOOM is a bit silly. If fusion cells were at the consumer level before the Great War, chances are they'd be pretty safe. I.e. they wouldn't explode in a big nuclear cloud if they were damaged. If they exploded when they got in a wreck, there wouldn't be many of them laying around the wasteland because no one would have bought them prior to the war. They would all be on the car lots.

 

[MetalCraze]

the car in fallout 2 worked on usual batteries you used for your energetic weapons. so yeah - if you even use that shit in the weapons - how can they be unreliable?
but Bethesda proved they can.