Fallout 3

Comments

3 responses to “Fallout 3”

1. 

   Mikki

   June 7, 2007

   Yeah, I find it kind of annoying — if entirely predictable — that so many people insist it on being Oblivion with mutants without any actual knowledge of the matter. As if Bethesda could only produce one kind of a game with one kind of gameplay.

   Personally, I’m of two minds here. The concept of Oblivion with mutants sounds doesn’t sound bad to me, either, and I freely admit that I’ve put a lot of hours into Oblivion and will undoubtedly continue to do so. On the other hand, the reasons why I dig Oblivion and why I dig Fallout are not at all interchangeable — and I’ll take Fallout over Oblivion any day of the week. For example, I want to see some serious NPC interaction in my Fallout, and this far Bethesda’s track record has been strictly quantity over quality. (Shivering Isles does a little better on that front, though, and I know that a big reason why the NPCs tend to repeat the same things over and over again in the original game is simply that there are approximately fifty billion of them in the game, and the DVD has limited storage capacity.) But I think the NPC problem in Oblivion goes far beyond the amount of dialogue they have — not that they’re awful, but they aren’t great or memorable, and they certainly aren’t interesting. You never really do anything with them, unless you’re killing them or helping them kill someone. Oh, and I also like the turn-based combat a hell of a lot, and I think we’re unlikely to get that.

   In the end, a lot of it comes down to the game’s atmosphere, and Bethesda has certainly demonstrated that they can handle that… and yet again, Oblivion’s atmosphere is conveyed pretty much by watching the amazingly beautiful vistas unfold and listening to the soft music in the background, and that works. I mean, I’m still doing that and having a ball. But that ain’t gonna cut it in Fallout. I want some pretty heavy storytelling from my Fallout experience, for one thing, and Bethesda’s track record for that is kind of spotty at best.

   Still, I’m kind of optimistic. I want a new Fallout game, and I want it to be a good one. Judging Bethesda’s completely unseen Fallout game by the standards fo another game is just dumb…

   …and yet these are the guys who felt that Star Trek Legacy was a game worth publishing, so, y’know. I’m kind of optimistic, but not that confident. Here’s hopnig.

2. 

   joonas.laakso

   June 7, 2007

   When did turn-based combat become so unsexy, anyway? So many PC classics are turn-based, and the Final Fantasy Tactics and their sort have always been good sellers on the consoles, too. Yet eveyone agrees that nope, we’re not getting anymore turn-based games. I know there’s lke Silent Storm on the PC, but no major releases (with, you know, marketing budgets).

   After all the die-hard fans doomsaying and naying, imagine the shock if Bethesda had stayed true to the series’ roots and gone all dialogue and turnbased combat on us. And when did dialogue die? With the coming of spoken dialogue in gaming, which has to be irony defined. (Okay, Bloodlines had some proper dialogue.)

   That said, I know – it’s gonna be Oblivion with mutants. But if there’s the same progress I’m seeing from the earlier Elder Scrolls instalments to Oblivion, that could be a very good thing after all. Maybe it’s time for that much-vaunted “radiant” AI to finally come of age, eh?

3. 

   Mikki

   June 8, 2007

   The radiant AI… yeah, there’s yet another idea that looks great on paper and, more often than not, produces downright idiotic game situations. Not that there isn’t a certain kind of a perverse pleasure in watching just about every person in a village start attacking each other just because someone hit someone else by mistake, but as far as the actual game experience goes, it’s not doing a lot for me. =)

   As for turn-based combat, I’ve recently (again) played Jagged Alliance 2, which is a pretty old game, and yet it still manages to kick fifty kinds of ass. It easily boasts one of the best implementations of turn-based combat ever. (They’re apparently trying to put out a DS version of the game, which would certainly be interesting if they manage to pull it off.)

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