This thread is so that we can keep all the discussion, rumors and speculation in one place.
This topic is for a friendly discussion of ideas and suggestions for Fallout 4.

We all have opinions about what the next game should have and should not have. Each of us may express that opinion freely. There are points we agree on and points we do not agree on. This means that people are going to disagree with you on some things. Accept that and move on. No need to beat your point so far into the ground that no one wants to look at it any more.

At moderator discretion, threads about specific and distinct topics as they relate to FO4 and the rest of the Fallout series may be acceptable in the Fallout Series forum. General idea/suggestion topics for a future Fallout game will either be closed, or moved to this one.
This thread should be used to discuss items you'd like to see in a future game, gameplay tweaks, quest ideas, things you hope are not in the next game and so on. If you want to discuss major issues, use a separate topic - such as the discussion about adding multi-player or co-op play, which already has a thread. Please search first to see if there is an active/recent thread on a particular topic.

Something to note. Discussions of Child Killing is not allowed on these boards. Don't even bring it up in this thread. It won't happen in any future game from Bethesda, so there is no reason to even discuss it. If you post about this subject, you may be Warned and or Banned from the boards for doing so.

This is also not a thread to discuss current or past Fallout Games, other than to mention an aspect of the game you want to see included, or not included, in a future Fallout game.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1514418-fallout-4-speculation-ideas-and-suggestions-245/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1514239-fallout-4-speculation-ideas-and-suggestions-244/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1513918-fallout-4-speculation-ideas-and-suggestions-243/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1513316-fallout-4-speculation-ideas-and-suggestions-242/

I want https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hH-GZdrm6k to voice the super mutants.

I think we are nearing crunch time for learning once and for all if Boston is really going to be the locale for the next FO title, or if it was just a mirage that Kotaku reported on nearly a year ago.. Pax East is being held in Boston this coming weekend, and Bethesda Zenimax will have reps. there including Pete Hines. It's pretty hard for me to imagine them passing up this opportunity for a teaser FO release if Boston is a main feature of the game world. ( Unless we continue to believe a new fallout is still pretty far off in the future....) Somethings got to give here.... And yeah, I know Mr. Hines has been pretty ambivalent about his participation, but that's exactly what I would expect if he was trying not to tip off a "surprise".

anrything that can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof

Truth is that NOBODY knows what is comming

we all assume and hope it is FO 4 even i assume and really hope it will be

but what do we know , basicly nothing , alot of rumours that all been debunked and speculations

what if they anounce something comletely different than FO 4 , what if it is a new ES or a complete new franchise anyother game from one of their gamestudio s , remember bethesda game studios is only one of many game designers within bethesda softworks

what if it is a complete remastered version of the original 2 games , what if it is only a remastering of skyrim to the xbox one and ps 4

i am afraid alot of us are raising our expectations to high

I'm trying to hold in my excitement at the news that something will be announced at E3. I now know how Half Life fans feel.

Anywho, Having played the utter disaster that was Grim Dawn I have realised how much I have come to hate level scaling. I understand the game has to remain challenging but in this day and age it just feels to "gamey".

Like Giant Rat suggested have the starting area remain fairly easy (a small town or an abandoned residential area) but then as you get into the "big city" the enemies become much tougher and only the highest levels can access it. The major areas much like downtown DC in fallout 3 should pose an instant death risk for those who are not ready for it.

On the subject of followers. While I like having them. I don't like the idea that they become nothing more that meat shields/bullet sponges or pack mules for almost the entire game.

My major point though is that I have noticed with companies like Bethesda and Bioware that when they have two RPGs but in seperate genres they tend to go out of their way to seperate them. For example In Oblivion you had several major places you could visit. Taverns, smiths etc. You could rent a bed in various cities get jailed for stealing sit and read books for as long as you wanted. Not in fallout though.

Why do companies go out of their way to take all these great features out just so it doesnt get labelled "Oblivion/Dragon Age with guns" or whatever. If its a good feature and people enjoy it then why not keep it in? Surely enough time has passed in the Fallout universe that you would have some rudimentary law system in place. Lore wouold still be around in the form of books or CD's or something that hadn't been destroyed. I have said this before but it seems very unfair that the Fallout fans get much less in the way of content and love than the Elder Scrolls fans get.

New Vegas went a long way to remedy this in the form of a survival system but to me it wasnt enough. The characters were sloppily written and I had to keep asking myself what drove my character to stay where he was and not just turn around and go home. Fallout 3 gave me a sense of urgency or purpose to find someone or something that meant a great deal. In vegas im told to find a chip I know nothing about so why should I care?

