Fallout 4 - it's official! Coming Nov 10, '15

[Morbus]

Fallout needs a really good return to its isometric TBS roots.

Fat chance of that.

I was there when it happened, in 2004, when Bethesda bought the rights and started development. In fact, I actually shared a few emails with Pete Hines about them creating a Fallout themed game, before they announced the purchase of the IP. But by then they were already in talks with Interplay, so I was just a random kid who emailed them and got a couple of replies, nothing else.

But I was there through development, emailing developers, following news (I was - and still am - a newsposter on the biggest Fallout fansite around), reading everything there was to read, and despite the immense pressure the fans (at the time) of Fallout put up for Bethesda to create a worthy successor, they never had a slightest bit of intentions of doing anything different from what they had in Oblivion.

"We're gonna do what we do best" was Hine's actually quote.

Rosh, one of the guys over at the codex and NMA, actually spoke a bit more with Todd Howard about the whole thing, and, from very early on (a few months after the announcement), he was under no illusions that Fallout 3 was always gonna be Oblivion with guns.

It was always us dumb fans hoping for something different, but, of course, our hopes didn't materialize.

If you don't know who Rosh (Roshambo) is, he was one of the leading Fallout fans during Fallout Tactics development and was very involved with the development itself, in terms of feedback and stuff, and, to this day, the fanbase credits the inclusion of a world map and special encounters and stuff to him, Roshambo, because Micro Forté was not originally gonna include that aspect of the game.

Roshambo has long since fallen off the radar. Very few people know what happened to him, but it doesn't really matter. Just a fan.

 

[Morbus]

TBS (or pause-able)

Turn based and real time with pause are two completely different things.
Heaven and hell different.

Kind of depends on how you define "do well", eh? How long has it been since we've had a AAA, top 10 sales game which is TBS based on an individual or small group? Has there been anything since Diablo? The genre makes more sense if you're running a nation, but seems to me that a TBS game centered on an individual has pretty much fallen to the indie level of funding and sales expectations.

You have to look at the budgets. AAA games cost hundreds of millions to develop, and sell maybe 10 million copies.

A good turn based RPG costs maybe 5 million to develop and if it sells 500 thousand copies it's not a huge success, but it gains the same kind of money (relatively speaking) as the AAA game that sold 10 million.

And how many AAA games sell 10 million?

It's a matter of risk/reward, and turn based RPGs aren't very risky, if you know the market.

Because their crowd is actually pretty easy to please, after all.
a) no brainless fedex quests
b) choices and consequences
c) a bit of challange in the combat

And that's it!

Of course if you're aiming for the stars, you're always gonna fail or poo a crap like TW2 which is as great a cop out as you're likely to see.

 

[werepossum]

Fat chance of that.

I was there when it happened, in 2004, when Bethesda bought the rights and started development. In fact, I actually shared a few emails with Pete Hines about them creating a Fallout themed game, before they announced the purchase of the IP. But by then they were already in talks with Interplay, so I was just a random kid who emailed them and got a couple of replies, nothing else.

But I was there through development, emailing developers, following news (I was - and still am - a newsposter on the biggest Fallout fansite around), reading everything there was to read, and despite the immense pressure the fans (at the time) of Fallout put up for Bethesda to create a worthy successor, they never had a slightest bit of intentions of doing anything different from what they had in Oblivion.

"We're gonna do what we do best" was Hine's actually quote.

Rosh, one of the guys over at the codex and NMA, actually spoke a bit more with Todd Howard about the whole thing, and, from very early on (a few months after the announcement), he was under no illusions that Fallout 3 was always gonna be Oblivion with guns.

It was always us dumb fans hoping for something different, but, of course, our hopes didn't materialize.

If you don't know who Rosh (Roshambo) is, he was one of the leading Fallout fans during Fallout Tactics development and was very involved with the development itself, in terms of feedback and stuff, and, to this day, the fanbase credits the inclusion of a world map and special encounters and stuff to him, Roshambo, because Micro Forté was not originally gonna include that aspect of the game.

Roshambo has long since fallen off the radar. Very few people know what happened to him, but it doesn't really matter. Just a fan.

