I'm judging from gameplay videos and spoiler leaks by the online community.

If you're a 12 year old, FO3 would be a great game. The dialogue is catered to a 12 year old, and so is the plot. The good stuff are few and far between. Megaton's good, but the characters totally sucked. Vault 106 is one of the rare brilliant pieces. The main quest's horrible - at least from what I see from the endings. Arefu is a total rip off from Fallout 2. And why can't Beth release ONE single f***ing game that doesn't have vampires in it? Man...

Again you beat the strawman. Deviation from the originals is a big thing, in case you didn't know. Imagine if Diablo 3 suddenly had aliens in it. And Silent Hill suddenly featuring post-apoc earth. Tell me how would you feel? Heck, if Final Fantasy suddenly became a world war 2 shooter, how would you feel?

You don't call your smartest classmate an idiot. FO3 is more like the idiot in the class who consistently claims he is the smartest. And sadly, there are people in the class that believes so, because they're too retarded to think.

Fallout 3 deserves a 3/10.

We'll have to just agree to disagree then.

Maybe you're not familiar with how the gaming journalism actually works but by giving a bad review, you can actually get sued by the game publishers. No kidding. And as for Beth, you might get blacklisted in the future for all their PR events. And all reviews have to be sent to Bethesda for "approval" before they can be published.

Sadly, gaming journalism isn't exactly as un-biased as you might want to think. It's not a fairy tale world that we live in, unfortunately.

So I take it that you didn't find the difficulty adjuster in Fallout? Maybe you would want to look into the options panel.

The point of the game being easy is actually going against the whole idea of what fallout is. Fallout dumps you into a wasteland and don't spoon feed you anything. It wants you to feel isolated, lost and overwhelmed. However thanks to the retarded generations giving birth to even more retarded children in the future, nowadays games cannot be too hard or else it'll be panned by everybody.

Fallout's difficulty isn't paramountly hard. It's just hard until you realize you can't go in guns blazing without at least a power armor and a big ass gun. And when you get that, the past disasters that you had to go through just made the "reward" of getting those big guns all the more satisfying. And fallout really appeals to your need for vengence for all the low level bullying the world has given you - rip those bastards into pieces, with satisfying gore and sound effects.

Fallout 2 destroyed all of this with the temple of trials though. But nevertheless, it still is a worthy successor.

Imporvements? You serious? Okay to be fair, the graphics are good. Take away all the characters, monsters and everything, and the capital DC wasteland looks amazing. If it was a more pure blooded FPS with dialogue (aka Stalker) I would have loved it.

What did it improve over the previous titles? Graphics. That's about all. Character animations are lousy (for a 2008 game), horribly written ten year old dialogues (improvement? my ass), clunky combat system, bad main quest (find your father... cliche maximized), a too-forgiving game world (shoot a begger and then sheath your weapon. he'll talk to you like you're a stranger or a good friend. how nice).

Given, there are some quests that sounds great - Vault 106 with its psychoactive drugs, Megaton, and to a certain extend, Arefu (although I still think it's a blatant rip off, and hate the idea of vampires in the wasteland). But from my experience in Oblivion, I'm pretty sure these are far and few between.

So nope, I still think Fallout 3 is a flop, unworthy of the name itself.

I'm hoping SC2 would change that.

But games in general nowadays are made to be newbie friendly. Spoon feeding and don't leave the retarded kid behind. Political correctness in the gaming industry - that's the future.

Ditto to Fallout 3. Isometric could work actually, by using the semi-real time system from fallout tactics, and add in an advanced cover system ALA gears of war. Then add in smarter AI and you'll have an amazing RPG combat system that stayed true to its roots. Too bad Beth decided to go with a half baked FPS system with pause.

As for SC2, I'm playing it for nostalgia's sake. DoW2 is nice, but too bad it doesn't have a large enough following compared to SC2. And SC2 is staying true to its roots by being easy to learn but hard to master - that's why Blizzard's threading very carefully when it comes to introducing new mechanics. The hero system in WC3 didn't work so well, did it?

