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Fallout 3 Fundamentals Released via Game Informer
CVG is carrying details out of the newest Game Informer magazine, which has a huge feature on Fallout 3. The relatively spoiler free information gives us hints at some of the biggest elements of the game, such as combat, character creation and growth, and the possibility of multiple endings. " Fallout 3 kicks off with your birth and your mother's death in a vault hospital. This is where you get to create you character as your father (voiced by Liam Neeson) hands you over to the DNA analyser, before removing his mask to reveal similar traits to the ones you picked ... Fans will be pleased to hear that the Karma system is making a return, and there are 9-12 possible endings based on your actions. If it's even half as good as Oblivion, this should turn out to be something very special indeed."
but if they manage to make this V.A.T.S. system tight and intuitive, them may just have a serious case of awesome here.
So, they've added Bullet Time then?
If it's even half as good as Oblivion, this should turn out to be something very special indeed.
Stop comparing it to Oblivion. A lot of people hated it and a lot of people liked it. I'm hoping Bethesda has enough sense to realize that they're making a sequel to a game that they didn't create, not a sequel to a game they did make. These should be two distinct games, not a post-apocalyptic Oblivion. It should be good compared to Fallout 1 and 2, not Oblivion.
V.A.T.S. sounds like a terrible idea. Just drop the first person and make it isometric. You cannot make a game like Fallout work from a FPS perspective. I knew they would screw this up.
The problem with Morrowind and Oblivion is that they are of that rare breed, the western RPG... or are they?
Morrowind and Oblivion allow the player to travel anywhere anytime BUT are at the same time on rails.
This is an odd mix of western and japanese style RPG.
A typical Bioware western RPG restricts where you can move at certain time BUT typically gives you a certain amount of freedom to choose your alignment.
A typical japanese RPG gives you a named character to play with a pre-defined background and you follow the a completly linear plot with a single possible ending.
Morrowind and Oblivion are an odd mix of this and it confuses people. You certainly are free in these games to do what you want WHEN you want BUT at the same time the quests you do undertake do not offer you a choice. There are no moral choices beyond choosing to do a certain quest or not. No light or dark path, for that matter you can easily complete quests for factions that are each others mortal enemy.
People that don't like these games are the people who don't think the freedom to explore and go were you want is worth the sacrifices to focus and story telling. Oblivion is designed to upgrade its enemies to suit your level. Great for allowing you to explore but it also results in utter nonsense like bandits holding you up for pennies when they are dressed in the most expensive armours.
In more focussed games with less freedom to travel you don't have this. The designer KNOWS roughly what level you will be when you enter an area and will have designed the quests and enemies for that level. So at level 20 you won't see a street punk with the stats of a superman.
it doesn't help that if you choose to follow the main story line you find yourselve on a story that is as on rails as any japanese RPG BUT without it really touching on your character. The designer doesn't know what class you are, what race or even what level.
It is not that Oblivion is a bad game. It is just that it clashes with what a lot of people want in an RPG. Because there are so few western RPG's around we still play it, only to then get frustated because in many ways it just ain't an other bioware style title.
I am glad they are making it first person.
Does it stick with the "classic isometric view" of the other Fallout's? No, it doesn't. Is the gaming world the same as it was back then? Far from it.
If they pull this off right, think of how insane it could be. Imagine having gone through fallout in first person. Imagine going through New Reno in first person. Imagine experiencing the crazy and insane things you went through in fallout, but through the eyes of the protagonist.
Personally, I feel there is MASSIVE potential here for drawing you into the gameworld. I think there is a great opportunity to make you feel like you are surviving in a destroyed and shattered world, instead of "just playing a game"
Fallout 1 & 2 are classics that can never be duplicated. I say let Bethesda try to modernize it.
So long as they don't re-invent it and they just "modernize" it, I forsee this potentially being a game worthy of the "classic" status. Don't be so quick to judge, approach it with an open mind.
I can't wait to come face-to-face with a mutant with today's graphic and animation technology.
Living With a Nerd
I think only the shooting is first person.
From TFA:
The long-awaited sequel runs on an evolved version of the Oblivion engine, although Bethesda says it's reworked the third-person view because of negative feedback from its last role-player.
I'm hoping it's 3rd person. If it weren't the elder scrolls team making the game, I'd be more in favor of it. 3rd person is part of what gives Fallout its flavor. Having gone back and played the Fallout 2, I'm amazed at how little time I spend walk around compared to a game like Oblivion, and I think part of that is the perspective. My only other hope is they don't keep the auto-level "feature" from oblivion.
Other than that, I don't really care. I agree that it's important to allow them room to innovate rather than trying to pigeon-hole features I need.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
... everything becomes a nail. Wish they would not bastardize my favorite game, because all they have is a FPS engine. Sad...
>>If it's even half as good as Oblivion, this should turn out to be something very special indeed.
^special^crappy^
Oblivion was a very pretty game, with very bad game design.
The entire world would scale to match the level of your character. So as a 1st level character, you can go into the Arena and kill the reigning champion with the same amount of difficulty as you would at 20th level. Maybe even easier... if you leveled your character in non-optimal ways (especially if you didn't go through the mind-numbing process of repeating actions for 10 minutes to maximize your stat gains) your character would be less powerful at 20th than at 1st.
