Duck and Cover

As far as I am concerned I just want something that looks and feels very much like fallout, fallout2, and FOT and NOTHING like that console abomination BOS. Apparently they are going to start from scratch, that's the claim anyway. I sure would have liked to see what Black Isles would have put out, but that’s history and so apparently is VanBuren and the first iteration of FO3.

I hit Bethesda with a few E-mails and one guy in marketing actually took the time to write me back, he says they are going to do their best to do FO3 justice and that they are fired up about getting the franchise and also that they know that we are a tough crowd to please (the good thing is that they know that if they make the fallout series fans happy they are just about guaranteed a hit.)

I hope they get the message that we want either a multiple view perspective that includes the revered isometric view . I am not sure that anything but an isometric view would feel like fallout. I don’t know why Fallout has such a high immersion factor but is surely does. Perhaps its because the series has such a strong connection to table top RPG games of the past and enough depth to keep us from getting bored.

Change is good up to a point when it is definite improvement. But change should not affect the flavor of the original game. The flavor of it is hard to put into words but I felt alone and mostly helpless when playing Fallout. I was in a situation that was very different and hard to understand. The truth is that original feeling was lost in the sequel. I'm not sure why - maybe it was trying too hard to be the same as the first game. Maybe it was stuck trying to expand things in the same universe. Maybe I was already familiar with what needed to be done and how to do it.

I want a similar but different universe - something to bring back the "lost" feeling I felt when I played the game originally. It was a unique experience to have the feeling of helplessness upon discovering a new world after it was utterly destroyed and try to piece together some meaning out of it all. I don't give a shit about specifics like it has to have deathclaws, power armor, and a gauss rifle. I want that indefinable aura of discovering and exploring an unknown post-nuclear landscape.

One thing I liked about the games is that the endings all involved detonating a nuclear weapon in order to save the world from post-nuclear horrificness; a cruel irony topping all the other cruel ironies in the stories. However, Fallout 2's ending kind of rang hollow; the nuclear weapon that destroyed the Enclave was just kind of there and easy to blow, and the bad guys could have been completely defeated without using it even though the game made you.

At the end of Fallout 1 and Tactics, however, I felt kind of like I was making a moral decision when it came time to detonate. I was so immersed in the stories that I felt like it was a horrible thing to do, but at the same time it was the only that could be done.

The ending of any well-done Fallout, in my opinion, has to force you to make an important choice you really wouldn't rather make at the end. Fallout 1 and Tactics were terrific at this, while Fallout 2 faltered a bit by making things too black and white.

I hope bethesda compleatly ignores Craptics when making FO3.

Pretty much what JJ said. When I first played Fallout I died several times to mantases and other things. Perhaps it was all the the flashing lights like New Reno, or how all the towns practically looked the same. Regardless, the game lost atmosphere and appeal.

Indeed some changes can be made, the most important things to presrve are the world, the nonlinearity, the SPECIAL system && the turn based combat.
I am not really sure what changes I'd like... I want to keep the 3rd person view, the suggestion above with multiple views and isometric being one of them seems good enough.

But since bethesda are going to release it on consoles too, I suppose the universe will be less complex, things will probably be less... less ammo, less thingies and less interesting non plot linked NPC's.
Which is really really bad.... I just loved how some NPC's had their own personality without being tied to the plot. Especially At-the-basket Dick.
Maybe I am just being unfair and have a pessimistic view of things, but I can easily name lottsa things they shouldn't change and things they are likely to mess up. But changes for the good, or chanes I'd like to accept......
Maybe a paperdoll in the inventory and a more arrangeable inventory would be spiffy.

The whole fallout3 tbusiness have made me really really uncomfortable with things, and I daily curse at X-box and consoles in general. And, should I ever have a kid who wants a console, he'd have to be ready to face multiple sucker punches.

JJ86 said:

I want a similar but different universe - something to bring back the "lost" feeling I felt when I played the game originally.

I can see that in fact I felt the same way, I remember walking out of the vault getting bitten up by rats, I had crappy weapons a sissy vault 13 jump suit and I was supposed to find something that jerk of a overseer called a water chip whatever that damn thing was.

After I almost got killed several times by rats and scorpions I stumbled into a raider camp and got knocked down to my last few HP's before I finally waxed some nasty clown that poked me full of holes with his spear. I scrounged up his armor and ran for the exit. I like that feeling of being on the edge of disaster and being constantly challenged to figure things out.

I hope with FO3 they finally put in the body maintenance stuff Its a whole new ball of wax when you are forced to carry more water and food than ammo and weapons and where your supplies dwindle as you trek across the wasteland

imagine the messages:

your water supply is low you decide to:

* travel at night to conserve water

* move slower during the day

* move faster and hope for the best

* do nothing


You are 10 percent dehydrated and have lost five current hit points

You are 20 percent dehydrated you are down another five HP's
and -1 to Perception, Strength, intelligence, and Endurance.