Don't forget that Interplay had already abandoned the Isometric Turn-Based game. Van Buren was all Interplay and it was a true 3D game; same for Fallout Tactics and the other BoS game I forget, they were all real time combat. Jefferson was a true real time 3D game; Black Isle was merely adding the ability to play turn-based combat to its real time engine to satisfy Interplay. That would be a good thing for Bethesda to add as well, if it's practical. The more flexibility the better. Honestly I don't think it would be all that difficult starting from scratch, but obviously it would mean rescripting every single attack script so unless it's done from the start, it will never happen. And given that Bethesda has apparently used a tarted up version of its existing engine, that argues for never happening. One could simulate it though, using an alternate VAT where the character's points recuperate extremely quickly after being attacked. It would be similar to Van Buren, a real time combat engine with the ability to stop combat and map out attacks but without the full range of options in a RTS engine.

Turn based and real time with pause are two completely different things.
Heaven and hell different.


You have to look at the budgets. AAA games cost hundreds of millions to develop, and sell maybe 10 million copies.

A good turn based RPG costs maybe 5 million to develop and if it sells 500 thousand copies it's not a huge success, but it gains the same kind of money (relatively speaking) as the AAA game that sold 10 million.

And how many AAA games sell 10 million?

It's a matter of risk/reward, and turn based RPGs aren't very risky, if you know the market.

Because their crowd is actually pretty easy to please, after all.
a) no brainless fedex quests
b) choices and consequences
c) a bit of challange in the combat

And that's it!

Of course if you're aiming for the stars, you're always gonna fail or poo a crap like TW2 which is as great a cop out as you're likely to see.

That's true. That's also why large developers typically don't do turn-based games - they have other ways to limit risk, especially endless sequels. The TBS model exposes large developers to competition from indies in a way that fully 3D graphics whore games simply do not, as the story and the writing are inherently smaller, more intimate activities than coding massive fully 3D worlds. A small team can much more easily write a good story, good dialogue, and good quest scripts than they can code a massive world from scratch and make it compete visually with AAA games. Beyond that it's simply a matter of taste - I simply don't find turn-based games (or third person games) to be nearly as immersive, so I find myself thinking about work issues when I specifically want to NOT be thinking about work issues.

It's interesting to note that Bethesda typically runs in the middle of these two models. Their graphics are usually not cutting edge, but they are aiming to have a good enough story and good enough game play to run with the big boys with merely good enough graphics. Personally I'm a bit of a graphics whore in most things but I loved the Fallout games so much that I'd happily buy Fallout 4 if it used the Fallout 3 engine. However as Shorty pointed out the ability to use more memory and especially more cores/threads is a huge improvement for future mods, so I'm hoping for that as well. There really is no excuse for any major developer releasing a game in 2015 that is capable of using only two cores.

 

[shortylickens]

I have never try any of the fallout 3 and Vegas mod though I'm assuming it on par with Skyrim mod or at least half as good?

Same basic idea: free roaming RPG in a wide open world full of stuff to do.

But very different feels. All the Fallout games have ironically funny violent streak to them and are set in post-apocalyptic America.
In Fallout 3 you have to leave your home vault and join the Brotherhood of Steel and defeat the Enclave.
In New Vegas you start in a town, free to do as you like. There are four possible endings and you have a bit of leeway in how to accomplish them. Both games have several add-ons which add whole new areas and they are quite different from the home area.


The Elder Scrolls is a Middle-Earth ripoff but its very well made and has plenty of unique ideas too. All games take place on the fictional continent of Tamriel but each game is set in a different region. Theres some overlap, like in Elder Scrolls 3 theres an add-on for a snow island and that same island is accessible in Elder Scrolls 5 via another add on. It looks completely different.

 

[Morbus]

Don't forget that Interplay had already abandoned the Isometric Turn-Based game.

I might be wrong in this, but I THINK I remember reading that Herve Caen wanted Fallout 2 to be real time instead of turn based and it's no wonder. None of the following Fallout games they developed was turn based. Tactics was a hybrid and Brotherhood of Steel was real time.

