For me "no demo" = "no purchase" (and no I won't pirate it either)

u mean ur looking for an arguement

If there are nice goodies for preordering, I'll do that. Otherwise I will buy it the day after it comes out as I usually do. I like to check for DRM complaints before purchase, but some games get me excited enough to preorder anyway. Also I've never had a problem with Bethesda, and don't expect one.

Considering the scope of Oblivion and the fact that some parts - including the opening dungeon escape scene- can be rather tedius, how much free play time would you require to decide whether or not you should pay for that game?

Why don't they simply make a demo like the original fallout had. You start out as some random dude in a room full of weapons. When you exit said room you find a gang of ruffians with equally large weapons. Point minigun, pull trigger, be entertained for 15-20 minutes while the battle plays out and decide if you want more.

My worries are not about the story as much as they are about the game play. Game play seems like a very easy thing to show. Give me a character with mid-level skill in everything and a simple area to play with them.

you know its gonna be bad...its bethesda. whats the point of even pirating it.

Jeez, tough crowd. When did Oblivion become so awful? I think Bethesda is one of the better developers working today, but hey, that's just me.

He's just saying it's awful because it validates his pirating it and not paying afterwords.

Huh? You played a 100 hours and hated it? I play wow and I hate it. I hate Warcraft 3 too (well multiplayer, singlep is great). I hate Kane, but he's just such a loveable guy. PEACE THROUGH POWER!

It looks like you bought 2 Source bundles and Bioshock. COD4 had a playable demo so it's kind of irrelavent to the topic. Seriously what % of the games you pirate do you buy? Obviously you can give any BS answer you want or be completely truthful and I have no interest in looking at your screen shots or reciepts. But to say that you pirated Oblivion played it for a few minutes and deleted it is stupid even if it's true. Oblivion was a very well done game from pretty much every aspect. That doesn't mean you HAD to like it, but it shouldn't have been that difficult to figure out without pirating. Seriously where were you mislead about this game that only playing a pirated version could uncover? Now you may say that you weren't going to buy it either way so whats the harm. Well here's what pisses me off. Besides being a great game Oblivion was also void of any invasive DRM. But of course people like yourself took advantage of that and pirated the game (and I doubt all were as nice as you to delete it after you were done). Do you think Fall Out or any future Bethesda title will be so void of DRM given the current climate of piracy? Oh yeah that right, I forgot, you're not part of the problem.

Purplerat, as much as I hate piracy, I think this forum discussion thread should be reserved for talking abou the issue at hand: Fallout 3 and the question of to demo or not to demo in the context of piracy. If it's a personal flame war you want with Oh Snap, then I suggest both of you gentlemen start another thread dedicated to such a topic and move your war of words there. Because right now, knowing how these discussions have gone in the past and being quite familiar with the steely resolve of Oh Snap, this thread will reach several pages and virtually none of it will end up being about the lack of a Fallout 3 demo.

The interface was pretty annoying, the character selection screen instantly disappointed me (an infinite number of horrible looking character possibilities), and the gameplay just wasn't fun. I'm not sure what else you want, you obviously thought it was the bees knees and I'd rather do any number of things other than play it.

I'd say 50-60%? I actually haven't even pirated a game in a while. The last games I pirated were Heroes of Might and Magic V (loaded it up, sat through a couple minutes of gameplay and instantly went "NOPE!" right into the trash bin), BioShock (which I bought), Cod4 (which I bought), and Assassin's Creed (got up to the point where the soldiers show up at your little fortress moat or whatever and you dive off and that was that).

Lots of review sites gave it a great score, but like I said, I don't bother with any of that nonsense. Everyone loves to hype games like that up and talk about how innovative and great the gameplay is, but when you actually sit down to play it, it's nothing new, and nothing interesting. You obviously feel differently, but I thought it was a terrible game.

Tell you what, if I ever get my hands on a time machine, I'll go ahead and pirate games, but if the game sucks, I'll go back in time and let myself know it sucked, so I won't pirate it. That'll somehow make the industry more money I'm sure. It's fool-proof logic.

