Still fantastic, a little buggy

[prog]

Fallout 3 continues to be a tremendous piece of work. I am really having some problems putting the damn thing away. The game's clock says I've put over 40 hours into it, which I grudgingly believe to be accurate. (Hmm, I don't know if it counts time that I spend staring at my status screen, which is how I sometimes leave it paused for a while.) EIther way, this is the most engaging CRPG I have ever played. I like it so much that I am choosing to look past its recent habit of locking up whenever I try to use certain doors, or fast-travel to certain locations. (The fact it has a good autosave system also helps.)

My character has really gotten her ninja on. The first few levels were a little rough (as is so for any PC who voluntarily takes a low-hit-die class) but she became so adept at the snipey-snipey that I've turned up the game's difficulty level. This makes open combat more expensive, and therefore makes all this sneaking seem more worthwhile. I am predicting that when I've completed the game with this character, I'll go back to the start and roll up a big bruiser, just to see how differently the game plays. I don't do this, normally. Crazy.

I sometimes run across other recent, not-quite-buggy In-play oddities, which I assume are the different NPC's scripts colliding in strange ways. Last night I discovered a minor character lying dead in the center of the town my PC lives in. There was no explanation for it, and none of the NPCs were paying any mind to him. After looting his corpse (hey, it's still an RPG), I picked him up and waved him around at passers-by, but they just said their usual scripted "Hello! Nice day!" greetings to me, their friendly-if-eccentric young neighbor. I then had some Weekend at Bernie's fun, propping him up in a chair outside of my house, but he kept sliding off. I settled on taking an empty bottle and laying it by his head: there, it just looks like he's merely dead drunk, now. Much better. Role playing!!

Comments

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I saw an extended TV commercial for Fallout 3 (which I can't find online anywhere) with sound bites from one of the designers saying that he explicitly wanted people to get addicted and call in sick to work etc. It was kind of startling how it was almost the exact opposite of Braid's philosophy of "your time and attention is precious". I almost posted to the Gameshelf weblog about it.

[prog.livejournal.com]

There are multiple interpretations of Jon's design-epigram (a statement which, incidentally, I think is brilliant). I find myself stating it aloud at my TV or monitor when a game punishes me for failure by making me redo something I already did successfully. This is a situation that's nearly impossible to get into in Braid. This continual novelty, its presenting you with challenges and situations that are unique within the game, are what I believe he means by the statement. If Braid were, somehow, 50 hours long instead of 5 to 10, I think it would still be true.

I don't feel that Fallout 3 violates it because I don't feel like I'm grinding; the game continues to present me with novelty, and a sense of moving forward and discovering new things. At no point do I think, "OK, I need to bulk up a couple of levels before I can enter this next dungeon." In fact, I have yet to think "Ugh, another dungeon." (Where "dungeon" means "blown-out subway station or abandoned robotics factory or something".) This is where its design-predecessor, Oblivion, fell short; Oblivion was beautiful and had a lot of clever stuff going on, but it fell into tedium an awful lot. I would have enjoyed it less if not for the novelty of the entire experience, but that only lasts for so long.