Fallout 3 trailer: June 5. Page updated with AWESOME.

[Starglider]

Get a fucking clue before yapping again. Sprites are in no way primitive. They are simply harder to do than 3D models, if you want them to look right. Harder does not equal primitive, and if you think it does well.. there's no hope for you.

This is utter idiocy and hasn't been true since 1996 or so. Even as of 1998 the Quake 2 engine was more complicated than say the Baldur's Gate engine and 3D art assets were taking comparable time to make as isometric assets. As of 2006, typical 3D engines are at two orders of magnitude more complex than any conceivable isometric/sprite engine and models and textures take much longer to make, largely because they can be viewed at much closer range than isometric models (which in later games were just 3D models that had been prerendered anyway) and are more complex to animate.

What I am saying is that done right, a sprite based, isometric Fallout would not automatically be primitive.

And you're simply wrong, for any sane definition of 'primitive'.

By the way, TES: Arena and Daggerfall were first person and used sprites. Limitation my ass.

Which was done only because the hardware of the time couldn't handle the polycount of decent 3D models, and it looks awful compared to real 3D when the polycount is available, thus no modern games used it. I can tell you from (coding) experience that sprite-actor 3D engines are considerably simpler than full-3D ones, though that should be obvious to anyone with a hint of a clue.

And I care... why? Elite was 3D. So were it's sequels Frontier and First Encounters. Then Privateer was sprite based. Then Freespace and Freelancer were 3D. Then Space Rangers was sprite based and entirely 2D.

Total lack of comprehension of the technical details. Early on, sprite 3D was infeasible because a) image scalers are more CPU-intensive than flat polygons, scalers that don't suck particularly and more importantly b) sufficient sprites to cover a sensible number of angles in sensible detail took up a huge amount of memory that early systems just didn't have. Sprite based full 3D was impossible in the time of Elite. Frontier didn't use it because it would've massively restricted the number of ships available and wrecked the realism of the landing and docking scenes. Modern games only use sprites in niche roles for artistic effect (and even that's been largely going away to be replaced by cel shaders).

The PSP is more powerful than a PSone which had a massive amount of 3D games

In really sucky texture-mapped 3D which actually looks painful to many modern gamers (read: various friends of mine).

So you're full of shit! Prove your ridiculous assertion that handhelds are limited because they're handhelds.

The total disconnect with reality is becoming obvious. In your bizarre parallel universe handhelds somehow do not suffer from volume, cost, heat or power limitations, and can mount as many expensive power-hungry heat-generating chips as they like without getting too bulky or heavy or hot or expensive or unable to be used for more than 5 minutes before running out of power. Nor does a tiny screen and simpler controls in any way limit your interface design options or force a simpler game design with fewer bigger objects.

[Nephtys]

Why are we worrying about how the PA Looks right now? There's a crapload of easy to make explainations. For one, this is going to be about two hundred years post-war, and the Original PA suits would be all running low on fuel at that point, much less having maintenance issues from being shot at. The shoulder plates could very well be replacements of the originals that were lost from being hit by rockets, or whatever. Or the suits could be continuously jury-rigged, preserving the important powerplant in an area with a less developed BOS (The East's had substantially less resources).

I don't see why the suits wouldn't need new plates or repairs of that sort once shot and banged up. The helmet design is similar enough to the original to be a variant, or a Chinese Copy, or new production whatever.

[Hotfoot]

To be fair, it's pretty much Que Que who's the only one that can't accept variations in the armor. Okay, sure, there's probably a small band of raving lunatics maurading around on the Bethesda forums as we speak that are spewing the same hate and bile that Que Que is, but do we really care about them?

Remember folks, if it's not Black Isle, it might just kill you and rape your mom.

[Crazy_Vasey]

The T-51b was, as far as I know, the good as it gets, pwns the shit out of everyone model of PA in pre-apocalypse days. There will be lesser versions out there and that armour did look somewhat more, hmm, primitive than the original version. I'm really, really unenthused about a Bethesda-made Fallout 3 and have been since the beginning but that's not something I'd bother quibbling over insofar as the rest of the materials released show that they're doing their best to keep the atmosphere of the original games and so worrying about them chopping and changing the Fallout world for no good reason is no longer an issue.

