Fallout Achievements on Windows live

[Ghostbear]

Make sure you enable Live before you start the game, or else you won't get the achievements.

[hunterx280]

How does one do this? I'm pretty new to Vista and I have yet to try it. Does the game ask you? What about the Steam version?

[biosc1]

How does one do this? I'm pretty new to Vista and I have yet to try it. Does the game ask you? What about the Steam version?

The game should ask you to sign in before playing (Press 'Home' key)...that's how it has worked with Halo 2 and Shadowrun. If you don't have GFW Live installed, it'll install it for you, do some updates, etc...then it will be just like on the 360 ;)

[axion]

Only more magical.

[JayK47]

Do the achievements transfer over the Xbox Live? Why am I even asking? Achievements... pffft. And I did not know that Fallout 3 forces you to install GFW crap. If it isn't DRM, its GFW. I can't win.

[Deadend]

Do the achievements transfer over the Xbox Live? Why am I even asking? Achievements... pffft. And I did not know that Fallout 3 forces you to install GFW crap. If it isn't DRM, its GFW. I can't win.

Bitchmoanmuch?

I haven't seen anything from GFW Live aside from inside Fallout 3, that I launch from Steam.

Really now, calm down.

Yes, the achievements count towards your total on 360, I can see my 360 friend list as well.

[KingGorilla]

Can I opt out and/or hack it out?

[biosc1]

Can I opt out and/or hack it out?

Just don't sign in...or create a crap free silver account if it really wants you to sign in.

[KingGorilla]

I mean that is the thing, will my initial experience be tempered by my least favorite part of any new game with online features:online name hunt.

There are these unpleasant holdovers of GFW live cropping up still. Fallout is a small matter relative to Dawn of War 2 going GFW live not Relic Online.

[Hotcod]

GFW live isn't going to die at this stage... the fact that the new 'free' thing is being used in 2 really rather major games can't really be seen as a hangover but the restarting of the product in to something that might turn out to be useful. I've already seen this move make a few people switch over from buying the game on the xbox to the PC... i don't really get why achievements are such a huge draw for some people but if gfwlive can adress that balance some what in some major cross platform games i'm not going to complain about it. In fact if i ever get around to buying a 360, which i will do when i have the cash, it will be a really cool thing to have. They just really messed it up the first time.

[Slack3r78]

Wait. The PC version has achievements? Fuck yeah.

[KingGorilla]

Wait. The PC version has achievements? Fuck yeah.

The problem, you are a part of it.

[Slack3r78]

The problem, you are a part of it.
OH NO PC GAMES ARE GETTING THE SAME CONTENT AS CONSOLES THE HORROR.

I mean, srsly. I was buying this for PC either way, the fact that it ties into the achievement system is a nice bonus.

[The Doctor]

My GFW Live menus don't work properly when I bring them up. I don't care, since I still get the achievements, I just can't click on buttons or menus to message friends and other stuff I don't care about.

[danielOut]

Really? The Live menu works great for me. This is the first game I've had with GFW Live integration, and I really love it. It is vastly superior to the overlays of steam and xfire.

I want to see more Live integration in major PC titles. And while I never would pick something up just for the achievements, they are quite satisfying. Like when you order a desert and it comes with ice cream on the side. Yeah, you got your desert and that was the main part, but you also got some ice cream, which rocks.

[Deadend]

I noticed the GFW overlay looks a bit like the NXE overlays... sexy.

[RandoM51]

OH NO PC GAMES ARE GETTING THE SAME CONTENT AS CONSOLES THE HORROR.

I mean, srsly. I was buying this for PC either way, the fact that it ties into the achievement system is a nice bonus.

Actually the games have less content than they did five years ago when developers went to the effort to put in usable, meaningful unlocks. Now they can just skip all of that and put in 50 virtual pats on the head. Then people can get together over milk and cookies and see who has the most foil stars from the teacher.

[biosc1]

My GFW Live menus don't work properly when I bring them up. I don't care, since I still get the achievements, I just can't click on buttons or menus to message friends and other stuff I don't care about.

In just this game? Have you entered your Live Access key yet? I thought mine worked last night, but I didn't enter the access key. Today, I tried to sign on in Fallout and it said my key was wrong...but there was no where to enter it, so I just went cancel.

I did learn, through trial and error, that when it says you can't log in due to your key being incorrect, choose "Stay Offline" or something that's not cancel, then it asks for the code and you're good to go.

[Slack3r78]

Actually the games have less content than they did five years ago when developers went to the effort to put in usable, meaningful unlocks. Now they can just skip all of that and put in 50 virtual pats on the head. Then people can get together over milk and cookies and see who has the most foil stars from the teacher.
5 years ago we were getting half-hearted ports like Deus Ex: Invisible War and Thief: Deadly Shadows.

