Fallout 3 pirated, videos spread

[raunchy]

heh, good luck getting those questions answered, the players are dull as dishwater

 

[Seelix]

Veni, vidi, oh my...

Can or should Butch's mother be considered a typical example of F3's AI? "Help!" "What's going on?" 'Help!" Was it so difficult for her to say "Help! Some radroach is attacking me"? Or is she blind or something and really does not have idea what is going on around her? Also crouching in the corner of the room and shouting while being surrounded by pack of radroaches is better than let's say trying to defend oneself, reach the door and go out. Right.

[One of my favorites R[andom]AI examples from Oblivion is some Mage from Mages Guild who is the only survivor from slaughter commenced by bunch of bloodthirsty Necromancers. He is deeply sad and really shocked by what had just happened before his very eyes. But some time after that when asked about "Rumors" or something like that he randomly states that he do not understand why Archmage is so very against Necromancers [one of the random responses that is from time to time repeated through many NPC]. It is even funnier considering that Archmage he speaks of is dead for some time and there is new one - in fact he is talking all that to new one. It is even funnier that nobody in big and mighty Mages Guild, one of the most important organization in whole empire, is aware of some invasion of evil beings that spreads through the land and nobody gives a damn. It is even funnier... Yeah. Fun keeps on growing.]

If NPCs in F3 will be so similarly random in their responses to surrounding world and completely oblivious to possible changes that may occur in this world, well... it'll be damn hilarious game.

What I also didn't like was:

--- Very abbreviated info about things that are going on in game. I would prefer some box at the bottom and longer description or nothing at all.

--- Compass [if IIRC it will not be toggleable].

--- Voice acting. Poor, seemed unreal [for example the way Butch speaks], like bad dubbing which was recorded without knowing situations in which it will be used. I like Liam Neesen as an actor but here he sounds somewhat weak, without any "spice", tone of his voice is boring and monotonous.

--- Hacking & lockpicking minigame. I do not like this sort of minigames in games that are or pretend to be cRPG. Game of Dice that is implemented in The Witcher is nice because it is game in game; it is to play and it do not pretend that it is something else. But Oblivion-like minigames really annoyed me.

--- Face animations. This girl, Anata IIRC, does some strange things with her eyeballs while she is talking about missing PC's dad. Just as if her eyes lead separate life or something, rolling without any connection to what the girl says. Other faces are lifeless.

--- Unskippable tutorial which also does not appeal to me in its form. In fact here the form is more irritating to me than the fact it's unskippable.
Having savegame made just before leaving vault seems to be some sort of help to that problem. But it could be useless when some mods will show up - in Oblivion many mods require to start completely new game to use it properly. I can already imagine some fan-made mods called "alternative start" just to skip.

--- I hope it was due to playing game using PAD by I must say that in FPP camera works in a way that gives me headache. I will not be able play long if it's the same in PC version.

--- Conversations. I mean time stops during conversation. Whole damn world stops because some kid from vault decided to talk to someone.
It's perfectly OK in older games, especially when there is no voice acting. but I hate it in new games where passing time is visible in surrounding world and most if not all lines are fully voiced. I liked conversations in The Witcher or Gothic games - two people talk and in the meantime life goes on: someone passes by, suns goes down, rain starts to fall... In games chatter can be one of the ways make time pass if it is necessary to wait for some specific moment.

--- PC does not speak. We cannot choose age because it it forced upon us, so the only choice that's left is: boy or girl. So logic dictates that there should be simply two sets of voice: one for male and one for female. End of story. Having mute PC in game where everyone make sounds is damn annoying. Especially in game where there are quite many lines to say. I knew it would be like that since Oblivion also had mute main hero. But it is a very big disappointment nonetheless.

--- I heard voices. Voices from Oblivion.
I do not mind when I hear the same voice in different games. It is obvious that some actors specialize in voice acting and can be recognized here and there.
But here are two differences that make whole thing irritating.
First: Oblivion has less that ten voices for hundreds people and those voices sounds everytime in the same way, usually boring and monotonous way; nobody cared for any diversity of tone, way of saying specific words, such things like stuttering... etc. - one wants to say: "one race - one voice". After playing for some time those voices stay in memory and are not only recognizable, they are damn painfully recognizable. In tutorial there was voice that was used for all elven races in Oblivion. Quite annoying voice I might add. I stopped thinking about fallout for a moment and instantly imagined some Bosmer or Altmer. Just great.
And here it the other thing: those voices from F3 seem to sound exactly the same as those from Oblivion. Mentioned elven voice is one example. The other can be moaning sound produced by a man who was either wounded or charged to attack - for brief moment I thought he is Imperial. Seriously.

