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Fallout 3 out today in North America!
I've got a long history as a gamer. Those of you who know me well, know that. Beyond early Pong/Atari/ColecoVision/Commodore memories, it was the Apple ][ that really got me into gaming. And while the submarine simulator that took half an hour to load and the Olympic games with their tinny rendition of the Soviet anthem were fun, it was role playing games that hit me hardest. Eternal Dagger, picked up on the way back from a family trip to upstate NY, really bit me in a major way. Once we got an 8088 IBM compatible PC the SSI "gold box" games wasted away many of my evenings. I still have vivid memories of clearing out certain sections of Phlan (particularly Sokol Keep) while listening to Metallica's …And Justice For All. The Ultima series, when I finally got into them through Ultima III for the NES, would end up becoming a major influence on my development.
But Wasteland was always my favorite.
It was a post-apocalyptic RPG, where you played a squad of desert rangers tasked with bringing order to the chaos and ultimately saving the world. Witty humor, beautifully written jokes and plot points, and vast improvements over the Bard's Tale engine that had already wasted so many of my evenings. Bard's Tale III was a wonderful game that kept me hooked from world to world, but Wasteland kept me hooked and replaying the same world over and over again. What originally hooked me on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
cybersphere were the Wasteland references.
My first play through was rather rocky. I wandered north into Darwin Village, way out of my league. Then I tried to actually assault the Citadel instead of get around it. Finally, I found challenges appropriate to my level, and ultimately fought through the Las Vegas sewers through a painful war of attrition. When all was said and done, I was proud to have beaten that game. One summer, I played Wasteland over and over and over again, resetting the game world and keeping my characters. I had it down pat, and could cut shortcuts to beat the final area in no time at all. By the time the summer was over, my characters were a group of grizzled veterans who could walk into Vegas and beat the Scorpitron apart with their bare hands.
Years later, I was excited to hear about Fallout, the spiritual successor to Wasteland. Sure, there had been the Wasteland sequel Fountain of Dreams, but we'd all like to forget that one. Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 both came out during my initial time atdrewuniversity as a student, and I played through the latter in my quadmate's room while he and his girlfriend watched television. From the epic intro, I was hooked.
Beautifully stylized, full of the irreverent Wasteland humor, and open-ended in the way only the best of Ultimas were. Slaughter bad guys across the field as a sniper, sneak in and turn their own guns against them, talk your way past them, go in guns blazing, send your faithful allies in, whatever. You got to explore, come up with solutions to problems that might have been different than your friend also playing the game, and experience consequences for your actions. The endgame movies, telling you what happened to the local area due to what you did, were freakin' awesome.
The two games came out in the late nineties, then we waited. A long time. The dumbed-down tactics came out, which I enjoyed playing just because it was Fallout. We had our moments of hope. After Van Buren died, the population became angry. Moreso because all they had to play was a dumbed-down advertisement-filled console adventure game that seemed an insult to everything Fallout was in their minds. Oh were they pissed. Impossible to placate, probably. We got a teaser, the tenth anniversary passed, and today Fallout 3 is released.
The fanboys won't be pleased. I've already read their rabid angry comments on sites such as NMA. Every time someone complains about hardware issues or DRM or their game crashing, the angry rabble yells a bit more. Even a seemingly loving tribute such as this one is picked apart for its factual errors and the narrator not sounding excited enough. Even if Fallout 3 was released with the ability to fix the economy, peak oil, and climate change? They would still be pissed that some plot element they thought was cool from Van Buren was left out (or included (because they're impossible to please)).
While rabid fanboy![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
graye is probably shirking work to play his copy today, my Amazon exclusive collector's edition doesn't arrive until Halloween. And it's arriving a bit too close to WotLK. But I'll give it a chance, expecting no more than fun, yet secretly hoping for a game that at least tries to follow the theme of the originals. There's a shot that might happen, and Bethesda has proven their ability to do open-ended well. Worst case scenario, I've already played this. And just like watching Episode 1 after seeing the Star Wars Holiday Special, things just don't seem that bad once you've sunk that low. If things are that bad, I might just forgive Molyneux and give Fable 2 a shot.
But Wasteland was always my favorite.