I personally dont care of they use the same engine they used in Skyrim. In fact I hope they do because it will give them more time to focus on other things like story and mechanics. The good thing about all of this is none of it is forced into the player. I just want the option is all.

without level scalling you just going to end up with a game that is completely linear and you end up doing exactly the same things over and over on every playthru

lfinding the right balance in levelscalling is probably the hardest part for any game developer no matter what game

some games hit it right others completely miss the ball

It's most likely a mirage and the rumour was initially propagated by some guy on reddit who eventually admitted that he made the rumour up.

It's not impossible but this whole rumour is predicated on admitted lies.

If we are being honest neither game invokes a sense of urgency well, it's either contrived compassion for your father or it's contrived revenge with IMO some genuine curiosity about the platinum chip and the role of the courier.

I agree, both at least tried to give a goal, a guideline you could always return to more or less.

But is this kind of agency really needed?

I like the concept of a Frozen One so very much because it (among other things) bears the possibility of eradicating this common thread completely.

Awakening from cryosleep (in the M17 Vault for example) could successfully subvert this trope and embrace a new theme, one of complete and utter independence - and thus helplessness. Imagine you successfully manage your way out of the Vault (because out would really be the only way anyone would logically choose aside from suicide perhaps) and meeting with agents of MIT who couldn't care less about your fate and who are only interested in the data of your Pip-Boy. What are you going to do?

Vault-Tec advertized a bright future created by GECKs, yet you find yourself in a barren post-apocalyptic nightmare. Your home faces no crisis - you don't have any home anymore. It lies forgotten in the past while everyone else has moved on. Maybe you had family with you in the Vault? It doesn't matter, they are dead. The initial dialogue with these android agents could serve as a means for the pc to blow off steam - but to what end? Their future would really be their own to shape in this war-ravaged land. MIT never promised you an employment after all.

What are you going to do? This is the question that could very well serve as the new kind of guideline that Fallout 4 could successfully pull off. The atmosphere of suspense, of uncertainty, of loneliness - that's the one that'll make you appreciate whatever help and friendliness you encounter.

I think it's the nature of the beast though. Give me any RPG/MMORPG without timed quests that give you a sense of urgency. You can be told the world will fall apart in twenty minutes (accompanied with massive shaking), but unless that timer is counting down I still don't feel rushed because I know they're too afraid to actually kill people in this stage.

Same for quests like go to point A and defend village from enemy A or it will be overrun and everyone will die. Why? Why rush? The game gives me all the time in the world. I can come back a year later and the bad guys will have waited for me to kill them!

Take home of this above rant: Exploration is fine and dandy, but story, consequences, difficulty and urgency should never be sacrificed for something like exploration.

I think I like the idea Garbage has if I understand it correctly. There is no MQ, at least an official one. The MQ is decided on by the PC. Do you want to fade into the wastes and be a hermit that does not do much to effect the world around you? Fine, go wander off and hide in a cave. Do you want to build an empire and rule the Wasteland? You can do that too.

It isn't outside the realm of possibility to learn of an impending attack on a settlement in say 3 days time as Demonsblade is suggesting. The PC can choose to go and help defend or attack, or simply ignore it and let whatever happens just play out and deal with the aftermath. Consequences for actions or inactions would be true and would alter your gameplay every time you decided to reboot. You would learn rather quickly in the new world that things will happen whether you participate in them or not. It isn't your MQ, but it could be if you so decide.

There should be a main quest that revolves around the war in the region. You would basically be bombarded with it anyway, so you wouldn't need the quest thread from the beginning.

The personal main quest would be eradicated and replaced with a sense of uncertainty. Yes, you would create your own future, but

1. I don't want to feel like the pc is a boss who can do just about everything - the game should rather give me the incentive to survive and find a place in society. Every aspect of Fallout 4 - from carefully creating my specialized character, over the tactical and challenging (at least on normal - you'd be free to choose easy mode) combat, to the grave and realistic consequences of my actions - should help drive this point home. Atmosphere can be simulated by visuals, sounds and letters - but these are just vehicles. The gameplay is the foundation of atmosphere. Just because people constantly tell me how dangerous some mutants are doesn't mean this expectation isn't completely destroyed by experiencing them as pushovers.