Van Buren was all Interplay and it was a true 3D game;

Van Buren was a hybrid system, same as Fallout Tactics, and it was 3D but from a top down perspective. There's a demo of Van Buren if you want to try it out, it's relatively cool.

That would be a good thing

If you know anything about games, you know hybrid systems are always crap. Because real time and turn based are such different system, and because you have to BALANCE the game, you'll either make real time impossible or turn based totally boring. Arcanum's real time is impossible, but Fallout Tactics turn based is boring.

Hybrid systems are always crap, what needs to be done is a true hybrid system that doesn't have two "modes", and instead incorporates the best of both worlds: the apparent realism of real time and the control, tactics and role-playing of turn based.

Unfortunately, nobody has done that, although I've been developing my own system on my own. I can tell you it's a bitch to balance, and an even greater bitch to design, and I'd bet it'd be a nightmare to market.

There's never gonna be a system like that, unless you're looking for indies, but even then, it's not worth the hassle.

 

[Blanky]

Fallout 1 was such a success that Interplay, who regarded Fallout as a side-project, nothing that would ever sell, immediately took over the development of the sequel (which ultimately led to the exit of the creators because they didn't agree with the corporate policy of Interplay - which, incidentally, led to the edn of Interplay six years later) and rush Fallout 2 out the door a single year later.

Rush operative word. At release Fallout 2 was a buggy POS. Ultimately it became a fantastic game like F1.

When i first saw F3 would be FPS and not isometric I was super disappointed. Now, though? I think I would hate an isometric game for fallout. It really does well in first person.

I would be super mad to lose VATS, though. I hope it doesn't go anywhere.

Surprised to see IGN still thinks this game will actually be out this year. I doubt it but in this I hope my pessimism totally misses the mark.

 

[tidy]

.

 

[werepossum]

I might be wrong in this, but I THINK I remember reading that Herve Caen wanted Fallout 2 to be real time instead of turn based and it's no wonder. None of the following Fallout games they developed was turn based. Tactics was a hybrid and Brotherhood of Steel was real time.


Van Buren was a hybrid system, same as Fallout Tactics, and it was 3D but from a top down perspective. There's a demo of Van Buren if you want to try it out, it's relatively cool.


If you know anything about games, you know hybrid systems are always crap. Because real time and turn based are such different system, and because you have to BALANCE the game, you'll either make real time impossible or turn based totally boring. Arcanum's real time is impossible, but Fallout Tactics turn based is boring.

Hybrid systems are always crap, what needs to be done is a true hybrid system that doesn't have two "modes", and instead incorporates the best of both worlds: the apparent realism of real time and the control, tactics and role-playing of turn based.

Unfortunately, nobody has done that, although I've been developing my own system on my own. I can tell you it's a bitch to balance, and an even greater bitch to design, and I'd bet it'd be a nightmare to market.

There's never gonna be a system like that, unless you're looking for indies, but even then, it's not worth the hassle.

I remember that demo - it was buggy as hell, looked like crap, and I thought played like crap. Closest I could compare it to was Rise of the Triad, which I enjoyed in the early 90s but was way over by that time. It was the primary reason I did not buy Fallout 3 for years after it was released - I thought Fallout 3 would look and play like the demo, not realizing that it had absolutely nothing to do with Fallout 3. Just to put it into perspective, that same year saw the release of the Valve Orange Box and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. Not realizing that Van Buren was in fact several years older, I compared it to games like that. It wasn't until years later, after picking up Fallout 3 GOTY edition dirt cheap on a Steam recommendation, did I get into the franchise and learn the scoop on the Van Buren demo. Never really forgave the guy who gave me that.

 

[werepossum]

Rush operative word. At release Fallout 2 was a buggy POS. Ultimately it became a fantastic game like F1.

When i first saw F3 would be FPS and not isometric I was super disappointed. Now, though? I think I would hate an isometric game for fallout. It really does well in first person.

I would be super mad to lose VATS, though. I hope it doesn't go anywhere.

Surprised to see IGN still thinks this game will actually be out this year. I doubt it but in this I hope my pessimism totally misses the mark.

