GDC09: Fallout 3, LittleBigPlanet clean up at GDCA awards

Yes. Yes it is.

Or PIN number.

You should buy LBP, man. You really should.

I was somewhat in a similar situation. Even though I knew the potential and high markings of the game, I had dedicated my time to other amazing ps3 titles. Eventually I had a few mates online playing and I made the purchase. It didn't take me too long to begin icking myself for not having it as my launch title into the PS3 world, buy LBP, the community continues to give, superb platforming... give me a add when you need help.

No you shouldn't. You really shouldn't.

Sackboy never gets "mad," merely "perturbed."

ITS COMING RIGHT FOR US

It's funnier that he's smiling, he's about to get wasted but cant get that stupid smile off his face.

Considering that Fallout 3 was made with the same engine as Oblivion, I imagine Bethesda paid attention to the improvements they made on their own game.

Several of the improvements weren't engine based. Such as believable dialog and characters that kept the same voice during conversations.

Also SPECIAL may not be something that is carried over. I like it, but they may decide to keep it out. Same with the difference in the way the games level up.

But the GoW2 dialog was reallllly minimal and shallow to me, whereas with Fallout 3 it is really thorough and an integral part of how the game is played. Personally I don't see how you can compare the two.

Yeah, your right. Overall writing Fallout wins, there's so much more there. It just lacked the actors to go along with it.

Good point. Actual voice acting is significantly more compelling and quality in GoW2 it seems. Voice acting in Fallout 3 can come off pretty flat or bland at times.

Gears of War? You mean the generic dialogue that vaguely told you what the next mission was about? Or when Cole Train raps? Compared to Fallout 3? Wow. Just wow.

Gears 2's writing was better? It basically amounted to "fuck this shit those motherfuckers are fuckin shooting at us lets fuckin kill those fucks. COLE TRAIN BABY" Oh, and can't forget that horrible attempt at a sad scene with Dom. "MARIIIIIA!!!"

That my friends, is grade A writing and dialog.

(note: I love the campaign, but lets not bullshit people here. It's cheesy as hell.)

Once again, Bethesda only hired 5 voice actors to do Fallout 3, why do all the ghouls have to sound the same, just a male and female voice, its so annoying! Fallout 3 has a lot of good points and yet so many faults that prevent it from being a really really good game. For instance, I wish the animations were more on par with GTA4 for instance.

Gears of War 2 and quality dialog in the same sentence is comical. I loved Gears 2, but I didn't play it with the expectations of hearing good dialog.

Actually... that's what i should've said Grand Theft Auto 4, the writing AND voice acting in that game was awesome... probably would've been a better choice. Fallout's story was better, but GTA's dialog kicks fallouts ass.

Gears 2 might not have offered award-level writing, but you have to admit that the second one had a much better narrative than the first.

5 voices my ass. The game was loaded with different voices.

Liam Neeson ... Father (voice)
Malcolm McDowell ... President John Henry Eden (voice)
Ron Perlman ... Narrator (voice)
Odette Yustman ... Amata (voice)
Jeff Baker ... Stanley / Hannibal Hamlin Sergeant RL-3 (voice)
William Bassett ... Elder Lyons (voice)
Karen Carbone ... Mother / Moira (voice)
Johnny Contino ... Grouse (voice)
Erik Dellums ... Three Dog (voice)
Shari Elliker ... Beatrice / Reilly / Star Paladin Cross (voice)
Peter Gil ... Colonel Autumn / Confessor Cromwell (voice)
Gregory Gorton ... Jonas / Dave / Pinkerton (voice)
Duncan Hood ... Overseer / Dukov / Scribe Rothchild (voice)
Jake Howard ... One Year Baby (voice)
Jan Johns ... Lucy West / Clover / Sierra Petrovita (voice)
Wes Johnson ... Mr. Burke / Fawkes / Protectron (voice)
Stephanie Joy ... Young Amata / Maggie / Lucy (voice)
Luke Lafferty ... Young Paul Hannon (voice)
James Lewis ... Mr. Brotch / Jericho / Eulogy Jones (voice)
Sean McCoy ... Young Wally Mack / Harden Simms (voice)
Heather Marie Marsden ... Sarah Lyons (voice)
Jennifer Massey ... Doctor Li (voice)
Cullen Pagliarulo ... Timmy Neusbaum (voice)

Pete Papageorge ... Chief Gustavo / Paladin Vargas (voice)
Mike Rosson ... Colin Moriarty / Doctor Lesko / Charon (voice)
Stephen Russell ... Andy / Minister Buckingham / The Great One (voice)
Craig Sechler ... Butch / Harkness (voice)
Diane Sowles ... Old Lady Palmer / Agatha / Margaret Primrose (voice)
Jakob Stalnaker ... Young Butch - Mayor Maccready (voice)
Corrieanne Stein ... Betty (voice)
Gus Travers ... Armitage / Butcher / Paladin Gunny (voice)
Charlie Warren ... Allistair Tenpenny (voice)
Audrey Wasilewski ... Tulip / Greta / Carol (voice)
Greg Williams ... Lucas Simms (voice)
Paul Eiding ... Nathan / Abraham Washington / Tree Father Birch (voice)

Point taken DarrenHollywood, but I wonder why so many other NPCs had such generic voices such as all the ghouls having one voice for males and one for females, what about that?

