I *know* WHY Fallout 3 sucks! (descriptions)

Wow, you know what, I was thinking that just a minute ago as I fired the game up. There've been a few times when I walked up to something, like those somehow pristine motorcycles, and felt and urge to "examine" them to see what I could learn, but alas, Bethsoft must not have considered that very important.

 

Complete lack of descriptions is a big flaw of the game. But one and only icon for every single misc item is even worse. Dropping things just to see how they look or what some of them are is annoying thing.

 

Yeah, every time I open my inventory, I feel like I should be reading an item description. Also, why would Bethesda be willing to make the models for each junk item, but not an icon for the inventory?

 

Re: I *know* WHY Fallout 3 sucks!

I never really noticed until you mentioned it that the descriptions aren't there. Yeah, it kinda sucks, but I would hardly call it the "backbone" of the Fallout experience. To me, exploring all the strange nooks and crannies of the Wasteland is the "backbone" of the fallout experience, and in that regard Bethesda has created something very cool, something quite awesome. For what it lacks in descriptions it makes up for in the decrepit beauty of the wasteland.

 

Re: I *know* WHY Fallout 3 sucks!

Yea it seems like a pretty drastic oversight, if you're spending the time and money to give everything a 3d model making an icon seems like an obvious amount of effort. I guess it's done to better categorize "junk", but they have an inventory tab for that!

 

Re: I *know* WHY Fallout 3 sucks!

Exploring FO3 is the same as Oblivion. At first you think, "Wow, this is huge!"

Then you realize, you are just exploring some copy / paste landscape with no rewards for exploration.

 

Re: I *know* WHY Fallout 3 sucks!

It wasn't an oversight, they've said in the past that they don't believe in text descriptions and that "with today's technology, you can show the player everything so there's no need for text descriptions" (paraphrasing of course).

 

That's why nobody writes books anymore, UG. They're so out-dated and archaic when you can just show an audience everything on the big screen. Ever watch a movie based on a book? That's some immersion right there, free from all them words.

 

Re: I *know* WHY Fallout 3 sucks!

Are we playing the same game? I've found all kinds of unique items exploring the wasteland. Exploring the waste is the best part of the game, the main quest is just so bayud

 

Re: I *know* WHY Fallout 3 sucks!

Oh yes, you're undeniably right. Bethesda's whole rotten philosophy is that their games give you an actual virtual reality experience that is totally believable and convincing. By that thinking the objects you encounter need no description, because nothing exists beyond what you see. They don't have to tell you a car is beat-up and will never run again, because that should be obvious from looking at it.

Another failed attempt at supplanting imagination. Or a successful attempt, for people with no imagination to start with.

 

Re: I *know* WHY Fallout 3 sucks!

I think we have a different connotation of "reward" in this game. Loot is really not all there is to it, and besides the loot is often not that great and there isn't that much unique loot either. I remember how pissed I was exploring a dungeon for some 3 hours just to hit a wall and find two broken rifles. Awsome.

 

Re: I *know* WHY Fallout 3 sucks!

I agree. Those comments made it a bit like there was a competent GM around ready to describe most of elements of the world.
It was one of the thing that made Fallout stand out in the crowd of other cRPGs. It has nice graphics, but unlike in a lot of other cRPGs with nice graphics, someone made effort to write all these descriptions.

 

You should all go to this thread:

http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=46721

 

Re: I *know* WHY Fallout 3 sucks!

This is totally funny, If you are planning to give some realistic experience at least you should have some decent graphics, I don't why everyone loves fallout graphics but just check out any other AAAA title in the market during the 2008, all of them are just better than it.

When it comes to graphics F3 is no Heavy Rain or MGS 4 after all.

 

I totally agree with Ravager...and telling crap like "look we got 3d graphic, we dont need descriptions! we can see everything!" is just meh ;/ another "console" type of argument...
U guys can imagine games like planescape torment, baldurs gate series (or fallout) without those descriptions giving fuel to our imagination ?

 

IMO Fallout (and some other great games) was made of many little things. Not just the name of the game, or a post-apo feeling inspired by 50's imagination are important (these are major things), but those little things like: item descriptions, dialogues, even floating text from your enemies during the combat, etc. Fallout had lots of little things, but FO3 doesn't have that, only some small major things (graphics and design).

 

Baldur's Gate series didn't have these descriptions (only descriptions of items) and in PsT there was a very limited amount of descriptions outside of dialogues and items.