Fallout 4! In like 4 1/2 months, its real.

[ElectricSheep]

there can be no comparison between the two no matter how you want to draw it other then it was made by the same company

 

I complain because I like, nobody forces you to read it. Modding is the only reason why I'm interested in Bethesda games.

[ElectricSheep]

Thanks! Unfortunately, I'm sure you'll soon be back with another "stop bitching and moaning it's immature!!!11". Because you're so mature.

[Coopervane]

 

 

As was pointed out a few times, the Dawnguard and Civil War storylines are the most disliked storylines, and those allow exactly the same choice and cut-off point that you guys are asking for. 

I barely touched the main quest in Skyrim (I didn't want to trigger the dragons), so I have no idea what Civil War is all about, but from what I've read people hate it due to how poorly implemented and content lacking it is. I did, however, finish Dawnguard and it's NOTHING how I imagine properly executed choices and consequences. The whole questline is insanely retarded and whack-a-mole, hence it's no wonder why people tend to dislike it. Serana and her juvenile dialogue lines is enough to facepalm on regular basis.

 

The civil war was really well set up, the fact that people can still debate which of the two sides is the lesser evil to this day is a testament to that. But then you start the questline and discover that it's a clowncar.

 

The vast majority of what you do in that questline is get sent to one of the abandoned forts, and then for a solid 5-10 minutes or so the game just has random soldiers pile out of the forts doors like a clowncar, and you just stand there and swing a weapon untill they stop comming and you're told that you won. Then you move on to the next fort.

 

There's a few other short missions sprinkled in between, but mostly it's just a dungeon-crawl at the start and then these whack-a-mole fort battles, that is the main thing i remember from it, and it all culminates in you going to Windhelm/Solitude to have a slightly longer whack-a-mole clowncar fight there. The whole thing is pretty short too, it takes perhabs about as long as the College of winterhold questline? There about i'd say.

 

 

My reaction to playing it the first time was one of dull disappointment. After the really good setup for the conflict, the actual gameplay and mission design of the whole affair was an anticlimax. If you felt Dawnguard got inane and whack-a-moly, then know that it was an inprovemnt over the civil war..

 

To it's credit though, beating the questline actually has some semblence of consequence, unlike when you defeat Alduin and absolutely nothing changes, and nobody even seems to realize that you went and did a thing (you know, nothing big, i just went and picked up some leeks, and then saved the entire world, but there's no need to even mention that), NPC's actually have dialog pertaining to which side won and how that has impacted their lives. So that's good atleast, and it might even be worth playing through this questline just to see that content after it's done.

 

So yeah, i'd say that peoples dislike of the civil war and dawnguard questlines has little to do with them having to pick a side, and everything to do with the gameplay in these questlines beeing inane, repetitive, unrewarding, and rapidly outstaying it's welcome (i think what really kills Dawnguard for people are the looooooong trecks through the Soulcairn, and then that.. other place with the wayshrines, ugh, so long, so tedious, so barren and repetitive).

 

 

What i'd really want to see in the future are more quests designed like the Dark Brotherhood questline. I think the main two things this questline did right, and why it is held up as one of the best of the game, is that it had gameplay variety (it wasen't purely combat focused), and it didn't cast the player as some Superman cleaving their way through waves of enemies, these missions were more about using your smarts to get to the target, and then making your daring esape, it allowed the player to feel like there were some stakes.

 

Skyrim, more so then previous titles, really had a problem of everything boiling down to combat, there was very little content that wasen't just "go to X, kill waves of dudes, come back". That's repetitive game design on it's own, but it's made worse by the game not having amazing combat mechanics, they weren't nearly strong enough to carry the game (dark souls it is not).

 

 

I wonder if we could hope for more variety in Fo4..

[Guest]

I will buy this game when Sexlab is made and an extensive Vault Meat mod is ready.

I am actually quite optimistic because a lot of stuff from skyrim may be possible to be ported to FO4.

[Guest]

I will buy this game when Sexlab is made and an extensive Vault Meat mod is ready.

I am actually quite optimistic because a lot of stuff from skyrim may be possible to be ported to FO4.

 

Just one dramatic doubt in my mind: will be the NIF format exactly the same?

[Guest]

 

I will buy this game when Sexlab is made and an extensive Vault Meat mod is ready.

I am actually quite optimistic because a lot of stuff from skyrim may be possible to be ported to FO4.

 

Just one dramatic doubt in my mind: will be the NIF format exactly the same?

 

 

Why would they change it? the current modded skyrim looks almost as good, if not better, than the preview FO4. If they change it there has to be a reason, it costs money to develop new things like that.

