Fallout Fallout General Thread - War, War Never Changes. Nor do game engines.

Battlegrinder

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Obozny
Also because the Bethesda favorite writer is just lazy. I really like Fallout 3 a lot (I played on PS3) but 13 years later you can see that the atmosphere does 90% of the job the developers didn't. I could understand before Bethesda became BIG that they didn't have a lot of resources compared to say Activision, but I probably will get a more fulfilling experience from isometric games like Deadfire,Wrath, Encased, Atom RPG and the sequel.

Crap, I have at least 60 games or more that have better quests or narratives that have better writing than Bethesda writers!

I'm not sure you can say that Bethesda's writing is necessarily bad, it seems on par with what you get in most other games (most other media, really). It's just that so many other parts of the game are outstanding that the poor writing sticks out.
 

TheRejectionist

TheRejectionist
I'm not sure you can say that Bethesda's writing is necessarily bad, it seems on par with what you get in most other games (most other media, really). It's just that so many other parts of the game are outstanding that the poor writing sticks out.

Personally, I think the fact they managed to resuscitate a fundamentally dead/stuck in development hell franchise and making accessible (I tried all isometric iterations and they gave me migraines except the non-canonical Tactics) is outstanding. Writing on par....eh, I respectfully disagree. Maybe if I had more choices in FO3, NV, FO4 and you could see them gameplaywise I would say it's on par.

Though it's better written than Borderlands 3 and its DLC. I will give that.
 

Battlegrinder

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on par....eh, I respectfully disagree. Maybe if I had more choices in FO3, NV, FO4 and you could see them gameplaywise I would say it's on par.

Ok, let's look at some other games from 2008 and see how Fallout 3 holds up (this isn't everything, just the ones I have some knowledge of).

Metal Gear Solid 4: Haven't played it, is either amazingly written or bloated and inane, depending on who I'm hearing from.
Dead Space: Generic sci-fu channel orginal horror movie tier writing at best.
Call of Duty World at War: It's call of duty.
Gears of War 2: Hahahahaha.
God of War Chains of Olympus: Generic mid-oughts edge lord crap.
Force Unleashed: Just barely not edgelord crap.
Mirror's Edge: Eerily prescient at points but otherwise not notable.
Saint's Row 2: The writing tip "you can have heavy hitting character deaths, or you can drive around the city spraying people's houses with poo. Not Both." did not exist prior to this game.
Command and Conquer Kane's Wrath: Was fine, but well short of the base game and RTS writing is....difficult to compare to more traditional narratives.
Silent Hill Homecoming: notoriously awful.
Turok: I actually forgot this one existed.

I count maybe two games on that list that are really good, and possibly only because of nostalgia. Compared to that list, Fallout 3 seems pretty good by comparison.
 

Zachowon

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Ok, let's look at some other games from 2008 and see how Fallout 3 holds up (this isn't everything, just the ones I have some knowledge of).

Metal Gear Solid 4: Haven't played it, is either amazingly written or bloated and inane, depending on who I'm hearing from.
Dead Space: Generic sci-fu channel orginal horror movie tier writing at best.
Call of Duty World at War: It's call of duty.
Gears of War 2: Hahahahaha.
God of War Chains of Olympus: Generic mid-oughts edge lord crap.
Force Unleashed: Just barely not edgelord crap.
Mirror's Edge: Eerily prescient at points but otherwise not notable.
Saint's Row 2: The writing tip "you can have heavy hitting character deaths, or you can drive around the city spraying people's houses with poo. Not Both." did not exist prior to this game.
Command and Conquer Kane's Wrath: Was fine, but well short of the base game and RTS writing is....difficult to compare to more traditional narratives.
Silent Hill Homecoming: notoriously awful.
Turok: I actually forgot this one existed.

