It’d be fair to say that Fallout 3 is my… *counts on fingers*… fifth most anticipated game of the year, and I’ve actually largely been avoiding the coverage so that I can hit it fresh. Anyway, I couldn’t help but to have a look at this most recent trailer. I didn’t want to be disappointed: I know it’s the world and the RPGishness that will make it for me, but I am rather disappointed by the gunplay shown here. It’s the way the enemies do an “oh I’ve run out of hit-points” and fall over dead, that kills it for me. They need to be getting visibly battered by a torrent of lead, I need physics! Anyway, the environments look suitably derelict, and that missile-launcher is spectacular. Hopefully there will be enough awesome for this game to still be pleasing when we could to do that obligatory “games of 2008″ round-up in December.
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The funny thing is.. with Fallout and Fallout 2 the text descriptions of the combats actually fill in the details that the animations could not provide at the time. “You hit MOB131_X in the face for 121 points of damage, gouging out its eyes,” was strangley statisfying. Fallout 3 seems to be pointed at the illiterate market, and the combat seems sterile as it lacks either descriptive text, or entertaining physics.
Presumably you think combat descriptions should be auto-generated and displayed above your enemies’ heads? It’s a pity we have to lose out on the Wildean wit of “gouging out its eyes”.
We should keep a run list of examples of Fallout 3 Derangement Syndrome.
P.
I don’t see a problem with the physics. In reality guns don’t make people fly backwards either (only in bad western films).
I’m also more interested in the story/characters. But I do agree the character animation lacks behind, which also was the case with Oblivion.
But Oblivion did have a lot of good quests which kept it interesting even after 200 hours. Unlike Mass Effect which had totally uninteresting sidequests.
garren: My point is that the Angry Internet Men (NMA division) are so desperate to find things to hate about Fallout 3, that instead of providing huge itemized lists of things not exactly the same as Fallouts 1 & 2, they’re complaining about things that are actually the same. Ironically, often the exact same things that they were claiming were changed/ruined previously.
Anyway, while the game is first-person, it’s definitely more of an RPG than it is FPS. A lot of the combat is meant to be played in pseudo-turnbased formate (see VATS), which does provide a lot of the visceral impact of the original games.
For those who want to wander the post-apocalyptic wastes, and fight battles that end the moment one side scores a single solid hit, there’s always STALKER and its prequel. This is something else, though.
I know it’s common enough knowledge that the 360 version has leaked out into nefarious piratey hands, and while I haven’t played it myself (the thought of chipping my thrice-replaced-already 360 fills me with terrible dread… plus, I’m not the piratey sort), the general response from those who *have* is positive.
It ain’t an amazing looker, but neither were the first two for their time. What I have heard is that it’s a very solid ‘proper’ RPG under that externally actiony shell.
“Presumably you think combat descriptions should be auto-generated and displayed above your enemies’ heads? It’s a pity we have to lose out on the Wildean wit of “gouging out its eyes”.”
I wasn’t implying high wit, simply text filling in detail. Yes I rather liked the little text display in the corner in Fallout 2, it reinforces the RPG ness of the game.
The point is, if the detail isn’t there visually, the text helps you imagine the combat, and gave you a reason, beyond simply killing the enemy, to use the targeting system.
But, hey, simplicity has its place too. I was just hoping for an RPG.
Who knows, maybe the game will be the best thing since sliced bread. Unfortunatley, its just looking a bit thin at this point.
Well, to be fair here ‘realistic’ physics would be pretty close to what you’re seeing here. Getting hit by a bullet produces almost no visible reaction in people. The ‘equal and opposite force’ is the recoil of the handgun, which simply knocks your hand back a few inches – that’s the equivalent force that the target ‘feels’. You guys have bought into Hollywood effects where someone is hit by a bullet and flies back 10 ft and does a flip. :)
That said, these animations and physics are horrible. I’ll wait to see the reviews hit the net before deciding to buy.
:/
And what happened the the shadows? Are they turned off on the 360 version because it can’t handle it? Please tell me the PC has shadows at least.
Oh, a related little fact: The game was originally going to have a Deus Ex style skill/accuracy system, where the higher your skill in a given weapon, the tighter your aiming reticule and the less recoil you get.
Unfortunately, this meant that when you were untrained in a weapon, you’d pick it up and bullets went everywhere but where you’re pointing, which made people whine and throw tantrums, so they’ve changed it to only having a partial effect on accuracy (although more pronounced when using VATS targetting), but lower skill in a weapon will affect your damage output.
Hence, if you pick up something like a minigun without any Big Guns skill, you’re going to be making a lot of sound and fury, but signifiying nothing – or at least, signifiying that you’re about to get your face eaten by a post-apocalyptic mutant superbear as your woefully underpowered shots ping harmlessly off its hide.
