By Jim Rossignol on June 5th, 2010 at 8:52 am.
I have to admit that Fallout 3 was one of those games that I played a bit of and then thought “well, I’ll come back to that.” I never did go back, and consequently I haven’t done much to follow New Vegas, which is due at the end of the year (and is what a cynical person might suggest Obsidian had been working on when they should have been making Alpha Protocol shine… I’m sure it’s far more complicated than that, of course.) Anyway, it’s a big standalone sequel to Fallout 3, which takes place in and around Las Vegas, which was largely untouched by the nuclear apocalypse. Of course, the landscape remains typical blasted, and mutants have words of advice for you, as you’ll see below. The game is out in “Q4″.
05/06/2010 at 09:10 Tom OBedlam says:
Wow!, its Reboot’s Hand and Slash out of retirement!
http://www.inwap.com/mf/reboot/cast/img/hs.jpg
05/06/2010 at 16:19 Doth Messar says:
Isn’t it Hack and Slash? =P (Reboot yess!)
05/06/2010 at 09:18 Greg Wild says:
What a rubbish trailer :P
Also. Their faces are all messed up.
Again.
FNV’s still on my definate buys list however :D
05/06/2010 at 09:19 Mistabashi says:
Glad to see they’ve added iron-sights. Not so glad to see the same horrible character animations and un-natural faces.
Still, I think the most crucial thing about this game will be the writing and quest design, which isn’t something that’s going to come through in the traillers. Fingers crossed they get it right, I’m happy to accept some of Fallout 3′s shortcomings again if they can improve the overall tone of the game and give me some quests / characters I actually care about.
06/06/2010 at 12:06 LionsPhil says:
It looks terrible, but I agree with Mistabashi: the bit that matters is the bit trailers don’t tend to, and can’t really in any depth, show.
Although the “TURN BACK DANGEROUS FOR YOUR KIND” complete with Oblivion face-O-zoom is not a great starting point, even if not as horrifically cringeworthy as the DE3 trailer starting with “I NEVAR ASKED FOR THIS HURRR”.
05/06/2010 at 09:22 Stromko says:
My best bet as to why Alpha Protocol was poor is that Obsidian just doesn’t have the time, money or talent to design and develop a game very well. They can tell a great story and develop a great world– which is something that Fallout 3 really needed– but core interface, gameplay and stability will probably be worse.
05/06/2010 at 09:46 Pantsman says:
I’ve been an Obsidian apologist ever since KotOR 2, but with AP I may have reached my limit. This time they had the time to develop the game, which means they lacked either the money or the talent. I’d be very interested to see a comparison of the relative team sizes and budgets of AP and, say, Mass Effect 2.
05/06/2010 at 10:38 poop says:
obsidian is the only developer in the world whose games will be less buggy and have better combat on a bethesda engine :)
05/06/2010 at 10:46 Sagan says:
@Pantsman:
At least the team sizes should be fairly easy to figure out. I copied the credits of Mass Effect 2 into Open Office, removed everything below “Director of Programming: Aaron Flynn,” then removed all the duplicates and came to 185 names.
I couldn’t find the credits for Alpha Protocol online, so I just launched the game and attempted to count. I lost count roughly half way through, but I think I would have ended up with something like 120 names.
That should at least say something. Namely both had pretty large teams. But I think some people on the Obsidian team worked on other games at the same time. Chris Avellone for example is listed as one of the lead designers, and he is probably also working on Fallout: New Vegas, so he couldn’t have been on Alpha Protocol full time the entire time.
05/06/2010 at 17:10 Pantsman says:
It’s also likely, though, that some of the Mass Effect 2 team were also working on Dragon Age during ME2′s development. I guess to figure that out one would have to cross-reference the credits of those two games.
05/06/2010 at 17:14 Wulf says:
Of course, Alpha Protocol being ‘poor’ is purely a matter of taste and subjective. For example: from my angle, it’s a good little RPG because it’s not a Casual-Modern EZ Go RPG, which does most of the thinking for the player. I’d be hard to convince too that someone didn’t like it because of the same reason I like it.
