Dungeons are the one thing NV failed to me, Fallout 3 had a nice range of types. By the footage we've seen there seems to be a good range of terrain, some built up like Capital and NV its self but dusty waste ground then you see places that look swampy others like camp Searchlight. Just takes a little work to do.

TBH I'd consider getting some dungeons desgined by modders to add to it from the start.

So factories use industrial building materials, and cookie cutter houses have similar floor plans.
?
I am not seeing how this is an issue. This is the way the world is.
I can take you to any business park in San Diego and it is the very rare exception that they do not look identical. Suburbia.. I don't need to go in depth here, do I?

I also dunno how much fighting you're doing in houses (any of the very few houses you can fight in had enemies that fit that locale), but factories have pretty unique things going on with them.
Not just the floor plans, but what was being built. Unique items and the like.

The only factory that I can think of that really had no value for going into was the Corvega Factory.

Yes, I just wish that the stories of more of those places were incorporated into the design of each place.

Exploring a house that looks just like the last 5 or 10 houses with nothing but loot and whatever enemies there are to fight might be ok for alot of people, but I would prefer more to discover.

I think it's just a matter of whether you would prefer a smaller game world with more depth and variation or a bigger one with more hours gameplay and areas to explore.

I've always thought the houses all looking the same was a sardonic comment on the conformity of 50's America.

I don't think fallout 3 rehashed things over and over, but I do feel like Skyrim did. I was so bored of everything skyrim had, especially those draugr caves/dungeons. Oblivion had the same issue but I just loved that game because it was my first bethesda game..

TBH, since when is a house anything close to a dungeon? How much should we expect to see in a house? Factories were all rather unique. Sorry, but none of this constitutes generic or repetitive dungeons.

Right, houses would fall into the "repetitive place" category, but the same idea applies. For dungeons, any building (factory or office building) that is filled with enemies and loot and not really anything else would apply.

Morrowinds dungeons were a vast overreaction to Daggerfall's dungeons...... If you never played DF... The dungeons were HUGE! You could spend DAYS exploring ONE. They even had a really cool 3D map, a feature that I miss on subsequent games.

Morrowind's dungeons were not a vast overreaction, they were exactly the step needed IMO.

The problem with Daggerfall's dungeons is the same many old RPGs had..... in that they didn't make any [censored] sense. No one builds forts, or tombs, or w/e, anywhere close to like how Daggerfall's were. DF's dungeons were just "gamey" places without any real logic. They were "dungeons" in all the worst ways, simply being "dungeons" for the sake of being cliche dungeons, rather then realistic ruins of forts, tombs, and old cities, that they should/would realistically be.

Morrowind took a far more logical approach by making them far smaller, and actually attempting to give them realistic layouts, and giving believable purposes to the various various rooms..... at least most of the time. Oblivion screwed that up by making them larger, and making every room just another trap room, or something without any obvious purpose. You couldn't tell what half the rooms in ruined forts were used for, because nothing about them made any sense. Skyrim took a more middle ground approach, having smaller dungeons then Oblivion's, but keeping the "room with a purpose" design of Morrowind, with a few traps here and there to make them not as boring as Morrowind's got. Ultimately I feel like it resulted in the best dungeons the series had yet.

I duno I felt that Fallout 3 had the best dungeons and Fallout New Vegas had the best vaults.

Right, we went from dungeons, that were exactly that, dungeons..... that would take hours to explore... (to find one item.....) to dungeons that were two rooms, and that is 'just what we needed'...... I must say, that I couldn't disagree with you more.

The dungeons in Oblivion/Skyrim make about as much sense as Daggerfall's...... especially the Dwemer Ruins...... some were pretty good, but, most were simply nonsensical.

i think skyrim was a giant leap in these regards, compared to fo3, but even more to oblivion, that's where i got that effect the most (even more than in morrowind)

basically, the dungeons are made from kit pieces though, so a certain amount of repetition will likely be inevitable, but what made the improvement (from what i saw) is, where they'd neatly line up these pieces as supposed in oblivion, they'd mix them up, stick them through eachother and abuse them in zillions of other ways in skyrim, to the effect that, in some places, you can't tell the pieces even if you know them. and i don't see why they wouldn't go further down that road.

