@Rylasasin. While it may be the "lazy" way out, that does not invalidate my points about most open ended games having very lacklustre finishes to their main storylines, leaving a lot of us with a lack of satisfaction about how the main storyline ended. Also if anything it's been Wasteland rebooted since Fallout 1 not TES Apocalypse.

I'd much rather get a sense of accomplishment from the main storyline than go "meh was that it !!!!".

Good discussion. I am all for an open play after the main quest is completed. I think that is the way it is going to work. Based on everything Todd Howard has said in interviews, it seems that Bethesda does not want to get in the way of playing in an open world.

Looking back at Skyrim though, there were issues that bother me to this day. Finish the Civil War on the Stormcloak side*. That should end those pesky Imperial & Thalmor patrols escorting prisoners right? Not so much. I don't want a game ending finale but when I do something significant, I do want to reap the rewards of all that hard work. In this case, the pay off is seeing my actions having a consequence on the world at large. I cannot begin to think that it could have been harder than a simple (sorry about pseudo code) [ IF (Civil War Complete=1 && StormCloakVictory=1): Stop Imperial Patrols; Stop Thalmor Patrols]. You win as Stormcloaks and the random spawning patrols should just stop. You might have a few patrols that have already spawned but those can either be defeated or wait until the world reset to go away. Maybe use their vaunted Radiant quest system to occasionally spawn a patrol but change it (add a letter that explains what the patrol is doing, make them immediately hostile with "Kill him/her before they report us to the Stormcloaks!", or something similar). Point is, there are ways to make your actions significant within the overall world story without slamming on the brakes when you reach a certain point. I hope Bethesda had the presence of mind to incorporate those kinds of world changing consequences into Fallout 4.

@stubs

Dragon age inquisition still let you continue after the main story, and there were some rather good reasons to do so (collectibles, dragon hunting, side quests). Additionally, there's future content that will build off of the ending of DA:I.

The lacklustre finish you mention is an issue with poor writing that fails to wrap things up proper. This was pretty evident with Mass Effect 3's (original) definitive ending which ignored a lot the actions and decisions made in ME 1, 2, and 3.

If you look back far enough you will see games BGS made that had hard endings: Redguard, Battlespire, Terminator series, etc.

I don't care if all the others had hard endings before 3 or not, none of those endings impressed me or helped me enjoy the story. To me they are nothing but underwhelming.


I really fail to see how its an issue anyways since even when 3 fixed the problem for the people that wanted to continue there was still the ending story clips that talked about the choices the player made.


There's zero reason we shouldn't have the option to continue since those who want to be done can simply stop playing that file. That's the easiest option and it makes themost sense. I bet that's what Bethesda decides to do.

Yes, at least in the main quest, defeating Alduin is a big deal for lore. But you will always defeat Alduin, the main story is designed to be safe and to make sense for any character to want to defeat Alduin. There is no discernible affect on the gameworld after doing so though. It's sort of just the same world to continue exploring and it is that way because of the very nature of the main quest. When you compare it to New Vegas, there is no denying that it would be extremely difficult to make fully realized versions of the world that correspond with each major ending and the smaller individual endings of sidequests. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. Even the Stormcloak rebellion is so static to the point that you are practically deciding the soldiers you see in different towns. You don't get to see the consequences of a war-torn country, the different ruling styles of each side, etc. It's practically the same world. That's how it feels. In theory you shape Skyrim forever, but you don't get to see how. In reality, it would take a lot of resources to show even two different outcomes of a major civil war (ideally it would be many choices within those outcomes if it was truly fleshed out) and that's why they don't flesh out their storylines. They don't want to have to show meaningful cause and effect. Obsidian did, and that's why the game has highly variant ending slides. They would not be able to do their story justice without them, just like Bethesda couldn't in Skyrim. My point is that if they intend to nix the ending completely, their story will need to be practical to work logically with a gameworld that will hardly change as consequence. Their scope, even if the questline is supposed to be epic and should have huge consequences, will be reduced significantly in favor of allowing the player to have their more meaningless freedom and headcanon. At least, that's what I'm expecting, even if they do better than Skyrim. I'm eager to see what they actually do, though.

