Fallout series

[vertexwindi]

I like the 3D Fallout games and the map is by no means tiny, but you can often spot too much in the distance, you see something that you know you will return to on a quest at a later date/higher level and things like that.

It's a trade-off between a world that's believably big and a world that's fun to explore. In the Fallout 3D titles, I'd rather have a fun world because for some reason they refuse to add ways to make exploring go by faster, even though FO2 had the Highwayman so it wouldn't be a huge stretch for the setting. TES has horses as well so I don't see why not.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

It's a trade-off between a world that's believably big and a world that's fun to explore. In the Fallout 3D titles, I'd rather have a fun world because for some reason they refuse to add ways to make exploring go by faster, even though FO2 had the Highwayman so it wouldn't be a huge stretch for the setting. TES has horses as well so I don't see why not.

I was thinking a map like in the 2D Fallout games for fast-travel and not in-world traversing. The map starts dark with only your immediate surroundings/vault/settlement marked out and from there you start to uncover it. Settlements and large things are added by passing near them, which is reasonable because they would be easy to spot from a distance, other things requires more exact coordinates where you travel to specific spot and then go in to the world to find the actual location. If it's close enough the player would then stand outside the entrance to a vault, cave, small camp or mysterious hole in the ground. If they go from the map into the world at a random spot it would just be wasteland, unless they are incredibly lucky or know beforehand where something is located.

I'm not NoMutantsAllowed levels of insane but I have some absurd adoration of the old games. I played so much Fallout 1, during summer break my routine was to wake up, grab a cup of tea, play Fallout with breaks for lunch and dinner... Then go to sleep, repeat.

 

[vertexwindi]

I was thinking a map like in the 2D Fallout games for fast-travel and not in-world traversing.

You could do that, but it's clear at this point that Bethesda isn't interested in that. For what it's worth, having the whole map be playable adds a lot to the immersion and allows for more natural-feeling battles than random encounters. Eh.

 

[Imperial Citizen]

Not to mention, people that worked on the game such as Avellone and Sawyer have left Obsidian. Granted, I hear Outer Worlds did well so another Fallout from Obsidian could still be good even without Avellone writing a fuck ton of shit that gets shaved off and all but at this point if Obsidian was able to make another Fallout, one wonders if they can try a new region that isn't the west coast or the east coast. Maybe focusing more on the wasteland and not just city limits where you got a one big city and everything else is a small settlement like 3 and 4 did.


If the devs were to try and give you the idea that only this faction is good and the other is bad, I can imagine rolling my eyes and going sure. For me, I could feel it being no different than from 4 when they give you four different factions and the only difference was some gimmick to them. They could say 1 and 2 gave commentary but from all the hours spent into them, it gave sympathy to a mound of flesh in 1 and 2 telling me that the best ending after a fan made bug fix for a douchebag faction was letting them be independent and cooperate with a group they were racist to. For the Legion bit, I thought that was Aveone saying he wishes people didn't have any sympathy to them even though their opponent turned out to only be slightly better.

I’ll give Bethesda credit for giving all the factions in 4 positives and negatives. The Institue is scientifically advanced but cares little for humanity. The BoS will protect humanity at the cost of genociding mutants. The Minutemen want to help the wasteland but are too weak to create a civilization and has collapsed due to traitors going with the Gunners. The Railroad help the Synths but do little else.

The in game outcome of each faction is the same, but Bethesda should be given credit for eschewing the black and white morality of Fallout 3.

Not to mention that removing the karma system actually gives more moral ambiguity to your character’s actions.

 

[Exceptionally Exceptional]

It's a trade-off between a world that's believably big and a world that's fun to explore. In the Fallout 3D titles, I'd rather have a fun world because for some reason they refuse to add ways to make exploring go by faster, even though FO2 had the Highwayman so it wouldn't be a huge stretch for the setting. TES has horses as well so I don't see why not.

This is exactly one of my problems with Fallout 4, 3, and even New Vegas. You can get Power Armor working again, but you can't repair a car? Fuck, the fact that you couldn't even buy a pack brahmin was kinda dumb given how often you see them used by wastelanders. You could possibly even train them as mounts, but we've never seen it for some bizarre reason.
Fuck, even having some sort of contrived "fast travel" option like a guy with a truck that acts as more or less a time consuming doorway would be something.
Adding vehicles would definitely be an improvement. And people can't even complain that "it'd make exploration boring!" because the simple fact is that a LOT of places would be utterly inaccessable by vehicle, meaning you'd still have to hoof it around a bit outside of the main roads.