I don't use VATS at all but I agree it would be a shame to see it disappear. Some people prefer a slower pace and/or just enjoy watching heads explode in slow motion, and that's fine. The more people a game can please, the better. I can't play isometric games though - I don't even enjoy third person. I find myself thinking about work instead of escaping work. If a game was turn-based at least it would wait on me - in a real-time third person game I usually just die without noticing while I'm wondering if that kitchen needs a 600A panel or a 400A panel, or I get annoyed and wonder why that idiot keeps making that annoying noise - until I realize that idiot is my character and I'm taking fire.

 

[pathos]

Outside of RTS type games where it's obviously a necessity, I don't see why anyone would want games to use the isometric view these days. It's a relic from the days when technological limitations meant that it was the only/most practical way to make games. As far as I'm concerned, it's as thoroughly obsolete as B&W cinema. Games like Diablo should have gone first person or OTS third person as soon as it was technologically feasible. I've had many arguments with people about this regarding Diablo specifically, but the best anyone can ever come up with is "that's the way it's always been", which is an absurd reason to keep the game in the isometric stone age. I'm pretty sure I can guess why Blizzard chose to make D3 that way, but that's another story.

Because some of us like isometric view to control a full party, the enemy party, and the surrounding landscape when we play turn based games?

Seriously, just because you don't like something, doesn't mean no one does. Has nothing to do with technical limitations, and everything to do with what I and other fans like.

 

[werepossum]

Because some of us like isometric view to control a full party, the enemy party, and the surrounding landscape when we play turn based games?

Seriously, just because you don't like something, doesn't mean no one does. Has nothing to do with technical limitations, and everything to do with what I and other fans like.

I can see how turn based combat would be advantageous when controlling a party - no one person (or at least, not the average person) is capable of making real time decisions for multiple people. I don't get how this is considered role playing though - you are literally the whole party, and there is no one around to actually witness your playing. Seems more like masturbation with dolls. Not that that's a bad thing . . . Just not my thing. Not that my type of play is role playing either - I'm experiencing the world, immersed in the world, but not particularly the character. I very seldom even remember the appearance of the character, and once I created a female character and was only reminded of it when I became determined to find that whiny bitch who was crying out while I was in combat - only to discover it was me.

Even in Fallout, I like my imaginary companions to be their own people. Or dogs. Or robots. I want them making their own decisions, while I make mine, with their own stories and their own needs and goals. Mostly I don't like them at all and only tolerate them on occasion for the quests, although Willow is pretty cool, and Veronica, and Boone wasn't bad, and ED-E absolutely rules.

 

[Morbus]

I don't see why anyone would want games to use the isometric view these days.

You serve to reinforce my prejudice against Fallout 3 fans: yall are totally intolerable to different tastes and complete oblivious to anything other than the shovelware you're fed by the AAA publishers.

I CAN understand why people find Fallout 3 entertaining. That's MY merit, not Fallout 3's. Because, by any sane measure, Fallout 3 is boring (who cares about explosions, are you all 3 year old toddlers?). The writing is atrocious, the game world makes no sense, the shooting mechanics are horrible, VATS is terribly overpowered, and the role-play is minimal (and usually bonkers). This is as objective as I can be.

But LIKING Fallout 3? Sure, I like crappy games as well. And I like astonishing games that other people might not like. NEO Scavenger, for example, my favorite RPG of 2014. Legend of Grimrock, for example, I prefer The Witcher 1 to The Witcher 2 and I find The Sims 3 to be a very cool time waster, despite its flaws.

So, modesty apart, my merit is that I can understand that other people like stuff I don't like. I don't go around saying that FPSs are archaic (they are) or that RTSs are all twitch-fests (they are). I can enjoy FPSs and RTSs as well.

Figures.

It's a relic from the days when technological limitations meant that it was the only/most practical way to make games.

Funny, because first person view came a few years before the first top down game.
Also, top down games are usually quite heavier than FPSs, and their graphics usually suffer for it.

As far as I'm concerned, it's as thoroughly obsolete as B&W cinema.

Mario kart should be played in first-person. Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros, The Sims, Batman, Metal Gear Solid, FIFA, Bloodborne, Mortal Kombat, Zelda, World of Warcraft, Football Manager, Hearthstone, Binding of Isaac, League of Legends, StarCraft... Candy crush! Everything is gonna be a first person shooter eventually!

