The comparison would be apples to tomatoes. What I see put up as atmospheric in most threads is Fallout 3's use of 3D graphics and sound to depict a dynamic setting /sandbox. The original Fallout does not use a 3D accelerator, in fact it only needs DirectX 5 to get by [windows version]. It is based on a PNP role Playing game where players would use a visual prop (like a hillside and battered wall, say..) just to have a common orientation, and know where the people stood. This prop could be used a hundred times in the game to depict different parts of the wall, and its no problem, because everyone playing knows that it is a representation of 'A wall segment' on 'a hill side', and no one would point out that this wall has the same cracks and dented trash cans as the one before. It is only the base essentials of the display that matter.

Folks deride Fallout's use of about three ruined city areas to depict ruined city areas all across the wasteland (in between the towns). A role player has no qualms whatsoever with this, because those "sets" depict the core essentials of a ruined city block, and that's all that it needs to. The game sprites for the people and creatures are handled the exact same way. The Vault Dweller has an 'obviously female' and an 'obviously male' version ~that's all that is needed to role play him or her. The Player assigns a uniqueness to their PC every time they make one. The sprite shows where it stands and generally what it is. :shrug:

Its the same for animals and monsters, but its ironic here in that most games (including Fallout 3) do the same; they use the same asset for every creature ~just as Fallout does. In FO3 every feral Ghoul is the exact same model as the last time. They all look the same; it doesn't matter. The difference is that Fallout3 makes it rather obvious that every vicious dog, and every Ghoul and Mole-Rat are identical, because of the upclose detail ~where Fallout usually depicts from a distance, and those minor identifiers fade ~plausibly, and the sprites tend to look like 'What' they are as opposed to 'Who' they are. In a large world, this is a far better thing for an RPG.

Fallout has the atmosphere in spades...(I should say the essential atmosphere) when it comes to visuals (and music). Fallout used atmospheric ambient tracks to indicate an appropriate impression of an area ~and it works VERY well. Just compare /examine Vault City, the GLOW, Necropolis, and the Brotherhood bunker. (and Redding)


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***There is another aspect to mention that has nothing to do with Fallout, but may play into visual RPG's as a whole. Most people can only track about 149 friends (tracking entails knowing your friends, and their relationships to your other friends. * IE. "don't invite Jane to Robert's party ~they hate each other." ). Its just me, I'm sure, but I wonder what effect is happening when you play enough RPG's to recognize individual faces and their allegiance? (FO3 is a game with 300 factioned NPC's)

hmm yeah, I understand all that. But it's like.. if I play a paper RP game, then a computer game comes out, it's never as atmospheric as it was when it was five of us sat around a table by lamplight. The majority of that atmosphere comes from me, my perception, not the pieces of paper. The game SHOULD have more, but it misses out on that... that part of the game that was left to the imagination.

I guess that is what is happening with the FO1/2 vs FO3 thing. FO1 and FO2 players relied on what was going on in their heads to a larger extent than the "everything in front of you" FO3, so of course it doesn't compare. But for someone like me, who never played the first two, they just look like lo-rez Amiga graphics, not an immersive adventure experience. Whereas FO3 had me at "it's a girl"...

bah I'm babbling. Guess what I'm trying to say is that games like this depend more on what the player brings to it than what the gfx/music/sound brings to it. (so agreeing with Patriarch)

I imagine that back in the previous century, people had similar discussions about silent movies vs talkies and radio vs television.

"You have sound, why do you need pictures? I prefer imaging what characters might look like rather than television showing me.

That's a big discussion; A lot of careers were ruined. There are emotional /perception diferences too between the media. Fast forward a bit... I doubt Citizen Kane would be as affective in color; yet The Wizard of Oz greatly benefits from it. (but this is a new thread all it's own).

The Witcher played out more like the Fallout of old (sans spell casting), and actually did do the archetypal NPC thing (though some took it wrong).

*Granted it was a lot more linear.

The key for it to work is that the quality has to be beyond that which the observer would be able to generate on their own, or to know when to limit the extra detail.

Nice discussions though, I'm glad people are trying to tackle the perceptual issues at some rate.

Still haven't really touched on what Fallout 3 apparently, actually, factually, undeniably failed to do, despite having nearly all agreed it couldn't have done what the OP expected of it. For those things such as generic lines from the same voice actor coming from different NPCs, you can dial it back and turn off speech altogether. Having NPCs standing around that will audibly say something generic if you speak to them is no worse than having NPCs standing around who'll only offer text and no audio.

