Fallout 3

[Shryke]

Greatest thing ever.

First, the article:

Washington is laid to waste. The Capitol is a blackened, smoking ruin. The White House has been razed. Countless thousands are dead. This is the apocalyptic scene terrorists hope to create if they ever get their hands on a nuclear bomb.

The computer-generated image below was posted on an Islamic extremists' website yesterday.

...

U.S. analysts said a lot of effort had been put into the video - entitled Nuclear Jihad, The Ultimate Terror - with graphics, music, and clips of different leaders and groups.

The same expertise seems to have gone into creating this image of a devastated Washington.

Hmm, that image is familliar. Oh wait:

It's from Fallout 3.

[Fatuous]

Greatest thing ever.

First, the article:

Hmm, that image is familliar. Oh wait:

It's from Fallout 3.

I thought it could have been one of those "Spot the difference" things but they look, well, they are the same. I suppose that this means that someone either from Al Qaida or the US government is a fan of the Fallout series.Somehow, I find that very believable as I've tried to play both of them and you have to be some sort of Turnbased RPG extremist to get through them.

[Werthead]

Australia has refused to grant Fallout 3 a classification due to it's depiction of drug abuse. However, since their concern was with the 'realistic' graphics of the drug items, it's possible that could be changed for release.

More info on the game here.

• Slavery, children, drugs and addiction feature in the game
  Child killing will not be possible. If attacked, they run away and adults around turn on you
  
• Most non-humans are hostile, but not all
  
• A level editor will not be included with the PC version, but might become available in future as a free download
  
• Character traits have been combined with Perks. You now receive one per level. There are around 100 of them, so in order to see them all you'll have to play through the game five times
  
• Up to one companion (plus Dog Meat) will be able to join you. You'll be able to give them weapons and armour
  
• Hand-to-hand combat hasn't been focused upon. It will be hard to complete the game without using weapons
  

[Werthead]

A hands-on preview here.

Sadly, my ploy of wandering around radioactive Washington poking things hadn't been all that lucrative so far - and I can only imagine that outside of the bartering screen my offerings of pool cues, burnt books and pistol ammo was roundly sneered at by Herr Wolfgang.

It was at this point that I decided to kill him with a grenade.

I watched Wolfgang and his guard wander off, away from the guarded gates of Megaton. I then chased after them, stuck myself in sneak/crouch mode, approached the German-monickered rag-and-bone man from the rear and performed a good old-fashioned pickpocket.

Rather than pick stuff, and undoubtedly get caught, I slipped an armed grenade into his trousers and backed off.

Wolfgang turned towards me and frantically began to slap at his legs to find the offending article, but unfortunately had become a shower of body parts before it was discovered.

Sweet

[Anya, Vengeance Demon]

There are oodles of hands-on previews now, and they really seem to run the gamut from frothing at the mouth with joy to just plain frothing at the mouth. (There's also this interview with Todd Howard and Emil Pagliarulo, which I thought was pretty good.)

[Humble Asskicker]

Child killing will not be possible. If attacked, they run away and adults around turn on you

I dislike the hypocrisy that is shown here and in other games similar. It's all well and good to have people literally exploding in bursts of gory violence, but if you shave a few years off this person suddenly it's morally wrong to depict this things. I understand it from a business standpoint - to make money you have to play to the irrationalities of the intended audience - and this game needs to make a lot of money to return its investment - but I just hope that at some point games will break this absurd taboo.

Anyway, I'm excited for this game. Won't be able to play it for many years to come, but it looks neat-o.

[Intercept]

I dislike the hypocrisy that is shown here and in other games similar. It's all well and good to have people literally exploding in bursts of gory violence, but if you shave a few years off this person suddenly it's morally wrong to depict this things. I understand it from a business standpoint - to make money you have to play to the irrationalities of the intended audience - and this game needs to make a lot of money to return its investment - but I just hope that at some point games will break this absurd taboo.

Anyway, I'm excited for this game. Won't be able to play it for many years to come, but it looks neat-o.

I still think the idea of child killing is rather disturbing. With games becoming much more realistic these days, it can get pretty graphic and unsettling.

