Games like Fallout

[Ratty Sr.]

Okay, Ratty, what is you're definition of an adventure game?

That's a difficult one. A traditional, albeit vague definition would in my opinion be that adventure game is a game which focuses on storytelling, puzzle solving and character interaction (something which is absent in games like Myst, but hey) as primary aspects of gameplay. Traditional adventure games are practically dead, but many games of other genres have a very accentuated adventure aspect. In KotOR, this aspect is so emphasized that the game could very well pass for an adventure game. Think about it - in an average adventure game, you progress through the game by talking to characters, solving an occasional logic puzzle, picking up items, using them on objects or bringing them to people who requested for them, after which you are rewarded with cutscenes that describe how the story evolves. That's precisely what you do in KotOR, and just like in an average adventure game, in KotOR you are required to perform your tasks or else the story won't continue. The only difference is that KotOR has combat in addition to running errands, picking up items and talking to people, that puzzles are called "quests", that not all of them are obligatory and that there are also finesses like character stats and equippable items. There is no feeling of being part of a huge, independant world, something essential for a game that strives to be an RPG. All areas feel confined and unnatural. Just like in a real adventure game, the entire world in KotOR is designed to revolve around you, like your own little playground, with strategically placed items for you to pick up and strategically placed characters for you to interact with. That's simply not how a real CRPG should work.

 

[John Uskglass]

Traditional adventure games are practically dead, but many games of other genres have a very accentuated adventure aspect.

*cough*The Longest Joyrney 2*cough*

http://www.dreamfall.com/characters/zoe/

April Ryan was one of the only reasons I ever considerd having anything to do with an art school, and a part of me envies Wooz.

In KotOR, this aspect is so emphasized that the game could very well pass for an adventure game.

Adventure games never give a moral choice or anything along those lines. KOTOR, dispite some would argue the shallowness of these actions, they exsist, and thus it' hard to argue that it's an RPG.

I don't pretend to be some kind of gaming taxonomist. KOTOR draws alot from the RPG world, it draws a bit from strategy games like JA2, and it draws some on adventure games. I have no problem with that.

 

[Ratty Sr.]

*cough*The Longest Joyrney 2*cough*

Sadly, The Longest Journey, Siberia and Myst are probably the only old-school adventure game series nowadays. Other than that, the genre is dead.

Adventure games never give a moral choice or anything along those lines.

Some, like Blade Runner, do give moral choices. And moral choices in KotOR are far from those in Fallout and Arcanum. In Fallout, I totally felt like an evil, malevolent, manipulative bastard, a "sword of despair" in every sense of the phrase. Well, it's hard not to feel evil in a game that lets you slaughter little children and sell people into slavery. In KotOR, I was just an ill-mannered, cynical prick, a mere shadow of the evil Sith Lord I wanted to roleplay. Heh, I was basically a Star Wars version of Alec.

 

[Roshambo]

Adventure games never give a moral choice or anything along those lines.

Hmm, you're 17, right? 17 from 2004 is 1987.

The "before you were even conceived" line is starting to become really cliché, even if it is apropos.

As for the simple run-through path of adventure, that sub-genre is indeed dying out in the traditional "point and click" form, especially in a commercial sense. It has continued in many other forms, including the action-adventure hybrids of Tomb Raider, Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, and many of the console and PC games similar in design.

The adventure genre has long made it well on the consoles (I don't care what some kid in the gaming press says, Final Fantasy is still an adventure game). I would have thought that when technology was advanced, CRPGs would have taken off much like how they followed adventure games on PCs; hopefully Troika may be one of the few who could have it happen, versus the sloppy cashing-in BioWhore went for.

Fable isn't looking all that well from surface appearances, but I hope he (Moly) does the good/bad integration much like Fallout meets Ultima, with the detail of Ultima 7.

 

[victor]

Yes, if you're talking about the graphics, they used to look much nicer. But they had severe framerate problems, so they probably had to tone it down. Oh well, I prefer smooth gameplay to mind-blowing graphics (they're not really gross either). Even if the game isn't great or what it should have been, it will certainly be interesting. According to promises, there's barely any game that can compete with it's world interactivity. You can marry a woman, which would affect an entire town, and not only people, but the entire world altogether, reacts to your actions. Be evil, and people will whisper to each other about you when you enter a tavern. They might even get up and leave.

