Fallout 3 Comments by Oli Welsh

Oh gosh, another victim of the hype machine???

yikes!
damn, I was looking forward to this. do they have time to er, fix it?

Oh dear...

That's disgusting: http://images.eurogamer.net/assets/artic...

Having watched the E3 trailers and material, the preview sounds about right. Not quite sure where the enthusiasm many show is coming from.

Wow, far more negative than I'd expected. Still, given that I'm brokey broke broke, I'm not going to be too unhappy if it's gash....

Not quite sure where the enthusiasm many show is coming from.

In the media? Probably along the lines of "want an exclusive preview? Here, have this, sign this, and write this when you're done. Ta ta-a!"

Oh well, at least there are other games coming out that might be good...

i thought this game looked incredibly dull when shown in the MS press conference, although coming from the people behind oblivion i'm not surprised.

No, I meant more the reaction of gamers to the E3 trailers - some people were positively creaming themselves. I thought the combat looked a bit dubious, and rather sterile despite their gore-em-up efforts.

hmmm...

that didn't sound all too good

I can cope with wonky animations and bad real time combat if the pause thing works out and the RPG elements are ok

but the stuff about the art direction sounded scary, I knew this was gonna be one of these brown/gray games but I'm so tired of those...

like this is turning out it's all gonna be up to Pete and Lionhead to save my RPG autumn, and that's a very scary thought, for once Pete, don't dissapoint us, we _will_ skin you and feed you to _my_ dog

Wow, even the preview is negative. This doesn't bode well!

oh noes :(

"But beyond that, there are simple questions of quality that it's impossible to avoid: characterless art, cold visuals, wonky animation, weak real-time combat, off-kilter writing. As it stands, Fallout 3 just doesn't feel right, and it will leave many players shivering for warmth in its nuclear winter."

Oh-oh... :(

I actually through the gameplay footage shown on the 360 Marketplace (the announcement video) looked pretty good myself but after reading EG's overly negative preview I'm starting to get worried.

Well, this sort of confirmed my worst fears after seeing the E3 stuff. I was still holding out a little bit of hope that they wouldn't completely destroy it.

Ah, well.

It's a shame to see such a well crafted IP mangled in Bethesda's clumsy hands.

right wait for the reviews on the pc version before buying me thinks

Guess I can cancel my pre-order for this then!

Oh b****, I can't think of anything else to say really. I was so looking forward to this.

I think I will remain sitting on the fence for this.

As a firm member of the Fallout Fan Boy camp (I'm a massive fan, Fallout is still one of my fav games to play through) I will keep to my overly optimistic mood...

But I fear this is starting to snowball out of control in all the wrong places.

Could it be they have aimed it toward the retard crowd of FPS obsessed spotty oiks? Dear Jesus I hope not!

Now, you would hope somebody at Bethesda actually realized that Oblivion was smeared by the awful character design and animation, and decided to do something about it before embarking on making a new Fallout.

Seems you'd be thinking too highly of them.

Of course it doesn't feel right. This is Bethesda taking a license that isn't their own. They've never done it right with an other's license!

Previews mean nothing anyway

I was actually quite looking forward to this game but its a decent point to remember about the shoddy animation of the characters in oblivion. Imagine that animation in a game such as Max Payne 2, hopping on the spot, bad physics.. it would basically crap on the shooter aspect completely in Fallout. I was very hopefully over the storyline, a half-hour playthrough cant really give that away, but still you'd expect a stellar preview and anything less is a bit disappointing.

Finally, someone tells it the way it is. I couldn't believe all the excitement and "zomg Fallout 3 looks amazing" I read as I was following peoples' comments as the press conference was taking place. How embarrassing for them.

//Conversation and bartering are two aspects of the game that we regretfully don't get anywhere near experiencing at E3, but given Bethesda's record and Fallout's history,

Well nope actually given Bethesda's history in Oblivion compared to Fallout history we can suspect this aspect of the game will be even worse than mentioned visual glitches.

Anyway nice to see some reviewer not drooling himself over the flying body parts of VATS.

so, it's oblivion with a fallout mod? =s

@hiddenranbir: "They've never done it right with an other's license!" - Terminator: Future Shock was good. But that's about it.

I'm still cautiously optimistic about FO3, providing it's possible to have VATS active all the time.

I don't care, I'm going to be buying it. If it's medicore, it can go back

Weeps openly

:(

wow.

Completely and utterly different to CVG's 5-hour hands on session.

Im still looking forward to this, I mean guys just because someone says "its not perfect" you all start crying into your milk/beer/cola (delete all that apply). Why not just wait for the reviews before getting all upset.