Gizmo suggested I disregarded the player input, but that's not true, I've been suggesting all along that players grudging Fallout 3's atmosphere aren't giving it nearly as much input, or cutting it nearly as many breaks as they did the original. Because it offers too much and its too hard? I doubt that. I doubt it because I don't have a problem with it despite my favourite RPG being an isometric offering, because I understand why that isometric offering is my favourite RPG, and it's mostly because of me, and so a new title trying to 'capture' what made it good for me is nigh on impossible.

Even with the good examples Gizmo gave of Fallout atmosphere, I suspect he doesn't realise how much he's painting over his own point of player input, while at the same time offering examples of how the game worked. Those areas he mentioned aren't nearly as atmospheric as he suggests, in the game. I know because there are areas in Icewind Dale that I think of as being perfect. The caves south of Easthaven, the area of Kuldahar, and Dorn's Deep. In truth what I actually need is the musical score and certain sections of the backdrop that I've completely embellished myself. S'all all there, I can almost smell it, but it's not there... in fact. lol

Seems to me that looking at this "recapturing Fallout" thing, that I'm seeing condiment flavoured, massive personal input for a game offering little visually, but barely a modicum of input for a game offering far more visually. I guess the main point is: If the atmosphere players of the original are hoping to recapture is mostly in their heads, how on earth is New Vegas supposed to get any closer to it than Fallout 3 did? lol

Seems that we have two different schools of thought about the atmosphere here. I have to agree with both of them to some extent, Fallout 3 provided me with the world that I had imagined in the previous games, it looked just like I had always imagined the world of Fallout be. But that isn't enough if you don't feel like you were living it, and yes you have discussed about the dialogue and others things that contribute to that, but really Fallout 3 was a train ride compared to original Fallouts. The fact that every larger quest had marker showing you where to go really killed lot of immersion for me.

Even though Fallout 3 looked like what I had imagined the world to look like, it wasn't immersing enough when it came to the dialogue, story and exploring wise. If I had to gather up clues through dialogue instead of somebody telling me that "he went to location X" and map marker magically appearing to me, the world would have svcked me into it much more, I would have stumbled upon side quests and interesting locations during main quest. Instead I played it through quickly and started the exploration on a second play through.

I don't now if you caught my drift but here's an example: First time playing Fallout when I was trying to find the waterchip I really felt that I was in the world, I had only one clue Vault 15. It turned out to be nothing and I drifted from town to town finding clues, it lead me to Junktown where I did few quests and gathered better gear. While trying to find out clues Killian tells me that I should try Hub and don't go to Necropolis because of the vibe there. Well my time is running out and Hub turns out to be nothing I really feel desperate and lost. Then I finally decide to take a shot in Necropolis and after a while the sweet taste of success and when heading back to Vault 13 my time runs out and the disappointment sets in. I didn't feel such emotions for a single time in Fallout 3, I just felt that some higher force was guiding my journey. It's just that also the feelings that you get playing the game contribute the atmosphere and unfortunately the story of Fallout 3 couldn't deliver me such emotions as being truly lost can.

Agreed. (to a point). In Fallout the important ones had voice, the bystanders had brief non-committal lines that you would expect of bystanders. I prefer the easy distinction.

(Also... Had the game made it commonplace that NPC's may talk in text, Modders would have had a far easier time adding quests that didn't stand out like a black-eye).

Not to nit pick ~much, but there is a difference between 'discount', and 'disregard' (Though I can see thinking I meant "ignore" when I meant "a lessened value" ~its used both ways). What I was stating was that Fallout's achievement was the act of incorporating player assumptions (and anticipating them too / even exploiting them).

You can have an Etch-a-Sketch, and compare it to a framed ink drawing and say that the drawing is far more detailed and "worthy" ~but the drawing does not let you draw... That's what an Etch-A-Sketch does ~that's what its for, that's it's achievement. Fallout 3 is a painting of the Fallout setting ~you see it as you find it. Fallout is/was an abstract of the Fallout condition; the setting (like it's wasteland) was open to interpretation.

This is most certainly true (and its funny, I just bought Icewind Dale ~again, two nights ago.)

This is what good RPG's do
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You are correct about adding personal additions to the games though... and I'll give you an example.
The other day I asked Mr. Avelone, "Did you hire Michael T. Weiss for Nameless, as an in-joke, because he's most famous for playing an anonymous 'jack of all trades' in the Pretender ". This is something that I had "painted" onto my opinion of Planescape as being a sharp-witted jest (that raised my overall esteem for it a bit). He told me "no", and that it just worked out that way. Weiss had the time, and the interview went well.
This doesn't discount that its still true (though coincidental), and so my esteem for it remains unchanged. Fallout had a lot of unintentional flukes. (for instance, I'm pretty sure that the turns fall on the beat in several locations during combat, though I don't for an instant think that Mark Morgan planned this).

