So the new Fallout 3 gameplay videos are...well, just see for yourself.

And, unfortunately, the same voice actors from Oblivion and Morrowind.

The voice actors were fine.  The only problem was there were just too few of them, recycled for too many different characters. And only a couple of the voices were familiar.  There are voices in those vids never heard in Oblivion.

Yes, that right there is the problem. By continuing to use some of the most used actors from the other games, it's not going to help them shake the "oblivion with guns" accusation, to say the least.

I'm looking forward to the game myself, but not so much hearing NPCs voiced by the same guy who voiced a third of the male characters in Oblivion, and at least a couple of the major NPCs in Morrowind (since only plot NPCs were voiced there, IIRC). It just rips you right out of the Fallout atmosphere when you hear the unforgettable voice of Imperial/Breton Man #2.

 *Eerily realistic facial animation/lip syncing

popped on a puppet body that doesn't move a dime.

 *Authentic Fallout atmosphere

Consisting of mudcrabs, cheesy mafia clones from the dark brotherhood of Oblivion and cars that explode when shot into its trunk.

 *Hacking and Lockpicking minigames

I hate minigames. I really and truly hate minigames. And I even more hate bad mini games like the one Beth does.

 *A reassuring amount of F words and general post apocalyptic attitude

Wow, saying fuck is the new black. Hurray for humanity.

 *Recieving negative karma for detonating an atomic bomb in the middle of a populated town...apparently for kicks.

Cool, exploding an atomic bomb for kicks, so much for roleplay. And getting bad karma for that even!

 *Shooting  enemies' arms off with custom made weapons.

Jay for gore. And giving each weapon the kinetic power of 11'' artillery shell.

*Punching enemies' heads clean off with Power Fists

Always gore.

 *Shooting enemies' heads off with custom made rail guns that proceed to implale said head on nearest wall

Yeah gore again.

Honestly, that videos sucked.

Fallout 3 looks like it'll be a clone of Soldiers of Fortune with an added Slowmotion/Instahit cheat.

I mean, most of the videos consisted of unnecessary and unrealistic gore (shooting limbs of, backflip a meter when hit by a peashooter, etc.) and horrible bad fps gameplay (do the enemies never take cover? are they armed with water guns or why don't they harm the pc?).

Oh, and the quest line leading to the ignition of the atomic bomb? How bad can you write those quests? Just meet a guy and he gives you the detonator, just so, because he's so eeeevil.

As you can see, I'm not as enthusiastic as you.

Edit: Argh, can't cope with the new quote system. So Italics have to do...

This simply isn't true, my rantastic friend.  I cite the other video showing death by Teddy Bears launced at deadly velocity from the rocket launcher.

Although if I remember, they did, in fact,  dislodge some body parts.  But they were fuzzy and adorable while doing it!

Yay looks awesome!!! I can't wait for it.

And yeah they need to get rid of that one guy (or just give him less roles!).

I wonder if we'll be seeing the Dark Brotherhood in someform (aka by another name, but still an assassin's guild).

*Oblivion Spoilers*

Ocheava (or whatever) made the weirdest noise every when I killed her... lol.

Looks pretty sweet

It's not Fallout.

It might be a great game (although I'm betting it's, at best, a good game), but it can't be Fallout.

And that makes me sad.

welcome...to...megaton.  have...yourself...a...nice...visit...partner.

STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM

I liked the videos. It's never going to have the feel of the old Fallout games, but at least it seems to have kept true to one of the major things that made the old games - S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Without it, the game would truly be Oblivion with guns. As it is, it looks to be an interesting enough spin-off.

I don't really mind the voice acting, but then again I never got that much into Oblivion. But even then, it wouldn't bug me.

@Vandenburg,

Have you played the original Fallouts? Pretty much everything you're complaining about was done in the original games You could cause a nuclear meltdown in a powerplant near a town, there was plenty of gore (you could cut people in half with a minigun, blow off arms/legs, blow off half a chest, melt people..). And there was certainly a lot of cussing.

My personal video highlight? Sneaking a live grenade onto that ghoul, and watching him twist around trying to find it before blowing up.

I loved both Fallout games, and I think I will love the third iteration. I for one hold Bethesda in high regard since they made some of my favourite games, all the way back to Daggerfall.

