T w e n t y S i d e d
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. |
As I mentioned in the episode, you can get the original Fallout from Good Old Games for just six bucks. (Actually I think I said five, which means I fell for the one-penny-less trick. CURSE YOU MARKETING!) I already owned the game, but I had problems installing it. Rather than muck about looking for workarounds I just bought it again. The version on sale at GoG didn’t have any of the old legacy issues. Plus, it came with:
* A PDF of the manual.
* The Fallout Bible. (Which, to be fair, is available for free. So don’t go running off to buy the game if that’s all you want.)
* The original soundtrack
* The in-game soundtrack? Which is different in some way I assume?
* A smattering of other loose items like wallpapers and such.
* The game. A rather important item, that. It should work on your fancy new future computer.
It doesn’t come with any DRM though, so you’ll have to provide that yourself. I’ve been forcing myself to find a random CD and put it in the drive when I want to play so I don’t feel like a criminal. Maybe if you’re using a laptop you can just refuse to play when you don’t have a net connection?
I found The Pitt hard to deconstruct because I haven’t played it myself. We were sent by Werner to free slaves, but the guy who sent us was talking about smuggling in a weapon. So was getting captured part of the plan? And what are we supposed to be doing? In this episode we gathered ingots and then fought in the arena for our freedom, but I wasn’t clear on what that was leading to. I guess it will be revealed when we get to Asher, but at this point I have no idea what Werner was expecting us to do in here.
Gamers Aren’t Toxic
This is a horrible narrative that undermines the hobby through crass stereotypes. The hobby is vast, gamers come from all walks of life, and you shouldn't judge ANY group by its worst members.
Internet News is All Wrong
Why is internet news so bad, why do people prefer celebrity fluff, and how could it be made better?
Ludonarrative Dissonance
What is this silly word, why did some people get so irritated by it, and why did it fall out of use?
Project Button Masher
I teach myself music composition by imitating the style of various videogame soundtracks. How did it turn out? Listen for yourself.
My Music
Do you like electronic music? Do you like free stuff? Are you okay with amateur music from someone who's learning? Yes? Because that's what this is.
Heh, you messed up the sequence when you killed the guys at the gate :D
What you’re -supposed- to do is put on the slave outfit and walk up to the gate. The raiders let you in, thinking you’re a slave and you end up in the same way.
Basically, you were supposed to infiltrate the base, disguised as a slave. Not explode your way in gun-first. The cutscene capture is presumably there to prevent you from breaking everything with super equipment :P
You see; this is what happens when you don’t listen to the guy who gave you the quest when he tells you what to do. :D
What Werner is expecting you to do is find some way to get to Asher and get the cure off him
But if Fallout 3 had been designed correctly, like its two namesakes were, this wouldn’t be issue. You should be able to the quest anyway you damn well please. Whether that way is to craftily disguise yourself and sneak in, or just kick in the gate with a power armored heel. You shouldn’t be able to ‘break’ quests.
To be fair, I broke a LOT of the quests in fallout 1 and 2 by doing weird stuff. THe scripting was NOT foolproof.
I’ll admit that they weren’t perfect, but it’s pretty difficult to break a quest by perusing a reasonable means of resolution. Which is precisely what happened here.
Well actually; if the game did let you just blast your way in, you’d never learn any of the story as to what’s actually going on, you’d miss out on all the unique items, and you’d never have a chance to persue the ‘good’ path.
That seems like a truely gargantuan amount of content to just blatantly miss because the player wasn’t listening.
They also miss it if they don’t get the DLC. I fail to see how being able to miss content is something that must be avoided, especially at the cost of freedom of action in a game based on freedom of action.
…
Considering that, if they’re here, they BOUGHT the DLC, and that the game didn’t make you come here in the first place or even include the quest in the main canon, then it’s somewhat reasonable that they make sure you at least get a chance to /see/ the content you paid for. Not a good justification, but a justification nonetheless. And certainly not a justification for all the times they do it in the main quest.
And in unrelated news, I really want to see the ingot-gathering bit now, but I’m just OCD like that. :D
@Will: See, THAT is exactly the reasoning Bethesda’s designers used. It’s also the reasoning of every bad, railroading GM out there.
They all think, “Gee, I just made all this fantastic stuff, it would be a shame if the players missed it.”
But the entire point of RPGs is to let the players determine how things play out. If they miss out on content – whether it be dialog, weapons, quests, or items – because they did things sub-optimally, it’s okay! That’s called CONSEQUENCE, its what gives CHOICES meaning, and it only results in good things; like re-playability.
I don’t want to see everything in the game my first time through. I want to be able to do things WRONG, and live with the consequences. If I don’t manage to talk down the crazy gunman in the hotel room, and he ends up shooting the girl he was holding hostage let me keep playing. Don’t give me a game over/reload screen because I didn’t do it perfect. Let me F@#K UP! I want to close off some paths by opening others, THAT IS THE POINT!
Actually the error here was in giving the player the objective of ‘sneak in disguised as a slave’, what they should have done is left it more open, although bearing in mind the rest of Fallout 3 i don’t know what people were expecting.
Having given the player the objective of ‘sneak in disguised as a slave’ however, i don’t see it being at all unreasonable to then smack the player in the face for blatantly ignoring said objective.
Hell, most games under those circumstances would either just lock the door or end the game for critical objective failure. And it would be completely reasonable to do so.
That’s the railroading questgiver. The actual objective is ‘overthrow overseer’ and the stated objective is ‘distribute cure’. Sneaking in disguised as a slave is not important to either of those if you are semi-competent at combat, great at stealth, or good at speech. Except the game makes it impossible to do anything other than one way.
And,in an unpopular move,Ill pull alpha protocol here.In a mission you can get the objective “Kill head guy”.But then,you can talk with him and decide to spare him,or something other.And its ok.Whatever path you choose,youll get a different outcome.Kill this guy,and later in the game,this happens.Spare him,and later something completely different happens.
Actually, that’s part of what makes The Pitt’s railroading a failure. I did pay attention to Werner’ objectives, but like numerous other players I decided to cut the middleman out and just kick the crap out of people anyway (in one playthrough, at least — my good karma character played it straight). My evil unarmed character blasted his way through no problem and still got all of the story bits and ingots because even though I was still killing guards and slavers left and right every chance I got. Despite carving huge swaths of violence through the Pitt, the essential characters still talked to me as if nothing was wrong.
That’s where the railroading failed in my opinion. The objectives given
(free the slaves, get the cure)did not preclude a non-stealth approach, the attempts to bar a combat approach were ineffective, and not only did I not miss out on anything by going noisy, but many characters still acted as if I was stealthing my way through the area. The railroading ended up being annoyingly intrusive, hamfisted, and inconsistent with the rest of the game while still failing to accomplish its intended goal.TL, DR: IMO it’s not that the all-guns-blazing approach breaks the script, it’s that you can easily take that approach even as characters tell you that A) it’s impossible to do so and B) act as if you weren’t doing it. What’s broken in the Pitt is the near-total divorce of your actions from any consequences positive or negative.
If the slavers had knocked you out by temporarily bollixing the pip-boy as someone else suggested (or otherwise zapped you like
the Enclavedid) and then slapped an insta-kill explosive collar on you that went off if you misbehaved, it would have worked much better on multiple levels. It wouldn’t have had a forced capture that somehow magically let you get overwhelmed by much weaker forces than you’d thrashed in the past. It would have used already established means to keep you on the proper story path (the slaver explosive collars having likely appeared in various encounters the character had already had before getting there) which would have flowed much more organically for the story. This also would have kept players from breaking immersion by doing things clearly outside the assumed bounds which the scripting had no way of responding to.Hell, the writers did something similar to the above suggestion in
Tranquility Lanethat left the character utterly without recourse to combat, instead having to pursue other approaches and it worked just fine. That was blatant railroading, with the fist of God coming down on you if you deviated too much, but it fit the circumstances perfectly, unlike the Pitt’s clumsy and ineffective attempts to guide the player down the same path.You are saying “Hoorah for railroading!”. That´s not a good sign.
To be fair, in video games a certain degree of railroading is necessary.
For one, the developers cannot anticipate all the possible actions a player might try to take, so restricting the available options keeps them from tearing their hair out.
Two, extra scripting increases the development time and file size of the game. Sure, it would have been nice to have the option in Fallout 3 to ally with the Enclave, but how much longer would it have taken to release the game, and how much more disk space would it require.
Three, without having some “rails” to point you toward the main quest, you’re likely to just stumble off in some random direction, and potentially never fully experience the (hopefully) awesome story that the developer (who’s name likely doesn’t share a name with a location in Fallout 3) has crafted.
Only in tabletop RPGs, run by a human who is able to improvise and adjust to unusual player actions, can you truly get away from railroading.
However, even then, GMs tend to do a fair bit or railroading, even if it’s not noticeable by the players, probably because having a story with structure is easier to handle and more enjoyable for everyone.
