i do not mind having a story that takes your character on some darker more evil road

jwever there are limits ,last thing i want to see is a plot twist as in fallout New vegas can join and help a faction that openly engage in the worse forms of slavery, commits horrible attrocities( including [censored] as a terror weapon , infanticide and even the use of chemical and nuclear weapons on civilians ) and even fullscale genocide all out of some complete absurd social and racial superiority, and you were suppose to feel good zabout it for finishing ther game that way ?

this is just fiction and a game but games have come a long way and most of the time they not only games any more

The Pitt was a promising attempt. Now we have to see if they will go beyond the attempt and actually do it.

From what we've seen so far, I see that Bethesda did take some hints from NV. Now I hope that Bethesda actually took hints from the story and characters - and not just the neon lights, crafting and iron sights.

-Inferring that Saints Row and borderlands are not masterpieces in writing, characterization, and narrative. Obviously im not talking about the abominations that Saints Row 3 & 4 have become and massive let down that borderlands two and all its spinoffs are. Im referring to Borderlands one and Saints Row 1 & 2 both of which lent themselves to have off-the cuff moments and such, but beneath all the silliness was a damn good story and narrative.........and not bad self-referential writing either, im talking serious narrative.

The rest of you points have implied the idea that you still view games as games and not an artistic medium. Your very well entitled to your opinion on the matter but it only serves to hold back the potential that this medium has. And if we go back to your posts on the first page of this thread, the whole argument sounds like syllogistic reasoning. It feels like you say "Ive never experienced a grey story I thought was good in a video game therefor no grey story in a video game can ever be good". Video games as potential artistic medium have only just begun and some video games are even outselling movies. So if the story is deep and the game-play is good.....why can't it be art?

The baron was used many times in this thread and is a good example to close my post with. You denounced him as a cliche, as to why you didn't get attached to his character. Yes his character is a cliche and yes ive seen it before. Ill even give it too you that it was not even a well hid cliche. However (and this is the most important thing) the first time I met the baron, I thought he was an evil warlord with a strong will...who I wanted to kill and be done with. I came to believe after that, that he was not a warlord, but just a drunk who beat his wife and traumatized his child.....again wanted him dead. After that well I mean he was a drunk but his wife was horrible to him too, so I mean I kind of feel for him but still hate him. After that he was a man who made mistakes because somebody else made mistakes. By then end of it felt he was a man who cared about his family alot, meant more to him than all his rebellion.

Ive never before had a video game present a character to me to hate, then actively try and change my mind about the character they wanted me to hate, by presenting them as just humans with problems like all of us with circumstances behind what they did. This is what writing should be and this is why video games can survive in the artistic medium.

lol rose tinted glasses? I just fired up that bad boy a week ago. Both games are very if not extremely gray to the point where I have to make up my own reasons for why what I did was right.

Really? I mean, there's Tenpenny Tower and the Pitt, which were great, but what else in Fallout 3 came even close to being morally gray? Most of the choices boiled down to 'help/save the good guys' or 'kill/enslave/rob the good guys'.

Whether or not Vault 101's overseer should be killed is a moral gray area. Whether it is wrong or not to abandon Butch and his mother to the radroaches is also unclear. Assisting Harold in suicide is another gray issue. The choice between killing the fire ant queen or helping the scientist can be argued either way.

some of the side stories, absolutely, but the main quests? Basic fantasy rpg stories with a rust coloured paintjob. Hence why 3 main quest carried the same problems, NV is where we got a real grey main quest.

This definitely gives me confidence that they're learning and adapting bit by bit. New Vegas handled morality better than FO3 (Yes, I know, not their game, but still part of the progression) and Skyrim handled it better than New Vegas. If they've made the same advances in writing as they have in gameplay (admittedly more subjective), then I think chances are high we'll have some really tough choices to make. At the same time, I do think pulling that kind of thing off is harder with a voiced protagonist.

I'll give you the Overseer, as I forgot about him, but maybe you and I just have very different morals, but to me the others you listed have a very clear 'right' or 'wrong' path to take. Abandoning Butch'a mom to death because she's a lousy parent and your own personal grudge against Butch is a very dark thing to do, whereas saving her is clearly intended to be a good act. Forcing Harold to live God knows how many lifetimes rooted in place is pretty messed up, if you ask me. And the game straight up gives you positive karma if you kill the ant queen, as Dr. Lesko's useless experiments has already wiped out an entire town, and he doesn't care at all.
Honestly, now that I think about it, I believe even killing the Overseer is wrong, unless it's in self-defense. The alternative is murder, and it leads the vault into complete disarray. If he lives when we return to the vault, he proves that he is willing to compromise and allows Amata to take over peacefully.

