You don’t envy Bethesda.
I’ve said this before, but the nagging question is why they’d take up this particular poisoned chalice of post-apocalypse role-playing anyway. “A new game by the makers of Oblivion” is a much bigger story to the gaming mainstream than “Sequel to old PC game you haven’t played”. Hell, the “3″ even risks alienating people who’ve never played (or heard of) the original, dismissing it out of hand – there’s eighteen year old PC Gamers who’d have been six when the thing comes out. Even putting aside that, the friends it buys you will brook no compromise. The Fallout fanbase epitomised by the cheery souls of No Mutants Allowed, having had a decade to stew over disappointment after disappointment, are openly fanatical. As much as they’d protest it, no-one can see them accepting anything Bethesda would produce.
A Fallout licence gives you… what? A post-apocalyptic world. Make your own up and save yourself the hassle of dealing with friends who hate you and strangers who look just at you strangely.
So why do it?
Well, three reasons come to mind.
Firstly, I could just be wrong and Fallout is a much bigger deal than I thought and that little Pip-Boy is a key to a world of infinite money. I don’t think so.
Secondly, Bethesda may be as dirty fanboys as the NMA guys. It may just be as simple as plain lust for Fallout, the plain desire to write a sequel to a game they think is brilliant. This sort of things strikes even the brightest creative minds – look over at Comics, where there’s a strata of some of the medium’s brightest minds whose most heartfelt desire is to have a shot at Superman. They’re insane, and if they had any sense they’d be doing their own thing… but that they don’t have that sense means that it’s done as an act of devotion. This is actually a good reason to give a damn about Fallout 3. People working on something that’s genuinely invested in, on average, leads to better work.
Thirdly… well, one of the major worries about Fallout 3 from even less fanatical fans is that they don’t believe Bethesda are capable of wrestling with the actions-and-consequences aspects that have traditionally been involved in a Fallout Game – they’re fine with multiple mechanisms (Assuming they get the experience system right), but the payoffs are limited. Just as key is their limitations as creators of fiction – while they’re good at verisimilitude and a sense of place, the fiction – dialogue, plot, whatever – of the Elder Scrolls have been merely acceptable at best throughout. This has lead some people to think that Bethesda, by definition, can’t do it. Thing is, by buying Fallout 3, they cover their weaknesses. They don’t need to create a world from whole-cloth – they have an inspiring world. They don’t need to work out how people act and talk – they have a game which shows the interactions between individuals and whatever. Buying Fallout actually acts as a crutch for Bethesda’s traditional faults.
Or maybe there’s something else. I’m still thinking. It’s already clear that Fallout is going to be one of those games that is talked to death by everyone. At the moment, we’re just looking at screenshots, listening to interviews and guessing.
For example, the closer-to-action first-and-third perspective has been slammed by purists (”Slammed by purists” is a phrase I’m going to have to excise from coverage of Fallout 3, just to save space. Presume until otherwise mentioned that any feature of Fallout 3 has been slammed by Purists, because it almost certainly has been)… but it’s going to lead to a far more tactile relationship with the world, the idea of it actually as a place. STALKER managed an interesting take on a post-apocalypse world this year, but in terms of the amount of space and the back and forth key to a more true-RPG structure, you’re going to get more of a world. Hell, by cutting down the cast size from Oblivion’s sprawl, it should be a more convincing world than the Fantasy – few people doing more interesting things have been promised, and is what’s needed for any kind of post-apocalypse game.
Then there’s the combat system, where we see Bethesda seemingly trying to compromise between the turn-based tactical pace and the demands of a first-person game. The game pauses, you call your special shots until you run out of the rechargable action-points, then set things going, with you playing until you earn enough timer. This is one we’re going to have to get hands on with to get a sense of. As Hellgate showed, what works in a third-person can feel completely artificial when first-person. It certainly has the potential to marry the worst of both real-time and turn-based worlds. Conversely, if you were of the more optimistic bent, you could note it recalls Space Hulk - which worked well, albeit in a more distant, tactical-wargame than the immersiveness which Fallout 3 promises.
