T w e n t y S i d e d
The two and a half of you who are unceasingly fascinated by the fact that Shamus puts his name under the title of each post may be somewhat confused at the moment. You may also wonder why I am referring to myself in the third person. This could have something to do with the fact that I am, in reality, not Shamus. The man in question is currently passed out on some crude form of sleeping apparatus, a victim of his ever shifting sleep schedule, and has entrusted me to write the post for today’s Spoiler Warning in the event that he were unavailable to do so.
As an added bonus, he utterly failed to specify exactly what it was I was supposed to post. So, without further ado:
Why Shamus is Wrong and I am Awesome
A treatise on the myriad ways in which Guild Wars is the best MMO ever and World of Warcraft sucks.
…Hey, why are you pulling that giant stuffed boar head off of your trophy wallâ€"OH GOD!
Ow, okay, I get it! You didn’t have to throw it at me! Jerk!
Let’s just… get to the video, all right?
Hello, person from the future. This space used to have an embed from the video hosting site Viddler. The video is gone now. If you want to find out why and laugh at Viddler in the process, you can read the entire silly story for yourself. At any rate, the video is gone. Sorry. On the upside, we're gradually re-posting these old videos to YouTube. Check the Spoiler Warning page to see the full index. |
See, I told you I was awesome. Hey put that down!
How I Plan To Rule This Dumb Industry
Here is how I'd conquer the game-publishing business. (Hint: NOT by copying EA, 2K, Activision, Take-Two, or Ubisoft.)
Shamus Plays WOW
Ever wondered what's in all those quest boxes you've never bothered to read? Get ready: They're more insane than you might expect.
Megatextures
A video discussing Megatexture technology. Why we needed it, what it was supposed to do, and why it maybe didn't totally work.
In Defense of Crunch
Crunch-mode game development isn't good, but sometimes it happens for good reasons.
Programming Language for Games
Game developer Jon Blow is making a programming language just for games. Why is he doing this, and what will it mean for game development?
A COMMERCIAL YOU HAVE TO INTERACT WITH FOR IT TO CONTINUE?? This is the worst thing ever created by man. That leg hair company should die in a fire.
I got a Bing commercial…no interactivity required, but I see those a lot on flash games at AddictingGames.com
The bing commercial was stupid, but it was a nice break from “Reinvent the Wheels” and “Cotton, the Fabric of Our Lives”
Huh. Seems as though AdBlock on Firefox blocks the ad at the beginning of the movie. I’m so used to browsing the web with it on that I sometimes forget that there are ads on most sites. I had just thought that once embedded you didn’t have to see the ad.
No, it doesn’t. Living in Europe blocks the ad, because Viddler is region-based ads.
Certainly seems to for me… I just get the video, whether it’s embedded or on Viddler itself, and I’m definitely not in Europe.
No ads for me.Which is a nice change,since recently Ive seen so many nonskippable ones to last me a life time.And the worst thing is that some were for the shows that I cant even watch in my country!(well I can watch them on the web,but I dont have the channels on tv that they were advertising)
Yeah it does; i used to get ads on these movies until i installed adblock awhile back for entirely unrelated reasons, it clicked a couple of eps later when i started wondering where the ads went.
If i turn adblock off, i get the ads, turn it on, no ads.
Amusingly, the same thing happens with Ten’s website when i’m watching Good News Week; normally there’d be a very short ad between each segment, which really didn’t bother me since Ten is a commercial channel after all and the ads were much less obnoxious than their usual ads. But after installing adblock, poof, no ads.
I’ve been suffering through these horrid things for the better part of Spoiler Warning’s running time. You don’t actually have to touch them to get them to continue, but they take a lot longer if you don’t. I normally just mute the sound for 30 seconds and check back. Honestly, whoever thought this was a good idea is a fucking idiot, and needs to be drawn and quartered. It is truly absurd the kinds of ways humans create to abuse one another.
Honestly, I preferred the interactive ad to having to watch “Reinvent the Wheels” for the fortieth time. I started having no interest in the program. I now openly loathe it, and would go out of my way to harm it if I could.
Same. It really is a horrible ad.
The every-two-second cuts. (I think the director wishes he was directing a music video.) The people speaking entirely in cliches. (I’VE GOT TO PULL OUT ALL THE STOPS ON THE BIG GUNS TO THE LIMIT!!!11!) The vague subject matter. (You waste thirty seconds of my time and you can even explain WHAT they are trying to do with these car designs?) The obvious disconnect between the amped-up voice over and the actual footage. (THEY HAVE THE PASSION! Cut to: Shot of some shlub getting advice from some random person to try hard, and shlub agrees to try hard. Wooo!) The smothering density of the ad. (How many times have we had to watch this crap in the last three months?)