Oh, and from watching (unofficial) videos, I can safely say that the game DOES have superpowered mutant bears, and they can and will mess you up terribly. I’ve seen players torn down in two hits by them.
“UncleLou: Surely by that argument all fp games released before a certain stage are no longer effictive at drawing you compared to modern games because they lacked the tech for Realistic getting shot flinching or Realistic physicslol”
No, not at all. But that things in the past were different doesn’t mean developers should ignore the progress. If they try to sell me the game as some sort of FPS/RPG-hybrid, it better look like one, and don’t have animations and AI of yesteryear.
All I am doing is measuring the footage by the standard Bethesda have chosen for themselves. If they insist on showing me first- and third-person sequences again and again to market it, I am not going to compare these sequences to Fallout 1.
I just realised your post might have actually referred to the part of my post you didn’t quote. :)
It’s my “level of abstraction” theory, basically. Old games still can be absolutely immersive, I am not saying each game must look like Crysis, far from it – it’s the incosistencies that worry me. On the one hand, you have a very detailed, modern 3D environement, on the other hand, animations and AI look severly lacking.
It’s a bit like voice-acting. A game with hardly any voice-acting and a few repeating speech-bubbles for NPCs like, say, Fallout 1 , is fine. As is a game with full voice-acting and a presentation like Mass Effect.
It becomes a problem if you mix different degrees of abstraction – say, a character in a detailed first-person game with voice-acting, who stands there and repeats the same line again and again, just like NPCs of old repeated the same speech-bubble appearing over their head. The latter is ok, the former is an immersion-killer, as it doesn’t fit the world.
Compromises have to be made, of course, but that’s essentially what I meant when I said FO3 looks a bit half-arsed to me.
@tukken
I’m confused. It clearly states ” is crippled” a number of times in that video. Do you wish it said something more specific? ” was gouged”?
That didn’t come out right. Should say “ some body part is crippled.” Also, I said a number of times but it seems to just happen once.
Can we please call a moratorium on the “blood spatter on camera” effect? It’s getting a bit old.
coreyw: On top of that, there is a clear animation/response when enemies suffer critical hits. They do get knocked around by them. Fatal critical hits tear off/shatter whatever body part it was, or (in the case of more exotic weapons) melt, dissolve or vaporize the target.
I have been watching streams of people playing the game (after the leak some time ago) for more hours than I care to admit, and the broad picture it has given me has taken me from quite warily looking forward to the game to putting in a preorder. And it is that same long view that makes the gripes expressed in these comments entirely inconsequential in my opinion; when you are actually playing the game (or watching someone else in my case) the fun of it all is such that you won’t stop to think about whether or not someone fell back realistically because you are still trying to get over how the guy’s head exploded. And just to speak to the “Oblivion with gun” comments; I found it somewhat amusing how similar it seemed to be to Oblivion at first, but that feeling wears off quickly and it really has a feeling all its own. The animations aren’t the greatest, but they’re more quirky than they are irritating and you eventually stop notice that about them as well.
Have Bethesda attempted an FPS before? No? Would explain much. ‘Tis a shame, because Clear Sky was ultimately a minor disappointment… and much as I love Stalker SoC, I’m near the end of my third full playthrough, and likely won’t touch it again for a while.
@Chis :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyNET#SkyNET ? :p
Doesn’t look like much to be honest. The mechanics behind it look like they’ll just serve to frustrate and annoy me.
@plant42: There’s a difference between asking that enemies (unrealistically) fly across the room due to the impact of (unrealistic) ballistics, and asking that enemies actually respond to being riddled with gunfire – like, in pain or something, anything. I mean, Uncharted approximates enemy response so much that it just seems like cosmetics most of the time, and it still looks far, far better than this.
Of course, enemies didn’t react at all in Oblivion, so why should they here?
But they DO react! I’ve seen several hours worth of gameplay, and there are very distinct pain animation reactions to being hit in any of the key body-parts. There’s no physical response to general impacts, but criticals are pretty damn common, especially with automatic weapons. I’ve seldom seen an enemy survive an entire fight without taking one crit, which usually has enough of a stunning effect to let you deal the killing blow.
The Trench Warfare video is pretty bad for anything other than ‘Here’s a power-armor/minigun rampage’ purposes anyway. Check out the other ones on Gametrailers.
Wait, a handgun can blow away your enemy’s face, but a rocket just makes them fall down? Something is amiss!
You guys oughta buy tissues or something, all i heard is tears from you. Since when does aesthetics matter? So what if it doesn’t have this or that engine.. Fucking just play it and stop expecting the next coming out off all the games. I think this is a very fine game. And the fall lineup still looks amazing. Far Cry is going to be really well made as is Fable, left 4 dead, and dead space.
