Fallout 3 Impressions and Opinions

[Andrew_Fireborn]

I swear, I've had this game for 7 hours and I'm halfway to sending Moria's head spinning across her goddamn store! She's so peppy and childlike, I feel like I'm dealing with some kind of junkie!

She reminds me of Sarah Palin.

You too eh?

Though I initially got the impression of more... "Chaaa, ya know what, uh-uh."

[Losonti Tokash]

I like Moira. She's one of the only happy people in the game (though it could just be her wa of coping with how shitty the world is) and generally cheers me up.

[Darth Onasi]

I like Moira too, she's my avatar.

[Stark]

F3 needs more mods that make things a) look worse or b) easier. This accounts for 60% of current F3 mods. I await the STALKER-esque 'carry eight million trucks' mods.

[Zixinus]

I like Moira. She's one of the only happy people in the game (though it could just be her wa of coping with how shitty the world is) and generally cheers me up.

Me too. Yes, she can be annoying, but she's the only person that has a sense of optimism and talking to her, she one of the few people that make some level of sense. Her idea is good and while she does give you dangerous tasks, she does reward you for doing them and try to take care of you.

One of the few interesting moments in the game where I met a wastelander who was very pleased to know the WSG and even gave me a free copy (because I lied about knowing about it).

Once again it'll be those stubborn modders to the rescue.

Which is very sad. If you need modders to make your game better, than you are doing something very, very wrong.

[Darth Onasi]

F3 needs more mods that make things a) look worse or b) easier. This accounts for 60% of current F3 mods. I await the STALKER-esque 'carry eight million trucks' mods.

Untrue, untrue. I'm using a balance mod to make things harder, Isn't great yet, but more are in the works.
Yeah there are the godmode mods and lol hello kitty power armor but hey..

Which is very sad. If you need modders to make your game better, than you are doing something very, very wrong.

Or from Bethesda's point of view, something very very right. Last I heard over $300 million profit on Fallout 3 alone.
All for a rather incomplete base for a good game that will be built on the back of modders. Money for minimal effort.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I don't really share the enthusiasm for mods. Sure, a lot of them are pretty cool, and they did enhance Oblivion quite a bit. But they didn't change the way it's played in any fundamental way. Oblivion with mods is essentially the same experience as Oblivion without mods, just enhanced. It's not like the combat suddenly became like Mount&Blade, or the main story got more interesting, or the new locations and quests added by mods were really anything special. Fallout 3 is a great game despite its flaws, and most of those flaws won't be fixed by mods. I look forward to replaying FO3 in a few months when the good mods have started to come out, but I don't expect them to address any of my major criticisms of the game.

[Stark]

I hear profit = good game, and F3 = minimal effort for Bethesda? Oh wait. But hey, I hear a single balance mod that makes things 'harder' disproves the fact that the majority of mods are 'make it how I like it' ridiculous crap too.

The huge pile of mods that reduce levelling speed or increase the level cap amuses me too, just for what it says about the people who make/use them. As Tuxedo says, these don't address any of the real flaws in F3, simply make it more what some fatty nerd thinks is 'better' (which is generally 'go faster' 'carry more' 'more explosions' 'the weapon I like is now better' etc).

Oblivion Lost didn't make Stalker a better game, it just made it more fun. It in no way changed Stalker's nature as a rushed buggy piece of interesting shit.

[Pulp Hero]

Yeah how dare a mod make a game more fun!

[Darth Onasi]

I hear profit = good game, and F3 = minimal effort for Bethesda? Oh wait. But hey, I hear a single balance mod that makes things 'harder' disproves the fact that the majority of mods are 'make it how I like it' ridiculous crap too..

They don't negate the existance of minor tweak mods, nor are minor tweak mods a crime. If somebody makes a mod that lets a 10mm pistol fire mini-nukes for 5764355726512 damage you're not obligated to give it the time of day.
Among a sea of mediocrity there are always fine gems, and some of the minor mods are just plain fun anyway.

As for Bethesda, in the end they make money for minimal effort with or without mods - as evidenced by the poor souls who buy their incomplete husks on unmoddable consoles. But if modders on the PC want to make the best of it, there's no use complaining.

Edit: Oh and profit =! good game, profit = success. Bethesda make profits, and are therefore successful, and will no doubt continue to peddle their brand of fun but ultimately empty games until people stop buying them.

[Enigma]

I was going to rant how Bethesda is just milking the FO brand and that unless they make some good changes either through patches or from expansion packs, they will not be as successful should FO4 come around but forget it. FO is a drug I just can't kick, glaring flaws or not.

[Darth Onasi]

I was going to rant how Bethesda is just milking the FO brand and that unless they make some good changes either through patches or from expansion packs, they will not be as successful should FO4 come around but forget it. FO is a drug I just can't kick, glaring flaws or not.