I´m sorry, I should have said “Hoorah for stupid railroads!”. I can´t argue with points one and three, since you are right. However…
Two: Strawman attack! I never said it would be nice to join the Enclave, I was implying the way they force the player to The Pitt storyline is stupid, not to mention that “scripting” a player going rambo with the slavers isn´t that much work (look how Josh just went rambo by accident and got into a battle that is almost uninstinguishable for any prepared one: except for the lack of curscenes). Don´t forget that after they slave you, you get to do exacly that. They were just lazy.
The root of the problem is that the animation used was annoying… I doubt there would be any complaining if there was a cutscene where you were just lamped on the back of the head by someone hiding behind a door as you walk in… It is more a fault of very little effort going in to the animation work rather then a genuine fault of the script…
I gotta say I like railroading in some videogames. I hate the railroading used in puzzlegames. But the sort used in shooters is perfectly acceptable to me.
This may have some correlation with the fact I’ve never IRL RP’d, and like my games to be heavy on atmosphere rather then heavy on different ways to complete it.
But to each their own. I prefer fallout 3 to one, but then I’ve never really been a fan of turn based. (other then card game videogames)
So you’re saying that adding more scripting of possible actions by the player wouldn’t increase the development time and cost of the game?
Because that was my point with #2, not the Enclave bit, which was included as an example of something someone, somewhere, might want to have as an option.
I need a clarification: are you saying that adding a bunch of lines for the rambo option would cost so much in terms of money and time it was an inviable option, or that it just adds? Because if we are going to use the “it takes time and money” then we can justify all their shortcomings. Bad build choices? The budget wasn´t big enough! Awful plot? Writers are expensive, man! Stupid IA? The “Intelligence” in IA is so expensive! (which is true, I think, so we can forgive) Karma Entity Stick in the Player´s Butt? We don´t have the money to make a decent reputation system! After all, we burned all the budget on shinny graphicz, a sort-of-bullet-time, bad voice acting and the marketing campaign! Oh, and on Pete Hines check, of course.
True, but in this situation they did anticipate you “going Rambo” and specifically scripted against it. They wouldn’t even had to make much new dialog either, just add a bit of lines to the man in charge, the guy who gave you the quest, and to that one slave you had to meet. And even then they wouldn’t have to add full-blown conversations.
You have a point about railroading, but in this case the railroading is wrong.
The thing is that people dont notice the rails when they are done well.Its just when the rails are stupid that it gets annoying.I will again mention half life 2 episode 2,where the rails lead to you to find the cure for alyx.But the thing was well done so that you actually wanted to save her.Here,its just dumb.A single booby trap,for example,that zaps you out as soon as you enter the door wouldve been way better than this.
They couldn´t do that because that wouldn´t be “original” since they used that trick in the main questline.
Both paths lead to the exact same end, but only one gives you a badass gun that you won’t get till later anyways.
A note for Josh: If you want to cheat shamelessly, you can use the console on the PC to get the Mysterious Stranger’s magnum. Fun fact? It does _more_ damage as it degrades.
Does attacking everyone mess up your chance to meet Ashur and decide between your ambiguous choices?
No, apparently he doesn’t pay attention to the firefight outside his office, which occurs minuets before his newest recruit walks in, bloodstained, and with a crazed look in his/her eyes.
Maybe there’s some sort of unflappability contest going on the East Coast, and the Lone Wanderer is unwittingly the elimination round. *Oh God, he’s killed all those Brotherhood troops and he’s coming for me next!*
Aloud: “Hey, fix my antenna.”
‘Now he’s crouching behind me, while doing a psychotic monologue! I’m so dead! No, relax, relax, you’re in your happy place Dog, in your happy place… Oh god, he’s stuffing something cold and heavy in my pocket! Have to take it out! Now, stand up calmly Three-Dog, all calmly and then’ BOOM
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
I like this idea, and I think it needs expanded upon.
I really hate Werner, because he’s not being completely honest with you. I can’t say more, because that’s spoilers.
That and his dialogue when you give him the cure made me wonder if I’d done the right thing, playing as a totally Good character…
I was playing a good character, and didn’t give him the cure. They were working towards the same end, and I couldn’t take it away.
You didn’t. The Good end is to leave the cure with Ashur.
I think the reason for the arena down there is the hope of being free some day, and how it makes the slaves (“Workers.” “What?” “We call them workers.”) work harder. Its problem is the low population, as you said, but I think it’s the same as for the rest of the game: we only get to see a fraction of the people.
Everett, the guy who gives you armor and arms for steel, treats the slaves well enough they leave him alive. I guess he’s doing it for that very reason, anticipating some uprising. Maybe he’s one of the former arena-fighters.
Provide my own DRM?
Surely they can’t expect me to provide something so big. After all, I bought the game, they could at least throw in the finished product.
It’s a real shame, isn’t it? Sadly, this is the state these things are in if you use Good Old Games.
On the plus side, fan patches can restore some semblance of DRM content. I’ve got a great one right now for Fallout that causes a lockup when the front door to my house opens, and another that reduces the game to 1 fps if I speak the word “currency”.
They still feel a bit tacked on, though. I guess it just can’t beat the real thing.
I nearly choked myself laughing over that paragraph.
The FO2 Deathclaws were a result of FEV exposure. http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Talking_deathclaw
I think Werner pretty much said “sneak in, get the cure, details will given by Midea”. The whole “beat up and take all your shit” scene was incredubly cheap, I understand that they didnt let you blast your way through cause it would turn the whole place into yet another shooting gallery and render all their work on cutscenes and dialogue and stuff completely pointless.
You are collecting ingots to get metal, I think. Guys in the Pitt just take the metal left over from 200 years ago and make ammo with it, they probably cant salvage the metal they already have because they dont have the equipment or knowledge base and technology. Still, randomly sending in slaves isnt a very good way to get a steady supply.
Smart deathclaws in FO2 (the ones from Vault 13) were modified by the Enclave, to improve their intelligence, to try and make supersoldiers. They ended up being too smart and paranoid leadership of the Enclave decided to ditch the project and get rid of them, but they escaped.
I think thats how it goes, I dont precisely remember.
On the deathclaws: yes, that’s exactly it. Near the end of the game, the intelligent deathclaws are slaughtered by the Enclave, as well.
Railroading your players into seeing your well-designed talking and cutscenes is still railroading. You’re still taking away options for no easily explainable reason.
Well, if they gave you the violent option, 99% of all players would have taken it.
I mean its Bethesda’s dialogue were talking about.
Raider: Whatcha lookin at you punk? You suck and I hate you! Just looking at you makes me want to puke! Now go get enslaved.
PC: I found a cure to all diseases in the world. Here’s a free sample. [Blam!]
What would be the matter with that? Let the players choose for themselves, they can always play it again to see what they missed.
Or,you can always make the enemies extra tough,so only few players would take that road.Its not really that hard to speed them up,give them high accuracy,lots of hit points,etc.
Take a look at hordes of the underdark end battle:You can choose to fight the uber tough devil that will kill you 9 times out of 10,or you can learn his true name and defeat him in dialogue.
It´s like playing Hitman with guns-akimbo. The game let´s you do that, but that doesn´t neccesarily mean that´s the only way (except in the last mission of the last game, but whatever). The problem is, like mentioned by someone somewhere above, that Bethesda didn´t want players to lose they awesome epic story of betrayal and luv and bullets; so they hit the player with a club (almost literaly) and make him see everything that the writers thought was “OMG AWESOME LOL LOL!”, instead of giving you a couple of choices on how to behave.
Though the only thing stopping you from shooting everyone as soon as you wake up is the lack of decen weaponry.
Thanks for another episode!
Does Viddler have any advertisements other than the one for this pimp my ride clone?
I really would like them to fix their time-based comment system so that it doesn’t constantly show me comments from the wrong time, or close the interesting comments I’m trying to see. They should be showing the ones around the current time on the side not over the video.
It always gives me “interactive” ads that take longer if I don’t click on them. I’m serious. This shit should be illegal.
It’s been “Reinvent the wheels” for me every single time. And since I have to reload the player from time to time as it crashes, I’ve seen this ad entirely too many times.
Me too. I’d like some Sid the Science Kid for a change, I think.
I’m getting the 8 or 7 second reviews from windows, which is a huge relief compared to those interactive “pick a team ones” I used to get.
Really does make me want to support windows.
You guys think you have it bad?
Starting today all the loading commercials on the internet were replaced for me with specific ones brought by the Portuguese branch of the Veet company.
My computer started blaring away about a ‘more feminine softness of the legs’ with me totally unsuspecting it.
I think i would prefer much more to see yours. Or the lack of commercials that I had before(I just had a small pop up bar jumping from the bottom of the screen).
I keep wondering how Sid’s measuring system is going to survive puberty.
He could start calling his measuring units “Little Sids”.
Or get a bigger room.
zzat an euphemism for his male parts?
LETS GO, LETS START RIGHT NOW!
I swear these adverts will drive me insane.
Actually now they’re showing Futurama adverts.
And I’m… I’m just fine with that.
Which reminds me, new episodes this Thursday.
ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD
If you use firebug on firefox (and I guess the dev tools in other browsers) You can see what URL it uses to download the video and pop that into your downloader (I use wget). It doesn’t handle timeouts (you have to get a new url) or multiple streams (same) but it’s far more reliable than watching it through the flash widget (Also, no ads).