It’s just shameful. These people are possibly solving Engineering problems. This could be interesting in a junkyard wars / Mythbusters sort of way (or at least, it could be sold as such) but instead they’re trying to sell us EXTREME CARBUILDER CAPTAIN AWESOME HARDCORE CAR BLOODFEUD ARENA ROOOOOOOCK!!!!!!
Audience: Zzzzzzz……
It finally changed to trying to make me donate to a cotton foundation. And from what I know, the web show is attempting to sell you on the scion.
I think clearing my flash cache is what did it.
Any short media becomes obnoxious with overexposure. The first time I watched the “ReinVENT the WHEELS!!!” ad, I was filled with a mild curiosity about car engineering and a desire to see some of the stupider designs crash and burn. (An SUV with a hot tub in the back! Don’t make any sudden stops!) The twentieth time, I was actively dreading the sight of one shlub saying, “Let’s push the envelope!”
I totally agree. There are some ads out there which drive me utterly up the wall. When I discuss them with my friends, one usually says “Oh, well you remembered their name, right? So that means it’s working.”
Yes, I remember their name. Unfortunately, it’s now written across the body of a molotov cocktail.
I will never ever do service with that brand name until I die!
Yup. On my “never to do business with” list is StubHub. Quite apart from the whole “online scalpers” thing, which I greatly dislike, their ads finish with an airhorn and a VERY annoying voice shouting “Stubhub”. At first, it merely made me cringe. Now, it makes me change the radio station.
I should probably tell the radio station that.
Me too, man.
I don’t even know how they got such a large advertising budget but couldn’t get a real television show anyways, but those Ads were EVERYWHERE. It’s insanity.
I think it may be even worse when you see an OKAY commercial a million times, because then your mind slowly warps to be driven crazy at the slightest mention of it, and you can’t hide behind the wall of it being a bad commercial, you just see your own perception changing.
Blip was driving me crazy for a while with WIRELESS FEES AND TAXES BITE LIKE A COBRA GET A CELLULAR MONGOOSE
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=adblock
I’ve been watching SA since episode one and I’ve never seen a single ad. For a long time I didn’t even know there were ads. There was one episode where everyone was complaining about the science kid that confused the hell out of me because I had no idea what anyone was talking about, “wait, where in Fallout 3 is there a kid measuring his room? Did I miss something”
Of course, being 4 days late, no one will ever read this…
Guild Wars is awesome. World of Warcraft, less so.
Does Guild Wars really count as an MMO? It has the same basic style of gameplay, but a completely different business model and backend programming.
Massive – yes
Multiplayer – yes
Online – yes
But then I would use RPG for any Game where you Play a Role (created by the player or someone else), which doesn’t seem to be the consensus definition either.
So, basically any game ever except for Tetris?
Id call this playing a role:
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1924722
Actually, Guild Wars specifically states that it is not an MMO.
Yes it is multiplayer.
Yes it is online.
But, since any part of the game in which you can actually do anything is an instance with a limited number of players (typically no more than 8) , it does not qualify as “Massively Multiplayer.” The non-instanced areas are really just trade hubs; you can chat, you can buy/sell/trade, you can pick up a few quests, but that’s about it. So far as multiplayer goes, these areas are more of a chat room for putting together groups before actually going into the game itself.
What about the term “MMO” implies anything about the business model? When I think “MMO”, I think “a game that I have to login to some server to play, and a bunch of other people are doing the same, and I can interact with them”. That some games charge me for the privilege of being able to login is beside the point. That covers your “business model” comment. How are WoW and GW fundamentally different in their backend programming?
In Guild Wars you don’t see random people running around doing stuff, since the whole world is instanced. So in some sense it’s like Diablo 2 with fancy lobbies.
I think the argument is that that makes it not massive. Personally I don’t care really I don’t like GW no matter what they call it.
I would say that’s a difference of extent(of “massiveness”) rather than of kind. Still not convinced.
“,,,Guild Wars is the best MMO ever and World of Warcraft sucks.”
+1
Agreed. Guild Wars is almost a perfect MMO to me. You go in, do your quest, then you leave, and if you died along the way, we,, the only drawback is that it made the quest harder. No loss of gold or levels, just a significant but not crippling inconvenience posed for the duration of the mission.