[Guest]

 

Why would they change it? the current modded skyrim looks almost as good, if not better, than the preview FO4. If they change it there has to be a reason, it costs money to develop new things like that.

 

 

Let me explain my point (doubt):

 

Still use the Dx9 engine? Nooo. -> Need to improve the pure graphic engine. -> Need to store somewhere the new items to render -> NIF format needs to be extended.

Impacts on the CK? Zero.

[Guest]

That's a valid point, and they are always getting criticized for having substandard models and graphics.

Just looking at Witcher 3 vs FO4 its quite easy to see the difference.

I guess we just have to wait till mid or late 2016 because that usually when they roll out CK along with news of DLCs.

[Guest]

As far as I know the CK for FO4 is planned for Jan 2016.

[GrimReaper]

 

 

The civil war was really well set up, the fact that people can still debate which of the two sides is the lesser evil to this day is a testament to that. But then you start the questline and discover that it's a clowncar.

 

The vast majority of what you do in that questline is get sent to one of the abandoned forts, and then for a solid 5-10 minutes or so the game just has random soldiers pile out of the forts doors like a clowncar, and you just stand there and swing a weapon untill they stop comming and you're told that you won. Then you move on to the next fort.

 

 

 

I wonder if we could hope for more variety in Fo4..

 

 

I guess the only reason the civil war quest shipped with the game was how deeply rooted it was into everything in the game. For one reason or another, they realized during development that making the civil war quest how they would have wanted it to be wasn't possible, so they gutted it, then gutted it some more and chopped off its arms and legs. The civil war was meant to be much, much more than what you see in the game. Apollodown is the only one that tried to redo the cut content and his mod is pretty unstable and installing it is pretty mucg asking for a broken game. From what I've gathered, the civil war was supposed to be a fully dynamic quest, your chosen side could even lose the war altogether. So yeah, the civil war quest that came with Skyrim is a band-aid for a heavily mutilated corpse.

 

 

That's a valid point, and they are always getting criticized for having substandard models and graphics.

Just looking at Witcher 3 vs FO4 its quite easy to see the difference.

I guess we just have to wait till mid or late 2016 because that usually when they roll out CK along with news of DLCs.

That's because players have no idea what they're talking about, most of the time. The Witcher can have better graphics because the engine doesn't need to calculate a few dozen scripts and persistent actors. Generic NPCs are spawned and despawned when they are needed and have no AI besides some kind of swarm intelligence that tells them when/where to spawn, when/where to despawn and which way they walk. Personally I don't want that in FO/TES games, there's enough games where everything is just a staged spectacle for the player to look at.

[afa]

Civil War has so much potential to be much more. Look at Season Unending, it is tied to the main quest in a pretty reasonable way.

That scene alone convey so much about the directions that could have gone in terms of tone and world setting. The strange alliance and foe between all the factions involve, empire, blades, greybeards, thalmor, stormcloak, Whiterun, and even the Dragonborn all technically have different interests at play.

[Coopervane]

They just went about it the wrong way i feel, because again, what they were apparently trying to accomplish was combat focused.

 

This was doomed to fail on this game engine i feel, what would really be needed to sell that was huge epic battles with tons of actors on screen, and the Creation-engine was always destined to fail them there, it would never have been that Helms Deep scale battle that people would want from it, so it was probably destined to disappoint even if they did manage to get those dynamic quests up and running.

 

 

Given the limitations, i'd say the far more interesting direction they could have taken this was to cast the player as a spy and saboteur rather than a soldier. I could think of a lot of cool ways they could have designed quests around that premise, quests that would have a lot more variety than just fighting waves of dudes (not that the concept would preclude combat focused missions, that could have been there aswell).

 

Ahh well, fun things that didn't happen..

[GrimReaper]

Leftover dialogue, markers, quest updates, and other evidence suggests that at one time the game's developers intended the Civil War to be much more dynamic and complex than it currently is. Taking a hold would have involved capturing the outlying villages and/or points of interest as well as completing the regular missions. In addition, sieges like those seen during Battle For Whiterun and the final two battles were intended to occur with each hold capture. On top of this, the opposing side would actively participate in the war, which would have forced players to play defensive as well as offensive missions. Finally, it would have been possible for the opposing side to lose their main capital yet still have other holds, meaning the final battle may have taken place elsewhere (for example, for the Stormcloaks the final battle could also have taken place in Markarth, as well as Solitude.)

 

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Civil_War

 

Those stupid capture the fort missions were an afterthought and an attempt to salvage what was already in the game and working, I suppose.

[ElectricSheep]

Why was the content axed? Gamebryo 2.0 Totally-new-never-seen-before Creation Engine started having seizures or did they simply ran out of time? 

