Why There Are No Ladders in Fallout

IGN writes: "You may not have noticed while playing Bethesda's Fallout or Elder Scrolls titles over the years, but none of the games from those series include ladders as a means of getting to higher places.

Bethesda Game Director Todd Howard admitting during a panel at Quakecon today that one of the gameplay features the studio continues to cut game after game is the inclusion of ladders for players to climb."

[SeanRL]

My 350+ hours invested into fallout 3 would just like to say....

F*CK LADDERS! Gimme stairs and more power armor!

Edit: Jet packs work too. Anyways, looking forward to Fallout: New Vegas, even if the engine looks and runs the exact same.

[MariaHelFutura]

Ladders and Stairs are overrated. Give me a Jet pack.

[Fred-G-Sanford]

I'm gonna buy Fallout 3 (Game of the Year edition) for my PC later today when it goes on sale at Steam.

I rented it for my 360 and played it for around 5 or 6 hours, but now I'm going to buy it and finish the entire game and all of its DLC in glorious 1920x1080.

Yay me. :D

[Bigpappy]

This is a modern RPG. Only painters and service men use ladders.

Who wants to climb a ladder with a rocket launcher on his back?

[AndrewRyan]

Mario jumps To get to the chimney on the roof of the house.

[rroded]

"It just felt like we're game development pussies because we can't do ladders."

Bethesda Game Director Todd Howard

lol

[zagibu]

Yeah, well, hasn't anybody else noticed that they are still using the same Klik&Play Game-Maker kit they've bought from an Indian Developer in 1999? They have no single programmer, just a bunch of artists that create assets for their kit. Mentioning ladders is just a desperate try to make people laugh, so they don't notice that they also can't do drivable vehicles, deformable terrain, or even a basic multiplayer mode like deathmatch.

I'm kidding, btw.

[RedDead]

Ladders are boring anyway. Prefare to fight my way up the stairs

[Chris_Hansen_Rocks]

why ladders if you have paint brushes?
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[palaeomerus]

In Morrowind you didn't need ladders because you could walk on air or jump a long long ways. Sadly Oblivion nixed that.

[ProjectVulcan]

Epic ladder action

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[Red_Phoenix]

Ramps and elevators seem to be working perfectly fine for me. Screw ladders, I would trade in the use of ladders in game for a game like fallout any day.

[TheIneffableBob]

Sounds like they need a new game engine (id Tech 5???).

[big_silky]

I understand it's a game but in reality ladders aren't that common. I don't remember the last time I actually saw one.

[Nihilism]

What do you mean? I mean I know there aren't ladders lying around everywhere now, but when nuclear explosions occur, don't they randomly generate ladders and spew them all over the terrain for ease of use for survivors. I must be missing something.

Note to bethesda: Climbing rubble in a nuclear wasteland is apparently less realistic than strategically placed ladders made from all the invisible trees that were killed in the fallout...yeah I don't get this article.

[danielle007]

But, obviously, not having ladders makes them pussies.

.... And they want to be manly men! Roar.

[SpaceFox]

Yeah, last time I remember seeing a ladder was.. BC2? Before that, RE5.

[karl]

u cant skate on ladders .... ramps FTW

[kasasensei]

Ladders in rpg? ridiculous...

[Megaton]

This article is a farce. At one of the power stations west of Arefu there's a ladder to get on top of the building where you find a folding chair, a BB gun, beer, and a skill book. Granted, it doesn't work like a ladder, more like a door, but it's there! And it's functional!

[Odin777]

That is true.

[zagibu]

Well, non-functional ladders are pretty easy to do. He was talking about ladders with climb animations.
There are more ladders in FO3 that work like teleporters, e.g. in the giant radar dish towers to get to the very top.

[Dsnyder]

.

[1Victor]

wrong all the ladders just fallout.

[Alos88]

Just treat them like doors; rather than having a complex animation of NPCs climbing up them have them fade out like they do when they leave a room in Fallout3/Oblivion.

[ZombieAutopsy]

That's what they did in fallout 3.

[aaronisbla]

love fallout 3 but honestly, ladder climbing would probably make the game crash more than it does now

[ZombieAutopsy]

Don't care about ladders I just want my fallout without frame drops.