Guild Wars 2 goes even further off the beaten track, by removing the death penalty entirely, in favor of a “Second Wind” system followed by “nearby waypoint.” GODS, why can’t it just go gold already?! *sob*
If you want to try out this death system before release, buy Borderlands. It’s almost a direct rip (the only difference is that in BL the penalty is noticable, I think).
“Water marking”
badum-tsh
The sound appears to have melted into a puddle and evaporated.
A giant boar’s head? Really, Shamus? Tacky, tacky, tacky. My leg lamp and I sneer at you.
Without having yet watched the episode (I plan to get to it later this evening), I am a bit disappointed that the introductory paragraph did not include the phrase, “STOP SHOOTING ME!”
That is all.
Damn, I knew I forgot something!
Given the existing lines ,shouldn’t it be “Stop BOARing me!”? Hurr hurr.
Anyways, yay for new vid, and go Josh, show Shamus who is the boss around here.
…honestly, I never noticed the “posted by” marker under every title, but now that I see it, I can’t stop seeing it!
Same here. Also, “Posted in by X” sounds awkward, and I will forever notice that now. Thanks, Josh :p
One of the long-standing bugs in my theme. Should read “Posted in Let’s Play by Josh.” or “Posted in Personal by Shamus”. And the category should be a link to all posts of that category.
It’s on my to-do list.
Yeah but even your “To-Do” suffers from the same glitch
For as non-interactive and cutscene-ish as the entire Liberty Prime thing is, at least it is the easiest escort mission ever. Sure your charge runs ahead of you suicidally attacking every enemy it sees, but, for once, it has god mode and infinite nuclear hand grenades.
I think it’s more of a reversal. “You think escort missions are annoying? Do you think the NPC has it easy? Think again! Try the role of the escortee, and see how the NPC gets to do all the cool stuff, while you feel too soft and squishy to keep up!”
+1 for making me spew coffee and not even being Shamus (the source of most of my monitor mishaps).
Ahem. Guild Wars was fun. WoW? Dunno, never played it (yes, I’m one of those five people). Actually, I’ve always been somewhat intimidated by MMOs (hey, years of having “does not play well with others” on my report card didn’t mean a thing, honest!) and the thought of paying actual monthly sums of money to try to ignore a horde of people who wanted nothing more than to taste my MMO-virgin blood didn’t so much appeal. But so many people here sang the praises of Guild Wars that I checked it out. And found it reasonably fun except for that part that’s MMO-like (you know, the people shouting all over the towns, group dancing in the streets, forced teaming, paying people to take me to places I shouldn’t be allowed to go yet, etc.) My hubby and another friend also took up GW and that made it even better because we would “gate-monkey” for one another and such and I found that I didn’t even hate forced teaming as long as I could team with someone who didn’t mock my noobishness. But then they lost interest and it was back to playing with henchmen who, I swear, deliberately got themselves killed (stupid tanks, I hate you!) or real people who were much faster and better than me and went to great pains to let me know it. So I quit playing.
Having just finished this section before work today, I have to say that the Liberty Prime sequence is pretty awesome on a first play through. Seeing a giant robot fling nukes at annoying Enclave troops just doesn’t get old for that first walk, and it’s so chaotic you really don’t have time to figure out that it’s almost a cut scene.
However, I can definitely see where any subsequent times that would get annoying about half way through, since you now know you just walk behind the thing and wait for it to do the dirty work.
Also, I’ll second that focusing on the main plot is the worst way to play the game. The side quests really do contain the best and most interesting parts. For example, I just did “Gotta shoot ’em in the head,” which gives you more options for its completion than most of the main quest combined.
Yeah, shame the Anchorage DLC messes that quest up.
does it??
why how when where??
The T51b Powered Armor carries a quest flag that closes the quest out. Which makes sense in context. The problem is the winterized suit is almost identical to the normal version, right down to a quest flag. So if you start “You Gotta Shoot ’em in the Head,” and then you pick up the Winterized T51b powered armor (for any reason (even if you’re just moving it from one container to another in your house)) you close “You Gotta…”, get the XP, and the achievement.
Also, given the relative remoteness of the quest giver for “You Gotta…” the fact that you get a quest marker for “Aiding the Outcasts” literally as soon as you exit the vault, and get powered armor training from that quest line, this bug is actually really easy to run into.
It’s a really easy bug to fix in the GECK, and the Unofficial Patch does fix it. (Never play without the Unofficial patches for Fallout 3.)
I don’t think it’s irritation about optimizing so much as dumping all those points into melee when you ended up shooting stuff all the time, like you were building a character opposite how you were playing.
