I disagree.

Netherlands=oh [censored]. Irradiated water flood. Damn.

Britain=Isolated status means even lower food supplies.

I can see reasons many countries got hit:

Britain may have been hit by China (similar to America, possibly an ally), America (the Commonwealth may have disliked the annexation) and other European countries (in a continuation of the resource wars.) Most major European countries may have been hit to sever trade, arms deals (Germany in particular) and other links. As Europe is smaller then America, the bombs would have been densely packed.

Although the European Commonwealth was fighting the resource wars and devestated by it, it is very unlikely that they had used up their nuclear weapons. They are a "good" thing to have as a last resort.

Also, since the FO universe is very focused on nuclear technology it is likely that there were far more nation with nuclear weapons.

As soon as the first bombs fell/were launched in The Great War many of those nation's could have thought "If I go down, I'm taking you with me" and dropped all of their nukes on the attackers, their enemies and countries they disliked for whatever reason. The Great War lasted 2 hours, and a lot of launch orders can be given in two hours time.

What I think is that as soon as the first warheads, those attacked fired back, in wich whatever allies they had needed to attack and defend as well, and those relatively safe from attack joined in for the sake of joining or hoping to kill their enemies and no-one noticing.

We all know the results.

This is reaching, you have no idea if USA alliances have fallen or not. It's also reaching Way too far to think that China would not bomb European countries.

Furthermore, a Actual global nuclear war would destroy world trade, and the global food chain would completely break down. This would leave heavily populated countries like China, India and S.E. Asia the Most heavily hit as they would suffer the worst from starvation and disease. Countries with very limited natural resources like Africa and the Middle East would also suffer heavily from the loss of food and global trade.

About the only thing I could agree with you here is that Europe would recover faster than the USA and other nations - mainly because it has decent natural resources, it was not a direct target of the war, and it's population would be small versus it's land mass.

The key to all of this is that Fallout is Not the factor in such a war. Starvation and Disease would kill 10 to 100 times the number of people that the bombs would.

Miax

How do you know it was not a direct target? England has been confirmed as hit. It is also confirmed that every country that could fired. European countries would almost definitely be amongst them.

"it's population would be small versus it's land mass."

Wait, what? Europe is densely populated, very much so. It's also rather small, even a few nukes would wreak havoc.

I do not know where you hail from, but most european countries have a huge amount of un-urbanised land, let it be forests, mountains or just farmland. Most of these countries (Holland, Belgium, France, Germany) have a few large Urban Area's (Hollands coastline for example) but the east and north of the country, although it has some larger cities, is not densely populated. The statistics say it is because we have
a large amount of people in cities, wich cranks up the average by far.

Above that, there are very few European cities that rival the amount of people in the American cities. There are not much European cities that have a population in the millions, I'm certain the United states have more of them

And I suppose this is my point, you don't necessarily need a Nuclear war to cause massive devastation. However the absence and nuclear fallout and the fact that you don't have large areas of land which are too irradiated to be useable means that Europe could recover faster. 200 years later parts of Europe should be on the way to recovery.

Back on track a bit...

I'm playing Dragon Age, a game I didn't think I'd like, but I have to admit that the storytelling/characterization/voice acting/animation is downright stellar, and makes any of the Fallouts look sadly weak in those regards.

So, for FO4, I want Dragon Age done in PA, WITH more room for exploration. That would be a perfect game.

fallout 4 shoud be set in Tijuana and san diego

Not so many Collection Quests in Fallout 4. Seemed like everyone wanted Scrap Metal and you could get caps through a variety of insane ways by simply being a packrat.

I can buy Scrap Metal to keep a Water Purifier running, or Advanced Tech for Goodies turn in...but once I start running Teddy Bears to Pittsburgh and collecting Cameras for the Brotherhood, it's just getting downright silly.

The teddy bears and the cameras didn't do anything (except act as props) before those inclusions is probably the justification. Admittedly Bent Tin Cans still don't do anything either (nor Forks or many other things) so YMMV with that. Personally, I didn't find much use in hording the things as I need money early. By the time I can hand in cameras I don't need the cash. Just what would I buy with 20k+? There's nothing to spend the money on once you have your house upgrades. You get better loot questing (I mostly buy ammo and some spare parts), come the late game I'm not even picking up all of the dropped loot if I don't need the parts.

It would have been better for a counter to be built into those quests. Do they need 30 teddy bears? 30 Cameras?

The Teddy Bears and the like were ammo for the Rock-It Launcher.

