next »

[Valter]

Oh, boy, more computer elitist bastards. Fun Fact for you, CraigStern: games on TVs are not retarded.

Excuse me for being touchy on the subject, but games that aren't on the computer don't automatically suck. Quit your bitchin' about how it's going to be on a console, and perhaps wait until you actually play the game or see footage of it to make judgement. Who knows? Maybe it's targeting a different demographic from the ones who played the first to Fallout games. We could stop sneering about how it's not the same as the first two games (which were developed by a different company). Hell, you guys are complaining about the changes Bethesda is making to the system, considering that indie generally tries to support innovation.

We've got 6 pages of people talking about how this game sucks, going off of probably 3 or 4 videos of the developers playing through a demo.

sheesh

[Alevice]

Oh, boy, more computer elitist bastards. Fun Fact for you, CraigStern: games on TVs are not retarded.

No, but they are usually more distilled in their controls and saving systems, due to limitations in the medium. Fallout is a CRPG at ists core, and we all know consoles + crpgs don't blend well. If they manage to find a way to keep the complexity of its interface in a console manner, I'll praise them.

Excuse me for being touchy on the subject, but games that aren't on the computer don't automatically suck. Quit your bitchin' about how it's going to be on a console, and perhaps wait until you actually play the game or see footage of it to make judgement.

It's not because it is console oritent we are complaining, but teh fact that Bethesda's particular style of CRPGs don't blend well at all with the way Fallout/Arcanum games do. Bioware's closer, but still, only PS:T is the only one truly close.

Who knows? Maybe it's targeting a different demographic from the ones who played the first to Fallout games.

And that's why we complain, becuase at this point the only ones who truly care about the FO universe are the fans of the first games. Other individuals will just see it as a yet another post apocalyptic FPS with rpg elements, at least that's what Beth's PR has led us to believe, to everyone. Had this been a new IP, no complains would be, but using anotehr individual's IP, yous hould at least keep what made conformed its essence, and no, it is not just guns and black humour.

We could stop sneering about how it's not the same as the first two games (which were developed by a different company).

The problem is not that it is another developer, the porblem is the particular developer's reputation (not that it is bad, just that you would not put a surgeon to do a group therapy session).

Hell, you guys are complaining about the changes Bethesda is making to the system, considering that indie generally tries to support innovation.

But ntohing shown is innovative! That's the problem. And imagine if Noitu Love 2 was developed by someone else than Konjak, and decided that they would innovate it by turning it into a tower defense game.

[Gnarf]

No, but they are usually more distilled in their controls and saving systems, due to limitations in the medium. Fallout is a CRPG at ists core, and we all know consoles + crpgs don't blend well. If they manage to find a way to keep the complexity of its interface in a console manner, I'll praise them.

Yeah, it's like the more buttons you get to press the better the game. And the really really good part about Fallout is the sophisticated save/load process you go through when trying to steal things. Unwieldy interfaces are AWESOME if you've got a mouse. All click click all over the place. Ace.

But all serious like. Really neat console games tend to not make it to us western gamers because we're all too retarded for them. Games aren't being dumbed down for consoles, they're being dumbed down for idiots.

[Cheater‽]

The good thing about believing that the game will suck is that you lose nothing if it does, and win considerably more if it doesn't.

[Valter]

The bad thing about believing a game will suck is pissing off everybody who has even the slightest enthusiasm about the game. I just hate pessimism in general. Besides, when you build up a game to suck, you set yourself up to hate it when it comes out, whether or not it's good.

Also, I think Gnarf kind of nailed it. When you have an interface so complicated that it can't translate to console controls, I'm pretty sure you're doing something wrong.

[Alevice]

No, but they are usually more distilled in their controls and saving systems, due to limitations in the medium. Fallout is a CRPG at ists core, and we all know consoles + crpgs don't blend well. If they manage to find a way to keep the complexity of its interface in a console manner, I'll praise them.

Yeah, it's like the more buttons you get to press the better the game. And the really really good part about Fallout is the sophisticated save/load process you go through when trying to steal things. Unwieldy interfaces are AWESOME if you've got a mouse. All click click all over the place. Ace.

For teh saving system, I dnd't mean the user handling of it, more like how much data has to be saved, and IMO, for a CRPG, should quite a lot, which eats precious bytes, which for a console, you have to be quite careful, much unlike PCs.

Please do not mixup complex with complicated. I didn't say that FO was exactly intuitive (quick save and reload were a must), but I liked having all options available to me (I almost used all of them for the partciular need), and many of them could be chosen by first-letter hotkeys, which made some thigns quite fast. I wouldn't mind if they were more accesible; many other CRPGs have quite handy interfaces.