Plus I now have a folder full of spoiler warning episodes :)
I get Bing adverts.
Over here in the UK, with Firefox and AdBlock Plus, I get no adverts.
Not sure which part of that is doing it (probably AdBlock I would assume), so I’d recommend getting something similar for whatever browser you happen to be using.
Unless you’re at work or something… In which case you probably can’t complain too much.
I don’t think either is doing it because I have the same setup as you do.
Nah, the adverts seem to be targeted based on where the IP address originates from, so us over in planeteurope get no ads with viddler.
Yet.
Precisely. Even the little pop-up advert on the bottom is region-designated and targeted at specifically my country. So nice to know they care.
maaaan, in nz i keep getting some clearasil ones for ladies.
IM NIT A LADY, VIDDLER. NOR AM I FULL OF ACNE
and theyre like 30 seconds long, too!!
Yeah, I just got a Clearasil ad too (also NZ), which is I think the first time I’ve seen a video ad pop up in Viddler (occasionally it’d just show an image at the bottom of the screen, but even that was rare).
The really annoying thing is that the ad popped up at about 30min into the video, and then at the end the video just stopped and offered to replay, instead of resuming where it left off. That’s just rude.
Huh, I’ve been having ads on these things for weeks now, so unless Scotland suddenly isn’t part of Europe…
But my main complaint isn’t with the Advert length, they’ve generally been relatively short, it’s the language. For the past three weeks now my adverts have been entirely in French.
European based IP adresses also get the adds. However, they need to work on that I think, because I’m in the Netherlands and I’m getting adds for the 7-Eleven and Wal-Mart stores.
Not that I’m complaining that much, because they are mercifully short.
I’m just happy Spoiler Warning isn’t using Blip. They’ve got adds that go on for several minutes in this absurd HD format which no existing Internet connection can stream properly, which causes a 3 minute add to take up to 10 minutes.
The steelyard is very well designed, except for some steel ingot placement (like the ones in the shelf). Sometimes they are in so obscure places I couldn´t help myself but to ask “How the hell did this end up here?”
Agreed. My first thought on seeing the ingots on the shelves: “What? Supplies and ingots on the shelf? How’d those get there? Why would someone put them there?” If there was some (brief!) explanation, even just a lingering dead body, I might have tried to explain it away myself. As it was, those, at least, just left me confused.
When I did that, I didn’t encounter the crazy guys immediately in that location. So, there was a bed, and I went to sleep for a nice 5 hours or so (hate playing in the in-game nighttime). Waking up, the wildmen actually said how foolish it was of me to think I could go about sleeping on their beds. Right before shooting at me, of course, but still. Maybe they used the ingots and meds as design elements for their little home away from home.
Heh. I “roleplayed” an insomniac every time I played FO3. With the bounty of stimpacks and food, I never saw a reason to sleep. My character slept once every week or two. I would have never noticed that.
You could also hire somebody to encrypt the data files and then buy the password off of him so you don’t have to worry about any of the money you saved.
Anyhow, I think this was one of the better DLCs, if not for the one of the more disappointing endings..
when nothing really changes.I thought I’d be doing the slaves a favor, so they can
escape which would seem like the logical thing to do considering the living conditions and the fact that the cure is still very far from working. Also, at least according to the background story, most of them were abducted from Capital Wasteland or other areas outside the Pitt, namely because of losing too many original slaves to the disease. You’d think they’d want to go back to their families and/or homes at least.Yeah, but there’s also a chance that most of them were just wanderers themselves, with no home or family.
But yeah, it would seem like at least a good chunk would want to get the hell out of there.
A gun with a suppressor, unless it’s using sub-sonic ammo, isn’t going to make that much less sound than one without it. There is a noticeable difference but the sort of “big noise” you still get is that crack of the sound barrier being broken and the only way to eliminate that is by using sub-sonic ammo, the problem with that is that in most bigger automatic weapons you then won’t have enough kick to cycle the action; which means you’ve suddenly got a rather quiet bolt-action AK-47 which isn’t all that useful.
Something like a 22. with a suppressor? Makes about as much noise as a BB gun. (Not counting the sound the bullets make when they hit, which can be a lot depending on what you’re shooting and brass ejecting on to concrete makes quite a bit of noise too.)
So… Bethseda were for once pretty accurate with their depiction of a suppressed assault rifle actually still being pretty loud.
But forgot to fix the 10mm silenced pistol, which is absolutely silent according to the NPC reaction when shot by it.
To be honest the silenced pistol in the game still makes about as much noise as a suppressed .22 would, ridiculously little that is. Honestly, I don’t know if any game has yet to do sound environments properly in that fashion anyway; so that if you’re in a hallway and ping someone with a suppressed pistol they’ll obviously know where it came from, but in the middle of a big huge noisy place they’d have no friggin’ clue.
So I can’t really fault Beth too much for that, the noise the gun makes is — if memory serves — pretty miniscule.
For the sake of comparison: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNgMkxzeQNE That’s a .45 suppressed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeKquXp8gKY and that’s an AK firing subsonic ammo (I love that cycling the action makes about as much noise as the gun firing.)
the jack russel looks so happy there.
i think the cycling makes more noise, even.
but if i recall, the silenced 10mm makes that little thwip sound from the movies, which isnt exactly accurate
i mean, they sound more like staple gunnzzz
is anyone else bothered by how much time Josh spends below 25% health, and he does nothing to rectify it? There’s a water fountain right behind the Arena girl, and he ignores it, preferring to run into the Arena with 60 health.
Nothing serious, just the powergamer in me going nuts.
Oh thank you. If I was there I would constantly be really annoying pointing out the status of his health and that maybe he should heal.
Reloading his guns too. “Don’t forget to reload, Dr Freeman!”
This, yes. Every episode I spend as much time glancing down at the health bar as watching whatever else is happening.
And the running around with 4/4 ammo… and then no ammo… And then him seeing he has no ammo, yet he sounds surprised.
Heads up – Pitt spoiler warning below this post.
Shamus has already probably had the ending to it ruined by that guy.
Hopefully he completed the dlc before he saw it.
We’re almost always at least two episodes ahead of the episode that’s posted, so we’re well out of the Pitt in terms of episodes in the post queue.
I actually just completed the Pitt, and I did it by killing every mofo who had “slaver,” “Raider,” or “boss” in his name. Why did I do it that way? Because I’m the biggest badass in the whole of the wastes and I’ll be damned if some normal damn DUDES with clubs frightens me. They are DUDES. DUDES. They’re not super mutants, giant bipedal creatures with huge claws that leap on my face and try to eat me, they don’t glow with radiation, they don’t move super fast, and they don’t appear within the confines of a spaceship. They’re DUDES. Some of them even look SICKLY. Honestly I started to feel sort of bad about killing my 200th leprous-looking slaver, but then I remembered that they brought it on themselves.
The dialog is awkward when you defeat the dlc with the “You are just DUDES!” method. The game clearly expects you to finesse your way in and sneak around. The NPCs are constantly telling you that there is no WAY you will be able to accomplish something without doing some clever bit of trickery, or the consequences will be getting beat up by some slavers. I can only imagine (because the game doesn’t allow it in dialog) that my version of the wanderer rolls his eyes at every once of these instances, then throws up his hands and yells “THEY’RE JUST DUDES!” into the sky in disbelief. “THEY’RE NOT EVEN IN POWERED ARMOR!” he would say, completely confused by the fear in the slave npcs.
At the end when you steal the baby you find some documents in a safe that you lose karma for opening after killing the slaver boss with extreme prejudice, (incidentally gibbing him with a pistol somehow) there is a sad story that is supposed to make you feel empathy for the character. “Aw, he didn’t really want to be the boss of a whole town of slaves. He was just trying to get by.” Welp, guess he should’ve found a different way, because he did not survive operation slave freedom.
Honestly, If I had played through The Pitt towards the beginning of the game, I would have done it more in line with what they expected. But its DLC, which means hopefully it becomes available after most people have had a chance to play through the game. Which means at the very least, there should be some kind of path for those of us who don’t really have any sort of gray moral issues, and who have already cut a swath of riotousness through the wasteland on our crusade.
The embarrassment of a handful of slavers being able to overpower me and take my stuff is mostly how it ended up that way, sadly.
The funny thing, as you mention, is that Karme Entity punishes you for reading the documents, but it doesn´t do anything if you kill the owners of those documents.
Also, the cutscene in that you get captured or captured is there obviously so that you don´t skip their awesome dialogue, clever story and amusing quests! Because it totally makes sense.
My first playthrough of the Pitt went the same way. My character was an unarmed specialist so taking away his equipment didn’t mean a thing. I just went from quest to quest killing every guard and slaver I came across as soon as I spotted them (excepting the occasional essential character). Somehow, this did not disrupt operations as normal in the Pitt in the slightest.
It also made the endgame
“Oh no, you can’t defeat all those guards without releasing the trogs”so much more ridiculous because I’d already cleared that level out. I did appreciate the opportunity for my character to get more XP byfollowing the trogs and then wiping both them and the newly-spawned slavers out.Expecting everyone to conform to an implied expectation of stealth in a game where you can easily build a murder-machine character even without min-maxing was a definite mistake on the writers’ parts. I’d restarted with a new character and was only level 10 or so when I went through the Pitt, so it’s not just a high-level character issue either.
