You don't have to like it, but don't be reductionist.

I certainly don't, but I have an opinion too.

I don't "not want to play after the MQ". I've just honestly never understood what the problem was, in FO3 & NV, with just reloading a save from just before the Final Mission so you could keep playing.

I emphatically DO want to keep playing..... but I was already able to in the previous games. There was no issue here - It's all a tempest in a teacup to me. Meaningless gnashing of teeth over a non-problem.

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(No level cap is an entirely different issue, of course. Personally, I think that having no cap and letting the character just keep getting stronger is throwing play balance out the window..... it didn't end up being a problem in Skyrim, due to the "level by using skills" system. If you kept playing the character by it's playstyle, you'd eventually stop leveling - hit an effective "cap" - unless you went out of your way to circumvent it. But in an "earn XP, gain levels, apply skill/perk points" system, there doesn't seem to be anything to stop you from being handed more levels as you keep playing.)

Honestly, I see the lack of a level cap as an interesting way to balance out the character system. They needed to have a level cap in the last two games, just to keep us from picking more than one badass endgame perk; that kept us from banking perks for later, too. This time, the best perks are walled behind SPECIAL; and it's going to take some sacrifice to start the game with 10 in multiple SPECIAL stats, or a lot of work to get them to 10 after chargen. And if so many perks have ranks, they can keep us specializing well into the 50s range; I imagine by the time we're taking perks that are no longer relevant to our character, the level scaling will have topped off and it'll be endgame god powers from there on out.

Its a non issue either way to me that's being blown out of proportion. It's equally logical to just not load a "beaten" file though as it is expecting people to cram their whole planned gameplay in before finishing the main quest.

At least this way both sides can get what they want (aside from people thinking its going to weaken the narrative but again I don't get the logic in that mindset) and I happen to think Broken Steele changed plenty. Its a lot better than some simple slide that doesn't actually change anything either.

Its going to be fun to me to use what ever suplies I collected during the finale and be able to use it for myself or my people.Being able to do that gives me more closure than some epilogue ever could.

I'm hoping the ending of the MQ does have some kind of game altering effect. Otherwise it's a moot point to end the game there or not

Just because there's no cap doesn't mean you can't restrict yourself to a certain build and not branch out from it. It's like this so that the people who don't want to be restricted don't have to be and those that want restriction still can through their own willpower. Sorry, but player freedom trumps your selfish desires.

yea, sorry about title meant no end of game after main story, was still giddy as a little girl at time of my thread post..

I'm still not sure how dropping the level cap changes the uniqueness of our characters. Sure, they'll all "become the same" after 300+ levels (emphasis: 300 levels), but that still says nothing about the experience of developing that character. Not including raising SPECIAL itself, we'll have 28 choices to make on our first level-up, and the order we make those choices in will create a radically different experience with each character. I could pick Solar Powered as my first ever perk; I could even go totally ham on the EN perks before taking anything else (and if the majority of perks have multiple ranks, it could potentially be dozens of levels before I even max out one line of perks), which would make me untouchable for most of the game; although I won't reap the rewards of other perks while I focus solely on EN. I could become untouchable in a different way if I decided to go ham on AG instead for stealth; or maybe I could have a balanced character that dabbles in just enough of everything to be equipped for every situation.

Now, if we're breaking level 100 just from playing for a few hours, I'll be pissed. But even if we leveled twice as fast as we do in Fallout 3 or New Vegas, that would take a damn long time. I'm expecting to play a lot of game before reaching that point; I might not even break level 100. I certainly didn't break level 70 in Skyrim more than once.

Personally I don't care much either way about continuing after the main quest because I never do the main quest anyway in Bethesda's games. Though I suppose if I had to choose I wouldn't want it to continue after, so that I don't miss out on post main quest content by never doing the main quest.

Isn't that delightful.

So that's about what I expected, I guess.

No hard level cap makes sense to me - hopefully this is a sign that Bethesda's made a system for Fallout that actually promotes the gameplay they're going for and I feel it ties in well with what we know of the revised ruleset. I think there's still plenty of opportunity for specializing - just depends on how leveling is balanced against the length of the game. I think you should absolutely be able to MOAT your character if that's what you want, but should probably mean going above and beyond just playing the game as normal. I would prefer (and hopefully this is the case) that in my playthrough just playing like normal that by the time I'm "done" with the game I haven't maxed out my character completely just as a side effect of playing.

The "no ending" thing was also expected - I was here for the reaction to Fallout 3's ending (though I actually approved of a finite ending, it's more to my preference.) One thing, though, has me mixed about this, though I'm optimistic:

When the old games came out, what I remember more vividly than anything else about the game - was that ending sequence. I was just playing a regular RPG and hoping for maybe a bit of closure (Edgar Allen Poe famously promoted writing stories backwards from end to beginning, arguing that the end of a story was the most important part that everything else ought to inevitably lead toward and I follow that philosophy as well.) Then suddenly it turns out that it was tracking seemingly everything I'd done with my character through the whole game (an illusion, obviously - it only tracked certain key decisions and end results.)

