Fallout 3 - Review @ RPG Codex

[txa1265]

... and I had many skills at 100 well before reaching level 20 as well ...

 

[CantBeBothered]

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

When I asked if F3 would win an Oscar, my question was rhetorical, because the answer is obvious. I'll spell it out for you now --> It would not win an Oscar or any other award in the film industry, because its writing, acting and plot are so sub par, that film critics would mock it and audiences would throw fruit.

So what you are saying is the writing in fallout 1
Regardless of that I think one persons garbage is another persons treasure.

When you get a bad score on your next essay, or maths test, you can run that argument by your teacher.

It's sad that some people cannot accept the fact that others enjoyed things they did not.

Believe it or not Fallout fans don't care about your happiness or unhappiness. The only thing we care about is that a classic has been ruined.

No the game is not on par with a movie,

So now you admit it. The writing, design and acting in F3 is not up to the basic standards you expect from a movie. So is F3 still worth the standing ovation and all of those 10s out of 10?

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.

Now you are making excuse for bad writing, lazy design and poor voice acting. I say its not good enough. It was done *much* better 10 years ago.

So what you are saying is the writing in fallout 1
I dare you to find a game you think would win an oscar.

I don't have to. See the top of this post.

 

[JDR13]

The only thing we care about is that a classic has been ruined.

Well you're certainly entitled to your opinion, but that's all it is. Even if Fallout 3 isn't as good as the prequels according to some, that certainly doesn't change anything about FO 1&2. Especially considering it wasn't even the same developer.

So now you admit it. The writing, design and acting in F3 is not up to the basic standards you expect from a movie.

Neither was Fallout 1 or 2.

It was done *much* better 10 years ago.

No...it wasn't.

Old-school fans need to let go of that "Fallout 1&2 = GOD" attitude. They were good crpgs, but they weren't the end-all RPG masterpieces that some people try to make them out to be. I'm not saying that FO 3 was better than it's prequels, it's obviously a matter of personal taste. I just don't think they were "*much*" better than the latest installment.

 

[tolknaz]

Obviously there is no such thing as a perfect game, every game ever released has flaws. The question is what kind of flaws a given person is prone to swallow more easily. The crowd that finds old Fallout games better seems to simply tolerate different flaws than those that like Fallout 3. I really don't want to say that one group is more right than the other, but somehow i doubt the new game is able to spark and sustain a rabid community like NMA in 10 years time. In other words i enjoyed the game somewhat more than i thought i would given the developer and subject matter but i really fail to see it becoming a classic and holding peoples interests the same way old games have.

 

[rune_74]

When I asked if F3 would win an Oscar, my question was rhetorical, because the answer is obvious. I'll spell it out for you now --> It would not win an Oscar or any other award in the film industry, because its writing, acting and plot are so sub par, that film critics would mock it and audiences would throw fruit.



When you get a bad score on your next essay, or maths test, you can run that argument by your teacher.



Believe it or not Fallout fans don't care about your happiness or unhappiness. The only thing we care about is that a classic has been ruined.



So now you admit it. The writing, design and acting in F3 is not up to the basic standards you expect from a movie. So is F3 still worth the standing ovation and all of those 10s out of 10?



Now you are making excuse for bad writing, lazy design and poor voice acting. I say its not good enough. It was done *much* better 10 years ago.



I don't have to. See the top of this post.

Nice dodge.

I'm at a bit of a loss with what you are trying to say here...I agree it would not win an award, neither would t he old ones which was my point. I don't know any games that would to be fair.

Then with the comment of my next test, basicaly I think you are trying to imply I'm young and don't understand anything. Which I will just tell you that you are wrong.

Onto the fallout fans....I'm a fallout fan and I don't feel like anything has been ruined. I like all of the games, not so much tactics and never played brother hood of steel but the rest I played and bought all when they were released.

You are in total denial if you think games were done so much better 10 years ago, because I hate to burst your bubble but the writing in the old fallouts was not oscar worthy(which you seem to ignore because it does not mesh with your other arguement) by any stretch of the imagination.

I love this whole lazy developer talk...do you think these guys said hey lets make a totaly crappy game and we will still make money from it? (Do I need to tell you how crazy that sounds?) Alot of people have really enoyed the game, and thats really the point of games right?

Zealots try and tell people what they should enjoy, I'm sorry but I really don't care what others think when it comes to what I enjoy (well to within reason heh)

 

[Prime Junta]

No...it wasn't.

Um, yes, it was. The writing in FO and FO2 is much, much better than in FO3, even though the game and the quests are at least as non-linear. "It" here refers just to the writing, remember?

 

[txa1265]

Um, yes, it was. The writing in FO and FO2 is much, much better than in FO3, even though the game and the quests are at least as non-linear. "It" here refers just to the writing, remember?

