So, the next Fallout ?...

[Rabid]

Now that Skyrim has been released, and as New Vegas has seen all its DLCs released, I suppose we can expect the next Fallout to come out in a year or two, possibly with a new engine.

So far, here's what I gathered on “Fallout 4” by surfing the web :

- There's what appear to be a fake teaser on YouTube for “Fallout 4 : San-Francisco”.

- A guy on a forum say a friend of his has a Bethesda employee as an acquaintance, and that he managed to get said employee drunk enough to say that the next game will be set in the Commonwealth (Boston) [posted 02 December 2011 11:58 PM]

- It tried to surf “No Mutant Allowed” to see if they had any information, but it was full of neckbeards and I got afraid I'd get contaminated by the stoopid...

Apart from that, as far as my poor research goes it seems that no solid announcement has been made, yet...

Any of you know something about Fallout 4, apart from the fact it's likely to use Skyrim's engine and be buggy as hell when it come out ?

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And because we're in GEC and it is going to be discussed anyway :

So, what changes in gameplay or in story-telling/quest design do you think should be made to improve the next Fallout ? Where would you like the game to take place ? What story would you like the main quest to be ?

[Mr Bean]

What would I like?
To play a Mutant or Ghoul
Here me out. I don't just mean character races but I mean the fact that most Fallout games have you as either a Tribal or a Vault dweller. Why not center the game about a mutant or ghoul who was alive when the bombs fell and have been kicking it around all these years before stumbling into something much bigger than him or her self, to push beyond just simple survivable acts into genuine leadership and a stake in the future with your immortal self.

[Stark]

But fallout protagonists have to be boring.

Let's hope they have an interesting environment, ie not 'desert' and not 'snow'. It's sadly impossible to expect anything outside the bland American setting, but maybe we can hope for no more braindead vault experiments. Stuff like balance is wrong to expect from Beth, but maybe a better menu UI and realtime gunplay.

[Rabid]

@ Bean :

I don't think we'll ever see it, but yeah, it'd interesting ; if only to see the player forced to put up with all the anti-mutant bullshit in the wasteland. Done right it could be interesting.

If Super-Mutant :

Have the player be a 1st generation SM that has served in the Master's army as a Nightkin, recently cured of his stealth-boy-induced schizophrenia by Marcus (so set after the events of New Vegas, with a NCR victory and a rapidly collapsing Legion after Ceasar's and Legate Lanius death). The character is now trying to reconstruct his sense of self by searching his memories (of which he has lost a lot) ; and by doing so re-awake things that should have been left to sleep forever. Theme : The Master's legacy, and return of our friend the FEV - "Nice job breaking it, hero ! Now you have to fix it or embrace it !" : basically, the Player would have to choose between his old allegiance (and help the plot device create a new generation of SuperMutants for the Unity), the New World (destroy the plot device), or himself (and create a new army of SuperMutants, for his own benefit [evil] or with voluntary people to help the Wasteland [good])

If Ghoul :

Have the player be a ghoul originally from Necropolis/Baskerfield, and now out of the NCR territory. Set in Seattle ? With the proximity of Canada, and especially of a big city like Vancouver, you could build some interesting backstory (Canada having been annexed by the US in the 2060's).


Also, this time, just for fun, I'd like to see members of the Enclave as the good guy (Enclave Dissidents ?) and genuinely trying to help (but still having some prejudice with the whole "mutant" thing, that the player would have to overcome to earn their trust) ; and the local Brotherhood Chapter having gone the downhill slope and now being nothing more but glorified Techno-Raiders (which could work in-canon if you set it in the Midwest/Chicago area, after the events of Fallout Tactics).


If I'm forced to play with a human : I'd like to see the game to show a bit of consistency, and have the player slowly starting to transform into a ghoul the more he is exposed to radiation in-game. Like, yeah, you've maybe drank liters and liters of rad-away, but those +5.000 Rads you've soaked throughout your adventures have left traces on your organism. So, not only you begin to be healed by radiations, but you begin to loose your hairs, your skin begin to fall, you take a penalty to your endurance ("ghouls are more frail than humans") and charisma (do I need to explain ?). This would also allow new dialog options and close some others ; and open some areas that before where too radioactive for a purely human player to go to. And some people would begin to shoot you on sight.


