3321

Technological advancement led to content regression, which is pretty clear.

Also, regarding databases…

Some dwarves would like to have a word with you, and they seem to be shifting ASCII colors.

3322

If only gamers still had the ability to read.

3323

If only developers had EVER had the ability to write.

Edit : Well, outside of the Adventure genre, and a few, notable exceptions.

3324

That’s what I mean by “broken bits”, really.

I think that Bethesda really does have an intended personality for just about every NPC in Morrowind or Oblivion. Unfortunately, you only get a sense of this when hitting one of the non-generic dialog items or when looking at the NPC’s house–there’s often far more effort put into the decorations than there is in the dialog. (The vials of skooma sitting in Caius Cosades’s hut in Morrowind, for example.)

3325

Heh. Yeah, I was thinking of that, too.

Just like you need to look past the ASCII to see the soul of Dwarf Fortress, you need to look past the horrible implementation mistakes to see the soul of the Elder Scrolls games. (Or Morrowind and Oblivion, at least; I haven’t played any of the earlier ones.)

And in both cases, I can completely understand someone not being able to do it. It took me a few tries to get into any of these games.

3326

Are you using the term “index” to refer to a data structure used to optimize search queries, or an alphabetical listing of the entire contents? Neither usage makes much sense in this context.

I only ask because this is, like, the thousandth time you’ve said that.

3327

Eh? I think that’s a pretty accurate description of Morrowind’s dialog. Oblivion added the stupid wheel minigame and actual lines, not many though.

3328

I mean indexes as an index in to an array.

“Which NPC am I? 1. Therefore I will have dialog which belongs to 1” and then 30 different NPCs have index 1.

3329

Well at least 17 years ago people used to try.

3330

Okay that makes sense, though it does require some explaining.

Calling the NPCs “primary keys” would probably be less opaque.

3331

Could be. I don’t program databases though, and nontechnical people can understand ‘index’.

3332

And I say a game can have soul with no NPC’s at all. Would you claim Ico had no soul? Like Ico, the soul of Morrowind was in the world itself. In the sandstorms you endured as you marched through the desert, in the beautiful alien landscape of the mushroom cities, in the floating temple city of Vivec, and the secrets that hid within it. There was a soul to that game, and if you didn’t see it, you were looking in the wrong place.

And frankly, for that matter, when I think back to Ultima 7, what I remember isn’t Shamino, or Iolo, or Dupree, or talking to any of them. What I remember was the world, and exploring it. Finding the hidden sacrificial altars in the middle of the deep forest, the secret items, the cache of glass swords and caltrops. Just like Morrowind, it’s the world that I remember, not the people in it, and sometimes, that’s okay.

3333

It’s certainly the world I remember from Fallout, as well. There were occasionally memorable characters, but the draw of Fallout for me is the setting. And the power armor.

3334

My complaints instead aren’t about the written text, but in the design layout.

Playing the game feels a bit like “seeing” the editor behind. Instead of being ‘written’, it feels like it’s just a mix of pre-assembled parts that all look alike. At some point, very early in the game, you already anticipate all you’ll see past the next corner. Huge world but paper thin gameplay. It’s all about the same few interpolations of the same things.

A big part of it is due to the levelling content, but not all of it. The dungeons were fairly boring and all the same. Where one turns right, the other turns lefts. Big places but thin of not generated content.

That clip from Fallout felt the same. They put a great effort to reproduce the city layout, but it’s all art. With a robot spawning here and there so you can shoot at something. It feels like a walking simulator with weak and disconnected gameplay parts.

Imho Fallout would work best as a survival game in an hostile environment. Where you need to work hard to wade through.

The impression I got, that may be still wrong, is that it looks more like Doom in a post nuclear setting mixed with RPG feats. These games work on scarcity of things. Like Mad Max. Work and fight to find water, work to find fuel, work to find ammo. If you are a walking arsenal the whole soul of these types of games goes to hell.

3335

Oh, I agree. Doesn’t need NPCs – but bethesda’s NPCs suck the soul right out of the game. Soul isn’t a one way thing. And yeah, Morrowind was a lot closer to having soul than Oblivion was – as long as you weren’t near a town or NPCs. I was always convinced that Morrowind would’ve been a great game if it had been a pure dungeon romp instead of pretending to have a world.