One thing I have noticed it that the fun action and combat and cool graphics have done a better job of allowing people to not notice or ignore the issues with the writing. In a 2D style game they come to the fore.

But I agree on the whole 'ruining' thing - just as Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods isn't impacting my enjoyment of replaying Gothic 1, neither do any of the flaws in Fallout 3 prevent me from having spent many dozens of hours replaying it already since first finishing it.

 

[crpgnut]

I'll just agree to disagree with cantbebothered. I don't care that he doesn't like the writing of Fallout-3. To me, writing is like 4th or 5th on the list of what makes crpgs fun. Exploration is number 1, and F3 has that in spades. I like character building 2nd, and with skills/perks/abilities I'm getting that. I like changing out equipment and modifying it and I get that too. I'm pretty much a happy camper.

I'm not going to waste minutes of my life trying to change someone else's point of view Life is too short. I loved the Matrix and Speed movies and neither of those had good writing and the voice acting was horrible

 

[Essaliad]

I love this whole lazy developer talk...do you think these guys said hey lets make a totaly crappy game and we will still make money from it? (Do I need to tell you how crazy that sounds?)

How is that crazy, exactly? The industry is full of talentless hacks who would love to make more money while doing at little work as possible.

 

[DArtagnan]

Though I haven't completed Fallout 3 yet, as I've gotten bored with it, I have to say I agree the writing is pretty bad. I've played around 30 hours or so, mostly exploring at will and not doing that much to progress through the main quest.

The writing isn't worse than many other CRPGs - but bad compared to good writing. Most games have bad writing, some have average writing, and very few have what I would call good writing. But note that I have particular tastes and Torment, for instance, wasn't my cup of tea in terms of writing.

I haven't played Fallout (1 or 2) in a while, but as I recall the writing was significantly better than Fallout 3 - and is probably somewhere between average and good in my opinion.

Fallout 3 is WAY too extreme in terms of lame humor, especially the way it's in overdrive with insane and over-the-top characters. I find that particular brand of humor amusing enough in small doses, but it seemed to me that at least half the characters you meet are like that, which is completely out of touch with trying to establish a plausible setting for the context of the game.

Then again, I never expected the writing to be good so I wasn't disappointed.

It DID however pleasantly suprise me in certain ways, and in particular the way exploration is meaningful and rewarding. Few other games have that many areas to explore that are reasonably distinct or unique. Oblivion, ironically, was horrible in this way - with almost every single dungeon being a carbon copy of the same template.

No, Fallout 3 is a great exploration game and it has above average character/combat mechanics - but both those aspects need a ton of work to make it past "good".

Overall, I think Fallout 3 is a pretty good game that deserves around 8/10 from where I'm sitting. The worst thing about it was the writing and the overly lenient difficulty level.

 

[curious]

my first playthrough was on hard the entire time and yeah it was mostly easy after a while. on very hard its never really easy that it doesn't take planning an thanks to being a steath character quite a bit of intial damage.

for those who played the game on normal--why would you expect diffuculty?
If there are 4 levels of difficulty and you pick number 2 with 1 being the easiest--you sure should be expecting a none-too-difficult game.

though of course the leveling is still way out of whack and in some cases you actually get more xp!

 

[JDR13]

Um, yes, it was. The writing in FO and FO2 is much, much better than in FO3, even though the game and the quests are at least as non-linear. "It" here refers just to the writing, remember?

Opinion noted.

 

[crpgnut]

What amazes me, is that all the people who talk about the great writing of Fallout 1&2 never seem to remember a specific episode in that game of good writing. I've played Fallout and I keep wondering what awesome plot and writing that these folks are referring to... I thought Moira's stuff in F3 was funny. She's seriously disturbed, but enthusiastic. When she apologizes for twisting your DNA like a kitten playing with a ball of yarn, I laughed out loud. I also like how she glossed over the slight mutation. Maybe the humor is lost on people who speak English/American as a second language?

 

[Dhruin]

I can give you plenty of specific examples - but then, I can give you some good examples from FO3 as well. What would that prove? The problem with FO3 is that it lacks consistency, the setting lacks internal integrity and the designers aren't as skilled at creating emotionally engaging situations as others. There are some good moments but also too many where a good quest concept doesn't carry through or the characters fall flat or it just doesn't make much sense. "Writing" is a broad catch-all phrase to cover all these issues - it isn't just about plot. Though with plot in mind, you didn't think the Master was a better ending than having to sacrifice yourself when you might have had an obedient ghoul standing right there?

I mean, I quite liked the start of The Family. At the end, I went "huh?" Is that it? Why did they accept that murderer back? Why did the sister react like that? Why this, why that? It just didn't gel.