I think I’ve decided never to pick his up with the glum assessment that ‘playing through the main quests is the worst way to see this game’.
Why *didn’t* they give you command of Liberty Prime for the Murder Paradae?
I did like the first movie ‘boy and robot’ better than the second Transformers and the endless desert combat sequence.
I giggled through this, but man, that felt anticlimatic as endings go. Boo, Bethesda.
I think you’re getting the wrong impression. Yes the main plot is silly, but like all Bethesda games, the main plot is a tiny fraction of the game, and not at all required for its enjoyment. There’s a reason these guys (as well as myself) have played this game 100+ hours. There’s immense fun to be had.
This video series is done by guys who’ve played several times through, who are essentially nitpicking. Granted, some of the nits are rather large!
Whatever issues it may have (read: does have), Fallout 3 is great fun. I doubt you’d regret picking it up.
I would like to add a disclamer for you:
*assuming you’re ready to mod the damn thing
But I’ve never been able to really enjoy Bethesda’s games without any mods. Just way too many incomprehensible decisions. (leveled quest rewards, non-retroactive HP from Endurance, corpses flying around from rifle shots making looting a nightmare etc. Most of the time I ended up looting corpses from jawbones and eyeballs since they were easier to find than the headless corpse itself.)
I never used a single mod. That’s not to say I wouldn’t have, but I played the 360 version (my pc at the time was old as dirt and would’ve barely run it). Even without mods, you can totally ignore the main quest if you like and have dozens of hours of awesomeness.
Well, Fallout 3 I might have been able to play without mods, but it would have been tortuous. Just removing the green coloring from everything made it more enjoyable. The TES-series is a lot worse though. The attribute multipliers alone demand modding.
Jar-jar fanfiction, eh?
Oh, good sir, you do not know that into which you have gotten yourself.
Popular works include “Jar-jar Mows the Lawn” and “My Immortal Gungan”.
Re: Rutskarn
You know who Colonel Autumn reminds me of? Foghorn Leghorn.
I say BOY are you’a mocking his FINE accent…How dare Yoouu.
Oh god. Cannot unhear!
I had played Oblivion and discovered in that game, that blowing through the main plot as quickly as possible got it out of the way so you could enjoy running around the sandbox at doing all the side quests. So I approached Fallout 3 the same way. I didn’t have Broken Steel, so imagine my “WTF!!!” at the end of the main quest.
I hate the ending sequence. I really hate it. The “cinematic” narrated by Ron Pearlman, just like everything else in this game, attempts to follow the original games stylistically (in that its not really a cinematic, just still pictures covered by narration), but entirely misses the point.
As it was said in the video, the original games gave you a summary of events that happened in all major communities you ever interacted with, after the end of the game, just like in some movies you are told what happened with all the major characters afterwards, before the end credits roll. You didnt just go for the best reward or the easiest solution, it gave your actions consequences and you acted accordingly.
In my opinion it was one of the core elements of Fallout, one of the things that make Fallout the big deal that it is (or was anyway). Essentially, everything you did had consequences. In every area there was a sort of a major questline that defined the ending, sometimes influenced by smaller events and sidequests.
For example, you could resolve tensions between Vault City, a major power in the wasteland and one of the most civilized places you could find (which was also full of xenophobes), and neighbouring Gecko, a small ghoul settlement living off of an old nuclear power plant which was leaking toxic waste into the waters of VC. You could sabotage the power station and , indeed, was vaguely encouraged to do so by the questgiver or you could dig around a little bit and find out that VC will eventually outgrow their vault’s power unit and stagnate without their neighbours. The decision you made in that quest affected the fate of Vault City and Gecko in the ending sequence.
What annoys me is that Bethesda really had no reason to not do it in FO3. They actually had the setup, all (three and a half) communities in the game had a quest that was seemingly put there for that, Megaton had the bomb, Arefu had the vampires, Rivet city had the whole business with Harkness and Zimmer, Republic of Dave had the election… It was seemingly the plan to have all of those quests affect the ending, the first time I was playing I had that in mind, but for some reason they didnt.
It’s because Bethesda wouldn’t know plot if it threw a boarhead at them.
Not true, as we discussed before. They certainly know plot, even good plot, but only on a limited scale. Many of their subplots (in various games) are really good.
Unfortunately they never let a good plot spoil their vision of the main story.
…Or something like that.
Personally, I’m not sure there was a single side-quest in Fallout 3 I actually thought was “good”. And I hated Morrowind so much I gave it away (at cost to myself).
So I’m not sure I believe this claim that Bethesda can do good side-plot.
well just because you don’t like any of their plots doesn’t mean that other people can’t.