As for the blow-up-Megaton quest, I think we really need to see the wider context in order to get a good sense of what its all about. We don't know if you can just walk up to Burke and he goes "hi, wanna detonate a nuclear bomb?" - which I agree would be EXTREMELY lame as far as quest design goes (and would probably be the first thing modded if and when mod support comes) or if you have to talk to a whole series of other characters before they point you to Burke.

Plus, what people seem to forget is that there are still approx. two months to go before the game goes gold. You can do a LOT when it comes to quest design in two months. So I think its a bit hasty to judge the whole game based on a partially shown quest line that is probably a demo version anyway. Just like its a bit hasty to say VATS is a "I-Win" system just because the hacked demo character seems to rip everyone apart with one hit.

My opinion is - the videos were great, they showed some eyecandy and that's all. Too short to really get a feel for how combat works, how quest dialogues work, how stealth and minigames feel etc. All we know for sure is that the game looks gorgeous and that you can rip people's extremities right orf!

Looks VERY VERY good. I'm definetly gonna buy that one.

I've played FO 2 only and very little of it... i liked but the UI was bad and i couldn't keep playing. I should try again...

The game being similar to Oblivion is not a bad thing IMO. It was a good game, and makes FO3 more popular. FO1/2 suffered a little being so HC games... at least i get this feeling. And this Fallout 3 certainly has the Fallout feeling.. at least for me. And gore is big plus. Violence is wrong but video game gore is good way to get rid of stress EDIT have to add that i'm gonna treat this game as Fallout and as canonical game unlike BoS/tactics (just read about them but... they didn't seem good)

Hopefully FO 3 will live up to it's exceptations.

Only thing i really fear is that money is too easy to get and/or useless. Scavenging for the win!

Fallout III look interessting and I'll play it when it is released. The only thing that was a bit annoying for me was these "Oblivion" look. These shinny, reflecting surfaces like you had in caves and dungeons in Oblivion. I just hope it was me and the daylight and not the game.

What was very positive for me were the PipBoy (with all his functions) and the world itself. I can't wait to see it myself.

Its Oblivion with a Fallout wrapper around it abd a Mature Rating.

Thats too bad, its not that Oblivion was bad, in fact is was quite good but I dont need to play the same game over again with a new  skin on it.

Well, I mostly just ranted away because I found the opening post a tad bit over enthusiastic.

But yeah, I've played the old ones. The critical hits surely were gory but only happened when you hit a critical hit (not counting the Bloody Mess perk which was only for comic absurdity imho). In the videos it looked like you'll always have a critical hit when using the VATS system. And it's imho not the same when used in sprites with moderation or almost always.

I only mentioned the cussing because the thread creator found it so awesome.

Also the questline for the meltdown in the original was a lot of fun. The quest line displayed in the video plainly sucks.

Lastly I'm mostly annoyed at Beth for creation a Shooter/RPG-Light instead of a turn based/bird eye view game. I still love me some turn based RPGs like I did five or ten years ago. (X-Com, Jagged Aliance, Civs und Panzer/Fantasy General, Battle Isle, etc.)

It just not the same, going from a turn based/bird eye view to a first person shooter (third person sucked in oblivion for ranged combat, so I don't expect anything different here). And I can't stand most first person shooters, so I won't forgive Beth for that.

Nothing like Sniper perk + point blank gauss gun shot.

Oh yeah. Crit to the eyes with a Gauss Rifle... not even Powered Armor helps.

A couple of points to consider, Vandenburg:

-the games you list were very good, yes, but they were also not RPG's but strategy or squad tactical games. Those types of games benefit from a bird eye view. RPG's don't. Immersion is a big factor in an RPG and first/third person view is far better at pulling you in the game world than any form of isometric perspective.

-there is a fully functional crosshair in third person view, so you can play the whole game like that. I know I will since Bethesda's approach to simulating first person view is sketchy at best (I don't like the feeling of floating around when walking or running).

-although it remains to be seen, it is claimed you can solve many quests with diplomacy or stealth as opposed to just blasting everyone and everything away. Plus, the sandbox nature of the Gamebryo engine means you can tackle any situation in a number of ways, which is a far cry from most FPS games.

My biggest gripe so far is unrealistic weapons damage, although I don't know what difficulty level was the game played in the videos and if the character was hacked to have a ton of health.

If and when the mod tools come out, I am going to make short work of that. Duck&Cover.