Just imagine how fun that'd be? Having to find parts for your post apocalyptic bus/van while finding better and better tech to hook into it. Tired of being chased by shit? Integrate a Stealth Boy into the engine. Sure it goes through batteries like a jet addict, but when you've just driven into the nesting grounds of a pack of Deathclaws it'd be pretty fucking useful.

 

[vertexwindi]

This is exactly one of my problems with Fallout 4, 3, and even New Vegas. You can get Power Armor working again, but you can't repair a car? Fuck, the fact that you couldn't even buy a pack brahmin was kinda dumb given how often you see them used by wastelanders.

Funny thing is that was gonna be an option in NV but they cut it out for some reason.

 

[Mola Ram]

Funny thing is that was gonna be an option in NV but they cut it out for some reason.

I feel like NV came very close to having functional trains in it (mostly because of the Powder Gangers, but also because a lot of rail routes seem relatively intact) but then just didn't for some reason.

Also, Fallout 4 already fucked up the lore of "there's no fuel left" by giving the Brotherhood a fleet of vertibirds that constantly crash all over downtown Boston, so there's no reason they can't just give us a car. The Highwayman was so fuckin' cool, too.

 

[Snekposter]

Personally I'd love to see first-hand the rebuilding the NCR is doing that's only mentioned in dialogue in New Vegas. One person mentions money flooding in to the Boneyard and of course, the quarrymen are shipping their limestone out by rail, not to mention the Powder Gangers were used as convict labor to extend the lines to New Vegas.

Spoiler: Long Ass Story Idea for Fallout: Arizona

So, following the Legion's retreat from Nevada and Caesar's death, in true Roman style they've got a triumvirate going on between Vulpes, Lucius, and Lanius, each instituting their own idea of Caesar's vision. Vulpes and his men are the truest to the old legion and its austerity and discipline, Lanius and his men have descended back down into tribal barbarism since the Legion he never liked failed him, and Lucius has taken Caesar's Hegelian thought and applied it to their defeat to establish a quasi-Republic. Its been ten years since the NCR's very nearly Pyrrhic victory at Hoover Dam, and they've been unwilling to poke the sleeping bull, expanding into other territories and rebuilding a proper nation. You're sent in all by yourself to gather intel for the NCR on what's been going on, and you end up doing things for people getting noticed and in places you can hear and influence things, and you get to choose your side at the end, NCR, Vulpes, Lanius, or Lucius, and with the option to convince Lucius of the faults in Caesar's vision and submit to becoming the NCR's latest state.

 

[Dom Cruise]

one wonders if they can try a new region that isn't the west coast or the east coast.

Personally I'd like to see a return to the Los Angeles area from the original game, but in 3D.

However only if it was Obsidian developing, not Bethesda.

I like the ideas of a huge open wasteland with procedurally generated content and the return of the Highwayman as well.

 

[Ira the Weatherman]

Avellone was the one who claims he wished the Legion wasn't joinable after someone sent him some dumb MUH MISOGYNY takes on Twitter. Sawyer claims the Legion ended up coming across as more misogynist than he intended and that he regrets not having had the time to add more Legion content east of the Colorado River.

Avellone also had full creative control over the BEAR BULL snoozefest that was Lonesome Road (with Ulysses being his particular donut steel pet character), as well as Old World Blues to a large extent. He can clearly be a good writer/designer when he wants to, but he's certainly no stranger to the smell of his own farts either.

 

[Exceptionally Exceptional]

Avellone also had full creative control over the BEAR BULL snoozefest that was Lonesome Road (with Ulysses being his particular donut steel pet character), as well as Old World Blues to a large extent. He can clearly be a good writer/designer when he wants to, but he's certainly no stranger to the smell of his own farts either.

I didn't mind Lonesome Road, but I do think it was the weakest of the DLCs for New Vegas. It certainly had some interesting shit, the Marked Men were kinda fun to fight. But the whole "you destroyed this community I'm illogically convinced will be the best thing ever by complete accident so now I'm going to destroy the base of a faction you barely give a shit about!" schtick really didn't make me think the guy was a great character. His motivations were insanely irrational.
I did like that we got a little bit more info about ED-E and the Enclave, tho.

 

[Snekposter]

Ulysses had actually decided to settle down and live there, free of the discipline and fetters of the Legion. And then when the NCR and Legon fought over it and you brought the remote detonator, well, of course he broke down screaming that you blew it up, and god damn the Courier to hell. It was a new home for a man who had lost his to Vulpes Inculta and the all-consuming Legion, after all. Ulysses is not thinking rationally, which is why when you gather the logs and force him to retrace his steps, you're able to convince him of what a terrible mistake he's made.