I did the exact same thing with a small guns specialist (I was roleplaying a regulator so I decided it was my mission to kill all slavers). I hid a .32 pistol and first shot everyone on the ground level as soon as I got in, then used the weapons I’d obtained to snipe the people on the balconies.
I did the entire 100 ingots, and so by the time i reported back to Midia I was decked out in full power armor.
At some point along the way I acquired a sniper rifle and shot Ashur’s aide when he was making his speech (Ashur being essential survived). Predictably everyone died in uptown, then Ashur politely met me and asked why I was there, apparantly not noticing his lack of staff. Then he and his wife died in events I can confirm were related to his aforementioned high turnover rate.
That made the final choice very easy because it was “orphan or live with Midia” and I really didn’t bat an eyelid when he asked me to release the trogs upon uptown for some reason. I mean seriously, they couldn’t just add one script check to see if anyone belonging to the ‘slaver’ faction was still alive in that map?
That was fun…
dude.
spoiler tags, man
To be perfectly honest the basic mechanics makes your character that much more powerful than the NPCs. The reality of it would be that just as a decently fed raider has, say, 30HP and can just keel over from a well aimed shot to the head so would you, in fact you’d likely be less resistant to being directly threatened as you’ve spent your life in the vault where you didn’t have to bother with stuff like training your pain resistance. Of course we’re talking about a game and PCs are generally tougher than named NPCs who are that much tougher than just plain average mooks but if they went for more realism than gunning your way through 5-10-20-100 dudes while also playing a dude (rather than a hero) wouldn’t be that easy (for the sake of argument I’m ignoring exploits).
The problem is that the writing actually stems from the assumption that your character and an average raider are equally human (far as abilities are concerned) in which case storming a city full of them is indeed suicidal or requires perfect commando skills coupled with godlike luck.
For the record, Fallout 1 always left me with the impression of immortal ghouls, as the residents of Necropolis were supposed to be the survivors of the Vault. I don’t think Black Isle made them immortal just for Harold.
You run into at least one ghoul in FO3 who was a pre-war scientist, so AFAICT they’re supposed to be immortal (or at least unaging) in that game too.
I’m replying to Shamus’s comment that “ghouls weren’t immortal before Fallout 2”.
The one Moriarty’s saloon (the name escapes me) was transformed into a ghoul by the dropping of the original bombs, you get a lot of his backstory from his mother in the ghoul city, including how they lived before the war.
This could explain how people still can remember a lot about before the war, but that may be stretching things a little.
i always thought they could just live for a very long time, was all
I started imagining an alternate capture scene where the bad guy waves some sort of Wand’o’Plot that fritzes out your Pip Boy. The end would have involved breaking the Wand and beating him to death. Ah, such wasted potential.
Incidentally, the idea of an ‘unarmed weapon’ makes me question if they know what ‘unarmed’ means.
Remember: monkeys with typewriters. They don´t know what is the difference between unarmed and hand-to-hand.
They neither know the difference between a cliché and a trope. Or the difference between a camouflaged railroad and a railroad with a train coming at full speed straight to you.
I thought Melee meant hand-to-hand. Now I’m REALLY confused.
It really should be either armed or unarmed hand-to-hand combat, I would consider anyone with a set of brass knuckles or the like an ‘armed’ opponent.
Which to my mind makes this discrepancy between ‘melee’ and ‘unarmed’ something common between all Fallout games, where things like brass knuckles are ‘unarmed weapons’. Which makes no sense.
The problem is that the use and misuse of the terminology really depends on context. A lot of people when they hear the word melee think it means close quarter combat with weapons, i.e clubs, axes and sword, and that hand-to-hand means close quarter combat that’s unarmed. In truth? Both mean the same thing; that opponents are engaging one another without ranged weapons. So there should really be unarmed and armed melee/hand-to-hand.
It still leaves you with the problem of having ‘unarmed weapons’ like brass knuckles, though.
Fallout 3 is hardly the only game that features ‘unarmed weapons’, to be honest. Tends to tick me the wrong way too.
Indeed, I think I mentioned it being a fault in the original Fallouts too and honestly it really pervasive through-out roleplaying games to have the terminology mixed up like that.
Not that real world examples does much better with it, honestly.
Wha-hey, I got sort-of mentioned. Checking through my old screenshots, I got up to five gauntlet trophies before Old Olney happened. When I lugged home about a dozen hands from that trip, I just thought “fuck it”, but I still kept stockpiling the hands, which got seriously out of hand when I plugged MMM and started seeing packs of deathclaws, including Matriarchs.
I was an unarmed specialist with a repair mod on, so I stockpiled components anyway for fixing the gauntlet I used. Like anything in scavenger games, if you decide to in for it big time, you’ll be swimming in it before long.
Edit: Huh, I don’t remember replying to anything. Ah, well.
Fallout tactics even had unarmded firearms: The punchgun!
This is a real thing.
Life is awesome.
i think maybe it was more a balancing thing. i mean, a lot of the game is weapons, and they wanted even people who did an unarmed build to stand some sort of chance?
powerfist!
i mean, a roundhouse is good and fine, but it dont beat a METAL FIST TO THE FACE.
WITH CLAWS
I can understand what they’re getting at; “Weapons that make your fist more dangerous.” Why couldn’t they call it fist skill? Punch? Martial arts? Last Resort?
martial arts would probably have been the best choice on one have because the character also uses kicks if he isnt using a fist-based weapon
but on the other hand, its not like the character has some sort of style, he doesnt do any crane-fu or anything, just roundhouses or punches or whatever.
calling it unarmed isnt but i really can’t think of anything better except grouping it all under melee.
which i guess they didnt want to do to make the fighting builds more varied.
The funny, or stupid, thing is, is that since Fallout 3 is focused on ranged combat, they could’ve dropped “unarmed” and just left melee. Bethesda already dropped skills, why not drop one that actually makes no sense?
Oh, right.
Anyway, it’s not really accurate to call it “armed melee” and “unarmed melee” since unarmed is, apparently, meant to only be about punching people. So the “unarmed weapons” are more tools to help you punch things. It should really be called the Punching skill. Or “Punchy”.
Is there a mod for that? ‘Cause that would rule.
That part where you were beaten down in a cutscene, rather than actually fighting, is the worst example of that happening in a game that I have seen, ever. Mixed with the terrible Gamebryo animation, it’s comically awful.
To be fair, the beginning punchfest of Mothership Zeta is equally horrible.
The arena does make sense. It’s logical that you’d want the workers with huge potential as fighters to be fighters. If you leave all the slaves who are gods at fighting in the pitt to train the other slaves, you’ll be screwed before you can say “uprising.”
However, making such fights “to the death” is stupid. Losing either a perfectly fine raider, or a perfectly fine worker.
Did mass effect 1 have an arena? I haven’t started 2 and haven’t got very far in DA:O, haven’t even bought Awakenings, so can’t comment on those, but I don’t recall an arena in mass effect.
Well, come to think of it, fights to the death might make sense if you assumed everyone involved was infected with that Trog virus. Of course, that would derail the whole “you lived, so you can wander around wherever you want” aspect.
As for “good fighters should be allowed to fight”, if you stop them from fighting, they won’t be good fighters anymore, and you won’t have to worry about them training anyone.
I thought the trog virus was more like radiation poisoning, if you hadn’t worked out how to make radaway.
It was more from environmental effects then it was contagious.
If you leave the slaves with no option but to fight their way out, if you don’t have some way of removing those most capable, you’ll end up with problems.
IE: any redwall novel.
The point wasn’t so much ‘we have to stop the infection’ as ‘they’re gonna die soon, might as well have some fun with it’. It doesn’t really matter what the source is at that point.
As for culling the capable, I thought that’s what the guns were for. And the ingot run. And feeding them slop. If for some reason you felt they needed to have hope, tell them they can go free once they bring in 100 ingots. Now you have hope AND slaves that can’t fight.
The only Redwall novel I’ve ever read was The Outcast of Redwall, which featured no slaves.
Now that you mention it I can’t remember an Arena in either of the Mass Effect games OR in DA:O. DA:O fits in so well with all the other fantasy cliche arenas Bioware loves to throw around too that it seems almost absurd that there might not be one in there.
Oh wait. The place where the Dwarves live, there’s your arena in DA:O, shoulda known they snuck it in there somewhere… still none that I can think of in Mass Effect 1 or 2 though.
Grunt’s loyalty mission in ME2 is sort of like an arena. A little bit.
Enclosed space with no way out of it except fighting waves of enemies? Rounds between increasingly more difficult waves of enemies? A final big boss you have to get through to complete it?
Dingdingding! Ladies and gentlemen, we have an arena fight! You’re right, that is most definitely an arena fight; minus annoying announcer and cheering crowds.
The second ME1 DLC – Pinnacle Station is basically one big arena. Then you win a house which there’s no way to get to in ME2 and because of ME1’s inventory system it’s also totally pointless as far as storing items goes.
yeah i played through it thinking it would give me something awesome.