[Nihilism]

I can live with the frame rate drops...what I can't live with is the crashing...one of the best games in recent years ( in my top 5 of all time ) but I refuse to play it again because it is so unoptimised I can't go half an hr without a crash.

[Fred-G-Sanford]

Could it be a problem with your hardware, dchalfont, or is this a known issue with Fallout 3?

[madjedi]

@fred i believe it's a issue, with the engine bethesda ect uses to make the fallout and elder scrolls games. I hope to hell vegas isn't a buggy ass mess like fallout 3 and oblivion was.

[ZombieAutopsy]

Mad is right it was a problem with the game, usually didn't crash till you were farther in the game but it is a huge problem especially if you don't save every 10-15 minutes. From what I'm told the DLC is very broken as well so I'll be waiting to pick up FOV until it's patched because I have a feeling it's gonna need one.

[Motion]

Yeah, I'd start out in the wasteland running a smooth 45-60 fps, after about 15 minutes goes by (I assume memory leaks or something) down to around 10-20 fps. Exit game, load a save, and back to the high frame rate. It was quite annoying.

[Nihilism]

Disagree is not from me, no it is not my hardware, my hardware is 1000x above the required specs, and I have tried every known tweak...it just isn't ever going to be fixed.

[HeroXIV]

Lol they can't do ladders? I'm 99% sure the mod community has a solution for this. Best thing about Bethesda games. Release a broken product and let the community patch it up!

[MexicanAppleThief]

There are ladders in fallout 3, what the hell? I remember there was one in the Ant Queen lair, whcih was really close to her throne.

The bugs, glitches, crappy animations really bring this game down. Its a shame these things are still present in Fallout 3 and I hope they fixed all this in New Vegas.

[ATi_Elite]

Ladders only lead to one thing....Cleaning out rain gutters.

Theres no handicap parking either

[TABSF]

I got your ladders

Oblivion Dark Brotherhood

Players and AI can use it

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[DasTier]

i was just looking for a video like that to post, but you beat me to it. There are also ladders in most of the castles. and i think the mage's guild has some.

[saint_john_paul_ii]

he meant dynamically using the ladders, like you know...Like Seeing your character climb the ladder LOL....

[sonicsidewinder]

didnt the older elder scroll games have climbing?

lol 'The Older Elder Scrolls'. I'd buy it.

[writersblock]

Make another fucking engine, you lazy bastards. You've been using the same one since oblivion, fallout looked meh and now new vegas looks like the EXACT same game

[SHOGUN 36o]

Another question. Why isn't there any chutes.

[C0MPUT3R]

The Super Human Gambit Quest . The Ant Queen's Lair has a ladder leading up to Cantaberry Commons.

[kraze07]

Forget what some of you guys are saying Fallout 3 desperately needed ladders in some parts of the game and I'm not talking about more of the ladders that act just like doors. Navigating through the major cities in the game would've been a lot easier if there were ladders.

[Ummm Da Dum]

no ladders, am defo not getting this game now.
should always state on the back of the case if it doesnt have ladders.

i only buy games with ladders in.
cant wait for a console/pc powerful enough to run snakes and ladders in glorious 3DHD, i might actually giz myself.

[Broncos98]

slow news day

[Ascalon94]

indeed

[Shield]

Now get rid of exploding barrels & breakable boxes and my gaming experience will be bliss! ;P

[BannedForNineYears]

They couldn't implement ladders because they are sloppy programmers who can't do anything.
I mean, look at their shooting mechanics? Tell me they're even close to decent!!!
The only reason people don't entirely care is because they slapped it with a bag of RPG. -_-

[NewYork214]

all games should ban ladders. they are such a pain in the ass. especially games that make it hard to get on the ladder. lol or if you get on the wrong side and climb all the way up and get stuck by the platform that you were trying to climb onto

[CrzyFooL]

Why on earth is this news? lol. Slow week at IGN?

[Captain Tuttle]

There were ladders in Fallout: Tactics.

[dinkeldinkse]

Fixed the ridiculous amount of crashing, frame rate drops, and glitches in general.