But I do agree, by endgame the last thing I need is more caps.

Good points - but "Absence of Fallout"?

I don't need to remind you that the trade winds run West to EAst, and Europe would receive HUGE amounts of Fallout from the bombs that explode over the united states. With luck alot of it would fall into the Atlantic Ocean, but countries like England, Spain, France and Portugal would have a snow storm of fallout from the US within days of the war.

I actually think countries in the Southern Hemisphere would be faster in the recovery, places like Australia and New Zeland. One might assume that Australia would be bomb by China because the US and Australia are allies - but I don't think so. China depends on Australia for Uranium and now even Farmland - and I really don't think Australia would attack China in that war. As you correctly pointed out, if the US actually attacked Canada, I think we would loose all support in Australia - especially given their tactical situation in being very close to China.

I almost think that Australia would be left out of direct bombing from either side, and being in the south and very isolated from everyplace else, they would stand the best chance to recover fast - and would draw fewer diseases from afar. Thus my vote for Fallout 4 is to take place in Australia! The connects to the Road Warrior alone fill the imagination with limitless possibility, and it has not be used before so its fertile ground for a Fallout game.

My 2 caps

[quote name='Miaximus' post='15324105' date='Nov 16 2009, 06:41 AM']Good points - but "Absence of Fallout"?

I don't need to remind you that the trade winds run West to EAst, and Europe would receive HUGE amounts of Fallout from the bombs that explode over the united states. With luck alot of it would fall into the Atlantic Ocean, but countries like England, Spain, France and Portugal would have a snow storm of fallout from the US within days of the war.

I actually think countries in the Southern Hemisphere would be faster in the recovery, places like Australia and New Zeland. One might assume that Australia would be bomb by China because the US and Australia are allies - but I don't think so. China depends on Australia for Uranium and now even Farmland - and I really don't think Australia would attack China in that war. As you correctly pointed out, if the US actually attacked Canada, I think we would loose all support in Australia - especially given their tactical situation in being very close to China.

I almost think that Australia would be left out of direct bombing from either side, and being in the south and very isolated from everyplace else, they would stand the best chance to recover fast - and would draw fewer diseases from afar. Thus my vote for Fallout 4 is to take place in Australia! The connects to the Road Warrior alone fill the imagination with limitless possi

I still follow the supposition that the entire world is pretty much totally devestated. The very name of the game itself is Fallout after all. And we can talk all we want about the "realistic" aftereffects of a nuclear war - but things like radiation and environmental devestation in this game have only ever been as accurate as needs be to fulfill the needs of the story. If a place needs to be overwhelmed with radiation, then it is - not because the writers painstakingly researched and came to a hard conclusion, but because they decided that's what they wanted. Whether or not any particular area would fare better or worse is really neither here nor there. The writers are always going to have the last say; and chances are they're not going to be putting as much thought into a lot of this (in terms of real-world accuracies) as we in this forum are.

Back on track - I also would like more stuff to do with my (not always so) hard-earned caps. There's going to be lots of collection quests in a Fallout game. I just think that makes sense. We're talking about a genre where a constant staple is that of scavenging through the rubble of a once-great civilization. Frak, the plot of a decent amount of post-apocalyptic movies is "I found something while I was out picking through the wreckage." The problem is that leads to a whole lot of caps. And when anything that you're likely to be spending caps on is also the very stuff that you're finding all over the wasteland, you're going to end up with a surplus at some point. (That's sort of unavoidable in this sort of game - while I'm out looking for useful stuff to scavenge and sell back at town so I can afford to buy more bullets (so that I can survive these ventures out in the wastes in the first place...) I'm also finding more of the bullets that I intend to buy when I get back to town...)

My first gut reaction would be to make ammunition and (especially) medicine more expensive (and rarer) to buy from a vendor. But I'm not sure that would be very effective in the long run. I remember Fallout 2 going into my first town and being in dire need of stimpaks, and in the whole town I could only find someone selling maybe two. And even then, I could only afford to buy one of them if I sold just about everything I had to get it. That was kind of cool, and upped the challenge - but even then, by the end of Fallout 2 it ended up just the same. It's been a constant through all of the games in the series that the endgame leaves you with more loot and money than you know what to do with.

