Fallout 3 - Game Informer Unlimited Summary @ NMA

Quoting myself from yesterday: "I have to say that I find VD's commentary to be close to spot on. It is depressing to watch the venerable and outstanding Wastland/Fallout/Fallout2 series end in what is, in all likelihood, going to be qualitative whimper - though no doubt FO3 (when it does appear) will be trumpeted as "completely new" "genre shattering" and "totally innovative" by the same weak minds as made such ludicrous comments as regards Oblivion. ...Yawn ..."

Now this new information from NMA confirms VD's impression. I am officially giving up all hope for Fallout 3. More "revolutionary" schlock. My favorite part is this quote:

"If you are a fan who is adamantly against some significant changes to the way gameplay occurs in the Fallout series, I’m going to tell you right now and save you the disappointment: I don’t think you’ll like Fallout 3."
 
Joined
Oct 20, 2006
Messages
53
Location
Montgomery, AL USA
What it means when he refers to a dialog tree is that dialog uses a list of questions for each answer.

So does Fallout, doesn't it? Why would he then say it's closer to Oblivion than to Fallout?
 
Joined
Oct 19, 2006
Messages
1,558
How would i know? Every time that guy explains something i get more doubts than i had before.

He could have said it's closer to Bloodlines than to Fallout. It would not cause such a bad reaction.
 
Joined
Mar 19, 2007
Messages
12
Did you actually play Fallout 2?

Obviously s/he did not. We've seen several of the "criticisms" of Fallout 3 are by people who are ignorant about Fallout 1 and 2.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Oct 24, 2006
Messages
1,769
Location
Minnesota, USA
How would i know? Every time that guy explains something i get more doubts than i had before.

Isn't that a good thing? The more they lower your expectations now, the better you'll be able to enjoy it when it ships.

I enjoyed playing Oblivion, and I fully credit the fan community's ruthless dissection of everything stated by Pete and Todd with my being able to enjoy the game. When the game finally shipped, I expected it to be a completely irredeemable mess. So I was pleasantly surprised when I found parts of it to be quite enjoyable. I was able to ignore/mod most of the criticised parts of the game (except the Dark Brotherhood dialog -- perhaps the most cringeworthy dialog I've ever heard in a game).

You should be happy people are tearing F3 apart, sight unseen. The less you expect from it now, the more you'll be able to enjoy it. High expectations are the bane of any modern CRPG. Pete and Todd are performing a valuable service for the Fallout community. You should be thanking them for this.

Good job, Bethsoft! Your efforts are truly appreciated. :thumbsup:
 
Joined
Oct 25, 2006
Messages
250
Location
Indianapolis
So does Fallout, doesn't it? Why would he then say it's closer to Oblivion than to Fallout?
I don't mean to seem clever, but could Oblivion's enormous success and name recognition be the only reason? Even if it's not going to be anything at all like Oblivion, I would expect Bethesda to make the comparison. That wouldn't be very accurate or honest, but....
 
Joined
Nov 11, 2006
Messages
1,807
Location
Orange County, California
You should be happy people are tearing F3 apart, sight unseen. The less you expect from it now, the more you'll be able to enjoy it. High expectations are the bane of any modern CRPG. Pete and Todd are performing a valuable service for the Fallout community. You should be thanking them for this.

How can we have any expectations of any sort if they didn't gave us any solid info about the dialog we can comment on? Everything that guy said is very vague and subjective. We still know close to nothing about how dialog is going to work with quests, choices and consequences.

We should wait for a good gameplay demo that explains very well how this is going to work. That will give us an idea of the quest quality we can expect from Fallout 3. Then we have to play the game or wait for someone we trust to review it to know how many good quests exist and how good the dialog is overall. There's no other way to do this without spoiling the entire game.
 
Joined
Mar 19, 2007
Messages
12
I have a qualified guess that Fallout's dialoque tree will be similar to (or exactly like)
the dialoque tree used in Bioware's Mass Effect. I think that it is the best choice if dialoque is going to be topical and voiced, (with subtexts, though).

In Mass Effect you have 3-6 dialoque options, I think, 1 one of them is pretty violent, 1 one them is sort of in the middle and one them is sort of the kind option.
In Mass Effect you can also only use stealth, diplomacy or violence/combat to solve quests. If (or when FO3) is going to have topical dialoque, then this Bioware speech tree/dialoque tree system is the best choice, imo.

As for nuclear cars, yes, they were around in Fallout 2, but irrc they were driven? by fusion cells and electric. Fusion is when you merge two atoms together, not split the atoms like would do in a nuclear bomb. And furthermore, cars don't blow up :roll: just because you shoot at them, drive them over cliff, or even shoot at them with a handheld nuclear catapult.

Everything in FO3 does not have to be nuclear just because it is a post apoc nuclear roleplaying game. I don't much care for the the stimpacks in Fallout 3 or any small detail lkike that, if & when the overall setting & tone deviated way too much from the original Falllout's tone and setting, which, I'm sad :( to say :( --- it does to me.

And the Limited Interview in Game Informer just proves this beyond doubt. I mean the whole 'dark and violent humor' wasn't what Fallout was all about. It was (sometimes) a part of the setting, but the setting had often very ironic iconic grotesque kind of bleek, black and gallows humour to it. Not only 'dark and violent humour'. Fallout is imagining a what if situation, what if the 1950's timeline were altered somewhat, and the world in 2077 actually experienced a Fallout. And then the game's story continues from there.

