Fallout 3 Lead designer revealed

[Briosafreak]

We keep receiving mails with that link at NMA, it's rather hillarious stuff

And nonsense, there's no date of release, that cover is from the Van Buren main menu etc...

 

[franc kaos]

*cough*

Question 2: For the purposes of Fallout 3, Todd and I have worked really closely on design. To be honest, Todd and I work really well together creatively; we share most of the same philosophies, and want the player to have the same kinds of experiences. So the overall design (setting, combat, story, quests, etc.) is mine, with a healthy dose of input from Todd (most of which I agree with anyway). Ultimately, Todd could have vetoed my entire design -- but very little of my original idea has changed. And the other designers work with the stuff Todd and I have established, and run with it -- often putting their own touches on things, as is expected.

http://z13.invisionfree.com/Kaleem/inde ... 32&st=1351

*cough*

So no branching storylines then.

 

[Lumpy]

He's saying that both he and Todd agree on what the players should experience, not that all players should experience the same thing.

 

[denizsi]

Both want the player to have the same kinds of experiences compared to what? If that other part of "we" weren't Todd, it might be a good thing but since it is Todd, I don't think that comparison could be anything other than Oblivion.

Also, to have a better perspective on Emil, read his old editorials and reviews archived at Adrenaline Vault where he used to work. You can start here:
http://www.avault.com/editorials/index.asp?year=1997

He may have changed for better or worse since then, but still it's important to know in my opinion.

As for why Emil became the lead designer, there's something funky with that. Is it possible that despite all the hype and glory, some of the suits might have sniffed some of the crap coming from Oblivion and Todd's leadership?

 

[franc kaos]

He's saying that both he and Todd agree on what the players should experience, not that all players should experience the same thing.

Yes, but we know Todd isn't a fan of branching storylines. He hated that Daggerfall had five endings because it made things difficult when creating MW, and few quests in Oblivion had multiple solutions - haven't finished it yet, but I'm willing to bet, like MW there is only one final solution, beat the baddy. Ergo, if Emil is in complete empathy with the Todd then these things will not appear in 'BS: Fallout 3D'

Still, the nuked out city remains are going to look gorgeous...

 

[Lumpy]

Both want the player to have the same kinds of experiences compared to what? If that other part of "we" weren't Todd, it might be a good thing but since it is Todd, I don't think that comparison could be anything other than Oblivion.

Also, to have a better perspective on Emil, read his old editorials and reviews archived at Adrenaline Vault where he used to work. You can start here:
http://www.avault.com/editorials/index.asp?year=1997

He may have changed for better or worse since then, but still it's important to know in my opinion.

As for why Emil became the lead designer, there's something funky with that. Is it possible that despite all the hype and glory, some of the suits might have sniffed some of the crap coming from Oblivion and Todd's leadership?

Emil is Lead Design. Todd is Executive Producer.

 

[denizsi]

Still, the nuked out city remains are going to look gorgeous...

Both Morrowind and Oblivion looked too sterile and orderly even in "ruined" environments. I think the same approach may just as easily carry on to F3.

 

[DarkSign]

That remark is similar to one of the discussions in the AoD threads...what exactly do ruins look like?

1. rubble
2. garbage
3. bodies?
4. junk
5. architecture in disrepair

what specific elements of FO screamed ruin to you? i think FO did a lot with textures in this regard imo.

 

[Bluebottle]

what specific elements of FO screamed ruin to you? i think FO did a lot with textures in this regard imo.

Personally I always thought it wasn't so much the ruined buildings themselves that were the best part of Fallout's scenery but the cobbled together junk that people had used to form makeshift shelters or walls.

 

[denizsi]

Bluebottle hit the nail on the head.

I also agree with the textures. The dirty and rusty looks without becoming a burden for the eyes.