In your tiny dreams!

Games like Diablo should have gone first person

You just don't understand what games are for!

Games are for having fun! And fun, being a relative concept, needs to be extracted using different methods each time. A wildlife exploration walking simulator should be first-person. A party based RPG should be top down. A cooperative shooter would probably benefit from being third person. A horror game could potentially benefit from having fixed camera angles. A point and click adventure will probably work best with a static camera.

The list goes on and on. Meanwhile, FPSs are just same old same old.

 

[Merad]

Outside of RTS type games where it's obviously a necessity, I don't see why anyone would want games to use the isometric view these days. It's a relic from the days when technological limitations meant that it was the only/most practical way to make games. As far as I'm concerned, it's as thoroughly obsolete as B&W cinema. Games like Diablo should have gone first person or OTS third person as soon as it was technologically feasible. I've had many arguments with people about this regarding Diablo specifically, but the best anyone can ever come up with is "that's the way it's always been", which is an absurd reason to keep the game in the isometric stone age. I'm pretty sure I can guess why Blizzard chose to make D3 that way, but that's another story.

That's rather silly. An isometric camera is intrinsic to certain gameplay styles. Yeah, you could make a "Diablo" game with OTS third person, but the gameplay is going to be fundamentally different because you're completely changing how the player controls the character and interacts with the world.

 

[tidy]

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[zinfamous]

The term "obsolete" doesn't even apply to something like B&W film or isometric. It's about style, nothing more.

what a strangely obtuse claim to make.

 

[Merad]

Yes, that's the idea. Deeper immersion, the potential for vastly improved combat, better connection with NPCs because now I can actually see their faces when I'm talking to them etc.

So you want more of a true RPG set in the Diablo universe. It could happen... but to date at least Diablo games have been synonymous with the hack 'n slash genre.

 

[tidy]

.

 

[futurefields]

What is a true RPG? In my mind Diablo was a true RPG, story driven.

Absolutely not, there is no choice in how the story unfolds and no branching whatsoever. Diablo is 100% loot and mechanics driven the story is just a means to that end.

 

[Merad]

What is a true RPG? In my mind Diablo was a true RPG, story driven.

It has been a LONG time since I played Diablo (even since D2, honestly) but to my recollection the games have always had an interesting but totally linear and very shallow story. I have a hard time calling a game a RPG without player choice playing a significant role in the story.

 

[tidy]

.

 

[werepossum]

You serve to reinforce my prejudice against Fallout 3 fans: yall are totally intolerable to different tastes and complete oblivious to anything other than the shovelware you're fed by the AAA publishers.

I CAN understand why people find Fallout 3 entertaining. That's MY merit, not Fallout 3's. Because, by any sane measure, Fallout 3 is boring (who cares about explosions, are you all 3 year old toddlers?). The writing is atrocious, the game world makes no sense, the shooting mechanics are horrible, VATS is terribly overpowered, and the role-play is minimal (and usually bonkers). This is as objective as I can be.

But LIKING Fallout 3? Sure, I like crappy games as well. And I like astonishing games that other people might not like. NEO Scavenger, for example, my favorite RPG of 2014. Legend of Grimrock, for example, I prefer The Witcher 1 to The Witcher 2 and I find The Sims 3 to be a very cool time waster, despite its flaws.

So, modesty apart, my merit is that I can understand that other people like stuff I don't like. I don't go around saying that FPSs are archaic (they are) or that RTSs are all twitch-fests (they are). I can enjoy FPSs and RTSs as well.

Figures.


Funny, because first person view came a few years before the first top down game.
Also, top down games are usually quite heavier than FPSs, and their graphics usually suffer for it.


Mario kart should be played in first-person. Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros, The Sims, Batman, Metal Gear Solid, FIFA, Bloodborne, Mortal Kombat, Zelda, World of Warcraft, Football Manager, Hearthstone, Binding of Isaac, League of Legends, StarCraft... Candy crush! Everything is gonna be a first person shooter eventually!

In your tiny dreams!


You just don't understand what games are for!

