What's wrong with a story that has the player defending the status quo from the threat of devastating change rather than being an agent of change for changes sake? That way, success means that you've saved the people's way of life and they are grateful because things haven't changed. Easy enough to portray post game play in that event.

This topic certainly is a case of an unstoppable force meets an unmoveable object! Both sides are trying to use their own logic to win the argument and so we keep going round and around. The problem is this whole argument is over personal preferences and there is simply no way to end such arguments. Each side will keep bringing up the same points and each side will refute them with varying degrees of sarcasm and condescension. Have fun guys!

Admittedly, this would work. I wouldn't take a liking to a Fallout story without some sort of polarizing, meaningful change to the way things are, but then again, this all boils down to personal preference.

-Except it does not. You can play for months or even wait for a year and guess what? NOTHING HAPPENS. There is zero consequences so don't even try to kid yourself.

-No Bethesda streamlined because the choices were too difficult and it confused people. You can even google it if you want.

-Lol sure. An easy compromise that appeases everyone is nonsense based off of wrong thinking. Please tell me what wrong thinking that is?

That's not entirely hard to do either, you just need a system in-game to show factions taking over locations as you help them do so.

Skyrim did it with its civil war, replacing Jarls, and town guards, stationing soldiers in various forts across the province, and changing dialog for the more effected areas like Windhelm.

At the same time they added dialog to places like Windhelm logically explaining why things haven't changed a whole lot

-New Jarl is talking to the Dunmer about how to improve the grey quarter, but Ulfric's war largely drained the coffers of the city so he has to wait while the city rebuilds and starts trading again before he has the money to make any real improvments.

-Jarl also talks about plans about allowing the Argonians into the city, but says he has to wait for now because Ulfric's racism wont just vanish overnight.

-Both the Dunmer and Argonians get new dialog expressing how pleased they are the Imperials are now ruling the city and trying to help them improve their lives.

At the same time, they also made sure to address points like how Ulfric's defeat wont immediately cause ever Stormcloak to just magically give up and turn themselves in, and how there are many stormcloak camps in the hills still launching attacks, something that would logically and realistically happen, which explains why some NPCs still comment about the war, and why the losing side still appears in the game. A nice way to not have to remove every single NPC of said faction and potentially break a lot of quests in the process, whilst also having to avoid changing mountains of dialog.

In this scenario you still learn everything that you would be told in the ending slides, whilst also still being able to play the game, and seeing your actions play out logically.

See the above.

Any competently written and designed narrative, even a political war based one like NV's, can allow for constant play, whilst also showing how things changing in response to your actions, whilst also having to avoid needing to make a whole other game to properly reflect it.

This is true, but I feel as if Bethesda would struggle to actually bring about the consequences in game. I would trust Obsidian (they were seemingly working on some sort of Broken Steel-type DLC before it was scrapped), but not Bethesda. Not after the atrocity that was Broken Steel, in which they rendered the only choice you could've made outside of the good one moot at the purifier and force you into the service of the Brotherhood again.

The civil war is a nice example of it working, but I just don't think Bethesda could do something like that with a fairly complex plot.

If what you say is true, and Bethesda did scrap the slideshow, then they'd better do it justice within the gameplay. They've had years to do this.

I dunno I thought Skyrim did a poor job reflecting such a major civil war. You seriously think Bethesda is capable of this? They haven't done anything to prove they're capable of such things. I seriously don't understand why you're opposed to such an easy addition that satisfies both crowds.

Well, because both outcomes have to be portrayed in the event that you choose change.

The biggest doable changes would be the complete removal of a faction from the game world, scattering of a faction, split of a faction, joining of two factions, building of structures and/or services, removal of structures and/or services, transformation of the land to more fertile or more toxic.

There are way more that could easily be done in Bethesda's game world if the story is written with these changes in mind.

No, they originally planned to make post ending gameplay as part of the vanilla game release, but cut it fairly early into development because it would have required basically another game's worth of content to make as they lacked the more dynamic systems Skyrim did for its civil war.

There was never any plans to make a post ending DLC.

I don't..... obviously. I felt it showed a rather realistic "end" to the main part of the war, which is all I ever wanted out of NV. Hell, if NV ended like Skyrim's civil war did, I would have had 10 times less problems with it.

Ultimately, NV's problems came from needlessly shoehorning everyone, their grandmother, and their kitchen sink, into a war plot that had no reason to have them in there, and then compounded the issue with an equally illogical and unrealistic attempt to force everything's result into immediate, when it wouldn't have. The only reason NV didn't have post ending gameplay was because Obsidian designed it just so poorly, in an attempt to feed into player's egos, that it lacked any sort of credibility or believable timescale to allow things to play out.

I actually felt fairly insulted by the way NV was designed. It all felt like it was designed just to hang over my shoulder, and tell me how [censored] cool I was, and how every time I blink the world had to explode. It is the worst kind of "consequences" a game can do. Greatly over exaggerating everything's result just to make player feel more important then they are, and to make player's actions seem more grave then they realistically would be.

To me, personally, consequences don't mean anything if they are like NV's, where one man's actions change the fate of every cat in the wasteland. Its so obviously fake, and designed just to stroke your [censored], that its impossible to take anything seriously, or with any amount of emotional satisfaction. Both Skyrim and Fallout 3, whose plots were literal Jesus allegories, and had the player fighting symbolic representations of Satan himself, had less ego stroking then NV did. Which is why I tolerate thier plots and endings better.

