[Dough with Fish]

Sorta, anyway. The good folks over at NMA released the Van Buren tech demo that Black Isle was working on before they got the axe. Go download and see what might have been.

[brozozo]

Wow, thanks for bringing this up. I've always wondered what Fallout 3 would have been like if it was developed by Black Isle.

[Ace]

The sad thing is I got more enjoyment out of this little 'what if' demo than I probably will from Bethesda's upcoming tragedy. Let's face it any design team that thinks that Oblivion's minigames are balanced or at all logical needed to be shot in the head. Let alone the "all players from level 1 should access all content" rule which means no potential conflicts or plot-paths, and no character progression. Oddly enough Shivering Isles had a few actual choices, but the damage was done.

[diceman111]

The sad thing is I got more enjoyment out of this little 'what if' demo than I probably will from Bethesda's upcoming tragedy. Let's face it any design team that thinks that Oblivion's minigames are balanced or at all logical needed to be shot in the head. Let alone the "all players from level 1 should access all content" rule which means no potential conflicts or plot-paths, and no character progression. Oddly enough Shivering Isles had a few actual choices, but the damage was done.

I must agree I just hope that they dont Oblivionize Fallout but stick to it the way Fallout 1 & 2 was especially in terms of levels and such (You can complete Oblivion on LVL 1 and its easier then if you lvl), dont get me wrong I liked Oblivion but it did do of things wrong (the levels for one thing, no Levitation magic was another) so fingers crossed and lets hope Fallout 3 turn out really good.   

[Raven2001]

Im still holding my hopes up...

I didnt like Oblivion that much, BUT I have faith bethesda will do the right call on Fallout. Well see

[Prophet]

Only Bethesda games I have tried are Morrowind (+bloodmoon), Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth and Oblivion (+Shivering Isles). I have liked them all very much. So I have faith in Bethesda. Fallout 3 will be a good game, above average I'd say. But I don't think they can meet the expectations of the raving Fallout fanbois. Poor Bethesda will be butchered.

[Raven2001]

What your forgetting to mention is that those fanboys are a bit on the loony side

I mean, left to them, fallout3 would be fallout2 with a new story... the world evolves

[phatosealpha]

Find me a freespace fan who would have freespace 3 be more then freespace 2 with more content, and I'll think that's a sign of a loony fanbase.

Eh, you know, Oblivion was OK, not great, just average, and Morrowind was a quivering mass of  boring gameplay and piss poor system implementation.  Fallout's were twinkable to great levels, but Morrowind was just plain ludicrously broken.  And the conversations....oh jeeze.   Morrowind turned everybody in the world into wikipedia, and Oblivion was canned repetitive dialog to the max.

Given their track record, I'm not inclined to expect a wonderful game from them.

[Raven2001]

You said the forbidden words!!! BLASPHEMY!!!

Seriously now. I consider myself a freespace fan, and I wouldnt mind for instance, a freespace 3 with near newtonian physics (ala starlancer, freelacer, for example)

And cant speak for Morrowind because never played it. But I found oblivion extremely tedious.

However, im willing to give them the benefit of doubt, like I always do... the worst case scenario is that the game will suck, and I wont buy it (yes, im actually going to buy it if it is good ).

[redsniper]

Starlancer and Freelancer didn't have newtonian physics, not even close.

[Raven2001]

thats why i said "near newtonian"

[redsniper]

not even close.

[Ace]

I think Raven means something like BtRL, which has sliding and 'rotational slide' added.

Anyway, as for why Fallout 'fanbois' want FO3 to be close to FO1 and 2, let's face it other than some GUI tweaks and a few skills being tweaked the old games were fine. This Van Buren demo to me would have been a pretty good game in the end once the combat system got tweaked.

If Obsidian was making FO3, I wouldn't worry... but the last good plot Bethesda wrote that was directly in the game (i.e. not books adding nice depth to a what seemed on the surface a tepid, cliche'd, plot ala Morrowind) was Daggerfall. I don't even trust their ability to have continuity considering how much of Oblivion contradicts things in previous games, and that's in their own universe.

Designing a heavy roleplaying game does involve a bit more than 'pretty grafix!' and 'I can ride a horsie!' Now don't get me wrong I like Oblivion for some elements of its gameplay (namely the dungeon delving) but it is sorely lacking in most gameplay mechanics.

Now using SPECIAL will fix a lot of that to begin with, but I'm worried about what "improvements" are going to be made to the skills when they thought it was a good idea to have 'Blunt' weapons include Axes...

[Prophet]

We get it! You don't like Oblivion! But some people actually think it's a good enought game, especially after some creative modding. We will just have to wait and see if Bethesda, "the demon who unleashed to curse of Oblivion upon the world", has learned from the fan feedback. Let them make the game first, and THEN talk about how they ruined it.