The best way [IMO] is to design with the same intentions, and aspiration. Fallout can be repeated without repeating it's raw content. Look at Arcanum ~Its practically Fallout in every way except setting and rules. (but I don't mean that it must be 2d/ISO ~no one wants a total Fallout clone as a sequel)

As to "what Fallout 3 apparently, actually, factually, undeniably failed to do"...

Fallout holds you to your actions. (this makes them important)

Since im not a Fallout Vet. my say might not be as important as others, but since you dont start out your story in a vault this time the feel will be the same from the first second to the last. Whether or not the feel is satisfying can't be determined untill the 19th.


I believe that most of the fallout vets are the biggest critics in here, im no expert but im pretty sure its relly difficult to put everything the community wants into a 7gb disk. Comprimises probobly had to be made every day. There will never be a perfect game, ever. As technology advances and people learn to go from a 7gb cap to a 20gb cap on a disk the demmand of certain content will grow and comprimises will still have to be made.



Fallout New Vegas will be 10 times better than Fo3, and im confident none of you have nothing to worry about.
Hey guys, the 19th is only 8 days away :hehe:

For me, Fallout 3 has been the best, most fun and immersive game I have ever played! After well over 1000 hours total, and literally dozens of characters created I still feel the same way. So, after all those hours I decided to try the original game out to see for myself what all the hard core lovers of the original game told everyone was so great about it. Keep in mind I had never had any exposure to anything Fallout related but Fallout 3.

So, I bought the Trilogy pack from Steam and jumped in there hoping to experience lot's of the stuff the people say is so awesome about the original. Boy, was I disappointed! 1st, the game didn't run worth a crap on my Vista 64 system. It would just go to a totally black screen and all I could do would be to just hold the on/off button until I shut down. Second, the controls were cumbersome and quite frankly horrid in my opinion. I just couldn't get into the click here and walk a few feet, click some more to walk a little more etc. Third, the "combat" wasn't combat as far as I'm concerned. There was nothing "heart racing" or even remotely "scary" about it. I guess that's the whole "turn-based" style of play, but whatever it was, certainly wasn't for me.

Fourth, (and I place this last for specific reasons), was after I really, really tried to suffer through the constant black screens, horrible game mechanics and overall boredom I experienced slogging through the crap to get to the "awesome immersive world and incredible story and writing" that people rail about, was the the "top down" or isometric view made it more cartoonish than anything to me. I was watching a cartoon character walk around little cartoon towns or a cartoon cut away view of an interior area. That alone totally blew any immersion I had left in me to even complete the game. I simply hated it. I don't care how good the writing is, nothing is worth my time to suffer through all the negative stuff to get to anything remotely good in the story. So, unfortunately, I didn't get to experience the parts that some folks say were so great in the game. But, at least I did try very hard several times to get into it, but alas, I just couldn't.

So, back to the OP, honestly, I felt the atmosphere in FO3 was incredible, but the original just svcked for me. I remember the sense of awe and wonder the first time I played FO3 and left the Vault the first time. I remember seeing my first Mirelurk and wondering WTF is that, just before I ran out of ammo for my crappy 10mm pistol and got mauled by him, lol. I remember getting that feeling over and over and over as I discovered new areas and saw new things. I still find new things to this day that I either forgot, or never noticed. In FO3, I actually felt like I was IN and a part of the world, not someone looking down into the world at a cartoon who is supposed to be me or my character.

Obviously IMO, one must have a pretty vibrant imagination to get as immersed into the original Fallout as many here talk about. I'm just at a loss why the folks who mostly slam Fallout 3 for what they perceive as it's shortcomings (very few shortcomings in my opinion) refuse to use the same imagination that they used to make Fallout 1 great in their eyes, and apply it to Fallout 3. I truly believe they would see it differently if they honestly did. Were there minor holes in the story? Sure, but aren't there in almost any fictional work? We always have to suspend our disbelief a certain amount with amy game, and let our own thoughts and feelings fill in the places left void by the devs. I feel Fallout 3 gave me a wonderful world that I could use to create my own experiences as I saw fit and felt like experiencing as I was doing them. :fallout:

Everyone has an equal say :foodndrink:

What some want does not require a lot of space. For myself (for example), I would want that the White Glove fellow not baby-feed you the solution to his quest ; rather just suggest what needs to be accomplished and let the player figure out how (preferably with more than one solution).
*(for those that don't catch this, its about the recent G4 video outlining this quest in NV)

Nothing can ever come close to FO1 and 2. They were a great mix of RPG and environment birthed by Josh Sawyer and Feargus Uruquart.

In my opinion Graphics don't matter to me, Still to this day I play N64 and gamecube games and tend to have more fun on them then playing some ps3 games
Fallout New Vegas will be entertaining and fun, ultimately that is the whole point, I never really played FO1/FO2 (Due to errors that wouldn't let me play at all) but from what I did get to play they were fun (Destroying someone with the SMG/combat shotgun with burst mode animation ftw)

So really I don't see what problems everyone else have but for me A game is a Game with the purpose to entertain if it does that then why does it matter?