[Ghostbear]

The problem, you are a part of it.

OH NO PC GAMES ARE GETTING THE SAME CONTENT AS CONSOLES THE HORROR.

I mean, srsly. I was buying this for PC either way, the fact that it ties into the achievement system is a nice bonus.

I think achievements are a fun meta game. There is no "problem"

[KingGorilla]

Achievements are the new multiplayer. Not too long ago seemingly every game had to boast deathmathc and CTF to be viable. It led to washed out games. That is how Far Cry and Crysis utterly collapse 2/3 of the way through, and have wrote online components that few played.

Fast forward to now, precious time and resources that could be spent on bugs, optimization, or god forbid actual content, is spent programming these nerd badges into the games. Wrath of the lich king is a much smaller expansion than Burning Crusade(same price) but it has achievements, so it is all fine.

Fortunately Bethesda is more than happy to sell us all of that content they either had to scrap or never got a chance to include for 10 bucks a pop later. Probably not an SDK any time soon though.

[Slack3r78]

Are you ever happy with anything?

I mean, really, if you think any significant amount of programmer effort went into adding an achievement trigger because you completed quest XYZ, you're out of your head.

[torrefaction]

KingGorilla is hilarious.

In the sort of way that Peter Griffin is hilarious.

[Bone]

Actually the games have less content than they did five years ago when developers went to the effort to put in usable, meaningful unlocks. Now they can just skip all of that and put in 50 virtual pats on the head. Then people can get together over milk and cookies and see who has the most foil stars from the teacher.In TF2, I just unlocked a new gun, a sandwich, and boxing gloves through my virtual pats on the head. Don't blame achievements for certain developers being lazy when other developers still understand how we like it ;)


5 years ago we were getting half-hearted ports like Deus Ex: Invisible War and Thief: Deadly Shadows.Huh. I really enjoyed Thief: DS.

[Slack3r78]

Huh. I really enjoyed Thief: DS.
Both games suffered from very small, hubcentric levels designed to work around the Xbox's limited RAM.

[bapenguin]

There's some big (good) changes coming to GFW soon. I think the PC folks will be happy.

[Bone]

Both games suffered from very small, hubcentric levels designed to work around the Xbox's limited RAM.
I felt that Deus Ex suffered for that, but Thief seemed to design around the limitations better. Either way, I enjoyed one while the other never grabbed me for more than a couple hours.

[crazyD]

There's some big (good) changes coming to GFW soon. I think the PC folks will be happy.

Will these changed require me to use it? My favorite part of the integration in Fallout is that I can completely ignore it and just play the damn game.

[Jackel]

There's some big (good) changes coming to GFW soon. I think the PC folks will be happy.

While I'll be hard pressed to want to leave Steam, if it integrates with Steam even the slightest I'll be happy with whatever changes they make.

[biosc1]

While I'll be hard pressed to want to leave Steam, if it integrates with Steam even the slightest I'll be happy with whatever changes they make.

Well, already, you can execute it from Steam and have access to your friend's list, invites and status updates.

[Deadend]

Achievements are the new multiplayer. Not too long ago seemingly every game had to boast deathmathc and CTF to be viable. It led to washed out games. That is how Far Cry and Crysis utterly collapse 2/3 of the way through, and have wrote online components that few played.

Fast forward to now, precious time and resources that could be spent on bugs, optimization, or god forbid actual content, is spent programming these nerd badges into the games. Wrath of the lich king is a much smaller expansion than Burning Crusade(same price) but it has achievements, so it is all fine.

Fortunately Bethesda is more than happy to sell us all of that content they either had to scrap or never got a chance to include for 10 bucks a pop later. Probably not an SDK any time soon though.

Hmm, looks like you are part of the problem. You hate everything.

Adding in achievements does not take that much time or effort at all to add, if the game does stat tracking at all. Throw in a few script triggers and a popup window! Achievement unlocked!

Games are also much less buggy on release than they were in the past.
They get shorter because the cost of producing high quality graphics is very high. This is why Oblivion and Fallout 3 have lots of repeat textures and meshes, because it takes much much much much more time per asset.
Hell, programing graphics is much more complex too thanks to shaders.
and coding for multicore.

Achievements cost maybe $15k to create. That is a high estimate I think.
20 more minutes of fresh content probably costs $100k. Good multiplayer mode would be $1 million.

Why the fuck wouldn't anyone do achievements for the price and potential amount of replay it will give to a subset?

