I think we should do our absolute best to describe every detail, however minor, that made us love those games so much. Although fallout 3 captured a post-nuclear war feeling, it didn't really capture the fallout feeling. I think the designers still had the elder scrolls on their mind. So please, let's tell them what is needed to bring our favorite game back from the dead.
what made fallout 1 and 2?
- Thread starter Adam12
- Start date
cratchety ol joe
Mildly Dipped
I disagree that FO3 'captured the post-apoc feeling' as it was never a 'struggle' to stay alive, even on hard i end up with caps flowing like I'm printing them and enough stimpacks / radaway to cure the entire wasteland (if i weren't hoarding them in my backpack)
HOWEVER.. i'm not here to rant against FO3.. again...
what made the previous fallouts so great? depth.
DEPTH... DEPTH!.. DEPTH!!!!
Of the two I've only really played FO2 (.. I've played FO, but I played FO2 a lot more) and I still remember the first days I played the game.
I remember having a sharpened spear, a sawnoff with no ammo and feeling VERY jealous of those damn slavers (they had cash and guns and stuff!)
Its just simple story elements that keep me on the side of the classics, little memories of finding things for the first time... or an amazing battle that i was sure I'd loose but pulled through (which reminds me of some raiders in a random encounter... but I digress)
It was about, "what's in the next square of the map... ?" it was walking into a new location and taking some time walking about talking to the inhabitants.
it was about getting a decent gun for the first time and thinking "oh ell yeah.. now its party time" even if it was just a 14mm pistol or something equally blazé
With the world of FO3 being ABUNDANT with guns, ammo, stimpacks its like a freeking family holiday park. Playing Fallout 2 Ironman style on hard... being scared that you have only 1 stimpack left and there are 2 radscorpions in front of you. The game gave you immersive feelings toward the characters and circumstances and it did so without a first person perspective with flashy graphics!
Really, the classic fallouts were all about... 'just one more hour' is the best way i can put it. always wanting more.
HOWEVER.. i'm not here to rant against FO3.. again...
what made the previous fallouts so great? depth.
DEPTH... DEPTH!.. DEPTH!!!!
Of the two I've only really played FO2 (.. I've played FO, but I played FO2 a lot more) and I still remember the first days I played the game.
I remember having a sharpened spear, a sawnoff with no ammo and feeling VERY jealous of those damn slavers (they had cash and guns and stuff!)
Its just simple story elements that keep me on the side of the classics, little memories of finding things for the first time... or an amazing battle that i was sure I'd loose but pulled through (which reminds me of some raiders in a random encounter... but I digress)
It was about, "what's in the next square of the map... ?" it was walking into a new location and taking some time walking about talking to the inhabitants.
it was about getting a decent gun for the first time and thinking "oh ell yeah.. now its party time" even if it was just a 14mm pistol or something equally blazé
With the world of FO3 being ABUNDANT with guns, ammo, stimpacks its like a freeking family holiday park. Playing Fallout 2 Ironman style on hard... being scared that you have only 1 stimpack left and there are 2 radscorpions in front of you. The game gave you immersive feelings toward the characters and circumstances and it did so without a first person perspective with flashy graphics!
Really, the classic fallouts were all about... 'just one more hour' is the best way i can put it. always wanting more.
Your right, I remember trying to kill a robot with a pipe rifle and only a few rounds. I had to switch to my sharpened spear and barely won the fight. The challenge was great, but another thing that I loved was the companions.... they added room to your inventory, they loved to tell the enemy that they will "beat you like a red-headed step-child" lol, and they always seemed to shoot me in the back. Another thing that was cool was that certain ppl could modify our weapons. You couldn't just get the best weapon in the game right off the bat. You couldn't find much of anything at first, then as the game progressed, you would find better equipment and had barely enough cash to modify it (unless you found an idiot willing to do it for free in the basement of a gun shop lol). I loved the atmosphere; there were junkies, raiders, highwaymen, pimps, hoes, boxers, government types, etc. There seems like in Fallout 3 just a few different kinds of npc's running around. Where is the diversity?? I can't dig graves or drive a car in D.C. either? I loved being a grave robber and a porn star. I loved not knowing if I was putting myself in an impossible situation (like having my way with the mob boss' daughter and wife). I love not knowing if my answer to an npc will be taken offensively or not. Having to make hard decisions without knowing the outcome. Can you say predictability? Plus, I remember stepping in radioactive waste not only hurt, but also cause me to be temporarily immobile. I don't think I was stunned at all when touching anything harmful in Fallout 3. You are very right, they need depth.
