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Editor, DLC Coming To Fallout 3

Posted by Soulskill on from the that-was-quick dept.

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.

22 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. Yes to one, no to the other. by Fallingcow · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Yes to one, no to the other. by Fallingcow · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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*

    2. Re:Yes to one, no to the other. by KillzoneNET · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

      You're right. I never really believed the number of endings they were touting to having, in all honesty I've only heard about that once. What I was looking forward to was the chance for there to be any sort of different endings, but none of that is in this game.

      They promptly half-assed the ending. If you go into the video folder where you installed the game and use Bink and Smacker tools, you'll find out that the ending breaks down to only 3 choices (*spoiler* You do it, someone else does it, you let it explode */spoiler*) and after that, it only shows one, maybe two quests you have completed (depends on how high your karma is I think) and that's it. Its a photo montage ending that doesn't explain or end anything. I seriously have doubts of me playing it again until more mods come out to make it more of a decent game like Oblivion and Morrowind are now with mods.

      For me though, I knew Bethesda would end up giving the same effort they've given all their games from Elder Scrolls 1 and on. They make sure it runs (mostly), plays like an rpg they were aiming for, then send it out to market when they deem it big enough. With consoles and DLC, they now have more of a reason to not expand on things that should of been there to begin with. I'm just glad these guys are pretty faithful to the modding community when it comes to the tools and ease of access to their content for people to modify and create anew. It's their saving grace and the real reason I bought the game. Like Morrowind and Oblivion, the game will last me more than a few years on community support alone.

    3. Re:Yes to one, no to the other. by yoyhed · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You can also get speech options for all the other SPECIAL attributes, if they're high enough.. although you're right, I never saw anything for having an attribute too low.. my 3rd character, a highly specialized killing machine, has 1 charisma and 1 perception and makes it by just fine.

      If you're just a total bastard throughout the game the ending is pretty funny, and it does mention some specific things, but you're right that it doesn't really mention side quests. I do think the main quest got a little silly and felt rushed at a certain point, which sucks because before that it was sweet.

      As far as Oblivion: at least Bethesda improved on that by hand-placing stuff in the world this time around. Oblivion just wasn't worth playing once you realized it was all leveled and you could just tool around the same starting areas as you leveled up to get the best items, and even worse, that you COULDN'T get those items at an earlier level. Fallout 3 vastly improves on the fun and replay factor of Oblivion with VATS and hand-placed items and locations.

      And Morrowind: sure the NPCs were lifeless, the combat sucked, et cetera.. but at the time, had you ever played such a vast and hand-detailed game, with so much freedom? At least Morrowind's main quest was actually interesting (it had a ton of back story at every turn if you were willing to read) and took you through all sorts of places and trials, unlike most of Oblivion's and half of Fallout 3's. Although, you're right: in Morrowind even, Bethesda managed to make the ending feel half-assed, among other things.

      Regardless, Morrowind still ranks as my favorite game of all time, just for the initial 250 hours or so of amazement as I explored every little nook and cranny of that world. And Fallout 3 is still a game I keep installed now, because it's so much more FUN (if you don't do the main quest after a certain point) to just explore and kill things. And Oblivion, well, I loved it at one point, but Fallout 3 has totally eclipsed it, since it is essentially a better version of Oblivion.

      --
      WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
    4. Re:Yes to one, no to the other. by beyondkaoru · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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)

      --
      the privacy of one's mind is important.
      you do have something to hide.
  2. It's shocking by Dr.+Hellno · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:It's shocking by altloser · · Score: 2, Funny

      So you played Oblivion with Hats

    2. Re:It's shocking by Fallingcow · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

      Heh, maybe they'll somehow manage to get the rights to do System Shock 3 next. *shudder* Or Thief (screw the critics, I even liked 3).

      Thankfully they do release very capable modding tools, and a lot of problems can probably be fixed, but they left a number of holes that just can't be filled by anyone other than a professional team without seeming out-of-place or of inferior quality, largely due to the ubiquitous voice acting in the game.

      I wish they could find the people who generate the good ideas at Bethesda (they do generate a lot of those, which is what keeps me coming back to their half-finished games), give them all raises, and then fire the ones who push unfinished products out the door and create or approve totally goddamned stupid things. They could replace them with some fresh blood, and, oh, I don't know, maybe start running their games by some playtesters and paying attention to what they say, so they'll spot things like, "huh, it's weird that I can't actually join the Sixth House, when the story and a few specific bits of dialogue seem to indicate that I can. I bet those quests would be fun!" or, "Jesus, these Ayleid ruins are boring, can't you give them some variety and/or create some free-form quests to make them worth visiting?", or "wow, that was dumb, why the hell did my dad just do that? I don't feel sad, I feel confused and irritated."

    3. Re:It's shocking by BenevolentP · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:It's shocking by Jellybob · · Score: 4, Funny

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

      And why would anyone expect it to be? It's set in a world where the majority of people are packing guns, lasers, and rocket launchers. I can't imagine Iraq is much fun if you decide the only way you're going to go into combat is by hitting people in the face either.

    5. Re:It's shocking by sammyF70 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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

      --
      "DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
    6. Re:It's shocking by MemoryDragon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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!

    7. Re:It's shocking by meringuoid · · Score: 2, Funny
      It's set in a world where the majority of people are packing guns, lasers, and rocket launchers. I can't imagine Iraq is much fun if you decide the only way you're going to go into combat is by hitting people in the face either.

      TROGG CAN PUNCH BETTER!

