News Fallout 3 rights purchased by Bethesda...

I underatand the caution about Fallout 3; Oblivion, whilst quite good, wasn't nearly the same level of personality many of the older RPGs were. It was pretty good, but felt more like the developers spent 70% of their time on the engine (which was a damn nice engine), 25% of their time on coming up with content and 5% of time on story and style. The Dark Brotherhood quests were pretty cool, and that Daedra sub quest where you enter enter that bloke's permanent nightmare and everything's just covered in blood and corpses was memorable, but you hardly went away all shaken and stirred by it when you left the game.

Plus the story was totally linear, which was amazing given how none linear the engine was, but they still managed to put zero choice into the narrative. It felt like you were hoop jumping, and there was only one set of hoops. The world even ground to a hault around you if you stopped hoop jumping, it felt totally mechanical and none organic. What little of Fallout I have played (or watched Joe playing) I got the feeling there was so much more to the game than that. Can you imagine being bullied into marrying a man following drunken gay sex by an angry father in Oblivion?

 

Lots of people saying this, but you have to ask yourself why bethesda are buying the rights to the franchise. Fallout isn't exactly a MASSIVE name by any stretch of the imagination, most of my friends who are pretty intensive PC gamers never played the original fallout series, but bethesda wish to carry on the series because they are pretty hardcore fans of the original series, and recognise are fairly largish demand from fans of 1 & 2. If their version of the game fails to titilate fans of the first two games, then how on earth do they plan to make any money from it? IMO it's going to be as good, if not better (because of the new format) than the single player RPGs.

Obviously, all that's speculation as we've not seen any proper details or screenies yet, it could be a bag of ****

 

Doesn't seem like such a bad thing here in terms of the prospects for F3 - use the same spangly engine, turn down the lights and turn up the grime, then spend the ~60% of time saved from making a new engine on making the game play fantastically

 

I haven't played oblivion but morrowind although loosing out to nwn at the time I think for me at least eventualy came out as the better of the two RPG's as it involved the player more (and was alot more open). I am a big fan of the first person prospective as it's more involving than isometric. As for cleaning it up, I doubt that, morrowind was pretty damm rotten if you went deep enough into it

* at one point I interupted a rape for example

**Don't they already have the engine for this game and so won't it have lots of awsome content ?

 

Whilst Beth have done a great job with Oblivion, I'm not sure they can produce a game of that quality for Fallout (imho, the reason is that TES was originally started and created by Beth, whilst Fallout isn't, and when designing the game universe, it's a lot easier when you have the say). Not to say Fallout3 will be bad, just not the same class Oblivion was. Let's hope this ain't gonna be the case eh?

 

Some companies are good at technology, others are good at design, it's not often you come across a company that's genuinely good at both. Just look what happened when John Romero tried his hand at design over technology. I'm just worried that Bethesda's speciality is making games that are carried by amazing engines, when left to develop a game that requires so much style and design they may suffer somewhat. This is just speculation, but history dictates very few developers are both amazing technically and amazing design wise at the same time.

(though feel free to come up with an example to prove me wrong)

 

I'm frankly astonished at the implication that beth are good at making engines but not content. Their engines suck ass from a code point of view, and they buy them in from another company anyway. Beth are game makers dude. Call me a fanboy, I know I am. But I play most RPG's that get released and I havn't come across any other company in recent years doing a better job of RPG's than bethesda.

 

They bought in the engine? I'll admit I didn't know that, but oh dear, that means they don't have anything going for them as a company! Come on you must admit whilst Oblivion was good on a minute to minute basis, overall it was woefully simplistic compared to other (older) rpgs, totally linear storyline with usually pretty one dimensional quests (which involved fetching stuff, with or without killing stuff in between). I'm not meaning to bash Oblivion, I did thoroughly enjoy it, but without it's tech it would have been a pretty forgetable game.

Compared to the older RPGs though I just really got the feeling with both Morrowind and Oblivion that the tech was running the day, not the story/design/style/whatever. I'm not one for saying tech isn't important, I love id software's games and their all tech driven, but just that there was so much personality in the orignal Fallout games I'm a little aprehensive about them pulling it off. Though I am hoping I'll be pleasently surprised.

 

I agree Oblivion was lacking, but I wouldn't call it an abysmal game..not by a long shot. I tend to consider Morrowind the best example of what good tech(for the time) and good gameplay are like together, and the best example of bethesdas capabilities. I guess because of that I'm not worried, as I've never played anything that topped it.

 

I can't express my love for Fallout games, (except Tactics, it was a fake one), and cannot wait to see what comes from it.
"Fallout : A Post Apocalyptic RPG"
I hope they will keep the distinctive feel Fallout had.
"Chosen One, get the water chip / G.E.C.K.".....Ah, good memories flow back.

 

Agreed. The engine looks nice at high settings but what kind of system do you need to run those kind of settings consistently? A pretty damn good one. Terrible optimisation aside the HDR is one of the least realistic implementations to date. The idea of HDR is to make lighting more realistic, not make everything glow. They also let it down with poor quality textures but thats a content issue.

Beth aren't nearly as good as much of their hype suggests. They made some decent stuff but we see in Oblivion how they became too dependant on the mod community to fix gameplay flaws.

