7th May 2008, 6:24 PM
If changes are the problem, then why is your constant complaint about anything that Bethesda does is that its "different". Doesn't that imply that changes ARE the problem here?
Look, I would have liked to have seen Black Isle finish up Van Buren and all that, but it didn't happen and it's never going to happen. The more you pine for the good old days and drag that rotten corpse around with you the more you become jaded about anything that anyone else does with the franchise because admitting that someone else can do it just as well or almost as well with some changes to the overall game design will be admitting that Black Isle is as dead as dead can be and that you'll never be able to go back to that happy time when they were still around.
Let me be blunt here. The Fallout franchise was already starting to get a bit stale by the time that Fallout 2 came out. Why? Because Fallout 2 wasn't so much of a sequel as it was an expansion pack. Combat was the same, texture palletes were largely the same, some of the towns were reproduced, some of the music was reused, and so on. Is that really what all the Fallout fanatics want? A Fallout 3 that's only a graphical update of Fallout 2 which was, at best, an expansion pack of Fallout 1? How is that in any way, shape, or form a good thing? Stagnation is terrible and one of the worst things that can happen to a franchise.
Mario did nearly everything it could in 2D, so it had to move to 3D. Then, it did every it could in the normal confines of what 3D platforming meant, so it evolved into something radically different. Mario in space?! How preposterous! But the important thing is that it worked because the crew working it on it had the talent and the vision to make it happen. And that, hopefully, is what will happen here. That's also why these changes don't bother me, because they aren't terrible and they're not so ridiculous as to make a mockery of the source material.
The opposite was what caused at least some of my dislike for the Halo series. Halo 3 was almost exacly the same as Halo 2 was almost exacly the same as Halo 1. The problems of first game weren't corrected and there was little to shake up the basics enough to make me overlook those problems.
I can understand the criticism thrown around at the other Fallout games. One was done by a nothing studio who's only previous title was a Micro Machines game and the other was by an Interplay that was already on its last leg. Neither had the time, money, or skill to make their respective games truly work.
On the other hand, Fallout 3 is done a studio that has proven that they have some talent, time, and money to deliver a polished product capable of providing hours of entertainment. Almost every peice of information that I've seen so far has shown an effort to move away from the Oblivion formula and do something different.
Sometimes change can be bad, but stagnation is always bad.
Look, I would have liked to have seen Black Isle finish up Van Buren and all that, but it didn't happen and it's never going to happen. The more you pine for the good old days and drag that rotten corpse around with you the more you become jaded about anything that anyone else does with the franchise because admitting that someone else can do it just as well or almost as well with some changes to the overall game design will be admitting that Black Isle is as dead as dead can be and that you'll never be able to go back to that happy time when they were still around.
Let me be blunt here. The Fallout franchise was already starting to get a bit stale by the time that Fallout 2 came out. Why? Because Fallout 2 wasn't so much of a sequel as it was an expansion pack. Combat was the same, texture palletes were largely the same, some of the towns were reproduced, some of the music was reused, and so on. Is that really what all the Fallout fanatics want? A Fallout 3 that's only a graphical update of Fallout 2 which was, at best, an expansion pack of Fallout 1? How is that in any way, shape, or form a good thing? Stagnation is terrible and one of the worst things that can happen to a franchise.
Mario did nearly everything it could in 2D, so it had to move to 3D. Then, it did every it could in the normal confines of what 3D platforming meant, so it evolved into something radically different. Mario in space?! How preposterous! But the important thing is that it worked because the crew working it on it had the talent and the vision to make it happen. And that, hopefully, is what will happen here. That's also why these changes don't bother me, because they aren't terrible and they're not so ridiculous as to make a mockery of the source material.
The opposite was what caused at least some of my dislike for the Halo series. Halo 3 was almost exacly the same as Halo 2 was almost exacly the same as Halo 1. The problems of first game weren't corrected and there was little to shake up the basics enough to make me overlook those problems.
I can understand the criticism thrown around at the other Fallout games. One was done by a nothing studio who's only previous title was a Micro Machines game and the other was by an Interplay that was already on its last leg. Neither had the time, money, or skill to make their respective games truly work.
On the other hand, Fallout 3 is done a studio that has proven that they have some talent, time, and money to deliver a polished product capable of providing hours of entertainment. Almost every peice of information that I've seen so far has shown an effort to move away from the Oblivion formula and do something different.
Sometimes change can be bad, but stagnation is always bad.
Sometimes you get the scorpion.