On that matter, I seriously hope you are not defending roguelikes interfaces, much less Dwarf Fortress.

[Gnarf]

To be fair, I think you can have an overly complex (or not) interface that suits just this one particular set-up without necessarily doing something wrong. But then you have a more specific target audience than "not the console crowd". And it can just as well be a game that doesn't translate well from arcade stick to keyboard as one not translating well from keyboard+mouse to gamepad. So I think that the "dumbed down for consoles" thing is bollocks in general, and often as not it's just ignorant PC gamers comparing very mainstream and very retarded console games to, you know, Fallout or something.

Admittedly, in Fallout 3 the choice of controller is pretty fundamental to the game since they want some of that FPS stuff in there. In Fallout 1/2 they could've fucked around tons with the interface and controls without making them fundamentally different games, because it's the RPG ruleset there that really matters and that's very separate from interface and controls (particularly because it's turn-based and that). And maybe it couldn't have been pulled off on a console, but the reasons given here aren't all that convincing. I think it takes a bit more investigation than comparing the number of buttons on a gamepad to the number of keys on a keyboard or whatever to find out.

Something along the lines of "dumbed down for console gamers, given that console gamer generally aren't into that kind of game" or some such seems fair to me though. If their target audience is sort of everyone, then stuff that will throw off people who aren't all that into CRPGs probably won't make it into the game.

On saving. Consoles these days have some disk space to spare and PCs haven't always had that much. For a certain time period, you're right. Just, not the one we're in right now. (Also it doesn't really hold for CRPGs in general, just for a particular breed of CRPGs, but fair enough since we're really talking about Fallout.)

The bad thing about believing a game will suck is pissing off everybody who has even the slightest enthusiasm about the game. I just hate pessimism in general. Besides, when you build up a game to suck, you set yourself up to hate it when it comes out, whether or not it's good.

I don't try to set myself up for being positively surprised, or make sure I think the game's going to suck upon release, or piss off enthusiastic people or anything. It's a lot simpler than that: I look at some of the available information about the game, and then I make some judgements based on that, which sort of shapes my beliefs concerning the quality of the game. And then, if me not being convinced about the game being good pisses someone off, that's their problem, and not my fault.

[Valter]

Well, my main problem is that I've liked almost all of the games I've played. I'm just naturally willing to be optimistic about things, and I really enjoyed certain games that were smashed by critics. That's also why I get annoyed about computer/console elitism: I can't see either one as totally superior over the other, and both have awesome games on them. Besides, most games that computer-centric people would like to play end up getting ported over at some point anyway.

[Gnarf]

Not the worst problem to have

Just bugged me how you (and Cheater) came off like you should believe this or that thing about a game, not based on what you know about the game, but for some other purpose. If you think it's going to be good, then good for you, you know. Very open to having my mind changed by it being awesome myself

[Craig Stern]

Oh, boy, more computer elitist bastards. Fun Fact for you, CraigStern: games on TVs are not retarded.

Some of them are. Some of them aren't. My point is that Bethesda evidently feels they have to change the game dynamics to accommodate the more limited controls and more action-oriented user base of the Xbox 360. I just don't see how the thoughtful gameplay of the first two games is going to carry over when the game is redesigned to play like an FPS.

[Gnarf]

I just don't see how consoles have anything to do with Fallout being redesigned to play like an FPS.

[Craig Stern]

The game is being simplified for the sake of a console release. Bethesda chose to do this by making it more like an FPS, which I can only assume is for the sake of appealing to FPS-happy console gamers.

I'm not saying that consoles are bad, or that computer games are better--I'm just saying that it looks like Bethesda is making compromises with the design to shoehorn Fallout into a console format.

[Gnarf]

And I'd argue the dumbing down matters just as much to the PC version. Because average PC games sell better than good ones. Because people don't recognize and appreciate high quality within a genre they aren't really into and don't really get. Bethesda would be every bit as interested in reaching the non-CRPGers if it was a PC only game.

Like, I'm all for elitism, I just don't buy any of that "dumbed down for console" stuff

[Renton]

I just pre-ordered it. I guess there's a part of me that believes it's gonna be frigging o'sm. Let's all hope it doesn't let me down, eh?

[Lucaz]

I think games aren't dumbed down for consoles, they are dumbed down for those hardcore gamers that just play FPSs and think Halo 3 is great. Now, if those players are more common on consoles, I don't know, maybe. The ones who are probably more common in consoles are teenagers, and that's a public where surely a FPS will sell better. Or at least I believe so.