Sigh, another "play the game first" guy. Haven't we beaten that strawman enough now? Dude, do yourself a favor - read back at this thread.

I guess you don't really understand what really made fallout shine is completely different than what made oblivion shine (to their fans)? They are different genres - Oblivion tries to impose immersion on the player while fallout tries to stay true to its PnP roots. Both have different aims and what Bethesda is doing is taking all that fallout stands for, rip it apart, take the artwork and universe and slapped it onto a thinly disguised Oblivion. To call it Oblivion with guns is extremely accurate.

I'm playing Oblivion right now and I can tell you how much it sucks as a RPG. The plethora of bugs and "immersion" breakers are everywhere. I seriously don't get the FPS + RPG part - not that it's undoable, but rather in Beth's case of FO3 it's horribly implemented, judging from the gameplay footage.

Had they called it Oblivion Apocalypse or Fallout: East Coast, I wouldn't be that pissed off. That's like taking Hellgate: London and then renaming it to Diablo 3. See how the Diable 3 fans react.

Seriously, I would rather the fallout franchise stop at Fallout 2 and being remembered as a cult classic instead of being butchered by Bethsoft in a lame excuse to extend the series and milk the franchise dry of cash.

Like I said, how many times does one need to get f***ed in the arse to realize they're sodomized?

And the thing about constructive criticism is, Beth's not listening. They never do. Look what happened to Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion. Enough evidences yet?

I just read back a couple pages back and found out that some already got their hands on the pirated versions since they can't wait...or something like that. I see... I guess Dead Space for me in the mean time...Far Cry 2 is a waste of money... Seen lots of good & great reviews for Fallout 3... No bad reviews from website thus far. Some critical reviews by fans...but overall they still rated the game as good or great.

Bioware and Black Isle studios are both great development studios. Fallout and Baldur's Gate are very different. BG's very linear, and the thing that makes it shine is the writing and plot. Fallout gives the player more freedom, and that's where it shines primarily. Writing wise, yeah BG's much better. But Fallout's the one with the replayability.

As for Oblivion, coming from a BG, Planescape and Fallout background, I just can't bring myself to enjoy it. If I wanted mindless sandbox fun, there's GTA. My bone with Oblivion is that it tries to be too many things at the same time. Had it been a linear RPG FPS thingy, I might even enjoy it. But well, everybody's got their own tastes I guess.

Truthfully, like I've always maintained, Beth doing Fallout is new technologies isn't the biggest gripe most oldtime fallout fans have. The problem with Beth is they are PR machines first and game developers second. The change from isometric to FPS is painful, but could be palatable if Beth had credible and excellent writers. Dialogues especially were the weakest link in TES series since god knows when. The plot have degenerated into some Hollywood esque "sacrifice this sacrifice that" piece of crap, and that's the biggest problem most fans have.

Yes they might have retained their Oblivion fans and many new comers who have never played the older series before, but they'll have a hard time persuading fallout fans from enjoying the new one especially since the trademark black humor and clever writing in the predecessors are now gone, replaced with 11 year old quality dramatic scripts poorly stitched together with an over abundance of profanities and tough-guy talk that fails to capture the atmosphere.

you're right about the "What can fans do" part. Blizzard fans are fortunate on SC2 because Blizzard practically went to the fans for ideas. Not so with Diablo 3, but still not many were complaining after seeing the second round of gameplay footage. But at least they responded to fan requests properly and didn't try to change things into something completely foreign. Beth on the other hand, all along the development progress was patronizing and condenscending towards the old fallout communities, especially they way they treated NMA and DnC like they are nothing more but yapping rats to be swatted away. Such disrespect towards the oldest fan community and they had the balls to say that they designed FO3 with the old crowd in mind!

You see, sometimes it boils down to perception. Had Beth spent more time working with NMA and DnC in the process, or even give official invites to these two communities to previews, reviews and even integrate some of them into playtesting and feedback, the whole old fanbase would be appeased and more receptive to FO3 compared to now. And they really had nothing to lose - many in NMA were bitter that NMA were consistently used as a strawman in the beth forums like they were the loud minority, when in fact they represent some of the oldest and most loyal fans of the franchise, and was even a great catalyst for the fallout modding community.

Sigh. I better stop here.