I'm surprised Prey even made it past that crazy scene with the kids and the ghosts.

[Xanrn]

Huh well I see you lot are eating the hype hook, line and sinker.

Yeah its going to look mediocre, with a crappy combat system. Cause apparantly Turn Based is not "next-gen" unlike FPS which is older and yet somehow newer and next gen. Also its probably too hard.

Also games can't be Isometric, because only First Person is true "immershun".

Then there is their complete destruction of the setting.

Enclave was destroyed in F2, but now they're back and apparantly on the East Coast.

Super Mutants are now just generic Ore/Ogre monsters and look like gobshite.

Ghouls are no longer Humans effected by radiation but now Radioactive Zombies...

Oh and you can heal yourself drinking water from toilet bowls which has been there for 200 years.

Jet has somehow survived Myron's death in a back alley of New Reno despite him being the only one to know how to make it.

Cars explode in small mushroom clouds when shot, because nobody would have scavenged their fuel cells years ago and people are stupid enough to use unstable fusion cells in their cars.

Now were onto 2 of the best bits, the new weapons.

Yeah the mini-nuke catapult, because in a world than ended in Nuclear fire, needs more radiation. Also people can survive using mini-nukes at close quarters...

Then we have the Rock-It launcher, which you make from leaf-blowers and other junk. Which can fire just about anything, including teddy-bears which can apparantly decapitate people...

Fallout 3 being made by Bethseda, is like having Dance of Dragons written by Terry Goodkind who ignores or changes Martin's notes.

Bethseda has taken the Fallout franchise and turned it into an abomination of their craptastic Oblivion and Serious Sam...

Also the coverage of this by American and UK games "journalists" is appalling never seen so much arse-kissing. You have to go to mainland Europe to find previews that aren't glorified ads.

[Space Bandito]

Hey Fallout 2 had its share of problems. But I think most of us are smart enough to filter through the hype. It looks like they are simply trying to please Fallout fans and Oblivion fans. I can (Ok I can't! ) wait until the game comes out to make a judgement. But for now I think it looks like a pretty good compromise.

And Xanrn are you nitpicking about realism in a video game? "And I want to use My gravity gun to push grass out of the way!"

[Anya, Vengeance Demon]

Enclave was destroyed in F2, but now they're back and apparantly on the East Coast.

...

Jet has somehow survived Myron's death in a back alley of New Reno despite him being the only one to know how to make it.

This is the moment in any anti-FO3 rant that I look for, and it always seems to happen. It's the moment when the complaint shifts on a dime, from "Fallout 3 is too unfaithful to the original games" to "Fallout 3 is entirely too faithful to the original games." If the game didn't have the Enclave or Jet or supermutants (as I've seen other people complaining about) or whatever, then these same people would be complaining about FO3 jettisoning too much of the franchise.

For the record, Myron's death was one possible ending, one of the many people analyzing Jet could have discovered a way to keep producing it, and I somehow missed the line of dialogue that establishes that every military base and Vertibird was destroyed at the end of Fallout 2. I always left Navarro standing, which (as you recall) contains hundreds of Enclave soldiers and personnel who might want to start the whole thing up again.

Cars explode in small mushroom clouds when shot, because nobody would have scavenged their fuel cells years ago and people are stupid enough to use unstable fusion cells in their cars.

The cars in Fallout have always run on fusion cells. They did in FO1 & 2 as well.

ETA: And the combat in the original games was not particularly good. Maybe you enjoyed the endless random encounters where you're stuck spending thirty minutes to take down a dozen mantii (or feral dogs, that was another one that ended up dragging on). Oblivion was much better in this regard.

[Shryke]

God, when did "No Mutants Allowed" spill over into this forum?

[Xanrn]

Uh no Myron dying is always the ending, if you don't kill him during the game.

Yes the Cars have Energy Cells, but they don't blow up when you shoot them, because they also run the Power Armour, they also run certain energy weapons. They also wouldn't get left in the rusted car for 200 odd years, when they have multiple uses. Its pure bullshit.

