I had another bug that was fixed by going back to a save. When coming back to the Brotherhood of Steel after acquiring and losing the GECK, you walk into the laboratory and are met with the leader and lyons pride discussing what to do. You become unable to move in the cutscene while things are being discussed, and after talking to Elder Lyons, Sarah Lyons wants to talk to you. However, if you come into the scene from the wrong direction, with another person between you and Sarah, she gets stuck while trying to walk to you, ending in a deadlock since your own movement is locked by the cutscene.
really? This is obviously a difference in opinion. I personally HATE auto-target systems like that. I hate pointing my crosshairs at something, attempting for a headshot, then having it jump down to the guy’s chest and me having to phsyically (virtually?) fight the auto-aim system to do any sort of decent damage.
That said, the FPS combat in Fallout 3 is far from “true FPS” like you’d see in a Halo (which I hate) or Unreal type game, traditional FPS shooters.
I am guessing such systems become necessary on consoles, who in my opinion are mostly unfit for FPS games due to the input limitations.
Can you explain which aspects are missing from a “true FPS”? I found playing without VATS to be like any other FPS.
I’m buying this game soon. I own Oblivion, but I did not play very far into it at all. Also, I never played a Fallout game before. I’m sure I’ll like it though; across the board, critics are raving.
IMO, compared to FPS like Call of Duty, Halo or Far Cry, manual aiming and movement feels unresponsive. I couldn’t possibly take down targets in F3 like I did while sniping a dozen Germans in CoD.
Also the hitpoint system in F3 exacerbates aiming issues; in CoD or Far Cry I take out a guy with a single shot or short burst to the head or torso. In F3 that means the bad guy is probably still at 70% health or something, and eager to face-shoot me in return. It’s an RPG element which clashes with standard FPS gameplay.
So I finally got around to playing it.
So far, I think someone really needs to mod in binoculars.
I haven’t played yet, but…
Would it be better to start with 9 points in intelligence and then grab the INT bobblehead before hitting level 3? Essentially you lose two skill points in exchange for gaining a +1 to another stat.
However, many classical FPS games have hitpoints + armor which let the players take an ungodly amount of bullets before dying. In that sense it’s hardly un-FPS-like. Personally I prefer FPS’s like the Rainbow 6 series with mostly realistic damage (in the sense that 1-2 bullets are usually enough to kill or incapacitate). All humans I encountered in Fallout 3 died from a burst to the head or body unless armored. Mutants and many other creatures were different though, but that’s not so strange.
Unresponsive aiming and movement? Did you play on a console or on a PC? I have never tried playing on a console, but on my PC I never noticed any unresponsiveness.
Well yeah, the player takes a lot of damage. But Far Cry and CoD opponents go down like flies once the bullets start hitting, while opponents in F3 are tougher nuts to crack, health-wise. Even the fatboys in Far Cry would drop with one burst to the head.
I play on the PC. A portion of my issues may be my specs, and I see upthread the point about V-sync which I’ll check on when I’m home after work.
Frankly my opinion is that this game doesn’t require min/maxing nearly so much as F1 or 2. I started with INT 7 and raised it to 8 with the Intensive Training perk, took the Educated perk, haven’t gotten the bobblehead yet, and am not feeling any real skill-point crunch at level 9.
Mmmmm…Gifted trait.
I disaggree with this completely. While mouse aiming is still far superior, I’ve gotten quite good at console FPS’s over the years as I more and more decided that dropping $200-400 every 6 months for keeping an up-to-date PC around just for games was far too costly and pointless (I’m an OSX guy for everything else). I’ll never say it’s as good as mouse aiming on a PC, but auto-aim is usually more of a hinderance than a help if you’re at all decent at aiming, period.
Basically yes. “True” FPS’s rely much less on stats than on simple player skill. Also your character tends to be much more maneuverable (I wouldn’t go so far as to say unresponsive, you’re just slower than you’d be in most FPS’s). While recent FPS’s have started incorporating RPG-like design elements (that, say, affect your shooting ability to a degree), Fallout 3 definitely falls into the RPG type game that incorporates FPS-like elements.
Only if they did a decent job of setting up sensitivity. I’ve played Max Payne on PS2. It is an experience I never want to repeat. Auto-aim would have been a godsend on that one.
I’ve been playing for a few hours this evening. It’s been great exploring tunnels after finding out the PIPBoy has a flashlight if you hold the access button down. Turning off vertical sync really smoothed out the mouse for me.
I’m having a lot of fun, but it really is Oblivion in a different setting. The guns are fairly fun although it’s stupid you can shoot an unsuspecting point blank in the head with a shotgun and it doesn’t hurt them very much.
Depends on what you’re shooting at. A point blank shotgun blast at someone with zero head protection will blow that someone’s head to pieces in one shot. At least that’s what happened when I used a shotgun on those Gary clones.
In the further interest of Fallout nostalgia, I’ve gotta say that there better be a Turbo Plasma Rifle waiting for me around the next corner. Head shots with sniper rifles are all well and good but melting people into puddles of goo, well who could live without that?
Another annoying little quest bug at the Tenpenny Tower:
Talking to the residents and getting them to agree to live with the ghouls and or vacate, BEFORE talking to Mr. Tenpenny, breaks that quest solution. Not a huge thing as you can still solve the quest two other ways. But the goody-two-shoes choice is lost forever unless you go back to an earlier save. Irritating if you are playing a saintly character. Which I was.
Have you turned people into ashes yet?
Damned skippy I have. 
Ah, that’s why I couldn’t get those bastards to cooperate. That’s ok, I found a different way to solve that quest, kill the people that resist. I went on a killing spree and looted the place of all valuables. Now I’m an “evil” character. The ghouls have moved in with the few Tenpenny residents that are left. Plus now I have Tenpenny’s cool .308 sniper rifle. 