I can only assume from the videos that hits in VATS count as criticals. I sincerely doubt non-VATS hits will start dismembering

I also don't think the video showed the entire plot line to detonating the nuke.

I am actually hoping that it will be as moddable as Oblivion was. A lot of nice stuff was released for that.

Hey I'll just rant on, so please don't take me to seriously.

Argh, I hate that word, Immersion. It's so overrated. Using your argument line, you can't get immersed in a book, because you only have text and not first person view.

It's just not true. Most important for immersion (if we want to use that word) in a game is a good story, coherent and interesting settings, appropriate music (no orchestral fanfare when leveling up for example...). It doesn't matter that much if it's bird eye view or first person view (for immersion that is). Or do you want to argue that the original Fallout games hadn't had a great atmosphere and immersed you in a believable postapocalyptic world? I personally felt very "immersed".

And I'm not talking about immersion (Todd really really ruined that word for me, honestly) anyway. I'm talking about a certain sort of gameplay that I prefer over other gameplay. I like turn based, bird eye view tactical games, be they strategy games or RPGs.

I can only judge from what they did before and it didn't work with Oblivion and honestly I don't see much difference from the videos there.

Sure, and they said much more about the Radiant AI in Oblivion which they didn't deliver. So what? I can only judge on what I see, not what I'm told there is. And since it's about the videos I only see first person shooter things with a quirky quest design. Don't blame me for that.

AFAIK they won't release the mod tools with the release for the game...

One of the perks of the Fallout games is to ALWAYS see the worst way someone can die.

Apparently that perk was enabled!

<3 Bloody Mess.

I'm going to miss the turn based combat, but I'm glad they put VATS in to help bridge a bit between turn based and real time. And I'm definitely glad they stuck with the xp-based SPECIAL character progression, true to the originals.

Well, immersion is a personal thing, I'll grant you that. But you cannot deny that a game world is much better represented in relation to your character in 3D. For example, gazing at the wrecked horizon of a ruined city is impossible using an isometric perspective. Or properly marvelling at how *huge* that supermutant is before he rams your head down your neck. From an isometric view, both your character and the huge beast are just toy figures. You cannot look up and say "oshit" to yourself. And so on and so forth.

Keep in mind that Fallout 3 uses an updated engine Oblivion used, but that does NOT mean its Oblivion with a Fallout texture pack. There is so much more to a game engine. And in any case, you can see in the videos that they have a fully functional "over the shoulder" aiming view in 3rd person perspective. If it works for so many games out there, I see no reason it shouldn't work in Fallout 3. Hell, I played Oblivion in 3rd person view and scored headshots with my bow, and that was with no cursor at all. Not that headshots mattered in Oblivion - but they do matter in Falout 3.

As for how the game will play out quest-wise, I shall simply reiterate that we shall have to wait and see.

Sure I can. Did you see the Diablo III gameplay videos? I did say "Oh Shit!" after seeing the Siege Beast for the first time.

Also as I've said about, I get very immersed in games without a first person perspective. Since this is mostly a subjective experience, you can't really argue about it anyway. I still personaly enjoy the bird eye view more then first person view. And you can still make (scripted) camera moves over destroyed ruins in the game while using bird eye view, though I don't think it's necessary.

As for the bow and spell shooting in Oblivion, I really never hit much with in third person view, but then the whole Oblivion combat system wasn't very good anyway. So I'll wait and see (and be very sceptical about it ).

Agreed.

Some people love Oblivion but the gameplay just doesn't appeal to me (and pretty graphics in no way compensate).  Oblivion feels like an empty MMORPG to me - one with crappy gameplay and an ultra painfully slow pace.

Fallout is an isometric and more of a classic type of RPG - the type that don't seem to get made anymore, and THAT is sad (maybe Bioware's Dragon Age will revisit classic RPG times).  Bethesda's bastardization isn't Fallout, it's just some other game, another FPS style clone, with the Fallout name pasted on it.

Maybe it'll be a decent game but it surely won't be Fallout.  And yes, it's very sad.

What did make Fallout "Fallout"? The game play or the world? If gameplay, i understand why you think FO 3 is not Fallout.. If the world, then FO3 is gonna be Fallout, as long as it's not restricted a la Oblivion (why i can't kill the Emperor and have the Mythic Dawn rescue me?) OR at least restrictions must not be as blunt as in Oblivion, subtle, unseen restrictions are no problem for me.