What I liked was overall look inside the vault and outside - I mean this first glance, bright light and everything emerging from it. Dead trees and remnants of road seemed also quite nice. I liked what I saw there.
But I do not care about shiny graphic and the latest technical goodies at all. For example I still consider Gothic II very beautiful 3D game when I see its world.

I didn't see much though. Only tutorial, going out and first meeting with sheriff. So I cannot form opinion about dialogues too. Those from tutorial seemed sometimes pathetic but maybe other would be better.

 

[Wooz]

Newsflash: It's flat out ridiculous to argue that WW2-era anti-chinese sentiment would last for over 100 years and preclude allowing Asian-Americans into Vaults. Fallout's divergent timeline does nothing to support your ludicrous intimation.

I didn't say the phenomenon would be a leftover from the WW2 era and survive that long; only that the 'new' war with China would have sparked a similar feeling throughout the pre-nuclear war population.

According to The Vault Wiki, the war with China was underway by 2066, eleven years before the nuclear war started, and three years after the vaults were complete.

Taking in account the society model based on 1950's America, I don't see why such a sentiment couldn't grow strong during years of war-time, into the discrimination similar to the 1940's and 1950's.

Still a ludicrous intimation?

 

[Casual Gamer]

Veni, vidi, oh my...

I agree with almost everything you said. The voicework and animations are the biggest disappointments so far. No worse than Oblivion, but could be so much better. I think Bethesda's design philosophy is against using "cinematic animations" so they can show off and brag about how everything is done "in-game" etc. etc.

There's no problem with that philosophy if you have the chops to pull it off, but either the technology to randomly generate convincing expression isn't practical or they just don't have it for some reason.

It reminds me of the premature shift away from pre-rendered cinematics several years ago, where every cut-scene looked shitty for the sake of using "in-game" graphics. Now, of course, a game like HL2 has fantastic in game cinematics, and because ALL of their action is scripted, the animations in them are spot on.

I would have liked to have seen scripted animations, at least during main plot point events, but I guess it's all or nothing for Bethesda, and while I can respect that philosophically, practically I think there could be a better, mixed approach.

 

[TheGM]

specualtory comments none the less.

Now.

I hear the people that play the game suck at it.

 

[Oakraven]

beats me, all I have see so far are the people who did the you toob, not the streams

 

[Casual Gamer]

Still a ludicrous intimation?

Admittedly less ludicrous, but dig on this for a hot minute:

In the 1950's the Chinese (and various other ethnicities) were still largely unassimilated, if assimilated at all. They were not industry magnates or holders of high office. This, along with the prevailing sentiment of the time, made their subjugation and exclusion very easy.

Today, most (if not all) ethnic groups have established a foot-hold in every level of American society, making it difficult to successfully legislate against any one group, or to exclude them from government.

The modern American government is now 7 years into a war with "islamic fundamentalism" and 5 years into the occupation of a arabic/muslim country, and yet we live and interact peacefully with middle-eastern immigrants, and their exclusion from a vault-esque program based on their ethnicity is not a foregone conclusion.

EDIT: Obviously you could argue that if Fallout's divergence clung to 1950's Science! and reel-to-reel propaganda, their "pot" could have "melted" differently, but then I'd contend that the trend itself was inevitable from the signing of the constitution, and even if it progressed more slowly, it being 50 or 60 years in the future would off-set that.

 

[Matt K]

I didn't say the phenomenon would be a leftover from the WW2 era and survive that long; only that the 'new' war with China would have sparked a similar feeling throughout the pre-nuclear war population.

According to The Vault Wiki, the war with China was underway by 2066, eleven years before the nuclear war started, and three years after the vaults were complete.

