toblix

Don't swear in the title don't swear in the title

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Those motherfucking fucking pieces of shit.

The battle system in Fallout 3 is called the Vault-tec Assisted Targeting System (V.A.T.S.). You'll certainly be able to tackle enemies in real-time using first-person shooting, the article says, but V.A.T.S. lets you pause time and select a target at your leisure.

Fuck fuck shit piss.

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Sounds weird. But were you really under any illusion about what bethesda were going to do with the licence? First person is their thang. Hello Oblivion engine.

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But seriously, what did you expect? It's not a PC game (not exclusively), it's not even a DS or Wii game. And it costs more to make than some countries to maintain. It's hardly a surprise they're not doing a niche turn based old shool RPG. That would be just bad business.

Sounds weird.

Yeah, but I think it's actually pretty simple. I believe this whole VATS thing is a variation on Max Payne's bullet time. You normally use real time, and once your APs charge up (which only happens when you don't do anything), you can unleash a targeted shot. It adds a tactical angle, but it's hardly Jagged Alliance ;)

And let's look at the bright side. Stop calling it "Oblivion with guns". Call it "post-nuclear Deus Ex"!

Blargh.

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I think it'll be fine. Really, of all the things to like about Fallout, was the combat system the best? Really?

The article I assume you read made me cautiously optimistic. Yeah, there's still lots of room to screw up, but I'm more worried they'll screw up the style and humor than any new-fangled gameplay. They refined the third person view, and are keeping Karma and Special and lots of choices, so I think it'll all be good.

Stop panicking! Really!

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Does anyone think this system sounds like the one they're using in Mass Effect? Thats the first thing I thought of: Real-time combat that in actuality is as slow-paced and micro-managed as you need it to be, classic RPG style.

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It's hardly a surprise they're not doing a niche turn based old shool RPG. That would be just bad business.

It's not just bad business, it's plain bad design. You can engage a player much more at eye-level, with real characters staring you in the face, than you ever could at some technical-limitation-caused sky-high isometric perspective.

It's really tedious hearing the purists bitch on about this. It's like people thinking that to make an adventure game, you need a verb system, an inventory, and a pointer to scan the screen with. It's just ... wrong.

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There's a reason chess is a third person turn based game, and it's not technical limitations.

I hate it when people say that it's just a design or technical issue and that it's not that important. It's really important. Fallout combat is about tactics, not about immersion or whatever. It doesn't have to be isometric, but it has to be third person. Why? Because you can't make meaningful tactical choices from a first-person view, you don't have the big picture. It has to be turn-based because that's how you do tactical combat. Max Paynifying it doesn't make it tactical, it makes it suck.

Anyway, I fully realize that this comes from my huge disappointment that they've changed what I loved about the first two games. I'm sure they're making a great game, but I'm just sad they had to "overwrite" the Fallout series with their first person crap. And first person isn't crap, first person Fallout is crap. Just you wait.

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whats classic RGP style?

I mean the action appears realtime but actually consists of turns or phases and attacks and actions all of which happen in turn and with a certain degree of probability.

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I agree with Toblix. Top-down views have their place, in a more tactical type of RPG which edges towards the RTS side of the spectrum. NWN2 tried to go all "KOTOR" third person and it was nearly unplayable until a patch allowed the camera to return to the classic top-down view.

But Cagney is right, it does sound like mass effect, which seems to be a hybrid FPS/KOTOR system.

Also like toblix I don't have much faith in Bethesda getting the content right. Seems to me that they tend towards building great RPG systems, with the engine and all, but then stock their world with mediocrity (Bioware in the past have had the opposite approach of limited systems but great content).

Of course, all we can do is wait and see.

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Seems to me that they tend towards building great RPG systems, with the engine and all, but then stock their world with mediocrity

Yep, that looks their current trend. And they are still being praised for it.

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Fallout combat is about tactics

I think you played a different Fallout to me, the combat in the one I played was about abusing the action point system, and trying to avoid your "allies"' continual attempts to shoot your arms off.

(Apart from that, don't you need squads for tactical combat? There's only so much you can do with one guy (as in Fallout) unless you have a really advanced stealth system or something.)