That set the bar for what I want in an RPG. I like seeing those end slides that cover the places and characters I've visited, and I enjoy being surprised at the end results of my decisions and even the occasional realization that I'm but one person in a big world that can only make so much of a difference no matter how hard I tried. I eagerly awaited completing Fallout 3 just to see what Bethesda would do with my absolute favorite part of my favorite roleplaying franchise... And it kind of fell flat - even before Broken Steel came along.

What I hope for is Bethesda planning ahead this time, and creating a Main Quest that can give me (and hopefully even surpass) that awesome and satisfying sense of closure and wonder that I got from playing the old games, and then drop me back into the Wastes to keep playing if I so choose (and with I'm assuming DLC down the line, continuing after the "end" makes sense to me these days - I'm not saying don't have that option.)

LIke some have said, I think a more personal story might be a better fit even - a narrative that's more to do with my character and their journey than being The Most Awesome and Important Person in the Wasteland. Because I doubt the game's going to totally change based on how I finish the main quest - and it's always bugged me in these games when no one really notices I've even done The World-Changing Really Important Thing that We've all Been Talking About Through the Whole Game.

Anyway, no surprises here - but... man, I really do want a nice ending credits scene this time out. That was my favorite part of the old Fallout games, hands-down, few developers have come even marginally close to as satisfying an end to a game, and as I said, I really think the ending of something is kind of a really important element actually.

To some players, it is disappointing when other players are not forced to play the game in the way that they consider correct.

Personally, I think this is great--though not unexpected--news. I love the fact that the world will go on. And I see no inherent incompatibility between the game's main quest having a satisfying ending and the game continuing beyond it. A good story needn't be a hugely world-altering one, necessarily. Single-handedly saving the world is something of a gaming cliche.

Now, I'm not saying that FO4 is going to have a good story, necessarily. You probably will be saving the world in some capacity. The story and ending might svck. I'm just saying that a continuing world is not proof that they will svck.

I never hit the level cap before trying a different character, but I'm not sad to see level cap gone.

Much better to have a soft cap by slowly increasing the exps needed to get to the next level.

Even better if Fallout 4 has a difficulty setting that will increase or decrease the amount of Exps needed to go up a level, so it can be fine tuned for your gaming style.

The important thing is that it looks like Bethesda has brought Special Stats front and center and has developed an elegant skill perk system that produces very different Sole Survivors.

Nothing better than sky high replay value in a huge open world to explore with a massive established modding community.

I think Witcher has better story development while Fallout has better modding support and is open world.

I don't think anyone will disagree that Witcher 3 has now set the standard for open world gaming.

The Witcher 3 free DLC was great too.

The one thing I wish Witcher 3 didn't have is level requirements for gear.

Just makes no sense, but there is a nice mod on Nexus for that.

Fallout 4 is looking really good so it is going to be interesting to see how well they compare up to each other.

I figure Fallout will still have better mod community support.

I think Witcher 3 will still have better story development, but from what I've seen, I've high hopes that Fallout 4 story development is going to be as good or even better than Fallout New Vegas.

Now it makes even more sense to get Educated and Life Giver (if they include those perks) immediately.

Life Giver is in the game, educated is maybe in the game.

Makes me wonder if there's going to be a soft cap somewhere. I'm hoping that's the case.

Skyrim had a soft cap of 50-55, suspect Fallout 4 will have something in a similar range.

I feel like my sig just got a little more relevant today.

Would Life Giver just be a bonus to your HP, or would it boost the HP gain per level? I wouldn't mind the latter, but there are always complaints in older RPGs that stat changes don't retroactively count for health; that's why everyone emphasizes maxing out END early on in Morrowind and Oblivion.

That's good news for me.

I have to say, you have some of the most constructive, thought-out posts on this forum. Very refreshing to read. I think we share a lot of the same opinions also.

I'm also not too upset about this, but they could easily add in slides and then let you continue playing the game to see how your actions affected the game world throughout the main quest. That's one of the unique things I've always enjoyed about the Fallout series. It's also one of those things that you can emphasize one of the major game elements in the series as well, that is choices and consequences.

I suspect it would just be a straight +HP boost like in Fo3 and NV

I can care less if game ends or not, but I do want ending sliders that give an overview of the long term impact my character had. Without it, it simply isn't a FO game.

One thing I'm conflicted about, in regards to ending slides, is that with Skyrim Bethesda really steered away from those sorts of cutscenes; any cinematic events happens in-game, not from a canned movie file. Ron Perlman's already confirmed as the narrator for Fallout 4, but do you think they'll change it up so that there aren't slides?

Maybe for the opening/ending sequences, they'll have the narration play as we move around the game world. Like, we wake up from our chamber in the Vault and Ron Perlman gives his narration as we're exploring the empty corridors and wondering what happened. Sort of like Bastion?

I really like the idea of a game experience that doesn't take us out of the game to show a movie file, but it's not really a dealbreaker either way. I do think there's better options than a slide-show, though, at least the ones we've seen so far.

Given that Ron plays the TV new anchor, the previous "slideshow" could be the PC sitting in front of a TV and actually watching the TV in-game.

In a surreal twilight zone kinda ending.