My major question that Fallout New Vegas is going to answer in one way or the other, is why game designers feel compelled to spend years rebuilding they're game engine and physics and all for every sequel, which is wonderful, but why? I'd be perfectly content with a game that was built with the exact same engine and was, UI and game play wise, the exact same as the last - as long as the designer spent all the time in development building a brand new unique world with brand new items, brand new characters and plot, ect.

Its a simple concept that many people would say is "just raking in extra money for the same product," but in reality, aren't we playing the new game for the new world, new quests and new plot? Yes, a new or more realistic engine is enjoyable, but do we really need to see a brand new, unique feature list and user interface with every single release in a series?
Fable I and II held true to itself fairly well, and has succeeded with complaint, and I hope Fallout New Vegas succeeds in what they've done as well. Maybe other game designers follow - it'll bring more games in a particular genre to the market, more unique worlds to explore, and on top of it all, it will bring the releases to the customers quicker.

Would you rather see a new engine with every release, or would you rather see an extensive new world using the tried and true engine of the "first" game in a series, with minor improvements where necessary?

Yeah, I personally wouldn't mind a little less time and money spent toward cutting edge graphics and sound, and a little more toward gameplay and content.

There is things to be said for change, but also the old can be good. Forums are used so devolepors can figure out what people like and dont like. Say no one liked the hardcoe mode (I will love it but whatever). The Dev. team would ethier take it away or would improve it by what forumers think. That is one way change can be good. Another way change can be good is that eventually the game will fell like a giant DLC if there was no change to gameplay. Now from my understanding i think i will love New Vegas features and game play, but there will be room to improve, games will get bigger as time progresses so we will have more to do, more of our life to waste! :rolleyes:

I prefer they update the engine as long as it increases stability and performance, sure I really enjoy more worlds to explore, but after the stability issues with FO3 this engine certainly needed tweaking/updating, exploring new worlds becomes less enjoyable if your game keeps crashing or freezing.

Didn't they do this anyway? Small tweaks and major gameworld overhaul? And also no UI changes...

Don't know. :shrug:

I'd have been content with a reworked FO3 based on the engine used in Fallout Tactics, (though I would have preferred an engine that takes full advantage of my current hardware ~and looked like eh.. Dawn of War 2). That seems to be a sensible reason to me though... New engines that make use of the new Hardware (to do interesting things that no one else is doing ~yet).

**Of course... Its cyclic reasoning, as the new hardware is made to speed up current engines... and offer new features that no one else is doing ~yet. :ahhh:

I think part of why developers spend as much time with game engines and creating new ones is that a lot of the game buying public these days expect each game to have a new engine, core mechanics and of course shinier and prettier graphics than the last one.

Personally I'm happy enough to see those things polished a bit so that they work more efficiently with fewer conflicts and or crashes, but all too many want/demand newer and better for each game.

I think it goes without saying, if it were not for those who pushed for those things we would still be scrolling vertically and sideways on a 2D image, do better graphics make a better game?, no, the game itself has to be good to start with, but good graphics can enhance the experience considerably, I admit it's shallow of me, but there are games out there with fantastic ratings that I won't go near because of the primitive graphics.

because stagnation leads to death, look at Rome. the industry needs to grow and chang new engines offer new possibilities and the use of new technology as well as for fan feedback to influence a title. look at say bioshock infinite ken levine the creator said that they built a new engine because they couldn't do what yhey wanted to with what they had available. this doesn't mean every game needs a new engine there are plenty of games that have used the same engine or an updated version. the goal of the designers should be to create the best game they can within their means wether that means using the same engine, tweaking the current engine as new vegas has, or buildin one from scratch.

A new game in a series doesn't always need to have a completely new engine and overhaul all the gameplay mechanics. But at the same time, there's only so much you can do by just creating new content, and if developers are never willing to change the core of the game, then there would never be any progress in games. If progress did not exist in the gaming industry, then we'd still be playing Pong. And if one developer keeps clinging to the same engine and core mechanics without updating them at all but other developers continue to use new engines in their games, then ultimately, that developer's games will become outdated, and they won't be able to compete with other games on the market, after all, I doubt as many people would have played Fallout 3 if it still used Fallout 2's engine and gameplay. Like any industry, competition is an unavoidable thing in the game business, and when it comes to competitive things, if one person stays in the same place while everyone else moves forward, then the one who doesn't move will inevitably lose even if that one was ahead of the others at first.

In the end, though, it comes down to what the designers want from the game. With New Vegas, they obviously that instead of doing something really new and amazing with the game, they should focus on enhancing and refining what was created with Fallout 3, and I can live with that. Certainly, New Vegas isn't the first game to do something like this, and other games that have followed a similar design path have been pretty successful (GTA: Vice City and San Andreas, for example.) and in any case, while Fallout 3's graphics might not be cutting edge compared to modern games, I think that the graphics of New Vegas would still qualify as decent by modern standards, and they could probably even get away with using the same engine for another game or two, especially if they still included some graphical updates. As I've said in other threads related to this subject, though, I think we'll get a new engine, or at least a much more advanced version of the same engine, seeing as Bethesda seems to insist on clinging to their current one, when Fallout 4 comes along.

It's all about getting your (in this case, the developers') money's worth.

Creating a new game engine is extremely expensive and time-consuming. Game engines are created and coded with successive iterations in mind.


What you want--more quests, bigger world--is what you're getting with "Fallout: New Vegas."

I agree entirely, for too long developers have been publishing crap games with pretty graphics.

Basically. It's like Christmas. " OH HEY, Sparkly gift wrap, small box, must be something cool like an iPod" *Open it up* "Oh....Socks....used socks...."

I think this argument would have worked very well with Oblivion and if Bethesda had been a company of 1,000 people, they could have turned out 4 or 5 years worth of new content on the TES4 engine. The engine was so good in its day that we would have soaked it up like rain in the desert, and Bethesda would be a more wealthy company today (perhaps, 1,000 mouths to feed gets expensive really fast). Still the concept of a software engine good-enough to last with years of content added to it is not a bad one and not foreign, I look at my kids Pokemon games and I see almost the same thing.

I think this can work for awhile, but advancements do happen.. There are alot of video games out there and we the people do not buy them endlessly, in fact I read in the Wall Street Journal that growth in gaming sales overall has flattened out recently. That may be tied to the overall economy, but it also means that competition for our gaming dollar is fierce and the studios are going to ever-evolve their platforms to try and win our business. I thus expect the studios will continue to pump-out better and better games, to which we all benefit.