As lobotomy42 points out above, the combat was one of the WORST parts of Fallout. I'm not bothered that it's gone.

It has to be turn-based because that's how you do tactical combat.

Eh? You can do tactical combat however you like. I heard this about X-Com Apocalypse, and the UFO series from Cenega, and more besides. I don't just disagree with it, I honestly don't get what people are driving at here. As long as you include the elements and complexity needed for tactical thinking, and as long as planning takes precedence over reaction time, why the need for turn-based combat?

I much prefer the pausable real-time of the UFO:After... series to turn-based, as it's harder to abuse. I have yet to find an implementation of out-of-turn reaction that isn't unbalanced towards either the mover or the interrupter, and thus possible to abuse horribly.

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I think you played a different Fallout to me, the combat in the one I played was about abusing the action point system, and trying to avoid your "allies"' continual attempts to shoot your arms off.
Apparently.
(Apart from that, don't you need squads for tactical combat? There's only so much you can do with one guy
And even less if you're bound to that one guy's point of view.
As lobotomy42 points out above, the combat was one of the WORST parts of Fallout. I'm not bothered that it's gone.
Good for you. I thought it was fantastic, so I'm disappointed that they've changed it. Hopefully they'll achieve the same amount of tactics and pacing as FO1 and 2, but I doubt it.
As long as you include the elements and complexity needed for tactical thinking, and as long as planning takes precedence over reaction time, why the need for turn-based combat?
Sure, I wasn't really talking (thinking, rather) about "tactical combat", because that's Rainbow Six, SWAT 3, C&C, and so on. I guess I'm thinking more about the pacing. Turn-based combat works fantastically in a lot of games. It's not like the concept has some inherent error that makes it useless. It has its strenghts and weaknesses just like real-time combat does, and for me, turn-based is what I associated with Fallout (less important) and think suits the style, feeling, gameplay and pacing(more important).

As I've said, this is more of a "this isn't Fallout" thing than "this isn't a great game" one.

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I'm also going to side with toblix on this one. I love an RPG when it's done well, but I've never been able to enjoy one done in the first person. Couldn't even take Oblivion for more than a couple of hours. This is due to a combination of things, not the least of which is the forced shallowness of the tactics. It pretty much forces you to become a tank because you can't see behind you or (unless you have a massive multi-monitor display) on your peripherals and need to be able to absorb a ton of damage from those directions while trying to fight something else. Not until a game in can successfully simulate peripheral vision do I think it'll be suitable for true first person tactics. Otherwise I'm looking straight ahead at my enemies and where I would otherwise see their buddies rushing up to attack me I can only see my speakers and maybe a can of coke. Doesn't really seem to allow for the choices that the character would actually have, does it?

Another big issue for me is that noone has yet been able to make first person melee combat feel satisfying to me. For a genre that should really allow you the choice between what type of weapon you want to use, allowing a pick between melee and ranged is a pretty basic thing. Yet every first person RPG I've played has guided you unconsciously over to ranged because the melee weapons have such dicey hit/miss distances and never really feel like they carry any weight. I like to at least experiment with melee weapons in RPGs, and will usually gravitate to a character with a mid-length blade/sword/sci-fi universe x's equivalent. They have a certain elegance to them that I enjoy. No first person RPG has ever made this a viable choice up to this point. (I've been meaning to play Condemned lately as I've heard it does melee admirably. Still, not an RPG, so beside the point.) If Fallout 3 can allow me to pick up a pipe out of a pile of rubble early in the game and make using it as a weapon feel right then it'll have a better chance of being as good as I hope. Still, Bethesda's track record doesn't give me a whole lot of encouragement to think it will be. Hitting things with a sword in Oblivion felt like beating a pinata with spaghetti. And even then having the pinata not react for another two seconds after you hit it. (Me: slashslashslash! Goblin: *pause* OW! *pause* OW! *checks watch* DIE!)

Hmmm... that turned out more rant-y than I'd hoped. You get the idea. First person RPG != fulfilling to me. I'm willing to give Fallout 3 the chance to change my mind, but I'm doubtful it will.

