Whatever :rolleyes:
I just think you have some sort of hate for ME1 but what do I know? Anyways enough of this, back on topic.

Again, have you played it? You keep saying this, but I don't think you know what you're talking about. The guy you're quoting even liked it. :laugh:


Also, who's saying NV won't be better? Are you even reading before you reply?

I think if we had a plethora of RPGs like we did back in the 80s and 90s alot of people (like us) wouldnt of enjoyed AP so much. Were just so RPG starved like I said before, that we will take just about anything now.

I agree with the sentiment...AP could have and should have been better than it was, but so few games nowadays even attempt to include deep RPG mechanics that it's nice to play one. That said, AP probably would have been an A-list title in the '90s. At the very least its graphics would have been cutting-edge.

I think so :shrug: (Specifically, I think that it will not be allowed to differ too much).
IMO FO3 (and New Vegas) are/and will be, vastly better than Oblivion, but are at their heart, just extensions of the basic design.
~Different animal than the rest of the Fallout games IMO (which is the only thing I can fault them on). Otherwise they are/(and look to be), great games each.

** I had decided to pass on Alpha Protocol. (Spy themed games are not usually of interest to me it seems)
, but reading this thread has changed my mind about it. I will certainly get it now, but haven't decided yet how long to wait (for a price drop).

Man, did you guy's play AP? I loved AP. One of the best games I've played this year. Yes, it had some bugs and glitches, but I never ran into many. With a few more months of polish, AP would have been a contender for Game of the Year. It was definitely like a modern-day spy thriller version of Mass Effect, but I thought it handled the story and your choices much better than Mass Effect has ever done. You started seeing immediate feedback on your choices - you didn't have to wait for a sequel, or for some cutscenes at the end. The storyline diverged drastically based on the decisions you made, some seemingly unimportant ones having far reaching, but logical results. Whole factions/characters could appear, disappear, or never show up based on what you did. People reacted to what you were wearing, how you treated them in the past, etc. The gameplay was great too.


I place the blame on AP's failure squarely on Sega's shoulders. They let it languish in development hell, flip flopped back and forth on it, and then forced it out the door before it was ready. Like I said, the only complaints anyone should have had about AP were bug and glitch related. Obsidian designed and wrote one hell of a game in AP. AP even had an "ending slideshow" that told what effect your actions had ultimately had on different characters, cities, and the world, just like in the first two Fallouts! Stupid Sega.


1. No question. I also felt FO3's cities and towns were too small. Rivet City was the only settlement that felt right. Megaton was almost there, but needed to be bigger and have more people. The lack of NPCs in the towns was the most glaring thing. Look at Grayditch, or Canterbury Commons. 2 families in one (deceased), and 3-4 people in the other? Or Arefu? Don't get me started on Bigtown. Ironically, besides Rivet City, Little Lamplight was one of the only other settlements that felt alive, and had "Little Lamplighters" constantly running from one place to another, doing activities, holding conversations, etc. Megaton had the right idea with the no name NPCs running around, but failed in not having enough buildings to support the idea.

2. Yes, Oblivion had more quests, but a lot were extremely simple, like "save my potatoes from the already dead ogre 100 feet down the street". Also, you have to remember that we never got a choice in Oblivion's quests. You could only take the quest or refuse it. You couldn't solve it multiple ways, you couldn't lie about solving it, you couldn't threaten the quest giver or kill them to get the reward ahead of time, etc. There were no good or bad outcomes/choices in quests, only good or bad quests.

3. So did Fallout 3, unless you are referring to terrain, in which case, yes, Oblivion wins out for variety with its transitions from snowy mountains to grasslands, forests, swamps, and beaches. Fallout being the world it is though, they couldn't do too much to compete in that department.

4. Well of course! Two experienced swordsmen start at a stalemate, and then wait for the other to make a mistake, and even then mistakes aren't always fatal. But Fallout uses guns. Of course guns result in a faster fight! There isn't much strategy besides "shoot faster" "shoot more accurately" and "don't get shot". There aren't exactly any fancy parries using guns, even when using gun-kata (yay, John Woo!). Haven't you ever seen Indiana Jones? Gun beats sword. Hence, why we aren't using them anymore in real life.

5. Agreed.

6. What?! Balanced? I agree leveling was slower, but not balanced at all. It was all too easy to level up too quickly using skills like Lockpicking, or Acrobatics, or Merchantile, or, I don't know, pick something that isn't combat, and then get utterly destroyed in every random encounter from then on out without the possibility to catch up because everything was leveling with you. You couldn't become a God because in relation to the world, you couldn't improve at all! The Elder Scrolls leveling system (where skills improve by using them) needs some serious adjustment. The SPECIAL system is a finely tuned masterpiece in comparison. The only thing Bethesda screwed up about SPECIAL in Fallout 3 was the fact they gave out skill points like candy at Halloween until we all got tooth rot and diabetes.