It’s hard to call. But when they talk about looking at something as sublime as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road for inspiration, you have to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Ultimately, this pre-match discussion is a little pointless. We’re all going to play this. Fallout 3 looks set to be this year’s most controversial game. We’re going to play it, if only to have an opinion to shout on forums, at friends, at enemies.
You don’t envy Bethesda. But you certainly hope they pull it off.
Related Stories:
Nick, consolification is another name for “dumbing down for the masses”.
…and that’s why pc gamers worries when a game is also developed for consoles. Not because we care or not if they will be also in other platforms, but if our pc version will be “streamlined”.
Yes, I am aware of that, I’m a PC gamer ¬_¬
@Turin and Nick
Speaking as someone whose PC would suicide at the sight of Fallout 3 and who will almost certainly play it on the 360, I resent the term ‘dumbing down for the masses’, the preferred term is ‘mob’ or ‘proletariat.’
Joint platform develop doesn’t necessarily lead to a lack of depth, sometimes it leads to gameplay streamlining in true sense. Bioshock seems the best, and possibly most contentious, example.
Well I can sort of unserstand why Bethesda are making changes as they are damed if they do and damed if they don’t either way.
I see the scenario very much like that of The Secret of Monkey Island which like Fallout had two games with the original creators connected. When Ron Gilbert left Lucasarts there were two more sequels released that tried to live up to the game and even go 3D.
Fans generally liked that sequels though most MI fans preferred the original 1/2 games & still hope to this day that Ron Gilbert will somehow get the Monkey Island IP back into his hands and do a “true sequel”.
The same I’d say is true for Fallout, even if Bethesda went all out with a complete clone of the original games and it was PC only there would still be those who say close but no cigar.
So that’s the way I see if your going to do it you may as well put your own spin on it and let it stand on it’s own too feet (or fall).
As for the console factor I don’t see that as being an issue at all the Xbox/PS3 are just as technically capable as any high end PC so it’s just a matter of getting the UI right & quite frankly on the PC or console I’d rather have a streamlined/simple but effective UI rather than a cumbersome and complex for the sake of being complex UI to make the game feel more immersive.
See also: Bryan Singer.
Fallout’s combat system remains one of the best things about the first two games (and should have made for a brilliant Tactics game, but something about it just didn’t quite click.). But you do have to understand how it works to build your character effectively for it. You want 10 AP, almost unquestionably. You need to pump at least one combat skill immensely. Probably guns of some sort in the first one (probably guns you can actually get in the first half of the game). Fallout 2 makes the egregious mistake of forcing you into the Temple of Trials in the opening, which almost requires you to take melee or unarmed. On the other hand, you can make it a long, long way into the game fighting with a sharpened spear, as long as you build right. Probably you get a melee weapon sooner or later that you can make it the rest of the way with – I lost that build in the transition between computers and actually finished Fallout 2 with something a little more sniper-oriented.
It’s why I was very excited to hear about VATS. But we’ll see how well it actually works, of course.
A quick counter-point about “dumbing down for the masses”: Complexity is not the same thing as depth.
Making a game more complex does not automatically make it better.
@ cullnean: Yes, I realize, hence my use of the words ‘precise schema’
Lain: point taken
I find the prospect of a true post-apoc RPG game rather compelling, but despite my love for them at the time I have to say I find the setting and gameplay mechanics of the fallout series rather quaint these days. I loved the unrelenting grimness of Stalker, I didn’t entirely buy all of the mutants in it (bloodsucker being the most notable) but I’m more inclined to accept them than the 10 ft bogey green mutants in the recent fallout 3 screenshots tbh. There was a lot of cheese in the original games, that was all part and parcel of the games format and the time, but is well past it’s sell by date these days. In the same way we groaned at Dukes recent reappearance I fear we might also end up doing the same here.
