How I see it, it's already been stated that Fallout 3 will use the Oblivion engine by Pete "y'know" Hines, so we're royally screwed UNLESS some major changes are made to it.
Changes such as:
Click-move interface - No fucking W A S D bullshit. I want usage icons, click to move, maybe even some of the stances from Tactics (Tactics sucked, but the combat mechanics had some good solid ideas in it).
Fix the goddamn 3rd person camera - it sucks. Choppy, prone to interference by terrain, choppy, makes distances hard to judge, choppy... you get the point. Fallout 3 should be isometric, end of fucking story. In order to lock the camera in a 3rd-person isometric mode, it'd require alot of work, it would need the ability to cut away ceilings as needed to keep the view without jacking up the camera.
Special system - correct me if I'm wrong, but it was stated that they have every intention of using the SPECIAL system for Fallout3. DON'T MESS WITH IT TO FIT YOUR ENGINE, make the engine fit the system. If they use the special system correctly (they way it was used in fallout 1-2), we won't have to deal with moronic leveling systems that involve bunny-hopping everywhere for acrobatics skill points or standing there while a rat pummels us to level our armor skills.
Skill rolls - Like above, use the special system as intended. No Click-hold to power attack, click-hold + direction to change attack types. Granted I felt that gameplay was rather fun for Oblivion since I was expecting a Action-RPG made for a modern PC/Xbox crowd and not a true cRPG, I wasn't dissappointed in the least and actually enjoyed the gameplay to an extent as it was, but that kind of gameplay has NO place in Fallout.
FaceGen - reduce some of the modifiable values to be more likely to randomize an average appearance. Some values (such as forehead slope,which can give your character a rather simian/bushlike appearanc, and face width go way out of the standard range of human appearance and extreme high or low values on various parts of the face create instantly hideous looks like the kind experienced in Oblivion. That is, if the FaceGen engine is used at all. I would far rather see traditional handmade facial models be used in the game. Though I admit FaceGen is a rather remarkable technology and it's lipsynching/facial expression abilities would fit quite well in making Fallout's Talking Heads for dialog, that is, if they put effort into making the face with it rather than just hitting the random button for making NPCs like I swear they did for Oblivion.
Quests - more quests, more thought put into quests, more moral decisions in quests, more options to solve said quests... more is good here.
Dialog & Scripting - Hire some damn writers, please. They still haven't made any real change from the encyclopedic feel of the dialog, far cry from your statements of "oh, we'd learned from that mistake in Morrowind and won't make it again".
Immersion - requires more than shiny graphics, the entire FEEL of the game goes there. Oblivion's world was too clean, too stylized even for a fantasy game. My armor is too clean after fights, after being stripped off a bandit I mutilated, even the dungeons felt too fake. This is why I find the immersion claims of Oblivion to be false and why enjoyment of the game quickly falls off unless modded. Fallout was truely immersive, you could FEEL the gameworld, the dispair and the sense of clinging to survival.
Death animations - Fallout had spectacular death animations, 2d can do that easily and well, 3d has a harder time, but is still possible. The Havok engine (collision detection engine used in oblivion and damn near every FPS) can set masses of bullets, ect.. So shotguns can send things reeling and blow bits clean (anyone played F.E.A.R.), while miniguns with lower mass rounds can have smaller, but spectacular, spasms and other effects. I hope to see that used to good effect.
No leveling lists for creatures - you level, creatures don't. Level 29 bandits leveling to 30 when you do and suddenly finding and donning full Daedric armor which you haven't even found yet and is massively expensive, far more than a bandit would make, makes no fucking sense and ruins things.
Anyone have any other suggestions I may have missed in my near-dead, post-double-shift state?
Changes such as:
Click-move interface - No fucking W A S D bullshit. I want usage icons, click to move, maybe even some of the stances from Tactics (Tactics sucked, but the combat mechanics had some good solid ideas in it).
Fix the goddamn 3rd person camera - it sucks. Choppy, prone to interference by terrain, choppy, makes distances hard to judge, choppy... you get the point. Fallout 3 should be isometric, end of fucking story. In order to lock the camera in a 3rd-person isometric mode, it'd require alot of work, it would need the ability to cut away ceilings as needed to keep the view without jacking up the camera.
Special system - correct me if I'm wrong, but it was stated that they have every intention of using the SPECIAL system for Fallout3. DON'T MESS WITH IT TO FIT YOUR ENGINE, make the engine fit the system. If they use the special system correctly (they way it was used in fallout 1-2), we won't have to deal with moronic leveling systems that involve bunny-hopping everywhere for acrobatics skill points or standing there while a rat pummels us to level our armor skills.
Skill rolls - Like above, use the special system as intended. No Click-hold to power attack, click-hold + direction to change attack types. Granted I felt that gameplay was rather fun for Oblivion since I was expecting a Action-RPG made for a modern PC/Xbox crowd and not a true cRPG, I wasn't dissappointed in the least and actually enjoyed the gameplay to an extent as it was, but that kind of gameplay has NO place in Fallout.
FaceGen - reduce some of the modifiable values to be more likely to randomize an average appearance. Some values (such as forehead slope,which can give your character a rather simian/bushlike appearanc, and face width go way out of the standard range of human appearance and extreme high or low values on various parts of the face create instantly hideous looks like the kind experienced in Oblivion. That is, if the FaceGen engine is used at all. I would far rather see traditional handmade facial models be used in the game. Though I admit FaceGen is a rather remarkable technology and it's lipsynching/facial expression abilities would fit quite well in making Fallout's Talking Heads for dialog, that is, if they put effort into making the face with it rather than just hitting the random button for making NPCs like I swear they did for Oblivion.
Quests - more quests, more thought put into quests, more moral decisions in quests, more options to solve said quests... more is good here.
Dialog & Scripting - Hire some damn writers, please. They still haven't made any real change from the encyclopedic feel of the dialog, far cry from your statements of "oh, we'd learned from that mistake in Morrowind and won't make it again".
Immersion - requires more than shiny graphics, the entire FEEL of the game goes there. Oblivion's world was too clean, too stylized even for a fantasy game. My armor is too clean after fights, after being stripped off a bandit I mutilated, even the dungeons felt too fake. This is why I find the immersion claims of Oblivion to be false and why enjoyment of the game quickly falls off unless modded. Fallout was truely immersive, you could FEEL the gameworld, the dispair and the sense of clinging to survival.
Death animations - Fallout had spectacular death animations, 2d can do that easily and well, 3d has a harder time, but is still possible. The Havok engine (collision detection engine used in oblivion and damn near every FPS) can set masses of bullets, ect.. So shotguns can send things reeling and blow bits clean (anyone played F.E.A.R.), while miniguns with lower mass rounds can have smaller, but spectacular, spasms and other effects. I hope to see that used to good effect.
No leveling lists for creatures - you level, creatures don't. Level 29 bandits leveling to 30 when you do and suddenly finding and donning full Daedric armor which you haven't even found yet and is massively expensive, far more than a bandit would make, makes no fucking sense and ruins things.
Anyone have any other suggestions I may have missed in my near-dead, post-double-shift state?
