FalloutNow!

My students have been playing Fallout 1 and 2 for a couple of weeks, preparing for the release of Fallout 3.
[...]

So when I handed them Fallout (half played the original, half the sequel) with no instructions or special preparation, they struggled. A lot. They had the original manuals, but almost nobody read them. After exiting the vault, they had no idea where to go or what to do. Their movements were limited for no apparent reason; "action points" made no sense; and they died within minutes nearly everywhere they went.
[...]

Our first Fallout conversation was a disaster. Few students had posted on the forum as I had asked them to, and it was obvious that almost no one had devoted much time to playing. They basically tried the game, got frustrated, threw up their hands, and walked away. Our midterm break began the following day, so I told them I expected them to continue playing over the break, be resourceful, roll up their sleeves, and figure it out. "Somewhere in there," I assured them, "is the best RPG you will play this semester. If you dig harder to find it, I promise you will thank me." A bit of hyperbole, perhaps, but I meant it.
[...]

Then, during the break, something broke. I began to notice increased activity in the discussion forum, which soon turned into a small flurry of posts. A sampling:
<blockquote>What is interesting about the random encounters in the game is that not all of them are hostile encounters. The kind of encounter that is very rare in games is the neutral encounter where you encounter people fighting. You can help either side but even then sometimes they will just turn around and attack you when they beat whoever they were fighting. My favorite way to deal with these encounters is to wait till a few of them die, and then it's looting corpses time. It’s amazing what kind of nice loot you can find on them. It’s also where I got my first gun.

Think about it, they have almost myths of what we know about these people and things. They don't know everything and have to rely on what they do know.  I'm really interested in seeing how much information is lost because of the isolation caused by the vaults.

That's an interesting idea. What effect would the isolation of the vaults have on the society? And what would changed based on the nuclear apocalypse? It would be like taking all the data in the world and deleting random parts. It would cause mass chaos, especially once the original humans (from pre-nuking) die out. Or, alternatively, there could be a safe-haven somewhere. From a developing standpoint, how could that effect the game? Could it?</blockquote>

"They're totally gonna screw up that game," said one student. "They're gonna say shoot this guy in the eyeball, like they're giving you all these choices, but you know they're gonna make it run and gun. You're gonna be running around blowing stuff up, and all the shooter players are gonna love it. But it won't be Fallout. I promise you. It won't be Fallout." "It looks pretty amazing," observed another, "and it should be fun. But yeah, it probably won't be Fallout."

chewie wrote: Ich studiere definitiv das falsche Fach  :'(

Ist sowas nicht ein Zeichen dafür, dass die Spiele damals generell anders gewesen sind?Vielleicht schwerer oder komplexer?

Dafür hatten Fallout 1 und 2 ein sehr umfangreiche Handbücher, was heute nahezu kein Spiel mehr bietet

Die wollen das Spiel starten und Spaß haben.

Ich überlege gerade echt bei welchem Spiel ich zuletzt ein Hndbuch lesen musste bevor ich gespielt habe. ... Ich weiß es nicht mehr. 

Dr.Popitz wrote: Ich überlege gerade echt bei welchem Spiel ich zuletzt ein Hndbuch lesen musste bevor ich gespielt habe. ... Ich weiß es nicht mehr.