Fallout 3 probably won't have too much DRM, and as for future Bethesda titles, I really don't care, because I'm not a Bethesda fanboy. I don't think they have any other titles they've worked on that have even interested me. I've heard that Interplay is actually starting production on a Fallout MMO (I think there was a thread on these forums), so obviously I doubt that would really have annoying DRM considering it would be entirely online based.

Fair enough. Back on topic:

I honestly think this move has reinforced the feeling a lot of Fallout fans have about Bethesda and what they're doing with the IP. I personally get the feeling that Bethesda really is riding off of another company's IP, and they're hoping that enough people will purchase the game based on that alone. If you release the demo for the legions of angry fallout fans (and if you don't think they're angry, visit the duck and cover forums: http://www.duckandcover.cx/forums/viewforum.php?f=47), they'll tear it to pieces like they have everything else that's been released thus far if it's gone in the direction everyone thinks it has (away from a lot of what made FO1 and 2 great, and towards more of a reference to the game like "look, haha, there's radiation! get it?" ). Better for Bethesda to just release the game and hope the name alone gets them sales.

Quite honestly it feels like a big "**** you" to a lot of the Fallout fans because they know that they have to prove that they deserve to carry the torch, so to speak. If they really thought the game was solid, and a true sequel to the original two games, they'd find some way of releasing a demo to prove to the old fans, "Look, we've made a really good game."

With the way review sites have already been talking about the V.A.T.S. system, I'm quite surprised they don't at least have a short combat demo like someone else mentioned previously in this thread.

OK Rob, I'll behave. As far as Fall Out 3 I've never played either 1 or 2 but can totally understand not having a demo. Although my question was meant to provoke Oh Snap, it does still stand; How long of a demo would it take to convince somebody of Oblivion's virtues? I'm assuming that Fall Out is similar to Oblivion in this way. If I only had the first 20 minutes to go on (escaping from the dungen and search for that priest) I probably wouldn't have bought it. So I could see why RPGs like this don't release demos.

Is it my imagination or is EVERY thread these days about piracy???
I'm thinking that some game developers are just spreading rumours about excessive piracy when they get poor sales on their PC games.

Anyhow, I hope Bethesda release plenty of videos to give me an idea of the game. Their games aren't perfect but damn close to it and I sincerely hope they keep their discs without invasive software, as they have been doing.

Or you could, you know, make an awesome game around the existing IP rather than just hope the name carries your sales.

i will prolly buy it even without the demo. I loved all of the Fallout games, even tactics, and given Bethesda's track record (Excluding Battlespire, and Redguard) i believe they will do just fine on fallout.

I can forgive the tactics, but did you love BoS?

If you are capable of judging a Bethesda sized RPG in 10 minutes then Tom's should look into hiring you. That is an incredible talent.

i'm still playing oblivion.... when i get bored, its fun to make a retarded albino Khajit or flourescant purple haired high elf and then see if i can kill some random guy in a house for the fun of it....

I do think Oblivion was overrated, but it is hard not to be when the hype machine is in full swing. It was a good game, possibly a great game, just not a phenomenal game.

The textures on faces were ugly as sin, but that wasn't a big deal to me. Mainly, my issues with it were the leveling system and how it handled multiple characters.

The leveling system was utter dog poo. Nothing at all redeeming about it. From the fact that all enemies leveled with you to the whole min maxing of trying to get every point for each level... it was poorly thought out and poorly implemented.

And when you had multiple characters on the same computer all their save games just ran together in an ugly unsorted mess. I have no idea how this made it past QA. They should have separated the savegames out for each character.

Aside from those three gripes, the game was quite good. I enjoyed it quite a bit and since the leveling system will be completely replaced with SPECIAL, I have decent sized hopes for FO3.

Yes, leveling enemies do suck. Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul solves that problem, and brings a lot of other cool stuff to the table as well. I highly recommend it.

You didn't miss much. It was one of the worst games ever, with the "Fallout" name slapped onto it.

That certainly wouldn't work if they used SecureROM.

If not, maybe I'll "preview" it from a store here that still does that. It's been doing it since the C64 rental days, customers have called software companies for tech support and other stupid things I thought would get it stopped, but they're still there calling it previewing instead of renting.

Usually though, their selection's small. Strong DRM or unique registration numbers sort of make it impossible anyway.