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.

You get dogmeat alright and a medieval knight who travelled forward in time to join the brotherhood of steel. Her name's Lyons.

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.

I'm tempted to use my Hellgate London vs. Diablo 3 argument. But I won't.

Anyway, from the looks of the gameplay trailers, it pretty much looks like an Oblivion total conversion.

1) Wait menu in Fallout 3 is exactly the same thing as Oblivion with a new skin
2) Animations in Fallout 3 exactly the same as Oblivion
3) Clunky menus in Fallout 3 is the same as Oblivion with minor differences and a new skin
4) Compass in Fallout 3 is the same as Oblivion with a new skin
5) Jump sound exactly the same
6) Lots of useless junk items that have no purpose at all... same like Oblivion
7) Same AI AKA idiotic AI
8) Sneaking and pickpocketing system is the same (aka you can't pickpocket without going into sneak mode)
9) Can't crouch without going into sneak mode
10) Can loot everything from a corpse, from weapons to clothes (nice.. everybody wants a bullet proof suit that you've just put a few lethal holes in)

The resemblance is uncanny. Truthfully, I believe Oblivion fans would love this - this is everything they liked, except in a post apocalyptic world. Heck, even the death music sounds the same. Except that we've got guns and gore. And the same stupid enemies that you can exploit easily.

I'm watching a lot of gameplay videos right now, and seriously, if you take away the guns, the characters and all living beings in the game, it'll be an extremely great and nostalgic scenic view. The atmosphere of the wasteland is impressive.

And then the humans came in and broke the immersion. Sigh, why are humans always the scourge of everything? T.T

Exactly. Oblivion's for ADHD + ADD kids. Fallout's for real men.

You never played fallout, and you hate Oblivion. Fallout 3 is Oblivion with guns set in a superficial Fallout setting. Isn't that obvious enough? Skip this game.

You shouldn't impose your standards on others, I believe. We have valid concerns about this game and we're coming from the views of an old fallout fan, and from the old school RPG era where writing and story is actually more important than combat and graphics. Maybe you have different ideas of what make a good game (e.g. i can blow heads? I roxxx!!!), but that doesn't mean we can't give criticism where criticism is due right?

Saying good things about a bad game is just as biased you know.

And besides, you probably still think fallout fanboys want "low resolution isometric turn base fallout 3". You're definately beating a dead horse over there. Maybe you should educate yourself as to the real reason why old fans didn't like Beth's take? Stop beating the strawman my friend.

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Added on November 2, 2008, 1:35 pmSACRILEGE!!!!!! BoS a continuity? You want me to kill you is it?

This post has been edited by soggie: Nov 2 2008, 01:35 PM

Can't tell from that. I never got around to finishing Tactics. Lost my enthusiasm when I reached the robots stage with my big ass humvee that refused to budge (BUG ALERT!!!!).

And give up the cool pipboy clock?

"Ohh.... James.... Oh... our baby.... ohhhhh"

MAN I AM GLAD MY "MOM" DIED EARLY!!!!!

My god, the voice acting for Catherine is really horrible! And Liam's "I don't give a f***" "one per thousand, two per thousand" CPR sets the bar for bad voice acting too.

I got out into the wasteland and that was when things began to look better. Truthfully, the wasteland is amazing. Massive props to Beth's environmental and level designers. Megaton is especially remarkable.

Then came the people. The sheriff liked me at first glance, even though I'm playing an evil *******. And god, Burke's voice acting is just so fake! Like a 10 year old trying to be a cool villian and failing big time.

Come to think of it, all the dialogues are pretty crappy. Burke's just top the bullshit pile.

The combat is okay. VATS is alright, but overpowered. Had to set difficulty to hard to make the world look punishing enough.

Spare me the pop culture references. The moment I heard vampires in Arefu I knew something was terribly wrong in the East coast.

My next stop is Rivet City. I'm going to go there next, and if the game tries to stop me, I'm uninstalling it.