i love you marcus.......

you know people think fallout is going to suck because bethesda has terrible writers and animators and not  because the gameplay is changing, right? the good news is there will be 300 collectible books in the game that give you a lot of fallout lore.

who gives a fuck about ANIMATORS, though?  fallout looks pretty terrible now, and people still play it, so obviously visuals do not play such a large factor in things.  that whole isometric, quasi-3d style didn't age well at all, i don't think, and fallout 3 looks PRETTY GOOD so honestly, graphics weren't the thing i expected you to criticize.  from what i've seen, they've kicked the animation up a notch from the low-grade stuff you saw in morrowind/oblivion.  anyway, yes i agree, bethesda's writers are not good.  i think the writing in oblivion was a step above most other fantasy rpgs, though.  still, i'm not expecting fallout to have especially good writing.  but the parts of fallout 1 and 2 i played weren't amazingly written, either.  maybe the good writing came later on, but yeah, i wasn't blown away by what i saw of either of the first two.  maybe i'm missing something!

Well, I paid off my copy of the game today. So I'll probably play it like mad for a few days when it comes out on Friday (stupid NZ getting it a couple of days after the rest of the world, fuck).

This is probably my most anticipated game this year (now that Prototype is coming out next year). I've pretty much already paid for it I just gotta pick it up at a midnight launch the Gamestop near here is having (well I don't "have to" per se but the wait is freak'n killing me and I want to). Although surprisingly I didn't get one of those more expensive special additions (I just want the game, now!)

I'm one of those people who walk the line between the old Fallout games and Oblivion since they're both some of my most favorite games of all time (I also like FPSs too so...). Basically if this game is atleast half of what I expect it to be (Oblivion with guns works for me, give me more and you've got gold) then I'll definately love it.

still, i'm not expecting fallout to have especially good writing.  but the parts of fallout 1 and 2 i played weren't amazingly written, either.  maybe the good writing came later on, but yeah, i wasn't blown away by what i saw of either of the first two.  maybe i'm missing something!

Well to tell you the truth the writing wasn't actually that good in Fallout 1 and 2. What made it seem like such good writing was the amount of choices you had in dialogue and the game's ability to continue to make sense no matter what you chose to say. I wouldn't call it good writing, it's more like I dunno... natural writing perhaps? Like it felt like you were really talking to people living in a post-apocalyptic future.

So far from what I've seen of Fallout 3's writing and dialogue choices it seems to be better than Oblivion's and I've heard that most quests are longer and more meaningful than Oblivion's and give you multiple ways in how you can approach them.

The thing that is kind of useless about VATS is that as far as I am lead to believe, AP will only really play any part in VATS, so you could play the entire game without ever even opening VATS and just playing FPS mode.

i don't think the graphics are really that amazing actually! i don't care that much about graphics and if i can still tolerate the original fallout's graphics then i can probably tolerate fallout 3's graphics. i mentioned the animation though because this seems to be one of the things that people are coming down on bethesda for (and it was very bad in morrowind and oblivion), but it is not something that bothers me. i think we are at a point where graphics look okay now but in five years they will look really plastic and shitty.

but anyway, i think the gameplay looks pretty good. i watched maybe a 3 minute trailer a couple days ago and it seemed okay, but the game seems very much like oblivion with guns. i even think that's a good idea for a game, oblivion with guns, and would work with pretty much any other concept. i'm not one of those guys who goes around PREACHING THE SANCTITY OF FALLOUT, whatever, they can do what they want with it, but i seriously don't think bethesda has the writing ability to make it as interesting as the previous two! i saw some of the dialogue (choice 1: i like your hat, choice 2: nice hat, partner, choice 3: i'm going to kill you and take your hat - not making this up) and it seemed really, really bad. rpg maker bad. but whatever, who knows.

ahahaha also the trailer i watched showed the player leaving the vault for the first time and there was this sign right next to a cliff overlooking a trashed city that said "scenic outlook". thanks bethesda.

yeah i don't really care much about graphics either.  as long as they meet up to some vague set of NEXT-GEN STANDARDS i've developed, i'm good.  fallout 3 meets those so after that point i just don't care.  i suspect you're right about how in five years it'll all look like plastic, though.

i dunno, though.  i'm not too fond of the way the gameplay looks!  like what bothers me about the trailers is how they're all selling up what an amazing overly bloody shooter it is.  fuck that.  violence had very little to do with why i liked morrowind/oblivion, and i get the impression fans of fallout feel the same about it.  it is about exploration and choice and all that other shit that makes a game like that interesting.  but their trailers don't sell any of that; all they do is talk about BOOM HEADSHOT *blows up guy with a shotgun somehow*.  i honestly don't give a fuck about any of that.  i'm not an fps guy so some bethesda rep spending 10 minutes going over the various dumb weapons (whoaaaa mini-nukes) does absolutely nothing for me.  if they want to improve combat, that's fine, because it certainly sucked in morrowind and oblivion and it'd only improve the game if they upped the ante in fallout 3, but i wish they wouldn't try to sell it like it's some sci-fi shooter, because that is very much a tertiary concern for me.  they just gloss over what the point of the game should be, and it makes me worry that it's going to play more like a shooter and less like an exploration-based, open-ended rpg, which would make it completely uninteresting in my book

I don't know man, Inon Zur did the soundtrack... Inon Zur.

Especially after Mark Morgan said HEY I WOULD LIKE TO DO THE FALLOUT 3 SOUNDTRACK.