@ Stark :

Yeah, the problem with Fallout is that it is stuck with its own convention of "you have to be able to be anything you want" = generic bland character, which frankly restrict the kind of stories that can be told... The more I think about it, the more I'd be interested to play as a Super Mutant or a Ghoul with a developed backstory (given it'd be well written). You could always accommodate with some bullshit like brain trauma or a traumatic incident in order to justify player changing their stats and personality. It'd be silly, but eh, it's Fallout we're talking about : the game where a scorpion can beat you to chess, and you have to ask a talking plant to teach you the winning move against it. Also, it's more or less already what's been done with New Vegas...
For interesting environment, there was this idea of a Canyon having been transformed into an EPA reservation, some sort of Ark, which had somehow survived the war (I think a GECK-analog was involved). So, with a nature more or less intact, even if some of the critters have been corrupted by the radiations/FEV, you could have communities living near it, cultivating their subsistence ; but not going too close to the Canyon itself as the wildlife there tend to become a bit aggressive.
Real-time gunfight ? Yeah, it's a bit of a bore, right now, and V.A.T.S feels a bit like a poorly implemented cheat-mode, trying as it is to emulate the old-school turn-per-turn combat mechanic (which don't really work in a 3D game like Fallout 3).
As for UI improvement, what would you suggest ?

[Vendetta]

Real-time gunfight ? Yeah, it's a bit of a bore, right now, and V.A.T.S feels a bit like a poorly implemented cheat-mode, trying as it is to emulate the old-school turn-per-turn combat mechanic (which don't really work in a 3D game like Fallout 3).

VATS worked better in New Vegas, due to the major nerf stick they hit it with. (In Fallout 3 the player ignores 75% of damage and gets a bonus +15% critical rate, in New Vegas that's down to 10% damage protection and 5% crit bonus)

[Stark]

Regarding UI I was talking just about the menus - the PIP boy thing wastes heaps of screen space, forces shit fonts and encourages BEth to be worse than usual. Lists are bad.

Frankly I think they either need to make VATS more interesting or fix realtime combat so it works, becuase while NV isn't as cheesy, it's still dumb and only exists to placate NMA idiots. However, I'm not sure the engine allows the kind of animation etc that be required, becuase shit animation and fucked speeds is the only reason you even NEED VATS.

[Rabid]

Yeah, concerning VATS it's "If you don't use VATS then you're doing it wrong", gameplay-wise : the game is penalizing the player that prefer to fight in real-time (which in a lot of case, I found in NV, is key to survival, given how VATS work). Penalizing player who prefer to do things their own way is NOT a wise choice to do in game-design I'd say.

Given the choice, over VATS I'd prefer the option to have real turn-per-turn mode, ala Fallout 1 & 2 but given a lifting : put the player in floating camera third-person mode, and let him also program his moves between shots.

How would you go about fixing real-time combat ? I haven't played any AAA FPS in like a year or two (I don't count Duke Nukem Forever...), and I've never played any battlefield/medal of honor/call of duty, and so I don't know what's the good shit right now in term of good firefight.

[Stark]

Just take idea from the last decade; don't make running backwards so important, don't make headshots hard through stupid running animations, don't use conefire that magically disappears in VATS, that sort of thing. Imagine if the enemy did anything that wasn't 'run directly toward player'! I,agile of encounters weren't designed around incoming DPS and the expectation 3 guys will instantly die every 5-6 seconds, etc.

However, slower non-beeline combat requires AI, level design and animation that is probably beyond Gamebyro. It's a laugh that Fallout is basically a Shooter from 1998 with tacked on headshot mode.

[Zixinus]

I go too for the super-mutant or being a ghoul. The idea of being a member of the Master's old army and finally recovering from stealthboy-addiction is great. It would set the time and a good excuse as to why you were inactive for so long.
The idea of following up of having to deal with the Master's legacy has potential.