So really, I'd just like more stuff to do with my money. Given that I'm going to have that end result anyway, then maybe there should be some things that are going to cost exhorbitant amounts of cash. At the very least, customizable weapons and armor were a good cash sink. Even if it was upgrading some armor I didn't even use anymore, it was still somewhere to spend my money. It wouldn't necessarily have to be just item upgrades, either. There could be entire quests that you'd have to effectively "buy" into. (Not sure how, but maybe the quest-giver won't even talk to you unless you're incredibly rich - that could even be a sort of Perk: Super Rich...) And upgrading your "house" was a way to spend money in F3, that could surely be enhanced some more, as well.

Anyway, I'd just like to have more things to spend money on. If it's unavoidable that I'm going to be knee-deep in caps eventually, then I'd at least like something to spend it on.

Upgradeable Base Of Operations - It could be filled with followers found through the game and various characters who you can outfit with whatever armor/weapons you find. Robots could be purchased and set up to guard the base. Fortifications could be upgraded through out the game to give you something to spend caps on. It would be a more interesting place to drop your loot rather than a standard house setting. Could be side missions where you have to defend the base at random times from traveling bandits. A trophy wall or room of the various critters would be nice too. Basically a Fallout version of the castle expansion in Oblivion.


Acid Rain - Storms in the Fallout world, during rain storms you would take on a minor amount of radiation unless you find cover.


Robot Shop - There could be robot shops spread through out the game where you can purchase follower robots, maxing at 6 or more to let you have a small army of robots to take on missions. This could be a really deep side of the game where robots could be built from scratch based on parts purchased or found through out the game. Unique robot parts could be rewards for quests. These could then be sent to your base, let loose into the game world, etc. Maybe a robot fighting arena where you can build strong robots to do battle against other bots. It would be fun to have robots that you can upgrade with wheels/ spider legs, etc, that can be ridden on as mounts. Something that would be especially amusing is if you could take the head off of an npc and mount them onto a robot body, letting you make robot versions of people that you kill.


More Robots - It would be awesome to have a bigger variety of robots, giant insect looking robots with smoke stacks creeping around, small armies of wheeled robots that swarm at you, and so on.


More "bad guy" missions where if you want to play as an evil character, you should be able to play the main quest from that perspective.

100% agree here, there would not be Anyplace un-touched by total devistation. Radiation, Fires, Starvation, Disease and other Humans would leave no place un-touched.



Also 100% agree here - caps are too easy to get, which makes Everything too easy to get.

I would carry this one step farther to suggest the level of difficulty do more to control the cost of items, or even to have a "non-combat difficulty" setting so that the player could choose how scarse money is. Then give us a ton more things to spend money on, and we might be as poor as "bottle caps".

Miax

Yeah, I think that sentiment's been raised a couple of times. Having the difficulty level affect little more than how hard the enemies are to kill really isn't doing much. Personally, I find that after awhile I just switch back to normal difficulty - I don't find the combat at the toughest diff settings to be all that much harder, so much as just more tedious. (I still think the worst case of this is to be found in Mass Effect, where I noticed that at the most difficult setting I didn't really die all that much more often - but that I'd be blasting enemies all across the terrain with the Mako's main gun to point that it just got ridiculous.)

I have to figure that players who are going to be starting a new game on the tougher settings are also the ones who are going to want things like limited supplies and such; more of a challenge overall, and not just concerning the combat portions of the game.

On a related note - I think it would also help if the arc of the main plotline was a bit more, well, "epic" in scope. Again, given that the end result is pretty much guaranteed to be an all-powerful character; I think it would make sense for the plot to revolve around something a bit grander. (Or at least something that would be harder to pull off given a "normal" human being.) For example, I've been playing a bit of Dragon Age lately. I'm not very far into it, but I think I can guess (and without giving away any spoilers) that the plot's going to center around you trying to put together an army to fight off the evil bad guys. I have to imagine the end-game's going to revolve around my character leading this army into battle, or in some way being involved in a very large conflict.

That's something where (at a guess) the plot of the game could concievably follow in-line with my character's progression. At the start, I'm a little low-level peon; and the scale of my quests are going to be pretty small - that's all I can handle at that point, anyway. But as I go forward through the game, my character gets more advanced, powerful, and influential. Until by the end of the game I'm taking on responsibilities I just simply wouldn't have been able to handle at the beginning of the game. (I mean, that's pretty standard fare for an RPG - my goal is to defeat the Final Boss, and the entire purpose of all my levelling up is so that I can finally be capable enough to defeat him.)

Anything in Fallout 4 wouldn't necessarily have to revolve (in any way) around something similiar to Dragon Age's setup, obviously. But just that the overall story arc - and the tasks given to my character at any point - are in-line with my own character's progression (as best as is possible given the relatively open setup of a Bethesda game, at least.) If that makes any sense...