 

I thonk theres one obvious problem here. We've got two schools. The peple who played rpgs (Ultima series, Planescape torment - NO plot like in PS: Torment - fallout series, baldurs gate etc) and the FPS/RPG mix (morrowind, oblivion and Darkmessiah).

The first ones played since the begining. From the old ones like ultima series and saw that the genre became a comercial genre since Never Winter Nights. The second begin to like RPGs since morrowind.

I am of the first generation, and always loved games (particulary RPG) and i have ultima 7 (part I and II), fallout 2 and recently installed Ultima Online again in my machine and i still have fun with them. Ultima Online is the first MMORPG btw.

Oblivion is obviously from the second generation of rpg players. It's a wonderfull game... "for being from the second generation computer rpg"!!! And it's a game for kids!

IMO the only game capable of catch some of the atmosfere (FPS/RPG) of Fallout is dark Messiah of Might and magic. Not because it's a nice RPG or tha gameplay is fantastic, but because it really catches a really dark atmosfere. So, if u get Dark Messia, NWN 2 and Deus Ex toghether, them we could mek a game near fallout.

I tottaly agree that my greatest fear is that bethesda makes a commercial game and let aside the experience we had in the past with Fallout.

Fallout is a game of prostitutes, addiction to drugs, hyper violence, high sarcasm, adult content... In other words, it's a post apocalypt (never know how to spell this word) world. And if u take these elements off FO, it will be not Fallout anymore!

The final scenes that u kill The super mutant boss with a shot in the eye is still one of the most impressive scenes i ever saw in a game.

U know what? I think ROCK STAR GAMES should make Fallout 3!

 

I wouldn't write all of us morrowind fans off as new to the RPG genre. I've been playing RPG's since I was about 3 years old in the days of shadowlands on the amiga 500.

 

Ah yee of little faith.... Give the guys a chance and don't bash them before they even deliver a product. There's heaps of tallent at bethesda and they are fallout fans, just like us. I played Fallout 1, 2 & tactics over and over, but I'm happy to just wait and see what Bethesda come up with and then judge.

As long as I can pick bloody mess as a perk I'll be a happy puppy!!

And by the way: aren't all quests of the kill this, fetch that type?? Is there an other kind?? I mean, even the kill him to get that to combine with this is still basicly a sum of the same kind of quests.

 

Heres a point; no matter how adult, violent and gross Fallout was in tone, what you actually saw was pretty clean. It always faded out when anything adult happened, and how graphic could you get with isometric sprites anyway?

If Fallout 3 gets a bit more child friendly then bear in mind if everything in the originals could be shown is super-spangly-3D-o-vision there's a fair chance it never would have just been banned.

Personally, I do hope they keep the adult tone up and use the new tools to push it even further! We're all responsible people who want a chance to explore the dark side of life. Hopefully Bethseda will place the product as a counterpoint to their 'cleaner' stuff, but I have a nagging feeling the Fallout will be influenced more by Beth. than Beth. will be by Fallout.

 

You want to explore the dark side of life? Then grab Vampire the masquerade: Bloodlines. Made by a load of ex-fallout staff it really handles dark stuff in a mature and semi-realistic way. It's good stuff, but you really need to download the fan made patches to appreciate it.

 

Well... I would say those death animations were/are fairly graphic. Especially the ones involving a minigun and a critical hit. They'd propably look ridiculous in a 3D environment due to their overblown nature, though.

Combat text was also an important part of it. Nothing like putting the gamers' imagination to use, much better than the approach of, say, SoF (= Soldier of Fortune) in my opinion. Lifelike violence is not entertaining.

 

Yeah, somehow a headshot in Half-life doesn't even rival fallouts: "Your shot hits the child in the eye for 47 damage, blinding and crippling him. The blow knocks the child to the ground and kills him."

With high perception you can get that a lot, but my favourite is still:

"You hit the bandit in the groin for 30 damage, knocking him to the floor and seriously wounding him", just because it is occasionally followed by cool combat dialogue (Count them, count them!)

 

Someone mention Bloodlines? There is a game that took me by surprise. Buggy, unfinished, ragged around the edges and the middle, it had me totally engrossed.

To short by far and entertaining on so many levels I forgave it all of its faults. I cannot say it challenged my morality, with the possible exception of having a human as a pet. It tackled adult subject matter with the correct amount of humor. It had an edge. It gave you a sense of power yet fragility, had atmosphere and a level of credibility that kept me captivated for many a happy week. They could do much worse than follow in the spirit of Bloodlines.

But that is not a TES game, so what chance?

Morrowind had a darkness to it, but skirted lightly around content considered adult in nature. I lost many months to Morrowind, it is certainly a sandbox and, from a technical point of view, a beautifully crafted one at that. Not, perhaps, what one would want for Fallout 3.

What could be taken from Morrowind is atmosphere and the way the game manipulated the emotions and psyche. I was lost, the scenery was bleak, I was desecrating a tomb, I was not liked and the Telvanni classic, I was not welcome. While I've not played Fallout it sounds like it it would also benefit from the character-centric as opposed to player-centric approach taken by this game.

As for taking anything from the happy, smiley, everyone's on prosac world of Oblivion. A linear world devoid of cross plot and complications where FPS style epic battles lead to epic boredom. I hope not. Ok, it has nice graphics used at times with excellent attention to detail, but even today I occasionally check out the box for a McDonnalds logo.