The game is also infinite. Once you finish the main quest, the world continues to evolve around you.

It's this clear distinction between good and evil throughout the game that's lacking in Bioware games (interesting side-note: the spellchecker wants to replace "Bioware" with "beware"). I'm looking forward to this game because the Xbox barely has any RPGs.

 

[Montez]

I read a review of the Fable demo they had at E3 a while ago. To sum it up what I took from it - the guy thought it looked really fun, but almost all the stuff you read about it and thought "holy shit that's cool!", the stuff that sounded too good to be true is, well......too good to be true. A lot of the stuff that everyone was raving about either exists only in the design document or is really neutered compared to what the hype machine made it out to be.

In other words, it's probably going to be a Morrowind clone. I never understood why so many people went into siezures over Fable, as almost all of the stuff they were hyping never had a chance of being as great as they wanted you to think - a little common sense and experience with video games should have told everyone that they were really over-exaggerating all of the game's features. I'm not saying it will be a piece of crap, but I've never seen such a wide disparity between what people are expecting and the game they are likely to get as with Fable. Also, AFAIK Molyneaux has nothing to do with the game besides making the initial game concept.

 

[Roshambo]

According to promises, there's barely any game that can compete with it's world interactivity. You can marry a woman, which would affect an entire town, and not only people, but the entire world altogether, reacts to your actions. Be evil, and people will whisper to each other about you when you enter a tavern. They might even get up and leave.

It's this clear distinction between good and evil throughout the game that's lacking in Bioware games (interesting side-note: the spellchecker wants to replace "Bioware" with "beware").

It might be impressive if you've played mostly BioWare games, but the whole good and evil concept isn't exactly new. Neither is people treating you ill or well depending upon how you act. Child killer in Wasteland, anyone? It's just that BioWare has no clue how to do that, and you get to play good-for-hire "evil" characters that are in fact leaning more towards Chaotic Neutral in the alignment wheel than anything really evil.

When you get down to a lot of the promises, if you have that level of being able to do anything in the world to that level, either it is a miracle or it is something that is hopelessly templated and scripted like Arena/Daggerfall/Morrowind. I have a feeling the main selling point of being able to marry is for the kiddies to choose what their wife looks like to wank off to. Sure, they might have "cute" traits like...if you've read some of SomethingAwful's Hentai Dating Sims, then you know the kind of character quirk level I'm talking about. Shallow, and ultimately pointless if it doesn't add anything to both the community and NPC design.

There's not going to be much different or deep between each of them (unless by "deep" it's referring to cup size), unless they did spend a shitload of resources writing to compete with the level of Ultima 7.

I'm looking forward to this game because the Xbox barely has any RPGs.

Still trying to validate buying that crap console, eh? It finally gets a few games worth mentioning, but most of them are already on other platforms or, preferably, the PC.

 

[victor]

Fable has been in development for about 5-6 years now. Molyneux is still supervising the production, and he is pretty much still leading it too. At least that's what he says. Big Blue Box is Lionhead's lapdogs, really.

There's another reason for marrying; imagine your wife is the daughter of a rich and respected man in the village. You kill him, your wife inherits all his fortune. Then you go home and kill your wife (all in secret though), and you inherit the money in turn. This was taken from one of the trailers. Being evil is really remarkable in the game. You can actually be chased by bounty hunters, and of course, go into a town and slaughter EVERYONE. Even the children (not sure about that, they might have removed the child killing). However, some towns will force you to surrender your weapons. I've seen all these things done in trailers, so it's not just promises. As I said, it all depends on the framerate at this point, and they better not fuck that up. Trust me, according to Molyneux being evil is not easy as in Bioware games, and it's very distinct and NOT Bioware-ish.

Oh, and Xbox>other consoles on the market. Fable isn't coming out for the PC.