As for Ghoul, a possible backstory would be that you are some sort of accidental survivor of a Vault contaminated by radiation (whether by design or by accident) and have been in some sort of transformation-induced hibernation. Or maybe a competitor to the Vaults, choosing long-term hibernation or something instead of creating a complete life underground. The hibernation chambers were damaged by radiation and infected by FEV (again, by design or accident). You alone survived (or not?).

Or hell, if Fallout 3 established it in a sidequest... why not one of the androids that ran away? That would work in several ways, including explaining self-modification. The main quest would involve finding how did you end up in whatever wasteland you are in by retracing your steps and keeping yourself alive. If for nothing else, it would work more interestingly as to how you would repair yourself.

I am not sure whether the games could be drawn away from USA territories, even though the USA doesn't exist in it anymore. The games rely upon the themes, culture and landmarks of the USA, including the 50's Vision of the Future (that was lost).

That said, which area in the USA is one that Fallout has not drawn upon already and may be iconic enough to be turned into a gameplay space?

[Mr Bean]

That said, which area in the USA is one that Fallout has not drawn upon already and may be iconic enough to be turned into a gameplay space?

The South
Fallout New Orleans which make a pretty good game, there's lots of area in the south we don't know much about and culturally are a pretty big deal. We've gotten California twice, Vegas, and DC. Why not New Orleans or hell Fallout:Disneyland .

Or they could go the other way and go for real 50's small town. Some berg that was one our famous towns of less than two thousands and because it was spared the nuclear holocaust then everything is fine but being between say nuclear silos or major cities it's surrounded by wasteland a few miles away (ingame)

[Rabid]

I go too for the super-mutant or being a ghoul. The idea of being a member of the Master's old army and finally recovering from stealthboy-addiction is great. It would set the time and a good excuse as to why you were inactive for so long.
The idea of following up of having to deal with the Master's legacy has potential.

If not for a game, it would at least be interesting for a fan-fiction.

That said, which area in the USA is one that Fallout has not drawn upon already and may be iconic enough to be turned into a gameplay space?

For the cities : Seattle, Chicago, Detroit, Denver, Salt Lake City, New-Orleans, Miami, New-York ; Toronto or Vancouver if you want to go in the annexed Canadian territories.

For the territories in themselves : The Appalachians Mountains (coal mines), the North-West (rain & forests)

I agree with Bean that New Orleans would be an interesting concept. Voodoo + Feral Ghouls ! Also, the Mississippi would be carrying down to the Gulf all the nastiness from half of the US territory, allowing for some interesting possibilities.

[Rabid]

Incoherent rambling ahead :

I know it isn't really a possibility, but it'd be cool to go to post-apocalyptic China, and see what happened there. Or to see the ruins of the European Commonwealth, which had been nuked even before the War, during the conflict between Europe and the Middle-East.

What would be fun is if Africa where the least affected region by the War, and by now the most prospere, at least as far living conditions are concerned - maybe not as much fancy technologies than in the American Wasteland, but more people. It'd only beg the question of how they survived the Nuclear Winter in the first place... South Africa with its own Vault program, this time really intended to save people ?

And for a game which has always paid a large tribute to Mad-Max, I wonder how it'd look set in Australia. What would a mutant radioactive kangaroo look like ?

[Enigma]

Shouldn't it be Fallout 5 not 4? Isn't F:NV the fourth installment?

[Zaune]

Shouldn't it be Fallout 5 not 4? Isn't F:NV the fourth installment?

Video game sequel numbering follows its own rather convoluted set of conventions. The lack of a number usually means the plot is taking place simultaneously to the last installment, but in a different area. It can also be a tacit acknowledgement that the game was was supposed to be released as an expansion pack before feature creep and/or the management intervened.

And these days, the 5th installment is usually the poimnt where they drop the numbering system completely, possibly as a subtle Lampshade Hanging on the fact they're running out of new and interesting things to do with the franchise.

[Stark]

And for a game which has always paid a large tribute to Mad-Max, I wonder how it'd look set in Australia. What would a mutant radioactive kangaroo look like ?