Man, you guys are totaly right, but i just want to say that for me just depth wont do it... what im saying is: Fallout was perfect with its third person turn-based combat style, the "quests"were awesome, i dont know if you remember but in fallout 1 to achieve the best weapons you had to get passed through a couple of deathclaws, it was really challenging as any other quests that were important. If you try to have a generic picture of the game it had one simple objective, that was to kill the mutants by destroying theier base, but in your way to it you have a lot of quests, jobs and favors (to the citzens of the cities) that you can (or not) do, they prove that to make a good game, you dont need graphics and brand new sparkling engine, you need criativity. You see... the game has so much details in every part of it that it amaze us with nothing of graphics and much of "everything", as you guys said we struggle every corner by killing rats, mutated giant rats to radscorpions, raiders, deathclaws, green troglodyte mutants, enclave soldiers, mutated camels with two heads and bizzare legs and if you want gang wars and mobsters wars. So the game has everything on it without losing its depth! thats the amazing part!!
To me oblivion could just add some graphics to the game, add some more weapons and make the game a little bigger cause in fallout 3 you get the brotherhood armor in the first few seconds of the game (well you cant use cause you are too weak yet, but it spoils the struggle to earn the right to have one....) But i dont want a game that has so many itens that they couldnt figure out how to distribute it regularly, like, i buy a brand new hand gun in a corner and in the next i have to buy a new one cause every corner has one that is better than yours... And the best part of the weapons is that they creat new wepons its not like those games that what defines what makes a weapon good is the "color", like: i have pistol that makes "X" damage, than i see the same pistol, but a blue one, that does "2X" damage... understand? a game that does it quite well is the Borderlands game...
Basically is that... fallout 1 and 2 has "something" inside it that has the formula for the perfect game.
To me oblivion could just add some graphics to the game, add some more weapons and make the game a little bigger cause in fallout 3 you get the brotherhood armor in the first few seconds of the game (well you cant use cause you are too weak yet, but it spoils the struggle to earn the right to have one....) But i dont want a game that has so many itens that they couldnt figure out how to distribute it regularly, like, i buy a brand new hand gun in a corner and in the next i have to buy a new one cause every corner has one that is better than yours... And the best part of the weapons is that they creat new wepons its not like those games that what defines what makes a weapon good is the "color", like: i have pistol that makes "X" damage, than i see the same pistol, but a blue one, that does "2X" damage... understand? a game that does it quite well is the Borderlands game...
Basically is that... fallout 1 and 2 has "something" inside it that has the formula for the perfect game.
I couldn't resist posting... I just had to reply to these comments.:
I have disagree with this... even on my first play throughs of Fallout 1/2 I had more caps and gear than I could even spend. The biggest problem I had was not having the inventory space for all the loot I was carrying.
Which weapon was this? And how was it different than say... getting the power armor first thing in Fallout 1?
I haven't encountered the ability to blow up a city or fight "super heroes" in the first ones yet. There is lots of diversity to be had, but it's easy to say "it lacks diversity" and then list several specific events that aren't available. That is a two way street.
I think this had more to do with the way the game engine handled taking damage rather than it being a feature of immersion.
This can't even be the same game... where in the world are you finding power armor in the "first few seconds"?
What? There are maybe like... 3-4 hand guns you might encounter in a regular game. How is that different than say... Fallout 2? I've got like 4 in my inventory right now.
I am now convinced that you are talking about Borderlands and not Fallout 3.
I don't want to turn this into a "vs" thread, just I read some of these Fallout 3 comments and they drive me insane. I'm all for people preferring one over the other... I just hate when I read threads like this and they are full of biased or incorrect information.
cratchety ol joe said:
I have disagree with this... even on my first play throughs of Fallout 1/2 I had more caps and gear than I could even spend. The biggest problem I had was not having the inventory space for all the loot I was carrying.
Which weapon was this? And how was it different than say... getting the power armor first thing in Fallout 1?
I haven't encountered the ability to blow up a city or fight "super heroes" in the first ones yet. There is lots of diversity to be had, but it's easy to say "it lacks diversity" and then list several specific events that aren't available. That is a two way street.
I think this had more to do with the way the game engine handled taking damage rather than it being a feature of immersion.
This can't even be the same game... where in the world are you finding power armor in the "first few seconds"?
What? There are maybe like... 3-4 hand guns you might encounter in a regular game. How is that different than say... Fallout 2? I've got like 4 in my inventory right now.