Also the combat is in the original was brilliant and fluid, helluva alot better, than click click click that was the bullcrap of Oblivion.

It took nowhere near 30 minutes to kill a pack of feral dogs, if it took you that long, its cause you sucked at it. It took very low Outdoorsman skill to be able to skip the animal encounters entirely.

As for the Enclave, that had exactly 2 bases, the Oilrig and the small outpost of Navarro.

Whats wrong with No Mutants Allowed btw, you ever actually been there or you going off hearsay?

Cause I suggest you actually go there, instead of talking crap.

Especially the reviews they link from people who aren't completely up Bethseda's arse.

Fallout 3 is Fallout:BOS with better graphics.

[Intercept]

I remember how bad the Bethesda forums were when it was overrun by NMA flunkies. I still haven't visited back since a few months after the game was announced. In fact I was one of the few people back then supporting Bethesda and literally the entire forum caved in on me declaring me a "corporate plant", paid for by the company to use my insidious skill in sly misdirection and flashy writing to pervert the minds of true hardcore fans.

The combat in the original Fallout was fucking awful. You controlled ONE guy in a turn-based game. The actions your one guy could do boiled down to different kinds of attacks, so it basically became, "Kill this guy as fast as possible, then move on to the next guy." There were points in the game where I simply chose the pussy way out or the nice guy way out simply because I didn't want to deal with upsetting the whole town and waiting 9023412341234 minutes for EVERY NPC ON THE MAP TO MOVE before I finally regained control of my character again to do one goddamn attack.

If you didn't notice, ghouls were already radioactive zombies and supermutants were already hideous ogres. The only difference was they were intelligent. There is no indication in any of the material that's been out that proves all the non-human mobs are unintelligent.

I understand if you think Fallout 3 is going to suck, but could you at least draw some actual comparisons of what you hated about Oblivion to what's supposedly going to be in Fallout 3 instead of just calling Oblivion a "clicky clicky suckfest adventure"? Because that's really what the previous Fallouts were. It was literally just fucking clicking till you can wait your turn to click again. The Fallout series was a paradox of both shittiest and greatest game I've ever played. I loved the world, characters, decisions, story and shit you could do. I absolutely hated the gameplay. The gameplay in Fallout 3 bears no resemblance at all to Oblivion, in fact. The only similarity is that it's in first person, but that's like saying Saving Private Ryan and Deuce Bigalow are the same movie because they were shot using the same camera.

Like Spiro said, it really seemed like there would be no winning. Absolutely no reference to Fallout 1 and 2 would mean to "hardcore fans" that they are disrespecting the roots of the franchise. Linking themselves to Fallout 1 and 2 would mean they're destroying canon. Why is it so unbelievable to consider that the descendant of the Vault Dweller didn't completely wipe out all of the Enclave? All we saw was him killing Horrigan and the President. Also, in the amount of time that's passed and all the fucking jeeps and zeppelins around at the end of Fallout 2 -- not to mention that goddamn jet-helicopter shit from Canada that you find in San Francisco -- you think the Enclave or Brotherhood of Steel would never think to travel East?

[Anya, Vengeance Demon]

Uh no Myron dying is always the ending, if you don't kill him during the game.

I'm afraid not. According to the definitive Fallout 2 walkthrough, the Myron-is-dead ending occurs if you "hear Myron's name from Jules, Little Jesus, Renesco, Reed or Myron himself, and don't have him killed during the game." Obviously, if you don't hear his name, that ending doesn't appear.

(The walkthrough, incidentally, is the work of NMA regular Per Jorner, and while he's not one of the original programmers, he describes his process before writing it like so: "I've been playing the game using the UK edition, patch version 1.02e plus the "children patch". To my knowledge there is not a single significant difference between the UK and US versions except for the children thing. I've also used Falche2 Character Editor 2.10 and Inventory Editor 1.01 extensively to try out situations and features; moreover I've used Fallout 2 DAT explorer v1.42 to unpack game files, Fallout Items Mode Editer 1.1 to check out some item details, Fallout Utility for Critter tinKering 0.62 to check out some critter data, and the script decompilers by TeamX and Noid as well as the scripts that came with the Fallout 2 Mapper to check lots of things." Since I doubt that you've done these things--and certainly I have not--I'll take his word over yours.)