[Vympel]

Hence the word logically.

Where does "logic" come into it?

Are you kidding me? Every single-fucking-member of the Brotherhood of Steel comes from the Mariposa Military Base, and then migrated to Lost Hills where the BoS was formed!
That's straight from Fallout 1 you moron, I have nothing to do with it.

The only moron here is you. I must've missed the part in Fallout which stated "the Brotherhood will never come from anywhere other than the Mariposa Military Base."

Heaven forbid they expand and start chapters etc. elsewhere with recruits from other than that region, eh?

The character models in Van Buren vs. the character models in Morrowind.

According to you.

According to anyone with functional eyes, as can be clearly seen in Hotfoot's screencaps.

Seeing as it was a tech demo meant to show basic engine functionality and gameplay and not pretty pretty graphics.

Prove it.

[quote
Then why did you say that you hadn't seen one instance of the full armour?[/quote]

Because I don't expect the other guy reading my posts to forget everything I say.

No, I deny your idiotic assertion that Fallout's sprites don't count as proper designs.

Except that, you know, even Black Isle admitted that.

It's not fucking similar at all. That's the problem.

Yes, it is. Equipment and HP of the enemy changes as your level goes up. Der.

Bullshit. His meaning is clear. Justifying Oblivion's scaling by saying other RPGs have some manner of scaling is a red herring anyway.

He wasn't "justifying" shit.

How is not being able to delete spells just in case some asshole deletes a quest-crucial spell not dumbing down?

Frankly, I never had a need to delete spells at all. I guess I must be dumb.

Except, you know, the aformentioned spell-delete, the awkward order of items

What's "awkward" about it, and what's it got to do with it somehow beign the 360's fault?

non-sensical spell-book and inability to drop quest related keys and items.

Inability to drop quest related keys and items is "dumbing down"? How?

Are you kidding? The lockpick game is incredibly easy once you know how it works. And I gave those two as the most extreme examples. Maybe I should also list how weapon skills no longer affect to hit %.. well.. because there is no to hit %.. Dexterity is trivial at best, Mysticism has been crippled, Block only adds various gimmick effects, etc. etc.
Class builds are also trivial given that in Oblivion it's incredibly easy to make a plate wearing sword wielding mage who is a master of stealth and fires bows like a pro. And is master of all guilds.

Oh what bullshit. In Morrowind you could get 100 in every fucking skill with no effort and in no time by taking advantage of having shitloads of gold to just visit every Master Trainer, and what's more, hit obscenely high levels with 100 to all stats by gaming the system accordingly. In Morrowind you could also be the Master of the Fighter, Mage and Thieves Guild simultaneously, the Tribunal Temple and the Imperial Cult, the Imperial Legion, Morag Tong, and a Great House. How is this better?

This is among the stupidest things I've ever heard. Why purposefully cripple yourself if you don't have to?

So you'd much rather be made to have it automatically resolved like in Morrowind, is that it?

That is the stupidest thing I've heard, for my part.

What a load of crap! How the fuck is threatening, admiring, boasting to and joking with the same person all at the same time either logical or fun?

Nice red herring- again- you'd much rather flick your mouse between persuade/admire persuade/admire persuade/admire persuade/admire persuade/admire persuade/admire persuade/admire persuade/admire persuade/admire ad infinitum until you get a disposition increase, is that it?

Because that's my idea of logic and fun. Heaven forbid you merely abstract the Oblivion mini-game into conversation.

Even Morrowind had better dialogue than Oblivion.

Oh yes, huge blocks of text with nothing but huge amounts of exposition. Right.

Regardless that the whole TES series hasn't had much in the way of dialogue.

And yet here you are insisting that Oblivion was some sort of massive abomination compared to it's predecessors.

Because, of course, a front line warrior needs access to those spells right away!

That's right, he does- or does it make sense to you that even a wizard holding a staff can't fire off a spell until he puts the staff away? I think you're confusing "getting rid of masochistic tedium" with "dumbing down".

Hey, if you don't like stat-based gaming, go play Halo.