It was a post-apocalyptic RPG, where you played a squad of desert rangers tasked with bringing order to the chaos and ultimately saving the world. Witty humor, beautifully written jokes and plot points, and vast improvements over the Bard's Tale engine that had already wasted so many of my evenings. Bard's Tale III was a wonderful game that kept me hooked from world to world, but Wasteland kept me hooked and replaying the same world over and over again. What originally hooked me on
cybersphere were the Wasteland references.My first play through was rather rocky. I wandered north into Darwin Village, way out of my league. Then I tried to actually assault the Citadel instead of get around it. Finally, I found challenges appropriate to my level, and ultimately fought through the Las Vegas sewers through a painful war of attrition. When all was said and done, I was proud to have beaten that game. One summer, I played Wasteland over and over and over again, resetting the game world and keeping my characters. I had it down pat, and could cut shortcuts to beat the final area in no time at all. By the time the summer was over, my characters were a group of grizzled veterans who could walk into Vegas and beat the Scorpitron apart with their bare hands.
Years later, I was excited to hear about Fallout, the spiritual successor to Wasteland. Sure, there had been the Wasteland sequel Fountain of Dreams, but we'd all like to forget that one. Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 both came out during my initial time at
drewuniversity as a student, and I played through the latter in my quadmate's room while he and his girlfriend watched television. From the epic intro, I was hooked. Beautifully stylized, full of the irreverent Wasteland humor, and open-ended in the way only the best of Ultimas were. Slaughter bad guys across the field as a sniper, sneak in and turn their own guns against them, talk your way past them, go in guns blazing, send your faithful allies in, whatever. You got to explore, come up with solutions to problems that might have been different than your friend also playing the game, and experience consequences for your actions. The endgame movies, telling you what happened to the local area due to what you did, were freakin' awesome.
The two games came out in the late nineties, then we waited. A long time. The dumbed-down tactics came out, which I enjoyed playing just because it was Fallout. We had our moments of hope. After Van Buren died, the population became angry. Moreso because all they had to play was a dumbed-down advertisement-filled console adventure game that seemed an insult to everything Fallout was in their minds. Oh were they pissed. Impossible to placate, probably. We got a teaser, the tenth anniversary passed, and today Fallout 3 is released.
The fanboys won't be pleased. I've already read their rabid angry comments on sites such as NMA. Every time someone complains about hardware issues or DRM or their game crashing, the angry rabble yells a bit more. Even a seemingly loving tribute such as this one is picked apart for its factual errors and the narrator not sounding excited enough. Even if Fallout 3 was released with the ability to fix the economy, peak oil, and climate change? They would still be pissed that some plot element they thought was cool from Van Buren was left out (or included (because they're impossible to please)).
While rabid fanboy
graye is probably shirking work to play his copy today, my Amazon exclusive collector's edition doesn't arrive until Halloween. And it's arriving a bit too close to WotLK. But I'll give it a chance, expecting no more than fun, yet secretly hoping for a game that at least tries to follow the theme of the originals. There's a shot that might happen, and Bethesda has proven their ability to do open-ended well. Worst case scenario, I've already played this. And just like watching Episode 1 after seeing the Star Wars Holiday Special, things just don't seem that bad once you've sunk that low. If things are that bad, I might just forgive Molyneux and give Fable 2 a shot.
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So far, so good.
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1. I have done most of my head shooting through VATS.
2. I've been shooting SWAT so far in vault 101 so.. maybe the raiders have super whippy heads?
3. I took a pretty high luck (8) and may get beneficial stats rolls.
4. I took small guns as for a trait affinity.
May have been a bug fix. Maybe I took a good stat set. So. YMMV?
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I'm still not happy about no longer getting more than one person and a dog in my party, but I'll deal.
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Seems like something that should really be discussed in the rulebook!
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Then tried a soldier. The difference was amazing. Sure I could hit things with my biotic, but I was doing minimal damage and had no abilities to do more damage, or access to better guns. The same pistol was like a battering ram in the hands of my soldier. *shrug*
I'm assuming they might do the same, keeping the RPG mechanics behind the scenes while letting you "play".
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The big difference is that with VATS, you're saving a bunch of ammo and it doesn't lead to the seemingly-ridiculous situation where you shoot someone 34 times in the head before they die. In VATS, I've needed maybe 3-4 shots to the head if they're wearing some head armor... less if I crit.
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Thinking about it, I realize Fallout 1 & 2 had the same issue. You could shoot people half a dozen times in the head if you had a really crappy weapon and still not come close to dropping them. Factor in your miss chance for shots to the head, and you could unload 2-3 clips at someone's head before they'd die. The difference here is that in "FPS-mode", they factor in your miss chance by reducing damage, rather than showing a funky animation of the guy dodging or something.
Anyway, finally got a lot of play in yesterday. I'm pretty happy with the game, other than the fact that I was expecting better graphics. I find myself wanting to only run around during the day because things look much better during the day than at night. Minor complaint though.
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