... like he hated Oblivion:
After that Shamus Young asks some questions that I'd like to be answered from Bethesda. Good read!So, E3 is over. The gaming press has seen Fallout 3 and they’re all giddy with the pretty graphics and talking about how the game was one of the best in show. Everyone is excited and happy and looking forward to it, which means that now is the optimal time for me to kick the piss out of the thing.
I have other games here on my shelf. Games that are stupid, bland, boring, shallow or inane. Some of them were the most “exciting” titles in the E3’s of yesteryear. I know it’s easy to impress someone with a twenty-minute playthrough on a jumbo monitor at a convention when you can overwhelm them with spectacle and nobody has time to measure the depth of the gameplay. A good showing at E3 means your game doesn’t have any obvious fun-killing issues, but it doesn’t mean you’re ready to step into the shoes of a legendary franchise like Fallout.
The original Fallout wasn’t a sexy tech demo. It was an ass-ugly isometric game with cheap 2D sprites that offered incredible freedom, immersion, atmosphere, story, characters, and dialog. None of those attributes are things which can really be conveyed or measured within the ephemeral context of E3. I remember how things went with Oblivion, which was the last game Bethesda put out, and it’s only because of my great love for Fallout that I’m even entertaining the notion of paying attention to this game.