Games are for having fun! And fun, being a relative concept, needs to be extracted using different methods each time. A wildlife exploration walking simulator should be first-person. A party based RPG should be top down. A cooperative shooter would probably benefit from being third person. A horror game could potentially benefit from having fixed camera angles. A point and click adventure will probably work best with a static camera.

The list goes on and on. Meanwhile, FPSs are just same old same old.

You don't see anything at all ironic about saying that Fallout 3 fans "are totally intolerable to different tastes and complete oblivious to anything other than the shovelware you're fed by the AAA publishers" and then telling him "You just don't understand what games are for"?

Also, top-down games far predate first person. I was maneuvering my little smiley face Rogue through hostile letters on PC in the mid-eighties and playing soccer and pong games on a bright yellow console in the mid-to-late seventies. Both game styles morphed as technology improved, first person from sprites to true 3D and top down from orthogonal to isometric to allow a bit of first person graphics without losing that big picture.

What is a true RPG? In my mind Diablo was a true RPG, story driven. I always saw the mindless button mashing combat as a weakness, another byproduct of it being an old, 2D, isometric engine. The strengths were it's story, artwork/artistic style, Matt Uelmen's score, sound design and the game's atmosphere in general. The weaknesses were the tedious combat, the detached nature of the isometric camera perspective and the emphasis on the skill tree which had people obsessing over numbers and ignoring how great other aspects of the game were.

Diablo II had the same strengths, but the same weaknesses too, and everyone seemed to latch onto everything that was bad about the game. By Diablo III that was all that was left. It seemed like a waste of an incredible world to me.

Tell me you wouldn't want to step into this scene, as it's depicted there, instead of merely seeing a crude cartoonish depiction of it from a detached bird's eye view:

And when I'm slashing through Diablo's minions, I want to be in amongst it, not floating up in the sky. Who remembers the Hell Knight death animation? Wouldn't you love to experience that up close? Imagine the Butcher's lair in first/OTS third person.

I completely agree that a first person view is far more immersive, but Diablo in first person would be a completely different game, not simply a better game. I also agree that it would be a better game in first person view because that's what I like, but I can certainly see how someone else might prefer top-down turn-based to manage every member of the party. Some people simply enjoy the minutia, control, calculations, and micromanaging of controlling every member; to them, that is immersive. Different strokes. I don't think one can say that one view or type of game is absolutely best, even within a particular genre, and they certainly shouldn't be all the same. I love Fallout 3; I don't want a hundred different versions of it.

Well - okay, I actually do want a hundred different versions of Fallout 3. I just don't want to impose that on everyone else.

 

[futurefields]

Loot an mechanics? What mechanics? The mechanics are garbage, and if that's all it is, then it's nothing. I don't agree.

 

[Morbus]

I'm trying to figure out where you got the idea that I'm a Fallout 3 fan. I've stated in this very thread that I don't give a rat's arse about Fallout.

Potato, potato...

I'd question the accuracy of that, but it doesn't really matter because which perspective came first is irrelevant here. In Diablo's case, it's not that there were no 3D engines suitable for 1st/OTS 3rd person games in 1997, it's that there were none that could have coped with the masses of entities required, ie. the hordes of hell. That's what I mean by technological limitations.

That's funny, because Doom came out in 1993, and Diablo 1 came out in 1996...

And nobody said Doom lacked demons. In fact, Diablo 1 could just as well be a first-person dungeon crawler, like the DOZENS of first-person dungeon crawlers that existed for 20 years, like Akabeth 1979...

But Diablo 1 was NOT first person for a very simple reason, that's not the one you're trying to shove down everyone's throats: Diablo 1 was top down because it was meant to be a rogue-like, and Rogue, as some will know, is a very influential dungeon-crawler from the eighties, and it was top down.

And because video-game design is much more than technological limitations, Diablo was, and is to this day top down, because of very concrete and tangible gameplay reasons.

Another idea you seem to have pulled out of thin air: that I want all games to use the first person perspective.

