If I liked “Baldur’s Gate,” I will probably want to buy “Icewind Dale.” In fact, I did. And I didn’t care that the latter did not have the exact same gameplay elements as the former, because I was getting the KIND of game I wanted to get.
My fear with “Fallout” is that I am going to buy the game expecting something in the vein of the first two and get something completely different. That’s my objection.
Sawyer is/was defensive, and rightly so. But there will never be any pleasing the fanboys against whom he is railing- they’ll find something to hate regardless. But I’m not talking about style or artistic vision, and I don’t think that the majority of the reasoned people are either.
I’m talking about getting the KIND of game I want. I want the tone and the overall effect and the gameplay elements to be the same. Because without those, it’s not “Fallout.” And if I’m buying “Fallout,” then that’s what I want.
I have no problem with “Fallout-Inspired” games or what have you, and I’d probably even buy them. But when you’re putting out something as part of a franchise, you have certain parameters in which you must operate.
The new “Die Hard” movie isn’t going to feature a Bollywood-style song/dance routine, or Barney, or a speech abut the empowering qualities of universal sisterhood delivered by Olympia Dukakis. Because if you made that movie, it wouldn’t be “Die Hard.”
But Fallout isn’t merely the embodiment of a turn-based shooter, it’s the storyline, the setting, the cities, the humor and the characters; in short, it’s IP. Changing the pace of the gameplay into this “Oblivion with guns” idea people have conjured forth, isn’t like having a ice-dance in the middle of Rambo, it’s like making Bruce Willis, well, long-haired or something. It’s still Fallout, and I don’t think anyone but disgruntled die-hard fans will deprecate the change.
Now, I can understand the other side of it, too. Take Final Fantasy 13, for eksample - live based action. Final Fantasy 12 - no random encounters. I was a huge sceptic before playing 12 (and loving the bejeesus out of it) and remain a skeptic of 13. Just like I was really skeptical of the change from the SNES format to the PS’ 3D between VI and VII.
I think you’re underestimating how important the turn-based nature of the game affected it. Fallout wasn’t always a chess-match, and I have no problem with allowing FPS mode for certain things, like dialogue and raw exploration, but it makes a lot of interesting variations in gameplay which you don’t get in other systems. I don’t think every game needs turn-based, but it’s really cool to have it. It’s not like it’s somehow obsolete, and it suits the thinking-man’s game nature of Fallout.
I don’t know that the game would be outright ruined without it, but having that in there changes and enhances a lot of the game. It’s not a mad scramble, but there’s often a rising tension in dangerous fights. You can actually do some incredibly cool things which simply WILL NOT happen in real-time games, just because you have the time to plan and select whatever options you wish.
Plus, having turn-based mode would mean that it would almost certainly have isometric perspective, which is very nice for engaging multiple enemies. What I (and many others ) are most worried about is that they’ll turn it into an Oblivion-style hackfest with ray guns. And instead of actual dialogue and quests, you can make the NPC’s like you more, which does nothing whatsoever, and go into boring look-a-like dungeons to kill monsters which are always exactly equal to your level.
Graphics that don’t look like shit would be a good start (I don’t like Oblivion’s graphics, what can I say… they may be technically great but from where I sit they’re pretty bleh).
One needs to remember that fan is short for fanatic and fanaticism is rarely pretty.
With that out of the way, something the game industry has seen over and over and over again is someone picking up a beloved franchise. Throwing away things that the people who loved the originals liked and rebuilding it into something very different in the guise of modernizing it. The end result is rarely an improvement and more often than not throws away the goodwill of that tiny existing fan base and fails to draw in any new players. See Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel for a very relevant example. So those fans are going to raise their complaints.
I have little hope for Fallout 3. I find that Bethesda is good at having big ideas while awful at making them fun and I have yet to hear a single thing that makes me think “Oh they’re sticking to the spirit of the original games.” The end product might be worth playing but I am wondering why they didn’t just make their own post-apocalyptic RPG and say in the previews “We love Fallout and Wasteland and wanted to do our own!”
