Let's Play - Yay or Nay?

Nah. I lost it beacuse Fish wanted it. Not much to do about it, he's older and meaner than I am.

Dragon Age sould be out pretty soon. Actually quite looking forward to it. It'll be a great "present" after Challenge Amphibious, one of the thoughest weeks I'll experiance in a while.

 

The game was a monstrosity as was Oblivion. RPG's for the simpletons of the planet. They both serve as a perfect example of how RPG's these days are actually action adventure games that give you a few choices now and again in order to give you the impression that you have a "Choice". Fallout 3 as a game, in contrast to Fallout 1 as a game, without any Fallout1 bias, is still awful. I shan't rant to you every one of Fallout 3's shortcoming, I'll simply outline a few.

1. The movement on Fallout 3 is awful. You can be running forward whilst moving sideways. At least on Fallout 1 your character looked like he was running in the right direction.

2. By the time of leaving the Vault, I had a baseball bat, 3 pistols, 122 rounds of ammo, 6 officer suits, 1 tech suit, 1 "Tunnel Snakes/Happy Days" Jacket, lots of miscellaneous items such as, "WonderGlue, Adhesive, Scrap Metal, 3 bottles of Alcohol, 12 Stimpacks, a baseball hat and ball etc. Ohh and I had killed pretty much everyone in the Vault that I have lived in for about 18 years. As I step into the wastelands, I don't feel to worried for a number of reasons. 1, I'm armoured to the teeth, 2, I am fully loaded with a shit load of ammo, a shiv and a baseball bat and 3, Within 1 minute I'm listening to some black guy from the 80's called C,Dog or whatever his name was. I guess to summarise on point number 2, in Fallout 1, I felt like my character had been thrown into the wasteland with a goal, but with now idea of how I would achieve that goal and no idea of what was to come. Whereas in Fallout 3, I had murdered most of the people I had lived with for so long, in order to find out where my "Daddy" went. The general goal of finding my dad was somewhat less compelling than saving my people.

3. The scripting for the conversations was absolutely diabolical. Example, when you walk into a bar owned by a money grabbing Irish Wanker and talk to the barman "Gob" (Token Mutant), this is actually one of the speech options you can use. "My father might have came through here, middle aged guy, you seen him?". What a joke, how many middle aged men have walked in and out of there, it is a Bar after all.

I shan't carry on any more.

 

Holy shit. Bell Hooks posted something intelligent and coherent. And yet... it's not raining frogs and blood...

It'll be mostly screen-shots and text, although I might make videos of the beginning and end of the game if I can get the damn software working.

 

Point 2 sounds like a complaint about their direction in starting the game, to me (mixed in with a couple falsehoods/misconceptions that may have come from not taking the time to finish it before slamming final judgement on it). The time you spend in the Vault at the beginning of Fallout 1 is negligible. You fight some rats, and then you bail. In Fallout 3, you are in the vault for the first 1-2 hours of gameplay. In Fallout 1, you would have been to Vault 15 and Shady Sands by then. Also, you expend ammo at a higher rate than Fallout 1, so you technically aren't that much better off by having 122 rounds of pistol ammo (which, incidentally, implies that you went out of your way to find the stuff. Exploration garnering resources does not equal fail game). Even further, you go back to the Vault later on, and you have not slaughtered everyone inside. Just the guards who tried to stop you from leaving. Honestly, I thought that the Vault segment(s) of Fallout 3 stayed truer to Fallout than everything else.

I had fun playing Fallout 3. It wasn't up to snuff with classic Fallout 1 and 2 (which have been released as a trilogy pack with Tactics for $20.00, btw. Look for it at your local Best Buy or Game Store!), but it was of above average quality nonetheless. Much of the dialogue, especially near the beginning, was atrocious, yes, but it didn't make me want to cry like some people like to claim. Fallout 3 was also made to be played in a first-person camera angle. Third person view as an afterthought. That's why it looks pathetic if you play it in that angle. It's really not far different from, say, the 'Multiplayer' button in Arcanum.

I will reiterate what I said before about your complaints on the plot: You don't kill everybody in the Vault. You fight 3-4 (Maybe 6 if you feel brave) security guards who are trying to keep you from leaving the Vault. You also have the option of slaughtering several other people in the Vault. I could complain that Fallout 2 was bad if I murdered everybody in my Tribe at the start of the game, but nobody would appreciate it much.