No, I think I'll play Oblivion.

Bullshit.

No, the only bullshit here is what you're selling.

Morrowind at least have two ways to complete the quest

Oh get fucking real. If you call killing Vivec, taking the Wraithguard to a Dwemer you never even would've heard of if you weren't significantly along the main quest already to jury rig it, and then destroyign the heart/ killing Dagoth Ur (aka the final result being the exact fucking same) "two ways to complete the quest" for your purposes, it's no wonder you have such an irrational hatred of Oblivion.

3 Houses of which only one was joinable

Two, actually. Oh wow three mutually exclusive quest lines which have no consequences whatsoever to the point of the plot, ohhhh the massive amount of player choice, how dare Oblivion take away this critical aspect!

and guild quests that conflicted with each other.

Bullshit- the only conflit was the thieves and fighters guild, and it only came into operation if you did the quests just so.

Oblivion had none of that, leading to the head Assassin of the Dark Brotherhood also being the Champion, head of the Mages' Guild, head of the Fighter's Guild, head of the Thieves Guild (which hate the Dark Brotherhood!) and a holy Paladin!

Yeah, you just gloss over the whole Morag Tong/ Tribunal Temple/ Imperial Legion/ Imperial Cult thing, right?

You're full of shit. How the fuck were Oblivion's side quests so much better than Morrowind's? They're basically the same, you twat.

No, you fucktard, they're not.

Is there any equivalent in Morrowind to a Guild quest-line finishing with your being drugged up, slaughtering a village inadvertently, and then destroying the competing guild responsible?

No. In Morrowind, you taunt the leader of the Fighters Guild (ie persuade/taunt persuade/taunt persuade/taunt persuade/taunt persuade/taunt persuade/taunt persuade/taunt persuade/taunt) until he attacks you and you kill him. Congratulations, you're the leader of the Fighter's Guild.

Any quest where you've got a guy seated in a chair and are beatign the shit out of him for information?

Any mission where you act as bait for some Battlemages to catch a renegade spell user killing unsuspecting travellers?

Any guild hall attacked and slaughtered?

Command battlemages to carry out an attack on the enemy?

Finish the fucking thieves guild quest line by *gasp* actually carrying out elaborate heists, as opposed to just killing people like it's a fighters guild quest?

How about a quest with undercover guards, female thieves seducing men out to a farmhouse outside of town to rob them?

How about a mission where you're lured to a fort for the sport of others ala Hard Target?

How about enter the dreams of a mage whoose gone in over his head to save him?

Dealing with an imposter vampire slayer?

Caught in the middle between two thieves?

Being stuck in a painting?

Corrupt guard captain?

A quest to find who stole a painting from a castle?

Any equivalent to the Hackdirt quest?

Anything with as many twists as the Umbaccano the Collector questline?

The answer is no.

In short, wake the fuck up.

Aside from a couple of DB ones which are largely gimmicks.

Ohhh, right, so if the quest doesn't qualify as being the same as Morrowind, it's not a legitimate aspect of the questing to be considered, it can be dismissed as a gimmick. Brilliant!

And if you need a fucking compass to tell you where to go then why the hell are you playing RPGs?

I must've missed which part of RPGs said I have to bugger around the wilderness wasting time following directions.

I suppose every game that didn't give you the equivalent of "you turn left pass the second tree and then go up the river, past Odai, then nort past the five rocks, take the second cave to the left, then levitate right up my ass"

Isn't an RPG now.

So, you like blunt axes do you?

I don't care.

From your tone, you obviously dislike RPGs. Which is unfortunate, because Bethesda make RPGs for people like you.. who dislike RPGs.
Horrible paradox, that. Do you see me pissing all over the FPS or RTS genre wanting them to be more like something else? No! So why do it to RPGs?

No, I obviously dislike elitist fanboy twats who think they know what an RPG is and isn't. As you've already been schooled on before this post.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Rabid Fanboy whining of CC aside , the trailer looks awesome (Just got back and saw it) .
I find it hard to believe that this really is in-game, since it matches the classic trailers so damn well from the music flickering on to the panning shoot, but if that is an in-game rendered movie then all I can say is that "Messa got's some upgrading to do" .