One of my favorite things in Fallout 1&2 was the animation & sounds for burst firing someone to death… Which appears to be very blah in this video. I guess “immersion” killed it. Unless some modders are able to do some amazing shit with this game, I’m not even gonna touch it with a fucking 10-foot pole.
This game looking like a walking abortion surprises absolutely no-one.
I don’t know if I’m watching the same video as other people, and when other people talk about what is and isn’t Fallout, I wonder if I’ve played the same game as these people as well.
All the FO3 threads on RPS have brought back strong memories of schoolyard arguements about how many colours the Mega Drive and SNES could display at once.
For those who haven’t seen… http://prepareforthefuture.com/
@yhancik:
I remember both Terminator FPSs and enjoyed them a lot. But have Bethesda made an FPS since then?? Future Shock – good though it was – was released thirteen years ago!
I must confess I forgot that Beth made them. Been a looong time since I’ve played them…
Reply to Chris
Call of Cthulhu Dark Corners of the Earth
Reply to people talking about animation
Sure they could have spent an extra six monthes on the human animation. But this is a game where that same level of detail would have to be given eleventy hundred types of mutants, giant scorpions, tanks with humanoid torsos, bugs, children and so forth. It would have taken another six years of development.
Yes the engine isn’t the best, but do you know what’s more jarring than a duff animation? Frame rate stutters at a crucial moment.
Also I only just played Fallout 1 and 2. Did nae fancy it, repetitive and over simpliefied combat, no meaningful party control in battle, highly disposable characters (the only reason you can do what you do to them is that there’s no real depth or consequence), illogical puzzles (buying the one rope from a guy in a village you aren’t meant to have been to yet in order to climb into a hole), average music and no real atmosphere. Compared to Baldurs or Anachranox it doesn’t come out too well.
Stop being so precious and let the game stand on it’s own legs. If those legs are crap then by all means rip it apart, but at least try letting it walk.
@Bhazor: Bethesda didn’t make CoC:DCotE; they only published it.
Also, “buying the one rope from a guy in a village you aren’t meant to have been to yet in order to climb into a hole”? There is no “you aren’t meant to have been to yet” in Fallout…and one might have the logical response that, if you encounter a hole into which you can’t safely descend, it might be time to go look for rope.
I have yet to experience an event in gaming more satisfying than a critical bloody mess in fallout1/2, and that is some tiny isomorphic 2d sprite. 3d is supposed to be better, but a fallout that changes a fundamental feature of the gameplay and takes itself WAY too seriously, cannot really be part of the “legacy.” F3 will still be a good game, but it saddens me when I have to advise people not to ruin it for themselves by playing fallout1/2 before hand (play them after). I will return again and say: if I get more satisfaction out of blasting a 2d sprite into a bloody rib cage than I get out of 3d fps like combat, something has gone terribly wrong (consoles maybe?).
“takes itself WAY too seriously”
So it is not you or the NMA-aligned crowd, but rather the game, that is taking things too seriously? Gotcha.
Bhazor: “illogical puzzles, average music and no real atmosphere”
Are you fucking serious? Especially those latter 2 damned points just boggle my mind!
ahh i preordered this, tis looks rather. err rubbish. il wait for pc gamers review, than cancel my order only if they say it isnt very good,hmm my high hopes are dropping.
Hehe, don’t worry overly much guys. I’ve been playing that leaked 360 version of the game for two weekends now. Lemme tell you a story. I came over to my friend at 2pm this saturday, and excluding a break for pizza we played straight until 5:30am.
Now, first worry you all seem to have, story and characters. Yes, animation is so-so. Voice work is top notch, as is the writing. We laughed out loud on many, many occasions. Quests are far more than the old fetch-quests, and they’re rarely as simple as they first seem.
Case in point, at one time you’re investigating the deaths of two people in a small town besieged by a gang of criminals. I won’t get into details, but it turns out they have kidnapped the victims’ son. We were playing a speech-heavy character, and managed to talk our way past the gang guards, finding out as we went along that there was more than meets the eye.
After talking to the leader for a while I literally told my friend, this evil bastard needs to die. Let’s rescue the kid and go home. Then it all turned around, and we ended up happily allying with (and becoming a part of) the gang.
Sound evil? Not in the least, let’s just say we got a lot of good karma.
Now, VATS. It’s not a gimmick, it’s a resource. Using it sparingly and strategically is key to winning without taking too much damage. The enemies move around far too much to effectively be put down in real-time.
Any other questions, post em and I’ll gladly do my best to answer. =)