Fallout 3

[Wrestlevania]

Let us prognosticate and bicker about the ways it may (not!) suck horribly in here. If you need inspiration, try over here first -- just make sure you post back in this thread.

Aaand... go!

[toblix]

I'm a huge Fallout fan and ejaculate forcefully whenever the word is uttered.

To me what made the Fallout games great was a combination of a lot of elements: The dialogue, the violence, SPECIAL (the character progression model) and the combat system. It seems to me that Bethesda wanted to do "something different", some of them thought Fallout was a cool game and since they had a huge fucking pile of money they just went ahead and bought it, giving them a bit of foundation to build on, and some free hype/reputation.

While I'm sure FO3 will be a cool game, I don't think it will contain the elements I find to comprise the very essence of Fallout. It will contain some, purportedly, like the dialogue trees (although it remains to be seen how good they are) and character progression system. The move to first person, though, is what makes me think they should probably just have gone with a new IP. The new perspective, together with the real-time combat will probably make this less Fallout-y and more action-y. Fallout combat was more like chess. Empirical evidence has shown that when real-time combat is introduced into Fallout everything ends up sucking more. Can Bethesda do this well? Maybe, but probably not.

Of course, these are my opinions, and of course the quality of the game itself is independent of how "well" it continues doing anything at all, but for those who'll see and evaluate it as a Fallout game, I expect to be disappointed.

[brkl]

twmac, regarding the humour thing, F1 had humour as well, and plenty of it. That's not what this is about. F1 was clever and subtle about it, F2 was not. Bethesda prefers the F1 approach.

[twmac]

Yeah I suppose, I just liked some of the out-and-out ridiculous situations.

I've always been a sucker for it in Books and films where all of a sudden the protagonist breaks down the wall between them and the reader. You know, when the character in a film has been playing it straight for ages and then all of a sudden just looks into the camera and appears to acknowledge that there is an audience out there watching them (this is why the awful Christopher Lambert and Mario Van Peebles vehicle: Gunmen holds a place in my heart)

Fall Out 2 did stuff like that and if 1 did that then I missed those moments in more ways than one.

[brkl]

Yeah, that's what they're trying to avoid. Breaking the fourth wall is hard to do well and easy to do too much.

[twmac]

But when done right (or even badly in my case) they are gold.

Just re-watched the reel for Fallout 3 the music playing inside the burnt-out vehicle. If they manage to get that kind of atmosphere into the actual game I really can't wait.

[Wrestlevania]

And what's all this knobbery about the game being first-person only. Balderdash!

Bethesda have made it explicitly clear that you'll be able to position your viewpoint from first-person right up and back to the traditional Fallout isometric view -- and anywhere in between!

Personally, I think being able to pick your targetted attacks in first person in #3 is going to really add to the experience.

[brkl]

Umm, no they have not. Apparently you can drag the camera pretty far back (at least outside), but no one has witnessed an actual isometric mode on Fallout 3, nor has Bethesda even hinted at it. Not that I mind too much.

[BigJKO]

They have said the camera can be pulled up and back far enough that it shouldn't be a problem for the players who want to mimic the old Fallout viewpoint. Pretty sure they're never going to allow to actually go isometric, but Wrestle's point, as far as I can see, is that it's not limited to first-person as toblix implied.

[toblix]

No, sorry about that. I actually knew about the zooming out thing, since it's been confirmed since forever. Maybe I forgot about it or something. Nonetheless the game'll be more fast-paced than before, though, and I can't imagine that being good.

[eljay]

I thought they said it was going to be as fast paced as you want it to be with a user enforceable turn based sort of thing... the VATS system or something.

Also it would be pretty bizarre if anyone allowed you to switch from first person up to third person and then to isometric, since it would have to change how the world was rendered entirely....

[toblix]

Also it would be pretty bizarre if anyone allowed you to switch from first person up to third person and then to isometric, since it would have to change how the world was rendered entirely....

Why? They could just set the focal width to ~infinity and viola, etc.

[Wrestlevania]

I believe the system they're planning / have created is that the further the camera pulls back the more overhead it becomes, until you end up with a decent 3D interpretation of the original series' viewpoint.

So I'm assuming that you'll be allowed to rotate the camera around some arbitrary point to achieve an accurate copy of the isometric view many "fans" are frothing for.

[SiN]

There's no reason they couldn't do an isometric camera ... change the render camera from perspective to orthogonal, fix the angles, and you're done! Honestly around half-a-dozen lines of setup code, but you know, much more to actually make it work.

But does it really matter? What's the difference between "high up there" and "isometric"? Apart from being able to say, "it's isometric, just like the old Fallout games."

SiN

[eljay]

Why? They could just set the focal width to ~infinity and viola, etc.

You want to set a variable in a game engine to near infinity?? madman!

I don't think I know anything about focal width, I thought it was more to do with depth of field and the internet refuses to elaborate on it, I don't believe any game engines have it as a settable property though.

As SiN says, isometric really isn't worth it, it's a constrained viewpoint....

[lobotomy42]

I believe the system they're planning / have created is that the further the camera pulls back the more overhead it becomes, until you end up with a decent 3D interpretation of the original series' viewpoint.

So I'm assuming that you'll be allowed to rotate the camera around some arbitrary point to achieve an accurate copy of the isometric view many "fans" are frothing for.

Yeah, but the developers have acknowledged that the game is not really intended to be played this way. My guess is that actually playing the game will require the "over-the-shoulder" viewpoint.

Which I'm okay with. Really, it all depends on the writing.

[toblix]

Really, it all depends on the writing.

NO!

[Roderick]

What SiN refers to (I don't know if it is with the correct terminology) is that you can change the focal point of the camera to the opposite of the 'fish eye' (where everything is extremely distorted), which then makes it seem like everything is 'flat', giving that isometric feeling of there being no proper perspective. Most 3D software use this mode for modelling, but I can't remember the terms. It's been too long ago!

[BigJKO]

Orthographic View?

[Nachimir]

Isometric?

That's different to the opposite of fisheye though. Wide angle lenses (short focal lengths) create barrel distortion:

The opposite effect is pincushion distortion, created in photographs by long focal lengths:

[BigJKO]

That first picture isn't a very accurate representation of the term. 3D objects viewed through isometric projection have accurate angles and a line that goes upwards, like a building (assuming it's a straight building, of course), would always be a straight up line in an isometric picture. Not sure if what I just typed makes any sense, though..

But yeah, Isometric is all about having accurate angles, 120/30 degrees.. or whatever. As are Trimetric and Dimetric projections.

[DanJW]

Neverwinter Nights 2 lets you swap between an over-the-shoulder "exploration" viewpoint and a top-down "tactical" viewpoint. It took them several patches to get it right though. Still, it can be done.

[Dr.Gash]

Right, an isometric viewpoint suggests fixed values of movement - i.e. the "hexes" of fallout 1 & 2. If Fallout 3 is purported to be an FPS RPG then it's not exactly going to be tile-based is it?

In other words, Bethesda can pull the camera out as far out as they want but the units of movement and accuracy aren't going to be related to the Fallout mechanics we're used to.

P.S. I'm not expressing an opinion about whether F3 is going to be any good, just trying to work through the display and gameplay options in my head.