Exactly as lame as it sounds; a reskinned radscorpion.

If you take the quaint Americana from the Fallout setting what have you got? Anything except shitty mechanics and crap backstory?

Actually, setting it outside the US would probably be amazingly offensive, due to the 'played for laughs' 'satirical' style. Itd probably just look really embarrassing next to better games.

[Bakustra]

And for a game which has always paid a large tribute to Mad-Max, I wonder how it'd look set in Australia. What would a mutant radioactive kangaroo look like ?

Exactly as lame as it sounds; a reskinned radscorpion.

If you take the quaint Americana from the Fallout setting what have you got? Anything except shitty mechanics and crap backstory?

Actually, setting it outside the US would probably be amazingly offensive, due to the 'played for laughs' 'satirical' style. Itd probably just look really embarrassing next to better games.

Wanna bet that if they set it in China it would just be San Francisco from FO2 all over again?

But as for setting, they should probably do somewhere that's green or at least not more goddamned deserts. You can barf forth apocalyptica even when there's actual plants growing (and according to the FO bible the only living plants in the entire world came from the Vaults or are the mutant killer ones, which is hilarious), and I'd like to see genuinely overgrown shit. Use the Upper Midwest and Steel Belt for plenty of good setpieces with overgrown factories, Chicago or Detroit or Columbus' remnants, and a balance between forested areas and open regions. I mean, that's just my preferences, of course, but I think it could work as a different approach to the whole apocalypse thing.

[Rabid]

The problem for the game designers, if they want to set it too far from the "core" Californian region, is that they would cut themselves from a lot of things from the franchise. Scratch that, it has been established in the semi-canon of Fallout Tactics that a good chunk of the Remnants of the Master's Army have gone to the Midwest, even if the local Brotherhood chapter has genocided a lot of them. And there's also deathclaws. And radscorpions. And it has been established in New Vegas that there are Enclave installations near Chicago.
The only thing you'd be missing is the possibility of having the Main Protagonist be yet another descendant of the Vault Dweller (and even then...).


What I'd like for any new Fallout game, would be a return of some kind of "world map". What I mean is, instead of having all the game take place on one map (like, all around DC, or all around New Vegas), you could travel a bit in the country, and see different places. Like, in the Midwest example, you could have a map for the center of Chicago proper, with its ruined skyscrapers and all its scavenging opportunities, another map on the outskirts of Chicago for a community living around a surprisingly well-preserved military base, then other maps for the most important communities/landmarks of the region ; All these maps, being more compact, would be more thought out, and more remarkable, each with its unique features, instead of the bland uniform post-apocalyptic panorama we have seen in DC and New Vegas.
And you'd have to travel between these maps in the old school fashion, on a world map, maybe with a vehicle once you find one. This could allow for a return of the random encounters of old, and a return for the historical use of the "outsdoorman"competence, other than crafting (I have never put any point in the outsdoorman competence in Fallout 3 or NV...).

[Broken]

Or hell, if Fallout 3 established it in a sidequest... why not one of the androids that ran away? That would work in several ways, including explaining self-modification. The main quest would involve finding how did you end up in whatever wasteland you are in by retracing your steps and keeping yourself alive. If for nothing else, it would work more interestingly as to how you would repair yourself.

I imagine this would be the easiest sell to investors and the general public rather then a ghoul or super-mutant with their potential "ick" factor.

I think Florida would be an interesting setting, so long as you have the ability to travel over the whole state. You could have commie's from Cuba invading the people of a rebuilt Miami, redneck ghouls in the swamps of central Florida, mutant sea-life from the west coast/Tampa due to the Mississippi River runoff and Gulf stream, a Disney-world analogue for theme-park ruins, and Cape Canaveral for the space-related MacGuffin of the main quest.

