Sarkus
3301
I’m hoping the various retailers that get them are forced to give them away in some sort of pre-order drawing. However, I know that isn’t likely to be something Bethesda forces them to do.
Why? Beth$oft would just IRRETRIEVABLY DESTROY THE FRANCHISE!!
Yea that bit was quite good. Pity it went downhill from there.
Page 110 - Table of Contents
I think you just created a singularity.
Sarkus
3308
Angie,
I couldn’t find the thread where you talked about the “Twilight” books (though I suspect it was this one), but here’s a funny link:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/entertainment/2008075490_twilight270.html
HRose
3311
The problem with Oblivion’s faces (and probably Fallout), is not because of an awful artist or animator. It’s because that thing runs on a purchased engine and all those faces are generated.
It’s not uncanny valley or whatever. It’s just that generated stuff always looks terrible compared to a piece of art carefully done by an artist. In order to have thousands of characters in Oblivion they had to generate all that randomly. The tradeoff is that it looks like crap, made worse by the fact that they used photoshopped real pictures instead of art to do it sooner as well.
I saw the Fallout clip from E3 and was not impressed (but then I’m not a fan of Bethesda). The engine stuttered badly and the world felt rather fake. The few combat scenes were badly animated and the gameplay looked rather bad too. The good parts are about the style. The intro, the inventory tool… But it really looks Oblivion with another skin and very poor first person shooter action.
Morrowind had a godawful combat, Oblivion had an acceptable one, but with godawful AI so that all fights were the same (and boring, without any depth). Fallout seems to fall in the same problems. Good atmosphere, but probably feeling too fake and with bad gameplay. It’s a kind of game, like Oblivion, that amazes you the first hour you play, then it’s just a long interpolation of the same. And you get that bad feel that it’s all just randomly generated.
Nothing is ever completely generated. The basic shape and textures for the heads and faces had to be created by someone – then they get modified via parameters. But that doesn’t excuse them being bad, at the very least, if you had the original parameters, the heads and faces should still look good. And they don’t.
Fallout seems to fall in the same problems. Good atmosphere, but probably feeling too fake and with bad gameplay. It’s a kind of game, like Oblivion, that amazes you the first hour you play, then it’s just a long interpolation of the same. And you get that bad feel that it’s all just randomly generated.
Well it’s a bethesda game, I don’t know why anyone expects anything other than a bethesda game. They have yet to put any soul in to their games, it’ll be interesting to find out if a purchased setting will have the soul they lack so much in their other games.
From what I’ve heard from various people who have seen dialogs/quests and also the longer hands-on previews, the flavor is significantly improved from Morrowind/Oblivion. I agree with you guys about the combat though, looks just as bad as their previous efforts.
It looks as though they have very elaborate set-pieces for action, too, but I haven’t seen them being used to interesting tactical effect.
Does anyone have a video or preview that suggests otherwise?
I agree with you guys about the combat though, looks just as bad as their previous efforts.
Not to pick on Killzig of all things, since he seems like a swell guy, but if my friends don’t spray me in the back with lead or dive into the deadly arc of my minigun I’d consider the combat of this game an improvement. As long as there’s not too much of it, because clearing that goddamn tanker in San Franciso was annoying as all hell.
Well, weak combat remains weak, whatever the old goalposts. If it can continue to produce an interesting setting to make up for that, we’ll just ignore it. But merely being improved wouldn’t in itself make the combat enjoyable. It’s a very different style of play.
Killzig
3317
Sounds like this is going to be a more solitary experience. Only one NPC in addition to Dogmeat and it sounds like they’ll be pretty transient. If it’s as much like Oblivion as it sounds I think most people will end up flying solo.
I disagree with this. I think there’s plenty of soul in their games. The problem is that there are also broken bits that can overwhelm everything else, if you let them.
I can’t really disagree with Charles.
On the other hand, your average NMAer will say that the new Bethesda stuff is crap and that Bethesda’s not been the same since Daggerfall. Whereas I’d say that Arena and Daggerfall were both unmitigated shit.
I liked SkyNET, though.
Charles
3320
I don’t think any game can have soul when NPCs are simply indexes in to a database. Oblivion fixed it, partially. But generic replies for every NPC just kills any sense of a real world.
Ultima VII had unique dialogue for every named NPC in the game. That was 17 years ago.