By the time you reach the latter half of the plotline (SPOILER: You find your dad halfway through the main story arc), the story shifts in such a way that it is actually parallel to those found in Fallouts 1 & 2 (Fallout 1: Find the Waterchip, Defeat Master. Fallout 2: Find GECK, Defeat Enclave. Fallout 3: Find Water Purifier, Defeat Enclave). They followed the Fallout story's formula of McGuffin - Save the World pretty well.

Fallout 3 has plenty of problems, but the only ones you laid out was poor dialogue and a crummy third person. I'd like to see you come forward with the game's actual flaws, if you please.

 

If you aren't going to play fallout 3 as an RPG, its works as an action game. However good dialog and good quests constitute the beating heart of good RPG, and here F3 falls woefully short. The graphics are acceptable. The exploration is poor - Stalker had a much better sense of a scarred wasteland to wander in. Too much of the environment is just set dressing. But crucially, it just fails to compel me. Other people like the game and I don't mind that they did, but it is missing the essential ingrediant which makes the whole thing work for me.

 

Designing an RPG in third person in my opinion, is an awful idea. A game in which character development is fairly important, not being able to even look at yourself/your character is a big let down. But as you said, they added the third person as an afterthought, most probably to please those gamers like me, who wish to see their character. The problem with the third person is that in that mode, there is are very rigid camera angles, resulting in not being able to see your characters face. I did actually play the game through, (I felt I should considering it cost £40.00) and by the end of the game I couldn't remember what my characters face looked like. I know it sounds somewhat picky, but I really want in a game, to be able to look at my character in all his/her glory. With the older games like Arcanum, Fallout 1-2, TOE, it was different. In those games the graphics on the faces were terrible, but the clothes coupled in with the atmosphere the games provided left such details to the imagination which almost enhanced the games for me. Normally I wouldn't moan to much about the third person thing, but I think Bethesda by now should have seen how bad their third person mode was on Oblivion and done something about it. I think the first person mode worked great with oblivion because its all swords + shields etc. What made them think that first person would work with Fallout 3 is another story. The V.A.T.S system that they came up with renders manual targeting useless. Why else, other than to manually aim would you develop a game to be played in first person?
Secondly, the way you described the beginning of Fallout 1 is slightly vague. The reason you don't start in the Vault in my opinion is that the creators wanted you to feel thrown into no where so you would feel a real sense of danger. Killing them rats at the beginning of the game, unless you chose the right starting stats, was actually not incredibly easy. Unless you had put a few points into small guns you would miss most of the shots fired. I guess my point is at the start of Fallout 1 you are pretty useless in terms of combat which leaves more room for character development. Whereas in Fallout 3, after killing 3-6 guards (some armed) you pretty much feel like billy big bollocks and that you can kill anything. Its at least a short while in Fallout 1 before you can fight actual people without getting blasted away. Look at the guard at shady sands, few shots off him and your dead. Compare that to Lucas Simms in Megaton, you could either beat him relentlessly with the starting baseball bat, truncheon, the pistol, and lets not forget that you will have about 12 stimpaks by now so your not dying any time soon. I guess I just can't stand how less challenging games are these days. Fallout 3, it doesn't matter how many times you replay it because it is for the most part, way to easy and way to simple.
The conversations in the game are actually pretty ridiculous throughout, in no way witty, at times stupidly aggressive, at times incredibly dumb, in general terribly designed. When I went and purchased Fallout 3, I didn't buy it because I wanted to play a game just the same as Fallout 1 + 2, I brought it because I thought what Bethesda could do with the game could be incredible. In my opinion they should have done away with the VATS crap straight away. The game should have been an over the shoulder shooter, with less enemies (By the time you've killed 500 mutants you really cant be arsed), and a manual targeting system much like the one showed in Mass Effect. Not a game I like to much but the movement and camera angles are fluent. If the game was manual targeting, the skills featured such as small guns, energy weapons, could have simply increased the accuracy of the shots taken and the effectiveness of these shots on the applicable area where the bullet hit the enemy.
I think in a sense, this game tried to hard to be like the originals. For example, the whole segment in the Vault. Its fucking stupid and unnecessary really. It has all the original stuff in it like Nuka Cola etc, the sort of same structure to the story line, but fundamentally where it fails to be like the originals is the rate of which the character develops. You are already killing people before you leave the vault, within ten to twenty minutes of leaving the vault you can blow up a settlement, within an hour you can kill 100 raiders, within 5 hours you can be half way through the story line etc. Also, I found Fallout 3 has some incredibly advanced technology featured in it. For example, the robot who cuts the cake, he hovers and is made presumably of metal, he speaks and reacts to people meaning he has quite a high level of Artificial Intelligence, he shows an ability to kill when he flamed the rad roaches, why he is equipped with a flame-thrower I don't know, he showed he was uncomfortable when the man was repairing him. That's technology that we are still developing now. You will know the only advanced tech featured in Fallout 1 + 2 were things related to the military or high security facilities. Like the energy weapons, the computer consoles, none nearly as high tech as a hovering robot with the same intelligence as a human being.
Its a ridiculous game, with severe lack of atmosphere. It might have been a bit more atmospheric but they HAD to include the old fashion music like the ink spots for example. I love most of the music in the game but it really does spoil the "Alone in the remains of a city destroyed by nuclear war."
Ohh and about the ammo, I would hardly say that the ammo depletion in Fallout 3 is much greater than it is in Fallout 1, there are simply a stupid amount of enemies in the game.
If you like the game you like it. But your settling for a lot less.
My idea for a Fallout 4. Bethesda should have revamped the original design for Fallout 3 made by Black Isle I think.