[Eishtmo]

The last time I had faith that a company was going to honor a great series, we got Master of Orion III.

I won't have faith until I have proof.

[Ace]

We get it! You don't like Oblivion! But some people actually think it's a good enought game, especially after some creative modding. We will just have to wait and see if Bethesda, "the demon who unleashed to curse of Oblivion upon the world", has learned from the fan feedback. Let them make the game first, and THEN talk about how they ruined it.

Which is the problem, if you need to have mods for the game to be good then the devs made a good engine but a bad game. Neverwinter Nights 1 was horrid for the same reason. (well Hordes of the Underdark did redeem it...)

But also don't do the knee-jerk "ZOMG! J00 HATES IT!" response. I have Oblivion the plugins and expansions. If anything my opinion did improve somewhat due to Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles. (after it plummeted with the first "official plugins" which if anything lowered the quality of the game) The problem is the sort of strengths that a dev team needs to make an RPG like Fallout just isn't seen in Bethesda. Just like I wouldn't trust the people who made the Gothic games to make a sequel to Planescape: Torment.

Part of the issue with Bethesda is the disparity in content. You have some questlines like the Dark Brotherhood done by one designer (who worked on the Thief games) which were original and had logical plots and creative design. With Knights of the Nine you had Kirkbride (who made the more original elements of the Morrowind plot what they were) involved so once again adding some depth to a rather simple plotline to make it interesting. But for every case of this, you have another Mage's Guild questline where suddenly necromancy is outlawed in the Empire (contradicting Morrowind, and let's face it to explanation given for Travern's doing it is rather weak) and Mannimarco who is the *GOD* of Worms becomes some scrawny elf. To make matters worse you have in other questlines and dungeons references to Mannimarco as a deity-type figure which is conflicted. Functionally the designer wrote a "kill the necromancers" questline and had to ret-con it into their setting, and rather poorly at that. Let alone the fact that design wise there wasn't anything interesting there gameplay wise unlike with the Dark Brotherhood.

To avoid a huge laundry list: there's only a few designers at Bethesda who have shown the capacity to write questlines with the depth that is seen in the Black Isle games. ...and since the lead designers for Fallout 3 are the same as Oblivion, even if they acknowledge their weaknesses I see a strong possibility for the same radical differences in quality in sections of the game. (Arcanum had this problem...)

*shudders at the very mention of MOO3*

[Raven2001]

Yeah exactly what I mwant by near-newtonian, Ace

And yeah, I see the point with Oblivion... in fact like I said, it wasnt really my cup of tea. Im just hoping that Fallout turns out to be one of those turning points for Bethesda (I REALLY hope so)

However what I was talking about the fanbase, is that... I mean... some years ago, I was banned from some FO forums for asking what was their problem against a future Fallout being made in 3d
And now I take a peek at Bethesdas forums, and I see stuff like "Nooooooo ZOMG WTF Fallout must be isometric, turn based, or it wont be Fallout!!!"... I mean wth what kind of fanbase wants their game to fall into oblivion (no pun intended ) due to lack of innovation?!

Not to mention that anytime that anyone mentions realtime or first person, the only thought they can get inside their heads is "ZOMG NOOOOO OBLIVION WITH GUNZZZZzzzz!!!".
Heck thats ridiculous

[Ace]

The irony there being that Van Buren is in 3d and they love it.

My issue is more with the fact that it's pretty much garaunteed that the plot is going to be... well... ugggh. I could live with it being a cartoon shaded stylized 1960s game as long as it had a good plotline.

[Prophet]

Oblivions plot wasn't horrible, when you compare it to the majority of games out there. But for the plot wasn't the main attraction in Oblivion. Just as it wasn't in Fallout 2. The plot in Fallout was actually any better than in Oblivion. Worst actually than the story in Dark Corners of the Earth, which I found downright exiting. So Bethesda's track record isn't all that bad. Not that I know if the same people who made DCoE will be involved with Fallout 3. And I don't care. If Fallout 3 turns out bad, I promise I will ***** and moan with you. Bur until then I will wait and see how it turns out.

[Raven2001]

Its not really the plotline aspect that bothers me... FO1\2 had pretty basic plotlines.

The sidequesting\dialogue however, are what is bothering me atm... but ive heard that the lead designer of FO3 is the same guy that made the Dark Brotherhood quests in Oblivion, which were, as they say, the only decent ones in terms of dialogue

Guess we will have to wait and see.

That 3d thingy was a long time ago... but it clearly shows that fanbase's stubborness and idiocy in terms of innovatio of any kind