on the other hand though, i'd like to say: considering the count of available assets, it's far beyond awesome how much they acchieve with how little. like, there's less than 10 different rock cliffs in skyrim (etc, same for pretty much everything there is in the game). ever had the impression you'd ^"seen that cliff before"? i certainly hadn't, although, as a modder, i KNOW the pieces.

for the unique dungeons: there actually are a couple unique sets (in skyrim), for whatever reason though, many of them though never are used in an actual dungeon (but in places like high hrothgar, nightcaller temple and so on). still, there are unique dungeon places, with a strange talent of pretending they aren't: riften sewers for an example, unique set. or funky devices that are hidden away in places so remote nobody will likely ever see them, like that odd dwemer teleporting device in kagrenzel

for fo4 anyway, i have VERY high hopes, since it seems from the trailers we'll see a much higher amount of "exterior" interiors, meaning without a loading screen and a view to the actual outside, this could mean a huge leap for "dungeon" design, even more for fallout (places that are supposed to be destroyed, collapsed etc)

i actually always considered these a very strong side of beth's level designs (IF they appear natural, some are just the "why on earth would anybody place a door here" type though admittedly)

the thing in comparison with "real" places is this: they're all very linear. other than in a "natural" building, you'd almost always have to walk the longest possible way back otherwise (and, other than in most "natural" buildings, you'll have most of what was in them weighing down your pockets) - which, in it's own way, is just AS unnatural as "convenience exits".

so - apart from being convenient - i think this kind of is a case where 2 wrongs make a right (again, IF done well): in a "real" building that's layed out like a bent noodle, you definitely WOULD try to build another exit at the far end, just so you'd not always have to walk all the way back

Bethesda's dungeons are always extremely generic and most of the time are filled with nothing but cramped corridors and no real alternative paths through them. Boring.

Fun > Realism

call houses repetitive if you wish, but really, that's the way housing development happens, so its a non issue for me.

As for factories. I'm trying to figure how unique layouts, unique terminal entries/story and remnants of what wasn't built there equals repetitive.

Particularly when compared to ES.

Just can't buy into the logic of FO having repetitive dungeons. Certainly not with what's been said in this thread

Not me! The metro were my favorite part of FO3. Sneaking through them with my gas mask on (mod) and a sniper rifle while hunting raiders was the best moment ever. It made the game 100 times better than stalker or metro 2033. I am really hoping that the new game gives us heaps of options that also makes this possible. I would be devastated if there was no expansive metro in FO4.

If Beth doesn't do it, modders will.

You question my views on F3 having identical dungeons, then go on to say that they look the same because that's just how they are? What's wrong with you?

Okay so we've established again that they are the same. 2) The attention to repetitive detail sure is nice and all, but dungeon exploration has rarely challenged your brain in BGS games.

Perhaps i could have been more clear. The textures look the same. The structural layout of the explore-able sections of the metro are not identical at all.

Any sameness (which is not the same as saying "identical") aesthetically, is because it isn't really a set of separate dungeons. It is a metro system, ergot assets for "one dungeon" are used in other places, as they should be, since it was originally designed (pre war) to be cohesive. So, if a uniform paint job is what makes you consider them identical, then, i dunno what to say. Perhaps another way to say it is that I can't say that a vw bug is identical to a pick up, just because they're both candy apple red. I mean, they're both cars. Both red. But the structure is different, and have different things in them.

As for getting lost... I for one have no problem finding the mall, or Arlington, or GNR.. but many do. I've been over all of them many times, but there are some places, due to different sub-levels coming into play- effectively making map markers (quest or placed) unreliable- that I can find myself turned around, when i go through again on another play-through. Lots of people dislike the metros because it can be easy to get lost. I like exploring every bit of them and if they were identical, I simply wouldn't put so much into exploring them.

Yeah, Fallout 3 and NV did not have this problem that the Elder Scrolls games have been plagued with. The dungeons in Fallout games have always been better designed and more unique, though they do tend to stick to a few themes, and there's less of them than there are in an elder scrolls game

I agree - and the backstories were always nice.

I didn't feel like there was any purpose in going in Skyrim's dungeons because draugr.

Dunwhich building would like to disagree with you.

Bingo.

The Dwemer ruins in Dragonborn were really well done.
And Skyrim's in general had some unique features, i'd call them better than Oblivion's or Fallout 3's. And i still haven't played Morrowind