I know what you mean, I'm a total whore for anything Fallout. Well except when it's obvious putrid garbage like Fallout: BoS of course.

[Stark]

I was going to rant how Bethesda is just milking the FO brand and that unless they make some good changes either through patches or from expansion packs, they will not be as successful should FO4 come around but forget it. FO is a drug I just can't kick, glaring flaws or not.

Like what? Aside from the bum quests and the mixed-up setting, the game's problems are structural and nothing to do with 'Fallout-y ness'. Are you saying Fallout didn't have 'glaring flaws'? Of course it did, the SPECIAL system has always sucked, the UI sucked, I can go on and on. It was still a bit of fun, and F3 is still a bit of fun.

I wish people would stop with the mentality that suggests 'not best game of year = omg worst game ever'. It is riddled with flaws top to bottom (like all Beth games) but it's fun and Fallout-y. People who think because they didn't like a game a sequel won't be successful are fucking lunatics; F3 outsold all previous Fallouts in like two seconds.

[Terralthra]

The only thing I can't figure out is how any strategy is supposed to compare to small guns + repair + sneak. Hunting rifles and .32 ammo are as common as dirty water once you start taking on Super Mutants, not to mention that you can just gather a bajillion worthless assault rifles, repair them to good condition, and sell them to any of a half-dozen vendors for even more ammo. Sniper and Commando perks both make headshots with the hunting (later laser/plasma) rifle in VATS even more broken, and Angel of Death makes you fairly invincible. The only limitation on my exploration is how much I can carry vs. finding a new map marker so I can fast travel back to my house to drop off loot.

Also, there aren't seven stats, there's six stats and intelligence, which is vastly superior. Doubling the skill points per level more than makes up for having 5 (later 6, 7, 8 with the intense training perk) in the other stats. Agi 5 doesn't hurt that much when you have small guns 80 by level 5-6.

[Stark]

They don't negate the existance of minor tweak mods, nor are minor tweak mods a crime. If somebody makes a mod that lets a 10mm pistol fire mini-nukes for 5764355726512 damage you're not obligated to give it the time of day.
Among a sea of mediocrity there are always fine gems, and some of the minor mods are just plain fun anyway.

So you're saying 99% of games suck, and 99% of mods suck, but there might be one in there somewhere you can find after trawling a forum and installed a dozen or so and ... somehow... that makes it okay? Shit is shit, buddy, the end.

As for Bethesda, in the end they make money for minimal effort with or without mods - as evidenced by the poor souls who buy their incomplete husks on unmoddable consoles. But if modders on the PC want to make the best of it, there's no use complaining.

Prove they put minimal effort, investment, or time into F3 right now. You can't; it's more likely Beth just suck as developers. Nothing about F3 says 'minimal effort' to me, you're just making excuses. It's improvement over Oblivion can be largely accounted for simply by ditching all the Beth systems that never worked and using the Fallout-style ones instead. Apparently 'unmoddable = incomplete' in your mind, which is terrifying in itself - people like you are so inured to developer failure that you tacitly accept that any released game is broken and only 'completed' by mods, which reflects absolutely crushing failure on the part of developers.

Edit: Oh and profit =! good game, profit = success. Bethesda make profits, and are therefore successful, and will no doubt continue to peddle their brand of fun but ultimately empty games until people stop buying them.

Which will never happen, because people like you think it's okay that a game sucks if mods fix it. Ironically, Beth probably doesn't consider things like the fast levelling to be a 'problem' that needs 'fixing', because that's the game they wanted to make - a quick, easy, fast one. It's only nerd modders that want to slow it down so they can replay it over and over.

[Lonestar]

Yeah, looks like I'll ahve to do a clean re-install. I had been hoping that the difficulties I had(it was freezing up after a certain amount of time) were because of a corrupted save, but I just re-rolled...no luck, after about 15 minutes wandering the waste outside of the Vault it started to freeze up and crash my computer again. Seeing as other programs(Company of Heroes) are running fine, I'm very frustrated.

[Stark]

The only thing I can't figure out is how any strategy is supposed to compare to small guns + repair + sneak. Hunting rifles and .32 ammo are as common as dirty water once you start taking on Super Mutants, not to mention that you can just gather a bajillion worthless assault rifles, repair them to good condition, and sell them to any of a half-dozen vendors for even more ammo. Sniper and Commando perks both make headshots with the hunting (later laser/plasma) rifle in VATS even more broken, and Angel of Death makes you fairly invincible. The only limitation on my exploration is how much I can carry vs. finding a new map marker so I can fast travel back to my house to drop off loot.

