Editor, DLC Coming To Fallout 3

Bethesda has announced that an editor for the Windows version of Fallout 3 will be coming in December. They also said the first additional downloadable content for the Windows and XBox 360 versions will follow in January. MTV's Multiplayer blog got a few more details from Bethesda's Pete Hines, who said additions to Fallout 3 will resemble the Oblivion expansion pack Knights of the Nine in size and scope. MTV then brought up the question of how early publishers should provide DLC, pointing to Fallout 3 and Fable II as examples of games for which the expansions were planned to go live only a few months after launch.

Comments

Yes to one, no to the other.

[Fallingcow]

Yes to a construction set. Thank god.

No to DLC. Since nearly all of it for Oblivion sucked horribly, I don't think anyone familiar with that game will be buying any for Fallout 3. Please just release expansion packs, Bethesda, especially since you have an odd habit of making ones that have better main story lines than the game that they're expanding.

Now if the community can just get some money together to have the narrator do some more lines for a better, more varied, truer-to-the-series ending, we might be on the way to making this decent-but-not-great game worthy of the name it bears.

Re:Yes to one, no to the other.

[Fallingcow]

Would have been nice to have some "and this is what happened in such-and-such town due to your actions" scenes, as we've seen in prior installments. I probably wouldn't have done nearly as many side quests if I hadn't expected some of those. I mean, I really thought I'd get one for helping the Crater side Supply chick with her book. Some of those quests were just boring.

Given how much other great stuff they cut (you can't even go through the game in "dumbass" mode; there are just regular options and [intelligence] options, no penalties or humor for low-int characters) it seems like they could have at least managed to do a bit more with the ending. Since 90% of my time was in non-main-quest activities (and, frankly, I didn't give a damn about the main quest past a certain, kind of silly, plot twist) I'd have liked to see some payoff for that.

Typical Bethesda laziness, I guess. Morrowind and Oblivion both felt incomplete in many ways, and were only made (somewhat) whole when the community stepped in. I'm glad they create what they do, and I love the Elder Scrolls world, but I wish they'd take just a bit more time and money to finish their games before they release them. I went in to this expecting something better, since they were building on a graphics engine that was already functional and that they'd played with extensively in Oblivion, but they still managed to screw up several big things.

I'd love to sit in on a few of their meetings at various points in the development process and see whether anyone in the company brings these things up, or they really all think they're releasing a finished, well-crafted product.

Hm... maybe it could be arranged for Valve or Blizzard to buy Bethesda... *goes to work planning and plotting*

Re:Yes to one, no to the other.

[beyondkaoru]

y'know what's really ridiculous about the ending?

(spoiler)

so, the danger is radiation, and you are given the choice between two humans to send in. why can't we send in my super mutant buddy? he is immune to radiation... and there's a ghoul you can get as a bodyguard too.

(end spoiler)

It's shocking

[Dr. Hellno]

that the fallout 3 expansion will be similar in size and scope to the oblivion expansion! It seems obvious to me that in between Oblivion and Fallout 3 they jettisoned their old design paradigm and followed a radical new direction! This is so totally unexpected!

Srsly though, I bought fallout 3 a while back and rolled a (sort of) melee character. So I basically got "oblivion with guns" without the guns.

There are some quality artists at Bethesda. Beyond that, I have absolutely nothing good to say about them. Writing? fucked. Combat? fucked. Quests? oh boy. Character progression? there isn't any, thanks to that ridiculously stupid difficulty scaling. In fact, I propose a trade. How about you, Bethesda, get to keep your DLC, and in exchange you stay the fuck away from decent, god-fearing franchises like Fallout. Thanks guys.

Re:It's shocking

[BenevolentP]

There is no very limited Level scaling in FO3; All creatures have a certain level range that scales with the player. But if you progress a few levels, you will one-shot every raider or mole-rat that gave you serious headaches before. And previous mole-rat teritory will not suddenly be infested with deathclaws or something.

FO3 isnt really great as a melee character, i give you that.

The combat is the best ive ever experienced in any not-strictly-turnbased game. Ever. The VATS isnt optional, youll die a lot if you dont use it.

I loved Fallout 1 & 2 and i absolutely love FO 3. The sheer amount of places, quests - i finished it after 85 hours and have visited about 70% of the places (judging by the map).

The writing isnt as good / funny as in FO1/2, but thats the only, minor fault i can find with it.

Re:It's shocking

[sammyF70]

Not too sure which Fallout3 it was you bought "a while back". The game by Bethesda has been out for slightly less than a month, so either you fell through a time warp, you are aging superfast, or you have a very low attention span.

So far (with something like 30 hours of gameplay on a single character and only halfway through the main quest), I didn't think the writing was fucked at all. Most quests I found offer many different possible paths, some of which aren't obvious at first, and the dialogues have been consistently very good and well performed considering the aforementioned freedom and the fact that there is an incredible amount of spoken text in there.

