Fallout 3 - Emil Responds Again

Fallout 3 Lead Designer Emil Pagliarulo has answered another bunch of questions at the official forums, this time collected together by Briosafreak's Fallout 3 blog. Here's a sample:

While I enjoyed it [Dark Brotherhood Questline for Oblivion], I found it was not really revolutionary, and as with almost all of the quest lines in Oblivion, it was completely linear.
Emil: True, it was linear, but that was by design. Quests with multiple paths were never planned for Oblivion… with the amount of content we had, we simply didn’t have the time or resources to design them that way. So they had a different, more straightforward structure, and we were totally fine with that.
In Fallout, we have fewer quests, and they tend to have a level of complexity far beyond those in Oblivion. Multiple paths, multiple choices, etc. In the Dark Brotherhood, even if you learned who the traitor was, you couldn’t really affect the outcome. In Fallout 3, a quest like that would certainly have allowed the player more options.

Click to expand...

More information.

Emil: True, it was linear, but that was by design. Quests with multiple paths were never planned for Oblivion…

Click to expand...

Wasn't there an answer to a question before Oblivion was released that had Todd talking about multiple ways of stealing a ring? While bullshit it did imply that multiple solutions where at least thought of... Am I the only one that gets the same vibe here that this fellow is just spouting anything to appease the masses or does he have any actual credit?

I want to know why we can't have Stealth cloaking devices in a Honda Civic!!

I think it's impossible to know how good a job they've done implementing multiple solutions in FO3 - and given their background games, it makes sense to be cynical. But when Emil says Oblivion had a shit-load of content and they always intended for the quests to be linear, that just sounds honest to me.

I don't think the masses need to be appeased, either. Most people are going to hear "Oblivion with guns" and think that sounds awesome.

I for one don't have any problems with their stated design goals. What I'm less sure about is whether they have the writing skills and wit to pull it off successfully. Making a Fallout pastiche is easy; making something that genuinely feels like Fallout is very hard.

I'm not writing this one off by any means, but I remain a bit skeptical.

It's funny, but I'm slightly skeptical for the opposing reason. I figure making an awesome game like Oblivion is well within Bethesda's abilities. I'm just not sure the kinda lame Fallout world was the best place to start. Fallout was great, in its day, but that day is long gone and other games have done post-apoc since then and haven't fared all that well. There isn't a post-apoc, non-shooter game that has come close to matching the sales of Morrowind or Oblivion. I'm much rather be getting TES V this year, than Fallout 3. Just my 2¢. I'm much more in favor of swords and sorcery over guns and computers.

crpgnut said:

Fallout was great, in its day, but that day is long gone and other games have done post-apoc since then and haven't fared all that well. I'm much more in favor of swords and sorcery over guns and computers.

Click to expand...

What other real post-apoc are there really? I can recall only one the german gaia or something. As for sword and sorcery we are up to our ears into it imho.

The Fall or whatever it was was apparently kind of a flop and never made it to English (or at least not the US). I can't think of any other recent post apoc. RPGs.

Post apoc. seems to be a popular genre for FPS games. Gears of War, Half Life 2, even the Halo games, probably more...

Speaking of (sort of) post-apoc settings...I drool like a baby everytime I think of someone making a *real* crpg in the Stalker setting.

*drools*
*wanders off looking for pureed bananas*

how are those fps you mentioned post-apoc. i think that term gets thrown around to loosely, as if all sci-future games are somehow post-apoc?!?!
i think post-apoc has a certian feel to it not just that some kind of disaster has happened. there has to be a feel of no government and tribal setting to the game-not just some military shooter were lets get those bad aliens...

Post-apoc just means after some event has destroyed civilisation it's a sub-genre of science fiction and isn't owned by games in any way.

who said it was owned by games?
my favourite post-apoc settings are in books, followed by movies, then games.
i was trying to state however that it is not just some textbook definition, meeting requirements a and b, but a certian 'atmosphere' that makes it what it is. i think many people try to combine the 'disaster movie' phenomenon with post-apoc--it doesn't work. one focuses on the impact of the situation from a more things and people are destroyed, while the other focuses on the connections that weave normal civilization together are destroyed. a game or movie or book that doesn't have those latter aspects in my view doesn't deserve the post-apoc label, which like 'cyberpunk' is a fairly small and distinct niche.