[Captain Cobra]

Honestly?  Probably both.

[GrimReaper]

Why was the content axed? Gamebryo 2.0 Totally-new-never-seen-before Creation Engine started having seizures or did they simply ran out of time? 

 

I suppose you can blame the consoles for that. The engine for Skyrim was made to work with consoles, and consoles only can do so much. If there's something in a game that goes beyond the capabilities of a console, you have no choice but to remove it.

[afa]

If it is about npc count the series was never good at handling large amount Oblivion and Fallout 3 were the same. Morrowind didn't even try.

If any Skyrim went the furthest with the number of active npcs on screen.

 

If it is about quest branches and design console or not have little impact, the number of possibilities was probably getting crazy and have to be abandon or didn't have the time to execute it. Bummer either way.

[ElectricSheep]

Back on topic, Bethesda should really hire better 3D artists.

 

Just look at this fuckness, look at it:

 

 

It's not even the low-res texture or mesh that renders the scene so hideously dumpy, but the fucking normal map that is all over the place. I can't find a spot on that armor that wouldn't be stretched or shrink for god's sake. And the worst part is, it's practically unfixable.

 

Anatomical correctness of Bethesda humanoid models needs no introduction.

[windpl]

Back on topic, Bethesda should really hire better 3D artists.

 

Just look at this fuckness, look at it:

 

 

It's not even the low-res texture or mesh that renders the scene so hideously dumpy, but the fucking normal map that is all over the place. I can't find a spot on that armor that wouldn't be stretched or shrink for god's sake. And the worst part is, it's practically unfixable.

 

Anatomical correctness of Bethesda humanoid models needs no introduction.

 

That because he got arrow in his knee.

[Sacremas]

No he got a sweetroll stuck up his ass after I was fisting him. I left it there in case he gets hungry later on, given he's not carrying any bags and he gotta keep his lunch somewhere. Plus cops and donuts and guards and sweetroll, it was a social experiment. He ended up just walking funny.

[ElectricSheep]

 

Back on topic, Bethesda should really hire better 3D artists.

 

Just look at this fuckness, look at it:

 

 

It's not even the low-res texture or mesh that renders the scene so hideously dumpy, but the fucking normal map that is all over the place. I can't find a spot on that armor that wouldn't be stretched or shrink for god's sake. And the worst part is, it's practically unfixable.

 

Anatomical correctness of Bethesda humanoid models needs no introduction.

 

That because he got arrow in his knee.

 

[afa]

But here is the thing...does it matter tho?

This is one of those things that mods can solve and I feel like we are letting them slide for the most part in the past because we can be pretty confident in there will mods that remake characters model and textures.

Depending on how mods support will be like that stance might change.

 

Different style and looks each player go for will be different, they can spend dozens of resources on making model and textures that look "good", but it'll never be the animu waifu, chicks with dicks, runway super model, amazon with giant knockers that people wants.

[GrimReaper]

If it is about npc count the series was never good at handling large amount Oblivion and Fallout 3 were the same. Morrowind didn't even try.

If any Skyrim went the furthest with the number of active npcs on screen.

 

If it is about quest branches and design console or not have little impact, the number of possibilities was probably getting crazy and have to be abandon or didn't have the time to execute it. Bummer either way.

 

I am by no means a software developer, but I suppose that dynamic quests add a lot more strain to the system than static ones. The problem with multiplatform games is that the engine of the game needs to accommodate to the weakest system(s), which would be consoles. I think that's the reason why Skyrim can't handle multiple scripts running simultaneously very well, because consoles don't have the power to handle that, so it didn't make sense for Bethesda to develop an engine that would by itself be too much for a console to handle.

 

FO4 will be the same with the difference that it is made for exclusively for the new generation, so we should see some major improvements on all levels, I think.

[ElectricSheep]

 

This is one of those things that mods can solve and I feel like we are letting them slide for the most part in the past because we can be pretty confident in there will mods that remake characters model and textures.

A botched normal map is unfixable; it would require to first redo the map, then redo the high poly version of the mesh (which you can't really redo, you can only make a new one), finally redo the diffuse texture. Which is why no mod known to me ever fixed normal maps when it comes to outfits or armor. It's only possible if the mesh in question is simple or can be relatively easy replaced - so we're talking about static meshes for the most part.

[afa]

Custom armor certainly exist

 

As for the branching civil war, it is probably less about running a bunch of scripts at once, but rather having to create scenario (quests) for each. Attack and defend scenario for each Hold as Stormcloak and Imperial (36), and the final event for each Hold as possible last battle (18).