BIG
disappointment. like not horse armor level, but probably orrery level
You don´t need to go that far to get to the arena in DA:O. Just star a dwarven commoner and do the origin storyline and you´ll get to the arena. The dwarven noble can go to fight there too, but it´s optional.
I guess Mass Effect is arena-free because it´s not in a fantasy setting.
I’ve only done human Mage and city elf opening missions… I’ve clocked 17 hours and not got very far… I don’t know why but for some reason I just don’t find the game that fun… I just bought ME2 on the steam sale (£17.99, very reasonable) and am going to start that soon. So i’ve got a lot to keep me busy.
Or I could just watch the Dr Who collection I’ve been amassing. Oh the joys of not having a job, I get to spend every day doing nothing.
Don’t try to enjoy it, it’s not a very fun game. If you’re a story freak, it’s got a very piss poor derivative story and setting, leeched from almost unflinchingly from every other dark fantasy ever along with the usual bioware storyline. If you prefer gameplay, the combat engine is slow, you face assaults of mook after mook, with no sense of proper pacing of fights. The character creation system itself is nothing special and poorly balanced overall, some skills are blatantly worthless, while others border on a god mode cheat. The regenerating health ruins any sense of tension to fight, because so long as a character survives the fight you get right back up with full health and mana. The alchemy system is absolutely worthless because potions are the second most common item in the game, and the third most useless. The game itself just on quests cut down to 3 encounters each would likely measure in at 40 hours, most missions have something like ten-forty encounters. The choices and consequences boils down to do something evil and gain a benefit, do something good and gain a benefit, do something blatantly better than the rest and gain a better benefit with no consequence, not only that but class qualifications persist into other save games, so once you’ve unlocked the prestige class, you can choose it immediately in your next game. Dog is by far the best character in the game, if only because he’s the only one to embrace the absurdity of a dark fantasy setting. Level scaling is in effect through most of the game, and if you choose you abilities correctly, you could likely complete the game at level 2.
EDIT: I could go on.
I’d say it’s rather Your Mileage Might Vary-kind of game when it comes to the most of the points you mentioned. The story: I don’t see really what’s so horribly wrong with it. The fact that it reuses quite a few fantasy cliches is kind of a moot point, since that’s what almost every fantasy book/game/movie has been doing in one form or another for the past 20-30 years. When you can get over that anyway, the actual in-game world and lore are pretty interesting as they are. And I can’t say the story was half-bad either. It might not be on the level of Tolkien, but it works for the game. It kept me playing anyway.
The level scaling doesn’t really work like that in this game. It adjusts the mob levels somewhat to your level, but most areas have set minimum level for the mobs you will face. I.E Trying to get into Orzammar with that level 2 character of yours just might proove to be quite the challenge. And generally speaking, if it’s just the fact that you find the game too easy, maybe you should stop playing it on Easy/Normal? Maybe try Nightmare? Or if you’re a munchkin, you could try not to powerplay to the max and see if it gets any better.
It’s a fairly casual rpg for the most part anyway. It’s not perfect, but heck it’s nowhere near as disastrous as you try to make it sound.
The story is standard “defeat the evil army” issue. However, Loghain´s treachery has a stupid fundation, simply because they wanted to “avert” the “he´s controlled/threathened by the great evil!” excuse, and used the less impressive (spoilers for those that didn´t get that far)
“he´s just paranoic”reason. The problem with using that is that it summons a big WTF?! from the player. Loghain does too much stuff that is hurting his own kingdom from theOrlesian threat he so much fear, so it doesn´t make sense that he is doing it because of that particular reason.What really kills the game for me is the abusive NPCs. I´ll use the classic examples: Morrigan and Sten. You can disagree with both, but never show them they are wrong, not because they are smarter than you, but because the writers won´t let YOU be smarter than THEM, so they cut out choices and left simple, stupid stuff. Why can´t I agree with Sten when he says that our medieval society sucks? Why can´t I point out that dwarven society works exactly like that? Why can´t I ask him why the hell is he critizising capitalism in a medieval setting? Why can´t I explain to Morrigan that giving my word to the smith about rescuing her daughter is just a convenience move? Why can´t I tell her “I have no other mage to pick, moron” when chosing someone to go to the Fade?
You know why? Because those are the Author Darlings, and it is written that No Harm Be Done to the Author Darlings.
To the fade one, if Jowen is there, you can pick him. I kept him around because I was planning on having him teach me blood magerks, only the game doesn’t work like that and you can only get blood magic from the Desire Demon. Not, you know, THE FUCKING BLOOD MAGE, I’m unsure if there’s dialogue explaining why he can’t teach you. I’ve always liked your prior examples, because as a dwarf prince, you should have been tutored in how to convince someone as to your point, interject in conversations, use court manners, how to successfully out argue damn near anyone, etc. But you never seem to use that skill set.
Please, by all means do go on. DA:O was a very far cry from what it was hyped up to be. Not that it wasn’t enjoyable the first time, mind. It’s just getting through to the 3rd act and not giving up, and replayign the bloody exact same thing over and over as a new char is what ruins the game.
And, really, if you guys think Fallout 3 is bad in terms of railroading, play Dragon Age 3+ times.
If you want to nitpick, it’s really not that much different from KOTOR when it comes to railroading with DA:O. You get pretty much the same amount of freedom. Not all railroads are a bad thing mind you. It’s just the stupid ones that make such a huge leaps in logic that they don’t make any sense whatsoever and force you to live through consequences that are from roleplaying perspective just complete BS. Like with what you get in FO3, all the freaking time. You’ll die from an overdose towards the end if you get too worked up with them.
Responding to both you and Jep Jep here, it’s not that it blindly follows tropes, it’s that it copies things almost exactly from things like Warhammer, Erberron, and Tolkien. It doesn’t make any effort to make itself unique from those before it, things like warhammer, embracing the comical aspect of cynical dark fantasy, Erberron, well erberron wasn’t that unique and DA copied from IT, Tolkien for being the progenitor.
That level Orzzammar, from what I recall, I went through there at level 4 it was the first location I chose, playing on nightmare, they scaled to level 5, when I played the game a second time it was the last one I did I was level 15, they scaled to level 17. Quite a wide range for a 20 level game wouldn’t you say?
Te extrapolate further on some points, the “tactical combat” comes down to, select party members, target mage, do something with them, the spell combos they say they have, rarely come into play as most encounters are scripted to prevent you from exploiting tactics, and rarely are they worth the effort of setting up.
Choices, the main one most fans point out as being ambiguos in nature, was the arl of redcliffes son choice, which feature get this, a total of three outcomes with minor variations, kill the son, the wife hates you, easy route, no reward, kill the wife for the ritual and side with the demon, gain a class, if you exploit saving and loading, you can also get a tome for another OP ability, or have a sex scene, demon stays cooped up in child’s head presumably to come out during puberty when he is sexually active. OR you can call to the mages and EVERYTHING TURNS OUT FINE, this is a default choice, you don’t have to make any extra effort to discover this path, beyond having wynne, morrigan, or jowen there, which if you are playing the game at all smartly you will, and there is literally no consequence to choosing it.
Back to carbon copy races, dwarfs in DA are pretty much the same a dwarfs in WH, strictly regimented society, scorn for magic, use of rune magic, warrior culture, best craftsmen and engineers, etc. Same for their elves and Erberrons elves, fallen from immortality, faction attempting to regain said immortality, just out of slavery, still heavily discriminated against, good bowman, natural mages, etc. Humans being same as every human something I don’t begrudge them for, it’s normal. Qunari, they seem to be something like The Men of the West in Tolkien, like man but better, than man, capable of evil, but generally more honorable, following a strict sense of ethics, etc. Darkspawn are Tolkien orcs, nuff said.
I agree with you on the railroading aspect, they also suffered from an obsidian ending as Shamus’s account can attest.
There are further points I could make, but I need sleep.
Also, there is no true variation in replaying the levels. If you saw a group of darkspawn with 1 emissary and 5 grunts at your level+2 in place x, you can be certain that at all subsequent playthroughs you will see the exact same group of 1 emissary and 5 grunts at your level +[1 to 3] in that specific place. And you will be forced to use mainly the same tactics that the location forces on you.
X2-Eliah: Nothing says you can’t get creative. If I’m bored, I can just change party composition and try something new when I’m playing DA:O. I’ve yet to run into an encounter I couldn’t figure out more than one way to survive.
It’s not like your generic FPS or some other single player game with a fairly linear gameplay and plot (You’re a Grey Warden and you must stop the Blight: you can never break away from this) will suddenly break from the norm. It’s a bit redundant to complain about being on rails when you’ve already accepted that the main driving premise of the main plot is the thing you should be doing anyway and that it’s most probably not going to change a lot. Not to forget that the gameplay most of the time doesn’t really allow the plot to branch in too many directions either. You can’t really compare it with a game that is (or at least pretends to be) open-ended.
Roll-a-die: Fair enough :) I haven’t really experimented on that level scaling, it was just the impression I had from what I’ve seen. I remember getting my butt handed to me by the ambushing goons at the Frostback Mountains when I went there with a low-level character. Could be that I just sucked then.
