Yeah, I know making a Fallout 3 topic on a games board is like making an evolution topic in Just Chat but I can't help myself.

I just played the original Fallout games this past summer, and I'm actually really looking forward to FO3 (this from someone who doesn't look forward to games that often). There is bitching all over from people complaining about how they're going to ruin the game when they haven't even shown us really anything from it. Sure, the storyline and world probably won't be as good as the first two but the gameplay looks solid and it looks pretty good too. Plus it has Dogmeat, so how bad can it be?
Of course maybe the fact that I've only just now played Fallout 1 & 2 have something to do with the fact that I think it'll be OK. Most other people have these glorious childhood Fallout memories and feel that anything else is a sacrilege. Anyone else actually want to play this game and not castrate the developers before it's even out?

I haven't really played the first two, but that Bethesda (who brought us the Elder Scrolls world) is making it shouts "EXCELLENCE" to me, and nothing else.

I played what they had up at PAX, and it was pretty consistently awesome. You SHOULD be looking forward to it, even if you've never played the Fallout series before.

...and I thought I had an ironic sense of humor!


I'm not a fanatic gamer by any means, so I will gladly agree, there's something to the sense of nostalgia that makes games better with age. I'm being healthy and taking this into note when I voluntarily disregard personal feelings towards the previous two titles before I play this game. It is my hope that others can reconcile this to their own ends, and my even greater hope that this game will be endearing enough to make doing this an easy task.

I'm frightened. Looking at the difference in quality between Oblivion and Morrowind, I think it's unnervingly likely that a similar jump will occur between Oblivion and Fallout 3.

?

Shlim, was that jump positive or negative in your opinion? Could go either way in your post...

Yeah, i'll have to lean towards what Razzle said, the Fallout 3 demos and what they showed was pretty cool.

You can build a teddy bear cannon. Teddy. Bear. Cannon. You read that right. That alone will make up for 10% of the awesome.

Teddy Bear Cannon? I want to play this game!

Negative jump, in my opinion, n00ser. You see, they focused on the graphics so much that they failed to introduce even remotely as much actual gameplay in Oblivion as there was in Morrowind, and I find it likely that they'll do this again.

Still, I'll probably end up getting it because it does look cool. I'm just concerned that it won't be as good as the previous games.

The game will fall short of my expectations. But then, it's being made by Bethesda. *Mourns for Black Isle*

When considering Fallout 3 it is best to ignore the opinions of NMA folks. Also speculation is a really fruitless forum endeavor.

That said, from what I've seen the game could go either way. If it's just oblivion with better storytelling I will probably be happy, but from interviews I've seen with Todd Howard (1up had a good one) it looks like they do, in fact, "get" Fallout, and understand how it is a different game design from elder scrolls.

I don't really get all the Oblivion bitching - to me Morrowind was an utterly broken and unplayable game. As delightful as it could be at times, and as superior as its art direction was, I never could get very far in it. Oblivion created an immersive experience that I could actually play and have fun in, despite all its shortcomings.

Morrowind was far superior to Oblivion. Sure, it was less advanced, but it will take you much, much longer than five minutes to get everything possible out of the game. In Oblivion the guild storylines are pathetically easy and short, and there's like four of them, plus a main storyline, and when you finish them there's no reason to keep playing beyond killing monsters, so what's the point? In Morrowind there's three guilds, three houses, two religious orders, plus the Imperial legion, and a main storyline (all of which are very long), plus things like the artifact gear that is scattered all through the map.

Wow, this definitely went over a lot better than I expected.
All I can say is I hope Fallout 3 comes with delicious recipes in the instruction manual like the first two did.

I wasn't referring to the amount of content (and I played Oblivion for 100+ hours in total and still never finished all the story lines - by comparison I had about 20 hours into my Morrowind archer/swordsman before I broke my save completely through the overzealous use of mods) so much as every time I start Morrowind I immediately feel like I picked all the wrong skills and want to start over because there are 500 of them and a bunch are worthless. And then I fall into some horribly boring dungeon. Completing quests is tremendously frustrating sometimes because people just give you general directions that are occasionally completely wrong so I would move onto another quest and then when I wanted to go back to the previous one oh hey look the journal is useless. Also combat is basically horrible and, while Oblivion's still wasn't that great, it at least elevated it enough so I could find some enjoyment in it.

The best thing that ever happened to me in Morrowind was when a wizard fell out of the sky with a bunch of scrolls of +1000 to acrobatics. Sadly, that's the only thing like that in the game.

Both games suffer from the same design flaw that I hope bethesda doesn't bring to Fallout 3: the optional main quest. I have to laugh every time someone tells me the main quest being optional is a selling point. It wouldn't matter if it wasn't so lame.

Fallout was the first CRPG I ever played where I felt I could really roleplay without limiting my options, and being driven forward by a story was loads of fun because I could complete it however I wanted (to some degree) and it was actually interesting and compelling.

Whereas the Elder Scrolls quests that I did were more limited in scope and approach, as well as their ability to make me give a damn. (Though Oblivion often did okay at creating some free-form situations.)

Heh, it's funny being told why Morrowind is so much better than Oblivion in such a way as presents a picture of the teller knowing more about Morrowind than the listener.

No game will replace Morrowind in my heart; Vvardenfell was my first love, and Mournhold and Solstheim made me the happiest person alive. I agree the depth of Morrowind is slightly more, but it sounds like you were waiting for Morrowind 2, not Oblivion. My sympathies.

That said, you can have just as much fun in Oblivion, with a better combat system and without all the annoying s### about Morrowind. And based on your standards of grading, adding official expansion packs brings it more up to par with Morrowind. If Bethesda does as well as they did with Oblivion, then Fallout 3 will be a solid game.

I am near the end of Fallout 2 for the first time, which I went and got after I heard about Fallout 3 coming out, and it is truly a masterpiece. It will be difficult to top it with Fallout 3, but even if it isn't as good as Fallout 2 it will probably be a great game. It's a super-cool setting, a beautiful game engine, and it's being made by a very competent company. Too bad Black Isle isn't around anymore, though. Anyways, it'll probablhy be totally dope, and hard-core fans will think it sucks. What's new.