 

[Role-Player]

I wouldn't place much faith in Molyneux, and certainly not in Fable. Feature removal has been happening in the game for a long time, and being evil also took a hit. Killing children, for instance, has already been scrapped.

 

[Roshambo]

Fable has been in development for about 5-6 years now. Molyneux is still supervising the production, and he is pretty much still leading it too.

I wonder if it really has been that long since Romero was made an example of.

There's another reason for marrying; imagine your wife is the daughter of a rich and respected man in the village. You kill him, your wife inherits all his fortune. Then you go home and kill your wife (all in secret though), and you inherit the money in turn. This was taken from one of the trailers.

And, like three other occurances of the same caliber, are about the only notable instances of this. It's not hard to add in "inheritance", as I've coded in such for MUDs a long time. For a CRPG it is a little novel and has been done before, but it should only be used if you want to get into details that banal. Sure, it does allow you to be an evil bastard in such a fashion, but I don't really see the feasability of that in terms of accomodating a multitude of playstyle options. Features like that are charming, but should take a back seat to other role-playing considerations. Either way you look at it, it's not really useful in the long-term.

It does have the potential to be imbalancing, especially if you get away with the murders and you have a load of cash now. While that is truly the spirit of a spousal murderer, the game balance is probably shot. It's like being able to easily steal out from the first stores' vaults early on in Arcanum. It imbalanced the money so poorly if you were a thief. That's why I liked the changes that made them a bit harder.

Being evil is really remarkable in the game. You can actually be chased by bounty hunters, and of course, go into a town and slaughter EVERYONE. Even the children (not sure about that, they might have removed the child killing).
However, some towns will force you to surrender your weapons.

Well, as it has been noted, killing children isn't in anymore. So enjoy your city of children. A lot in the game has been axed, especially when they found out how much people wanted to do in terms of evil.

I've seen all these things done in trailers, so it's not just promises.

Idiot. You fell for the biggest hoax in marketing, EVAR. They also do that at E3. There's a lot of trailers that have gameplay "features" that only exist in the creative talent put behind the trailer. It's also not hard to write up scripting to simulate actual gameplay, in fact it's staple for testing.

As I said, it all depends on the framerate at this point, and they better not fuck that up.

Yeah, who knows what else will be axed?

Trust me, according to Molyneux being evil is not easy as in Bioware games, and it's very distinct and NOT Bioware-ish.

That's funny, because "playing evil" in BioWare games is fairly pointless.

Oh, and Xbox>other consoles on the market.

Maybe in terms of graphics, but in terms of game selection and genre variety, the XBOX is abyssmal beyond definition.

Fable isn't coming out for the PC.

I should care...why?

 

[Macaco]

Just a little observation, for any fan of the fallout combat, i have to recomend silent storm, lovely tactics game in a kinda parallel ww2 setting, with power armors and stuff. absolutely loveable combat, tough things really go downhill later in the game when you find the said power armor

 

[Fallz]

What is this "wasteland" game?
Is there a website?

Wasteland (if your talking about the right game) appears to be what fallout was based on although it isnt actually an official sequel. It follows the story of a group of rangers in post-nuclear america and is set before the fallout series. This actually runs in well with F1 when you meet Tycho the Desert Ranger.

There is a website that is part of a web ring although I cannot remember it!
You can also download the original wasteland from somewhere on the net because I did, played it for five minutes and then deleted it.

 

[Fallz]

Whoa! Ignore that last post, it was a reply to a post on the first page of this thread and I didnt realise there was any more pages! God - sorry!

 

[Claw]

And that was the story throughout the series, even though it was too obvious in number IX (you had a PC, for fucking out loud!).

Totally unlike Ultima VII.

At least BIS tried to do an RPG with PS:T.

That sounds harsh. I thought PS:T was supposed to be the pinnacle of CRPGs, or something. I didn't play it yet, though, only hearsay.
Or did I just misinterpret that comment?

 

[rikus]

my side and 2 cents-
kotor-great setting, but yet another console game.

PS:T-everyone knows the story was great but the combat?play it again if u can.

gothic 1,2:the only games that actually reminded me of fallout even though they have a console feel.

btw if u havent played either gothic u all suck.