I'm sorry if I misunderstood you, and I do recognize I'm jumping to conclusions, but "I don't see why anyone would want games to use the isometric view these days", "It's a relic", "as thoroughly obsolete as B&W cinema", "Diablo should have gone first person or OTS third person as soon as it was technologically feasible" (which means as soon as they were released, because it was feasible at the time), "the way it's always been is an absurd reason", "isometric stone age".

I did jump to conclusions, but I stand by them. You want all games (except for RTSs, in your words) to be first person or over the should third person.

What I'm saying is that there's more to games than the twitch-factor and mindless action. If you like that, awesome, I've spent countless hours playing that kind of games as well, but games are about the fun, and if it's more fun for me to play Fallout from a top down perspective, then that's the kind of game that I want. And I'm neither the only fan who finds top down RPGs enjoyable, neither am I not backed by the creators of Fallout:

- Tim Cain left Interplay to found Troika and develop ToEE (top down perspective), Arcanum (top down perspective) and Bloodlines (first/third person). Their company was making a Fallout spiritual successor when they closed doors (guess what perspective). Recently he worked (and is working) in Pillars of Eternity (top down perspective).
- Jason Anderson, also left Interplay for Troika, has gone under the radar but has recently worked for Wasteland 2 (top down perspective)
- Leonard Boyarsky, also left Interplay for Troika, is now working at Blizzard as an artist (that's what he is) and we all know Blizzard ONLY makes top down games.
- Chris Jones, is working at Obsidian, known for doing mostly top-down games.
- Feargus Urquhart, credited in Fallout 2, Icewind Dale, Planescape Torment, Torn and loads of other top down games
- Chris Avellone, who led Fallout 2 and founded Obsidian (where he worked in Torment, Icewind Dale, Pillars of Eternity, Tides of Numenera, among many others), has recently left the company for another oppurtunity in the gaming industry (as of yet undisclosed), which many speculate to mean he's gonna join inXile to work on a Van Buren game (yeah, that's right... the real Fallout 3... or at least the one that never was).
- Josh Sawyer, of the game he's worked in, only Fallout New Vegas and Alpha Protocol were not top down

I mean. I could go on for a little while longer if I cared to check some wiki articles, this is off the top of my head.

I'm not alone, my friend. There's lots of people who enjoy top down games just as much as other people enjoy first person games.

It's a matter of tastes, where you are in your life, how your day has gone, what your priorities are, how much time you have to play, and on and on and on...

Deeper immersion

I disagree partially, but not completely. I do understand where you're coming from, but I can also get totally immersed in top down games. I mean, I can get immersed in a book easily enough, and even ones that don't have any pictures!!! I know, you don't believe me.

the potential for vastly improved combat

I totally disagree. One of the most astonishing combat systems ever made (Jagged Allience 2) was top down, turn based. Real time just can't beat that. It might come close, sometimes, I'm not one to deny, but top down and turn based is always gonna be better, combat wise.

better connection with NPCs because now I can actually see their faces when I'm talking to them etc.

Yeah, you've never played Fallout. Fallout had talking heads because of that. When you're playing a pen and paper RPG (which is what Fallout was created to mimic), you can converse face to face with the characters, because you're all right there in the room.

There's absolutely no problem with talking heads. The only problem is budget restrains.

And, besides, it's not really that big of a deal. If the game is well written, like any book, you'll enjoy it just as much, if not more.

Our imagination is a powerful thing.

what a strangely obtuse claim to make.

Unfortunately, it's not nearly as strange as that. I've seen plenty of claims like these around the web.

 

[Morbus]

Absolutely not, there is no choice in how the story unfolds and no branching whatsoever. Diablo is 100% loot and mechanics driven the story is just a means to that end.

This, pretty much.

Diablo is a rogue-like, a dungeon crawler, NOT an RPG.

And I'm sorry if that definition also includes Final Fantasy. Sorry if I burst somebody's bubble, that's also not an RPG either. If you don't role-play, it's not a role-playing game.

 

[Morbus]

You don't see anything at all ironic about saying that Fallout 3 fans "are totally intolerable to different tastes and complete oblivious to anything other than the shovelware you're fed by the AAA publishers" and then telling him "You just don't understand what games are for"?

No. Not when the answer I give to that question is, as I said, fun.