STALKER is definitely post-apoc. HL2 is a bit more difficult but you could make a decent case for it.

@crpgnut - give me one major attempt at a post-apoc game that proves "that day is long gone".

And don't try The Fall. One of the buggiest releases ever by a German developer whose other major credit is Soldiers of Anarchy (Play that one? No, didn't think so) doesn't have any relevance to a major NA studio with a rabid fanbase and an IP that ensures lots of media coverage.

Metalheart? Please. Another buggy German effort released by a Russian publisher that the English market hardly knew existed. The design was laughable and proves nothing, other than bad designs often fail.

Mayhem's failures? The uncountable Polish indie efforts that never get released?

Stalker isn't a "true" post-apoc setting in that it is only centered around a (relatively) small area...as in not the entire planet/country/etc. But I'd still consider it post-apoc within it's own area. Also, I could easily see the zone expanding to consume the entire planet...for instance if it were actually feeding on the people that make it into the wishgranter and have their wishes granted (assuming of course that nobody has yet met the "people" behind the wishgranter and destroyed it all).

HL2' is kinda post-apoc...society *as we know it* is gone, and replaced by what the aliens/combine want...which is still evolving. But no, it isn't post-apoc as in everything is destroyed and the remnants of humanity have to struggle to survive. Just that everything is conquered by the combine/aliens and the remnants of humanity have to struggle to survive (and defeat the invaders).

I'm one of those freaks that actually liked Soldiers of Anarchy. It took several tries (over the course of a year and 2 patches) for me to finally get used to the controls/etc but once I did I really enjoyed it. It's more of a "tactical" strategy game real-time with pause though...I sure wouldn't call it a rpg.

Never played The Fall, or those other 2 stinkers.

My fantasy rpg's would have to be a Dawn of the Dead (or even 28 days/weeks later...though that would definitely be an action rpg) or a Gamma World setting. Both of which would be post-apoc...and neither of which will ever get made.

woges said:

Post-apoc just means after some event has destroyed civilisation it's a sub-genre of science fiction and isn't owned by games in any way.

Click to expand...

Well, not necessary sci-fi. You can have also post-apocalyptic fantasy, the AD&D Darksun world being the good example.

The other funny thing is, that the term "post-apocalyptic" is in fact very strange as misleading. "Apocalypsis" is the Greek name for the book of Revelation. According to its origin, the term "post-apocalyptic" should refer to the world after the final triumph of Good over Evil, that is, the world of eternal happiness, and not a miserable decaying place

Dhruin said:

But when Emil says Oblivion had a shit-load of content and they always intended for the quests to be linear, that just sounds honest to me.

Click to expand...

Which brings into stark relief the absolute bullshit of the Oblivion marketing machine ... choices - none. The Codex review article is a personal fave ... hilarious.

I have always found that I enjoy Oblivion more by thinking of it as an open-world action game with RPG-lite elements. I just hope that they can manage a more robust RPG while still obviously catering to the mass market.

It ties into the other thread at this point. If we acknowledge that a large amount of the pre-release PR on Oblivion's RPG stuff was lies or exaggeration, and if Bethesda is running around the main-stream press touting 'Oblivion with guns' and then hitting RPG sites saying 'but it is really much deeper than that' ... what are we to think?

Good grief, for once I totally agree with Mike!!

Corwin said:

Good grief, for once I totally agree with Mike!!

Click to expand...

Hey now ... I thought we actually generally *did* agree?

txa1265 said:

Which brings into stark relief the absolute bullshit of the Oblivion marketing machine ... choices - none.

Click to expand...

Yes, that's the problem. They weren't honest about Oblivion until they started ramping up the PR for Fallout 3, so I find little reason to trust anything they say about Fallout 3 until they attempt to sell in their next game.