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On Fallout 3
So I finished Fallout 3 the other night.
Wow. What a great game. The art design and soundtrack in particular were amazing, VATS was fabulous, and I liked touches like the radio channels that commented on my PC's real world actions. I haven't played a lot of computer games in the last few years, so this was a nice reintroduction. Alas, I missed the hilarity of the previous two Fallout games, but Fallout 3 was pretty engrossing as a more straightforward post apocalyptic story.
I've been thinking recently about quest writing though, and so I'm just going to ramble a bit about the narrative elements of the game, in terms of what I thought worked well and what didn't. I'm going to leave the question of the ending to the side; I know a lot of players hated the ending. I didn't, but it is frustrating to not be able to play beyond the game's conclusion, particularly when you can trigger the end quest before you've maxed out your character.
My favourite quest/setting was probably Tranquility Lane, for its perverse inversion of previous gameplay. I loved the setting, and the sudden loss of things (like the Pipboy) that I'd come to rely on. I opted to go with the Loom-like Failsafe puzzle as an exit strategy, and I liked the fact that I had to figure out how to turn the Failsafe on.
Other quests I enjoyed: Grayditch (the town overrun with ants), Reilly's Rangers, and escorting whaz-her-name from Dukov's place. I liked the developing narrative of the first two, and in the latter, I liked the challenge of having to keep a weaker character alive in a trip across the gameboard. Also, the Vault of Insanity (I forget its number) was great. The hallucinations freaked me out until I figured out what they were.
Settings I didn't like so much: Rivet City was a great set, but the quests seemed to be pretty simple. The android thing was interesting, I guess, but in most cases once you'd done a single quest for an NPC, that was it in terms of your interaction with that character. I was also found locating certain NPCs in the large set rather difficult, and I was irritated by the market being closed at night.
More than that, I was a little saddened that there were so many markers on the game board that didn't apparently have any quests attached to them. I guess this can be refreshing, but as I play for narrative and not combat, after wiping out the 6th or so den of raiders, I was starting to feel it was a bit pointless.
Now, as some of you know, I've been asked to come up with some quests for an MMO. And MMO has a different set of requirements than a singleplayer game, of course, but nevertheless it's got me thinking about what I like to see in game quests.
In Fallout 3, I really liked the moments at which it seemed like my PC's decisions made a noticable impact on the world. I could have done with more of that in terms of recurring characters: i.e. if I set a super mutant hostage free and that character escapes, it would be nice to be able to run into that character later in one of the town settings.
I also liked it when the quests were layered, and involved discovering bits of backstory. None of the vault stuff was really pertinent to the main quest, for example, but I'm glad it was there to enrich the background.
I didn't like the more basic Fed Ex/kill quests. The stuff involving Moira's book was fine - I understand that there needs to be a certain amount of gameboard exploring built in at a starter location, and I liked the fact that the Moira NPC presented the PC with a set of exploration quests to choose from. But after a while I got tired of the "go to this dangerous location and get this object for me" quests that were being tossed my way. They got repetative, and they didn't seem to change things much.
Thinking it over, I guess I would also have liked to have seen more evolution from the NPCs. It would have been nice if once my PC reached certain levels, NPCs that I'd previously interacted with would have started presenting my character with new quests.
Eh. That's it for the ramblings. Good game, though.
Wow. What a great game. The art design and soundtrack in particular were amazing, VATS was fabulous, and I liked touches like the radio channels that commented on my PC's real world actions. I haven't played a lot of computer games in the last few years, so this was a nice reintroduction. Alas, I missed the hilarity of the previous two Fallout games, but Fallout 3 was pretty engrossing as a more straightforward post apocalyptic story.
I've been thinking recently about quest writing though, and so I'm just going to ramble a bit about the narrative elements of the game, in terms of what I thought worked well and what didn't. I'm going to leave the question of the ending to the side; I know a lot of players hated the ending. I didn't, but it is frustrating to not be able to play beyond the game's conclusion, particularly when you can trigger the end quest before you've maxed out your character.