*shrug*
what games would you consider have a great plot, then?
I’m sorry, you gave away your right to talk about Bethesda plots when you gave away Morrowind. That game had an excellent story, with one of the deepest, most interesting villains I’ve ever experienced. Their main story plots have been sub-par since, yes, but they certainly have the ability to do good story. Even in FO3, some side-missions stories were quite good. (The Family, for instance).
That quest went well until you learn that “the Family” are just vampire mutants WHO ARE TOTALLY NOT CANIBALS IN DISGUISE. One which, according to game mechanics, is a teacheable mutation, since you can get a perk to make blood bags useful.
You sure that is the best example? It´s so fanfic-ish, to me (in the bad way).
theyre not mutants, even. theyre just people who crave human flesh.
then they say they control it so they only need to take blood, rather than eat a whole person
And The Family’s spokesman shows disgust towards eating flesh. In all forms. And it’s apparently impossible to respond to his “what are we”-thing with any form of diplomacy. All of the responds are either insults or general scoffing at the idea, and then he makes some comment about the PC being close minded or something. Either author insertion, bad fanfiction or a crappy parody.
Even though I had prepared for the “post-apocalyptic vampires” -thing I hadn’t been bracing for the bad writing, not mention that it’s difficult to consider The Family a group of “misunderstood and misjudged” people when half of them seem to be assholes.
So they are wasteful cannibal vampires. And according to the ingame moral compass you are supposed to strike a deal between them and their victims in Arefu as opposed to just exterminating them.This quest makes me cringe.
The problem is that Bethesda actually gave you some freedom about how to pursue their quest for once, but that doesnt make its plot less rubbish.
Lets examine some other sidequests.
Power of atom: An old rich guy wants to blow up an old scrapyard of a town, built around an atomic bomb, because thats what rich old people do. And the bomb in qustion was just sitting there for 200 years untouched, leaking radiation into the water, and not a single person ever attempted to disarm it.
Tenpenny tower: Snooty rich bastards discriminate against an innocent bloodthirsty ghoul supremacist. You either kill the snooty rich bastards, kill the supremacist (and his companions) or negotiate to let him in peacefully, whereupon he somehow kills everyone because diplomacy is for the lawful stupid.
Big town: Teenagers booted out of Little Lamplight, having lost their plot armor, struggle, pathetically, to survive. Its in your power to save them by showing them which end of a gun makes the loud noise.
Wasteland survival guide: you help a clearly insane but surprisingly competent (and extremely resilient) Megaton trader/mechanic write a book that revolutionises the industry of wasteland survival. The resulting manual is full of staggering revelations such as: dont step on landmines, try to find food, read books and avoid radiation.
Nuka cola quantum: Oh please.
What im trying to say is that sidequests are definitely better and more fun than the main quest, they have a lot less railroading and more room to be clever and complete them in different ways, but that does not automatically mean that they make sense and their writing is better.
And I loved Morrowind, though I can see why some people might not like it. Besides, a few Spoiler Warnings ago some people mentioned that much of the Morrowind team left Bethesda as of Oblivion (and was presumably replaced by monkeys).
This is actually to Someone:
They’re not necessarily wasteful, since they don’t have to kill to get fed. Bloodpacks, draining nonlethal dose of blood etc.
But the leader talks about eating flesh as inherently impure and wrong, regardless of situation. Even if the source is dead and the eater is not a vampire. Also he seems to hold vampires as superior beings because of that and you can’t argue with him in any sensible way.
Perhaps, but the game is inconsistent about their nature and their ethics. So they all come to Meresti station because of their strange craving for blood. Its a horrible mutation/condition that doesnt let them properly function in society. Except…it can be taught? So what is it, an illness or just their choice?
The game tries to pose them as tragic outcasts, but they are actually aggresive and dangerous thugs. I think there is a terminal in their hideout that pretty much says they were originally going to kill everyone in Arefu to get their blood. They taunted and scared the inhabitants, they killed their Brahmin (which even their leader agrees is a bit of a dick move) and the game expects me to feel sorry for THEM. And then you negotiate a “mutually beneficial” deal between them and Arefu (which is really just bargaining them out of being eaten and into paying ransom).
They’re not drawn to the station. The leader just collected everyone there. But yeah. According to dialogue it’s a mutation, which gets contradicted by the perk. So yeah.
I thought that some of them wanted to kill everyone in Arefu, and that the leader objected.
