miffy495

Fallout 3

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To be honest, I'm seriously torn between getting Fallout 3 and Far Cry 2 at the moment. On the face of it, Far Cry 2 sounds more unusual and divergent, but I think Fallout 3 - for any number of reasons - is perhaps too important to miss at launch. There are already a dozen or so minor spoilers in this thread alone that make me want to play it urgently--before everything's out of the bag.

That's probably the right order, for spoiler-related reasons. I highly recommend both though. I'm playing through them sort of simultaneously--maybe an hour or so of each in a given night, or a few hours of one of them. There are some common thematic threads (perhaps amplified in my mind due to my constant back-and-forth between them) but the execution is quite different. Somehow they work well to complement each other, or give me a break from one or the other when I need it.

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Cheers, Chris.

Mrs V picked up a bargain copy of Fallout 3 this afternoon as it happens, which I'm really looking forward to playing. Just need my 360 to hurry up and get back from Germany! (That's where the European repair/refit centre is, you see.)

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Well, I was up playing the intro sequence until 3am last night. So at the very least, I can't complain about the game being engaging!

Some things I liked:

  • The e-mail to the overseer about the GECK - this restored some Fallout creds for me
  • Liam Neeson
  • The hacking mini-game
  • Dialogue! And dialogue options!
  • Stepping out of the vault and seeing Washington D.C. - My hometown! - was awesome. I wish more games were set here.

Some things I didn't like:

  • Combat, as a whole, sucks
  • I find it really hard to figure out all the places I can go. Even in the Vault sequence, I got to the end and thought "Did I miss something?"
  • 1st Person Controls on consoles are so difficult for me...yet 3rd person view is ugly

So far, I'm liking it!

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Yeah, I agree with everything that's being said here. ie:

It's very obviously the Oblivion engine hence;

Animation and combat sucks. Luckily;

VATS works much better than I thought it would. It still doesn't make it anything like the old Fallout games though, as "choose a body part to shoot at" is not exactly strategic.

Dialogue and setting are great though, with lots of lovely little details.

Also the SPECIAL system is much more fun than the elder scrolls jump-grinding method.

How exactly does the hacking work? I couldn't get the hang of that.

Actually I think this might be the best hacking minigame I've seen. Basically, choose a word from the big mishmash of 'code'. If you guess wrong it will tell you how many letters are correct, which will help you with your next guess. Number of guesses depends on your science skill I maybe. Think of it like a game of Hangman.

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Basically, choose a word from the big mishmash of 'code'. If you guess wrong it will tell you how many letters are correct, which will help you with your next guess. Number of guesses depends on your science skill I maybe. Think of it like a game of Hangman.

Sounds more like late 70s classic Mastermind to me. :erm:

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Hah, yes, best beard selection in ages. Shame the hairstyles are all a bit lame.

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Bit OT, but the beard comment reminds of the old 'Santa is a sytem admin'

1. Santa is bearded, corpulent, and dresses funny.

2. When you ask Santa for something, the odds of receiving what you wanted are infinitesimal.

3. Santa seldom answers your mail.

4. When you ask Santa where he gets all the stuff he's got, he says, "Elves make it for me."

5. Santa doesn't care about your deadlines.

6. Your parents ascribed supernatural powers to Santa, but did all the work themselves.

7. Nobody knows who Santa has to answer to for his actions.

8. Santa laughs entirely too much.

9. Santa thinks nothing of breaking into your $HOME.

10. Only a lunatic says bad things about Santa in his presence.

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Speaking of beards and the like, I was delighted at the hilarious choice of beards (and their descriptions) you have in Fable 2. Quoted one of 'em in my sig.

Is Fallout 3 already in discount?

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Is Fallout 3 already in discount?

No, just some healthy launch day cannibalism by a massive UK retailer. It's probably jumped backed up to full price now.

Wrestlewatch Update: My 360 still hasn't arrived in the post. Come on, Microsoft! :frusty:

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I'm about 14 hours in, and so far I really really like it! I am big fan of the originals - and having followed the sometimes hillarious sometimes depressing way of discussion over at No Mutants Allowed - I was rather sceptical. But minor details aside - I'm overwhelmingly very happy with Bethesda's execution. Sure some things could be better - but the athmosphere and the execution - I cannot imagine a better fallout-sequel being made at this point. There is no way Interplay could have done something comparable to this. So several thumbs up from me.

Also - as discussed above - having talks with friend also playing it is very very cool - as it highlights how different you can go about this game.

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Not sure how many hours I've played (steam doesn't seem to log it for some reason), but I'm also liking it very much. I even kind of like the combat, although the mix of real-time and turn-based is somewhat awkward. In some situations it works out well, though:

I ended up in a room with only one way out and 5 radscorpions on the other side of the door. My character is pretty weak --focusing on speechcraft and science-- so those scorpions would have surely killed me if I'd have to fight all of them at the same time -- I was having trouble with even one of them earlier. But luckily I had ammo and the combat system allowed me to do this: open door, take a few shots at the scorpions, close door, wait for AP-s to fill, repeat. One of them got inside during this, but I managed to survive somehow.

My main complaint so far is that most characters don't have much new to say once you complete important quests, like

disarming the bomb in Megaton. I would have expected at least some reaction from the Church of Atom. There seem to be a few bugs as well: I looted Leo's drug stash, but the objective remained incomplete and later I found Leo hanging around there.