A new feature I'd like to have implemented into Fallout 4 (Or even New Vegas): Rifle Butting.

Too often, I find myself reloading with a Ghoul or other Melee-centric combatant screaming down on me. The ability to smash them across the face with my gun - doing minimal damage but knocking them back - would be a godsent.

I don't know. The story's plot should be more intricate and diverging, but the setting should be what makes the game "epic". The story should feel dire, the violence awkwardly lols worthy, and the dialogue should be witty, incontrast with the story.

That's a good idea. I'd go for that.

What I mean by that is simply events that take place on a more grandiose scale. Really, there's nothing in Fallout 3 that I really felt like I couldn't have accomplished with my character at Level 1, fresh out of the Vault. I can't really get too far into that without going into spoilers, but for the most part I felt like I could have "finished" the game at pretty much any point - all I was really doing was waiting around for the right events to trigger so that it could "unlock" the final sequences needed to finish. Becoming a more powerful, experienced, and evolved person was all just sort of a side effect; and not something that really played any sort of a roll in the game.

To restate this - an archetypal (videogame, at least) RPG has a pretty standard setup when you get right down to it: there's a Final Boss out there, and it's up to you to kill him. The only problem is that you're a lowly peasant with no real life experience. All of your adventures up to the end of the game are really just there to serve to prepare you for that final fight. That's what levelling up is for. If you were always capable of defeating the Boss, then you could have just skipped all of the sidequests and gone right over and beat the game. And what would be the point of a game where you go through all of that experience-building, with no other goal than killing the Main Boss's Secretary? I mean, Diablo was called Diablo because that's the guy you have to kill at the end of the game - you're out to rid the world of Penultimate Evil (or at least knock it down to size for awhile...) It would have been pretty lame to have gone through all of that trouble just to take down Bob the Sort of Mean Dude.

And I don't mean every RPG has to involve a Boss Fight. That's just the easiest way of stating it. Gaining levels isn't (supposed to be) just about getting better at doing things. You're becoming a more "evolved" person. You're learning things about yourself. Levels and such are just abstractions - it's implied that a certain amount of emotional growth is taking place at the same time. I just think that (ideally) the tasks given to my character should be in-line with that level of overall growth that these gains in experience represent. The more powerful you become, the greater the stakes should be. And I just didn't feel that with Fallout 3.

And don't get me wrong - I don't think it was really all that bad of a plot. Post-apocalyptic stories should be more personal in nature. And you should never be so powerful a person to be able to save all of humanity and make the world a better place. (Because, for one thing, that sort of rules out the possibility of sequels...) It just struck me (personally,) as Acts 1 and 2 of a 3 Act play.

That actually has been bothering me since I started playing games.
I remember thinking that if I was the evil boss at the end, I wouldn't just send wave after wave of my weakest minions to be slaughtered by the wannabe hero until I have no army left, I'd just send a couple of my toughest ones straight away, to get rid of him before he has managed to figure out which one is the 'jump' button, and carry on with my evil plans without fear of being disturbed.

I still find it kind of dumb that the top guy is always such a great fighter - I'd think that the big boss' strength would lie in his ability to effectively influence and command a large evil army - an activity which should leave him little time to get on with his sword training, at least not enough to be pose any serious threat by himself to the guy who has just taken that army down. ie without his army he should pretty much be as pathetic as Bob the Sort of Mean Dude.

I realize that people might find that to be inappropriate within the context of a game that tries to have an 'epic' feeling, still, it might be more satisfactory than one might expect to reach the ultimate evil only to find out that he has just turned into pathetic little Bob because of you having spent all that time taking everything from him - instead of finding out that the bad guy in the end is so much more superior to you, that no only he was a fearful leader, but even though he has lost everything, he can still be a fighter gifted with a skill equal to yours - even though he didn't spend the last few days/months/years training hard by fighting ogres inside dungeons.

[quote name='rebet' date='Nov 17 2009, 05:46 AM' post='15329146']
I still find it kind of dumb that the top guy is always such a great fighter - I'd think that the big boss' strength would lie in his ability to effectively influence and command a large evil army

And that's why Bethesda had it's previous big releases end with an army v. army scenario instead of a one boss deal like Morrowind. The only real problem I had with the Fallout 3 ending was
all without me having to fire a single shot. Don't get me wrong, I thought that part was great, but I think It would have been cooler if there was more challenge to it. Its great that Bethesda is trying to escape the normal formula of spending all game leveling up and gaining equipment to defeat an all powerful "Final Boss" to making you actually feel like you are a part of a bigger fighting force.