The updating to the armour looks good, it lacks some of the steam-work like charm of the original armour (This version looks more streamlined, slimmer and lacks some "gridwork") but I suppose that I can forgive the 80's like modifications since it'd still be indistinguishable to a normal person (And not an obsessive Rabid Fanboy like myself, albeit one who doesn't mind change ).

[Stark]

Death, are you retarded? You claim the new armour is 'more streamlined' and 'slimmer', but that nobody but you would notice? ON PAGE EIGHT OF THE GREAT ZOMG TEH ARMOUR IS TEH CHUNKY ARGUMENT!

I'm going to be charitable and treat this as unsuccessful sarcasm, rather than hilariously misplaced self-promotion.

[Vympel]

Someone's claiming to have gotten the upcoming Game Informer exclusive on Fallout 3 early- from NMA:

The article is based on an hour long demo GI was given. I'll list the high points

- Game runs on an evolved version of the Oblivion engine. Third person view has been reworked since the verdict was that the Oblivion version sucked balls.

- Game starts with your birth and your mother's death in a vault hospital. This is essentially the character customization part of the game. Your father hands you up to have your DNA analyzed and you get to pick out all your character traits. Your dad takes off his mask to reveal similar traits to the ones you picked.

- You grow up in the vault and as you grow you get your first book titled "You're Special" which allows you to choose you baseline stats for each of your 7 primary aptitudes. You'll also get your first weapons and wrist computer (menu) as you get older and take tests to determine the initial layout of your skills and traits.

- Every aspect of character creation is based on S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system. Of your 14 skills you can tag 3 to grow at a faster rate than the rest as you level up.

- Battle system is called the Vault-tec Assisted Targeting System (V.A.T.S.). The article states. "While you'll certainly be able to tackle enemies in real time using first person shooting, V.A.T.S. lets players pause time and select a target at their leisure". Battle system still uses action points, but once you've used them up you'll still be able to fight targets in real time while they charge back up.

- Game is still violent and gory. One of the featured screens is of a guy's head exploding in super gory detail. Apparently all gory deaths in the game will be in slow motion.

- More than one way to play the game. Go balls out and kill people, or sneak past situations, or perhaps talk your way out of situations.

- Enemies can target you just like you can target them, so you can get injured in very specific points on you body. This in addition to an all new health/radiation system. This new system has you measuring how radiated certain things (like water) are and how they affect you when you consume them.

- Karma system returns

[. . .]

It doesn't say anything specifically about party members, but there's a section that talks about how integral NPC's are to the game, and that a lot of the progress in the game will be made via quests.

EDIT. A little caption under a screen shot says you'll be able to hire henchmen to help you out but this is definitely not a party based game. Also Bethesda confirms that there'll be a dog in the game.

[. . .]

As a matter of fact they do. The game does not scale like oblivion, so if you enter a high level area expect to be promptly murdered.

Also, I just read a little caption.

Level cap is 20.

Definite ending to the game, but there are 9 - 12 possible endings.

[. . .]

It is XP based. Most of your XP comes from quests.

[Ace Pace]

But..But...EVERYONE KNEW IT WOULD BE OBLIVION WITH GUNS!

I guess Bethesda isn't the fools QueQue made them out to be.

[loomer]

Well, it's kinda sorta maybe oblivion with guns! See! It has real time FPSing! BOOOO!

In all seriousness, though, if the article is correct, then I am deeply reassured. Well, not deeply, but somewhat. I don't trust Bethesda with Fallout, to be honest, not completely, but nor am I radically against them developing the series further.

[InnocentBystander]

That sounds fantastic.

[Aaron]

This sounds great, I'm really looking forward to this. Unfortunatly I'll have to get a new PC to run it.

[Netko]

Very promising. I'm guessing the combat system is something akin to KOTOR and the first person shooting is actually first person targeting or whatnot because having such wildly disparate systems as third person KOTOR vs a realtime FPS would be a bitch to balance.

All in all, nothing in there that kills my hopes.

[SirNitram]

If the bits about SPECIAL and Karma are true, I'm a beleiver.