Note that I’m not directly disagreeing with you, just nitpicking. In fact, everything I’m pointing out is just seasonings to my hate pie, because it just adds to the whole bad-fanfic -feeling. “Oh woe is us, we’re so misunderstood. If stupid, weak, humans just weren’t such close-minded assholes we could live in perfect harmony with them.” They actually remind me of elves in most fantasy fluff.
And I agree that killing everyone in The Family should be considered a good deed. Even if the game would have made a believable case that the leader has truly good intentions, it’s already established (with the brahmin killing) that he can’t keep the group under control, and that some of them are dangerously violent.
There’s just no reason to believe that the ‘brahmin event’ won’t repeat itself, and possibly with people dead. And since there wasn’t any real punishment the last time, why would I believe there would this time? Since when has harboring murdering psychopaths been a good thing?
Could you give a better example? All the good dialogue that I remember from FO3 have been either outside of quests or singular bits. Although I haven’t been through nearly all of them.
I don’t get it? This games has great side missions with good options and story factors, but yet it doesn’t effect the main plot. Hopefully Obsidian can do better, they certainly cant do worse than Bethesda.
I don’t know if it’s just me or something, but the audio cuts out on me at “Hi, I’m Sha-” And then viddler refuses to let me hear anything.
Yeah, the problem is tha-
…
._.
You are a cruel man. Surely, an audio glitch wouldn’t affe-
I bet its Candlejack tha
It can’t be Candlejack he’s not rea….
Stop saying Candlejack! He’s gonna…
Aw hell now this is just getting si-
Oh dammit, not this Candlejack crap again. He isn’t real peop
Where you about to say “si-
That area based concequence thing is one of the reasons I am excited for new vegas! They said that they are bringing back a rep system so that other npc’s will change they’re behaviour towards you if you are a friend of someone like the bos, or enemies with them. even though the graphics haven’t improved with new vegas, the animations have and frankly the point of the game just plain MAKES SENSE.
There actually IS a mod for Fallout 3 that lets you build your own town. I haven’t tried it personally, but apparently it’s called “Real Time Settlers” and lets you build towers, farm food, recruit most friendly NPCs in the game, and basically do everything you SHOULD be doing instead of this ridiculous Project Purity business.
Its an interesting mod, but its rather wonky and constrained by the engine. You “hire” builders, scavengers and the like, in much the same way you “train” units in an RTS, have them add to the resources (food, scrap metal and caps), create buildings to hire more people to build more stuff… its all for its own sake and its not what “creating a settlement in an RPG” would entail.
And, of cource, the GECK never enters the picture.
Well it at least sounds like something better than Project Purity. Plus it sounds like an expansion on the whole “Big Town” sidequest where you can teach the exiled teens from Little Lamplight how to build Sentry Bots and such to defend themselves, which I liked, but was disappointed you could only choose ONE thing to teach them.
The problem is that its completely devoid of any personality. It plays as, just that, an RTS in that you build stuff to build stuff. Your settlers have no names and dialogue and feel more like robots than actual people, they will never thank you for all the progress you have done and all you will ever get out of it are useless caps.
In terms of WoW v. GW, I have a post on the Guild Wars 2 forums concerning it, which has an exceptionally obvious pro-Guild Wars bent to it. You can reach it by clicking my avatar, it’ll be the first post on the page. If anyone would like to construct a well-reasoned rebuttal, I’d be willing to quote it in the GW2 thread.
It seems necessary to remind certain viewers and viddler commenters that the category is called “Let’s play” and not “This is how you should play”.
Leveling Cuftbert against his best interests has probably made the series more entertaining rather than less; those who are really bothered by it should go and make their own video walkthrough.
Interestingly, the rather ham-fisted levelling of Cufthbert has shown how stupid the levelling and perk system in FO3 is.
You become unstoppable after a few levels, no matter what you decide to put skill points into.
Thankfully, I’m modding the hell out of it (FWE), which makes things much better. I’m still almost unstoppable at level 16 (except for large groups of Enclave soldiers), but that’s mostly due to rather overpowered equipment from the DLC.
To be fair, this PC-becomes-a-steamroller effect was also a problem with the real Fallout games, though maybe not so early in the game. But if it’s either that or auto-leveling foes, I know which poison I’ll pick!…
There was always a chance of death with the originals, even with power armour on.
Even if it was usually because you got critically hit.
It was really Fallout 2 that started the rot (although you could say that about so much really…), since it removed the level cap, and didn’t have much in the way of time limits.
Actually the fact I played through Fallout 1 as a high speech low combat character meant that if I ever got up against a super mutant I was screwed unless I was saving every combat turn. So the game was still very challenging until the end for me.
