New Fallout 3 Info

[Killzig]

What was so good about the living painting quest?

[Kunikos]

Edit: Both morrowind and oblivion used emergent’s gamebryo engine. Assumedly F3 will also. ME does use unreal, so you’ve got 1 out of 3.

AFAIK doesn’t GameBryo (formerly NetImmerse?) also not provide a 3D renderer? I’m sure that each of those games has had their own renderer technology aside from GameBryo.

[Guido_Jones]

I see a lot of Sig 550 derivatives on the back of the main character in those screenshots. My favorite assault rifle! Me likey!

Pretty sure that’s not a Sig550 (although the foregrip is misleading). The magazine well and stock assembly are wrong. It looks like some type of HK G3 variant, probably a CETME A/B.

Plus from what I know of Fallout history the Sig550 came out way to late to be part of it (late 70’s/early 80’s) while the G3/CETME guns have origins in the late 40’s/early 50’s

[Miramon]

Chiming in on Bethesda art and animation.

I thought their body animations were mediocre in some of their games, but I thought the models and faces were the really ugly part. You can put a decent stylized face on a pretty simple polygonal head, but the texture art for their faces seems to be very weak indeed.

There are some very talented people out there in the industry (we had one at Turbine for a while) who just have the knack for faces. Some of our other artists couldn’t do nearly as good a job, despite being otherwise reasonably competent. I seem to recall, though I can’t find the reference, that some Korean semi-pro fans were able to do a better job on the EQ 2 PC faces than the original pros.

So it’s not necessarily easy to find the right person for the job, but it’s astonishing that a major studio like Bethesda has had to resort to such poor art in certain parts of their games, at least in the past.

That being said, that image Zengonzo posted isn’t nearly as bad as some of the stuff they’ve used in past games.

[Kalle]

revolutionary AI

Err, what? Whatever the hell Oblivion’s NPC’s had to guide their behaviour I wouldn’t call it intelligence

[Sarkus]

Pretty sure that’s not a Sig550 (although the foregrip is misleading). The magazine well and stock assembly are wrong. It looks like some type of HK G3 variant, probably a CETME A/B.

Plus from what I know of Fallout history the Sig550 came out way to late to be part of it (late 70’s/early 80’s) while the G3/CETME guns have origins in the late 40’s/early 50’s

That’s one of the controversies within the Fallout canon. Fallout 1 used primarily generic/unique firearms, though a few were clearly based on real weapons. Fallout 2 added more weapons that were based on real stuff. So, there’s always been a lot of debate over whether real guns should be in Fallout or not.

[Damien_Neil]

Oblivion’s environments are definitely not as distinctive as Morrowind’s were, but they’ve been growing on me.

The Elder Scrolls world is built on a mish-mash of generic fantasy trappings: Elves! And orcs! And…um…vampires and werewolves! Plus demons! There’s enough interesting stuff layered on top of that, however, that it manages to be more a bit more than generic fantasyland.

Oblivion feels a bit like that to me–generic on the surface, but not so bad once you get into things. Plus, the Shivering Isles looks to be distinctive enough to show that they haven’t lost their touch for doing interesting environments. (Admittedly, I haven’t yet seen anything of the SI content other than screenshots; I may change my mind once I get into it.)

Plus, it’s really very nice technically. Trees, lush vegetation, sweeping vistas, and so forth. There’s a bit I just hit in the Knights of the Nine quest where you’re standing high above Cyrodil, with the entire game world spread out underneath you. It feels pretty impressive.

Which is why it’s so odd that the faces are so terrible. (Terrible animation doesn’t surprise me; almost nobody puts effort into animation, it seems. Which is absurd, since good animation stands out way more than lots of polygons or high-res textures, as WoW demonstrates.)

[spiffy]

I’ve never really thought about it, but I wonder how it feels to be that particular animator/artist (or lead, supervisor) who has his work constantly referred to as the worst example possible for face models/animation? Sucks to be that guy.

[Bahimiron]

Compare, say, the environments of Oblivion vs Assassin’s Creed/Prince of Persia series, and it’s night and day.

You don’t even have to try that hard. Compare the cities in Oblivion versus the cities in Morrowind. It’s like after making every city in Morrowind its own, unique setting they gave up and every town in Oblivion is Generic Fantasyville #2A.

[Gordon_Cameron]

They might have felt a bit hamstrung by the lore. Vvardenfell has the mixture of styles (Hlaalu, Imperial, Telvanni, Redoran), whereas the center of Cyrodiil is supposed to be mostly Imperial.

