Fallout 3 - Review @ RPG Codex

[rune_74]

No wonder... Not only did he *slam* F3, but he also gave good some damned good suggestions as to how it could have been made better.

I have a question for the people that played F3. How do you think its writing stands up to a Hollywood movie? Do you think it would win an academy award?

Would fallout 1 or 2?

 

[CantBeBothered]

>Would fallout 1 or 2?

Nice dodge.

 

[txa1265]

I have a question for the people that played F3. How do you think its writing stands up to a Hollywood movie? Do you think it would win an academy award?

I don't consider either of those good metrics of quality writing, and there have been many, many movies with cringe-worthy writing ... so perhaps the answer to the first question is 'yes'.

As for Academy Awards, they do typically give writing awards to things with at least some reasonable level of quality and coherence, so I'd say 'no'.

 

[CantBeBothered]

The point I have been trying to get across to many players, is the writing in F3 would be judged extremely harshly, if not outright mocked by most members of the public, if it was presented in any other medium -- movies, books, radio,or TV.

 

[crpgnut]

I don't generally read my games, I play them. Is the writing in Fallout 3 wonderful? No, but it gets the job done and some of it is very well written. The whole questline with Moira in Megaton is well written, humorous, and memorable. Planescape Torment had fairly good writing, for a game. Compare it to any book or grade A movie, and it fails terribly. Unfortunately, most of that game was reading and there was very little playing involved. You wandered from location to location and talked for hours and hours. Dull! I wanna play. I've already played Fallout 3 for over 50 hours, so I'm paying less than a dollar an hour for the entertainment. Some of the level designs in this game are a joy to behold. I just got done with a ruined facility that produced comic books. It was totally logical in its layout and yet quite fun to play because it had been rigged with traps everywhere. No dialogue, just some wicked fun combat and exciting trap locations.

 

[curious]

did you play the rpg while you were there crpgnut, that made exploring that location even more worthwhile?
edit: and by rpg i mean more adventure i suppose ala kings quest

 

[Rendelius]

Rendelius, where have you been? We rarely see you here anymore.

Oh, working most of the time. Running an advertising agency with two friends of mine, doing a lot of stuff for big clients - which leaves little time for gaming, really (most of my gaming time is now devoted to flightsimming).

But I have always been reading the news here - still my fav source of RPG info .

 

[rune_74]

>Would fallout 1 or 2?

Nice dodge.

How is that a dodge? Its a legit question....would you consider them oscar worthy? I wouldn't. I think it's funny how people look back on old games liuke they ahd some holy grail of writing but in reality it's not that rosey.

If anyone dodged here, it was you. My comment made your arguement pointless.

Off topic: why not register and become a member of the forums?

 

[crpgnut]

I second Rune's suggestion Can'tbebothered. Join us. It is quite fine to disagree with our point of view. I don't like Gothic or PST but I still enjoy talking to those who do. After all, they're all crpgs

My biggest gripe with all Bethesda's games has been the speed of leveling. They've never been able to master gameplay hours vs leveling very well. Part of that is inherent in the type of games they make. How do they know whether a player is a completist vs a main quester? I think all Bethesda games should have a leveling menu as part of the beginning. I'm grateful that the modding community is so robust for Bethsoft games. There are several mods available already that address this issue. I'm leveling at 1/3 the speed of the base game and that seems about right, though I may slow it to 1/4 later.

 

[CantBeBothered]

I don't generally read my games, I play them. Is the writing in Fallout 3 wonderful? No, but it gets the job done and some of it is very well written. The whole questline with Moira in Megaton is well written, humorous, and memorable.
.

Not only was Moira's voice, character and acting incredibly annoying -- if she was in a stage play, people would throw fruit at her. Her quests were utterly ridiculous -- explore a mine field, step on a mine, purposefully get yourself hurt until you are almost dead, get yourself moderately irradiated, or irradiated till you are almost dead and so on. If anyone went to a movie with that in it, they would walk out or demand their money back. On top of that, the reviewers would bury it.

Some of the level designs in this game are a joy to behold. I just got done with a ruined facility that produced comic books. It was totally logical in its layout and yet quite fun to play because it had been rigged with traps everywhere. No dialogue, just some wicked fun combat and exciting trap locations.

The comic book facility is one of the areas that made me stop playing. There was nothing in it, but killing ghouls who all did the same thing -- growl and charge you. Then there was the exciting opening of a hundred boxes to find... junk. When I got to the end of this huge boring area, I asked myself "Was that it?... I want that time back." As I asked myself that same question, for almost every area I visited, I stopped playing after 15 hours and have been unable to force myself to play it again.

I forgot to mention the only place of note in the comic book area, was the crazy human who did not talk, he just shoots at anything that moves. Again, brilliant, well thought out RPG design.