I don’t agree with that at all – Duke Nukem has a lot of 1980ies action hero cheese which might indeed be past its sell date, but Fallout is a lot more subtle than that, and not really tied into any trends of the 1990ies. It has a unique mixture of over-the-top violence and razor-sharp dialouges that qualify as timeless, in my opinion.
I feel sorry for Bethesda. There’s nothing stopping Fallout 3 from being a true classic, but because they want to, y’know, put in a 3D engine and downplay the turn-based combat in order to make it actually sell some copies, rabid narrow-minded fans are ready to firebomb their offices and curse the game.
I loved Fallout (Fallout 2 nearly as much but I can’t forgive it for that bloody stupid Temple of Trials) and if I wanted more turn-based RPG goodness, I’ll play it again. Bethesda can’t release a 1998 game in this day and age, it just wouldn’t sell. So let them make a great modern RPG rather than try to recreate RPGs of old.
Which leads us to question No. 1 – why, if pretty much everything changes, call it “Fallout”?
And I never quite understand the “rabid fanboy” argument. If the next Halo was a 3rd-person platformer, most fans of the series wouldn’t be too impressed. I am not sure why it’s expected from fans of turn-based isometric games to be enthusiastic when the mechanics seem to get changed drastically.
The “rabid fanboys” argument is the same as the “Fallout 3 will be shit” argument, only at the opposite end.
“Lou says:
I don’t agree with that at all – Duke Nukem has a lot of 1980ies action hero cheese which might indeed be past its sell date, but Fallout is a lot more subtle than that, and not really tied into any trends of the 1990ies. It has a unique mixture of over-the-top violence and razor-sharp dialouges that qualify as timeless, in my opinion.”
I’m referring yo the whole premise/look of the games not just the dialogue. Back in Isometric land it made sense to have big sized bad guys because of the nature of the game, directly translated into 3D it looks kind of tacky & lame.
Because turn-based isometry is “outdated” and we should have moved on by now. Obviously.
But the thing is, as much as I’d rather have a turn-based isometric Fallout 3 like Van Buren looked to be, I’m more than happy to settle for what Bethesda’s doing. It wasn’t realistic to expect them to go turn-based or isometric. That’s not their style. And they’re pretty much the nonlinear open exploration RPG kings right now, so they’re one of the best possible choices to receive the license. (Not that I wouldn’t have liked it to go to Troika, if they’d stuck around, or Obsidian, but I don’t think that was a very likely scenario – neither studio is or was rolling in the cash, as far as I know. And that was what Interplay’s primary consideration was, I feel damn sure.)
“But the thing is, as much as I’d rather have a turn-based isometric Fallout 3 like Van Buren looked to be, I’m more than happy to settle for what Bethesda’s doing. It wasn’t realistic to expect them to go turn-based or isometric. That’s not their style.”
Of course – I just find that everyone who utters some doubt or scepticism is immediately labelled as a “rabid fanboy” who doesn’t realise that “things have moved on” etc. – by people who are actually much the same as these rabid fanboys. There’s something like a middle ground.
Van Buren had the right idea: please, Bethesda, give us both forms of combat. The effeminate, blouse-wearing turn-based combat for those hairy-buttocked D&D players that masturbate over stats for hours. And real-time head-stomping/gunslinging/etc for the rest of us that have fucking lives to live.
(Yes I do watch Zero Punctuation)
“That’s not their style.”
Yet that’s the style of the game they chose to develop. They could have adapted their engine to make a game that looks more like Fallout than TES, but instead they did the opposite.
And I never quite understand the “rabid fanboy” argument.
i once felt as you did.
and then i understood.
Fallout 1 and 2 are on my list of games to play in 2008. I’ve got them ready, in fact, and looking at the first hour of gameplay makes me feel quite optimistic about the next however-many-there-may-be. In the same week, I also played STALKER for the first time, and there’s a really nice emotive link between them. The flavour is the same – slightly dark, lonely, and with an aftertaste of fear.
Fallout 3 seems like a nice idea. I don’t think it’s what everyone would want Bethseda to do – it doesn’t really count as something ‘new’, but maybe it’s as close as we can hope for for a company so large – but I think it’ll turn out ok.
