Bethesda developing and publishing Fallout 3

[Adagio]

Originally posted by pg
Adagio - iirc you could force npcs to move out of doors in fallout 2. in fallout 1 this was a real problem though wasn't it? more than a few times i remember killing an npc to make them move.

Never found that option

The closest thing I found was that you could tell them to 'stay close' or 'keep distance', but when you were trapped this wasn't much good anymore, since when you're trapped and you tell them to 'keep distance' they wont move before there is a distance between you and the npc...

[vovan]

Originally posted by Adagio
Never found that option

Indeed, the option is only there in F2.

When you click and hold your mouse over the NPC to get the little pop-up menu, there's all the usual buttons - talk, examine, use skill on, etc, and then there's the one button that looks like a hand and an arrow I think. It moves the NPC.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Adagio
Great, Fallout 3

Personally I couldn't care less about adding NPC to join the player, since they can be really annoying... Several times in Fallout 2 I had to reload the game, because the NPC's closed the exit in a very small room

What I'd like to see is things develop over time... like when the game begins there's only a few diffenent weapons/shields, but after some time people start inventing these things... but you can also influence this by doing some missions for a certain inventor (to make the invention be released faster) or kill him (to stop it)... or something like that...

this was a problem in fallout 1, but in fallout2 you could use the push command.

[Dis]

Originally posted by vovan


Indeed, the option is only there in F2.

When you click and hold your mouse over the NPC to get the little pop-up menu, there's all the usual buttons - talk, examine, use skill on, etc, and then there's the one button that looks like a hand and an arrow I think. It moves the NPC.

I believe you right click the NPC in question (it doesn't even have to be an NPC in your party) and then there's a little arrow that indicates the Push command. They don't get pissed at you, although they will say something sometimes.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Dissident


I can care less about porn. Fallout2 had no porn. I just felt drugs and prostitutes and bad language added a different flavour to the game. Much better than all these G-rated fantasy games like Baldur's Gate2 (which I loved, but for different reasons)

actually there ARE harlots in BG, and in PST you can even buy their services, although the services are not explicitly described and take place off screen.

[DrSpike]

Looks like we've found LotM's speciality.

[Felch]

Steamy^

This is all good news.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Looks like we've found LotM's speciality.

DnD RPG's?

Nah, I still prefer history oriented strategy games and sims

[DrSpike]

As long as they have brothels it's all good right?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by DrSpike
As long as they have brothels it's all good right?

Brothel of INTELLECTUAL pleasures, Doc, thats the only one you actually get to see in PST. They should have acknowledged Woody Allen more explicitly on that one, I think.

[LDiCesare]

But they have to improve the dialogue over Morrowind. That's the most annoying dialogue system in existance. One main reason I stopped playing. That, and the combat system

Agree. Morrowind's dialog system is the worst I ever saw. And I'd rather have a turn based combat system and an isometric view but I believe it'll have neither.

[Verto]

What was wrong with the dialogue?

[Apocalypse]

Originally posted by Verto
What was wrong with the dialogue?

It's the exact same every time. In Fallout (and Arcanum) there would be many factors that really changed it up such as reputation, karma, previous actions, intelligence, and charisma. The conversations were at times long and with many choices, which were really branching. From that you really had to think about what to say to get information/accomplish what you set out to do.

[LDiCesare]

In Morrowind, the way dialogue works is: increase your dialogue skills by talking to unimportant people, bribing them, etc. This gives you a chance to reach the required level so that when you talk to an important NPC, they will react as you want (I saw this only once in the game). You can also get extra options when you want to talk, but are very limited in these options (this happens once in the whole game as far as I remember, near the very end).
The problem is not so much the system is broken in Morrowind. It works but is very very very awkward (clikcing the option when it is shown is quite hard) and is almost never used, which makes social interactions in that game a joke.
Also, dialogue should depend not only on your own speech skill but also on your clothes, race, sex, intelligence, etc. For instance in Arcanum, people would talk very differently to a barbarian-dressed half elf, an intelligent half orc, a stupid human or a nice looking woman. And your dialogue options would also vary.

[pg]

Originally posted by Verto
What was wrong with the dialogue?

lack of personality and character is the main thing. this is mostly because almost all dialogues are exactly the same(as mentioned). the real problem is morrowind was just too big. there is no way for a game with thousands of npcs to have good dialogue unless it's all randomly generated(which has problems of it's own see daggerfall). compared to a game like fallout(less than a few hundred npcs, and probably even less than talk a lot) so it's understandable how much the quality suffers.

massive environment is a very good selling feature for morrowind but in a way it's pointless because the majority of people probably won't even interact with a third of what's there. why build such a huge game if most people aren't going to play it? fallout 2 felt like a huge world but it really wasn't at all. the content was much higher quality so i usually wanted to complete quests(where i ignore 90%+ in morrowind) and it was much better balanced so i couldn't do anything i wanted. i hope fo3 is balanced well because daggerfall and morrowind weren't at all.