I enjoyed Alpha Protocol as a very PC-ish RPG, and I’m looking forward to New Vegas.
05/06/2010 at 19:36 DarkFenix says:
It’s pretty objective that Alpha Protocol is a very poor game from a technical standpoint. It’s also a plain fact that the interface and many gameplay mechanics were built to accomodate consoles.
However, the storyline, general presentation and voice acting were all top notch. This actually leaves me quite optimistic about FNV, since the parts of AP that Obsidian ballsed up are the parts that already exist. Perhaps Obsidian can wrap a half decent story around the Fallout universe (Bethesda sure as hell can’t, they wouldn’t know a story if you beat them around the head with it).
05/06/2010 at 09:32 Jhoosier says:
Hmm, cautiously optimistic.
05/06/2010 at 09:46 Thermal Ions says:
“Fallout 3 was one of those games that I played a bit of and then thought “well, I’ll come back to that.” I never did go back”
Ah, so I’m not the only one then.
05/06/2010 at 14:10 HermitUK says:
Did exactly the same, actually, though I recently went back with the DLC installed and played most of it.
Main issue as with all Bethesda stuff is the crashing. The god damned crashing. Mods can fix game issues (like turning off the autoaim or the Green Bloom), but they simply can’t do anything about the underlying stability. Clocked a good 40 hours on my current save but I’ve drifted away from it primarily due to crashing every half an hour.
Add to that stupid things, like FO3 not using more than 2GB of RAM unless you get a hacked exe, or the fact that multicore processors can make it more unstable since the MC support is dire. Or the fact that it used DirectSound for the Pipboy Radio – DirectSound doesn’t exist in Vista/W7, so you’ll likely find the radio sounds stutter. There’s fixes, but none of them help everyone and some will make the game more unstable again.
I’m honestly hoping Obsidian can do something for the stability of the engine itself – most everything else will be fixed by the modders in 6-12 months. I’m well aware this is a fool’s hope, but I’m an optimist. Plus, there’s a much simpler fix long-term, and it simply relies on Bethesda stopping using the horror that is GameBryo for their games.
05/06/2010 at 14:25 Nova says:
My thoughts were more like “well, I’ll not come back to that.”
Didn’t like it at all to be precise.
05/06/2010 at 19:17 Fumarole says:
I played the hell out of it until I hit the level cap, then stopped shortly after that. And I hadn’t even been to Rivet City yet.
06/06/2010 at 01:49 HermitUK says:
The speed at which you levelled was something of a joke, yes. Didn’t mind it so much for the first five levels or so, but they should have increased the XP for a level up by quite a bit after that. The combat in FO3 needs the exp, much like Borderlands does, to add the motivation. Without it, it’s just a game about pressing the IWIN button and clicking on people’s heads a lot.
Gets even more silly once you add Broken Steel, too. Hitting 30 isn’t exactly hard, and what with the Bobblehead bonuses you can pretty much have every skill at 75+ points without even needing to plan ahead for it. Not saying players shouldn’t be able to go for a jack of all trades, but it would be nice to see some more impressive bonuses for specialising in a few key areas, instead of just being able to turn yourself into a God. Course, most of the DLC end up giving you some silly powerful weapon and/or armour too, which makes combat even more of a joke.
06/06/2010 at 01:52 Vinraith says:
@HermitUK
The levelling is too fast and the enemies too weak in vanilla, but there are literally dozens of mods to fix that problem in various ways. I stand by my recommendations down thread, but changing the leveling rate it trivially easy as it’s just a single value in the mod tools that you can tweak.
06/06/2010 at 16:02 jeremypeel says:
I played through in hardcore stealth, Thief style, and didn’t hit the level cap before Broken Steel upped it. Which was lovely, but also a rarity as I understand it.
05/06/2010 at 09:47 sockpuppetclock says:
They better fix the world hitboxes…. trying to shoot around corners only to find out you hit a 5-inch-thick invisible border around the corner itself is not fun.
