Fallout 3: WARNING - POTENTIAL SPOILERS

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txa1265 Posted: 10-29-2008 3:58 PM

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Just a place for all of us frothing fans to drop in our first impressions.

I posted mine at the GamingWithChildren blog here.

I think I have already sufficiently established myself as a curmudgeon on many topics but certainly regarding PC gaming: I have railed for years about the impact of consoles on PC gaming (Deus Ex: Invisible War), complain about the state of games that are obvious ports when they do arrive (Oblivion), complain about the generification of genres that has occurred as consoles have led the charge to mainstreaming (again Oblivion), and so on.  So I am a perfect candidate for someone to come out and rant about how the newly released Fallout 3 is nothing but ‘Oblivion with guns’ and rant and froth about the history of the franchise and the purity of the RPG genre and … well, just come on in and see …

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mafafu replied on 10-29-2008 4:19 PM

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I am replacing my normal crying baby pic with something more appropriate for Papa Smurf

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Shady replied on 10-29-2008 4:21 PM

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+45 to mafafu's internets skill!

plus how can you get mad about having to hit tab, come on thats basically how i played baldur's gate 2.

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firenextdoor replied on 10-29-2008 5:05 PM

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Got release-date delivery on this, haven't had much time to play it.. So far it seems pretty cool, but it's easy for me to get lost in this huge world

LOVED the way they did the opening and how you select your skills, name, sex and everything; very cool.

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txa1265 replied on 10-29-2008 7:53 PM

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Shady:

plus how can you get mad about having to hit tab, come on thats basically how i played baldur's gate 2.

Um ... no.  You want a Map?  Press M and it gets there directly, not by Tab->Data->Local Map.

It is bad design, plain and simple.

And as I said - it is small potatoes, but reflects upon the fact that some of the bad design decisions from Oblivion seeped into Fallout 3.

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Shady replied on 10-29-2008 9:47 PM

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txa1265:

but reflects upon the fact that some of the bad design decisions from Oblivion seeped into Fallout 3.

so your complaining that they are catering to the casual gamers who like to click then rather memorize buttons mapped to a keyboard with a good sized number of buttons! the reason i bring this up is because your a big fan of apple's product because of the simplicity and the wii. i'm just chalking this one up for the disdain you have for consoles like the 360 and ps3 and you wanna blame the design of the game on those console, when in reality im sure if it was a pc only title it would be the exact same game as it is now.

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txa1265 replied on 10-30-2008 8:07 AM

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Shady:

i'm just chalking this one up for the disdain you have for consoles like the 360 and ps3 and you wanna blame the design of the game on those console, when in reality im sure if it was a pc only title it would be the exact same game as it is now.

Again I want to stress that these are minor niggles, not major complaints.

I figured out some of the controls last night night by reading the manual (gasp!) so I can multi-target and assign hotkeys to switch weapons.  Just not obvious.

Well, in Morrowind you could use keys to directly access things, but that was a 'PC first' effort and fairly new to the console space.  With Oblivion you went to this unified interface that required multiple steps to access things.  I am not blaming the consoles for these things, but rather the choices made by the developer to make things work most easily for the consoles, and force the PC gamer to do things in a cumbersome way.  It is bad interface design by Bethesda, not anything about the consoles themselves.

And to be clear, for an RPG gamer, pressing M for map and I for inventory and C for character is pretty much a universal standard - it is asking no more than asking a new shooter to use WASD for the movement controls.

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firenextdoor replied on 10-30-2008 11:48 AM

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txa1265:

Shady:

i'm just chalking this one up for the disdain you have for consoles like the 360 and ps3 and you wanna blame the design of the game on those console, when in reality im sure if it was a pc only title it would be the exact same game as it is now.

Again I want to stress that these are minor niggles, not major complaints.

I figured out some of the controls last night night by reading the manual (gasp!) so I can multi-target and assign hotkeys to switch weapons.  Just not obvious.

Well, in Morrowind you could use keys to directly access things, but that was a 'PC first' effort and fairly new to the console space.  With Oblivion you went to this unified interface that required multiple steps to access things.  I am not blaming the consoles for these things, but rather the choices made by the developer to make things work most easily for the consoles, and force the PC gamer to do things in a cumbersome way.  It is bad interface design by Bethesda, not anything about the consoles themselves.

And to be clear, for an RPG gamer, pressing M for map and I for inventory and C for character is pretty much a universal standard - it is asking no more than asking a new shooter to use WASD for the movement controls.

I have to agree here. The console version of Oblivion is much more fluid than the PC, almost to the point that I stopped playing Oblivion on the PC after I got to Weynon Priory..

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PSWii60 Elite replied on 10-30-2008 12:13 PM

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Shady:

txa1265:

but reflects upon the fact that some of the bad design decisions from Oblivion seeped into Fallout 3.

 

so your complaining that they are catering to the casual gamers who like to click then rather memorize buttons mapped to a keyboard with a good sized number of buttons! the reason i bring this up is because your a big fan of apple's product because of the simplicity and the wii. i'm just chalking this one up for the disdain you have for consoles like the 360 and ps3 and you wanna blame the design of the game on those console, when in reality im sure if it was a pc only title it would be the exact same game as it is now.

No offense txa, but I got to agree with Shady on this one. You tend to be far too critical of consoles.

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txa1265 replied on 10-30-2008 12:27 PM

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Just a note:  last night I used my X360 wireless controller to play for a bit.  And aside from just preferring the WASD & Mouse control system over the console controller, everything else was definitely easier to do with the controller.  Almost like it was designed that way

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mafafu replied on 10-30-2008 12:28 PM

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txa1265:

Just a note:  last night I used my X360 wireless controller to play for a bit.  And aside from just preferring the WASD & Mouse control system over the console controller, everything else was definitely easier to do with the controller.  Almost like it was designed that way

My main problem is that you assume that is bad.

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Shady replied on 10-30-2008 12:50 PM

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okay, well um wouldn't the menu's be navigated through buttons instead of a mouse if this was taking after the console versions

and the reason i think a contoller is  > then keyboard and mouse is that with a contoller its more compact and ergonomically designed for the hands verses the keyboard and mouse, i never had carpel tunnel syndrome or tennis elbow from playing too much cod:4 on the 360 verses however many times i had got it while playing WoW. Although i did have plenty more jaw aches from talking trash on xbox live!

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txa1265 replied on 10-30-2008 1:33 PM

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mafafu:

My main problem is that you assume that is bad.

I didn't make a value judgment - just an observation.  People are passing judgment on me based on my assessment that this game - which is inherently a PC franchise - has been designed as a 'console-first' product.  I am not claiming that this is a bad thing in itself - it is just that in making the multiplatform game they have made some design choices that work well on a console but badly on a PC.  And just as it is not debatable that Fallout is a PC franchise, neither is it debatable that making something that is a standard single key take 3 actions is at a minimum 'inefficient design' if not downright bad design.

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mafafu replied on 10-30-2008 1:51 PM

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You did get the game $10 cheaper :D

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Shady replied on 10-30-2008 1:58 PM

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okay my problem with TXA's statements is he is saying its made this way because of console priority, which im sure is not the fact, but rather it's probably designed this way to all those casual gamers and "casual" people out there who buy wii's and apple products (yes, im saying you are being hypocrite!)

edit: because when it boils down to it hardcore gamers know that most of the hardcore games out there are usuing keys for every thing you could want, but casual gamers ever hardly pick up on having to hit "i" for inventory or "m" for map but rather finding it easy to get used to hit one button then clicking away till their fingers fall off!