I count maybe two games on that list that are really good, and possibly only because of nostalgia. Compared to that list, Fallout 3 seems pretty good by comparison.
World at War had a remarkably good story. it was back during the good times of the COD series, when Story was key
 

TheRejectionist

TheRejectionist
Ok, let's look at some other games from 2008 and see how Fallout 3 holds up (this isn't everything, just the ones I have some knowledge of).

Metal Gear Solid 4: Haven't played it, is either amazingly written or bloated and inane, depending on who I'm hearing from.

I can say it's both because I played all of them.

Dead Space: Generic sci-fu channel orginal horror movie tier writing at best.

Disagree on this, though I can see your reason behind it considering they never hid the influences. The execution and atmosphere can hold up to it though.

Call of Duty World at War: It's call of duty.

It's the best of CODs in my humble opinion. Though basically a copy paste of various WW2 Oscar worthy or Oscar bait movies. Especially Enemy at the gates.

Gears of War 2: Hahahahaha.

I have the PC version of it but haven't managed to play it. So no opinion.

God of War Chains of Olympus: Generic mid-oughts edge lord crap.

Why so ?

Force Unleashed: Just barely not edgelord crap.

I can't say a word because I would be too much biased because I enjoyed the Legends part of Star Wars too much before I knew of Kotor and few others.

Mirror's Edge: Eerily prescient at points but otherwise not notable.

It was basically a tech demo.

Saint's Row 2: The writing tip "you can have heavy hitting character deaths, or you can drive around the city spraying people's houses with poo. Not Both." did not exist prior to this game.

Yeah they should have gone totally with the second only.

Command and Conquer Kane's Wrath: Was fine, but well short of the base game and RTS writing is....difficult to compare to more traditional narratives.

I need to play it yet.

Silent Hill Homecoming: notoriously awful.

I started with this one the series, it is awful compared with everything that came before.

Turok: I actually forgot this one existed.

Yeah Turok hasn't seen a good release in a while unless you count the re-releases.

I count maybe two games on that list that are really good, and possibly only because of nostalgia. Compared to that list, Fallout 3 seems pretty good by comparison.

I will not hide that nostalgia does play a factor for me also.
 

TheRejectionist

TheRejectionist
Still in my opinion COD World At War, and the first Black Ops, "homage"-d too much from movies. Fallout 3 tried to be original at least.
 

Zachowon

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Still in my opinion COD World At War, and the first Black Ops, "homage"-d too much from movies. Fallout 3 tried to be original at least.
True,
but look at the MW series. Which started the years prior.
 

Aaron Fox

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Still in my opinion COD World At War, and the first Black Ops, "homage"-d too much from movies. Fallout 3 tried to be original at least.
... COD was movie-heavy since its inception or have we forgotten the various Stalingrad and D-Day levels that took their design straight out of Enemy at the Gates and Saving Private Ryan respectively?
 

TheRejectionist

TheRejectionist
True,
but look at the MW series. Which started the years prior.

I am not denying it.

... COD was movie-heavy since its inception or have we forgotten the various Stalingrad and D-Day levels that took their design straight out of Enemy at the Gates and Saving Private Ryan respectively?

Yeah they did took the design straight out of both. I can understand more the second since it is a pretty epic movie with an epic entry. Who wouldn't want to copy the landing scene or have an equivalent ?
 

S'task

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Ok, let's look at some other games from 2008 and see how Fallout 3 holds up (this isn't everything, just the ones I have some knowledge of).
You're not comparing apples to apples, you need to be looking at other western cRPG games that came out around the same time if you're going to honestly compare writing, as the writing of an on rails FPS is very different than the writing requirements of an RPG.

And just a few months before 2008 you had Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer... which from a writing perspective blows Fallout 3 (and 4... and pretty much every Bethesda title) out of the water as well as the original Mass Effect (which has inferior writing to NWN2:MotB, but definitely superior writing to FO3). In early 2009 you also had Divinity II - Ego Draconis which having played both FO3 and it I think Divinity II has a better written story, if weaker open world and replayablity than FO3. And while it released late 2009 and thus I feel is not really comparable to FO3, you also saw Dragon Age: Origins... which... yeah, has writing up there with NWN2:MotB.

