Macky wrote:This makes a lot more sense to me now.
I read about the major Fallout promulgators like Brother None refusing to buy, play, or review Fallout 3 after a slew of disagreements with the direction of the title...and it always sounded like spoiled shit - If the experience isn't just what you wanted it to be than you have a tantrum and refuse to partake in the profits. Profits in that it is all we have as Fallout fans. But now that position seems less like a poor sport response and more like a forced outcome if you ever wanted to see an authentic and genuine attempt at developing a sequel for the series.
The general idea is that history will keep repeating itself where Fallout is concerned. With Fallout: Tactics, the proposed/revealed changes made during development hardly did anything for the FO fans, but some dialogue was still maintained with the developers in hope that the success of the game would once again pave the way for a "true" Fallout title. While Tactics recieved some moderate success, stringing along fans at the promise of a Fallout 3, instead of holding true to their end of the bargain, the developers attempted to push FOBOS out for the consoles, with a FOT2 in pre-production, and while no one was creaming their pants over the idea, there was still people willing to keep the diplomatic option open just in case that the developers would eventually come to their senses. Pre release of BOS it became only too apparent, even to the nutjobs, that no work would ever be put into a true sequel to Fallout, and especially not if FOBOS was a smashing success. As it was, Interplay was under alot of economical stress, and the subsequent failure of the title managed to gut the company.
The situation is no different when it comes to Bethesda. Wether we support the game, in the hopes that losing our "Rabid Fanboy" routine will let us share our ideas and wishes with the developers peacefully, or rage against the machine in an attempt to break Bethesda as a company, we will not get a true sequel to Fallout. In the first case, the result will undoubtedly be more of the same bland garbage as is presented in FO3; if it's a financial success, it will make them think that they've found the perfect formula for future FO projects, and will stick to it no matter what. If we're lucky enough to cost them a few sales and dollars, to the point that they don't break even with FO3 (probably not going to happen) they will more likely cut their losses and throw the Fallout license away, rather than risk another failure. Neither of these two do us Fallout fans any real good, and so the best bet would probably be the neutral option; ignoring the thing alltogether, much like everyone does FOBOS.
Macky wrote:I have been riding this train of ignoring Oblivion because I can. I didn't know that Beth's announcement for Fallout came before the release of Oblivion. This is simply because those games are not on my radar and never will be. But it is a game changer because it decreases the distance between orcs and mutants - and I realize that this is what you all have been saying from the beginning but it is only now sinking in. Like....Bethesda creating an inconsiderate, predetermined sequel to franchise X off of engine Y.
They're running a business, and this is their business strategy; the end product is hardly even a part of the equation. I think possibly we'll see more of these antics from Beth in the future, because there probably is a profit in buying up critically acclaimed franchises from dead/half-dead companies, hyping them to shit pre release, then dropping a console-turd on the carpet, grabbing the money and buying up another venture, simultaniously apologizing for the poor quality of the previous title. By the look of things (especially the intelligence of the average gamer these days) it may take a good 7 or 8 games before anyone noteworthy draws the same conclusion that I did.
Macky wrote:In any case, I appreciate the serious responses because no one has ever taken the time to be real and debase my optimism on this.
There's certainly enough material out there for interested parties to partake of and learn from. So far I've only been repeating myself and quoting others, and while I'd love to do so for every potential consumer of Fallout 3, it does get really tiresome in the end. As Smiley said, he had to whine and bitch for a good while to convince me to do this.
Macky wrote:Toxic, you said something about emptiness behind the NPC's and the subsequent experience of immersion... there was something about that in the F3 Review from Sweden. I guess I wouldn't understand unless I played Oblivion/Fallout3/ Bethwinddragonquest etc. but in practical terms, I don't think I understand what that really means.
It means they failed on implenting one of the most important features of the Fallout franchise; believable NPC's. A believable NPC has character, personality, a hint of history and emotion and really seems like he belongs in the game world, by being tied in with other NPC's, by adhering to the logic presented in the game world and by staying in his set character. A brief visit to Shady sands is enough to give you a fair impression on how Fallout presents its' NPC's; people are related to each other, they talk about each other with you, not as a part of a quest, but simply in conversational terms, seeing as it's a tightly knit community where everyone relies on one another and so forth. There are relations between the NPC's which are presented in more subtle ways, via hints dropped in the dialogue, and the worries they have cannot always be adressed by some simple fetch quest, and the information they provide doesn't always carry any value.
Bethesda has never had any real skill with small-talk or details, in that aspect. Their development track record has no dialogue heavy games to boast of, and their consumer group is also not one for reading, which (at least I think) is one of the primary reasons they insist on going fully voiced, when it is otherwise obvious that they don't have the capability to pull that off either. Another piece of the puzzle is the Beth-meth(od) for making games: apparently they create the world and characters FIRST, and THEN based off of what they have, they flesh the world out with, what they consider to be, storylines, intrigue and believable plots. While this may sound reasonable to some, it clearly puts a limit on imagination and severely staples creativity.
So what is the end result? A very matter-of-fact and sparse character design. NPC's hardly ever have anything meaningful or witty to say to the PC, and if they do it's more than likely forced on the player in the form of a speech, more than a natural conversation. Instead, the two main NPC interactions are 1) questing for them and 2) killing them. As the main quest often spans over numerous npc's, and is always linear (cannot be solved out of order) killing the NPC's isn't always possible, and is prevented (and sometimes prohibited) to prevent the player from making the game unbeatable.