EDIT: Try and replace "Bear and Bull" with "memes" in your mind and see if things don't make at least a bit more sense.

 

[Burned Man]

I'd have to disagree with the idea of a ginormous procedural generated wasteland if you are going to be exploring it in real time. In Daggerfall if you try and walk from two locations to the other you get 30 to 40 minutes of walking with absolutely nothing in between. Sure the world is huge but its empty outside of all the map locations. If you do procedurally generate it and it still massive in size then you'd get a lot of the same stuff repeated which will dilute the sense of exploration.

I'd like something like Fallout 3 but just multiplied a bit. The actual wasteland in 3 felt expansive enough and you'd be able to see points of interest on the distant horizon that would take a while to actually reach and when you finally got there after 20 minutes you'd look at the map and realize that was only a grid or two. 4 however was cluttered full of stuff every ten feet you'd find a shanty with skeletons in it or a drainpipe with loot and mire lurks. It didn't feel like a barren wasteland and more like a junkyard.

Vehicles I'm iffy on. I'd be fine with something like horses or a motorcycle/atv or something light like that. I'm just afraid if they added a car they would make it too gimmicky. I can just see Todd Howard on stage giving the presentation about how this car is your home away from home, its got all the workbenches you need, it has a gps radio system that allows it to call in merchants to your position so you never have to go to town to sell your junk again, and last but not least it would have some sort of on board ai with a snarky personality to talk to you and drive to your position if you ever leave it behind. You also know there would be a scene of the protagonist fixing the car in the intro and when he turns the key in the ignition he'd say "It just works."

 

[vertexwindi]

I'm just afraid if they added a car they would make it too gimmicky. I can just see Todd Howard on stage giving the presentation about how this car is your home away from home, its got all the workbenches you need, it has a gps radio system that allows it to call in merchants to your position so you never have to go to town to sell your junk again, and last but not least it would have some sort of on board ai with a snarky personality to talk to you and drive to your position if you ever leave it behind. You also know there would be a scene of the protagonist fixing the car in the intro and when he turns the key in the ignition he'd say "It just works."

Oh god. I take back everything I said, that absolutely sounds like something they'd do.

 

[eternal dog mongler]

I'm not NoMutantsAllowed levels of insane but I have some absurd adoration of the old games. I played so much Fallout 1, during summer break my routine was to wake up, grab a cup of tea, play Fallout with breaks for lunch and dinner... Then go to sleep, repeat.

Same. Residency for me was split between seeing patients and punching people in the dick in Fallout 2 when I was supposed to be sleeping in the lounge.

no sleep only power fist

 

[Sug Benis]

The message that I get from the series is that ideology is often just a mask for tribalism, that's the point behind the "war never changes" message. Ultimately, the US and China were starving dogs protecting their turf, it wasn't any more complicated than that. The games definitely often seem to lean towards libertarian ideals, but at the same time Lonesome Road makes the point that tribalism (or at least finding a home to invest in) can be a good thing. The entire theme behind the DLC is that Ulysses finally found some measure of peace in Ashton, and the Courier came and fucked that up by accidentally blowing up the town and never looking back, because that's the nature of wanderers who never get attached to anything. Honest Hearts deals with the same message, and at no point does the game heavily chide you for choosing to drive the White-Legs out of Zion, which might as well be one of the most nationalistic and tribal choices you can make in the series. The DLC goes to great lengths to let you determine for yourself if this way of thinking is sometimes justified.

Single best take on this debate I've seen lately.

I was thinking a map like in the 2D Fallout games for fast-travel and not in-world traversing. The map starts dark with only your immediate surroundings/vault/settlement marked out and from there you start to uncover it. Settlements and large things are added by passing near them, which is reasonable because they would be easy to spot from a distance, other things requires more exact coordinates where you travel to specific spot and then go in to the world to find the actual location. If it's close enough the player would then stand outside the entrance to a vault, cave, small camp or mysterious hole in the ground. If they go from the map into the world at a random spot it would just be wasteland, unless they are incredibly lucky or know beforehand where something is located.

I'm not NoMutantsAllowed levels of insane but I have some absurd adoration of the old games. I played so much Fallout 1, during summer break my routine was to wake up, grab a cup of tea, play Fallout with breaks for lunch and dinner... Then go to sleep, repeat.