As for the Dark Brotherhood, I never played that questline because I jumped ship before having a character who would. I bet I'm missing out on one of the better questlines in the game, but I am skeptical of the tangible consequences of killing the emperor in the game itself.

That's the problem. Bethesda missed the point with those ending slides. They aren't supposed to be like "and so it was that the Lone Wanderer did the thing," they need to be like "because Lone Wanderer did the thing, x happened to x people over x amount of time." New Vegas did that and so did the originals. That's why they exist. As far as Fallout 3 goes, the ending was coy and the slides didn't have any good reason to exist. This is what they should learn.

Best case scenario, there will be a "hard" ending, that actually delves into what happens due to your actions in some detail, and they will give you the option to continue playing afterwards with the caveat that the world may not reflect all of those long term consequences. Because if they actually did, I would applaud Bethesda, but I doubt it'll happen.

imho An open post-ending game world that comprehensively reflects the consequences of your actions and decisions in the main game > well written and comprehensive ending (doesn't matter if it's a soft or hard ending) > badly written/non-canon postgamefree play > terrible hard ending.

@Motsie With regards to Dragon Age Inquisition, true, but it had a good "hard" ending for the main storyline (which is what I prefer, in that it felt decisive, climactic, yada yada yada). If Bethesda manages to do that with Fallout 4 and gives us a "Final" storyline mission which triggers an "ending" cut scene & or (hopefully a lot more meaningfull than fallout 3's poor ones) vignette sequence, roll credits etc, then lets those who want to continue playing do so, great.

I admit that I may have come across as rabidly anti-open ended games, but it's more the poor endings to main storylines that I'm so vehemently against. I get that at least some proponents for open ended games view the main storyline as an "inconvenience" that they have to endure/rush through asap, so they can get on with puttering around the game world to their hearts content (which can be fun to do).

The Fallout series in the main has had "endings" to the main storylines which made it feel like what you did ingame in the run up to the final sequence mattered, that you made a difference, basically showed that one persons actions can have far reaching consequences etc. The exceptions were the burned game and the poor ending to Fallout 3 (at least in comparison to the others).

In my opinion this issue divides players into two groups. On the one hand we have people who want to be told a story. On the other hand we have people who want to tell their own stories. People who want to be told a story are more likely to want the developer to decide when the story ends. People who want to tell their own stories are more likely to want to make that decision for themselves.

They will never agree on this. They want fundamentally different things from a game.

Yes that is it, face it, you either get an short video about how you saved the universe and get kicked to main menu afterwards or you continue playing with some small changes afterwards.

Most games are linear, you unlock new levels and move on, often you can not even go back to earlier areas. In this case it don't make sense to continue the game.

However in an open world game an ending leaves with 5 options. 1 Either ignore the main quest entirely, 2 do the start and then quit out of the final part where everything reaches an climix. 3 Save before doing the last part and then reload or do it and start an new game, 4 either seeing just an fraction of the content or 5 do an 2 and finish the game then bored.

None of this is good options. Oblivion had an problem in that you wanted to do an 2 or 5 even if the game continued you would loose access to the sigil stones after the main quest making you want to delay the end. Skyrim and Morrowind did this better.

Its not that i want to be told a story but i want my playthrough to have a feeling of game completion instead of it being an endless ongoing without final rest. just like in new vegas the game is finished and you can leave it and move on to another game cause youve done basiacally everything there is to the game.

I would love a scenario where we get what Fallout New Vegas did but also be able to see what happened afterwards, would work for both groups. I don't that happening though but I can dream.

This, i did newer finish the main quest in Fallout 3 before broken steel, my typical neutral/ chaotic good characters would not do the stupid suicide mission

Harold / Bob should work well enough

This is true. To go further, there are two different types of player freedom that people are concerned with. There's the freedom to interact within the stories and make choices and then there's the ability to do whatever you want and ignore the stories. Obsidian is mostly concerned with the first and Bethesda is more concerned with the latter. These games work best with a balance.

It seems we really want the same thing, the option for both outcomes to work. I believe players will get the option since they fixed it in 3.

One minor disagreement though is that personally I did not care about the endimgs in NV either because it too felt very anticlimatic and I personally was really annoyed that the ending had to just be done.