You throw your best weapon away as you stumble trough the desert in a delirious state of mind.

now that’s a lost feeling


Fallout2 was cool but there was too much forced humor and dumb shit

Actualy, FO2 had a foos system but never implemented it.


Look in the NMA moding/hacking fourm theres a thread on it, old one though.

I heard that from my son, he is focused on the FO2 mapper and ran across that in a walkthrough,it would have been cool option for FO2. FO3 should have such a system as an option at game start.

I remember I played a text only post nuke RPG game that a classmate of mine made in C prgramming language for his term project. That little game was a kick in the butt he had a brutal real life food and water system implimented that you could turn on at the beginning of the game but once you turned it on you could not shut it off, twas a sort of an ancient 'hard man' mode in that respect.

It was great, hunger and thirst really adjusted your attitude. If you met a lone traveler out in the wasteland that you thought you could take on the guy was dead after you talked to him to get some local info. There was a life number that you could move back to full value by eating+drinkng.
wounds could only be healed by rest and medication. It was a fight just to stay alive when treking from one location to the next. I think that kind of reality level would be a great game option for FO3.

Note: In my current FOT campain project I have made sure that stimpacks and healing powder are rare and expensive items but every dog, wolf, and bramin, you kill in this mini campain has drmeat.ent in its inventory each unit has a weight of 0.5 and restores between 2 and 5 hitpoints so to restore 20 hitpoints you have to eat between 2 and 5 pounds of dry meat.

ARG that text colour you're using is impossible to read.
As for Pete Hines, can you send me the emails in a PM or something? I'd like to put that as news if you're OK with that. I didn't get much from him when I emailed him, just 'its going to be a while before we can say anything'.

And I think it's true that if the hardcore FO fans are pleased, the game will be a hit. Simply because FO fans are known all over the internet and PC gaming cimmunity as being harsh, and if we're pleased, the game's sure to be good. The fanbase is also pretty large now.

Emails, unless stated otherwise, should be off the record. Developers tend to get pissy when they're quoted publically after the fact.

That said, you have a bunch of people clamoring for things like, "Make Fallout more like GTA!" or "Fallout first person would be cool!" Those are the type of people who don't really give a shit about the game itself and will buy it anyway as long as it's a Fallout game and resembles a CRPG. They're not really the people who Bethesda needs to look at when it comes to how they should make Fallout 3. They're the sure sales. Bethesda needs to be more concerned about the people who won't buy the game if it's not like Fallout.

I'm surprised people still play FOT.

Bethesda needs to be more concerned about the people who won't buy the game if it's not like Fallout.

Thats a fact, write it in stone we have been starved for a new fallout RPG for years we tolerated FOT because the game has some interesting things about it but we puked when they made BOS and none of us bought it. My son wanted a copy of BOS but I told I wouldnt have that abomination in the house. He subsequntly played the game and he says its the worst piece of crap he ever played he exped something like fallout and didnt get it.

The way I see it Bethesda has a golden opportunity to have a game go gold on preorders before the first copy is on the shelves. that is if they deliver a FALLOUT game and not some mutant piece of crap dumbed down for game consoles and playable on a PC.

Note: point well taken: I removed the name of the guy I quoted in my initial post and did not send anyone those two e-mails.

I concur, Saint, I concur Pleasing us is a tough job, no doubt about it, but the rewards that are there to be reaped are gigantuine at the same time. I sent them a mail a while back, telling them to remember the fans- not just poleasing us, but at the same time ensuring contact with us and, maybe, have a few on their contact-lists (people like Rosh and Saint) to have them go over the story-line, etc. Cause we all know: if Saint and Rosh can accept the game, then everyone should be able to do so! They never replied though...

They know my email.

Was it just me or did anyone else notise that there where way to many random encounters in FOT? Every square on the worldmap had like three encounters each! I hope they dont do that in FO3... it was really annoying...

This is a comment from a lowly englishman who thinks Fallout is the best thing to happen since the simpsons.

This is my 2 pence,

why doesnt Bethesda just use the Black Isle stuff? it has the liscence for it? Reading recent interviews from the devs it sounded like it was going to be one hell of a game. To see it rot makes me almost want to cry.

I do not want argue about insignificant things like most people do. I just want to beg for someone out there in computer land to pick up and finish this game as i know it would make TRUE fallout fans very happy.

i dont expect anything, but looking around i didnt see anyone make this point and i thought it needed to be.

I think the point has been made to use what was already done with Van Buren and run with it. But that might be unrealistic - I don't know. The game world is a place of magic and blatant stupidity.

I've got a gut feeling that Bethesda will change FO3 form Fo1/2/T too much. There is even a chance they might make it 1st person like Morrowind.

:shudders:

That would be like making Doom 3 isometric.

:shudders again:

Doom 3 in 3-rd person would be like Resident Evil with a flashlight I imagine?