Fallout3 and profound dissapointment
Just when it seemed computer games where entering a new phase of elevated sophistication, of subtlety and depth, it seems there is still much to disappoint.
And in the true nature of disappointment it is the failure to live up to a extant high standard that provides the greatest short fall.
If all games achieve only banal mediocrity then it doesn?t take much to stand out. But when there have been games of late that have delivered sublime artistry and a complex sense of plot, poetry and narrative then the fall from grace when a game blithely fails to keep up is all the more profound.
I, like so many others have eagerly awaited the release of Fallout3. Previous Fallout?s aside, the prospect of open-world, multi-narrative driven, RPG built off the foundation of Oblivion had all the hallmarks of a major moment in contemporary gaming.
Now 12 hours of game play into the Fallout3 experience I am both awed and appalled. Lifting its gameplay directly from Oblivion, Fallout begins way ahead of the eight-ball with a smooth, dynamic and detailed gameplay systems. Sophisticated but accessible, able to be as complex or transparent as you need or want. Visually Fallout is superb; design and world detail is one thing but its the rendering of Light itself in the game world that is beautifully realized. Certainly Fallout3 owes a great deal to the dappled, muted light of HalfLife 2 but it is no bad thing to stand on the shoulders of giants.
But as a swoon with Visual and Tactile enjoyment of Falout3 I am also profoundly disappointed and dismayed. Whilst contemporary games have finally dispensed with using the voice acting talents of the office staff and embraced employing ?real? actors (Liam Nesson notably lending his talents to FO3) to deliver real performances it seems they still have not grasped the idea that Game Designers are NOT screenwriters....!
The screenplay/script of Fallout3 is absolutely, abysmally atrocious. Mind jarringly banal, intolerably cliched, disastrously directed and unnervingly passive.
Whoever wrote the dialogue for fallout3 should be put on trial for crimes against the written word...!
Oblivion suffered much the same fate and it was hoped that Bethesda Studios might seek to amend this one major flaw when they moved on to falout3. Alas not to be as Fallout3 even surpasses the verbal pain Oblivion inflicted. At least Oblivion had a fantasy world of Kings and Elves to justify the heroically verbose use of language. Fallout3 has no such fallback and delivers a script so horrendous you?re compelled to click through the dialogue scenes as fast as possible.
There will be those who will decry my criticism with the mantra "its all about gameplay" but this seams an empty accusational idea. Much like watching a movie and saying its "all about the camera work". Why cant or shouldn?t a game have it all? Why should a game be anything less than superlative art - gameplay, visual aesthetics, character, performance; narrative united in the construction of a singular experience that transcends the sum of its individually exceptional parts?
As I said earlier, the pain of this let down is all the more pronounced when the past few years have delivered examples of game writing that is truly exceptional. Take for example the opening monologue voice over delivered by a disembodied Andrew Ryan as you descend by bathysphere to the underwater, utopia-maligned, city of Rapture.
Click here to listen to this audio. A beautifully written monologue fueled by subtext, subtitles, poetry embedded in social and political commentary. Everything the script for Fallout3 could have been but fails to be.
Games can be, and should be, nothing less than the most brilliant of art which why it pains me so much when a game like Fallout3 achieves excellence in all areas but the quality of the writing.
Please, please, Please Bethesda - take the script seriously....
Posted at 12:00AM Nov 05, 2008
by Mike Jones in 3D graphics & gaming |
