Fallout 3

[BasiliskWrangler]

Installing the game now....

I have decided to just forget about Fallout 1 & 2. Not literally of course, but rather I'm just going to assume that Fallout 3 is a new franchise...a cross between STALKER and BioShock set in the Fallout universe, made by the Oblivion folks. Using this assumption, I'll post my opinions later tonight...

[BasiliskWrangler]

I'm about an hour into it and I am really impressed. No, this is not Fallout as we know it, but in does seem to be a very nice post-apocalyptic shooter with some decent RPG elements to it. Visually it is stunning (if you have the horsepower to run it with lots of bells-n-whistles on).

The game mechanics reminds me of Deus Ex a bit actually, and the interface is lifted right from Oblivion. It's definitely got a touch of STALKER in there too. Overall, I have to really say this looks like it's going to be fun romp, even if it's not a true successor to Fallout.

[CrazyBernie]

I was seriously considering purchasing Fallout 3 today, but then I watched a trailer for Command and Conquer:Red Alert 3 (Here) and almost fell out of my chair. Combine the fact that it looks hilarious with a fully co-op campaign, and I'm sold. I realize that it's not an RPG, but the C&C franchise is one that I've played every game they've released to date... (well, to be honest I never finished C&C3 or the expansion... but I've at least played it).

In other news, I'm currently downloading the Sacred 2 Demo.

[txa1265]

You really have to set FO 1 & 2 aside for this one ... more like a 'inspired by the Fallout games'. I've played a couple of hours and am having loads of fun.

[Getharn]

Hm, maybe I should give Fallout 3 a try. I managed to miss the other two installments, so I guess I won't have the same sense of outrage that fans of the franchise might experience...

It's interesting that people are pulling some inventory management and plotline choices into the first person genre these days, but to my mind it certainly doesn't make them RPGs. In my opinion, this fusion should be regarded as a new (albeit evolutionary, rather than revolutionary) genre. When you boil things down to fundamental gameplay elements, the whole spectrum of games out there can be thought of as a linear combination of a few different elements - fantasy vs. futuristic setting, degree of inventory management, degree of character development and degree of linearity (in both the world and the plotline).

Games like Half Life exemplify the linear FPS genre, despite sometimes being innovative in their own way - no character development, no serious inventory management, just blast your way through. That's not a complaint, I think all the Half Life games are amazing, but I like the way that they don't try to be something they're not. Stick in some inventory management and you've got Crysis. Make it also non-linear and you've got STALKER. Stick in some character development on top of that and you've got Syetem Shock or Bioshock. Take out some of the non-linearity again and you've got Deus Ex. Crank up the fantasy setting and you've got Dark Messiah. Stick everything else back in again and you've got Oblivion or Morrowind.

Despite these differences, in some ways all of the games share a common thread - single character, first person perspective and direct, real-time control over your character's actions. These are the things which don't, to my mind, make it a "true" RPG. That's not a value judgement in any way - it's just a categorisation. The only thing I lament is that this categorisation seems to be slowly getting diluted to the extent that you can call pretty much anything an RPG these days, and that doesn't make it a very useful categorisation.

In the 70's, beer in the UK was in a sorry state - it was all mass-produced rubbish, and tasted awful as a result. A set of people set up CAMRA in response - the campaign for real ale. This created a designation of "real ale" which put restrictions on how the beer could be made and still be called "real ale", and this was very useful as the public could suddenly tell the difference between decent homebrew and mass-produced crud. As a result, there's now a popular real ale movement in the UK, and the industry is thriving.

So, maybe we should start the campaign for real RPGs?

Anyway. I'll stop blathering now. Apologies if that was rather off-topic and/or tedious.

As an aside, does anybody know offhand if my X1950 will cope with Fallout 3? It played Bioshock reasonably, but the recommended specs for F3 call for a 512MB graphics card, whereas I think mine's only 256.

EDIT: I tell a lie, according to my eBuyer purchase history (I love online shopping!) it's got 512MB. According to Toms Hardware, however, it's not a patch on the 3800 series that's part of the "recommended specs" for F3. Still, I guessing they've provided lots of detail cranking down ability?

[macdude22]

Well apon finishing my homework around Midnight I popped my Fallout 3 disk in the ol 360 and took a whack at it. The game oozes style, and I like it. This game is great for what it is, Fallout inspired Oblivion. I'd love to see them revisit the isometric view, with a true turn based RPG, not unlike how Blizzard is remaking StarCraft 2 but this will tide me over in the interm. I certainly got a good chuckle when I made the crack about butch's mom and then subsequently beat the hell out of him before the GOAT test.

[Fleisch]

Oblivion (like many 1st person shooters -- any with head bob or where you have to turn around quickly ) made me motion-sick, plus my reflexes are no good anyway. So, so much for that.

[Saxon1974]

So what I am hearing is that if I didn't like Oblivion I won't like F3?

Is there level scaling?

And are whatever kind of dungeons\keep equivalent this game has all generic and pretty much the same?

Those 2 things made Oblivion unplayable for me.

[Saxon1974]

Hm, maybe I should give Fallout 3 a try. I managed to miss the other two installments, so I guess I won't have the same sense of outrage that fans of the franchise might experience...

It's interesting that people are pulling some inventory management and plotline choices into the first person genre these days, but to my mind it certainly doesn't make them RPGs. In my opinion, this fusion should be regarded as a new (albeit evolutionary, rather than revolutionary) genre. When you boil things down to fundamental gameplay elements, the whole spectrum of games out there can be thought of as a linear combination of a few different elements - fantasy vs. futuristic setting, degree of inventory management, degree of character development and degree of linearity (in both the world and the plotline).