I agree there could have been more variety though. The landscape of Morrowind feels more specific and memorable to me than that of Oblivion. I still think Ald 'Ruhn is one of the coolest virtual locations I’ve seen.

[Sarkus]

Which is why it’s so odd that the faces are so terrible. (Terrible animation doesn’t surprise me; almost nobody puts effort into animation, it seems. Which is absurd, since good animation stands out way more than lots of polygons or high-res textures, as WoW demonstrates.)

I just think it’s because of the whole “uncanny valley” effect. WoW gets away with it because the art style of the game is not meant to be super realistic. Games that are trying to be realistic, like Oblivion, all suffer from the “uncanny valley” facial animations. The possible exception is Valve and the Half-Life 2 era facial animations. And even there you can see flaws.

[Kalle]

That’s one of the controversies within the Fallout canon.

…at this point I’m surprised that I can still be surprised by how insanely navelgazing some people can be.

[scharmers]

I just think it’s because of the whole “uncanny valley” effect. WoW gets away with it because the art style of the game is not meant to be super realistic. Games that are trying to be realistic, like Oblivion, all suffer from the “uncanny valley” facial animations. The possible exception is Valve and the Half-Life 2 era facial animations. And even there you can see flaws.

Mass Effect did a kick-ass job.

[Damien_Neil]

They might have felt a bit hamstrung by the lore. Vvardenfell has the mixture of styles (Hlaalu, Imperial, Telvanni, Redoran), whereas the center of Cyrodiil is supposed to be mostly Imperial.

I’m really curious to see where they take the series next. Someplace more unique than Cyrodil, hopefully.

[Arbit]

I liked the Morrowind faces. It was refreshing to see a fantasy game where everyone isn’t either a super sexy model, square-jawed warrior, or a fat bartender. Morrowind had some exotic looking and just straight up ugly people, and that was nice to see.

[TurinTur]

Oblivion’s environments are definitely not as distinctive as Morrowind’s were, but they’ve been growing on me.

The Elder Scrolls world is built on a mish-mash of generic fantasy trappings: Elves! And orcs! And…um…vampires and werewolves! Plus demons! There’s enough interesting stuff layered on top of that, however, that it manages to be more a bit more than generic fantasyland.

The Elder Scrolls is a bit mish-mash of generic fantasy, agreed, but the execution itself it was pretty rich and interesting and well realized. I read a good amount of books in Morrowind and was amazed with all the detail and weird stuff: from the gods, to the death rites, to the peculiar cultural festivities to the internal conflicts, the stories about crazy monarchs, etc etc etc

[Damien_Neil]

Right, that’s what I was trying to get at: The Elder Scrolls starts out as generic fantasy, but is actually fairly interesting once you get past the surface layer. The Altmer and Dunmer may look like generic elves, say, but they have some pretty original cultural stuff going on.

Oblivion’s landscape feels like that to me–generic on the surface, but with a bit more depth to it.

Oh, and agreed about not liking super-sexy faces. I don’t like the face-replacement mods for Morrowind, since they tend to turn the place into the Island of the Supermodels. That’s not an improvement.

The problem is that Bethesda doesn’t really do a good job of making convincingly ugly faces, either; they’re just technically not very good.

[Grifman]

Pretty sure that’s not a Sig550 (although the foregrip is misleading). The magazine well and stock assembly are wrong. It looks like some type of HK G3 variant, probably a CETME A/B.

Plus from what I know of Fallout history the Sig550 came out way to late to be part of it (late 70’s/early 80’s) while the G3/CETME guns have origins in the late 40’s/early 50’s

That “shotgun” they have looks like a Soviet submachine gun:

PPD-40

[Foxstab]

Right, that’s what I was trying to get at: The Elder Scrolls starts out as generic fantasy, but is actually fairly interesting once you get past the surface layer.

Kind of like Baldur’s Gate?

Since you insist on keeping this thread rolling, I’ll pour some gas onto the fire.

The guys in the office are very hardcore gamers who play a lot of things like RPGs, we play action games, we play sports games, we play everything, board games; and so, you know, our target audience is us, you know, so who’s the model guy outside the office? And I say, he’s the guy who goes to the game store every week and goes “what’s cool?”, you know, that’s who’s we’re making the game for.

So Bethesda is making a FPS to court the DOOM clone lovers.
Fallout 3 will rock for sure! GG

P.S.
Does he even have a clue what a hardcore game is? Does most of the Internet at that?
Halo != Hardcore, FYI.

[Mehrunes]

I’m petrified.