 

Just so you know, Mass Effect wasn't really "manual targeting". Sure, you moved your mouse to point and shoot but vast quantities of it were dependent on your skills in the relevant weapon class.

Also, do you honestly expect people to read all of that about a game that most of us dislike anyway and still give a crap at the end?

Atleast your proofreading skills are up to scratch.

I don't mind first person to be honest, I like being able to get close to the characters. Actually it may just be because I grew up on Ishar and EotB. I'd rather be able to feel a change in my character at the end of a story rather than that WoW itemisation bullshit anyway, sorry.

 

I liked Fallout 3 because it was fun.

 

You have a point, but aside from most of the dialogue and some of the quest content, as well as biases suspended, I find the overall rpg elements to be somewhat stimulating.

While I agree wholly, I was able to immerse myself A BIT in the exploration. Unfortunately, it gets pretty damned old after an hour or so, and the game clearly suffers from Ayleid ruin syndrome.

No argument.

Again, I agree. I would expound, but I would really just be reiterating what Grak has already said. I'm not trying to start a flame war, merely stating an opinion. The problem is that most people who dislike the game are Fallout fans, which is sad, but only on the part of the developers for their unprovoked rape of an innocent life form. Still, I must sigh resignedly and state my opinion that Wasteland Survival RPG is a, er, GOOD game. It fails to surpass most similar (similar in leveling and skill system, as well as skill application. By which I mostly refer to the "base stats influencing determined skills" in a reactive manner, which my roommate ironically refers to as isometric leveling, hur hur.) RPGs, and even those that share its common name, which I won't speak, despite its pre-release hype and off-hand attempts at appealing to Fallout fans.

Off-topic, of course, but "when in Rome..."

Also, I didn't get any introductory "fuck off"s. What's that about?

Back to the off-topic topic, if you've explored every possible style of gameplay in every game you own, but still have a copy of "it" lying around, g'head an' zonk yourself on the head with a hammer until you forget about Fallout 1&2, as well as all your (insert word, biases is too negative, but preconceptions is too positive... hrm.) then pop 'er in, and have yourself a few dozen hours of: (feel free to choke me with the very word

I also agree with Bell Hooks...

*Wipes away vomit*

...about the difficulty. Level adjustment works for random encounters, but there's a nice RPG element out there called "common sense-based leveling balance" that mostly occurs in open-ended games. In a game like, say, Fallout, you know not to run into The Hub guns blazing unless you want a rifle up the arse. In WSRPG, I can start the game, cross the river while blasting super mutants, stroll into downtown and storm through Underworld with my baseball bat. That's like in Arcanum, if you go straight to Tarant and just start killing everyone in the boil, then raid the power plant (which oddly enough has the largest concentration of guards... not gonna say much about that.) just because they're all conveniently "balanced" based on your level. It's fucking STUPID!

I guess the point is that by this mechanic you can do any of the sidequests at any time, but why would anyone think this is a good... idea... Oh. OH. Ha, ha, ha... I GET IT! It's so any idiot can pop the game in and fly through it no problem! Then tell their friends piss-pantsedly about "tha most EPIC gaem evar!" HA! So you don't actually have to use reason, logic, judgment, any of that. You know, HOG-TYING THE ENTIRE CONCEPT OF IMMERSION AND FORCE FEEDING IT CONCENTRATED ELEPHANT SPLOOGE!!