Let´s play…Mention from where Dragon Age borrows things from!
Andraste is Joan of Arc. The Urn of Sacred Ashes is the Holy Grail, and Arl Eamon is king Arthur. The Chantry is the Church with female priests instead of males and sort-of agnostic-ish believes. The Tevinter Imperium is Rome. Orleais and Ferelden had a war that looks a lot like the hundred-years war between Britain and France. Templars are called templars because apparently everyone likes templars now. The urban elfs are the opressed minorities of the history. Abominations are Chaos possesions from Warhammer. The Archdemons are old gods buried deep in the earth (World of Warcraft, and I´m sure they took that idea from somewhere else too)…can´t think of anything not mentioned already.
Who´s next?
I don’t regret the purchase, I don’t dislike the game… It’s just… I don’t feel the need to go and play it.
I also just bought a bunch more games off the massive steam sale… FML steam are taking all my money.
I hate to break this to you Shamus, I mean I know I love harping on Bethesda, but Daggerfall didn’t have an arena, Arena strangely didn’t have an arena, and morrowind had 3 fights in of 100 hour game in said arena. :P
Not sure if Battlespire or Redguard had arenas either.
And lets not forget that Bethesda made Terminator: Future Shock, which I don’t think had an arena either.
Same for older Bioware games too I think… can’t remember Baldur’s Gate or Neverwinter Nights having arenas, and I haven’t played Jade Empire so can’t comment on that.
Baldur´s Gate II had an arena-like thing in the Brassen Crown (was that the name?) but you could only fight one NPC that insulted you. After that (or before), you could only bet on dogs bitting each other to death. Also, the sahuagin (is that how it´s spelled?) threw your party against an ettin in an unescapable plaza-thing in the center of their city. Neverwinter night has a arena prop in the toolset, but I don´t remember where/if it was used.
Ah, fair point on BG2 (copper coronet I think), never used to do that, there was so much choice I never felt the need.
Also I do recall that NWN had some sort of maze/arena/challenge where people watched and bet on the winner (in some inn mid-game iirc), but I never bothered with that either since I usually play wizard or cleric types.
Still, not quite the arena of the sort that you get in Oblivion or Dragon Age though.
There was one proper arena called the Gauntlet in the Blacklake District, first chapter of NWN. It was in the basement of an inn, and the ownership of the inn was the main prize.
Another arena of sorts was in the Neverwinter Wood in the second chapter. It was in the druid camp, and druids-only.
Enjoyed the Imperial City Arena in Oblivion more, however.
EDIT: Ninja’d, but came out on top… yeah.
NWN had at least two “arenas” First was chapter one, fights in the inn in the Blacklake district. Second was chapter two, an artificial dungeon in the inn.
Also in chapter two, druids could battle for rank and status in a series of scripted fights.
Baldur’s Gate 2 had two arena-likes in the Underdark. In the tavern in the Drow city you could fight a bunch of stuff for money (the last enemy being a beholder) and when the Ithillids capture you should you enter their city (another bad cutscene-capture, they capture you by hitting you with psyonics (spelling?) even though there are spells that give you an absolute immunity to such things) they force you to fight in an arena.
Oh, right. Don´t know how I forgot those, I had such a great time with my Spell Mirror Cloak there.
Jade Empire has an arena.
In fact, you have to atleast go into the arena to complete a quest, not counting the “beat the arena” quest.
Why is having an arena a bad thing? It certainly beats most fetch-quests for fun & reasonableness.
Well, it´s not a bad thing per se, but you can´t camouflage an arena the same way you could a fetch quest. And they share the “overused to death” space in the videogames quests-of-the-trade cabinet.
And depending on how they’re built they might feel a bit cheap. The worst arenas are the ones where you get no feeling of there being a crowd watching you or this being any sort of big deal and it starts to feel more and more like you’ve been dropped into a developer testing zone where they would stick different monsters to watch them fight it out and then decided to add it into the game…
On that note one of the things I liked about Fable 2 was that while it had an arena it… didn’t feel so much like an arena. Having changing terrain, traps, and so forth made it fairly fun in my opinion.
For the record, I think it’s worth mentioning that some of the F2 designers (OEI head honcho Feargus Urquhart for example) has recognized themselves that a lot the stuff in Fallout 2 was pretty stupid, such as the talking deathclaws. I think there’s still a big risk that the some of the sillyness will return for New Vegas (unfortunately it just seems as if the setting of Vegas would draw that stuff out), though hopefully we won’t have to see the millions and millions of pop-culture references.
What I think will be hugely positive aside from stuff like writing, is that the roleplaying will probably be a lot better. Aside from the SPECIAL mechanics, skills and all that having a more pronounced effect (which I’m sure many people will loathe), it’s pretty encouraging to hear them say that there is no single bad guy in the game (it all depends on what faction you want to help or destroy), that we can make it through the game without killing anyone OR killing almost everyone (children and one major NPC excluded if I understand things correctly).
Then we have the stuff like reputation making it back in, traits making it back in, more skill usage in dialogues.
I’m still one those grouchy people who think making a first-person, Elder Scrolls free-roaming action-RPG of the Fallout franchise wasn’t a very good fit and I think New Vegas will still contain a fair amount of stupidity. But speaking as a fan of roleplaying games and choices in games, there appears to be a lot to like in New Vegas.
Since its an Obsidian game, its a given that it will have a fantastic story. Well the first 2/3 will most likely be fantastic anyhow.
It will also have many bugs and most likely a crap ending though.
They’ve said they have already lined up the ending, but you will not be able to continue playing after it happens.
Which from one view is a kick in the balls, but on the other hand, at least there is going to be an ending.
Plus, I’m sure there will be mods to rectify that. There were mods for the same thing in Fallout 3.
I’m not convinced yet. Technically ‘suddenly fly away with a planet exploding behind you’ for some reason IS an ending.
I’ve never actually played KOTOR or KOTOR2 but stuff like this just further and further convinces me that I should play KOTOR2 to, at the very least, find out how bad this ending is for myself…
…I’ve heard it’s pretty bad.
It’s not so much ‘bad’ as it is ‘incomplete.’ You just don’t get closure on much of anything. It’s like watching a TV show that gets cancelled halfway through the first season *cough*Firefly*cough* the last complete episode wraps up nice, but you’re left hanging as far as the series’ overall plot is concerned.
If the setup wasn’t spectacular it wouldn’t hurt nearly so bad at how little it fills in. You are, quite literally, going to the apex of the Exile’s personal quest… and get cut off from the galaxy map, without your allies, on a map full of moderately tedious (maybe I’m just good at levelling Jedi, but until the last boss, I never felt in any real DANGER on the planet) with basically no explanation.
That mountain peak in front of you, is, in fact, a giant concrete wall you’re barelling towards.
That said, much of the game is fun, especially if you’ve been properly braced for the endgame.
You actually summed it up pretty well. The biggest problem with the end, more so than the incompleteness, is that it’s simply boring.
Now I’m terrified they’ll RFED us. sadface.
Silliness is fine. Silliness is absolutely, perfectly fine.
Silliness is not the same as stupidity.
Any game that was made intelligently enough that you can add in silly little in-jokes and fun without screwing the game, is definitely okay in my books.
Your mileage may vary, but moments of silliness don’t break immersion quite as much as the out-and-out stupidity that Shamus & co have been harping on this entire series.
As far as pop-culture references… Well, in a way, it does make sense that people somewhat after the fall of society would hold onto the relics of what came before. Not 200 years, but for a while yet… And some of the most visible elements are those of the pop culture.
The RPG trope of “cutscene capture” almost always drives me to red hot rage because it is almost NEVER done well AT ALL.
In all the RPGs I’ve played the only ones where it was handled well (and not idiotically ala Broken Steel) were Deus Ex and ONE of the capture sequences from KOTOR (but not all).
One of the poorly handled KOTOR scenes was where you enter a Sith tomb and the hermit living there pipes in knock-out gas to drop you and your party. It would work well, except that you can have two droid party members (and I had both). Both HK-47 and the utility droid just decided to chill out while Evil McCrazy did horrible things to the PC.
This highlights the single biggest problem with forced capture scenes is that they have to disregard the entire rest of the game in order to work. Your character could easily defeat those raiders, but for no reason other than “lol” you aren’t allowed to.
Happens in other genres too, most notably for me in Half Life.
Whenever I replay the game, I throw a bunch of grenades into that room, and yet still get captured.
Goldeneye captured you in cutscenes, but if you had the controls set up right, you could kill everyone during the cutscene, changing it from being captured to striding confidently away. Didn’t change the plot at all, but it was quite cathartic.
This is actually why the Deus Ex capture actually makes sense and works. It is (in many ways) more of a steal-em-up than a shoot-em-up, and charging blindly at the enemy is a good way to get yourself killed.
This sets up not only that it would be a good idea to allow yourself to be captured (avoiding combat) but also that you have a chance to get out of capture (because you’ve been encouraged to stealth em up and losing all your gear just encourages you more).
Fallout 3 actually makes this three times. Once in The Pitt, as the video shows; once in the main vanilla questline; then abducted by aliens. We could count the lobothomy in Point Lookout, but you don´t get caputured or anything just…lobothomized.