Fallout 3 had a very detailed and realized "physical" world, while 1,2 had intricate "social" worlds. Fallout 3 blew me away when they the visual queues to tell a little story. The first corpse I stumbled upon was deliberately positioned in a way that conveyed action and the items/debris put that action into context, and to take it one step further the location of the scene the emotion of the person at their time of death (houses in the Minefield and various spider holes). Fallout 1 and 2 tried to do that, but they had to resort to a text description when you used the observation tooltip on the scene. I cackled maniacally when I saw a skeleton laying in a bathtub with a toaster in its lap.

Fallout 1,2 had incredible diversity in dialogue options and many of them you would not see unless specific conditions (karma, SPECIAL stats, skill levels, prior interactions and quests) were met. This allowed for them to create nuances that made each interaction, and especially certain quest/plot ones, a memorable and unique experience. Fallout 3 had just a few options that were obviously based around karma and the lines offered when stat criteria were met felt bland or cliche. Fallout 2 for certain I know had some very emotional lines that svcked me in, and hilarious ones that poked fun at the games limited constraints/design. Fallout 3 had memorable characters and some entertaining interactions, but none of them stand out like applying for Vault City citizenship and proving yourself to an organized crime lord,

They both have their ups and downs, but overall I liked fallout 3 more just because wandering around the wasteland I felt like I was actually there, even without interacting with its inhabitants.

FO: NV appears to attempt recreating the depth of dialogue and interaction from the first 2 titles while maintaining the rich wasteland from the third. If it is successful it will be one of the best games ever.

J.E. Sawyer has nothing to do with the originals, Van Buren was his first try at the Fallout and NV will be the first one that has ever been completed. Tim Cain is the man behind all of this.

Josh Sawyer did not work on Fallout 1 or 2
This is his first shipped Fallout game. (he worked an Van Buren)

Why is everyone so freaking obsessed with "Recapturing" the feel of the original games? All that I want out of Fallout: New Vegas is some great NPCs, some heavy moral choices and an interesting story. While I played a ton of Fallout 3, it did lack those really tough moral choices that made you question whether or not you were doing the right thing. Except for the Pitt of course, which I thought was brilliant in that regard.

I don't want to play the same game I did back in the 90's. I want new experiences in new places. If you want to "Recapture" Fallout 1 and 2 so badly then go and play them again and recapture the heck out of them. They aren't going anywhere.

What is your point? I don't think that touches the issue here in the least.

A lot of folks here probably played Fallout in the last two weeks, or certainly still have it installed. No one is asking for a Fallout clone, but there are aspects of the game that are missing from the series. (And I'm not talking about the combat mechanics).

I'd rather play again the game that I played in 90's than the game I played 2 years ago. And you just stated everything that Fallout 3 was lacking. Interesting characters, rich dialogue, huge amount of quests and great story are those things make Fallout 1/2 so great. Aimless wandering in the desert trying to find some spaceship, isn't something that I'm particularly interested in, it's fun but not when 70% of the game content is about that.

I don't either, "recapturing" the quality or feel of the game doesn't mean you have to clone it. I think we all agree that we want it to be as fun and interesting as possible, as best as it can be, I think we have simply tried to figure out what some of the mechanisms were that made previous games work when they had less to work with! A modern game with the level of tech and the ability to add so much data can surely allow for better experiences but they have to fulfill the promises of the tech otherwise they can be less effective (like in fallout 3, oblivion, whatever other game you think the lameness of some part of it cut the rest of it down).

WOW! If 70% of your game was "Aimless wandering in the desert trying to find some spaceship" I can understand why you don't like it. I guess we're lucky that for the rest of us it amounted to MUCH more than that miniscule little event. Perhaps you should try a walkthrough and see how much you might have missed? Here is a good one.

http://www.mahalo.com/fallout-3-walkthrough

I hope that eventually you will be able to see everything actually reuniting and the nation rebuilding. It has been over 200 years its about time to pick up the rubble and regroup the nation. They need to make one that mentions everything coming together to build the nation again. But in it you will decide the Victor (Ruler) that will guide the nation back to reuniting. It would be cool if all the major factions (Mainly BoS and Enclave).

OP:

I agree with just about none of your arguments.

I thought the world building of FO3 was outstanding...certainly more immersive for me than FO2, for example.

I'm not so sure about FO :NV. The strip looks too intact for me. Yes, I'm aware of the backstory, but the backstory is inherently anti-fallout, IMO. We'll ahve to see what the rest of the game looks like.

Please, explain why.