Project Reality Forums

martov wrote:dont blame fallout 3, content is much more difficult to create in 3d than in 2d, so I dont blame F3 for not having as much content as F2 or 1.

It is absolutely their fault. I put the blame on them 100%.

Fallout was never meant to be played from a first person 3D perspective. The original Fallout 3 from Interplay still had an isometric view much like Fallout 1 and Fallout 2. Interplay then sold the rights to Fallout out to Bethesda (they needed to liquidate their assets beforehand due to bankruptcy and employment lawsuits).

Using the 3D engine solved the following things, none of which are related to creating a great game and honoring the Fallout franchise:

• They could simple mod the existing engine that powered Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. All it took was a few minor engine upgrades and new art assets. Much easier than implementing a new isometric engine (something Fallout deserved imho).
• It would appeal to a larger market. 2D/Top Down games are not as exciting for the casual gaming community. They like eye candy and, for some reason, a lot of game studios feel that eye candy == 3D first person.

Top down games being ported to 3D engines is hands down my biggest pet peeve with the gaming industry today. It's a cost management decision through and through. While it may cost more to develop a 3D engine, they feel it will generate more sales. They can also re-hash existing game engines (as in the case of Fallout 3) to cut development time and costs. Also, by standardizing 3D engines they can focus their hiring of employees to a specific niche of game development, including artists. The only thing that suffers is the game itself.

Fallout is the perfect example of a game that should never have been ported to a 3D engine -- a first person one no less.

• Artwork from a 2D perspective looks a lot more realistic and believable than 3D will ever look. It's simply easier to create. Since it doesn't take as much processing power, the concept of "detailed textures" is irrelevant. Everything has one perspective and can look freaking awesome. This is why concept art and pre-rendered 3D animations always look so amazing -- they are pre-rendered! The game engine is not responsible for rendering tons of objects on the fly. You could pack a town with as many "static objects" as you want with no performance decrease whatsoever.
• It's more accessible to more people. Since the performance requirements are negligible, 8 year old computers would be able to run it. Even if the perspective was "top down" and the engine was still 3D, the system requirements would still be much lower because lower resolution graphics look great from a distance if they're developed to work that way.
• With 2D or top down, less work needs to be put on the engine and more can be focused on the gameplay. The budget for Fallout 3 was HUGE. Guess where all the money went? One thing people fail to realize is the amount of work and employees it takes to maintain a game engine. They need more testers, more quality assurance personnel, and way more talented programmers who can quickly fix bugs as they arise. The amount of code is also much larger, which means more development/debugging tools are necessary to maintain the game engine.
• Other bells and whistles also become less relevant. For example, it never bothered me that in Fallout 2 most characters didn't speak. There were only a handful of NPCs that had fully rendered 3D faces and could speak. These were of course pre-rendered, which is why they looked so good for that time. What made Fallout great was the dialogue itself. It's considered one of the most immersive games of all time and yet most of the dialog was text based.
• Half-Life is the perfect example of a game that looks great, but it becomes completely irrelevant by mid-game. Once you enjoy the graphics for the first few levels, it becomes "normalized" from the player's perspective. It's no longer impressive. It no longer "ooohs" and "aaahs" you. This is the nature of FPS though. The graphics are only impressive for the first little while and afterwards all that's left is the gameplay. This is *exactly* why the Modern Warfare 2 campaign is so short! Instead of focusing on impressive gameplay that keeps you attached to the game, they focused on impressive visuals and other spectacles that kept you going. No studio or producer has the resources to create a game with 200 hours of gameplay while maintaining that amount of eye candy -- so MW2 was a short game.
• Fallout 2's game version is currently 1.02d! For those that don't understand software versioning, this basically means that there were 2 bug fix releases (1.01, 1.02) and 4 minor bug fix releases (1.02a, 1.02b, 1.02c, 1.02d). Also note that not every version is released to the public. The developers have a todo list and when they're done and mark the tasks as complete, they increase the version number so they can maintain a consistent version history of the software. It may go through testing and more bugs are found, so they go back and release another version. Eventually it is released to the public.
  
  Just the fact that the game didn't get up to 1.1 means a lot. A 1.1 release is a major release with a many many bug fixes and sometimes new features.
  
  By comparison, BF2 is on version 1.5 - that's five major release and who knows how many minor ones! Fallout 3 is on version 1.7, seven major releases and definitely a ton of minor internal ones. COD4 is also on release 1.7.
  
  Seeing a pattern? Games with 3D engines are riddled with bugs because the code base is massive. This isn't a big deal for first person shooters because that's their nature -- they are more complicated graphically. However, the fact that very immersive and otherwise amazing 2D/Top Down games are being ported means that the development/producer studios are putting more weight on the visual appeal of a game than the gameplay and content itself.
• There's also the (not as important) issue of making games pass ESRB ratings. Notice how the only games who catch flack for being too violent or too gory are 3D first person shooters (or 3rd person, in the case of GTA4). Top down games rarely (if ever?) get this kind of flack, mainly because they are easily portrayed as games. Fallout 2 as it was would never pass a teen rating today if it was 3D first person. If it was top down, no one would care.

My point is not that all games should be 2D or something -- if you've read this far I'm sure you see that. All I'm saying is that games that were once blockbusters in a 2D or Top Down perspective are being destroyed as franchises because they're being ported over to 3D first person. As I said in my original post, all this does provide a short term sales streak and the game dies out because it has no substance.

It also saddens me that studios with huge budgets are throwing it all away on eye candy. It still doesn't look like real life and it still has clearly has visible flaws that people always make fun of (like the facial animations in Fallout 3 or Elder Scrolls: Oblivion).

Imagine if those big budgets were put towards paying more/better writers, talented artists and game designers? A man can dream...

Cassius wrote: Also i do not see how the battlefield series was ever different from what it is today.

it's a lot different, sights, graphics, map setups. it's all become more linear. gameplay remains relatively the same but the way the maps are built now is what's bringing the BF franchise down for me. everything is placed conveniently for you to use as cover or theres a conveniently placed hole in the wall sort of thing. none of that existed in BF1942 it was all open ground for you to figure out how you wanted to get there and how you were going to make it in alive.

no then onto the Later BF series that being BF2 modern combat, and BFBC etc. dumbed down again. sniper 1 hit KOs anywhere where in BF1942 it had to be a head shot. a rifle firing the same caliber as any other weapon is 10 times more powerful just because theres a scope on it etc.


COD i like the originals, didnt play much of it on console but now that you cant "die" it really sucks, i mean it only takes 1 or 2 bullets to kill an enemy on campaign but you can take an RPG to the foot and be up again with a quick stab of a needle by your buddy?

Bringerof_D wrote: COD i like the originals, didnt play much of it on console but now that you cant "die" it really sucks, i mean it only takes 1 or 2 bullets to kill an enemy on campaign but you can take an RPG to the foot and be up again with a quick stab of a needle by your buddy?

It isn't really all that different on Project Reality

But I agree, PC gaming has really taken a turn for the worse. I haven't bought a PC game (or any game, for that matter) since last year. I've been playing Project Reality and a few other BF2 mods since. I don't see any game in the forseeable future that really sparks my interest.

The only game I ever bought is BF2 lolol, and F.E.A.R 2 was very fun btw, waiting for the next one...