I think the ammo loot thing makes no sense; .32 isn't really that common in loot boxes, it's common because the hunting rifle is hell common (especially midgame, every motherfucker uses them). Contrast with even 10mm, which is much rarer, while goddamn flamer ammo is fucking everywhere.

The insta-kill vape shots on laser/plasma + the perks that boost headshots/criticals/rifle use make VATS a 2-shot kill on absolutely everything. If only the laser/plasma rifle ammo wasn't mixed up by the devs, lol!

Also, there aren't seven stats, there's six stats and intelligence, which is vastly superior. Doubling the skill points per level more than makes up for having 5 (later 6, 7, 8 with the intense training perk) in the other stats. Agi 5 doesn't hurt that much when you have small guns 80 by level 5-6.

I'd got the other way; int is important to get science and lockpick to high levels early, but gun skills are totally useless. I finished the game with all gun skills below 25, they're simply not necessary. The game is pathetically easy with high skills, but VATS + agi + int-boosted skills = you always win regardless of actual gun skills involved.

[Darth Onasi]

So you're saying 99% of games suck, and 99% of mods suck, but there might be one in there somewhere you can find after trawling a forum and installed a dozen or so and ... somehow... that makes it okay? Shit is shit, buddy, the end.

No, I'm not saying that many suck. I'm not even saying they suck. I'm saying there are a fair few mods you won't like, a fair few mods with limited appeal. And, ok, yes. Some outright suck.
But 99%? No.

Prove they put minimal effort, investment, or time into F3 right now. You can't; it's more likely Beth just suck as developers. Nothing about F3 says 'minimal effort' to me, you're just making excuses.

Hardly, I'm the last one to make excuses for Bethesda. From my point of view it's minimal effort, you might call it incompitence, but it amounts to the same thing in the end.

It's improvement over Oblivion can be largely accounted for simply by ditching all the Beth systems that never worked and using the Fallout-style ones instead. Apparently 'unmoddable = incomplete' in your mind, which is terrifying in itself - people like you are so inured to developer failure that you tacitly accept that any released game is broken and only 'completed' by mods, which reflects absolutely crushing failure on the part of developers.

Don't put words in my mouth. Of course I'd prefer a complete game, but I'm not going to look down upon the existance of mods for this game or deny that they'll make it complete. Of course players shouldn't have to do the dev's jobs for them but the way I see it, Bethesda aren't going anywhere, and will continue to make games in this pattern.
So we might as well make the best of it.

Which will never happen, because people like you think it's okay that a game sucks if mods fix it. Ironically, Beth probably doesn't consider things like the fast levelling to be a 'problem' that needs 'fixing', because that's the game they wanted to make - a quick, easy, fast one. It's only nerd modders that want to slow it down so they can replay it over and over.

[/quote]

How you equate me being glad that modders are stubborn enough to carve games like this into a gem with me applauding the game's state on release is beyond me.
I don't praise the game's moddability because it's incomplete, I praise it in spite of being incomplete, and in spite of Bethesda stonewalling modders by not releasing the CS.
It's not a situation I like, but on the other hand I like sandbox games and I love Fallout so yes, I want to see the game made better.

Again, most of Bethesda's income seems to come from the console versions anyway, so if you want to blame anyone, blame them.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Let's clear up a point of discussion: I don't think anybody is attacking the concept of mods. I simply said that mods don't change the fundamental nature of the game. They make it better, more balanced, more fun, but they don't fix the major problems. Oblivion was samey and soulless (especially the endless and near-indistinguishable romps into the plane of Oblivion), the main quest wasn't that engaging, and the combat couldn't hold a candle to Mount & Blade's for a variety of reasons. As time wore on, you had mods that mitigated or got rid of the ridiculous level scaling, mods that made the game more beautiful, added quests and locations, improved balance, gave us new spells, etc. They were very high quality and well done mods and they did substantially enhance the game. But they didn't really change it in any fundamental way. It was still a vast but samey and boring world with a so-so main plot and high HP based combat that wasn't very visceral or dynamic.

If a person tells me they enjoy Fallout 3 despite its flaws and look forward to mods making it better, I agree wholeheartedly. But when someone tells me they're disappointed by the game and won't play it until mods come along and fix its problems, that person needs to wake up and smell the hot cocoa, because that's never gonna happen.

[Stark]

Minimal effort = incompetence? What a fucking idiot. It's 'minimal effort' to spend years and millions of dollars, just because you fail according to a few nerds? Fascinating. 'Effort' is thus equated with 'things I like', which must make you feel very powerful.