I guess I was mostly thinking about FO2. As Andy_Panthro pointed out above, this is where things started to get really out of hand.
Personally I never considered this a problem in a story based game. You don’t need to constantly die or be challenged to enjoy yourself the story world design etc. should be enough to set the mood for the game. The problem with FO3 is that the sory is bad, the bosses aren’t any harder that regular goons which defangs them (bosses don’t need to be hard but they need to be harder, feel more epic and change it up so that they seem significant) and they needlessly pad the game with superfluous fights. The problem with the padding being that when you have that much fighting without context you need challenge and variation because nothing else makes it important.
I actually have a bigger problem with RPGs that try to be challenging. Because the challenge is not in the individual fights but in how you spend your levels so if you spend them in a bad manner (I have this disease where I only pick skills that sound cool rather than ones that are any good) you get stuck which can sometime be solved by grinding or by repaying the entire game. I did this myself in planescape: torment, I made a few bad turns ran out of monsters to kill and way too weak to enjoy anything in the last fortress and I have yet to see the ending because of this.
Ah yes… Torment. A game notorious for being remarkably light on combat. Until the end, that is, and all of a sudden you find that your character that was breezing through previous encounters is getting his nameless ass handed to him.
I’m replaying my way through PS:T right now, and I will urge you to try again despite all that. The end is totally worth it!
I found that in FWE its very hard to play the game with a melee character build. I went for a sort of a “beefcake” STR and END character with lots of hp and damage resistance to boot, but no matter how much health regen and DR I have and how much chems I take, the moment ANY enemy with an assault rifle turns his attention to me I get shredded within 2-3 seconds. I guess melee characters are supposed to stealth and the “tough” build is better with Big Guns.
By the way, to keep the game fresh and challenging get Mart’s Mutant Mod Increased Spawns, a fight with 8 supermutants in a field in the middle of nowhere easily tramples the demonstrated endgame sequence in spectacle and performs a triple suplex on it in terms of difficulty.
So, hey, question: can we see some of the good stuff?
Like, after the DLC is done, you can, say, pick three of your favourite quests, one from each of you, and go do those quests so you can compliment the game for doing well.
Bwahahahaha! “So you can compliment the game for doing well.” So funny!
Well, I imagine it has very low self-esteem right about now, and I think the best way to fix that would be to have the bullies who’ve been picking on it tell it what it does well.
So now the game’s going to go all co-dependent. :P
*Insert thick Russian accent*
Lets all laught at the feeble little game Ahhahaahahaha
CRY SOME MORE!
Hey, it’s a cotton commercial, it finally changed from those god-awful scion commercials. THANK YOU VIDDLER THIS IS MILDLY BETTER.
I always snicker during the introduction, When Shamus says “Hi everyone, I’m Shamus”, and my mind reads it as “Hi everyone, I’m shameless” yes you are *laughs*
What makes me laugh is the way Rutskarn says “and I’m Rutskarn!”. It’s the chirpiness of it I suppose, but it always makes me smile.
Hold on, I just thought of something.
Does this mean Josh has admin access to Shamus’ site?
Do you know what he could do with this kind of power?
SSSSHHH. It’s bad enough people like Guild Wars.
Post additional Spoiler Warnings?
I like this development.
Do Shamus’s dreams feature Joseph Gordon Levitt, Ellen Page, and Leonardo DeCaprio?
Are safes prominent?
I may have some bad news.
Be honest, Shamus was too busy playing World of Warcraft to update us.
Cue the Wow rage. Also, Shamus, no updates on Wow? For shame, Shamus, for shame..
So what next? More Fallout? Can we get a new series now please? There’s only so much vitriol I can take.
We’re going to finish up Broken Steel, and then it’s on to a new game. About which we will say nice things.
So,I guess its not mass effect 2?
Are you doing prince of persia perhaps?Even Yahtzee has nice things to say about that game.
Or how about a quick run of portal?Though I must say that hearing any commentary over glados would be disappointing.
Prince of Persia makes me sad; every game they’ve managed to get one aspect of the game very right, and the other aspects horribly wrong. They’re all great games, but playing the various PoP’s always makes me wince a little when i get to the bit they screwed up this time.
Also, is it just me or is the Prince a bit ‘sticky’ in Forgotten Sands?
I don’t see them doing Forgotten Sands, due to its insanely overzealous DRM.
Aw, I was hoping you’d go through Mothership Zeta.
Yes I want you to submit yourself to that pain. I’m evil like that.