Thievery was even worse. If you tried breaking into people's houses (a common activity for the thief archetype), don't try to do it at low levels. All the houses in the game (even nobles' houses) are filled with nothing valuable. Because you're not high level. It's totally backwards. The way it should be designed is this: a nobles' house should be protected by high level guards. If I can defeat them, then it should have jewels and stuff in it, not apples. Because I'm 3rd level.
There are mods out there (like Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul) that fix the problem somewhat, but nothing but a total revamp of the game dyamics would make it a good RPG. A core feature that makes RPGs fun is that your character gets better over time. "Treading water", Oblivion's paradigm, is by contrast not fun.
"If the next Zelda is half as good as Max Payne 2 was, we should have something special, indeed."
FALLOUT ISN'T OBLIVION!!! When are people going to get it into their heads??? The two series are not only completely different, they're meant to appeal to completely different aesthetics. Ya know, it's sorta along the lines of Final Fantasy pandering to jock gamers, or Resident Evil pandering to young casual gamers.
It's good to have different series that are DIFFERENT, because everyone gets something that they like. Sure, it's good to branch out and expand your audience, but not if it completely disregards the fundimentals of the series.
I, myself, am not a Fallout fan, I've never actually played a Fallout game, but I've seen them quite a bit, and I'm interested in picking one up at some point. And even *I* can recognize the huge gaping gorge that is the difference between Fallout and Oblivion.
Things that will make Fallout suck, by default:
- First Person [check]
- Real-Time [check]
- FPS elements [check]
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
in as much as it will be an rpg, it will be made by Bethesda, and it will be on the PC, 360 and the PS3. These things will guarantee that it will most definitely be remotely like Oblivion.
Oh, yeah, it will also have voice acting so that guarantees it will be even more remotely like Oblivion!
Can anyone think of anything else that will make it even further more remotely like Oblivion?
I'm so excited! I can't think of the last time I was this excited that a game so remotely like Oblivion was coming out. Maybe it was NWN2? That was made by a developer and was an RPG with voice acting and even had graphics!!! That was so remotely like Oblivion that it made my eyes tear up.
"People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything."
Nothing agains Liam Neeson, however. He's one of my favorite actors.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
Are you kidding? I'm throwing down like it was 1986.
I'd rather have it play like KOTOR than oblivion because I prefer turn-based and semi turn-based battle systems in my RPGs. But isometric 2d graphics won't cut it in today's market. 3d third person FTW.
That sounds horrible. The combat systems sounds like Max Payne meets KotOR, not Fallout. Also, the ability to be stealthy or charismatic shouldn't be bonus ways of doing things, they should be considered there by default. Not having those choices would be greatly detrimental to a Fallout game.
I hope it's not like Oblivion. I thought Oblivion was a terrible game to play. They totally flubbed the combat system and the leveling up/reward system. Combat was nothing more than mash the action button until the monster died or kite the monster until it died. And you did alot of combat unless you enchanted yourself up some chameleon wear. The reward system was utter crap. Common highway robbers with Ebony? When even the lowest beggar wears discarded Glass items, Oblivion has reached the Age of Plenty!
Obsidian seems to have nailed down the atmosphere and the look of Fallout. I'm sure the world will be interesting to explore, and the storyline will be good. However, these rumored gameplay elements just makes me sad.
Negative three possible endings. Boy that sucks. Heck, even Halo 2 had only negative one.
Turn based or real time, I don't care. As long as the NPCs still try and frag the leader every time we get in a fight, it'll be a Fallout game...
Wasn't the consensus of most true (ie: non-console) gamers that Oblivion sort of sucked?
Morrowind had giant mushrooms, insect mines, floating jellyfish, plant-castles, mongolian yurts,
hindu derived gods, cities built under giant crabs, underwater ruins, giant flea vehicles,
flying spells, etc...
Oblivion had deer, butterflies and tudor villages. No flying, nothing underwater, and a bland
European theme that was about as imaginative as the local renaissance fair.
The interface, gameworld and game play of Oblivion were dumbed down for the console crowd.
IF there's a trend at work over at Bethesda, it's the trading of imagination for stock fantasy
concepts, and a dumbing down of gameplay for a wider audience. I loved Fallout... IMHO its very,
very up in the air what Bethsoft does with it.
Let's pray they don't make it "half as good as Oblivion".
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Oblivion basically says that crime is not worth it?
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
I want to be able to take my time and pick out my morbid strategy before I proceed to blow someone innocent childs ribs out, and I'm not sure if that is truely plausible with this new combat system. But it's been a long time and I guess we have to accept some changes and the combat system is minor changes in my eyes. At least it's minor changes if the new system owns up to what combat is supposed to be in a Fallout game, because while combat is very important it's as a tool you apply (like dialog) as you proceed through the game. This is probably much easier achived with turn based combat though, and if this new combat system turns combat from tool into gameplay feature then it probably won't deserve the Fallout label - and then again if they do it right maybe it will. VTM Bloodlines had real time combat, and that never turned into anything like the monotome AI bashing most elderscroll games have been.
Also, if the game is half as good as Oblivion it'll be one of the worst games ever because Oblivion was upright horrible.
Congrats on being magazine pirates. Let me know when you guys publish something so I can rip it off and give it to millions of people for free, ok? I mean, those people who paid for the exclusive details and work for a living at a magazine company don't need to get paid for their efforts, right? Right?
Strange how any AC dissing FO3 is getting modded down.