As Tuxedo says, mods are cool. I mod pretty much every game I have that has mods available, and I have some games (like HL1 and Mount and Blade) exclusively for mods. But mods are limited in what they can do, and from my personal perspective the attitude that 'oh it's okay mods will fix it' or that a game is 'incomplete' without mods is fucking disgusting. F3 is a fun game and made shitloads of money, but it falls down in details - most of which mods simply can't fix. The point that many have suggested that F3 doesn't last long enough to hold interest for mods still remains; by the time I got anywhere in Oblivion there were already large, detailed mods to keep the game from going stale, whereas I've already played F3 to death and am unlikely to return to it. Even Stalker lasted longer.

BTW, Fallout 3 is a complete game. It's incomplete to obsessive mod people who think every tiny element has to be tweaked to their personal satisfaction before it's 'complete', but that is not what the word means. No major functionality is missing from Fallout (although there is some evidence of cut areas), and a game isn't 'incomplete' if it's fucking broken. That makes it 'bad'.

[Covenant]

The only thing I can't figure out is how any strategy is supposed to compare to small guns + repair + sneak.

Depends how far you plan ahead, honestly. I can beat it real fast in-game once you're on a second playthrough, using either Unarmed or Energy Weapons. Deathclaw Gauntlet is the best melee-range weapon in the game and you can get it the second you've headed to Super Duper Mart due to a random encounter that you can save-scum for, but which I got both times I went. Perhaps if I have an X+ Unarmed it favors that special encounter, but it'll spawn a deathclaw right out front the Mart, mostly dead, and usually with a schematic on a nearby corpse. Easy as pie. 40 (nearly 50 with extra schematics) damage which ignores DR from armor, with 7 agility you can swing it three times, and with Action Person you get four. You can easily sneak-kill a Brute or Enclave soldier member with it, and over this weekend I finished up the game. I'll have you know, at 95 unarmed, I was out-meleeing Deathclaws without breaking a sweat or using in-combat stims/chems. The only problem is a lack of targets tough enough to survive long enough for the Stunning Fist power to wear off, since at 18 you get a perk that lets you KO a target for 30 seconds randomly on a hit, and it seems to happen often. Basically an insta-kill, and since you're basically invincible during VATs you can really abuse it.

Furthermore, I'd assert that Laser Rifles outperform small arms in a straight-ahead playthrough, and once you make some money and can afford to buy Micro Fusion cells, you can feed a hungry Plasma Rifle and headshot most enemies on Very Hard. The easiest plasma rifle to get is also the most powerful one, from the Replicated Man quest. Do what Stark says and play the Artful Dodger for a few levels, get your lockpick high, and then finish that quest the easy way via the back door to the Bow, aided by some mentats and your utility jumpsuit. You'll get a massive flat bonus to your VATS accuracy and one of the most powerful weapons in the game, and you'll literally be dripping in ammo by the time anything can survive a hit from it.

So I'd say the best, but not most fun, early combo is probably very high Int with a focus on Lockpick, Sneak and Speech. By the time anything gets dangerous at all you'll have gotten your main suite of skills and will be able to coast most of the way. Adding a combat skill is just gravy then, and making that combat skill Energy Weapons meshes well with the benefit of an early onset maximum Lockpick. The damage of that gun more than offsets the low skill you'd have with it, and you're pumping sneak so just fire from close range. Plus, because you're cheesing Replicated Man early on, you're getting wired reflexes, so you come out on top any way you slice it.

[Vendetta]

The only thing I can't figure out is how any strategy is supposed to compare to small guns + repair + sneak.

Big guns + high damage resistance + Bloody Mess + flamethrower. No, it's not as effective as other strategies, but it's so worth it when an enemy explodes in a shower of gibs, and all the gibs are on fire. Also, walking up to point blank on a Raider, not caring in the slightest that they're shooting at you with some puny no-damage pea shooter, and shredding them point blank with a minigun is also fun.

[Ryan Thunder]

Does anybody else think its cripplingly lame that you can use a fucking pool cue as a weapon but not a scalpel, rake, or shovel?

[Stark]

No more retarded than equations that never go to zero, so that a radroach can still hurt you through rigid armour with giant resistance bonuses (even as it plays the 'tink' sound effect no less) and standing in a slightly radioactive puddle in fully sealed, metallic armour with rad resists hell high still gives you 1 rad/s, which is what it'd give a naked man with open wounds. Turns out numbers only go down to 1 and most of them START there.

Up in the wasteland, how many areas are there of actual high radiation? The water is 1, the ocassional crater is 1, the disposal site is 1, shit like that. Inside places is higher (even places raiders are apparently living which makes oh so much sense) but you'd think standing on top of leaking waste barrels would be a bit more dangerous than being near a closed and sealed silo door.

[Terralthra]

Re: energy weapons

By the time I ran into any enemies which could withstand three hunting rifle shots to the head, I had energy weapons at 85 too. Int 10 is the broken thing. 20 (+3 for Educated) skill points per level is broken, pretty much no matter where you end up putting them.