NOICE! SCRATCH ONE GRUB! >>>>>>>>> Hey smoothskin I'm a ghoul, only I have the same voice as that guy over there and him too, and we really dont have a lot to say"
Honestly I expected Fable 2 to win best writing, i know it didn't really have much in the way of a solid the way fallout did, but what was there along with the sidequests and the townspeople was pretty great. I remember one quest where you get ambushed by ghosts who say if you dont return their sacred treasure they'd have to do the "dance of anush gorath baga" or something like that, and after repeating it a few times the head ghost was basically like "fuck it, the dance"

Well that was unnecessary. I don't imagine he meant it literally when he said 5, rather to emphasize they recycled quite a bit. But great, thanks for all the fish, er filler I mean.

you neglected Darren, that most of those actors had at least 3 other voices too. The guy who did Brotherhood of steel, Enclave soldiers, wastelanders, also did all the supermutants,and that's just that guy. The guy who did abraham washington and Nathan was also used for every old man npc aside from pinkerton

I neglected nothing, the list is copied from IMDB in its entirety. If their roles are missing, I wouldn't be surprised if other voice actors are missing too. The point I wanted to make was that there are alot of voice actors in that game, and the best way to make that point was by showing who and how many were in the game.

The fact that those characters that have the same voice even have lines of dialog makes the writing that much stronger. Where in GoW did you hear enemies yelling about trying to find you, or begging for mercy before running scared? It just didn't happen.

"The fact that those characters that have the same voice even have lines of dialog makes the writing that much stronger." ? How does that necessarily make the writing stronger??

Whu... whu... whu...

WHAT! Are you seriously TRYING to start a flame war!
I'm sorry if this has been replied to with the same thing I'm saying, but I didn't have time to read the other posts. I just had to freak out.

Did you HONESTLY say that you think that Gears of War 2, one of the least intelligent mainstream games in the last couple years, deserves the Best Writing award?

It is essentially the same atmosphere as Halo, "The crazy monsters, with better technology then us, are single minded in wiping us out! They have more resources, and humanity has been pushed to it's last strong hold!"
And the personal story is retarded, "LET'S KILL ALL OF THESE MOTHERF***ERS, AND WHERE'S MY WIFE! SHE WENT MISSING, WHICH IS COMPLETELY ORIGINAL AS A PLOT ELEMENT! LET'S KILL MORE! WE NEED TO GO TO A LONELY DESERTED PLACE, BECAUSE THEY HAVE SOMETHING WE CAN USE TO MAGICALLY SAVE US FROM THE BAD GUYS!"
Gears of War 2 can be fun to play, but the writing is more pathetic than pong having a plot, and not even as intelligent as the story to Mario.

You shoot things in it, you don't think about it, you just shoot. It's not intelligent, they just put in a plot because is expected in a game.

Frankly nothing can be compared to MGS4 story telling. For those who just don't get it and complain it's too convoluted, well they are daft and I can't help them. However, if you've been playing the series since it's debut in 87, a lot makes sense really and it still maintains it's awesomo feeling, so ya Fallout 3 by no means deserved to win. I did enjoy Fallout 3 but I got sick of the characters staring dead on at me with next to no movement, it is just weird watching... that game badly needed some beautiful cut scenes.

I believe that's referring to the cinematics of the dialog. How the camera doesn't pull away to give it a "cut scene" feel. It just keeps in the static dialog mode.

I feel that both GTA4 and Fallout 3 are getting too many awards whereas LittleBigPlanet isn't under or overhyped.

Actually, LittleBigPlanet was massively overhyped. It just all died out right before it came out.
I personally don't think that LittleBigPlanet deserved that many awards, and that there should have been a lot more variety in them, but I'm happy with the awards that Fallout 3 got.
I would have liked to see some love to Valve's Left 4 Dead, or Mirror's Edge which was a pretty awesome new game this year.
LGP essentially took the idea of Halo 3's in-game forge, furthered it, molded it to, what I assume is, a plat former, made it cute, and packaged it up for sale.
Nothing against it, a lot of people enjoy, but doesn't look like it's crazy awesome, or crazy innovative.

Mostly Harmless:
Forge (and Anvil) were tools Bungie used back on the Marathon series of games. They gave them away with Marathon Infinity (the third and last Marathon game). So Halo 3 is not a great example to use as a counter example to a lack of originality on this particular front.

I think LBP integrated the dev tools better than Marathon (I don't have Halo 3), you never had to use the dev tools to advance in the game in Marathon or Halo. Whereas in LBP you have to apply stickers to activate triggers at times. Additionally, LBP added a larger community aspect to making levels than Halo or Marathon did. Of course LBP didn't do it as much as Spore did, where other people's creations wander into your levels.

Oh, sorry about not being informed on that, I don't have much experience or education with Marathon: Infinity (the only one that I don't know very much about).

But I'm actually pretty sure that the Halo 3 user-created community is at least close to the same size as LBP or Spore.

Any ways, a game like LBP was an inevitability, so many games are have user-created content these days. Guitar Hero, Halo 3, Spore, I don't think that LBP was that innovative.

(A side note: In Halo 3, forgers have all-sorts methods for things that you could consider switches. hitting a door can teleport you, or other various methods of activating things.)

I just want to note that I haven't ever played LBP, so it's okay if you guys want to down vote me, I'm not a very credible source.

Why do i now have a desire to play Pokemon?

Pokemon pretty much lost me after there were more than 151 Pokemon, now I'm just confused.

It's contagious. But you can develop an immunity to it. You probably want to play one of the originals. The new ones are a little less contagious.