Oblivion wasnt perfect but was still a great game, I think there will be some issues in F3, but it all depends on how much fun the game is to play and how serious the issues are... and as someone mentioned, now is the time they will be adding all of the polish and bug fixes.

I'm still looking forward to this.
Sod the preview. Oblivion is the only game on current gen so far that I have been blown away by and I will happily buy up more of the same. The shonky combat just adds to the fun.

I liked the article except the part where you call Bethesda misogynistic.

This was 99% over the top based on one line of content and puts doubt over the rest of this article for me.

@ berelain well that 5 hour review seems pretty good, so one of them is wrong, which one :D

Considering the comments on the review, here are the two main points from the CVG review:

"The dialogue and voice-acting throughout seems fine - good even. You shouldn't go in expecting the reams and reams of dialogue that could present itself in Fallout of old, but you should expect the same variation, number of replies and tone.

Can I vouch for it being better, worse or "Argh! So much worse!" than the old games? No, as I haven't met enough people or delved deep enough into their characters (sorry, nma-fallout.com) but I can scientifically state that both acting and dialogue are at least a bazillion times better than Oblivion's. They can put that one on the posters.

This is a very different game, a very special game, and one I simply cannot wait to contaminate myself with come Autumn.

Guess we will soon see.

@ UncleLou

er, isn't Fallout 3 on your Most Wanted list?

@berelain - Wow, that preview sounds amazing. 5 hours aswell rather than 30 mins

"Wadsworth the robot butler who can cut your hair" - sold

"Lady Killer gives you extra damage against female enemies, and "unique dialogue options" when talking to female NPCs. Sorry, Bethesda, that's not satirical, it's just crass and misogynistic."

You miserable bastard.

i'm currently playing through Oblivion again and i still love it, reading this is a bit disheartening but i'm still looking forward to it. if its got a good story then that'll be a big factor for me

"characterless art, cold visuals, wonky animation, weak real-time combat, off-kilter writing. As it stands, Fallout 3 just doesn't feel right": Oblivion all over again. Man, when I think of the amazing art direction of Arena back in the 90's, I wonder how Bethesda got this low. The screenshots we've been seing for a while had been enough for me to pretty much mae my mind up about Fallout 3, because it cannot work without an interesting art direction and it seems to be, simply put, crap. Vulgar, ugly, derivative.

SecondMiltia (isn't there a spelling error in your name?): ???
The introductory bit about E3 was great, informative, and funny, an excellent approach to the core content, and the way Welsh starts out by pre-emptively qualifying his subsequent statements, before bashing the game on several fronts that have very little chance of being much improved before launch (the terrible writing for instance, and the overall lack of personality) are perfectly sensible - and totally professional, of course. Why do you think the journalists are invited at E3? The publishers need that kind of coverage, that's why they have the devs prepare 30-minute gameplay chunks for that purpose.
You're not a journalist, and it shows.
As to everyone "lapping it up", well, the press is a reference, you know, so people tend to turn to it as a point of reference when considering the value of a game or anything else...

uh oh! Might save me some money though.

I hope…

1) Eurogamer got a crappy pre-alpha build with a big to-do list of fixes
or
2) Bethesda read this preview and delay the game by six months to make it betterer

For an October launch, you'd think it would be going gold in September, which gives them about six weeks of polishing. Two months tops. Erk.

Sounds disapointing . is it my imagination or have most recent ' previews / hands on ' been rather negative . including mercanaries 2 ( I think I spelled that wrong . no not the 2 ) . At least we can be fairly sure that eurogamer isn't fawning round the developers to get freebies and exclusives . every games gets hyped , people get paid lots for doing it ,some live up to expectations and some dont . just be wary of games that come out with no review copys sent to sites like eurogamer .
See . I'm hyping up Eurogamer . thats 3 times I've typed eurogamer now . ( 4 now )

the CVG preview does sound rather more positive.

But then, I wasn't holding my hopes up for this article after reading the first few lines. Seems to me that if someone goes into a playtest of an alpha build of an in-development game and starts off with that kind of negative attitude the preview is going to come out pretty bad.

What happened to the unwritten rule of minimal critisism in previews? Not that i mind, we all know the games rarely change in any big way. Still want it though.

OH GOD NO!

Expected.

"Lady killer" is a bit funny...

Maybe a good injection of negativity is what we need to bring the expectation down a notch.

Yeah, I'm all for not hyping the fuck out of something for once.

Something smells funny here. EG are the only ones moaning about this game...

NMA haven't paid you off have they?

Dear oh dear. This will stir up the crazies at NMA. It does sound a bit rubbish.