Regardless, these are all very secluded instances, and even if you don't see them as gray, which I certainly don't, they bring the grand total up to 5, which is hardly enough to consider Fallout 3 a game that provokes you to think about what's right or wrong.

That's a pretty silly way of looking at it.

New Vegas had grey morality and your actions had meaning and shaped the world no matter which side you go for, and not 'always' for the worst.

In fact, it was oftentimes for the better. Take the Helios power distribution. It was a difficult and meaningful choice who you sent the power to, because every potential group would benefit, but it was ultimately a choice of good vs good vs good, and unless you weaponized it, no matter what you did, it ended up improving somebody's life.

lol, def not Fallout 3. I thought he was referring to Fallout 2, which I meant was morally gray. I think that's one of the greatest strengths to the first two games and even New Vegas to some extent. But those games have had better writers. Honestly, Bethesda hasn't been known to do this right.

I believe Planescape Torment shoots down all the points. The writing in that game is beyond superb, better than a lot of books, certainly better than a lot of movies. Game can and will become something more than they have been. It's a relatively new medium as opposed to the others, and therefore it takes time to get all these things down.

You can hardly blame gamesas for the Enclave being "EVIL!"....though blaming them for retconning them back into a viable faction is fair game....it was the Immaculate Interplay who created a faction made up of the descendents of the same government apparatchiks and their 1%er sugar daddies who burned the world in the first place, then gave them the goal of snuffing everyone else on earth not in thier club because surviving the fruits of their ancestor's misrule made them a evolutionary rival for control of what was left of the world. There is nothing "morally gray" about mass murder and genocide, the clearly stated goal of the Enclave in FO2. If anything, gamesas tried to tinker with them to make them more "morally gray" by introducing a "Liberal Wing", headed by Colonel Autumn, who advocated imposing a military Dictatorship on the Wasteland instead of scouring it clean of people with FEV based chemical weapons like the Eden led "Conservative Wing" wanted to. That should have been fleshed out to give the game three possible endings....the canonical Brotherhood victory and operation of the Purifier for the good of all, a Autumn faction victory where Purity becomes the foundation of a Enclave dictatorship, or Eden turns the Capital Wasteland into a graveyard so the Enclave can expand unimpeded until Richardson's plan can be carried out.

But they can do a "Morally grey" quest-line.....the Tenpenny Tower Quest was about as gray as they come, not to mention displaying a surprising bleak view of race relations that still surprises me they got away with.

It should be noted that this kind of "grey" is also pretty aggrivating because it's impossible for the player to "win" or anticipate the bad outcome. Fallout 1 planned a similar sort of "SURPRISE, BAD ENDING!" scenario for Junktown, but it was ultimately reverted because it proved annoying for players. It's not fun from a gameplay perspective to be handed a bad ending when you're given little to no reason to actually anticipate it and forsee it coming, nor are quests with only 100% failure results very rewarding.

With Butch and the radroaches, remember that your life is already in peril and you need to escape the vault. Trying to save Butch's mom is clearly a good-guy thing to do. I am pretty sure that we can turn Butch down without being mean about it, so that not trying to save his mom is not clearly being a bad guy.

Harold is unhappy with what life has brought him, and he is pessimistic about his life to come. Harold is no longer fully human, but he persists in seeing things from a human's standpoint. He has the capacity to enjoy a happy life despite being rooted in one place. We are given an opportunity to help him achieve an optimistic outlook.

You assume that Dr. Lesko's work is useless, so you bias yourself against it. Assuming that his goal is feasible, should his experimentation be permitted to continue? Has he finally managed to put ample safeguards in place? Is the potential of reversing dangerous mutations worth some risk? If so, how much risk is too much? Is Dr. Lesko on to something, or is he only wacko?

Even when he isn't pulling the trigger himself, the Overseer is ordering others to pull the trigger. This man ordered the death of one of your good friends, and he is determined to have you killed just for being your father's child. We can find evidence that the Overseer is seriously contemplating having Beatrice put down for being senile. We can also find evidence that at least some of what the bullying Tunnels Snakes do is done on his bidding. The man appears dangerously unstable, so the vault might be safer without him.

You expect me to enumerate every single gray choice in the game while you need only enumerate a handful of black-and-white ones? That ain't fair.

Roy pretty much tells you his plans in dialogue if you talk to him. Aiding him in getting to the tower residents is clearly wrong. The only grey area is whether to remove the danger to the tower residents by shooting him in the face before he's actually committed his massacre or simply walking away and letting them work it out themselves. Sadly, the option to warn the Tower residents wasn't available.