Going back into the Midwest and/or Chicago area with a world map would also be interesting. New York I would save for a really, really big game that centers on that location with perhaps limited contact with other cities. An almost entirely urban "world" map except for whatever funky wildlife has overtaken Central Park. Full-scale war in the massively expanded subway tunnels of the city between feral ghouls, Brotherhood/Enclave, even vaults or their competitors. Warring skyscrapers inhabited by different bands of tribals with jury-rigged sky-bridges between them since the streets are too dangerous for most mere humans, so introduce a new (hopefully) iconic faction/race to run wild on the streets. Escort/own heavily-armed "neutral" trade caravans that move between the skyscrapers, occasionally fighting their way through the dangerous city surface to get to another tower. New York City is large enough and important enough to house whatever main quest ideas you can think of.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

But as for setting, they should probably do somewhere that's green or at least not more goddamned deserts. You can barf forth apocalyptica even when there's actual plants growing (and according to the FO bible the only living plants in the entire world came from the Vaults or are the mutant killer ones, which is hilarious), and I'd like to see genuinely overgrown shit. Use the Upper Midwest and Steel Belt for plenty of good setpieces with overgrown factories, Chicago or Detroit or Columbus' remnants, and a balance between forested areas and open regions. I mean, that's just my preferences, of course, but I think it could work as a different approach to the whole apocalypse thing.

I think Florida would be an interesting setting, so long as you have the ability to travel over the whole state. You could have commie's from Cuba invading the people of a rebuilt Miami, redneck ghouls in the swamps of central Florida, mutant sea-life from the west coast/Tampa due to the Mississippi River runoff and Gulf stream, a Disney-world analogue for theme-park ruins, and Cape Canaveral for the space-related MacGuffin of the main quest.

It's my understanding that Fallout: Tactics 2 was intended to be set in the overgrown, mutated everglades of Florida. And given how much weird Americana there is in Florida to Fallout up, from all of Miami's Art Deco stylings to Disney World to Fort Lauderdale, it would actually be really neat if Bethesda followed that up, I think. Not that I expect they would.

[Rabid]

Yeah, the US part of the Gulf of Mexico would be an interesting area to set one or several Fallout into, as it has been untouched by previous Canon in the series, apart from Cassidy always wondering if Texas survived the War, in FO2 : I don't count the Brotherhood of Steel playstation game (set in Texas, game which I never played), as it seems it has been deemed "non-canon" by whoever is in charge of the Fallout IP nowadays.
For the fun of it, if you go to Texas, near the Mexican border, it'd be interesting to see maquilladoras & the fenced frontier given the Fallout treatment (with automated defenses still reducing to ash anyone trying to cross the Rio Grande, even in the coastal waters)
The only problem for a game set on such a vast territory is that you would need to make a lot of maps even to cover only the most important landmarks of the Region : San-Antonio, Houston, Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, New-Orleans, Mobile, Tallahassee, Orlando, Tampa, Miami, Cape Canaveral Nixon... And I haven't even covered Georgia or Mississippi yet ! It would be hard to give "personality" to each of these primary locations, and heck I'm not even counting secondary locations here.

But as far as where the next game is going to be, my money is on Boston / The Commonwealth. I hope to be proven wrong, though.

[Panzersharkcat]

I personally think it's going to be set in Chicago. There are definitely Brotherhood guys there as well as an Enclave base. I'd also like to see more of the old-school Fallout weapons. Maybe replace the stupid-looking N99 10mm pistol with the Colt 6520 and bring back the Wattz series of laser weapons. I also want to see a more sympathetic Enclave and get the chance to join them. Get a mix of Fallout 2 and Fallout 3 Enclave armor there as well, with their proper lore names, Advanced Power Armor Mk I and Advanced Power Armor Mk II, and with the Mk II better than Mk I. That was just annoying seeing supposed APA Mk II being only slightly better than shitty T-45d.

[Bakustra]

I personally think it's going to be set in Chicago. There are definitely Brotherhood guys there as well as an Enclave base. I'd also like to see more of the old-school Fallout weapons. Maybe replace the stupid-looking N99 10mm pistol with the Colt 6520 and bring back the Wattz series of laser weapons. I also want to see a more sympathetic Enclave and get the chance to join them. Get a mix of Fallout 2 and Fallout 3 Enclave armor there as well, with their proper lore names, Advanced Power Armor Mk I and Advanced Power Armor Mk II, and with the Mk II better than Mk I. That was just annoying seeing supposed APA Mk II being only slightly better than shitty T-45d.