This just reminds me. I had a mod for New Vegas once, one that adds driveable vehicles to the commonwealth. Was, to borrow an off-misused 4chan phrase, comfy. Fixing up the beaten old truck at the old gas station in goodsprings, and cruising my way around after Benny in cowboy style. Then I got an armored up Mad Max II tanker truck to haul my shit around with me, including a deployable sentry bot from another mod (RobCo Certified, I can remember the name of that one) to pop out if shit went down, and turned into a trading powerhouse with the help of a few in-game mercantile and economy mods. You haven't lived New Vegas style til you've run a couple hundred pounds of hash, moonshine, and ordinance through Caesar's legion territory with Boone in a machinegun turret, Cass riding shotgun in a very literal sense, and a sentry bot wheeling after you.

Then I got a motorcycle, welded on a gatling laser, and that was the thing that ended up corrupting my 100+ hour save file and I never tried that mod again. Maybe I should do so and just avoid motorcycles and/or vehicle mounted weapons like the plague.

 

[c-no]

I’ll give Bethesda credit for giving all the factions in 4 positives and negatives. The Institue is scientifically advanced but cares little for humanity. The BoS will protect humanity at the cost of genociding mutants. The Minutemen want to help the wasteland but are too weak to create a civilization and has collapsed due to traitors going with the Gunners. The Railroad help the Synths but do little else.

The in game outcome of each faction is the same, but Bethesda should be given credit for eschewing the black and white morality of Fallout 3.

Not to mention that removing the karma system actually gives more moral ambiguity to your character’s actions.

The factions did feel underwhelming, at least with the Institute's motives because I still don't see how replacing people with robot doubles is really redefining mankind. And the Railroad still feels weird for me in how a handful of people are somehow one hell of a thorn in the side of the faction that has terminators and laser guns. Still, it all is better than the black and white morality shoehorned in from Fallout 3. Oddly enough, 3 made some better use with karma at least in what companions you could get but even that would be shaky if one would note that with some characters, you could of been given the option of giving them caps or at least showing you weren't someone that was under-equipped, along with hitmen coming after you depending on your karma but even that was underwhelming since who would really give a fuck about some vault dweller giving hobbies bottles of clean water. New Vegas did hitmen better since that was tied to which faction you pissed off and karma wasn't the only thing you had going for you since towns and factions still hold any reservations until you did them good or bad directly.

Vehicles I'm iffy on. I'd be fine with something like horses or a motorcycle/atv or something light like that. I'm just afraid if they added a car they would make it too gimmicky. I can just see Todd Howard on stage giving the presentation about how this car is your home away from home, its got all the workbenches you need, it has a gps radio system that allows it to call in merchants to your position so you never have to go to town to sell your junk again, and last but not least it would have some sort of on board ai with a snarky personality to talk to you and drive to your position if you ever leave it behind. You also know there would be a scene of the protagonist fixing the car in the intro and when he turns the key in the ignition he'd say "It just works."

Alternatively, if they add a car in, it doesn't have workbenches or merchants for you to call in but it's all still just an underwhelming drive where you see your character drive by themselves rather than letting you have any control, with the car being even more fragile than vertibirds that any vehicle you see will be smoldering wrecks that'll disappear. I can imagine the vehicle being jank enough that it'd make me prefer the vehicles from the Skynet and Futureshock games Bethesda made for the Terminator franchise. Those gave you a car to drive and I can imagine that being leagues more fun than any possible underwhelming jank. funnily enough, there were some vehicle mods for Fallout 3 and New Vegas that shows it can be done though granted, they could still be held back by any limitations of the engine or the game.

 

[2021Murder]

replaying fallout 3. I just wanted to know if anyone else feels like Todd wanted the game to be set before the first Fallout. We all know the complaints about how fucking undeveloped the world is for 200 years after the bombs fell, but going on how fallout 4 and 76 went. it seems like the world feels like they only decided on it being set after the first two fallouts way later in development.

 

[Sir Wesley Tailpipe]

replaying fallout 3. I just wanted to know if anyone else feels like Todd wanted the game to be set before the first Fallout. We all know the complaints about how fucking undeveloped the world is for 200 years after the bombs fell, but going on how fallout 4 and 76 went. it seems like the world feels like they only decided on it being set after the first two fallouts way later in development.

It’s cute that you think they put any thought into it.

 

[Get_your_kicks_with_30-06]

replaying fallout 3. I just wanted to know if anyone else feels like Todd wanted the game to be set before the first Fallout. We all know the complaints about how fucking undeveloped the world is for 200 years after the bombs fell, but going on how fallout 4 and 76 went. it seems like the world feels like they only decided on it being set after the first two fallouts way later in development.

I think you are partially right, but I think the main reason for this is because Bethesda wanted to make the series there own. They wanted to swing there big corporate dick around and say that we own this series now and we are going to do it our way. Which explains the complete change of location, a completely different story for the super mutants, killing an established character (Harold), a different atmosphere, etc.