I do think that we all can agree on the fact that a sequel should stay true to the original games, regardless of if they feel an urge to reinvent them or not. If they don’t there is no point in making a sequel other than using the name for fast cash.

And how do you stay true to the originals? Well, what you need to do, is basically staying true to canon, game mechanics, and the setting of the original games. One needs to design the new game without loosing what the previous ones were aiming for. One of the core design descisions of the original Fallout games was to try to recreate table top RPG games, which is why turn based combat was choosen, as well as a isometric perspective. And let’s be honest, FO3 hardly seems to be a RPG at all, it is more of a shooter with RPG aspects.

Apart from this, one of the things which really made the Fallout games stand out was the dialogue. You never really knew what you were gonna get, was the ‘right’ choice really the right choice. An example from NMA:
“Kill Gizmo the meanie – Killian rules with an iron fist. Kill Killian the lawman – Gizmo makes the place prosper.”

A good example in FO2, when the First Citizen of VC gets rather annoyed with you if you helt Gecko, or if you are non predjudice against mutants and ghouls.

The is, needless to say, much more than this, and if you can be arsed all views can be found at nma or dac.

It seems like bethesda are making a decent game. But, and this is a big but, it is NOT a fallout game, which makes it suck, much as a decent adventure game sucks as a FPS, a decent post apoc FPS sucks as a RPG. It isn’t that hard to get, rilly,

Absolutely. This is why I love Morrowind and Mass Effect and various other games that incorporate this journal system. It gives the player a breadth of knowledge, but those interested in just experiencing the game proper don’t have to deal with it.

Not to mention Mass Effect does have a very comprehensive journal system in its Codex. It’s invaluable for those players who want to gain a greater understanding of the world.

The best games are subtle in both presentation and “telling”. If you play it and get a deluge of information, the story isn’t being told professionally. I realize that (some) older RPGs have better stories, but there’s a lot of things in them that were either redundant. They’d describe something I could see just fine. The dialogue (especially in Baldur’s Gate) was stilted and melodramatic.

The best balance is between the complete information overload of old RPGs and the lack of description of (certain) modern RPGs. I think that the closest to this balance is Morrowind, actually, thanks to the journal and wide array of information you can glean from inhabitants that was stored in the journal. I guess it could be described as the Civlopedia from Civilization: the information is there, but it doesn’t force itself upon you.

And games like Mass Effect seem to be doing fine without long text descriptions.

They try to discourage us from playing a game that they themselves have not played in the hopes that Bethesda will see a red figure at the end of the day and pass on the liscense to someone else who will make the game THEIR way with THEIR ideals from 1991.

And I actually liked Oblivion. It had some flaws, but it was not so unbearable that I put the game back on my shelf to wait it out for Elder Scrolls VI. And I am not the only one who did that. It seems to me that their argument is based on the console version and not the PC version. I played it on both, and although I enjoyed it on the PC more, it wasn’t horrible. Only people with higher than God expectations say it was worse than average.

Problem is with all video game sequels is that there is never a TRUE sequel to any video game released. All the fans have their shining vision of what the game’s sequel is supposed to be, which will never get made. Or it will get fan made, and chances are that only a tenth of the people who played the official liscensed sequel under the product name will play the fan sequels. And this makes them mad enough to take it out on everyone else who has hope that something will be good.

Sorry to rant, but wow. I’m sick of the doom and gloom schtick of the overly zealous fanbases lately.

No flames from me, as the author of this blog I appreciate your levelheadedness. Keep it up.

P.S. Bring on the flames.

It’s understandable, I guess, that Bethesda choose the most immediately impressive way of demonstrating the feature though. Imagine if Todd Howard was up on stage at E3: “Hey guys, check out the awesome combat in Fallout 3!” and then missed with all his shots…