Taking in account the society model based on 1950's America, I don't see why such a sentiment couldn't grow strong during years of war-time, into the discrimination similar to the 1940's and 1950's.

Still a ludicrous intimation?

Not to stray even further off topic, but it would be interesting if BS had kept with that and there were no Asian's in Vault 101 but keeping with the social experiment, there was a Vault completely comprised of decedents from an internment camp. I wouldn't expect this from BS but it would create an interesting opportunity such as would all of them be put into the Vault or only some (and who) and open or not there would be some nice possibilities that could have been explored. Oh well, just another wasted opportunity.

 

[Wooz]

In the 1950's the Chinese (and various other ethnicities) were still largely unassimilated, if assimilated at all. They were not industry magnates or holders of high office. This, along with the prevailing sentiment of the time, made their subjugation and exclusion very easy.

Today, most (if not all) ethnic groups have established a foot-hold in every level of American society, making it difficult to successfully legislate against any one group, or to exclude them from government.

I realize that. The question is, how much would Asian-Americans be assimilated within the hypothetical Fallout pre-war population?

Since the latter is based on a model of society in which every deviation from a strictly-set norm was repressed and racism rampant, I found it odd that Bethesda decided to include a Chinese doctor in one of Washington DC's vaults.

The modern American government is now 7 years into a war with "islamic fundamentalism" and 5 years into the occupation of a arabic/muslim country, and yet we live and interact peacefully with middle-eastern immigrants, and their exclusion from a vault-esque program based on their ethnicity is not a foregone conclusion.

Granted. Again, my opinion is that FO's society would rather be reminescent of the Truman era, than the cosmopolite America today.
Officially excluding any group from a major program due to their ethnicity would be nigh-unthinkable now, but was common practice during the time that was served as a reference.

The "Li" issue is yet another in a series of inconsistencies we've seen in Beth's interpretation of Fallout's retro-futuristic atmosphere, in which modern-day standards permeate its alternate history game world.
In other words, akin to seeing M1A1 tanks in a Steampunk world set in the 2100's.

I hope I've made my reasoning clear.

EDIT:

EDIT: Obviously you could argue that if Fallout's divergence clung to 1950's Science! and reel-to-reel propaganda, their "pot" could have "melted" differently, but then I'd contend that the trend itself was inevitable from the signing of the constitution, and even if it progressed more slowly, it being 50 or 60 years in the future would off-set that.

Fair enough, although would that necessarily mean the civil rights movements of the 60's and 70's were also inevitable since the American constitution was signed? Maybe, maybe not. I certainly don't know, we're talking about very complex sociological processes.

The "what ifs" are countless, although one thing directly indicative of Fallout's pre-nuclear war's zeitgeist is the execution scene in Canada, where U.S. Soldiers "keep the peace" deliberatedly executing an unarmed and bound individual in the middle of a street, then laughing about it.

 

[Casual Gamer]

Granted. Again, my opinion is that FO's society would rather be reminescent of the Truman era, than the cosmopolite America today.
Officially excluding any group from a major program due to their ethnicity would be nigh-unthinkable now, but was common practice during the time that was served as a reference.

The only problem with that opinion, is that it ignores the improbability of the Truman Era lasting 120 years. The Fallout timeline diverged in the 1950's, but time didn't stop moving. It's speculation on both our parts in the absence of a complete history, but you have undertaken the burden of extra assumptions to prove your point.

 

[Jiggly McNerdington]

Conspiracies again I say. CONSPIRACIES!

After seeing some youtubes and streams though, I'm still disappointed. Yeah, the guys playing them were comically bad at it, but the AI and animations seemed about as bad as Oblivion. Like people getting up off of a bed, and using the exact same animation. And I noticed at least one pistol floating a few inches off of the hip of an NPC.

Eh. Maybe it shouldn't bother me as much as it does. Sprites in the originals pulled guns out of thin air, so why can't a gun float on their hip? Net effect of the movies was turning me off Fallout 3 a bit. Now I'm thinking it'd be better in the $30 range.

Oh yeah, and some of the hideously clunky dialog. Like talking to sheriff What's His Face. "Hey there, I don't know why, but I like you! You're welcome to stay in town as long as you like!", then giving the PC the option to say "You don't scare me". What the hell?

