Nameless Voice wrote:Overpopulated wasteland? Depends on if you're talking about enemies or NPCs. Bethesda always have far too few NPCs in towns and cities, and Fallout 3 is no different. But Bethesda games always make up for it by having an over-abundance of hostile NPCs in the wilderness. Oblivion, Fallout 3, they always make me think that the vast majority of the world's population are bandits or raiders. (Though, to be completely fair, Fallout 2 had insane numbers of raiders, slavers, and other hostile encounters, too. It just wasn't as noticeable as in Fallout 3.)
Well yeah, but F02 also took place over a much larger territory as well. In fallout 3, there is an enemy camp with a dozen or more inhabitants 'yond every hill. You really can't claim the same for the originals(you'd face what, one hostile random encounter once or twice every week of in game travel time? Compare with every hour in F03.). Its also made much worse due to the fact that nobody grows anything in the entire capital wasteland. They all live off of 6 Brahmin and the loot they can take from abandoned buildings. Part of what made the originals cool to me was that they showed humanity rebuilding. Especially when you look at the changes between the two(NCR mainly)
I also noticed the whole "main quest mashup" about water and the Enclave - the main quest isn't really very original.
I could rant about some of the quests being rather silly (e.g. vampires?), but I'd have to be fair and point out the silliness in earlier Fallout game, too. I seem to recall a quest to recover someone's spleen, and let's not even go into some of the bizarre random encounters in Fallout 2.
Yeah Fallout 2 was quite silly at times. Not as bad as F03 though.
"Delays are temporary; mediocrity is forever."
odio ergo sum
In a way, I think Bethesda should consider games like The Settlers or Knights and Merchants to get an idea of a world economy - it would make their worlds feel that much more real if you could watch the residents planting and harvesting crops, milling grain, making food, mining ore, making weapons, etc.
But there no way any world will be realistic when the number of bandits far outweighs the number of regular citizens.
Nameless Voice wrote:In a way, I think Bethesda should consider games like The Settlers or Knights and Merchants to get an idea of a world economy - it would make their worlds feel that much more real if you could watch the residents planting and harvesting crops, milling grain, making food, mining ore, making weapons, etc.
But there no way any world will be realistic when the number of bandits far outweighs the number of regular citizens.
Oblivion was actually supposed to have those features, but was dropped so that they could push the game out early (it was a management decision)- this occured not even a few months after the E3 demo which showed their "radiant AI" working- the entire concept was removed so no dynamic economy.
Bethesda I honestly doubt will ever put a dynamic economy into their games because it'd be too complex- their design seems to be as simple as possible so that they can just quickly release a title and make bucket loads of money again. This is why their QA process is completely useless, they're rushing too much and throwing out good features to get the game out quick. From a business sense this does make sense sure, less investment into wages = higher return ratio- but in the end their games come off under developed- I think that's probably a very good reason for my annoyance with them, their games are never really released in a complete condition and they rely on DLC to nickel and dime the player- even then they just add crap that isn't going to improve the game much.
I'm not expecting good things from their next game.. especially if they're still using Gamebryo.
They do constantly du--- er, "simplify" the game systems with each instalment. Daggerfall had more skills and options* than Morrowind, which again had more than Oblivion. Fallout 3 is kind of outside that scope because it's not in the same vein.
* Of course, a lot of the skills in Daggerfall were totally useless. Speaking Impish, anyone? Did the skill even do anything?
I remember the Radiant AI demo back in the day, with the evil woman who set her dog on fire for barking at her. A shame they dropped it, a world full of psychotic AI could have been hilarious to watch.
Nameless Voice wrote:They do constantly du--- er, "simplify"
It's called Streamlining, you insensitive clod
Nameless Voice wrote:
I remember the Radiant AI demo back in the day, with the evil woman who set her dog on fire for barking at her. A shame they dropped it, a world full of psychotic AI could have been hilarious to watch.
They dropped so many things. Including much of the AI.
"Delays are temporary; mediocrity is forever."
odio ergo sum
Yes, there's a bunch of evidence from the mouthes of the developers, the game was massively over talked- a lot of what they were referring to made the game sound like it was a dynamic RPG. What we got was the total opposite to a dynamic RPG.
Also in reference to the useless skills in Daggerfall, every elderscroll has had this problem including Oblivion.. hell even Fallout 3 in cases suffered the same issues (anything that gave you AP for example was a total waste- since AP didn't do anything). The game has always had redundancy issues- and the shortsightedness of the developers has lead to them never fixing this even after 20 years. But easily Oblivion's was the worst at it, it was too easy to be good at everything and there were skills that quite frankly weren't even worth the time leveling up.
Fallout 3 is kind of outside that scope because it's not in the same vein.
Disagree, Fallout 2 was more complex than Fallout 3, its a simplification no matter how hard you look at it. VATS especially was the biggest simplification of them all.