Moira can be funny but none of it makes sense. Writing a book (how is it going to be printed and distributed?) is crazy. Who is it for? You can't walk 20 feet down the road without being attacked by raiders, so who the hell would survive in this setting and want a book on such basic material? How did she survive without walking the couple hundred metres to check out the Supa Dupa mart herself and why does it still have stuff 200 years later? OK, so forget all about that and just enjoy Moira as a batshit insane character...but I can't help thinking how much more I would have enjoyed an insane character if the scenario made sense.

You know all this stuff. Maybe it doesn't bother you. Maybe you'd rather call it something other than "writing" but FO/FO2 made me care about more characters and didn't make me think "Huh?" anywhere near as often.

I'll give you a bunch of examples from FO if you like but we'll just trade examples all day. It's the big picture, not just some moments here and there.

 

[Corwin]

To give Beth$oft some credit, the game does contain possibly their best ever NPC's, but their previous standard and the quality of their in game dialogues was always among the worst ever!! (And I really liked Arena and Daggerfall as games)

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

To give Beth$oft some credit, the game does contain possibly their best ever NPC's, but their previous standard and the quality of their in game dialogues was always among the worst ever!! (And I really liked Arena and Daggerfall as games)

With the notable exception of Battlespire and Redguard, their non-RPG TES games. Battlespire contains some above par lore related dialogue and it was mostly a shooter. That always confused me. I am only starting into the game, but so far I haven't found a lot of deep dialogue trees, i.e. ones where the current selection of topics depends heavily on previously made dialogue choices. Also I miss more background dialogue - there is some, but its usually a single bit of info from each character - I had hoped for a little more. MW's Wiki system had its advantages, you know?
I agree on lack of consistency and in depth setting design though - one of the great weaknesses of Oblivion relative to Morrowind as well. It's not bad, but there are enough huh? moments to be a little dissapointing. Still, I really like the game, the atmosphere totally pulls me in and that makes up for a lot of things.

 

[Dhruin]

It's funny, some of their lore stuff is great. If you read the terminals (or books in MW), it's good stuff. Why can't they translate that to the interactive elements like dialogue?

 

[Prime Junta]

I've often asked myself the same thing. The best answer I've been able to come up with is... they don't know how.

Writing good dialog is terribly hard. I couldn't do it to save my life, even though I'm fairly fluent at some other kinds of writing. Writing "lore" into dialogs in a way that doesn't make them sound terribly heavy or stilted is even harder. Expressing stuff like that by "showing, not telling" is also damn hard.

Bethsoft's dialog writing always kinda sucked. It's never been better than FO3, and FO3's dialogs are plodding and pedestrian and lacking in character most of the time; even at their best they never rise above a few witty lines or unexpected twists.

But then, really good dialog, and storytelling by showing rather than explaining, is rare as hen's teeth -- Fallout had it, VtM: Bloodlines had it, and The Witcher had it in places.

Planescape: Torment had unparalleled story and lore, but often collapsed into excessive verbiage trying to communicate it in dialogs; all BioWare games I've played fall into the "Hello, stranger, good to see you, now, let me tell you about my mother" mode.

I've always wondered why. Good dialog should be relatively easy to put into a game; it's no harder to debug than poor dialog, it only takes one good writer to make it, and it doesn't introduce any technical complexities. Perhaps it's just that good writers aren't attracted to games, or appreciated by people who make and play games. It's quite common to run into that attitude even here, like in crpgnut's post above -- "I don't play a game for the dialog, I play it for the gameplay, and to explore, and to develop my character."

 

[GothicGothicness]

I've always wondered why. Good dialog should be relatively easy to put into a game; it's no harder to debug than poor dialog, it only takes one good writer to make it, and it doesn't introduce any technical complexities. Perhaps it's just that good writers aren't attracted to games, or appreciated by people who make and play games.

I happend to have been at a game company that tried to hire a professional writer, acctually they enjoyed to write dialogue for games, the problem was that they just had a hard time to understand it was a game and not a movie.

In a movie you could decide each line, and what would happen and direct it. In a roleplaying game the player might choose different dialogue say goodbye comeback later, and you often do not get a chance to really establish the character it could just be a chance encounter. ETC ETC, writing a good dialogue for games is much more complicated than for movie or books.

It ended up with said writer being fired since she couldn't come up with good enough stuff.

 

[Prime Junta]

Yeah, that's sort of what I meant, even if I didn't express it very well. There aren't enough good writers who are attracted to games, and play games, enough to understand what makes for good writing in a game as opposed to a movie or TV.

What beats me, though, is how come so few such writers have emerged. The games industry has been around for quite long, and if anything, the quality of writing in games has declined. You'd think that the industry would train writers to understand games -- or game designers who understand writing.