And frankly, for that matter, when I think back to Ultima 7, what I remember isn’t Shamino, or Iolo, or Dupree, or talking to any of them. What I remember was the world, and exploring it. Finding the hidden sacrificial altars in the middle of the deep forest, the secret items, the cache of glass swords and caltrops. Just like Morrowind, it’s the world that I remember, not the people in it, and sometimes, that’s okay.

I do agree, but like I said. Soul doesn’t flow in a single direction.

edit: It’s worth noting that while I played and finished Fallout, I don’t carry any special love for it.

editedit: Also, as an exercise, you remember the name of NPCs from Ultima 7. Can you name three NPCs from Oblivion? Or three NPCs from Morrowind? I’m trusting you not to cheat and google.

3336

Another thing about NPCs that worked poorly both in Morrowind and Oblivion is that they are disconnected. To me this is the biggest difference in feeling compared to Ultima 7.

There are an handful of NPCs that may be related to a quest that speak of each other, but for the rest it looks like they are all oblivious to each other. It’s not that the writing is bad, it’s that those characters do not seem to live together in the same world. In Ultima you could visit a town and feel all the people there part of it. In both Morrowind and Oblivion there was a lack of sense of community and truly living people. So they felt like robots.

3337

The main draw for me was probably the dialogue, which was some of the best in any game. I googled this picture to demonstrate.

http://www.nma-fallout.com/fallout2/eggs/lassie.gif

I also liked the range of choices you had in that game. With production values as they are, it’s not really practical to do that these days, but you had a lot of interesting, unique and often strange quests which really set the game apart. They often made you make choices that the ESRB would have seizures at now, like helping out gangs and selling drugs, etc.
The weapons were also funny and interesting in their own right without generally being a teenage male fantasy, something the new Fallout doesn’t really seem to get I think.
That’s why I don’t really expect this game to resemble the old Fallout games. The cost and legal insanity making a game like Fallout implies in this day and age doesn’t make sense. I think Fallout 3 will be a great game in its own right, and comparing it directly to the previous games will only end up in unrequited expectations and misaligned hopes.

3338

The NPCs in Ultima VII should pretty much be a case study in how to make a complete world. They know about each other, and they know about events going on in the world, and they know things related to the plot when they need to… and beyond that, they have personalities, ways of speaking, information that’s custom only to them. Little stories that are unique to themselves.

Basically, Garriott and Origin approached the NPCs in the same way they approached the world. They made it extremely complete, and added a lot of hidden gems which were there to find if you were interested in finding them.

Seventeen. Years. Old.

3339

Also another regression in interactions possible:

In Ultima it was fairly common to have dialogues going on between a bunch of characters, like it happens in reality. While in Oblivion the you-and-me type of interaction is surely more limited and worsens the disconnected feel.

In Ultima you went into a town and had to solve the murder case there. So you went and talked with everyone to gather details. It was about the people, and how they lived together. Not just quest givers or random banter.

3340

A drawn-out Lassie gag is your example of “best dialogue ever”? There’s some funny dialogue in Fallout, no doubt, but that ain’t it. But, again, none of the funny stuff was really all that memorable to me. What I remember about Fallout was the freedom, the monsters, the violence, the satisfaction of shooting someone/thing through the eye with a laser rifle, and the very tangible sense of becoming a far more powerful character as the game progressed.

They often made you make choices that the ESRB would have seizures at now, like helping out gangs and selling drugs, etc.

Yes, I certainly can’t think of any games that let you help gangs and sell drugs in recent memory.

The weapons were also funny and interesting in their own right without generally being a teenage male fantasy, something the new Fallout doesn’t really seem to get I think.

Yeah, the way Fallout 3 is using all the weapons from the old Fallout games is really an indicator of how they don’t get it. Damn kids and their teddy bear gun fantasies.

I think Fallout 3 will be a great game in its own right, and comparing it directly to the previous games will only end up in unrequited expectations and misaligned hopes.

I expect it to be a post-apocalyptic RPG with humor and gore, and I hope it will be fun to play. I do not expect to be let down on either front.