And back to the purpose of the thread:

-Factions. A great part of Oblivion was that it gave you a huge world to explore, and it gave you a reason for being there. I felt that at least 80% of Fallout 3's real meat lied in the wasteland outside the boundaries of the given quests, but I had no real desire to wander the wastes in the hopes of finding something interesting in the huge open world environment.. Wouldn't it be cool to join a faction like Reilly's Rangers, The Brotherhood of Steel, or a group of Raiders?

-Motorcycles. I loved the horse mechanic in Oblivion. It felt like I was actually adventuring rather than crawling around the map. Fallout really got tedious after a while due solely to the fact that I really didn't want to spend 15 minutes walking to a place that I haven't discovered.

-More unique equipment. I really got attached to my equipment in Oblivion, because most of it was unique in some way. I can still remember what I had to go through to get a particular sword, and it makes me appreciate the weapon. Fallout had plenty of unique weapons, but they weren't really unique they were just stronger damage variants of a regular weapon.

-Armor pieces. This one has been a favorite of mine from when I first picked up Morrowind. I wore heavy armor, and it was really fun trying to collect all the pieces of daedric armor. Whenever I found a piece, it was like I completed a little quest of my own.

-A steeper difficulty curve. I shouldn't be able to leave my sheltered life in a vault, go to megaton and kill every person there without hardly a trouble.

-Stonger Super Mutants. Sure, Overlords(if you have the DLC) and Masters were difficult to dispatch, but after a while I breezed through them as well. In other words, I shouldn't be able to enter the Mall and dispatch 10 Super Mutants (who are supposed to be superior in combat to humans) with only a modicum of difficulty.

I know the whole Oblivion with guns thing is a sore spot for some people, but Oblivion was a great game, and I think the whiny fans of Fallout 1 and 2 should svck up the fact that no one wants to play a turn based "shooter" with a highly complicated stats system. I played through Fallout 3 and loved every minute of it, so I bought 1 from gog.com to see what I was missing. It was good for its time, but it reminded me a lot of D&D with guns.

I'd like a faction system that has faction specific requirements (stats, skills, a quest or two to prove you worthiness requiring the said stats/skills) for joining and that would actually have some benefits other than a simple questline to level up couple of times. Like otherwise unobtainable gear/supplies (again, specific to the faction) and possibly even new means to overcome some obstacles in the mainquest, offering a new approach to it for example.



Apparently many people do want to play them. And I'd recon that the "Oblivion with guns" phrase has not much to do with whether or not Oblivion is a good game, but more to the fact that the comparison should've been made towards the other games in the Fallout series and not towards TES 4 - at least that's how I view it. Bethesda is perfectly capable of developing a game that is closer to the foundation of Fallout, heavier on the RPG side and still maintain most of their own design philosophy (FPP/TPP, open/semiopen world sandbox). It's just a question do they want to leave the mould they have created for themselves - for TES series - to actually try and make something - even slightly - different (gameplaywise) for a change. :shrug:


imo

I don't think that the stats system was watered down enough to constitute the nagging going on from old fallout fans. From what I've seen of Fallout 1's stat system, There was a lot of unnecessary skills (outdoors man, first aid AND doctor, throwing) that needed the update. I do agree with many purists that complain about the perks being handed out like candy. IMHO, perks would be more difficult to choose if you actually had to live with the consequences of your decisions. I would also like to see the return of traits, which was one of my favorite features in the original fallout stats system.

Here's an alternative to vats that I have come up with in my head after seeing the combat system in Fallout 1, which is more strategic.

-turns from RT to turn base, but both sides take their turn at the same time. Everyone decides what they are going to do with their action points, and then it plays like a movie, with characters moving and firing at the same time. After everyone is done with their selected moves, their action points return, and the process starts over. I think this would be a great system, because it would let the shooters play their game, but allow the people that care about strategy to play accordingly.

-the ability to choose 2 often used weapons to quickly switch between in vats, like an assault rifle and a grenade, so you can switch between them mid-turn. So you tell your char to head for cover behind a car, shooting at Mutants as he runs, but when he gets behind the car, can quickly lob a grenade over the barrier before he reloads.