Take Charon for Broken Steel and give him Sunglasses so that he looks like the most badass companion ever. Then give him some energy weapons and a metal armor.
Of all the NPC companions, Charon is the only one with an AI. So that’s more badass points right there.
I hoped you’d do all DLCs. What’s the next Spoiler Alert going to be about?
Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, do some side quests or at least the other Dlc.
(At the least Point Lookout)
seconded for point lookout
cuz i like the main quest for the area
if i didn’t know better i’d say you guys really didn’t like this game.
So the outcasts want to be miore like the original BoS. But are “outcasts” becasue they dont conform with the East Coast BoS. So, why not go somewhere else? You infact can travel pretty much all over the east coast.
And worse yet, on top of Rivet City, there are folded wing aircraft, they could easily fix a few up and go wherever the hell they want.
With things like “Pugilism Illustrated” surviving the 200 year wait for you to destroy/read them, you think a few manuals would be around in the nice Pentagonal shaped building they can fix a giant tin can in.
I wish for a game, with a fallout setting that ould ust let you travel and was based almost entierly around side quests, there is a thin main story line but thousands of side quests. It sure would take forever to make, but i’m pretty sure it could be done.
Fallout IS based around sidequests. In the original games you spent most of your time in towns, solving problems of everyone you met. That was the main focus. In contrast all TES games (and FO3) are based around combat, dungeoncrawling in various combat locations and acquiring loot.
A lot of the game’s problems are caused by difficulties in transition between the two.
I’m not sure the aircraft are really a factor, there aren’t enough aircraft on Rivet City to take the entire outcast faction wherever they want. That said, they have enough suits of powered armor for everyone and ample supplies, so you’re absolutely right, they should be able to do whatever they want within reason. So there is an open question, why don’t they hoof it up to NYC or down to Norfolk and start their operations up again there.
There’s a line of dialog from Lyons about how they’re mocking him, and it implies that’s why they stay, but that explanation sounds kinda weak to me.
On the subject of the skill books, what bothers me isn’t that they exist, (there were copies of guns and bullets in Fallout and Fallout 2) it’s just how freaking common they are. Between skill books and bobble heads, there basically isn’t an excuse for failing to max out your skills in Fallout 3.
Since no-one else has decided to chime in on Michael Bay – Bethesda:
Not being a Transformers or Fallout fan, I can tell that while there are certain similiarities between those, like the fun being in the explosions, action, pyrotechnics and explosions, there are differences when you look deeper.
The Transformers movie had annoying characters and bad dialogue while at the same time missing the point of the originals, which was big transforming robots fighting other big transforming robots. And is better enjoyed by ignoring all of the story and just focusing on the spectacle.
Fallout 3 on the other hand had annoying characters and bad dialogue while at the same time missing the point of-
Uhh. So, yeah. I guess the difference is that they’re based on a different IPs, that had different reasons for being popular in the first place. I don’t know if the Transformers can be made good by fastfowarding past the teenage-drama-comedy parts (I know alcohol doesn’t fix ’em), but I do know that in FO3 you can avoid the main quest and have much more fun. And there are the mods.
A bit of belated blithering aimed at Shamus. In one of the earlier commentaries you chewed out Fallout 3 for lacking the kind of pulpish comic book style of the first two. Now it might be that I just went back to Fallout 3 after having blown way too much time in S.T.A.L.K.E.R., but, to me, the art direction and even the color pallet do seem to have that kind of comic book theme going. I’ll agree that it’s more monochromatic than the first two games, but it isn’t all monotonous greenish brown.
Two caveats: 1 it’s possible I’m just insane. And 2, I haven’t done much tinkering with my load order since I went back to Fallout 3, so it’s possible something is making the game more colorful (clear skies.esp comes to mind (but I’ve no idea if it’s active or not)).
Did Elder Lyon at 32:04 say “without the effort of both you and your father.”? Didn’t his daughter march to her death to save the wasteland, she is dead but you can give her some bloody compliments you withered old geezer.
And by the way when he forced you to join his little brotherhood it kinda screamed “One of us, one of us” at me.
Dear God, does Viddler not update their commercials on older videos? I just randomly decided to go back and watch this one episode, and get an ad for Glee.
GLEE: Don’t miss the season premiere on September 24th!
Yeah, first of all, I don’t care, and second, it’s frickin NOVEMBER.
Oh wow my “free trial” of whatever the streaming software is expired, now I cant even watch this. Nothing makes me feel generous with my money more than my favorite show being taken hostage. If they think im going to fund their griefing program they are sourly mistaken.