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I'm about 14 hours in, and so far I really really like it! I am big fan of the originals - and having followed the sometimes hillarious sometimes depressing way of discussion over at No Mutants Allowed - I was rather sceptical. But minor details aside - I'm overwhelmingly very happy with Bethesda's execution. Sure some things could be better - but the athmosphere and the execution - I cannot imagine a better fallout-sequel being made at this point. There is no way Interplay could have done something comparable to this. So several thumbs up from me.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Whenever I try and think of a "better" Fallout 3, all I can think of are slight tweaks or changes I would have liked to see on this take. This game feels like the legitimate extension from its predecessors, which is something that surprised me. To be honest, it's probably more faithful to the franchise than anything Interplay would have done at this point!

Also, this game is totally addicting. I keep putting off real work to play it. Goodness, I could play this game for days and never get bored.

And

I hate the fucking fire ants

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Well, my (new) 360 arrived in the post from Germany yesterday. So I finally got to fire up Fallout 3, having restorted to flipping through the manual repeatedly over the weekend in impatience.

I've only played up until the point where you first venture outside. But, for a 3D version of what I've experienced of the Fallout series, Bethesda's game definitely feels "right" to me also.

There's one thing that's slightly bothering me, though, about the escape sequence:

Must you kill The Overseer in order to progress? I may have accidentally removed his head with a point-blank pistol shot... while his daughter was watching...

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There's one thing that's slightly bothering me, though, about the escape sequence:

Must you kill The Overseer in order to progress? I may have accidentally removed his head with a point-blank pistol shot... while his daughter was watching...

No. I didn't at least. I killed the guard there with him, and then I talked with him, and just left him there.

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Erk, I wasted nearly a dozen people making my exit... ;(

Edit: Argh, dammit! Too annoyed at myself for the inadvertent rampage now. So, in true Fallout fashion, I'm going to reroll my character and start again--instantly making this a perfect Fallout conversion for me. :grin::getmecoat

Edited by Wrestlevania

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Heh, well done. I've only just started doing some more main-questy stuff. I'd managed to get 8 hours deep into the game without talking to Moira at Craterside Supply yet. Feels kinda silly doing her tutorial stuff at this point, but XP is XP, so who am I to complain? Besides, seems like some of the items she gives me for running missions will make it more than worth it anyway. Ugh. It's now 4:53 in the morning. I should really turn this off and go to bed. Stupid awesome game...

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While Moira's quests can feel a bit questy (quests for the sake of quests) I like how they are framed - sort of putting the player in a role akin to Ford Prefect in HGTTG - doing research for a survival guide...

Oh, and Wrestle - I'm curious as to how little killing you can do to get out of the vault? I imagine a lot of sneaking might do it - I'm not sure you can talk you way out of many of the encounters....

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I think I only met two guards in the corridors, one of them I sneaked past, the other I killed.

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I don't think you can pull off sneaking unless you've wasted all your initial skill points on the sneak skill itself, and unless I'm mistaken you can't talk your way out of combat as they appear as enemies not NPC's. You might be lucky to avoid them by chance, and if you run outside of the Vault the last two you meet won't pose a threat, but other than that it was shoot, or be shot for me. I didn't kill the overseer mind, I just left him there standing like a dork. Hopefully we meet again, especially now I have a minigun.

I cannot imagine a better fallout-sequel being made at this point. There is no way Interplay could have done something comparable to this.
Maybe I'm alone in thinking this (here at least), and perhaps I'll come off as some angry internet man who is complaining for complainings sake - but I just don't think Fallout 3 is anywhere near as good as it could have been if we are talking about it in terms of Fallout 1 & 2.

If we are discussing it as the sequel to Oblivion, with an atmosphere and tone similar and somewhat faithful to the original Fallouts then yes; it's very successful, and very good. But as a true sequel to Fallout 1 & 2 I completely disagree because as great as Fallout 3 is; its greatness isn't analogous to the originals. It barely touches upon what made the originals so brilliant and to my mind does literally nothing to advance the genre. These are games 7 or 8 years old, basic even in comparison to something like Baldurs Gate 1 & 2 which amongst other things featured NPC relationships. Fallout 3 is a great game, but not in the way Fallout 1 & 2 were great games and certainly not in the way I'd expect a sequel of those to be great.

...I wonder also, cynically, whether the lack of focus on the RPG and dialogue elements that was extremely prevalent pre-release was a concious effort to lower expectations? Anyway, can't stop, got to go out and buy some tin foil for my new hat.

That's right Remo, waterproof. Just try and piss on me now!

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I think I only killed one guard on the way out. The first guy gets taken out by radroaches and the rest you can sneak past or run away from.

And I hung around outside the overseer's room listening to him interrogate his own daughter, but he never knew I was there. At the vault door I had to apologise profusely for not saving her.

I'm on the last chapter of Moira's questline, and if nothing else it has been great comic relief. "Mines are terrible, awful weapons that can lay dormant for years. But the great thing about them is it's easy to make your own!"

Besides the main questline it is Moira's breadcrumbs that have been leeding me around the worldmap.

Talking of the main quest line, I urge everyone to play it up to the point where

you find your dad

. There is a superb Twilight Zone style quest called "Tranquility Street". It reminds me of the best Dark Brotherhood quests in Oblivion. I'm going to ease off on the main story now though, as I've heard the game ends when it does.

One thing I like about the game, which is common to both Fallout and Oblivion, is the living world random-event possibility. A couple of times now I have found dead bodies of named charcters in out-of-the-way places. Who were they? Who killed them? How long has the body been here? Where did they get this awesome rifle which I am now taking for my own?

I can only answer the first question by replaying the game from the start (which I will do with a thoroughly evil character - my current vault-dweller is a reluctant hero, but it didn't take long for Free Dog to start praising him on the airwaves and then Talon Company to come after him).

Cigol, not that I'm disagreeing with you, but what would you expect from a true Fallout sequal? Is it just the combat system? Or something about the storytelling? I'm interested in the specifics of what you started to say.

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