Consistency and logic in placement is also important. In Fallout, you see the ghouls and other obvious low lifes in and around crumbling units with nothing useful around and all the useless junk in contrast to others in better outfits with arms and or armour, in better buildings with better, useful junk.1 This distinction between social classes of wasteland is reflected pretty good. Quality of inhabitation tells a lot. Junktown had dumped cars for walls. That's quite a resource, for instance. So, since almost everywhere was a ruin, how the better ruins went to the stronger and shittier was left to the weak is one of the things it did for me.

 

[stargelman]

My favorite part of Fallout 3 is going to be the critics. Every review will start off with this reminiscing about playing Fallout in 1997, conflating the first and second games unreflectively, then launching into a march of progress spiel before a couple paragraphs of acritical worship. Maybe we'll be lucky and get a sentence or two about how people that prefer the old style are repugnant, because no matter how insignificant we are in market terms they'll still be annoyed without absolute, universal agreement that everything gets better every day with every sale. Then he'll finish off with some random disconnected complaints just to break up the texture a bit.

It's gonna be great, I tell you.

You know, I actually played with the idea of starting a generic RPGing site just so I would have a platform on which to totally trash any new game Bethesda would throw at us like a monkey throws feces.

I quickly realized I had much better things to do though.

 

[Ladonna]

Just put a 0 down at Metacritic on every game you hate. It drags the score down nicely....

 

[Bradylama]

I think the key aspect of Fallout's post-apocalyptic feel was decay. The entire game oozed the sense of a world in disrepair and it had a lot to do with textures, as Darksign pointed out. A lot of rust, maybe some charred bodies, and barren earth.

 

[MF]

With Fallout, it's a combination of everything, eg. good art direction :

The box art, the manual, the descriptive text (that little console in the bottom-left is really important), the textures, the cars, the intro, the social structure, the placement, the voice-overs (Ron Perlman). Too bad the writing sucked.

 

[Grandpa Gamer]

With Fallout, it's a combination of everything, eg. good art direction.

Yes. The sum of Fallout was greater than the parts.
I really wonder how Bethesda will pull this off. Not the RPG part we usually discuss, but the design and feel of the whole thing.

Making Fallout 3 live up to it's predecessor in this department seems an almost impossible task, considering Bethesda has to do it with today's technology and today's demand for close up detail. Making a good RPG would actually be easy in comparison (assuming they want to, of course )

Fallout was all about dark humor. Tightrope stuff, balancing the happy optimistic Vault Boy images with the despair and depravity of the actual game world...

 

[cutterjohn]

...here's some more fuel for the fire...
lead level designer for Fallout 3 announced...

...has experience with Oblivion level design... }

BTW:
...I saw a radscorpion the other day...

 

[sabishii]

To Kharn (and nongenre aka Joel Burgess) on my negativity towards hiring Oblivion and Morrowind modders:
they have no experience in the game industry, they specifically have no experience on designing anything in Fallout's spirit (or you certainly didn't specify any reason for it) and although there are undoubtedly talented people there, I'd certainly like to see some experienced (and soulful) people working on Fallout 3 instead of some modders whose lifelong (aka 18 years) dream of becoming a game developer came true.

 

[kingcomrade]

Still, the nuked out city remains are going to look gorgeous...

Yeah, at 5 feet. Then the scaling will cut back to half a polygon per pixel so that it can run on the Sexbox Circle.

what specific elements of FO screamed ruin to you?

The brown color schemes, the rust, the fact that everything was made with...er, sheet metal? That flimsy greenhouse-style stuff. I can't remember what it's called. That everything is constructed from the broken remnants of burnt out objects.

 

[Spectacle]

After having my expectations for fallout 3 reach absolute zero following the release of oblivion, I now find myself curiously optimistic. I'm not expecting anything like a true fallout sequel, or even an RPG, but I can still hope for a fun post-apocalyptic action-adventure.

Oblivion had boring combat, but replace the swords and blunt weapons with guns and we might get some decent FPS combat. And surely they cannot manage to make the setting as bland and boring as Oblivion is?

Still, my expectations are quite low, and I won't be surprised if Beth manage to produce something that's crappier still.