-better benefits for targeting specific body parts. When I first heard of VATS I thought "Oh boy! A shooter with strategy elements!". You can imagine my disappointment when I found out that I would be using VATS less for strategy than a head shot generating mechanism. If a Super Mutant is wearing a helmet, I want that to show in how much damage he takes to the head, enough so that if I run into said mutant, it would be more beneficial for me to hit him in the arm or leg instead. This is also why there needs to be armor pieces.

-follower commands? I'm not quite sure about this one. If we were using the system described above, then it would make sense that we would be able to give orders to our followers the same way we do with our char, but I think that would break immersion. So instead maybe use a system of nonspecific orders, as you would shout to a comrade in the heat of battle. So a command to aim at a specific super mutant becomes aim for that group behind the sandbags, and move here becomes an order to flank the enemy.

I know some of these changes may be unrealistic, but I think they have a good basis in strategy. If anyone has any tweaks or additions they'd like to add, I'm open to them.

This has come up a number of times in the various iterations of this thread, but just in case Bethesda is looking through these to gather ideas for the next game, I feel it bears re-emphasizing.

(To me) the absolute, most crucial aspect of the original Fallout games - the thing that I think of first when I remember playing those games; the one element that I feel makes a Fallout game a Fallout game: Is quite simply how reactive it was to my choices throughout the game. I've talked at length about the turn-based system that I was partial to, and how the ruleset of Fallout 3 has left a bit to be desired. But all of that pales in comparison to the one thing that I really think Fallout 3 fell short on. Everything else I might criticize really is just nit-picking in my case - this is actually the major gripe I have with Bethesda's entry into the series.

What absolutely blew my mind the first time I played through Fallout 1 was the little narration at the end of the game where it went through all of the major people and places I'd encountered in the game and told me what happened to them, based on my actions. And it wasn't simply about where my Karma level was when I ended the game. In many cases, being the "good guy" meant that a town would fall apart and die. The game as a whole (I felt) was less about the karmic implications of your actions, and more about the actual existential effects that your choices wrought upon the world.

I don't usually replay roleplaying games - no matter how different they are in each playthrough, there's going to be a lot of recycled stuff, and I find it quickly gets boring reading through the same text over and over again. But I've gone back through Fallout 1 and 2 countless times, just to see how the end of the game played out if I made different choices. And I felt it leant a lot of weight to each and every decision I made. The important thing wasn't so much the mechanics of how often the game "checked" these decisions, or for what - it was the illusion that literally any choice I made could have an important impact on the game during that ending narration.

Seriously, that's what I feel to be the most important element that the original games brought to the table. I'm kind of a stickler about how a game ends - in the same way that I don't feel satisfied with a movie unless it has a good ending. In storytelling concepts, the end of a story is the most important part. Edgar Allen Poe, for example, used to write his stories backwards for that very reason - everything that comes before is simply the context for which the ending gives a meaning. (This is also why I'm not a fan of "alternate endings" in DVD releases...) More than any other aspect of the original games, that's what I always felt made that game so exemplary.

And it's something I felt missing in Fallout 3. As a videogame ending goes, I think it was actually pretty good. Honestly, if it was for any other game, I might even have been impressed by it. But for a Fallout game made with all that we've learned over a decade of evolving the medium - I wanted much more. For me, I don't feel that it lived up to the reactiveness of the original games - and I was really expecting them to raise the bar here.

And it doesn't just have to be about the end of the game. Choices you make can certainly impact the "meat" of the game, as well. I thought that was the direction they were going with this in Fallout 3 (and it was present to an extent in the previous games, as well.) I knew going into Fallout 3 that I'd have the choice of whether or not I was going to blow up Megaton (that was in the first official video preview I saw of the game...) And that's a pretty drastic change you came exert on the gameworld. I thought, however, that was just going to be the tip of the iceberg (especially considering that they told us about it before the game even came out...) But that really was pretty much it. And when you get down to it, it really doesn't affect anything beyond Megaton itself. Fable 2 did the same thing at the beginning of that game - you make a completely arbitrary choice early on to be good or evil (for it's own sake, and neither for any particularly compelling reasons, I felt,) and that's it.

So in conclusion - all I really want out of a Fallout 4 is a game world that at least gives me the illusion that every choice I make in the game carries weight. I want an end sequence that surpasses that of a game that's now ten years old. Everything else (for me) is just nit-picking. What I think really makes a game "Fallout" are the consequences those decisions bring with them, one way or another. That's what the original games showed me all that time ago, and I'm still waiting for another RPG that raises the bar in that aspect. I'd like that to be Fallout 4.