|
|
Dirty Bomb - Fallout Enforcer editorial from March 16, 2003
| |
|
[ N/A -> Editorial ] |
| Editorial posted by 258 |
Thu 29 Jul 2004, 2:10 PM |
I present to you, instead of message board rumblings, an essay explaining why this game is a horrible idea and quite literally a "dirty bomb" which will leave Fallout fan's, quite literally, in the fallout.
I was very much saddened today as I discovered the new Fallout Game. Being a long time fan of the series, I was almost offended at what Interplay wishes to distribute as a "product" and even though it's probably not nearly finished and will look better in later development phases, will surely bomb. I'm especially saddened because this game puts fallout fans into a lose lose situation. The lose lose situation is that we're either forced to support a less then spectacular ((much less if I may say so)) product and possibly continuation of that product or not only will the company potentially discontinue any sort of Fallout products, but further hurt the company on the market.
As probably any fallout fan can guess, the game is most likely going to be nothing like the other fallouts. Even if the game looks ok graphically, the game will most likely contain none of the elements that made Fallout succesful, and even worse, contain plot, characters, events, etc which disrupt the timeline or anything presented in the Fallout Bible. This problem, ofcourse, is to be expected when a change in developers occurs, however, to this extent is just blasphomy, especially when documents from the original developers are available, not to mention the original games. When dealing with a world as meticousily created as Fallout, you have to stay within certain bounderies, even if it is a fictional world. So even if fan's do purchase the game, Interplay stands a chance of degrading it's fanbase as surely some fans will drop out due to not wishing to purchase another "company milking" product which is just made so the company has a standard of revenue. This technique ofc!ourse is made famous by Capcom, who pumps out special edition, after special edition just to support itself. However, unlike capcom, Interplay is taking it's product and turning it into something of "$9.99 saturday night special", which are generally regarded as items of distaste. For illustrative purposes, it'de be similar to Capcom releasing a Street Fighter Stradegy game for computer. Not only would it not appeal to the Street Fighter fanbase, but would probably not appeal to stradegy gamers. In the end, we can only hope for a product that's not only mediocre, but doesn't destroy the Fallout universe we've come to know and love and pervert it to something we will all despise.
There have been afew people who say, "If you support Fallout and want Fallout 3, buy this game regardless". This is just disillusionment as an excuse to buy the game. Although you will be supporting Interplay, you will not be supporting Fallout 3. The best evidence of this can be seen within Interplay's own interworkings and Fallout: Tactics ((Which I felt was ok...not as good as Fallout 2, but still alot better then it could have been)) which sold very well for it's first few weeks. Fallout Tactics 2 was then planned ((I don't know if it was officially announced, but Interplay did have alot of rumblings about it)) and then it was canned in the next few weeks when the game did not do as well as planned. The "so what?" of this is that even if Fallout Tactics had been the biggest success that Interplay had ever seen, plans would have been made for another Fallout: Tactics, not Fallout 3. So, even if every fallout fan buys Enforcer because they'll be "supporting fallout", they'll be supporting Fallout: Enforcer, not Fallout. Going along with this example, lets look at Capcom's Megaman Legends, a game that's set in a megaman alternate universe. The first Megaman Legends garnered enough success to generate not only a sequal, but another side story involving the character Tron Bone. Although the game contained the characters of Megaman and such, the game has yet to really further along another game in the Megaman series. It instead, just promoted a sequal to Megaman Legends. Obviousily, the differance here is quality, but the argument is still the same. By supporting Enforcer, you're supporting an Enforcer sequal, not a new Fallout.