You can anticipate the bad outcome. You are correct though in observing that the player can't win. He either kills Roy before he's commited his crime and get dogged on the radio by Three Dog, lets the tower residents get slaughtered, or has to walk away without getting his reward for dealing with the issue.

The consequences of trying to set up a compromise in the TT Quest could only surprise people who weren't paying attention.....given the prattling of people about the good intentions of the Legion as if they completely ignored what Caesar smugly tells them in dialog, that's a lot....Roy and Masters are totally up front with their intentions if you approach them. Unless you walk away, you are going to get blood on your hands if you get involved in the TT Quest...and if you don't pick a side you're doomed to disappointment as well....that's the way the "morally gray" real world works. It's a carefully laid trap for people who arrogantly believe they can impose their values on others....that's what I love about it. Roy doesn't want the building nearly as much as he wants to slaughter its inhabitants for daring to look down on him.

Me....I take Gustavo's money and dealt with Roy and his friends. I did do it Roy's way once, in my Evil run.....it was amusing, not to mention instructive. The dialog proved Gustavo's instincts were right on the money.

Agreed, they handled that quest very well. The whole "unexpected consequences" thing is something I wanted to see more of in their games. In a world as gritty and seedy as the Fallout universe there really should be more of it. The only thing that puzzled me is why they didn't opt to have more of that type of quest in the game in the first place.

Refusing to save her isn't being a bad guy, but it's not exactly a difficult choice on the moral scale. The options are: let person die, or don't let person die. No guards are in the in educate area, and there is really not much reason to say no to Butch unless you are apathetic to the situation it you wish to spite him.

We are given an opportunity to make Harold look at things from a selfless perspective. He may not be human in body, but he clearly remains one in mind, and he has made it very clear what he wants. To convince him to live is to convince him to put his own desires aside and dedicate the rest of his indefinitely long life to the Treeminders, something that he only is willing to do because he's a naturally good person. It's not what he wants or what he deserves.

Dr. Lesko is (somehow) working with FEV. The virus is essentially a weapon, and nothing good has ever come from its involvement. If you can't draw the line at him wiling out an entire town and feelin no remorse, I honestly don't know where you could.

I'll give you the Overseer, because I actually do think there is some grayness there. He himself is a psycho, and I don't see a lot of redeeming qualities in him, but in the end, he does give in, and killing him only ends up making things worse for the vault.

Fine. I consider the first three of these to be the real offenders because ultimately they are he only ones that impact more than a handful of people. Those you mentioned are much like the others I listed- ultimately unimportant. I mentioned the Pitt and Tenpenny Tower as okay examples because they are not completely meaningless to the world.

-The main quest is completely black and white. Purify the water, or poison it and kill lots of people.
-Nuke Megaton or don't nuke Megaton.
-Orbital strike on the BoS or the Enclave.
-Crush Moira's dreams or help her fulfill them.
-Assist Dr. Braun in tormenting the V112 dwellers and allow it to continue forever, or shut it all down.
-Bring Agatha the violin or lie to her and sell it to someone else. Also, be a dike to her or don't.
-Help slaves reach safety or tell slavers where they are.
-Basically everything involving Paradise Falls
-Most other quests in the game are basically "help the good guys against evil super mutants"

I think the better question is, "should they" because the plot of FO3, though it wasn't a huge contribution to changing the whole in-universe, it was still in a larger slant to having to "save the world" type motif, as opposed to NV where you were just trying to fufil a self-serving task but having to make karma choices on the pathes that would get you to your answer. FO3's final conflicts were more about if you were selfless enough to sacrafice your life, or let someone else do it. A lot of which felt too much like a coin-flip. Bethesda needs to play more "what if" with the plots they want so that there isnt an obvious moral bias, but appropriate a cost to every proposed solution at every step - so that you have to think about possibilities rather than what you should do ethically to your position. Its a problem when FO isnt supposed to have defined right and wrong based on pre-war peace ideologies. It should be about doing what you think is right through cause / effect / gain. They also need to give more options to be neutral or decline certain things so that you can see what would happen if you just walked out on people as well. Like say there was a date timer set for how long you have to keep up with your father before he dies or the option to betray your father and let the Enclave control the project causing the world to change post-game.

Hey now, I found the walking information kiosks to have their own charm and personality.

No, your choices meant almost nothing in the game world. The only time they actually meant anything was in a non-game post ending slideshow.

It wasn't difficult because no matter which one you pick nothing actually changes in the game. hell, its not even as much of a false-choice as the other choices in the game are since there's not even a ending slide for it.

I was wondering when you'd show up. Have you destroyed any copies of New Vegas today, or is that a hobby you save for the weekends?