Fallout 4 theories

[TheOneBearded]

OT: I really hope that Obsidian has some say so on this project. A Bethesda-only Fallout like Fallout 3 wouldn't be as good as one made by Obsidian. They offer better content and narrative. Just look at the main story and the amazing dlc and compare them to what F3 offered. Talk about getting blown out of the water.

Well get ready a disappointment then, because it will be a Bethsdurpia only project.

As far as post-apoc RPGs go, my attentions are going to Wasteland 2. Fallout is dead to me now as long as it's in Beth's hands.

First, I hear that the voice and puppeteer of The Count from Sesame Street has died. Then, I hear that Neil Armstrong has died. Now, I hear that Fallout 4 is Beth-only. Goddammit.

 

[TheOneBearded]

As a general rule I find that the "Fallout 3 vs Fallout NV" argument can be split into two groups:
1. People who like the novelty and exploration of Fallout 3 a whole bunch.
and
2. People who like the coherent world and writing in Fallout New Vegas a whole bunch.

The point being that they scratch different itches.

I don't mean to just outright dismiss you're theory, but I found Fallout 3 did all of those things alot better than New Vegas.

Seriously? Fallout 3's plot made no sense -snip-

Im sorry but if i was just shot in the head and left for dead, i would stick clear of that person then pissing him off and getting shot in the head again.

Rrrrriiiigggght. So ultimately helping a bunch of people in scary power armor, led by a computer, help pollute the waters of Wash. D.C. with radiation makes for a better story?
Or the fact that the Brotherhood of Steel are the good guys even when they are known, lore wise, as complete asshats and not noble knights in shining armor?

Oh, and getting shot in the head and having the sheer power of vengeance keep you alive is what separates the men from the boys. The Lone Wanderer wouldn't know anything about that.

 

[The Last Nomad]

As a general rule I find that the "Fallout 3 vs Fallout NV" argument can be split into two groups:
1. People who like the novelty and exploration of Fallout 3 a whole bunch.
and
2. People who like the coherent world and writing in Fallout New Vegas a whole bunch.

The point being that they scratch different itches.

I don't mean to just outright dismiss you're theory, but I found Fallout 3 did all of those things alot better than New Vegas.

Yeah, obviously not everyone is going to agree with me, that's why I just call it a general rule rather than absolute fact.

I can't really say that I agree, though. A lot can be said about the writing in Fallout 3, but "coherent" isn't at all the word I'd use, it's a lot more patchwork. You've got totally separated communities set up a stone's trow from each other with wildly different themes and stories, and they very rarely even acknowledge each other and are oblivious to the main story. Little grannies living happily within shouting distance of a building full of super mutants and a nest of fire-ants, that kind of thing. Contrast this to NV where almost everything is centered around, or influenced by, the NCR/Legion war or the New Vegas political scene. I'm not saying that the former type of writing doesn't have it's place - I think that type of novelty is the main reason the exploration element works so well in Fallout 3 - but I tend to get rather uninvested once I notice that, story-wise, most locations are their own little bubble-universes.

But, as I said, different itches.

I never really thought about the fact that everyone doesn't care about whats around them... But I suppose that just goes to show how bad a state the Capital Wasteland was. Everyone was just out to save themselves, supermutants included.
I liked that better than everyone being on one side or the other of the NCR/Legion War. Everywhere in New Vegas I went I was basically doing quests by proxy for one or the other side.

And I still feel Fallout 3 has a far better story, although I agree that it isn't always as well written, but that's just really the dialogue. The actually story being told is far more interesting.

 

[The Last Nomad]

-snip-

Seriously? Fallout 3's plot made no sense (sorry, but water does not stay contaminated for that long), the setting made no sense (why would people still be scavenging two hundred years after the nukes? Even Fallout 2 had shown that humanity was already rebuilding and re-progressing), and the ending made no sense (why should I be forced to die from radiation, when my radiation proof companion is right there?!?)