"I won't buy this piece of crap, that'll show interplay that we will not support this sort of trash and demand Fallout 3," also seems to be a very common line among the boards lately. However, the problem with this is, it will most likely do little to show Interplay that Fallout 3 is in demand and that the public will settle for no less. The most likely result is that Interplay will lose confidence in releasing another Fallout related product and discontinue the line. This is a very scary thought indeed as any Fallout fan is thinking. Want an example of this? Look at X-Com series. The first is considered the greatest PC game of all time, or atleast IGN think's so. Let's look at it now. After trying to branch off afew times, X-Com is pretty much officially dead. X-Com: Enforcer, the last game related to the series and killed it off pretty much. Regardless if it was or was not a good game, fans simply did not buy into an action game set in X-Com. It simply did not appeal to X-Com fans and most action fans just didn't want to buy it. As a result, all X-Com games, mainly just Alliance, are on the back burner and will probably never be released. I'm pretty sure that no one wishes for this to happen to Fallout, however, if trends in the gaming industry continue, Fallout 3 may never be released. Interplay does indeed hate you. But what if it's actually a really good game? Chances are people still won't but it and it'll fail. This can be easily predicted because of two major things. First and foremost, the largest fanbase of Fallout are owners with PC's, not owners with X-Box's and PS-2's. Changing the format over to strictly console format, Interplay has basically eliminated a good portion of it's consumer base. "Yea, but doesn't PS2 have the largest consumer market?" This is true, however it will be irrelevant. Let's also not forget that X-Box also has a fairly decent sized market, being that it's considered the second most popular Console on the market. The reason? Almost no one in the console world has ever heard of Fallout, and if they have it's because they own a PC. So, by moving Fallout to the console market, it has succesfully reduced it's user market to those PC owners who own a console and due to the fact that it's only being released on two of the three major consoles, it's further limited to solely those who own a Playstation 2 and a X-box. They've also further limited the consumer base by hanging the genre of the game. Fallout has always been known as a roleplaying game. Even though Fallout Tactics was a stradegy combat game, it maintained enough Roleplaying elements for it to retain some ammount of popularity among it's fanship. By changing it over to strictly an action game, we've succesfully further eliminated the fan-base and targeted to an audience who has no idea of what Fallout is and what it's about. Even if the game does turn out to be good, you have to remember, it has to go up against the likes of Splinter Cell, Devil May Cry, Metal Gear Solid, and other such 3rd person action titles which it probably will not stand a chance against. Interplay sure must have some great plan, because this sort of marketing technique and developing attitude sure does baffle me.
Now that it's been established that this is gonna be a product that is gonna fail misserably, how will this effect Interplay, and potentially the chances of ANY sort of Fallout. Well, it all depends on how bad this product fails and how much Interplay put's into it. As of today, Interplay Entertainment's stocks rate at $0.0695 according to the latest ((11:19 AM est)) stock market report. That's about 0.07 a share. In January of 1999, the stock was worth an amazing $2.54 per share and climbed all the way to $4.00 a share in Feb of 2000 before finally tanking to $0.51 in August 2001 inwhich it hasn't recovered from and has slowly been declining. At $0.06 a share, the company's future doesn't exactly look that bright. If another product seriousily tanks, the company could look at filing for Chapter 5 Bankruptcy protection and then every Fallout fan is really screwed. Ofcourse, we have to look at the upcoming games aside from Enforcer to get a full view. Aside from Enforcer, have 4 other releases. Lionheart, 2 versions of Hunter the Reckoning, and an X-Box version of Run Like Hell. Lionheart has the highest potential to be a good seller, currently ranking better then both versions of Run Like Hell on Amazon.com even though it has yet to be released. Run Like Hell is just a port of the PS2 game, which received less the stellar reviews and was considered a mediocre game by most. The X-Box version currently is ranked 1,603 on Amazon.com with it's PS2 counterpart ranking even higher. The original Hunter for X-Box saw a small amount of success, ranking #674 on Amazon, however wether that is going to continue is questionable. Knowing this, Interplay could have to face a hard road ahead as it may have to battle uphill.
So what can Fallout fan's do at this point? Probably not alot, as it seems unlikely that Interplay will listen to it's fans. I'm sure, without me saying, a petition will start. Generally, though, those don't yield enough results, and most will be happier just to fall into the corporate scheme of things and purchase the game. Since it seems unlikely that Fallout 3, will ever enter the development phases, I've heard many people rumble on the internet that they'll just start a development house and produce Fallout 3. Although admirable, Interplay currently owns the copyright for Fallout 3 and will probably take every chance it can get to flex it's corporate muscle and pound any would be developers into the ground unless it's approved by them, which at this point seems unlikely. So really, most Fallout Fan's are left to their own devices and to watch their favorite series most likely die out.
I really hope I'm wrong in all instances here and that Enforcer will be amazingly well done and sell better then any other product in Interplay's history. However, the chances of this happening aren't very likely if you just look at the facts and what we get to go on so far. Interplay will hopefully realize this mistake before it happens, and stop, we can only hope.
As Fallout fans, we can only wait and watch. Although we can put in our input, our input is really only good if it's listened to. If this game fails, or even if it succeed's we may never see a Fallout 3, instead we get to listen to political garbage and get rich quick schemes. In the end, it's the Fallout players who have to wait for the fallout to cease as their forced to watch their favorite series be destroyed. |
| Edit - Delete |
|
|
| Fallout 4 Responses: What do you think of it? |
|