 

[artmiser]

Oh come on

Allot of these posts are after the vidoes have been pulled for hours, also someone mentioned butch and help for his mom. If you watched that video and listend as you went past butch you could hear a women screaming for help inside of a room. The guy who was playing bypassed allot of stuff.

I am a fallout fan, bought it new at the store many a year ago, game looks good to me and I think I will enjoy it.

 

[Casual Gamer]

Personally, I'm fine with whatever assumptions a player makes when left to their own devices, and to believe a contrivance that leads to a 2077 with bad reel-to-reel projectors and big band jazz on every station was never a big deal for me. So really, for you to believe that time stood still where social change is concerned, or that the canon allows for this specific mutation but not that specific mutation etc. etc. is perfectly within the limits of enjoyment.

You might read a book and hear your gym-teachers voice coming out of one of the characters, that doesn't mean you can win an argument with someone who hears John Malkovich. Some of this shit has always been left up to the player's imagination.

 

[maximaz]

Well, the game looks like a better quality rape of Fallout than BOS was, but a rape nonetheless.

After watching this, I'm of the opinion that Beth should have done a multiplayer deathmatch spinoff instead. It's the only way that could be fun. I take back anything positive I've ever said about F3.

 

[Jiggly McNerdington]

Erm.She.Became.A Ghoul.20 Minutes After Nuclear Blast.Standing In The Epicenter Of It.

Not just that, apparently she stays there and offers to repair your weapons for you or barter with you when you drop by again.

Aaaaaahahahaha! I hadn't seen or heard that. That's goddamn brilliant.

 

[Jebus]

Newsflash: There are options between "letting people into supersecret government programs" and "sending people to concentration camps".

To be fair, the FO Vaults really weren't all that secret. You had advertisement posters everywhere, a public display model in LA, and regular public drills - so common even that when the war began there was a 'cry wolf' effect.
I doubt there'd be even one citizen left that didn't know about them.

The only problem with that opinion, is that it ignores the improbability of the Truman Era lasting 120 years. The Fallout timeline diverged in the 1950's, but time didn't stop moving. It's speculation on both our parts in the absence of a complete history, but you have undertaken the burden of extra assumptions to prove your point.

Actually, what Wooz is doing is making a heck of a lot less assumptions that you.
Everything Fallout is based on 1950's vision of the future. PERIOD. It ends there. Nothing changes.

Have you ever noticed that there isn't even anything beyond 1950's music in the Fallouts? As if there would be no new songs created in those 120+ years. As if music styles never change.

What you do is take the 1950 American population, and plant it in the distant future wholesale, with plasma guns and robots. That's the basics. No evolution. No moral progress.

 

[UncannyGarlic]

The modern American government is now 7 years into a war with "islamic fundamentalism" and 5 years into the occupation of a arabic/muslim country, and yet we live and interact peacefully with middle-eastern immigrants, and their exclusion from a vault-esque program based on their ethnicity is not a foregone conclusion.

That's more true now than it was in the first few years after 9-11 when people with Arabic sounding names and people who looked Arab were commonly taken out of crowds to be further searched in airports (racial profiling), a practice which many people (71 percent of blacks and 57 percent of whites, poll from between 9-11 and 10/1/01) wanted to be made into law (here's the first article that popped up on google and it's from 2000). Also look at the border vigilantes and the amount of racism towards Latinos. Just because it isn't officially mandated doesn't mean that it doesn't exist and/or isn't common practice. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that in a world that didn't have successful civil rights movements in the 60s (or movements at all) would likely have this crop up. Hell, even the modern US could have this crop up with the right supreme court and the right international situation.

 

[God is Dog backwards]

Heh, you guys are missing quite possibly the worst line from all the footage shown so far.

The new Brotherhood of Steel greeting:
"Steel be with you"

WHAT THE FUCK?!?!

Ok I didn't watch the vids.

Nor are I going to read the 17 pages of this.....

But damn....Steel be with you....

*Shakes head*

Count your blessings. It could have been 'May the Steel be with you'.

 

[Wooz]

How does that make it any worse?

 

[God is Dog backwards]

Because it'd sound like something from Star Wars.

Still, something's failed somewhere when you have to explain a joke.