The atmosphere was pretty cool, but like everything else, it's only surface level. Actually dig underneath the surface of Fallout 3, and the setting doesn't make any sense. It clashes too much with the established lore of the previous Fallout games, and had too many plotholes that could be avoided with a high-school level understanding of basic science. New Vegas was far closer to the original Fallout games, in that it actually showed humanity trying to rebuild from the ashes, rather than simply wandering around in overalls, gazing at their own navels.

Anyways OT: I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Fallout needs to head to New Orleans.

It has the potential for a new kind of setting for the games, a marshland area populated by giant alligators and mutated snakes. It has the iconic landscape of the Mississipi delta, New Orleans and Baton Rouge. But more importantly, it is a key area of many of the values and ideas that we would term as being uniquely American. It is the birthplace of Jazz, arguably America's greatest and most singular contribution to music, and a key part of the Fallout series. It is the birthplace of African-American spirituality, where 19th century slaves mixed their native African beliefs with traditional Christian teaching to create the Southern Voodoo culture that is so identifiable with the South today. And as an area largely populated by African Americans, it has had a huge role in the struggle of non-whites against inequality, racism and bigotry. The Fallout series thus far has danced around America's history of slavery and racism, and a game set in New Orleans would be the perfect opportunity to reflect on those less-than-noble chapters of the American story.

The 'clashes with established lore' argument is more often than not bullshit. If it was made by the original creators with the same added lore, people would praise it as expanding the lore, but not if some other company had the gall to add their own ideas to the sacred cow that is the original lore.

Sometimes the argument is solid though, but not so here. This was the east coast of America, not the west like the older games. Its a continent apart. Clearly it was just taking alot slower to rebuild. And it would seem it was hit alot worse by the bombs.
Never was the east coast mentioned in any detail in the originals, I guess apocalypses tend to cut off communication across long distances. So Bethesda were free to do as they wished really and they choose to make a very different game to what interplay would have.


While I may disagree with a lot of your post, I agree to fuck that new Orleans should be the setting (or part of it) for a future Fallout game.
Since fallout universe splits from ours around the 50's, it wouldn't be hard to imagine life for african-americans never got a lot better down south, and slavery could be a major theme as it often is in Fallout games. It would also be very interesting to see how race politics work out when another race (ghouls) is thrown in.

but I do think every series should be set in New Orleans at some stage... but Fallout would work particularly well there.

 

[The Last Nomad]

The 'clashes with established lore' argument is more often than not bullshit. If it was made by the original creators with the same added lore, people would praise it as expanding the lore, but not if some other company had the gall to add their own ideas to the sacred cow that is the original lore.

I don't think so. If Interplay had released a Fallout 3 where Super Mutants were inexplicably on the East coast, and rendered dumber than a sack of hammers, people would still have criticized the game. If Interplay had released a Fallout 3 where the Brotherhood Of Steel were transformed into knights in shining power-armour, people would also criticize the game. And if Interplay had released a Fallout 3 where the plot revolved around a fundamental misunderstanding of basic nuclear physics, people would still have criticized it. It wasn't that Bethesda did anything new that caused people to complain. It's that what they did add was so painfully derivative of the older games, and just made so little sense, that fans felt like they'd taken a small dump on the established canon.

No way to tell how people would have reacted, since it didn't happen. But I feel if the exact same game was released under interplay's name it would have been far better received by 'fans'. (I use quotation marks around fans because someone who nit picks the shit out of a series just to make themselves sound better is far from a fan in my book).

Sometimes the argument is solid though, but not so here. This was the east coast of America, not the west like the older games. Its a continent apart. Clearly it was just taking alot slower to rebuild. And it would seem it was hit alot worse by the bombs.

No matter how many bombs hit, or where they hit the American continent, radioactive decay is still the same. Chernobyl was hit by a radiation blast anywhere between 12 and 50 times the size of Hiroshima, depending on which sources you read. Yet thirty years on, it's now a green, fertile land full of flora and fauna. There's still some radiation there, but nowhere near strong enough to be fatal to wildlife.

