| I thought the trait system was very innovative, to say the least, however I wouldn't necessarily say that it's the "greatest", since there's been about 10 years in the meantime for other developers to implement their own systems and improve upon it.
I agree about being able to choose "none", but if there's a "net gain" for all the rest of the traits in Fallout 3, I doubt there would be much reason to choose it.
I also concur that some of the traits weren't very good because they had very limited uses, which was basically my point earlier when I said that the traits needed to be balanced better, since some of them were a lot more valuable (such as "gifted") than others.
BI's humor was pretty good, but nothing compares to Rockstar's humor when it comes to their GTA series (are you listening, Bethsoft?). I couldn't possibly count the number of times I fell over laughing at some of the stuff they had on the different radio stations in the various cars as you were driving.
I think humor can be crucial to a game's success, because it ramps up the entertainment level exponentially while you are playing. Humor can be difficult to do (especially when targeted towards a younger audience), but every game should deliberately have at least a little bit of humor (IMO), so long as it doesn't sidetrack the major parts of the gaming experience. To continue with my example of the GTA series, one of the things that made the radio stations so entertaining to listen to is that you didn't really have to actively do anything to experience the humor. Basically, you would hop into a car, and as you were driving around you could listen to just about anything you wanted, but it didn't really distract from the rest of the game.
This is why my favorite humorous items in games tend to be "optional" things like the aforementioned radio stations, poster/pics on walls, in-game books, interactive objects, dialogue, etc. You can always turn off or change the radio stations in GTA, you can look away from posters/pics, put down books, etc., but it can really ruin your gaming experience if you're forced to interact with something that doesn't make any sense.
I'm sure Bethesda will manage to come up with something that completely flies in the face of what I just said, though.  |