Ah yes, the capture by Colonel Foghorn Leghorn.
My first time with that one, I actually saw the flashbang coming, and my Counter Strike instincts kicked in as I immediately turned around and headed back up the stairs. If I recall correctly I actually got to the top of the stairs when it went off, but when the flash died I was on my back in the middle of the room.
I actually avoided the capture, but it gave it to me anyway.
Shame on you Bethesda.
And, to be fair, being abducted by Aliens is a perfectly reasonable way to capture someone in a cutscene.
I give them that, yes. Still, two of the DLC and the main questline feature a questline. That´s almost half the DLCs.
“Questlines that feature a questiline”! DUH. I´m so smart!
I meant “questlines that feature a capture”.
I could download the previous episodes from viddler.com (click the movie to go to their site).
But this time there is no download link, was this an oversight?
I really prefer to download the original .wmv file and watch it on my tv.
Being the perfect good guy, I killed everyone except marah and the slaves(I killed werner). Then reverse pickpocketted enclave grade weapon on the slaves.
Okay, short lil rage-rant to Viddler. Their buggy ass comment system can go fuck itself. I’m done with it.
That aside, fun ep.
Also; on a related note. I am somewhat baffled as to why so (apparantly) many people feel the player should be rewarded for blatantly ignoring his mission objectives and just mindlessly killing everything in sight.
Because it’s an RPG, not Operation Flashpoint. It’s supposed to be open ended, letting the player decide what exactly the objectives actually are, and how to go about achieving them is the whole idea.
EDIT: I just realized I gave you this spiel already, sorry.
RPG’s give you missions to complete, or ‘quests’ if you will. Sometimes the quests are open-ended with only a final goal that needs to be achieved, other times they’re more specific, with steps to complete. If the player ignores those steps entirely, then yes, there should be consequences.
Personally, as i said above, had i designed that particular part i would have made the quest more open ended, but barring that, assuming some reason arose that meant it had to be closed off like that, i would have had the raiders simply lock the Pitt if you shot up the gatehouse, and that’s it, no Pitt for you.
Bioware chose the less ‘realistic’ but more sensible option of railroading the player, preventing him from going headfirst into a tree. Speaking as a fairly experienced DM (primarly D&D) i can say that this was probably the correct choice for the game. Often i do let the players i’m DMing for go off the rails like that, and then i slam them with reasonable consequences, at which point, unless they’re familiar with my DMing style, they look at me with shock and horror and go “Wait, that’s it? There are consequences?!?”
More often than not, players in games tend to deliberately do stupid things just to see if the game will let them, and then they are amazed if the game does, but treats them as stupid things. Often it’s easier all around to just not let them do stupid things.
I agree with you to an certain extend. Yeah, a certain ammount of railroading is necessary in videogames. You can’t give a player unlimited freedom (though I do think the technology is there, no one used it yet).
But at the very least give the players more then one option. Not doing that is fine (though still annoying) in pretty much any other game-genre there is, but it destroys the character custimisation aspect of RPG’s. Example: “Oh, the only way in this city is through shooting. Aren’t I glad I put points in to sneaking and speaking”.
Also, nothing can excuse how utterly ridiculous it looks when you’re dressed in power armour (complete with helmet) and you’re being beaten into unconciousness by a couple of scrawny guys with sticks.
It wasn’t ridiculous that there was a cutscene capture.
What was ridiculous is that it was so closed off; Josh walks in, a guy says “you killed the guys at the game, you didn’t think you’d get off so easily, did you?” and then two more start punching the PC bare-handed.
Okay, first off, they could have at least made it a little more bearable, by say, making the knockout blow a surprise attack from behind, or a brick to the head from above, etc.
They could make it infinitely worse by insta-killing the player as they walk in.
They could make it better by acknowledging that the player might try to storm the Pitt… And cut straight from “walk in and captured” to “fighting in the arena” which in my mind would be perfectly reasonable.
As stated by others, it’s much less about being “rewarded” – ultimately, the “reward” for the Pitt as a whole is a (few) new weapons, a new area to explore, etc. But no game that claims to allow for role-play should be so blazé about saying “there is only one way to complete this section, and any other course of action will fail. Therefore, no other courses of action are available to you.”
It’s identical to a player in your tabletop game saying “I want to step off the path into the forest.” It’s perfectly okay to say “Well, you can try, but it’s probably a bad idea. How good is your survival skill? How is your perception? Roll against survival… High roll, you find a peaceful glade with a spring, you are healed and rested. Low roll, you stagger back onto the path several hours later, and lose X hit points from scratches, poison oak etc.” but never okay to say “You can’t get off the path.”
In this section, Bethesda are saying “you can’t get off the path. Just for wanting to step off the path, you are captured by raiders and sodomised.”
It’s not ‘rewarded’ so much as ‘it should be possible’. Reginald, who is unoptimized and only halfway through leveling can, with very little effort, slaughter everyone there. All of the guards, the overseers, Wildmen, and the monsters. Then take the cure, hand it to Medea, and walk away into the distance while the freed slaves cheer. Given what you know in-character, this is a perfectly reasonable course of action, but the designers tried to block it off with the forced-capture shenanigans. You can still do it with a small guns or unarmed specialist, so all the forced-capture does is annoy people.
It’s a common problem to all the Fallout games (and other nonlinear RPGs) that you will eventually reach a point where you can butcher whole towns without breaking a sweat, the end of game content being the only place where you may still face a serious combat challenge.
My problem was always that even though you may not want to use this to solve your problems, just knowing that it would be a viable option is quite the immersion-killer when jumping through hoops and navigating dialogue trees.
So while I share your bafflement at the players’ attitudes you describe, what bothers me the most is that mindless violence can be a successful strategy in the first place.
That’s more an issue with the players though; players of video games (and often games in general where combat exists) tend to feel entitled to mindless serial murder if they so choose, and then get all upset if the game (or DM) looks at them like they’re, well, mindless serial killers.
I’m honestly not sure where this attitude comes from, but it’s certainly the leading cause of ‘rocks fall and everybody dies’ in RPGs.
To be fair, they are often about mindless serial killing of everything non-human already; making the leap to murders isn’t that hard.
Now, a game where you are not the killer of all things moving..
I object to the ‘mindless’ part of that. I have made paladins before whose style upon reaching a slaver camp like this one(the ingot retrieval mission, forcing people to live in disease-causing areas, brutal bloodsport) would be to offer surrender to each slaver, then kill them if they refused. It’s not mindless, it’s brutal, efficient, and actually likely results in less death than if you go through the game’s route of freeing the slaves. And I think the slaves would agree that it’s a good thing, as would the church he worships. Not because they’re idiots, but because the only method of solving this situation involves death, and an aggressive solution keeps the death confined to the slavers, not the slaves.
Because, of course, plunging the entire area into lawless trog infested chaos is ovbiously a good thing to do.
Your Paladin is trying to apply Black and White morality into a Shades of Gray area of the game, he deserves everything he gets (preferably a bullet).
Out of curiousity; if the Raiders had met the player with full force and legitimately defeated the player in combat before capturing him, would you still complain about railroading? Even if the raiders were ‘levelled up’ to match the player so that the fight was actually extremely difficult no matter what level you were at?
Basically, is it the capture itself you’re whinging about, or the rather lackluster way it is pulled off?
Any time failure is the only option, expect frustrated players. However, an impossible fight (or my aforementioned Wand’o’Plot) would have made the whole thing more bearable, especially if followed up with a rematch later on. It’s partly the device, and partly the fact that they didn’t even bother trying to justify it.
How does slavery qualify as a gray area?
Second one for me as well. If the Slavers had been shown to legitemaly be stronger than Reginald — able to beat him in actual combat, instead of beating him down while he’s suffering from Cutscene Stupidity — everything after that part would have made perfect sense. The being a slave, the sense of danger you’re supposed to be in, the having to follow stupid and dangerous orders and the struggle for survival. It could all have been justified by saying “Hey, these Slavers are really good at what they do, and they can actually beat you.”
Bonus: in this scenario, players who actually still manage to beat the Slavers would feel like they desérve to just walk in and free everyone. ‘Mindless violence’ becomes Hard Mode instead of Default Murder Mode.
Everyone wins.
Same with me.And there already are games where your enemies are so powerful that you can only lose.No one complains about railroading in them.
+1 to everything Jarenth said. The problem with The Pitt is not just the lack of choices, but that they don´t even camouflaged it. And that´s the key, hidding the railroads. Easily spotted rails tend to make the players to hop off them and find another route. Scalled difficult enemies that defeat you in battle and capture you feels like it was a consequence of your rambo-ing the gates. A capture cutscene doesn´t, unless well managed. The Pitt one wasn´t. It was arbitrary, immerssion breaking and killed the mood.
Slavers are evil. There are only a few situations where slavery is justified, and even then they better be very careful about how they treat the slaves. Anything they’re doing to protect themselves, the slaves can do, too, while not being slaughtered by guards for the lulz. Or the can leave and go somewhere safer. And again, the end result of freeing the slaves is exactly the same as the end result of slaughtering everything that holds a whip. The only difference is that the slaves don’t riot and die en masse and they get freed quicker, both of which are good things.