Games like Half Life exemplify the linear FPS genre, despite sometimes being innovative in their own way - no character development, no serious inventory management, just blast your way through. That's not a complaint, I think all the Half Life games are amazing, but I like the way that they don't try to be something they're not. Stick in some inventory management and you've got Crysis. Make it also non-linear and you've got STALKER. Stick in some character development on top of that and you've got Syetem Shock or Bioshock. Take out some of the non-linearity again and you've got Deus Ex. Crank up the fantasy setting and you've got Dark Messiah. Stick everything else back in again and you've got Oblivion or Morrowind.

Despite these differences, in some ways all of the games share a common thread - single character, first person perspective and direct, real-time control over your character's actions. These are the things which don't, to my mind, make it a "true" RPG. That's not a value judgement in any way - it's just a categorisation. The only thing I lament is that this categorisation seems to be slowly getting diluted to the extent that you can call pretty much anything an RPG these days, and that doesn't make it a very useful categorisation.

In the 70's, beer in the UK was in a sorry state - it was all mass-produced rubbish, and tasted awful as a result. A set of people set up CAMRA in response - the campaign for real ale. This created a designation of "real ale" which put restrictions on how the beer could be made and still be called "real ale", and this was very useful as the public could suddenly tell the difference between decent homebrew and mass-produced crud. As a result, there's now a popular real ale movement in the UK, and the industry is thriving.

So, maybe we should start the campaign for real RPGs?

Anyway. I'll stop blathering now. Apologies if that was rather off-topic and/or tedious.

As an aside, does anybody know offhand if my X1950 will cope with Fallout 3? It played Bioshock reasonably, but the recommended specs for F3 call for a 512MB graphics card, whereas I think mine's only 256.

EDIT: I tell a lie, according to my eBuyer purchase history (I love online shopping!) it's got 512MB. According to Toms Hardware, however, it's not a patch on the 3800 series that's part of the "recommended specs" for F3. Still, I guessing they've provided lots of detail cranking down ability?

Im on board with the campaign! I have felt that for a while now, pretty much every other game is called an "RPG" now. I have gone to using the terms "Oldschool RPG" or "True RPG", because the term RPG game doesn't mean anything to me anymore.

[BasiliskWrangler]

So what I am hearing is that if I didn't like Oblivion I won't like F3?

Is there level scaling?

And are whatever kind of dungeons\keep equivalent this game has all generic and pretty much the same?

Those 2 things made Oblivion unplayable for me.

I haven't played enough to know if there is level scaling (just made it to level 2 last night before bed). The few buildings I have been in have been hand-built and not generic, but that is not saying I won't run into generics later on.

It is clearly an RPG for people who like shooters. They do seem to make good use of stats/skills/attributes and the level-up process is like Eschalon in that when you level, you get points to improve your skills with, not the "improve as you use" method of Oblivion. It is not an old-school "true" RPG by any stretch, but so far it feels like a quality, fun romp through a nuclear wasteland.

IMO, it certainly feels far more RPGish than "The Witcher", which to this day I still don't know why RPG enthusiasts enjoyed that game.

[CrazyBernie]

Hm, maybe I should give Fallout 3 a try. I managed to miss the other two installments, so I guess I won't have the same sense of outrage that fans of the franchise might experience...

It's interesting that people are pulling some inventory management and plotline choices into the first person genre these days, but to my mind it certainly doesn't make them RPGs. In my opinion, this fusion should be regarded as a new (albeit evolutionary, rather than revolutionary) genre.

They have a label for this type of game.... it's a hybrid called an Action-RPG

As an aside, does anybody know offhand if my X1950 will cope with Fallout 3? It played Bioshock reasonably, but the recommended specs for F3 call for a 512MB graphics card, whereas I think mine's only 256.

EDIT: I tell a lie, according to my eBuyer purchase history (I love online shopping!) it's got 512MB. According to Toms Hardware, however, it's not a patch on the 3800 series that's part of the "recommended specs" for F3. Still, I guessing they've provided lots of detail cranking down ability?

Well the game is built off the Oblivion engine, so my guess is that it'll do fine for indoor areas. I ran Oblivion on a P4 2.4GHz w/1GB RAM and a 512MB X1600 with the details tweaked to somewhere in the middle and I got great indoor framerates. It's the outdoors that you'll have to worry about (keep in mind BioShock was all indoors, hence your reasonable performance). I could never get the outdoors to run at an acceptable Looks-to-Performance-ratio. Fallout 3 has obviously gotten some upgrades to the engine, but I imagine it'll still have enough tweaks to get the details down to a playable level. But the REAL question is, do you want to play it with all the details turned down?? I never finished Oblivion because I couldn't deal with having the resolution/details turned down, because that's not the way the game was meant to be played.

[CrazyBernie]

Here's what Fallout 3 was supposed to look like....

[Getharn]

Well, I'm officially lazy - I've pre-ordered it on Steam. Damn, that's this weekend down the drain...

[Saxon1974]

Honestly as much as I like the setting Im leaning towards not getting it. Just don't have much interest in another first person Action-RPG.

[Saxon1974]

Here's what Fallout 3 was supposed to look like....

that's the Van Buren build that was cancelled right? Too bad. Although as nice as that looks, something about it looks to clean for post apoc....