05/06/2010 at 09:56 Saucy says:
lol oblivion with guns
05/06/2010 at 10:01 Vinraith says:
@Jim Rossignol
Do yourself a favor, go grab Fallout Wanderer’s Edition, Mart’s Mutant Mod, and the Weapon Mods kit (all of which are conveniently designed to work together) and go give it another try. I liked the vanilla game well enough, being a sucker for open world RPG’s, but it didn’t really shine until I upped the survival ante with those mods. It feels a lot more post apocalyptic when you have to eat irradiated food and drink irradiated water to keep from starving and dying of thirst, have to carefully skirt around enemies that are just plain out of your league, and generally have to put a lot more thought into SURVIVING.
05/06/2010 at 13:37 Antlia says:
@Vinraith
And please do take D.C. Interiors Project with you, because that lifts the mood up by some two hundred percents.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=5573
05/06/2010 at 17:50 Vinraith says:
@Antlia
Good catch, how could I forget DC Interiors? It works smoothly with the other mods I mentioned, and really does add a lot of extra little bits of exploration to the downtown area. There’s quite simply no reason NOT to run it.
06/06/2010 at 05:36 Matzerath says:
I am currently playing with all of the aforementioned mods, and yes, they add an awful lot (including two new lore-friendly monsters, if I’m not mistaken). It’s actually nice to have to run for your friggin’ life once in a while. The raiders still attack en masse, but the enclave actually use tactics, and the super-mutants are just terrifyingly bullet-resistant. Looking at the New Vegas trailer, I can see that it hasn’t increased in difficulty much from vanilla Fallout, which is sad. Also, I hope there are some new foes; it’s not very inspiring to see, wow, MORE super-mutants.
06/06/2010 at 07:17 Matzerath says:
I would also suggest this music-change mod:
Which is basically a lot of Goblin tunes that odd a hell of a lot to the general atmosphere of the game.
Also, there’s an ambiance mod on Fallout Nexus that’s pretty great, though it keeps scaring the shit out of me.
05/06/2010 at 10:03 R.Hippy says:
It was infuriating trying to hit people that were close to you with assault rifles. I kept finding that the gun barrel was embedded in the target and it wouldn’t register hits. And the railings etc. seemed to think they were solid objects even when you could see through the gaps. I pretty much had to give up on trying to shoot without VATS.
High hopes for what Obsidian can do with the world though. I ended up losing three months into Bethesda’s take on it, even if most of the quests were less than wonderful. Also looking forward to hardcore mode. Carrying all of my supplies of weightless ammo and hundreds of stim packs that could be applied at any moment made it all a little too easy…
05/06/2010 at 10:32 Iokanaan says:
what I am wondering about is whether we really need an apocalypse in order to have televisions on wheels.
05/06/2010 at 11:00 Tom OBedlam says:
When I become PM you can be my Science Minister
05/06/2010 at 10:34 Anthony says:
Fallout 3 was one of the very few games I’ve ever sunk 100 hours into, despite the usual issues with Bethesda’s writing and issues with animating the human form.
I’m mostly optimistic for New Vegas.
05/06/2010 at 10:48 Chaz says:
I must admit I stopped playing when I was probably not even a quarter of a way into the game and put it down for nearly a year myself. However when I finally did force myself to get back into it to try and get it completed, I found myself completely sucked into it and spent many hours doing everything and completing all the DLC etc. Once I’d finally finished I must have spent some 200 hours or so playing it, and it felt kind of sad when I finally put the game down for good. It does improve massively when you hit the higher levels and become more profficient at combat, as it makes the fighting much more satisfying. The satisfaction of being able to pop a raiders head with a single shot from a hunting rifle just never got old.
If you do go back to it, then the Brotherhood of Steel DLC is a must buy. The biggest advantage I found of that DLC, as well as the obvious open ending the game and raising the level cap to 30, was that it meant Dogmeat leveled up with you, turning him into an invaluable side kick, as he could tank anything the wasteland threw at you, Deathclaws, Albino Rad Scorpions etc, leaving you to dishout the damage whilst he soaked up the hits. Unlike Fawkes, because Dogmeat’s attacks weren’t that stong, it meant you got the kills and the XP.