[RandoM51]

In TF2, I just unlocked a new gun, a sandwich, and boxing gloves through my virtual pats on the head. Don't blame achievements for certain developers being lazy when other developers still understand how we like it ;).

You might have noticed this already but if you haven't I'll let you in on a little secret: Valve is the exception to many, many rules that bind other developers.

Might have something to do with being founded by Microsoft millionaires who have enough cash to do the "right" thing instead of doing the immediately profitable thing.

The achievement system is the smartest thing to come out of videogame marketing in the last 20 years. I'm just not as comfortable playing Pavlov's dog to Microsoft as some other people appear to be.

...and I don't expect that to stop anybody from enjoying the achievement system, nor do I want it to. Whatever strokes your boat is fine.

[Widgetcraft]

I'm really enjoying the GFW Live integration. It's quite slick, and everything works just as well (or better) as on the 360.

[kropotkin]

Do you want to know what's really worrying? It is actually possible to double your achievement points on the same game by playing it on the '360 then the PC version. I found this out when I played Gears of War. I finished it on the 360 some time back then picked up the PC version to co-op play with a friend who's a PC nut. As I played through I started clocking up achievements for things I had done on the '360 version. Oh the horror.

As an aside the icon for the GFW achievement is a cool shade of blue as opposed to the garish green that's seen on the XBox 360.

[Bone]

You might have noticed this already but if you haven't I'll let you in on a little secret: Valve is the exception to many, many rules that bind other developers.Up in the sky... it's Captain Obvious! :)

Of course Valve is the exception. But most of the developers we bitch about being lazy DO have the cash. Whether funded by THQ or EA or the like, the decision to not have unlocks is made all the time by people who could easily do so.


The achievement system is the smartest thing to come out of videogame marketing in the last 20 years. I'm just not as comfortable playing Pavlov's dog to Microsoft as some other people appear to be..Maybe you're misconstruing the importance we put on achievements. To me they are just a small, but fun distraction- a recognition of difficult accomplishments, or even better, recognition of something hilarious like toting the gnome into space in HL2 ep2. I would be fine without them, but I appreciate their inclusion.

[biosc1]

Do you want to know what's really worrying? It is actually possible to double your achievement points on the same game by playing it on the '360 then the PC version. I found this out when I played Gears of War. I finished it on the 360 some time back then picked up the PC version to co-op play with a friend who's a PC nut. As I played through I started clocking up achievements for things I had done on the '360 version. Oh the horror.

As an aside the icon for the GFW achievement is a cool shade of blue as opposed to the garish green that's seen on the XBox 360.

Well, some are shared, like Shadowrun...you can only get one achievement once...hence the cross play achievements work both ways. Some allow doubling up...but if you really want to go that hardcore you would be importing Open Season from other regions, because achievements are region locked...so you can get up to 3 times the achievements.

Yes, I was an achievement whore...I'm much better now, honestly ;) (and no, I never imported anything, but I did play Open Season and NBA2k6).

[Savok]

Achievements are the new multiplayer. Not too long ago seemingly every game had to boast deathmathc and CTF to be viable. It led to washed out games. That is how Far Cry and Crysis utterly collapse 2/3 of the way through, and have wrote online components that few played.

Fast forward to now, precious time and resources that could be spent on bugs, optimization, or god forbid actual content, is spent programming these nerd badges into the games. Wrath of the lich king is a much smaller expansion than Burning Crusade(same price) but it has achievements, so it is all fine.

Fortunately Bethesda is more than happy to sell us all of that content they either had to scrap or never got a chance to include for 10 bucks a pop later. Probably not an SDK any time soon though.
Fuck sake, adding a counter for how many head shots you make isn't the same as tacking on an entire crappy multiplayer.

And Wrath is smaller? They added an entire fucking class and profession that can radically alter abilities, there's a god damn nightmare for any sort of balance. Yes the "new" hairstyles are bollocks.

Counting the zones, Northrend has 10, if you include the new starting zones for BC it had 11, the horror.

Using the handy achievement system I can tell you to get the quest achievement for HFP (which seems to be roughly 90% of the total quests) you need 90 quests complete. Now to get the Borean Tundra achievement, it's 150. Actually the lowest the quest achievements go for is 75 in Wrath, most zones are in fact 100+. BC on the other hand goes over 100 once, Netherstorm, and its lowest is 68.

Achievements also provide tangible benefits. For instance, if I manage to complete a bunch of normal difficulty raid content, I get to fly around on this (http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2008/september/8970/mount_plaguedprotodrake.jpg). There's also titles, tabards, pets...

[Disgustipated]

Watching KingGorilla get owned is hilarious.