And before someone, not you specifically Demon, starts with the whole "THAT JUST MEANS YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT UR ACTIONS CONSEQUENCES!" argument, let me stop you right there, I do, I just ALSO care that my consequences aren't so overblown, and obviously designed to stroke the player's [censored]. and before you ask "but how can you be sure Bethesda can pull it off?"... they dd it in Skyrim, which i found miles more tolerable then NV.

Because its an entirely pointless waste of time and money to code something like that, when any decent made narrative wouldn't require it. Its a solution of satisfaction that has no reason to exist in the first place, so long as the design is even half-way decent to begin with.

Alright, fact checked -- I was slightly wrong. On that note, they lacked the dynamic systems because they had less than a year to make their game, and Bethesda had what -- three years? I'm hoping to see that kind of work on Fallout 4.

The parenthesized portion is the most pointless part of my post, not sure why you ignored the rest of it. I think you have a point here, I just don't think Bethesda is capable of it in an even larger scale than the civil war. I agree with DemonsBlade in the regard that the slideshow gives Bethesda less of a chance to have an epic fail in tying up the end.

Is this even supposed to have a poll ?

I pretty sure 90% of people will want to keep playing after the end.

Its a open world game for crying out loud ! You suppose to be doing stuff after you just bones and dust for all i care !!!!!11!111

Seriously I would love fallout games way more if I would be allowed to see the aftermath of my choices in the wastes would feel my ending more fufiling that way

SPOILER AHEAD !

Also I don`t need to remind people about that ending when u dont choose to pick either side in New Vegas and keep the region to yourself right ?

Me too, but at the same time, Bethesda tried that on Fallout 3 and failed miserably by totally streamlining the game.

Because I only intended to respond to that singular section.

And on that note one has to take into account Bethesda had to spend a lot of that time rebuilding Gamebryo to support guns, create VATs, make all the scripts, make all the textures from scratch, and tons of other things that Obsidian wouldn't have had to do since BEth had already done it for them when making Fo3.

Its highly unlikely Obsidian would have been able to do it at all with how NV's plot is so set up, its just so jumbled that it would have taken longer then Skyrim had in development to come even close to making post ending gameplay.

But anyways, to answer the OP's question, yes, I would like to see post ending gameplay, and I would like to see a narrative that supports it.

I guess we'll just have to disagree here since we had different experiences with the game. Obviously I thought Skyrim was just.. But that's me and others loved it.

Then again, there really isn't a point for us to debate this anyway. I'm sure we can agree that differences of opinion are bound to happen. We were both able to get our opinions out there so what the heck

I disagree!

Na, I totally understand, I hold no hard feelings or ill thoughts for anyone I disagree with in such a manner.

As someone suggested, just have the game auto-save in a new slot before the point of no return.

Or do what Infamous and Fallout 2 done, let you play but tell you explicitly that your future actions will no longer influence or be reflective of the plot.

I think either of those would work, although I'd prefer the latter. I think I was the one who made that point, so I'm biased.

I voted for forced rollback.

I thought this was supposed to be Fallout, not The Elder Scrolls.

The ending should be the end, that's all there is to it. Don't ruin the story just so these TES fans can play house or whatever it is they do.

Despite the fact that most of the 'consequences' in the ending slides are pretty much 'the next day', such as Caesar hitting Vegas, or PGs running amok within a few in-game days. The only one I think that would take a few months to work is Hanlon talking down President Kimball and whatnot.

Hah, nice.

I had no problem with the original ending for FO3, it made the LW a legend in my book. But I can undertsand if Bethesda goes with the after mq. That's one of the many things they're known for. So yeah, I'm conflicted. For those who say the Witcher 3 allows you to play after the end. Can you send me a message explaining to me how it handles the many endings that game supposedly has? Don't worry about spoiling the endings, I don't intend on buying the game.

Not true, most of the consequences are not "the next day", it's obvious. For example, an Independent Vegas, and without upgrading the securitrons, there's anarchy in the Mojave. And it's clear that it's not solved overnight. It's clear if you do upgrade the Securitons, that the acceptance of an Independent Vegas are not accepted right away over night: "Chaos became uncertainty, then acceptance, with minimal loss of life." That doesn't sound like it happened overnight to me. Same with Caesar hitting Vegas. Although the locations in game are all close, in the Fallout Universe it would take weeks for them to truly conquer the rest and enslave/kill the others. The NCR has to negotiate with the Strip, if they win. That isn't going to be an overnight event either.

And that's just three of the four main faction outcomes, excluding the smaller factions. Tabitha and her robot, if they go on adventures, aren't heard about right away either. It's not an overnight event. The possible truce between the NCR and BoS isn't likely to be an overnight event either.

So a lot of the outcomes and consequences, are really not as you say, happening the next day.

Mmmm... I'd say no, let the ending be just that. Especially since it allows for more extreme events to occur (like FO3's implied death, which BS changed).

The downside to that being the loot we get get in the final stages, such as Boss's unique helms, are completely pointless of course...

...if they DID extend it, I'd hope like Broken Steel - the world would noticeably be different and more events would have occurred.

Saying "forced rollback" feels like framing the question. It means that people who are ambivalent, or think it would be wise but don't adamantly support it, are encouraged to say "Nay" and side with you.