I believe it’s been mooted about that Troika’s dispersal is a direct effect of their failure to secure the license. As in, they had publishers willing to keep funding them- if they got the license.
Which is a bit like someone stealing your wallet then coming back to kick you in the nads for good measure.
“And no, I didn’t play the originals (10 minutes with the Fallout demo in ‘97 which culminated in getting killed by a dog doesn’t count).”
Hey, that’s my experience (down tot he death, even) of Fallout.
Huh. I sure wouldn’t describe my experience of either Fallout as slightly dark, lonely, with a taste of fear. I’d describe it as goofy hilarity with an undertone of what’s been lost in the wake of catastrophe. I may find shooting people (and/or plants) in the groin to be slightly more amusing than I should, though.
Tactics tried offering both turn-based and real-time combat modes. The end result was that neither one worked satisfactorily. (So did Arcanum, for that matter, with similar results.)
And yes, there are legitimate doubts to be had about the direction Fallout 3 is taking, particularly if one didn’t enjoy Oblivion (I did, very much so, although it did need a fair bit of modding to get there.). But there sure are a lot of people who seem willing to judge the game to be shit long before it’s come out or even seen more than a few sparse previews.
I’ve got a decent amount of faith in Bethesda when it comes to Fallout. As was mentioned above, you can say a lot of things about ‘em but they’re not lazy bastards who’ll deliver a half-finished game, nor are they bound by a publisher to deliver on time. Seeing as rushing a game out is what ruined many, many good RPG’s over the years (like KotOR2 and everything by Troika) my main worry is somewhat comforted.
Personally, I don’t give a rat’s ass about what the super mutants look like, they had only a handful of models in the original games and after that everyone’s imagination of what they looked like from a ‘human’ viewpoint was different. It’s also utterly unimportant, in the scope of things. Dialogue is also not a thing of worry, the focus of the Elder Scrolls was a huge world and joining every damn faction in existance, Fallout is largely about proper interaction so they’ll put the focus more on that.
What worries me is the thing mentioned above; consolisation and its impact on the interface. Oblivion’s interface was dreadful, the inventory system and statistics screens a Combat system on their own and character creation pained me. Am I the only one who doesn’t like spending 45 minutes trying to stretch, skew and mold a character’s face with those creators, and still ending up with someone that looks so alien it could scare off Ellen Ripley?
Anyway, my point is, if someone just had the brilliant idea of attaching a trackball mouse and small keyboard to the next-gen consoles, I could sleep easy at night.
My point is not that the game should be isometric like the originals, just that a direct translation of the originals games stylings doesn’t suit the 3D engine format. By going with the licence they’ve hamstrung themselves in terms of the look and the feel and it’s overblown. If they’d developed a franchise free Post -apoc game things could of been a bit more measured.
The choice of perspective and the combat mechanics will stand on their own. Either they will work, be fun to use and intuitive, or they wont. Whether they compare to the original Fallout games will be irrelevant if it is a good system. Certainly the more real time closer to the character view is the common method for rpgs now, the isometric one being less popular. If it is done well it could give the game a great flow and be a lot of fun.
I haven’t really liked Bethesda’s previous games myself but the developers have been saying the right things in interviews, (scaled spawns were mentioned as being out in one interview I saw which is reassuring) I think it is virtually impossible to tell one way or the other. I just hope they make a game with some depth in terms of narrative and keep the character and witty aspects of the originals.
Hell, the “3″ even risks alienating people who’ve never played (or heard of) the original, dismissing it out of hand
Maybe they should release it as Fallout VII. For hundreds of thousands of gamers, Final Fantasy VII was their first encounter with the series, and it sold gangbusters. It also snatched a portion of Nintendo’s userbase, as the fans who had been playing the Final Fantasies since the NES followed the developer (Square) to the Playstation.
Not saying the games have much in common, beyond “big sequel in RPG series with fanatically loyal fanbase,” but hey. Square sold FF7 to more new gamers than FF1 owners.