Apparently we can use talking to solve our differences now. I wonder how well this will be implemented. Conversation challenges usually suck imo as there is no challenge, you see the marked response (be it by font, brackets, or otherwise) click it and insta-win. It's a bit cheap.
Can't wait to see how they do with it as I've heard they're trying out something nifty.
"Delays are temporary; mediocrity is forever."
odio ergo sum
I approve of being able to talk characters into doing what you want if you've invested in making your character good at speech (e.g. spending XP in social-related skills, ala Vampire: Bloodlines), but without skills... seems too easy, somehow. There's no "cost" to this approach.
Nameless Voice wrote:I approve of being able to talk characters into doing what you want if you've invested in making your character good at speech (e.g. spending XP in social-related skills, ala Vampire: Bloodlines), but without skills... seems too easy, somehow. There's no "cost" to this approach.
My Smile is augmented
Jonas wrote:Sounds like you guys haven't read any of the previews wherein they describe in great detail how their conversation challenges work.
Linky?
"Delays are temporary; mediocrity is forever."
odio ergo sum
PCG: It’s interesting that you pick up on that, because one of the things that surprised me watching the demonstration was that the guy failed the conversation. And I know Deus Ex had moments like that, where you could fail to get what you wanted, but it’s very rare in games for a social path to be closed by you saying the wrong thing. Even in BioWare games, you get a good ending and a bad ending, but it’s not a dead end. So is that a conscious focus for the game?
DeMerle: Well, certainly in the conversation gameplay. So we have different types of conversations in the game. The one we were showing you there was the conversation gameplay, which has that gameplay component about it. So yes, it was very much a decision that you could fail the conversations. I actually would like to see a lot more of that kind of thing, because I feel that it was such a strong moment for me in Deus Ex to know that my path got closed because of my decision.
I actually don’t like it in a lot of roleplaying games where you get these choices and then it’s like, “Okay well, I followed that path. Let’s go back and do the other thing,” and then you get all the information. To me, that’s fake: it’s not what a real dialogue is like. And so I like moments in the writing of our story where we can do that. Where we can say, “You’ve got to choose this or this.”
PCG: During the conversation the player lost, the options on-screen at each stage were Insist, Advise or Pinpoint – are those always the same?
DeMerle: Yeah, well, in the conversation gameplay, the philosophy for these is that you have to convince a person to do something for you, or to help to get to your objective, or whatever. But it depends on the individual that you’re dealing with, and their personality, and what they would play to.
So I wouldn’t say you’re picking emotions – in a lot of games, you’re picking, like, “Am I gonna be tough? Am I gonna be nice?” – it’s not that kind of thing. It’s more of a psychological gameplay based on the individual character you’re dealing with. So maybe this is a character who will respond to being humiliated, but this character isn’t, so with that character that’s not a choice.
So it’s more about the psychological aspects of it. And then hopefully, if we’ve done it well – and so far we’ve had really good reactions to it – you can tell instantly from the behaviour of the character whether that’s succeeded or not.
PCG: So are the actual options you have during the ‘conversation games’ different depending on who you’re talking to?
DeMerle: Yes, they change per person.
PCG: I take it there’s no visual representation of their attitude towards you? Like, in Oblivion, you have Disposition, which you have to get to 100…
DeMerle: Well, you know, as we said: the game is about augmentations. So there’s a particular augment that you can get that will help you get more hints on that.
Assuming they make the system well, I think a big part of how it turns out will have to do how often it is used.
The "we have different types of conversations in the game" is probably one of the more hopeful things I've read on the subject because previous things I've seen make it seem like ever single conversation was going to be what they've described as a combat like system where you're trying to force someone into doing something they don't want to do ending in a win (they do what you want them to) a loss (they're never going to do what you want) or a draw (they don't do what you want, but you haven't yet aliened them so much they'll never listen to you again.)
Even if the system were well implemented that really sounds like it would suck. It's one thing to have bargaining and manipulation as an option in some conversations, it's another if your character can't open his mouth without engaging in psychological battle. Hopefully that "different types of conversation" comment means you'll be able to have a nice non-manipulative conversation every so often. Several of the more memorable ones in Deus Ex were ones in which no one was trying to get anyone to do anything.
Yeah, just read a preview on DX3. Not going to read the whole thread here.
Forced boss fights, ala Alpha Protocol must infuriate Jonas, no?
Also, the dialogue system sounds a lot like Alpha Protocol as well. Of course I *still* hate fucking ME dialogue wheels. I wish they would stop using them, they don't add anything at all. It's perfectly possible to have AP-style convo consequences, AND actually know what the hell you're talking about... which fails most times with the ME-wheel.
Can somebody tell me how I can get a custom avatar?
Oh wait, I already got one...