[Vendetta]

Very promising. I'm guessing the combat system is something akin to KOTOR and the first person shooting is actually first person targeting or whatnot because having such wildly disparate systems as third person KOTOR vs a realtime FPS would be a bitch to balance.

It sounds like you can use VATS to control the character and aim automatically for the cost of AP, and if you run out of AP between refreshes it dumps you into realtime control with no targetting assistance and no pause to issue commands.

It will be a fine balancing act, if VATS provides a significant advantage to even a skilled FPS player, having it suddenly taken away would be a thing to avoid, which would not only encourage AP management, but give the player a real sense of "Holy Shit I'm In Trouble Now!" if they ran out of AP, which would hit you square in the face with the lethal atmosphere of combat.

[brianeyci]

The only problem is whether a player could be a really good FPS player, then drop right in and get hits to the eyes that only someone with 300 small guns should get. If a skilled FPS player never used VATS, then the game becomes unbalanced because you can shoot shit in the eyes from level one.

Obviously this is an easy problem to fix with accuracy nerfed in real-time if you have low guns skill like Deus Ex, but it's still something to look out for. It might not even be a problem -- if it's true that walking into an area with 10 hostile level 50's gets yourself annihilated. Everything else looks incredible. If it's true, awesome.

EDIT: Actually I changed my mind. A skilled FPS player will not miss a person ten feet away that's human sized, but so what. Maybe Fallout 3 combat is far more deadly than in Fallout 2. If they want to balance the game with both FPS and VATS, it would go like this: FPS skills are essential, and VATS are for insane heroic shit like shooting someone moving fast sidestepping in the toe.

[Stark]

Absurd headshot-ness is a problem for all badly-designed FPS's, but it's easy to avoid in a case like this. Frankly, if the FPS isn't crippled (ie, lol u have to teh VATS you get screwed on accuracy etc), people will simply play it as a shooter (ie, Deus Ex, Stalker etc). Nothing inherently wrong with that, particularly if the enemy is still getting their skill roll stuff.

[brianeyci]

Maybe VATS could be like bullet time in Max Payne.

*watches Fallout freaks' collective heads explode all at once*

[Vympel]

Scans of the magazine are out on NMA. Bow down and worship.

[Rightous Fist Of Heaven]

AP's are still in? SPECIAL is still in? Third-person view that actually works? Holy shit, I think I'm starting to feel more than cautiously optimistic

[Netko]

Hahaha NMA is in meltdown.

While I'm not sure about my feelings of them making the game first person/quasi first personish third person, everything else sounds like it has good potential. One other nitpick is the continuous map - I'm not convinced that is a good fit for fallout (Stalker comes to mind here) - I'd prefer a map based hotspots model, but this could work out good as well. My last nitpick is about the possible consolitis - check out the Pipboy. Seems like the demo was played on the 360 - I hope they learned their lesson with Oblivion and will be providing the PC crowd with an interface more tailored to the platform.

Anyhow, the potential is there, now lets see if they succeed in making a good game.

[Rightous Fist Of Heaven]

The amount of bitch&whine on NMA about this is incredible. It seems everybody hates the V.A.T.S system. Am I really the only one who thinks it's a reasonably good compromise between real-time and turn-based?

[Stark]

If it's Oblivion-based, I'd half expect the same 'it's a whole province the size of a municipal park' thing. And maybe the 'unexplored ancient ruins not 400m from the gates of Imperial Centre' thing too.

I also hope they learnt their UI lesson from Oblivion - the vanilla UI is actually very good for a console, at 10 feet or more from the screen. On PC it was utter bullshit (pfft why bother using the whole screen for the map lol).

[Lord Woodlouse]

For those who've not seen them: http://www.nma-fallout.com/

Makes me want to squee like crazy. Not sure about the whole thing being in DC, mind. Like some others I'd prefer a wider scope of hotspots possibly at the expense of the larger world.

[Stark]

Any time developers talk about how awesome their AI is, it always makes me sad.

I know they're scans, but the screenshots kind of look... naff. The exterior terrain seems to be pretty bland geometrically. Interiors look fine, but that's easy.