      --
      Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
    8. Re:It's shocking by westlake · · Score: 2, Insightful
      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.

    9. Re:It's shocking by fortunato · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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. ;)

    10. Re:It's shocking by justinlee37 · · Score: 3, Informative

      And why would anyone expect it to be?

      Because Fallout 2 had a very in-depth unarmed combat system, with the option of switching between punches and kicks, new moves as your unarmed skill increases, and a smorgasbord of unarmed combat perks. Also in Fallout 2, you could do targeted shots with unarmed attacks; blinding a guy with a karate chop to the eyes never got old.

      Especially because, in Fallout 2, perception was used to determine ranged combat distance modifiers, and blindness reduced your perception to 1. This meant that blinded characters had exceptionally low % chances to hit anyone with a firearm. Additionally, blinded characters often stopped fighting altogether and ran away. Now, if you used sneak to ambush someone, you could potentially blind this adversary with your eye-gouging karate chop before they even had a chance to get a single shot off.

      However, I did have fun as a melee character in Fallout 3. It's all about the deathclaw gauntlet and the shiskebab.

    11. Re:It's shocking by justinlee37 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

  3. Re:Tell me ... by MemoryDragon · · Score: 2, Informative

    It depends, at the beginning I felt it lacked... but I am now 20 hours into the game and I am really happy with it. And I loved the old Fallouts!
    The game becomes better the longer you play!

  4. and the bug-fix patch is coming out ... when? by crow5599 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Seriously. Where's our patch? This is one of the buggiest games I've ever played in my life. I couldn't finish the main quest on the PS3 version because of a game-ending glitch. I had to watch the damn ending(s) on YouTube.

  5. Time for piracy... by VinylRecords · · Score: 3, Informative

    And companies wonder why we don't pay for their games.

    I pre-ordered a BRAND NEW copy of Fallout 3 for my PS3 (Survival Edition from Amazon) the day it first became available.

    It arrived at my doorstep the same day that the first reviews started appearing, reviews like the one at IGN where they said that the PS3 version was riddled with bugs and glitches and made parts of the game unplayable...of course IGN is in the pocket of the game companies so the PS3 version was given a ridiculous 9.4 out of 10.

    Really 9.4 out of 10 when the game has massive glitches, bugs, and freezes constantly? Many quests cannot be completed due to glitches including sometimes the final quest. 9.4 for that? No ending to the game? NO downloadble content? This is a 9.4?

    So the 360/PC versions get a 9.6/10 meaning that all of these things: massive glitches, tons of bugs, terrible draw distance, no downloadable content whatsoever...........are all worth a combined score .2 out of 10.

    I thought, "ok be optimistic, so I might encounter some glitches that's fine," but before I had even left vault 101 I had to HARD reboot my PS3 not once but three times as the game froze THREE times while I was taking the g.o.a.t. at school. Did Bethesda test the PS3 version? (Rhetorical question. Answer: no)

    Now that the PS3 won't be getting down-loadable content I will be downloading a PC copy and playing that.

    If I had known during my pre-order of Fallout 3 for the PS3 that the game would be nearly unplayable without encountering massive problems and that the game would have no ending to the story...and no DLC to resolve the story in the future...I would have opted to just avoid the game entirely.

    I know some people are going to respond, "you should have gotten the PC version" but as a hardcore PS2 fan (Metal Gear, Final Fantasy, God of War), unless a game is exclusive to the PC (Starcraft II!), if it's multi-platform I usually go for the PS3 version (like I did with Dead Space).

    IGN :

    "Fallout 3 is a top notch shooter-RPG that fails to disappoint in any substantial way. There are minor problems with the game -- issues such as clipping, the occasional framerate chug, and some questionable animation (especially in third-person view) -- but nothing that takes away from the overarching enjoyment you should derive from even a few hours of gameplay."

    This is from the PS3 review. Top notch? No. Better than average. Yes. Worth $60 on the PS3. No way.

  6. Not time for piracy... by mjwx · · Score: 2, Interesting

    reviews like the one at IGN

    There's your problem, relying on a commercial game site to provide you with accurate information on a game. You'll often glean more facts out of the "official" game forums, you may get to a critical thread before they delete it.

    Personally I no longer buy a game until I've heard what proper game critics have to say about it. I now work on the theory that I should find out everything that's wrong with the game and if I can live with the problems (weather they be technical, story or gameplay related) then I'll consider purchasing the product.

    Fallout 3 is a PC game ported to PS3 which would explain why he PS3 is having the worst problems. I purchased the PC version and it had no problems running at full spec on my 2 yr old gaming box. I was even able to get it running smoothly on a 4 yr old gaming box (granted at a low resolution) that my housemate had. Whilst I've had a few crashes on PC its nothing show stopping, I would prefer however that Bethesda would fix the damn bugs rather than release additional content.

    This is from the PS3 review. Top notch? No. Better than average. Yes. Worth $60 on the PS3. No way.

    Once again I'd say this is a PS3 issue, my mate who has all three consoles plus a gaming PC said that the PC version I lent him was considerably less buggy than his PS3 version. This kind of thing happens when a port is rushed and half arsed. Personally as a PC gamer I'd rather they spent the time on porting the half finished game on polishing it on the PC.

    Apart from releasing a buggy port Bethesda has done nothing wrong (no draconian DRM, I don't like Tages but I can live with it) and if the bugs matter that much to you don't buy it. Piracy will not send a clear message to Bethesda or the games industry about bugs.

    --
    Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
  7. Everybody Hates Katamari by Channard · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.