Indeed, I would hope they find a way to have an engaging and divergent story and still let people keep playing.

But strictly speaking, the slides themselves aren't part of the climix, they're an epilogue. The climix is the Battle of Hoover Dam. So if you felt the actual dam sequence is anticlimactic, than that's a separate issue. But you can have an epilogue whether the climix is well-done or not. And again, what is the alternative? Would you rather they take out the variant quests, or would you have been satisfied if the world didn't really change but you were technically able to play after the ending?

I'm not sure if I want to read all of this thread, but ever since BGS has gotten the rights to Fallout and actually made it TES with guns, I don't think you can expect the franchise to be completely like it was. Don't even look at it as a Fallout game, look at it as a BGS game. This is what they do. Freedom and a huge world. You should be able to anything past the main quest. Anyways, it still very much feels like a Fallout game, because it is.

You know, I was more than happy to continue exploring NV's DLC locations, even though the ending slides said the characters' fates. Will probably be the same when there's an ending, I'll just download a mod and use that to continue playing.

I have played RPG style games where you had no freeplay. Tomba and Tomba 2 come to mind here. After you defeat the final boss, you have to reload a previous save. That's fine in Tomba when the boss fight is just one fight and you can't save there. That's not fine in Tomba 2 where you may save when the world is in black-and-white time freeze mode and you have to start a new game.

We are talking about playing after the ending here. So yes you are correct Fallout 2 isn't a Fallout game. How terrible they already ruined the franchise back then.

You're saying that. Not I.

No the ending Hoover Dam battle was ok by me its just the ending clips that I didn't care about. I don't think it has to be an either/or situation between deep branching story and playing after the end. Any competent game companyshould easily be able to have as much deepness and choice in their quests while still letting players load up their post game files after the end of it all. (Even if the post game doesn't reflect the result all your choices that the end clips talked about and I'm fine with them not doing it.) It can be argued about until the game comes out whether Bethesda themselves are good enough to give both and I'm sure that it unfortunately will; I choose (hope) to believe that both ooptions can happen and we can all get what we want.

I'd rather have a story that leads to a impressive conclusion than demand a open ended ending that generally made every F3 endgame (post broken steel) the same. I liked the NV permanent ending that made me make sure to complete everything I wanted to before leading to a conclusion. If there was a limiting factor like the water chip failing that seemed to limit the time I had to play, maybe a open ending would improve things, but if we have a F3 or NV ending that would let you literally spend as much time as you want exploring there'd be no real need for a post game where most of us are wandering around max level and killing deathclaws with boxing tape.

I feel the same as you but the only thing i would change is in NV how you could get weapons, armor and ammo in the battle of hoover dam and you cant keep it if you want to go back to exploring.
Its not that big of a deal if its guns or ammo cause you can get them in the campaign but i like collecting as much as i can armor and weapons and i thought it was a shame you couldnt keep Legat Lanius's armor or General Olivers green suit. I would hope that in F4 that if theres a perminant ending there is nothing from a collectors point of view that they would want that you can only hav for a few mins before it is over.
If you get what i mean?

I get the urge to get all the special items, but since by that point I'd already had a footlocker in my home filled with tons of special items I never bothered to wear or use, one more seemed kinda useless. If they'd been the most awesome items ever created I might have been annoyed not to get the opportunity to use them, but as it was they were just reskins of the generic items.

Hopefully the F4 ending will be open enough that you could do select parts in a player chosen sequence and let you at least use your favorite items during the end. Like if NV had let you go to the legion camp first, get the special bumper sword and then move on to taking the dam, you'd then have had a chance to play with the sword.

I get what you mean, I am the same i collected everything unique even if i sold it or gave it to a companion it felt good collecting all the weapons as for armor i only kept two on me at all times but legats helmet would have looked great on a companion.
I wish it was as you said even if i got to use the unique armor and weapon from the ncr or the legion for the final battle i would have been satysfied! I hope there is also some special weapons in F4 because altough i think it is amazing all the ways you can customize the weapons and armor it would still be good to have to go into every cave or kill a special player to get something that looks good and is not common!