This new one looks just like more of the same, which is fine by me as that’s just what I’m after. Also I can’t wait to give the hardcore mode a go, as given all the other weight restrictions in FO3, it felt a bid odd to be able to carry around thousands of rounds of ammo for all your weapons. Although they made mines and grenades count against your weight limit but strangely not missiles and nukes.
05/06/2010 at 11:28 Derf says:
Not impressed by this short trailer. Looks like a Fallout 3 mod, as I suspected all along. Also, the guy is playing it on a console…
05/06/2010 at 11:45 Hidden_7 says:
Despite their shortcomings Bethesda games manage to completely capture my attention when they come out, going back to Daggerfall. I remember when Oblivion came out around exams, I had to have my roommate hide the disc, less I spectacularly fail all my exams. Luckily FO3 came out earlier in a semester when there was more wiggle room.
The idea of combining that open world formula that so captures my imagination with the kind of fantastic imaginative writing seen in Torment or Kotor2, or even bits of NWN2, fills me with an emotion that can only be described as glee. I’m not even a gleeful person, by nature, I tend to be subdued and cynical if anything.
So yes, very much, Do Want this. They could sell it to me with no trailers at all.
05/06/2010 at 11:50 Jimbo says:
It was inevitable that Alpha Protocol was going to suffer as a result of New Vegas. Fallout 3 just sold too well for the follow-up not to be priority #1. Screwing up New Vegas -or missing the release window- would be a disaster for Obsidian.
It’s a real shame though, because AP was the first franchise Obsidian could call their own. If it flops -which seems inevitable at this point- I don’t know if we’ll see them working on new IP again for a while. Mind you, if New Vegas flops then I don’t know if we’ll see Obsidian working again full stop, so they were right to put that first.
05/06/2010 at 13:31 Tei says:
another Obsidian game!… gods must love us a lot, or hate us, maybe both things.
05/06/2010 at 17:40 Rhygadon says:
I’d say definitely both, and I suspect they’re oblivious to us (a la Lovecraft) as well. Being able to embody contradictions must be one of the nicest perks of being a god.
05/06/2010 at 21:37 Hidden_7 says:
Humans can love and hate a single thing. Ambiguity of language lets you get away with all sorts of nonsense and tomfoolery.
05/06/2010 at 13:45 Sidorovich says:
I somehow got it into my head when this game was first announced that it was going to be set in the gritty streets and sewers of ‘New Vegas’. Something Fallout3 never got quite right was the fear of having to go underground. Interiors were too brightly lit and there was nothing that’d make you properly ‘jump’. But this spin-off’s got the same old wasteland we’ve seen a hundred times over. Where’s the new Obsidian??
05/06/2010 at 14:13 HermitUK says:
Vegas is in there but they’ve not shown any of it off yet, as I recall. Last big preview I remember reading in a PCG said the actual city was still heavily under construction. I agree about the underground, too. If they give you a proper torch instead of the silly PipBoy light that’d help. They really should look at some of STALKER’s interior sections, too.
05/06/2010 at 18:20 Lucas says:
Wanted: professional color palette designer.
05/06/2010 at 18:41 bleeters says:
…are those claptraps in that picture? But with guns! For hands!
Oh God, we’re doomed.
05/06/2010 at 18:49 Davie says:
The fact that the guy was on a clear deadline of a minute made it kind of painful to watch. Too much. too fast. And I can see they haven’t done much to fix Fallout 3′s graphical flaws.
Doesn’t matter though. It was a great game despite looking rather poor, so this is absolutely on my buy list. Assuming, of course, Obsidian doesn’t fuck it up like they did with Alpha Protocol.
06/06/2010 at 21:27 The Dark One says:
I think the delayed release for AP gave people a false impression that it was being improved during that time. Josh Sawyer mentioned on the SA Forums that he’d handed in his final bit on work on the game months ago.
07/06/2010 at 00:26 Boldoran says:
I think the guy in the video should talk a bit faster.
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