The NPC's are shoveled into different categories, such as main quest NPC's which are nothing more than flags for you to follow through the wasteland. You pick them off in a specific, linear sequence; they say their speech, give you a rudimentary task to complete, and then pat you on the back and send you over to the next mq npc. The rest become "filler quest" npc's, because they cannot have any impact on the linear main quest, and so their wishes in the game world are limited to harmless "fetch this thing I want" and "kill that unimportant character for me" requests from the PC.
I guess I should comment a bit on Megaton (which is the stupid little township, built in the crater of an undetonated nuclear bomb btw
, that you can effectively wipe out in FO3) because it does seem, at least on the surface, to go against their primary design philosophy concerning side quests. The consequences of blowing Megaton up, however, are not worth any praise; there's worse karma to be made by stealing forks out of people's houses (no joke), no npc (from what I know so far) outside of the Megaton area is going to react negatively / positively to what you have done (in fact it's not brought up) and the only real consequence to gameplay is the death of a realtive few filler-quest npc's, and stock walk-around-and-do-and-say-nothing-of-importance npc's, which isn't that big a loss anyway, and changes next to nothing.
The rest of the npc's? Well, let's just say they'll be attacking you, and you'll be killing them, no matter what the situation is. The sandboxyness of the game allows you to wander around and explore almost unhindered, and while finding some unimportant raider camp or four-man bunker in the middle of nowhere might seem intriguing, it will be populated by people programmed to attack everything that moves within their radius, no matter your intention or potential ability to talk your way out of situations, which makes exploring nothing more than a boring, mmo style grind in the end.
Apart from not having any multi-layered conversations anywhere in the game, the monologues they do have are awfully voiced by a small group of "voice actors" who apparently don't like their jobs, and then edited not to fit into any immersive context (a good example would be an otherwise angry NPC telling you to have a pleasant and jolly day at the press of the "Good Bye" button, which is an actual example out of the game). Being fully voiced, they are also very limited in responses to what you choose to say, and as a result your choices in dialogue are few, and rarely make any difference to what the NPC will say next. Bethesda also seem to have a problem with animating facial features, and from what I've seen of Fallout 3 (and I've seen a good deal, mainly for the lulz) the facial expressions of the npc's don't change whatever happens, which is a big blow to this particular game, considering that the early installments of the series pioneered in the use of talking heads. Effectively, that means that an NPC with a jolly voice (that sounds strangely similar to all the other voices you've heard so far) might threaten you while showing only apathy and disdain with his face, and while I hate giving this game critique over graphics or technology, seeing as there are plenty of other failures to comment on, like the horrible writing for the npc dialogues, it does go a long way in breaking any potential immersion.
To sum it up, the npc's are poorly written and thought out, badly voiced, ranked by importance to the main story, have no desires outside of wanting X ammount of item Y, the death of other npc's or your death, can't act, have schizophrenic tendencies and are overall shallow and uninteresting. To be even more frank, pedestrians in a GTA game will have an easier time making the player care for their lives and dreams, than the npc's in FO3, and their presence and behavour is no less than 10 times as immersive and plausible.
Macky wrote:Having understood Bethesda's rejection of Fallout's basic gameplay principles in exchange for the FPS market....it even still leaves something left to be salvaged...right?
Not the FPS market Macky, the fps/rpg/actionadventure hybrid console market. Basically, Oblivion and Fallout 3 adhere to a genre that fuses and dumbs down multiple genres. No self respecting FPS lover is going to rape him/herself by playing FO3, simply because it's terrible as an fps. No RPG diehard is drooling over the next big thing from Bethesda, because they simply cannot deliver a good experience on that front. Lastly, the action adventure (read as hack'n'slash) tykes are by now alot more interested in Diablo 3, or jacking off to some mmo or other, to fall for that crap. FO3 is aimed specifically at an expanding movement of dumbfucks who want their games to do a little bit of everything and who wouldn't know quality from being fucked up the ass. And then it's aimed at people who just don't know about that first group; people who expect a fun game experience, people who buy the game and then just get disappointed, but not necessarily disappointed enough to rage or trash around the TES forums -- people who can get with the hype, but never make a stand. And that's a full market's worth on its' own. And no, there is nothing to salvage in Fallout 3. They aren't even releasing mod tools, fearful as they are that some savage will remove invulnerability from the children in the game and effectively get the game banned in numerous stores and countries.
Macky wrote:The emptiness. Is it that your dialogue options are so predictable and regimented that they jade you to the experience?
Among other things. For instance, the gameworld of Fallout 3, if converted into Fallout 1 measurements, is about the size of 1½ world map area circles. Stepping out of the vault for the first time, you can already see a good 70% of the above-ground areas you will be visiting throughout the game, and more likely than not you can already tell where the invisible walls and "You cannot go any further" messages will start appearing. It's certainly not empty (in fact, this little spot of wasteland is extremely crowded) but the game experience suffers with it alot, and turns into a shallow trek'n'slash.
Macky wrote:The Swedish reviewer acted as if persevering through the F3 journey was better than doing nothing, but that's about it. This was tied to that emptiness thing you mentioned. In an operational definition, what is it that Oblivion's 'engine' does that creates such a vapid game experience -- in terms of a concrete example?
Not the engine, the developers. They are not in it to make good games, they are in it to hype people up into parting with their hard earned money and that's it. The game leaves you with just that impression and nothing else, and being that it's a Fallout game, it also hurts the positive memories you have of Fallout. The idea that this farce can be undone via modding is a very naive notion, as while the engine could undoubtedly be used to make and isometric and turn-based game (any engine could) there is nothing in Fo3 which can be salvaged and added to; the project would have to be a Fallout 3 made from scratch, and not a mod. In the end, it's simply a massive cash-cow spin-off, which puts even more shitstains on the good name of Fallout, and so lackluster, boring and poorly executed that it hardly even deserves the scrutiny we've given it in this thread.