My favourite quest/setting was probably Tranquility Lane, for its perverse inversion of previous gameplay. I loved the setting, and the sudden loss of things (like the Pipboy) that I'd come to rely on. I opted to go with the Loom-like Failsafe puzzle as an exit strategy, and I liked the fact that I had to figure out how to turn the Failsafe on.
Other quests I enjoyed: Grayditch (the town overrun with ants), Reilly's Rangers, and escorting whaz-her-name from Dukov's place. I liked the developing narrative of the first two, and in the latter, I liked the challenge of having to keep a weaker character alive in a trip across the gameboard. Also, the Vault of Insanity (I forget its number) was great. The hallucinations freaked me out until I figured out what they were.
Settings I didn't like so much: Rivet City was a great set, but the quests seemed to be pretty simple. The android thing was interesting, I guess, but in most cases once you'd done a single quest for an NPC, that was it in terms of your interaction with that character. I was also found locating certain NPCs in the large set rather difficult, and I was irritated by the market being closed at night.
More than that, I was a little saddened that there were so many markers on the game board that didn't apparently have any quests attached to them. I guess this can be refreshing, but as I play for narrative and not combat, after wiping out the 6th or so den of raiders, I was starting to feel it was a bit pointless.
Now, as some of you know, I've been asked to come up with some quests for an MMO. And MMO has a different set of requirements than a singleplayer game, of course, but nevertheless it's got me thinking about what I like to see in game quests.
In Fallout 3, I really liked the moments at which it seemed like my PC's decisions made a noticable impact on the world. I could have done with more of that in terms of recurring characters: i.e. if I set a super mutant hostage free and that character escapes, it would be nice to be able to run into that character later in one of the town settings.
I also liked it when the quests were layered, and involved discovering bits of backstory. None of the vault stuff was really pertinent to the main quest, for example, but I'm glad it was there to enrich the background.
I didn't like the more basic Fed Ex/kill quests. The stuff involving Moira's book was fine - I understand that there needs to be a certain amount of gameboard exploring built in at a starter location, and I liked the fact that the Moira NPC presented the PC with a set of exploration quests to choose from. But after a while I got tired of the "go to this dangerous location and get this object for me" quests that were being tossed my way. They got repetative, and they didn't seem to change things much.
Thinking it over, I guess I would also have liked to have seen more evolution from the NPCs. It would have been nice if once my PC reached certain levels, NPCs that I'd previously interacted with would have started presenting my character with new quests.
Eh. That's it for the ramblings. Good game, though.
no subject
While Fallout 3 pretended to cater to a non-FPS crowd it was, at its heart, an FPS. I say this because the third-person view controls were SO bad that I pretty much had to abandon them immediately. Meanwhile VATS was sufficient but far from a perfect solution to the problem.
Overall, I was really disappointed with F3's lack of catering to a non-FPS audience, especially considering that Fallout 1 and 2 were both third-person, hexmappy RPGs.
So, what MMO are you working on?
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no subject
Will you marry me?
That aside, I echo pretty much all of your sentiments. I did also enjoy the Vampire quest, but... once again, you go through all of this work and nothing changes.
My favourite quest, though, was the one that felt the most "Fallout" to me and that was dealing with the Ghouls and Tenpenny Tower. Even if you do everything right, horror ensues... there is no "good" solution. That felt like Fallout, right there.
And tell me of this MMO thing?
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The MMO thing is the IU telecom dept's Londontown project. Whether it ever gets off the ground, I have no idea, but in the meantime, it's providing me with some exposure to the writing side of the world o' games.
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I REALLY hated how with the vamp quest, the quest giver has no reaction to the quest's outcome.
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(Anonymous) 2009-03-02 02:32 pm (UTC)(link)Tony
no subject