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Fallout 3 - VATS Editorial @ Duck and Cover

by Dhruin, 2010-06-21 21:07:22

VATS: How Bethesda Set Their Sights On The Lowest Demoninator and Hit a Bullseye is the title of editorial at Duck and Cover on the "dumbing down" of Fallout 3.  You can probably guess at the content from the title but it's not without some pertinent points.  An early snip:

When one saw the increasing “streamlining” under the helm of Todd Howard, coupled with an approach that showed little fidelity to RPG roots, into a more console friendly shooter style game. The message was becoming clear, the appeal would be to the gut, not the mind. Rather than appealing to the RPG crowd with a fundamentally sound RPG, they would go for a more corporate, trendy, “McRPG” style of game that would put training wheels on it’s RPGs so as not to alienate the lowest common denominator. A profitable approach I’m sure, but not the most conducive to RPG fundamentals or fidelity to Fallout and it’s RPG system, which was Fallout’s entire rasion d’etre.

As the veil slowly lifted on Fallout 3, we began to see this more Oblivion-like approach (same design team, same engine) with some familiar Oblivion concepts new to Fallout (FP perspective, mini-games, scaled down threats, large but shallow world, same reliance on marketing, gimmicks and superficial graphics or big name Hollywood voice actors, r) added in as well, mostly at the expense of Fallout’s defining and integral RPG foundation.

Information about

Fallout 3

SP/MP: Single-player
Setting: Post-Apoc
Genre: Shooter-RPG
Platform: PC, Xbox 360, PS3
Release: Released


Details