Fucked combat? It wasn't through time you fell through, it was from an alternative universe . Combat in FO3 is stellar ... for what it is trying to be, namely a Roleplaying Game. It is not a FPS, never was intended to be (nor were the previous Fallout instances). You are supposed to use VATS in most circumstances. The only ones I can think of where you don't use VATS are

• very easy foes (radroaches after you reached a certain level, for example)
• whenever you don't have any action points left but don't want/can't wait. In that case, and here I might be mistaken, your luck (the game stat) plays a bigger role in whether you'll hit or not than during VATS events where your skills are more important.

If you play like it's an FPS (or in your case as melee, as if it was Dark Messiah), then of course, you won't have much fun. Not Bethesda's fault that you can't read game descriptions though.

Character Progression? *PLENTY* of that, thanks to the very complex and involving quests (or show me any other relatively recent RPG who let you make as many moral choices during quests), and as someone else stated earlier, the difficulty scaling only defines what you'll meet in certain zones based on the level you have the first time you actually enter the zone. Oh wait .. I suddenly see the light! I know what you've been rambling about! You see, the game we're talking about here is Fallout 3, it is NOT W.O.W.! The character progression isn't defined by how much you grind, but by the choice you make concerning your character's personae and how it affects the character's future decision. This should of course be reflected in the way you set your skillpoints and the way you choose your perks. And that's something Fallout3 does very well, considering it's only a computer game and not a human GM.
But of course, if you thought we were talking about W.O.W. (or maybe FFXI, or basically any MMORPG, along with most other single player ~RPGs~ (Diablo???) which came out lately), then all your comments make sense :
"Shitty combat?" "check!" "Fucked writing?" "There was writing??? oh! ... check!" "Character Progression?" "lots of that! I used a template I found on Tw1nK-R-Us, and was able to get to lvl 125 in a mere 5 hours ... Basically I play a Mutant Dwarf Mage with Ranger and Animal Companion. Doesn't make sense in the story, but who cares. That's the winning build. Everybody is playing those"

lots of talk just to tell you : you are wrong

Re:It's shocking

[MemoryDragon]

Amen to that... I personally like Fallout 3 as well, it is not the same as the old Fallouts and I would loved to have seen some of the old Black Isle guys doing parts of the game (But from what I read there were really bad issues between Bethesta, Interplay ans Black Isle - Basically Black Isle got screwed by both parties in many ways!!!)

But that does not reduce the fact that Fallout 3 is an excellent RPG in the best sense. And definitely not a shooter or level grinding game!

Re:It's shocking

[westlake]

It's set in a world where the majority of people are packing guns, lasers, and rocket launchers.

I can't help wondering why you should be trusting a pre-war weapon in a Mad Max world. Why the thing hasn't rusted into uselessness or blown up in your face.

Re:It's shocking

[citylivin]

"Writing? fucked. Combat? fucked. Quests? oh boy. Character progression? there isn't any"

Are you kidding me? Its the most revolutionary game put out in years. Every day at work I cant wait to get back to the wastes just to explore. Nothing beats cresting a hill, hunting rifle in hand and seeing an abandoned sewer grate in the distance. As you move closer you spot some feral dogs who also have an eye on you. Raise your rifle, toggle into VATS and BOOM HEADSHOT - the head is now cleft and flying through the air. You move towards the corpse and noticed that you can interact with the sewer. Do you dare open the grate and climb into the darkness?

Fallout is awesome! I actually thought the combat sucked too untill I realized that you could freeze time with vats ala oldschool fallout, and turn it into a turn based game. Before that I was mindlessly spray and praying things, and wasting tonnes of ammo.

Theres so much to explore, so many interesting conversations and so much freedom to be as good or bad as you want to be.

Im not sure what you were expecting, and I never played oblivian, but if you enjoyed the first 2 fallout games you WILL have a BLAST in this one. It is very true to the story and feel of the originals. I hope it wins game of the year, instead of a boring rehash which probably will win (im looking at you call of duty 4)

Re:It's shocking

[fortunato]

I believe that was what the "repair" skill was for.

I can't believe people still fire revolutionary war era weapons in a modern world. Why the things haven't rusted into uselessness I just don't understand. ;)

Re:It's shocking

[justinlee37]

VATS ruins what could have been an RPG. Also, here's a citation for the fact that VATS does have some bullshit damage reduction attached to it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCPVCYspxtQ . If you start experimenting inside of your own game, you'll suddenly realize that there is significant DR in VATS. I routinely survived nuclear car explosions simply by being in VATS mode when the explosion happened (and yet they still blew my opponents to bits). I saw a mod once that fixed the issue; I'd provide the link but I can't seem to find it again in any reasonable amount of time.

Everybody Hates Katamari

[Channard]

No matter how odd producing DLC so soon after the game's release may seem, it can't beat the Beautiful Katamari DLC for sheer audacity. Which actually unlocked levels that were already there in the game.