Honestly, I'd rather they ignored Fallout Tactics and didn't include any Enclave or Brotherhood or any of the factions. Just went with what Fallout really is, which is "kitschy post-apocalypse". You could have knockoffs or whatever but I think that having, at best, one faction carry over (like from FO1 to FO2) would be best overall.

[Rabid]

Honestly, I'd rather they ignored Fallout Tactics and didn't include any Enclave or Brotherhood or any of the factions. Just went with what Fallout really is, which is "kitschy post-apocalypse". You could have knockoffs or whatever but I think that having, at best, one faction carry over (like from FO1 to FO2) would be best overall.

Yeah, time to try something new for the 5th game... But given the marketing pressure put on the game designers I doubt they'd be allowed to make a game without any iconic faction that could be easily recognized on the cover-art...
If you were to set it in the Chicago area and had to include at least one "iconic faction", I'd go with a "sympathetic" Enclave (karmically neutral), and explain the absence of the Brotherhood by saying they have been finally driven off by the Enclave from the region a few decades ago.

To explain the change of character of the Enclave here, it could be relatively simple : Like, at this point in time there has been two radical change in leadership for the Enclave, as each time it has been blown up by a rag-tag bunch of wastelanders after they tried some nefarious plot to take over the wasteland, and so maybe this local Enclave cell, now cut from the central leadership (hinted at in New Vegas' DLC "Lonesome Road" as far as Chicago is concerned), could have decided : "Fuck this shit, now we are going to settle down and try to do things differently if it help us not being blown up".
It could offer interesting story opportunities, challenge the prejudice the player has toward the Enclave, and encourage the player to fight (or reinforce, by his actions) the prejudice the Enclave may have toward wastelanders.

I hope the Mac-guffin/Plot-device could be something different than a Waterchip, a GECK (or a derivative of its technology) or vats full of FEV. I can dream.
What would be fun would be a game without Mac-guffin : it would be just you and your companions wandering the wasteland and interacting with different factions, making alliances or enemies as you go ; the endgame being you and you allies fighting with or against the Enclave. I just hope the final fights would be more interesting than "Liberty Prime FTW ! - hey wait, why am I even fighting ?" or "Anti-climactic underwhelming boring ass assault on the Hoover Dam". Or hell, if you where to play the Diplomatic Card on the side of the Enclave, your main quest could be to unite the Windy Wasteland without the Enclave having to step in to crush the opposition by itself on the field - your Main Quest would be to avert the necessity of a Final Fight.


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Windy Wasteland... Windy... Oh shit ! POST-APOCALYPTIC WIND FARMS, GO !

[Mr Bean]

As for making a sympathetic Enclave it's a simple two step. Each cell of the Enclave has some sort of brain backup in the form of the pre-war computers right along with connection to some kind of Congress? Some Enclave cells are out and out lead by their Pre-war computer. Why not just have one of the more important ones go crazy, they shut it down and lose their communications via the same issue or some other reason about thirty years ago. Twenty years ago there was a power struggle and the Enclave's ranks were decimated and they were forced to go outside their own ranks for replacements (Not adults mind you, lets say they raided the nearest unopened Vaults), after twenty years of indoctrination about how great America used to be along with per-existing Vault-Tech indocs they started running into the issue of the younger Enclave generation really believing the America propaganda and losing some of their anti-wastlander bias. They are still not good guys but this new cut off Enclave faces the same issues that the ones in NCR territory did.

[Rabid]

Oh, and one thing that bugs me to no end (since, you know, we're in 2011 and all that...) :

When I'm in first-person mode, and I look down, I want to see feet, limbs, detailed shadows, not empty air ! God damn, we aren't in the 90's anymore, there are no more limitations that force characters to be floating heads ! I want to be able to get a sense of the character's own body (especially if I play a Super-Mutant or something that isn't exactly "human").
See what has been done on the subject in "Mirror's Edge" or the "Chronicles of Riddick", and take inspiration from it.