I watched HG Wells Time Machine with Rod Taylor this morning

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine_(1960_film)

and now I feel that 10 years have passed and I am in a world filled with Eloi (young players) and Morlocks (reviewers), who reward AAA game developers with 10s out of 10 for complete garbage. The only way humanity can go from here folks, is down to degeneracy.

>I second Rune's suggestion Can'tbebothered. Join us.

I don't know, F3 was pretty much the last straw and there seems to be almost no one left in the computer games community that is hardcore about standards. So at this point I am considering returning to pen and paper RPGs.

 

[rune_74]

So what you are saying is the writing in fallout 1 and 2 was oscar worthy?

Regardless of that I think one persons garbage is another persons treasure. It's sad that some people cannot accept the fact that others enjoyed things they did not. No the game is not on par with a movie, however movies are not on par with games in the fact that they have strict and relative linear roads to the end. A movie lasts 2 hours or 3 depending on the movie. Movies hav a set amount of characters, settings and plot lines. Games easily surpass the amount of characters and plot lines as well as settings. So, although they are both forms of entertainment I think they are different in their own right. I dare you to find a game you think would win an oscar.

The game is not complete garbage as you say, well to me at least. And I am by no means a young gamer. You are entitled to your opinion, but I disagree with it.

 

[curious]

appranently you missed the computer in the basement

also while many of the quests in fallout 3 are indeed lackluster (especially the main ones) there are a number of long drawn out and enjoyable ones. the Reileys Rangers quest was great, and not just for the unexpected great reward either.
Also the Agatha quest was cool in the fact that the reward of classical music adds quite a bit to the game. I will say that yes there are many places that are just fun to explore, if you like that aspect of gaming, which i do greatly, and through the placement of objects, enemies, and especially notes in various forms there are a trove a places that really have kept the game from getting repetive for me after a mind numbing 300 hours. I spent a third of that with oblivion and felt sick afterwards. true there are many things that make this seem like an action adventure shooter game rather than an rpg, but for the most part i think this is one of the top 5 3d rpgs made possibly. its ashame the vaults were mostly filled with dead or hostile people, but considering the amount of unique areas i can hardly complain. oasis alone is cool enough for the fact of hearing the underused as of late voice of stephen russell.

its no gothic, bloodlines, ultima v, or anachronox, or even the witcher...but its a damn fine game and sure beats most games these days that have an "rpg" slapped someone on the box. i'm still in awe that bethesda has finally won me over.

 

[JDR13]

its no gothic, .

Unfortunately no game is....

We can only hope that Risen will be close to being that good.

 

[curious]

i'm hoping its even better...
not that its possible in a sense, but from a technical perspective holding true to all of the things that made the series great
substance over streamlined
lush and vibrant over large and mundane
and all that other good stuff
i'd wait 2 or more years longer for it if need be
the new feeling of embracing a carefully crafted world
forged by the talented if not a bit ambitious pirahna bytes
i can but dream of a game that had me plunking nearly 100 hours into just its demo!

bring back the original pirahna bytes "murky depths" loading logo!

 

[Prime Junta]

I for one got bored with FO3, just like with Oblivion -- only not quite so quickly. I just picked it up again now, wandered around for a bit, stumbled into an ambush by supermutants, went "Oh, well," and quit. Somehow the game doesn't give me any reason to keep playing; it just keeps on being more of the same.

I guess a part of it is that I don't feel like I'm making any progress. The new locations are much like the old locations; the new quests are much like the old quests. In S.T.A.L.K.E.R., for example, the new locations actually felt different from the old ones, and the story (such as it was) was much more interesting and atmospheric. Yet it, too, was an open-world post-apoc game with various factions fighting each other.

Perhaps it's time to uninstall something and reinstall that one.

 

[rune_74]

Stalker would have been much better if it wasn't so buggy and if I remember correctly it waqsn't really as large a world either.

 

[Prime Junta]

The patches sorted out most of the bugs. The world wasn't anywhere near as big, but it felt much more "real;" it was more atmospheric, hung together better, and kept surprising me. (It was also a good deal harder, which is a good thing IMO.)

 

[curious]

the original was never that buggy for me. clear sky...i put a lot of hours into what i thought was an improved stalker experience in many ways...after the 2nd week though i gave up after spending dozens of hours doing everything possible to get past crashes only to wind up getting to more game stopping crashes--probably the most frustrating gaming experience ever for me--mortifying

 

[tolknaz]

Sadly i must agree with many points that this reviewer made. Fallout 3 is not a particularly good game and in certain areas previous games absolutely crush it. With that being said however i liked it for what it was. It is certainly a big step up from both Oblivion and Morrowind for me.

 

[Corwin]

One niggle with the game is that you can easily reach the level cap without doing hardly any of the main quest. While ignoring the main quest is par-for- the-course with Beth$oft games (I totally ignored it in MW), reaching a cap so easily is a disincentive to play on. I know there are mods to 'fix' this, but they shouldn't be necessary.