7. I would hazard to say this is true, but many because you can do everything in Oblivion with a single character, since again, there are no choices or alternative outcomes in quests, only doing them or not doing them. Nothing you did locked out any content, so you may as well keep playing with the same character as make another one. Fallout 3 tends to encourage new characters, both because of the skill and perk system (though characters did tend to become homogenized by level 20), but because you were constantly locking yourself out of content (because of the alternate solutions to quests or dealings with NPCs or factions). If you disarm the bomb in Megaton, you can't watch it explode, or have a home in Tenpenny Tower. If you blow it up, you miss out on a house and quests in Megaton, so you are more likely to start a new character. The other possibilities just sit in the back of your mind and fester until you create that new character who is the complete opposite of the old one and embark on the game again.


I liked Oblivion just fine, and played it quite a bit, but I was crushed when I realized that nothing I did really mattered. I wasn't making any true decisions, or, thanks to the god-awful leveling system, progress. The cougars alone almost caused me to rage quit on numerous occasions. I even had to restart my very first playthrough because I had focused on Sneaking and Lockpicking and Speech, and leveled up enough in the Imperial City for the cougars to appear in the wild and prevent me from getting to any other cities because I was too weak to stand a chance against them. So once I started again and knew how to "game" the skill and level system I was good.

You know a game system is broken when to excel at the game you discover you should pick skills you don't want to use, and avoid leveling up. The Elder Scrolls system needs a serious over-haul, and I hope Bethesda takes some lessons from Fallout 3 and New Vegas.

just rent AP if you can. While there are a lot of playthroughs if you want to see all the different endings/consequences, the playthroughs them self are only 8 or 9 hours long. I beat it 4 times in a weeks rental. Despite its flaws if your RPG starved like a lot of us you will enjoy it. Dont forget Two Worlds 2 and Gothic 4 though, they both come out in October. I guess all of us RPG elitist get an early Christmas this year. :wink_smile:
On topic

I think a lot of people dont understand that Oblivion and The ES series in general arent suppose to be story/consequence driven games. They are more like pen and paper D&D in video game form. You make the story, you role play, your not restricted or having your hand held by a story. Its really about using your imagination. Thats why roleplaying in Oblivion is more fun/better.

How fast do you guys play your games? My first AP run took about 25 hours.




Could you elaborate on why it is a dud?

my first AP playthrough was 9 hours and thats getting pretty much all of the Intel and doing all the side stuff. I actually thought that was part of the charm of AP You can finish it quickly but there are a ton of playthroughs because the choices vary so much so your encouraged to play it multiple times.

I wouldn't go that far. Even with a medicore GM the P'nP games tend to be much more responsive to your actions - even if the player decides to just run in the woods and kill things.



That's true. I guess I'm just slow and thorough with my games.

I would, to me Oblivion is only limited by your imagination and creativity. YOU are the DM. You can make up any quest you like, I know I have. Ive done everything from wash upper class citizens clothes in the river for gold, to Greco-Roman wrestle a greased brown bear as an initiation into a secret Martial Arts society

But Oblivion does not respond to your imagination and creativity but in a very limited way - the foe either dies, or you (by some strange twist of fate) die. You can of course pretend to be anything in the world (nothing wrong with that, if that's the way you wish to play), but you also have to pretend the consequences, outcomes and impacts. To me that's the same thing as going in a real life sandbox with toys and playing with them all by my self. And the way I see it, that (pretending something that does not take place) shouldn't be the hook of computer game. But that's just my opinion.

Just don't say that in the oblivion part of the forums. Lot of hardcoe RPGers there.

Yeah when you don't have quest related items and such it limits abit of gameplay and quests. Its just easier to work with actual content than your imagination. Sometimes I have trouble with my completetionist side and my rpg side. One wants to horde loot and finish quests. While the other wants to fight imaginary folks and develop nonexsistent dialogue with NPCs.

If you have to play pretend in a computer game to role play, then a sign of bad, bad game design. I think the "play alone in the sandbox" anology is spot on.

who said you have to do this? I started roleplaying like this after hundreds of hours put into Oblivion. After doing everything there was to do several times. Everything I do is in the game in one way or another. If I have to create some custom item and hide it somewhere thats not totally making up everything. If I did that id be better off just playing p&p games. I said Oblivion is like D&D not is D&D

I am closing this for review. However, after seeing all the flaming, flamebaiting, trolling and other posts that contravene forum rules the chances are it won't be reopened and some of you may be hearing from me.