I am now convinced that you are talking about Borderlands and not Fallout 3.
I don't want to turn this into a "vs" thread, just I read some of these Fallout 3 comments and they drive me insane. I'm all for people preferring one over the other... I just hate when I read threads like this and they are full of biased or incorrect information.
cratchety ol joe
Mildly Dipped
korindabar said:
while I agree that the ability to gather stims etc was present in FO1/2, I found it much more balanced than FO3 on harder modes (my most recent recollection of a game of FO2; I actually ran out periodically of stim-packs and was unable to buy more due to not enough caps having to rely on Doctor and First Aid ... and natural healing time).
late game FO2 always saw me carrying a bazillion stim's and caps... but that was late game
I think its fair to say that even set on its 'hardest' mode FO3 hands out stims + caps like confetti right from the off (I'd say its easy to collect 100+ stims with only a minor amount of work.)
so while I don't dispute your counter point of my previous statement, I will try to point out that I was more referring to the absolute easy with which this 'post apocalyptic wasteland' can be survived: my main point, even on the hardest setting FO3 fails to feel like a struggle for survival.
SerbianWarrior
It Wandered In From the Wastes
This is subjective there are things that some people like where as others do not.fallout 1 and 2 werent perfect nothing is, but fallout 2 was near perfect, at least for me.
In fallout 1 you had a time limit, you werent able to f*** around like you can in FNV and F3 in which you can play for years in game time without doing a single quest or talk to a single character... But then again you could just go in guns blazing kill everyone, even the children (which i never did
) it was all about player freedom and several interesting ways to complete quests, oh sure F3 had several ways to complete quest number 1 kill everyone number 2 do it peacefully...
In fallout 2 you could choose a side and stick with it or not choose a side at all and that was awesome it was about preservation of arroyo and that meant trying to save it any way you saw fit, it wasnt about puting a virus in a water purifier or not putting it in. And sex, oh yes you could even have sex, Mrs Bishop is one hot milf
...and wait...wait for it EVEN marry someone at the time that was an insane innovation.
Reading the dialogue was a pleasure, you had so many interesting characters and places from New Reno with the gangster feel, to Navaro and the Enclave to Vault City every place had a distinctive feeling to it.
The story was great it was simple,but detailed it was just a great adventure.
The gameplay elements were obviously awesome as well, getting a rocket launcher or a gatling laser late game was awesome.
And the atmosphere oh yes the atmosphere!
To me it was the best, a post apocalyptic game where you see children runing around and stealing to survive, the strange foods and drinks
The destroyed cars and buildings the sci fi enclave troops, the only state and government in the world the NCR, vault city a paradise rulled by a insane bitch
it was all great, so in the end for me 2 things were essential to the greatness of Fallout games.
Player freedom and atmosphere even though there were many things that made F1 and 2 great.
To end this rant, i still love Fallout 3 and FNV but the first 2 were the greatest.
In fallout 1 you had a time limit, you werent able to f*** around like you can in FNV and F3 in which you can play for years in game time without doing a single quest or talk to a single character... But then again you could just go in guns blazing kill everyone, even the children (which i never did
) it was all about player freedom and several interesting ways to complete quests, oh sure F3 had several ways to complete quest number 1 kill everyone number 2 do it peacefully...In fallout 2 you could choose a side and stick with it or not choose a side at all and that was awesome it was about preservation of arroyo and that meant trying to save it any way you saw fit, it wasnt about puting a virus in a water purifier or not putting it in. And sex, oh yes you could even have sex, Mrs Bishop is one hot milf
...and wait...wait for it EVEN marry someone at the time that was an insane innovation.Reading the dialogue was a pleasure, you had so many interesting characters and places from New Reno with the gangster feel, to Navaro and the Enclave to Vault City every place had a distinctive feeling to it.
The story was great it was simple,but detailed it was just a great adventure.
The gameplay elements were obviously awesome as well, getting a rocket launcher or a gatling laser late game was awesome.
And the atmosphere oh yes the atmosphere!
To me it was the best, a post apocalyptic game where you see children runing around and stealing to survive, the strange foods and drinks
The destroyed cars and buildings the sci fi enclave troops, the only state and government in the world the NCR, vault city a paradise rulled by a insane bitch
it was all great, so in the end for me 2 things were essential to the greatness of Fallout games.
Player freedom and atmosphere even though there were many things that made F1 and 2 great.
To end this rant, i still love Fallout 3 and FNV but the first 2 were the greatest.