Faults in Oblivion that Bethesda must rectify for Fallout 3

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cazsim83
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Faults in Oblivion that Bethesda must rectify for Fallout 3

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<strong>[ Game -> Article ]</strong> - More info on <a href="#Bethesda Softworks">Company: Bethesda Softworks</a> | More info on <a href="#Fallout 3">Game: Fallout 3</a>

<p><a href="http://www.gameplayer.com.au/">Gameplayer</a>, an Australian gaming site, has put up a <a href="http://www.gameplayer.com.au/gp_documen ... age=1">six page article</a> about what Bethesda is going to need to change to make Fallout 3 work, since so much of it looks and feels like Oblivion with guns already.</p><p>(If you have trouble navigating away from the first page, you may need to click on the RSS button near the bottom right of the article to get the hotlinked page shortcuts to appear.)</p><p>Here are the faults they found with Oblivion, from the rather sizeable article:</p><blockquote dir="ltr" style="margin-right: 0px"><p><em>The fact that this almost sacred series is about to receive a next-gen sequel in the form of Fallout 3 is, dear readers, a big deal. In a market where sequels seem to be nothing but reworked versions of their predecessors, with little or no innovation when it comes to story telling and/or immersion, we think that it is reasonable for Fallout fans to be a little worried.....
</em></p><p><em>...There are, though, some who did not appreciate the ubiquitous pop-culture Easter eggs found throughout Fallout 2 (they obviously missed the Dr. Who and Godzilla references in the first game). So even before this third game in the series has been unleashed there is a lot of history to wade through, and extremely high expectations for Bethesda to match...</em></p><p><em>Of course, you may know Bethesda from a little game called Oblivion, which itself has faced its fair share of controversy. The big question we therefore have to ask is this: does Bethesda have the balls to make Fallout 3 kick arse? Well that depends on whether they can face up to the flaws of Oblivion. Certainly that game will do them no favours with Fallout&rsquo;s hardcore fans: in fact, one of the original developer&rsquo;s key staff described the sale of the license as feeling like "our ex wife had sold our children that she had legal custody of." </em></p><p><em>The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was released two years ago to pretty much universal acclaim (its average ratio on gamerankings.com is 94%). It&rsquo;s a great game, there&rsquo;s no denying that. However, it wasn&rsquo;t until we got over the initial &lsquo;wow&rsquo; moment of playing this incredibly deep and immersive RPG that we started to pick out some rather glaring flaws. </em></p><p><em>...<strong>Radiant A.I:</strong> This was touted as the best artificial intelligence program ever, and it turned out to be a little bit, well, arse...</em></p><p><em><strong>Open World:</strong> Oh yes, Oblivion had a friggin&rsquo; massive world alright &ndash; around 42 square kilometers in fact. Unfortunately, this sense of openness and exploration was a little bit of an illusion. After witnessing the surrounding forests, roaming animals and sequestered fortresses, it became quickly apparent that everything started to repeat itself, ad nauseum. Oh yay, yet another bloody cave system, and then another fort with exactly the same interior. And don&rsquo;t even get us started on the Oblivion gates&hellip;.actually, they&rsquo;re next.

<strong>Oblivion Gates:</strong> How awesome did these things look? The only problem was that they led you to the most insanely repetitive areas in the game. Gameplay here consisted of teleporting in, running up a tower, opening some gates, perhaps running through some tunnels, running up another tower, killing a few Daedra and then nabbing the shiny key thingy to close the Oblivion gate. Awesome the first three times you do it, not so much the following thirty.
</em></p><p><em><strong>Characters:</strong> There are several problems here. For one, the game&rsquo;s NPCs often engaged in gobbledygook dialogue, with most of them not even able to hold a coherent conversation.</em></p><p><em><strong>Enemy Levelling:</strong> This is a massive bugbear for a lot of people. Essentially, what enemy levelling, or scaling, did in Oblivion was to make character progression obsolete. </em></p><p><em><strong>What Bethesda needs to learn from Oblivion
</strong>Our wish list for Fallout 3 is below. This represents what we think Bethesda needs to take on board in their development plan for Fallout 3. With any luck, come later this year, we might be able to come back and tick off what did and did not make it into the finished product.
</em></p></blockquote><p>You can read the rest, this is just taken from the first three pages. Perhaps we should hold Gameplayer to their pseudo-promise of following up on this article later this year? </p><p>Spotted @ <a href="http://fallout3.wordpress.com/">Briosafreak's Fallout 3 Blog</a></p>
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However, it wasn&#8217;t until we got over the initial &#8216;wow&#8217; moment of playing this incredibly deep and immersive RPG that we started to pick out some rather glaring flaws.
:rofl: Quite a wow moment.
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