And the game's story wasn't one where you had to find your Father. You were practically kicked out of the Vault, you got the short end of the stick, literally! ---- and then 'goodbye'. You are sort of shoehorned in or forced to do to so,mething, you don't decide by yourself that you want to go look for someone. This is how the main plot in FO 3 sound to me, you're 19, your father is missing, and you decide /by your own free will :roll: !) o go look for him. Come on dudes & dudettes: Everyone knows that most 19 year old young men and women would be happy to see their father go away.... (the main plot sounds directly borrowed from both star wars and baldur's gate, though....).

As for the first quest (the megation quest??) it doesn't seem you have the option to turn down the quest, or to go tell the Sheriff, or to tell the town's people of this.
It just seems 'yes, I have to this quest because Mr. Burke wants me to do it.' And the whole come back later and see a different settlement in the (now blasted) town's place, didn't Gothic 3 and STALKER already do this. I mean, in G3, you could wipe out an orc town, I think, and next time, you went by, people (humans) would be there.

The setting is nice, of course, but there also needs to be game to play, and by that I mean not a survival horror game. If I want to play that I'd buy Condemned or Manhunt 2 or Clive Barker's Undying or possibly PREY, FEAR, or Gears of War.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
2,147
Location
Denmark, Europe
Then why did it need a "fuel cell controller"?
 
Joined
Oct 19, 2006
Messages
321
Then why did it need a "fuel cell controller"?

From the description of the fuel cell controller:
This chip controls the flow of power into a car's electric engines. Many drivers quickly burnt out this chip through frequent rapid acceleration. Still a valuable part to have -- if you only had a car to install it in.

So it regulates the flow from the MFC or SEC to the car's electric engines.
 
Joined
Oct 19, 2006
Messages
1,558
So you weren't so much recharging the batteries as you were replacing them, and not necessarily with batteries. If you had a bank of MFCs installed in your car, you were driving a nuclear-powered car. Is that right?
 
Joined
Oct 19, 2006
Messages
321
So you weren't so much recharging the batteries as you were replacing them, and not necessarily with batteries. If you had a bank of MFCs installed in your car, you were driving a nuclear-powered car. Is that right?

Yes. Would you then call it "a nuclear car"? Did you call the laser rifle "a nuclear laser rifle"? Same charges.

Why it would explode when getting shot at is even more ridiculous.
 
Joined
Oct 19, 2006
Messages
1,558
What I'd call it is irrelevant. Cars with internal nuclear power sources are part of the canon. Just like ghosts and aliens.
 
Joined
Oct 19, 2006
Messages
321
I'll believe absolutely nothing about what Bethesda says is in this game and I'll ignore the hype about it until I see the finished product. Oblivion was nothing like what it was hyped to be after Bethesda showed off that fraudulent demonstration of Radiant AI at E3 a couple of years ago. It really is sad to see some of the exact same people that fell for all of that bullshit PR jumping on the bandwagon again.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
622
OK, then. Let me try to explain with my very limited high school education i physics.

Nuclear refers to (or so I belive?) to nucleus --- a core, or more precisely the atom's core. And even precisely, the core of the stuff? (sorry I don't want it is in English?)
Uranium, normally called Uran. This atom can be split, the split can be controlled.
In order for the Uranium to be split, you'd have to it go through a process (sorrt, can't remember exactly what it is), but it changed the number behind the Uranium so that Uranium now looks like Uranium 235 (I belive?). When the Uranium is split through this proces, then you'd have a nuclear explosion that would result in a mushroom cloud.

Fusion os the merging of two cells such as one Hydrogen atom merging with the
H20 molecule (If I remember my chemistry and physics correctly?) so that it gets another O2 (oxygen molecule). This process then creates fusion which is a sort of heat thing? - this heat thing can then be used to fuel cars - if this heat can get a storage unit safely enough such as a electric car battery or be inserted into micro fusion cells. (as i'm not a chemist or a physicits, I may or may not have gotten some of the processes wrong...). These (micro) fusion cells or electric car batteries can then be used to propel a car to move forward. By the process of fusion --- the merging of atoms. And could as such, of course, be viewed as nuclear.

However, I think the term 'nuclear' often refers to (and correctly so?) the splitting of the core of the atoms, happening in nuclear power plants or in the nuclear bombs
:( that was responsible for the Fallout winter. :( (in the games of course). It is painfully clear to me that Bethsoft doesn't really understand the concept of what 'nuclear' means or what it refers. How else could they have come up witk at 'stupid' weapon like the Fatman, a nuclear handheld catapult ?? :roll: And furthermore, don't you think that scavengers in the Fallout universe would have gotten their hands on the engines in the cars?? - Especially if the engines really were small nuclear power plants, since in the Fallout universe there always seem to be, or should be, a scarcity of (electric) power...

If anyone feel the need to correct my crude assumption about nuclear and other stuff, feel free to do. Then I'll have learnt something today (or tomorrow), too :)
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
2,147
Location
Denmark, Europe
There's both nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. But the term "nuclear" is misunderstood and misused by virtually everyone. Heck, the most powerful man on Earth can't even pronounce it correctly. To some folks its meaning is clear, but to the rest of us it just doesn't matter.

It's like the term, "broadband." If I'm remembering it right, broadband began as an alternative to baseband. Later, broadband meant speeds greater than ISDN. Then another, even greater, speed. Then another. Today most people would tell you broadband means "high speed Internet access." At this point, I'd say that's probably correct. But that's not what it means to everyone.
 
Joined
Nov 11, 2006
Messages
1,807
Location
Orange County, California
Back
Top Bottom