The only real challenge in my little escapade was that stupid robot, (who's... racist? When did this suddenly become Star Wars? And that cliche accent makes me want to suddenly start thinking Michael Moore should be president, which is fucking confusing and pissing me off.) who blasts me with a flamethrower and subsequently gets me yelling incoherently at my death cutscene's assholeitude. I don't even think Michael Jackson would want to see himself die in such obnoxious motion-blurred slow-mo. It's like, "heh-eh, you dead." This goddamned game...

Anyway, it's enjoyable despite its faults, but only if you suspend your disbelief. A LOT. I had an easier time of convincing myself that I was actually the mayor of Earth building railroads with my mind in SimCity games than convincing myself that WSRPG isn't a back-asswards attempt at a Fallout game. Which is ironic as all fuck, considering.


(7 Posts? Uh, yeah, I'ma skip to the end.) Section >>V
In conclusion, it's average. I will kill anyone who says that it's better than either of its direct prequels, but it's not a bad game if you take it for what it is, or, if you prefer, ought to be.


Enough said:
V*See Zanza's post*V

 

In the end I play games for fun, and I do enjoy RPGs for the stories they tell and the opportunities they allow for me to immerse myself in them, however at the end of the day if I am getting enjoyment out of a game I'm not going to whinge about how they could of made it better knowing full well my rant won't make the game better.

 

Xiao's Opinion of Fallout 3: I have played some incredibly stupid, shitty games because I am a plot WHORE. I can forgive a multitude of sins if the story is good or even if the character interaction is compelling. Fallout 3... the story was so poorly told, the dialogue was so incredibly retarded, and the pacing was so schitzophreni that I refused to finish it.

And this is coming from someone who played the mind-bogglingly poor Eragon game for the PS2 ALL THE WAY THROUGH. Seriously. I can tolerate a lot of stupid shit but Fallout 3 was a few giant leaps too far.

 

I agree the story of Fallout 3 was terrible compared to previous story lines, but I found that the game itself was mediocre, and by that I mean I had senseless fun when I turned my brain off and Role-Played in my head. Because that is about all you will get from Oblivion and Fallout 3 if you plan to take it as a serious RPG. That being said it doesn't mean I didn't enjoy both adventures however when it came to Oblivion I must admit I needed a mod to make it the game it should have been originally, gee I can't even remember the name of that mod anymore but it was the extremely popular one that basically everyone should have. You all know the one I'm talking about...

 

In this topic, it's trendy to talk bad about blockbuster games.

I'm just kinda angry about kids who say Fallout 3 is the best game ever and the first Fallout games suck because of their graphics.

I love Fallout 1 and 2, and I gotta say, Fallout 3 really is a worthy sequel.

 

P.S. While talking about story, has anyone here played Little Big Adventure 1 and 2 (Relentless and Twinsen's Oddysey)?

It had the most fun and meaningful story I've ever seen in a game. Not to mention the special style it had.

 

No, but I did once spend a month playing through and loving to DEATH Shining Force 2. It was a fun tactical RPG, the plot was good if a little spartan, and there were some heart-wrenching moments that actually made me cry. ME. (Poor, poor Oddler...)

 

When did I ever ask to keep the mushroom? I enjoyed the confusion. And what the fuck do you mean I'm meaner you stupid asshole.

 

Ah the shining force games, now that is an example of the RPGs I grew up on. Lots of people preferred the second game but I was a fan of the first, I remember school holidays going to the video store and hiring it for a week to play on my megadrive 2.

 

I never actually got to play the first Shining Force.

It's worth point out at this point that it was 1998 when I first owned a PC, 1999 when I got introduced to what a GOOD video game is like (bless you Baldur's Gate 2, what a way to discover the genre!), and it was 2002 before I indulged in my first Playstation, my reliable PS2 workhorse. (Said PS2 is still sitting over on my shelf, waiting for me to finish the semester and the NaNo.) So much of my experience with older games has been through emulation that I'm not even sure what most of the older consoles look like.

You may commence your mockery now. I still reckon older games have better plots that 99.99% of the dreck that comes through these days. Whoever first put graphics over story and gameplay needs to be SHOT. In the balls. In front of a crowd of angry oldschool gamers. And then have a heated solution of vinegar and salt poured over the wounds.

 

Ha. Honestly though, I also enjoyed the confusion. And the mushroom. God damn, I miss that 'shroom.

 

A cute little woman with glasses who likes writing, good books and classic RPGs.

Marry me?