So why is it that two centuries, Washington is still a radioactive hell-hole full of scavengers? The radiation in the water should be all but gone, and the radiation levels on land should not be strong be strong enough to stop life from reclaiming the Capital. This is the issue. If the game was set a few decades after the War, it would be understandable. But it's not. It's set two whole centuries later. The same amount of time it took America to go from thirteen Colonies on the Eastern coast to an entire continental nation, complete with nuclear power, flight and space travel.

Using real life facts to argue against new elements to a series that already had fact defying plot elements is kinda pointless. Ghouls, supermutants, deathclaws, Buildings that only ever seem to lose floors above the ground floor; none of these things follow real life logic. Why should only radiation do so in the Fallout universe?

Never was the east coast mentioned in any detail in the originals, I guess apocalypses tend to cut off communication across long distances. So Bethesda were free to do as they wished really and they choose to make a very different game to what interplay would have.

This is where I disagree most. I don't think Bethesda made a different game to Interplay. I think Bethesda took all the superficial elements of Fallout 1 and 2, stuck them into 3 without trying to work out just what those elements were or why they worked, and hoped no-one would notice.

What I meant was that there is little or no established canon for what went on on the east coast. Bethesda were free to make their own lore, and that they did, when they bought the rights to a decade old series I'm sure they thought it wouldn't bother too many people if they effectively make their own version of the series. Sure it is extremely different in some ways, but like I said, a continental divide during a nuclear apocalypse can make it hard for organisations to stay upon the same path. Hence the vastly different version of the Brotherhood of Steel.

Bethesda effectively made a new IP, no need to know anything about Fallout to get engaged, but enough things for fans to enjoy, while at the same time, seeing them in an entirely new light. Its not like they went out and destroyed all copies of FO1 and 2. You can still go back to them if your not happy with Fallout 3.

While I may disagree with a lot of your post, I agree to fuck that new Orleans should be the setting (or part of it) for a future Fallout game.
Since fallout universe splits from ours around the 50's, it wouldn't be hard to imagine life for african-americans never got a lot better down south, and slavery could be a major theme as it often is in Fallout games. It would also be very interesting to see how race politics work out when another race (ghouls) is thrown in.

but I do think every series should be set in New Orleans at some stage... but Fallout would work particularly well there.

Glad to see we can agree on that at least.

Personally, I also thought it would be interesting to contrast the treatment of ghouls with the treatment of African-Americans back before the War. Seeing as Fallout never progressed beyond the Fifties, it seems logical that black and other racial minority groups never won the civil rights struggle the way they did in real life. It would be interesting to wander round a rubble strewn New Orleans and see 'Whites Only' signs hanging off the walls, or designated fountains for black people rusting in the streets.

It could even have got a lot worse in the hundred or so years between the split of our timeline with Fallouts and the time of the Great war. Maybe the black community had an all out revolution (or would adding such a major historical event be blasphemy to the canon? [i kid]) and the city was split into black and white areas with the interground being an all out Warzone.


Jeeze this is a long post, but I just felt I had to answer most of your points as for once my head was not empty and I actually felt I had something relevant to say. I hope someone takes the time to read it.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

I will never forgive Bethesda for what they did to Harold.

 

[Coppernerves]

I reckon befor a Fallout 4 title, there'll be more Fallout Some-other-place games with the same kind of gameplay and engine as FO3 and FONV.

Fallout 4 will play more like Deus Ex HR but with menu based skills such as intelligence stuff and cooking, and minigames other than hacking and talking.

I hope the next fallout games will have a more detailed morality, where different NPCs care about different aspects of your ruputation eg. honesty, manners, reliability, courage, obedience, temper, and greed, thus presenting you with different problems and solutions depending on that reputation.

I also hope that melee and unarmed hits will prevent the use of ranged weapons until the non-ranged combatant has been out of melee range for a second or two.

 

[Ljs1121]

I'd like a Fallout set in Northern U.S.A./Canada. I've thirsted for a Wintery Wonderlandy nuclear wasteland for far too long.