And in 2008 you had Fable II which... honestly, I remember less of the story of that than I do of FO3, so it definitely had weaker writing.

There's a few Diablo clones thrown into the RPG category, but I have trouble counting them as their gameplay design makes writing less of a focus. Oh, and I left off JRPGs too because while they are comparable, they're also very different and more linear and so again the writing isn't as comparable.

So if we restrict ourselves to 2008, FO3's writing does seem to hold up... but it was also released in a drought year for western cRPGs. 2007 and 2009 both had titles that had writing that simply was near legendary tier (both Mask of the Betrayer and Dragon Age: Origins were held up as having writing on nearly on par with Balder's Gate 2 and Planescape: Torment, two of the best written western cRPGs of all time). As such, for the RPG genre as a whole, FO3 managed to come out in a year where it didn't have stiff competition in the writing department, which helps it hold up, but a quick look at the year before and after reveal that it wasn't some standout as far as the genre goes.
 

Battlegrinder

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not comparing apples to apples, you need to be looking at other western cRPG games that came out around the same time if you're going to honestly compare writing, as the writing of an on rails FPS is very different than the writing requirements of an RPG.

I'm not sure about that in this context. Yes, the writing requirements for different genres vary, but I'm not sure how much that impacts the overall quality. Bishock is an FPS and frequently gets held up as amoung the best written games ever, for example.

And, if we're going to do a comparison within genres, I would argue Fallout 3 is in fact one of the best written open world sandbox/exploration games, so comparing it to RPGs is in error. It has a story and makes heavy use of RPG elements, yes, but those a secondary element to exploring the world and doing random side quests. If you spent 95% of your time in mass effect driving the Maco around blowing stuff up and only occasionally got out to talk to people about Saren, I think people would be a bit hard pressed to define the game as an RPG first and foremost.
 

Husky_Khan

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World at War had a remarkably good story. it was back during the good times of the COD series, when Story was key

World At War was terrifying when your fighting in the tall grass or some trenchline and you can hear the Japs get all pissed off and you realize they are going to charge and attempt to bayonet you and your praying to Yahweh that you don't run out of ammunition in your current mag...

*PTSD shivers*
 

S'task

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I'm not sure about that in this context. Yes, the writing requirements for different genres vary, but I'm not sure how much that impacts the overall quality. Bishock is an FPS and frequently gets held up as amoung the best written games ever, for example.

And, if we're going to do a comparison within genres, I would argue Fallout 3 is in fact one of the best written open world sandbox/exploration games, so comparing it to RPGs is in error. It has a story and makes heavy use of RPG elements, yes, but those a secondary element to exploring the world and doing random side quests. If you spent 95% of your time in mass effect driving the Maco around blowing stuff up and only occasionally got out to talk to people about Saren, I think people would be a bit hard pressed to define the game as an RPG first and foremost.
The reason I think you need to compare RPGs to RPGs has to do with the volume of writing involved.

An FPS, even one as good as Bioshock, has a fairly tight script, it doesn't require much secondary writing or worrying about branching paths or giving players choices. Thus that means the writing is more focused and ends up being done as a secondary thought, OR it is given a lot of time and attention to detail. RPGs don't have that luxury, they have a LOT of writing that needs to be done (Bethesda even has a specific JOB for "quest writers" as a position at their company in that period... I know, I've applied to them in the past*.) and so they have to put out a volume of writing so large that they generally can't get at much tight focus or workshopping... plus you then need to also write alternative paths and resolutions. This means that a company needs both quantity and quality writing to make RPGs (this is, also, why western cRPGs as a genre see fewer releases compared to other genres they involve a lot more time and investment than almost any other genre while having a much more niche audience).