You were given the overarching goal of helping the slaves and obtaining the cure. Murdering every last slaver in the Pitt then just grabbing the cure should be a legitimate method of accomplishing that.
In the Wehrner ending, that’s what happens anyway, so all you’d be doing would be saving yourself a few hours of feigning servitude and collecting ingots.
Not connected with the topic,but there is a bit of weirdness with your dice.Check it out:
http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d5/DaemianLucifer/Weird.png
Unless youve changed those comments and it really should say “0”.
Yeah i just noticed that, the dice appear to have broken. On the main page they don’t say how many comments there are in text either.
A disturbing question arises:Where are you hiding that knife so that they leave it while they take the rest of your inventory?
Inside his mutton chops naturally.
In his underwear. You may have noticed that everyone in fallout 3 has them surgically grafted to their flesh. Also, The slavers probably aren’t looking there – they don’t really care that you have weapons, they just want the shiny loot while you’re still not technically ’employed’, at which time you’d have been allowed to keep as deadly an arsenal as you saw fit.
Indeed. When was that switchblade useful anyway? I don’t have the game, so is there a way to go through that part where you actually need that weapon?
Well,you can use it to pick your teeth after a meal of some raw meat.
You can poke a deathclaw with it too. And then run like hell is after you.
It’s probably a switchblade for a reason.
Shamus – minor bug in the text for how many comments, a stray backslash gets through:
“162 comments. But who\’s counting?”
Actually there is a semi-forced capture in Dragon Age near the end.
After you free the queen a knight following Logain and her soldiers attempt to capture you. It’s pretty much an impossible fight unless you exploit the AI and kite them around. Possible outcomes: 1. You surrender and wake up in a prison. 2. You attempt to fight and get killed. 3. You attempt to fight and, through tactics and/or exploiting the AI you actually win. You don’t go to prison, but the knight is dead and won’t show up later in the game.
That was pretty cool.
it is, in essence, a true forced capture. Bioware just didn’t make the knight in question overpowered enough, and by cheating the mechanics, you can win – even when it is obviously not meant to be possible at all.
I don’t think it is. The simple fact that when you beat that fight and continue the game the knight who tried to arrest you didn’t show up anymore even though she has some dialogue lines later in the game shows that Bioware at least expected some players to beat that fight and actively chose not to make it impossible to win.
It would have been a good example of beatable-forced-capture if it had been a little clearer (for me, at least) that ‘not fighting’ was an option. I tried that fight over and over and over again because I was under the impression that it was your bog-standard fight-or-die scenario.
But still, this is a good example of how this kind of scenario ought to play out. If you’re not strong enough, play by the rules; if you à¡re strong enough, snap the rules in half and spit in the developers’ faces.
Ok, true. However, there is one really true forced capture (at least that I can recall immediately) – after beating the big ugly on the top floor of Ostagar tower. You get shot down by about 4 magically strong arrows in a cutscene.
I always thought that was a sloppy hack, because it makes no sense when you get rescued later. What, did she battle her way to the top of the tower and drag my armor-wearing ass back to her hut, me over one shoulder and Alistair over the other? Why didn’t those Darkspawn just finish you off or eat you or whatever?
I see the need for it in a story sense, but it’s ill fitting. I think it would have worked much better if, upon seeing you were outmatched, you leaped out of a tower window and landed in some water below. (During a cutscene, obviously.) Then the game could hand-wave the whole thing, “Yeah, you were washed downstream away from the darkspawn to where she would be able to find you.”
You forget that she is a powerful mage.So she couldve just teleported you there,or levitate you,or somesuch.
It still suffers from the “oh no! I’ve never been hit with this few arrows at once! I think I’m going to pass out!” And the fact that they didn’t finish you off, eat you, take your pants and run them up the flagpole, etc.
If you ask about it, you’re told she “turned into a bird” to rescue you. And considering the form your rescuer takes later if you fight her, that “bird” might actually have been able to pull off what she claims.
It’s still stupid, though, for the reasons Shamus mentions.
Teleportation simply doesn’t exist in Dragon Age. I don’t think flight exists either, although shapechange into flighted creatures does.
Yeah, I’m a lore junkie.
I recall Morrigan tell you Flemeth transformed into a huge bird and took you from the top, so she didn´t fight. Which means she broke the tower´s roof. Can huge birds do that? Or maybe she transformed into a dragon, which would make more sense.
She basically turned into a Rock (the mythical giant eagle, not the stone). According to Morrigan her form was large enough that she could hold you and Alistair in one talon each. So yes, slamming through the half-rotted roof would not be too hard, I think.
Yes, I have seen at least two blind Let’s Plays where the person manages to beat her (keeps reloading until he succeeds) and the story does not suffer from it. So it is not a forced capture.
I, on the other hand, knew from spoilers about the going-to-jail part and just surrendered.
As for exploiting the AI… It’s called Tactics.
So hey, little sidetrack: did the X-amount-of-comments messages get changed? I’m seeing a few of those (mostly describing this post) that I’ve never seen before.
Yes. I added a smattering of new messages, and re-arranged some of the old ones. The comment count has to go over 200 before it runs out of new messages. I added a few special-case messages for interesting numbers, and also introduced a bug somewhere. (In one of the 100+ ranges it just displays zero for the number.)
Around 130 I think.I added the picture,but forgot to note which number it was.
I think this one displayed a typo some comments ago. “who/s counting” or somesuch.
You’ll be pleased to note that I took your advice and purchased Fallout 1 and 2 from Good Old Games. I’m not so hooked on Fallout’s combat I needed to buy Tactics, but we’ll see after I finish Fallout 2.
I’ve gotten a good way into #1 so far and I must say It feels very different to Fallout 3 (my only prior experience with the franchise). There’s some of the feeling I had when I first entered the wasteland of “OK, what do I do now?” (atmospheric, but can result in boredom) but predictably as I get more acquainted with the wasteland it’s getting better. On the more esoteric side, I now officially get that joke from Fallout 3’s Daring Dashwood radio plays about the “Shady Sands Shuffle”.
I’m playing a high charisma character and am now trying to think of how many other games would include a line about “crop rotation”.
Also: farms! Where were those in Fallout 3?
Yeah, the first two Fallout games (and Fallout 3, to an extent) have a sort of lurching what-do-I-do-now-it’s-a-goddamned-wasteland feel to it. I mean, they give you this scavenger hunt that takes place over a massive wasteland, give you only a tiny handful of leads, and then have all of those leads turn out to be complete dead ends.
Of course, once you do actually get into the swing of the hunt, it’s much more rewarding. And when you find the Water Chip, it’s a thousand times more satisfying than if you’d just meekly followed a string of quests that took you to it. You feel like, “Hey, I actually did wander into this Wasteland and find a piece of electronics the size of a potato. I’m awesome.”
Fallout 2 is basically that, except the scavenger hunt is much, much harder.
To me, FO3 felt like less of a wasteland because you could barely walk five feet without bumping into a quest hook or various folks who want you dead.
A lot of my favourite things about Fallout were altered or removed in FO3 really, one of the best things being two groups of enemies killing each other. If you manage to get one of those encounters early on, it can really help your chances if they mostly kill each other. Just kill the remainder, then pick up all the loot!
There are quite a few enemy vs. enemy fights in there. The Capitol is probably the biggest one, with Talon Company assaulting the Super Mutants.
Plus, the most obvious one, Regulators vs Talons if you switch from Good to Evil or the other way around. The spawn at the same time, and then… Instant Loot! :)
Much as I admire Rut’s knowledge of seminal 1970s post holocaust sci-fi (I for one would like the young Charlotte Rampling inspecting my brutal physique at close quarters)- remarkable in one so challenged in years – I feel The Pitt bears a closer resemblance in aesthetic terms to a more recent classic:
Wild Boys never chose this way
Wild Boys falling far from glory.
They tried to chain you.
Looks like they’ll try again.
Yes, indeed.
I just watched half an episode of Sid the Scientist.
While definitively not the biggest mistake of my life, it is probably one of the worst ways I’ve ever spent time.
What kind of magical fairy-tale land has a (Pre-K or Kindergarten?) School with a full playground and sizable class room with only 4 children.
That whole show is awful, and the animators could be doing something much better, as on the whole the visual style isn’t terrible (Though the teacher’s mouth is weird, to say the least.)
Hopefully Rutskarn will read this. I just hope he’s not laughing at me. (But there’s never anything on Television at 6 AM anyways.)
Man. You totally talked over the guy who magically captured you getting his exploding-trouser-based karmic comeuppance and subsequently falling 80 feet.
Also, the capture scene doesn’t look that bad at first. After all, you’re heavily outnumbered, right? But then you actually fight them. And you kill twice their number in seconds. The only real delay was them running into horrible death range. The first 4 or 5 take about 3 seconds. That wasn’t even a fight. It would have taken you as long to kill radroaches.
What’s wrong with railroading? Make a fun road for me to go down, and I’ll go down it. I don’t see the need to be so darn principled about your agent-autonomy in a game when the whole point of gaming is having someone craft an experience for you, and then sitting down and experiencing it.