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You just go and play Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos and I'll see you back in a jiffy :grin:

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I'm also going to side with toblix on this one. I love an RPG when it's done well, but I've never been able to enjoy one done in the first person. Couldn't even take Oblivion for more than a couple of hours. ...

Don't agree with you on that rant. The combat system in the TES games isn't even the problem. There could be some improvements here and there.

I've played all TES game. Daggerfall was a major improvement over Arena. Morrowind was a step back, it was quite limited in freedom and a lot of things were simplified. Oblivion was even worse, it has been consolified. It had even less freedom and quite some things were so badly implemented that they might as well leave it out. But the worst thing done in Oblivion was forcing you to complete the main story by annoying you with oblivion gates all over the place.

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And even less if you're bound to that one guy's point of view.

Then just use the third person view and stop frothing from the mouth.

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Then just use the third person view and stop frothing from the mouth.

Whoa.

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While I loved the Fallout combat, I think it's a good thing that Bethesda is pushing it in a new direction, trying to match it better to their vision of what Fallout 3 needs to be. Considering how awfully wrong it could have gone, I think it's a fair compromise to have some real-time components and some sort of turn-based stuff.

And honestly, the charm of the original Fallout combat is looked back upon through some very rose-tinted glasses. It didn't really work at times, like when you got blasted in the back by your allies or when you started combat in New Reno and half the town got chained in to battle by stray rounds, making for some endless turns.

What was fun was focusing on the crotch of that slaver, only to miss and blast his gut clean off, and then looting away after you took the rest of the gang down by pure chance as well. What was fun was getting your ass handed to you after trying to pick-pocket a Bozar off a guard. I think Bethesda can accomplish this stuff, because even though pure turn-based combat is gone, there's still targetting, there's still stealth and there's still a million things we know nothing about yet.

What's been bad about their combat in the past might not even come back to haunt them too much on this project, since Fallout tradionally has had quite a few ranged weapons and number three doesn't look like an exception. Something that is discouraging to me though, is the way the writing and voice acting in Oblivions ended up. If something's going to ruin Fallout 3 for me, it's probably not going to be the combat.

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I'v been thinking about this overnight and I can see both real-time and turn-based combat being interchangable and still working out.

I'm interested to know what Bethesda have done with the idea of hexagonal movement for the world though. Getting in the right place for combat - i.e. optimal range, engaging a target, etc. - was a key part of the original turn-based games. The strategy part was also the most fun aspect of the combat; planning out how to tackle a situation, deciding who to kill first, working out what you could accomplish each turn with the AP you had available.

If Bethesda don't allow people to use turn-based combat exclusively if they wish, then the game will be much weaker for it. And if they've watered down the strategy, by not accurately translating the whole "AP counting" approach to combat (like the original titles), then that's what'll ruin it in my opinion.

In turn-based mode, I would also like to have the option to (automatically?) pull back to an isometric view for combat, with a glowy hexagon grid overlaying the terrain. Pipe dream though I'm sure -- I really should read that scanned Game Informer article now.

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hexagon grid is sooo last gen... it should be a chiliagon grid

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A first look ant fallout3 is up on eurogamer.

Some nice quotes:

It's first-person. There, that's what you came here to find out. But I implore you, stick around for a bit longer. I've interesting things to tell you. (Not least, that it can be played in third-person, even pulling the camera back and up).
The Vault-tec Assisted Targeting System is how Bethesda are going to confuse everyone, especially those who wanted to burn them on stakes for abandoning the turn-based nature of the others in the series. While the combat can be simply approached as first-person shooting, this is inaccurate, and not taking advantage of the elaborate skills you possess. VATS is the love-child of bullet-time and turn-based combat. During a fight you can freeze time, then depending upon how many Action Points (yes, they remain too) you have available, you can zoom in and target specific regions of your enemy/enemies.

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Yeah, stuff I've read in the fucking millions of different previews (what'd they do, organize some sort of Fallout 3 bukkake for game reviewers?) has cooled my burning hate somewhat. There's still lame stuff like the nuke launcher, but the all-important combat may not be the lumbering shit-golem I instantly was certain it would be.

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