This is also why I don't think you can compare the writing of Diablo clones and JRPGs to western cRPGs, their linear nature means they have more narrow writing requirements that do not represent as large an investment of effort.

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* The reason Bethesda's writing quality is lower goes back to their hiring here in my opinion. They want people who can write but then also have a history with programming, basically, they end up hiring entry level programmers who dabble in fan fiction... rather than hiring someone who's a writer first and foremost and teaching them how to do the basic programming needed or pairing them with a programmer to work together. Note, this is actually the opposite of what old school Bioware, Black Isle and others did, where they hired people who were WRITERS first, and then either taught them how to program or had programmers work with them.
 

Aaron Fox

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The reason I think you need to compare RPGs to RPGs has to do with the volume of writing involved.

An FPS, even one as good as Bioshock, has a fairly tight script, it doesn't require much secondary writing or worrying about branching paths or giving players choices. Thus that means the writing is more focused and ends up being done as a secondary thought, OR it is given a lot of time and attention to detail. RPGs don't have that luxury, they have a LOT of writing that needs to be done (Bethesda even has a specific JOB for "quest writers" as a position at their company in that period... I know, I've applied to them in the past*.) and so they have to put out a volume of writing so large that they generally can't get at much tight focus or workshopping... plus you then need to also write alternative paths and resolutions. This means that a company needs both quantity and quality writing to make RPGs (this is, also, why western cRPGs as a genre see fewer releases compared to other genres they involve a lot more time and investment than almost any other genre while having a much more niche audience).

This is also why I don't think you can compare the writing of Diablo clones and JRPGs to western cRPGs, their linear nature means they have more narrow writing requirements that do not represent as large an investment of effort.

------------------
* The reason Bethesda's writing quality is lower goes back to their hiring here in my opinion. They want people who can write but then also have a history with programming, basically, they end up hiring entry level programmers who dabble in fan fiction... rather than hiring someone who's a writer first and foremost and teaching them how to do the basic programming needed or pairing them with a programmer to work together. Note, this is actually the opposite of what old school Bioware, Black Isle and others did, where they hired people who were WRITERS first, and then either taught them how to program or had programmers work with them.
Given that the most expensive training is programming, you shouldn't be too hard on Bethesda for that. I mean I had problems with HTML5, and that had spaghetti code that made what Bethesda uses look like something straight and narrow.
 

Free-Stater 101

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Does anybody here play Fallout 76? I recently started playing again and was wondering everybody else's thoughts on the changes since launch.
 

Battlegrinder

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Obozny
Does anybody here play Fallout 76? I recently started playing again and was wondering everybody else's thoughts on the changes since launch.

I bought it a while back, around when the BOS got added, played for a bit. It was OK, but never really hooked me the way the single player games did. Just felt too busy and awkward. I probably would get used to it if I spent more time on it, but it's not good enough to merit me doing that rather than play any of my other games.
 

Navarro

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What could be neat would be a Fallout game which starts prewar. First half of the game is fighting china, then the nukes fly and you just have to survive as everything goes completely to shit.

Too similar to FO4, more's the pity. It would have been nice if that game's prologue had been a bit more drawn out, similar to the Vault 101 sequence in FO3. Have some basic movement tutorials, go to a shooting range or get attacked by criminals for combat tutorial, etc. (it would also have been nice if you were allowed to have more pre-War professions than "ex-military" or "action hero lawyer").
 

Bassoe

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It would have been nice if that game's prologue had been a bit more drawn out, similar to the Vault 101 sequence in FO3. Have some basic movement tutorials, go to a shooting range or get attacked by criminals for combat tutorial, etc. (it would also have been nice if you were allowed to have more pre-War professions than "ex-military" or "action hero lawyer").
This is the actual PC. Combat tutorial is killing the guy you'd been sent to offer a spot in the Vault, so you can impersonate them until the Vault is safely locked down with you inside it.
 

Duke Nukem

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