I’d like to point out that some of us simply don’t have the reflexes to play realtime shooters. I have arthritis and numbness in my hands (and feet, too, but that doesn’t affect my gaming), so I don’t like twitch games. In the FF games, for instance, it’s hard for me to play some of the characters, as they need to have certain button sequences tapped in quickly, and I just can’t do that. Sabin, Tifa, and Zell, I’m looking at YOU. This is one of the things that I’ve loved about Fallout 1&2, I could take my time, do what I needed to do without fumbling it up. There’s plenty of game series that are twitchers as it is. One of the things that I’ve always loved about Fallout and other turnbased games is that they ARE turnbased.
If you don’t already have em I’ll send you a copy of my X-Com games!
It’s quite possible to pace a real time game so it’s not a whack-fest.
Compare HalfLife and Halflife 2. Halfline was about brains. Two seemed to be about wrists. (Of course most gamers are mode used to working their wrists rather than their brains :))
Or in the MMO world compare City of Heroes with D&D Online. Heroes was was about planning, cooperation and coordination. DDO is jump and swing.
Nothing wrong with either style, but one is certainly more cerebral than the other.
If they made Fallout 3 in the style and pace of, say, Fable, I’d have no complaints.
There was also a lot of waiting. Like every time a stray bullet hits a damn hooker and the entire town gets pulled into the fight and so everyone has to die. Or running around tracking down some jackass with a melee weapon when you couldn’t see through walls properly because of the engine. Or trying to find things on the ground because they were like two pixels in size. Fallout had some significant issues with game mechanics. Granted, going to a first person shooter style RPG isn’t necessarily the solution to these problems, but Fallout is not the end-all-be-all.
Well hey, everyone liked Deus Ex. And if you didn’t like Deus Ex, you’re a commie nazi.
Fallout, as Gukumatz said, is more than an isometric view. It’s more than a turn-based combat system. If a good game is made in a post-apocalytic setting with loads of dark humor and heavy RPG elements… well that’s pretty much all I expect. Apparently, many others expect Fallout 2.5. That’s your prerogative I suppose.
We can only hope that Bethesda learned their lesson. They got raked over the coals for that.
Look, remember when everyone hated combat in Morrowind? That’s why you got Oblivion. In between they screwed some other things up in the name of balance, but clearly, Bethesda tried to fix a major issue people had with their first game. I trust them to at least try to address issues. They’ll make some mistakes with Fallout. But a first-person perspective wouldn’t kill it outright.
Good thing there’s game reviewers then.
And for what it’s worth, I loved the hell out of Oblivion and put 200+ hours into it. And I’ve played through both Fallouts… god at least 5 times apiece.
I’m kind of a johnny-come-lately, having only started playing Fallout 2 about a month ago. I only wish there were more like it. The humor (“I came to town to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and I’m all out of bubblegum”), the seemingly infinite variations on how things go depending on what you did before, the artwork, all first class. I like turn based games because I want to think things over and take time to smell the roses. If Fallout 3 is a real time game, count me out.
I can’t wrap my head around the idea of a hallway in a camp. Isn’t a camp a collection of temporary structures (usually tents or teepees or whatnot, sometimes cabins in the case of permanent camps)? Usuallyn in the open, usually each simple structure separated from the others?
I don’t think I can picture any structural layout that would resemble a hallway…lanes, alleys, or aisles between tents, sure; hallways, no.
It’s that kind of poor analogy that really lets the steam out of a perfectly good rant.
And I don’t mean to pick on you here, since this is apparently a popular viewpoint, but lets make the assumption that Fallout 3 ends up being (1) real time and first person, and (2) totally fucking awesome. Would you let the fact that (1) is true ruin the fun of the game for you? I mean, I can understand if you just don’t like FPS style controls/games at all (a la Lynn perhaps), but if it’s otherwise got most of the look and feel of the Fallout world down–but without isometric turn based combat–will you be dissatisfied?
I really found it kind of boring before that. And, I played Morrowind absolutely obsessively. There’s just something soulcrushing about an RPG game that makes everything you encounter of exactly your level. I just found it extremely unmotivating to do ANYTHING. At least in Morrowind, you could avoid powergaming the leveling system and just slowly work your way up as you liked. In Oblivion, you can’t because you worry about surviving. Bleh. The first few dungeons were cool but after awhile you realize you can go in dungeons practically anywhere and they’ll all be the same, because of your level. What’s the point of exploring that? Plus, the quests were mostly dull and the voice-over dialogue severely limited their number. Of course they’d sell you little packs, which was a cool idea, but yikes, horse armor? C’mon guys.
