What utter rubbish. [/quote]
C’mon, cousin. It’s just an opinion.
This was a hoot, though:
Fallout has some of the best art direction ever seen in PC gaming.
Like I’ve said before, I loved the first one and took to it like a morphine addict. Both of them are transcendent examples of how to properly create atmosphere, from the stained-up dog-eared guidebooks that come in the box, to the mournful blues music on the gritty vinyl, to the well-fleshed-out vault dweller subculture. And yeah, yeah, I know there were some cool towns and bases, my hyperbole in the previous post aside. But honestly: the Fallouts, like the Jagged Alliances and Arcanum, were most assuredly NOT pretty.
No offense intended, for sure, but that doesn’t make it less rubbish. It’s just an argument.
Both of them are transcendent examples of how to properly create atmosphere, from the stained-up dog-eared guidebooks that come in the box, to the mournful blues music on the gritty vinyl, to the well-fleshed-out vault dweller subculture. And yeah, yeah, I know there were some cool towns and bases, my hyperbole in the previous post aside. But honestly: the Fallouts, like the Jagged Alliances and Arcanum, were most assuredly NOT pretty.
I was talking about the art direction, not necessarily the quality of any given tileset on any given map. The art was, and still is, really good - look at the whole interface, built up as a valve driven microcomputer. Look at the lovely claymation heads (and they’re a lot better in F1 than F2). Look at the cheesy retro greenscreen Pipboy with the Bomb screensaver. It has class running all the way through it, and it’s consistent with its source material, as well as being individual. But, it’s a combination of that and the other stuff you mention above that make it great. I can’t believe you compared it to Arcanum, which looked, and still looks, altogether like a sack of shit, with little personality, despite the game being fair to good. The JA series has competent graphics, but they’re not in the same league of coolness as Fallout.
Yeah - I suppose I’m of the opinion that opinions about aesthetics are just different, person to person, rather than one person’s tastes being rubbish when compared to another’s. But that, too, is just an opinion.
I was talking about the art direction, not necessarily the quality of any given tileset on any given map. The art was, and still is, really good - look at the whole interface, built up as a valve driven microcomputer.
Well put - art direction, as manifested through overall presentation, was damn near flawless. ALMOST flawless - if only they’d spent a little time on those environments! AND MORE CHROME!
And - opinion/rubbish time - I thought Arcanum was equally well done. The interface didn’t have the continuity of the Pipboy, but they did a good job of capturing that steampunk/Victorian thing, and the subcultures with the interactions between the races and their gods was fleshy and delicious.
I think the two main components of Fallout were the story and the atmosphere, and I think they would both be ruined by the MMO transition. The story, because it’s impossible to have any sort of compelling narative without a protagonist, and it’s impossible to have a true protagonist with thousands of players all trying to be that protagonist. And even if the world looks just like the world in the first two games, the atmosphere will still be ruined by all the people and their constant chatter. a/s/l?
I don’t think this will succeed unless it departs radically from the usual MMO mode. Something like the private adventuring system used in Ultima X would be well suited to an online Fallout game: essentially, a cooperative/competitive party-based game without all the attendant crap (i.e. 99.9 percent of the other people playing). A crowded post-apocalyptic world would just be goofy, wouldn’t it?
Well, my real point was that the concentration of people that usually comes with these games would work against the basic premise of a Fallout MMO. I don’t want to play an after-the-bomb MMO that’s packed to the gills with people.
Another way to handle this would be to keep the “massively”–but also have the players massively spread-out–and I mean miles and miles away from each other. (The problem with this is that the game world would have to be, well, Earth-sized.) Basically, everybody’s a survivor and the idea is to stay alive (make or find food and weapons, for instance), and ultimately to find other people, form communities and fight off atomic mutants or whatever and, eventually, other communities. I could get into a game on that scale.
Chrome is the antithesis of the post-apocalyptic realm. Rusted, beaten up, bullet-riddled corrugated metal is the proper choice.[/quote]
Balls. In the post-apocalypse, there will be a surplus of chrome and a dearth of humanity and pimped-out low-rider 1978 Caprice Classics to use it all up.
According to the Post-Apocalyptic Aesthetic Authority, “…all things shall be mostly chrome, except those things that are stainless steel or black high-impact plastic. Rust and corrugated anything and dead grass and derelict toilets in the yard are tolerable for a reasonable time period after the apocalypse. Thereafter, CHROME IT UP!!!”
I’m telling you, you don’t wanna get sideways with the PAAA.
No thanks, I’ll stick with my sawn off, one armed leather jacket and the nitrous unit for my wheels.
Speaking of which, why aren’t I able to play some kind of lovechild of Car Wars, Autoduel and Battlecars*? Perhaps with a little Morrowind-esque freeformity thrown in for good measure. And no, not an MMORPG. I don’t want my post apocalyptic hijinks spoiled by the bastard public. That goes for any kind of Fallout Online too.
Honestly, publishers these days have no idea what people want, and by “people”, I mean “me”.
Games Workshop’s mid 80s ZX Spectrum rip off of Car Wars. A fantastic car designer and three maps!
I think to change text and images they’d have to have text and images to change. There’s no real indication that Interplay ever got beyond some concept art, is there? My guess is Interplay is thrilled to get $2M out of this because that’s $2M more than they ever would have seen otherwise.
If there’s patent trolling is there also IP trolling?