Yes the Cars have Energy Cells, but they don't blow up when you shoot them, because they also run the Power Armour, they also run certain energy weapons. They also wouldn't get left in the rusted car for 200 odd years, when they have multiple uses. Its pure bullshit.

Very few people in the Fallout universe have power armor or energy weapons. The Salvatore family in New Reno was unusual in that regard. Most people aren't wandering around with unloaded plasma weapons looking for a refill.

It took nowhere near 30 minutes to kill a pack of feral dogs, if it took you that long, its cause you sucked at it. It took very low Outdoorsman skill to be able to skip the animal encounters entirely.

It doesn't have to be feral dogs specifically. The same could be said about an encounter with a dozen raiders, the trip to kill the king rat in Klamath, the wanamingos, the centaurs in the bottom of the oil tanker, or pretty much any other fight with a large number of enemies: combat dragged, and it would take forever between turns. Maybe it's 'fluid', in the sense that molasses is a fluid, but I really don't see how "brilliant" applies.

As for the Enclave, that had exactly 2 bases, the Oilrig and the small outpost of Navarro.

They had two that we saw in the game, and one was left standing by the end, its technology and personnel usually intact (save for the doctor who was experimenting on the deathclaw, who you could kill pretty quickly). I don't see the problem.

Besides, is it really that strange that the purported government of the United States would want to set up shop in the former capital of the United States? It's actually much weirder that they were set up on an oil rig in California.

[Rhaco]

I think the last RPG I played was Dragon Warrior on the NES (that is an RPG, right?), but the videos of Fallout 3 I've seen on Live look pretty good. Might give it a shot.

[Shryke]

Uh no Myron dying is always the ending, if you don't kill him during the game.

Yes the Cars have Energy Cells, but they don't blow up when you shoot them, because they also run the Power Armour, they also run certain energy weapons. They also wouldn't get left in the rusted car for 200 odd years, when they have multiple uses. Its pure bullshit.

Also the combat is in the original was brilliant and fluid, helluva alot better, than click click click that was the bullcrap of Oblivion.

It took nowhere near 30 minutes to kill a pack of feral dogs, if it took you that long, its cause you sucked at it. It took very low Outdoorsman skill to be able to skip the animal encounters entirely.

As for the Enclave, that had exactly 2 bases, the Oilrig and the small outpost of Navarro.

Whats wrong with No Mutants Allowed btw, you ever actually been there or you going off hearsay?

It's full of whiners. There's good people too, but the general attitude is "Anything new sucks".

But seriously, you just called the combat from the original Fallout "brilliant and fluid".

[Cuellar]

Man, I liked Oblivion, and my only complaint was lack of multiplayer...

I have to agree with intercept. The game was fun, but combat was pretty shitty in the old fallout. I completely don't remember any of the story line though, since it has been like 10 years.

[Serious Callers Only]

Heathens.

To paraphrase a popular guy:

Anyone who didn't like The Dark Knight Fallout is a tool.

[Flayed Man]

Heathens.

To paraphrase a popular guy:

Anyone who didn't like The Dark Knight Fallout is a tool.

Everyone here seems to love Fallout 1 & 2. It's just the combat system being criticized.

I went back & played Fallout 2 again just a few months ago (couldn't find my old copy of 1) - the game remains awesome, but the combat definitely blows. And then they made Fallout Tactics and it sucked even worse.

Fallout 3 is looking like a great update to the franchise, and every gameplay review out of E3 confirms it. Hopefully this game & Fable 2 will make bank and, coupled with the success of Mass Effect, encourage more RPG development. These days, it's a long time in between titles for fans of the genre.

[Imp]

Personally I'd take the fallout combat system over the oblivion combat system. Neither were great, but I like the idea of the fallout system with a few tweaks and a little more variety, and it'd be pretty hard to screw up. Then again I'm a fan of turn based strategy... And Bethesda has a history of making clunky, dodgy feeling pseudo-fps controls. But sadly that's what we'll be stuck with.