But, in Morrowind, I exactingly cleared every dungeon in the game - despite the similarities - and built up monstrous collections of exotic weapons and armor in my Telvanni stronghold. I didn’t care that the stronghold was in the middle of nowhere. It was mine, and it had a dungeon with lava and a skeleton. I filled my bedroom with alchemy equipment, components, a huge collection of books and a pile of skulls. I created many magical items so my character never needed to actually run again, he flew everywhere.
The expansions were pretty crap, though. Goblins that were more powerful than demons. No levitation magic works? WTF is that? At least invisible walls have more self-respect than removing one of the most fun parts of the game because of poor design.
I never really got into the Fallout games, but while I used to consider myself an Elder Scrolls fan I’m not sure if I trust Bethesda anymore to keep their own series in the spirit of the prior versions, let alone another beloved name.
I play a lot of blitz online (you each have 3 minutes or 5 minutes. If you run out of time, you lose.)
Well, often, a guy might be kicking your ass, and he runs out of time. The messages start. . . .
“The better man lost.”
“I had you.”
“Idiot.”
Blah blah blah.
Dude, we’re playing on a short clock. Did you ever stop to think that your material advantage was due to the fact that you took more time to ponder your moves?
If you’re going to whine, play long, or with a delay built in. Ridiculous.
It’s hard to argue brandname loyalty as a developer concern when the devs that built the franchise got pink slipped for their trouble. That’s not to say that I don’t sympathize with the UWV/NMA fanbois just a tiny bit, and this is coming from someone who relentlessly bashed them on the old Black Isle boards back in the FO2 days. I’d happily fork over hundreds of dollars for a new authentic Fallout title from the old FO2 team. But it’s not going to happen, if for no other reason that while the old formula may have been critically acclaimed, the Black Isle dudes got themselves jobless in part by following it. Avellone, Feargus, Sawyer et al. may be great devs but I’m betting the Bethesda people are going to do what they need to do to make Fallout profitable and avoid the same fate. Besides, without Avellone to helm the dialogue any FO was gonna be weak, at best.
I hope to enjoy it for what it is, kind of like the abortion that was FO Tactics.
Grossbottom pretty much nailed it. There was a company that made exactly the sort of game the forum whiners wanted made. That company doesn’t exist any more. Is anyone really expecting someone else to step in and do exactly what the failed company was doing right before it failed? People are acting like we had the choice between traditional Fallout and new Fallout. But that’s not the way it is. What we have, is a choice between new Fallout and no Fallout whatsoever.
Personally speaking, that’s as easy a choice as I’ve ever been given.
Umm…look at X-Com Interceptor and X-Com Invasion(?). They were “X-Com” too, but that didn’t make them terribly bad and insulting to the X-Com fans. They were shitty games with a license
The game doesn’t have to be taken off of everything it ever was in order to be good. In any event, we are of course all speculating. But we are speculating and dreading Bethesda’s general lack of attention to detail and decreasing quality over time.
And I’d actually rather have no new Fallout if the new one was going to ignore everything that made Fallout great. I’d rather they simply made a new game with a similar tone in that case, or didn’t make one at all.
Aside from that, there’s a very disturbing general trend I see in PC gaming. The PC is best at making games everyone can play: Civilization, Diablo, Fallout. None of them took much hardware and all of them were wickedly fun. They were also all 2D, though that’s not required (see Worlds of Warcraft). But the point was not to blow people away with SFX or out-wow the consoles, but to make a good core game and build upon it into something fantastic. Great games like that don’t come along all the time, but when they do they can outsell anything else. Starcraft is still the most-played online game AFAIK.
As a final note, someone made a connection to Deus Ex. Good game, but it’s not Fallout. You had to have decent reflexes in some points, and at its best it was never the same kind of thinking-man’s game Fallout 2 is. And there’s not even remotely close to the same replay value.