2. The war itself would make living as a farmer or something pretty much impossible without constantly being harassed - basically anything you do would need you to partake in the war in some way. Factions should play a huge role. New Vegas wanted to portray each faction as flawed, none of them particularly likeable. It worked to a point. Fallout 4 should concentrate on giving each faction a human face, make all their motivations plausible to a degree. You want to find a home in this world. The factions should provide it - but they'd be at war with the others.

Well, if you take the internet as an authority, Fallout 4 will be set in Berlin.

Been a long time since I talked here.

Since we still have no announcement of a Fallout 4 reveal or even any videos of Fallout 4. I'm really hoping that Bethesda Game Studios and Todd Howard work really hard on developing the PC version of Fallout 4 on PC.

I very much want the PC version of Fallout 4 on PC to be 64-bit only on Windows with it's .exe 64-bit only also. It's time for 32-bit to be retired.

I hope there will be dynamic Global Illumination (GI). If Bethesda Game Studios is indeed using the Creation Engine again and calling it Creation Engine 2 or whatever I really hope they add support for 64-bit Windows and 64-bit .exe with real time rendered dynamic Global Illumination (GI). I hope Bethesda Game Studios uses Gematrics Enlighten III Global Illumination (GI) software or Nvidia's VCGI Global Illumination (GI). I prefer Nvidia's VXGI Global Illumination (GI), because I have Nvidia graphic cards. Here's to hoping there will be Windows 7 64-bit support (obviously there will be since it's still at 46% of the PC gaming market), Windows 8 64-bit. Windows 81. 64-bit, and Windows 10 64-bit. Here's to hoping Bethesda Game Studios uses Nvidia's PhysX 3.3 physics engine with 64-bit physics, I also hope there will be subsurface scattering and Physically Based Rendering (PBR).

There should also be DirectX 12 support added in 2016, because DirectX 12 will not only allow for thousands of NPC's on screen at a time and hundreds of thousands of drawcalls (I heard DirectX 12 will do 600,000 drawcalls for it's first release with more as updates), but DirectX 12 can also allow each of those 1,000+ NPC's or 2,000+ NPC's or however many NPC's Fallout 4 will have so each NPC can have their own Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), giving each NPC different schedules, etc.

Unreal Engine 4 and Unity 5 can already do this including make maps so big, bigger than at least 10+ The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrims.

I am currently using Unreal Engine 4 and I can tell you Unreal Engine 4 is a very good, very flexible video game engine with lots of possibilities being achievable if you want to develop video games on Unreal Engine 4. Epic Games keeps on updating Unreal Engine 4 with each new version of Nvidia's PhysX physics engine Software Development Kit (SDK), SpeedTree Software Development Kit (SDK), and soon DirectX 12 support will be added.

Even CD Projekt RED claims that in the city of Novigrad in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt there is like 2,000 NPC's just in that one area alone with each having their own schedules like being bandits, hunters, merchants like some sell fish, others sell vegetables, hunters you can work for, prosttutes, etc.

I very much also hope Fallout 4 has no loading screens either only if you Fast Travel. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will have no loading screens only when you Fast Travel.

Mod support needs to become very good this time for the PC version of Fallout 4. The editor needs to be a lot more improved, without sacrificing the modding capabilities that PC versions of The Elder Scrolls video games, Fallout 3, and Fallout: New Vegas are known for.

We PC gamers who are modders and both modders and programmers, do not want to see these modding capabilities sacrificed or removed, but have a lot of improvements to them to make more different types of mods possible than ever before. A better scripting tool would be useful also.

These are my hopes for a better developed and optimized PC version of Fallout 4 on PC.

I prefer 50 well functioning NPCs with a purpose, well written quests and dialoge over 2000 where 1980 of them are fillers to give the illusion that the area is crowded. Greetings to AC Unity .

Technology is fun and I like it too to get for the limits. But without purpose it gets boring pretty fast.

Well with the advancements we have now and with even more advancements coming now and years from now. It should be possible to have 2,000 NPC's that are not fillers with nothing to do. Giving well written quests all while also having thousands of NPC's doing their own stuff.

Here is where I hope CD Projekt RED's The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt shines with all of those claims they have made in the last 2 years since announcing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Here's to hoping Bethesda Game Studios does more than ever before and we get to see it in Fallout 4.

That is just my wish which I very much hope becomes a reality.

I am skeptical in this regard because making quests, dialoge,... for thousend of NPCs costs a ton of time and is actually unrealistic to make in a reasonable time frame. Sure FO4 has a long development time (if it is in the works), the Witcher 3 was already postponed several times and isn't released yet. So we have to see what we get.

Games that are released and showed tons of NPCs didn't really shine in this field (thats why my tiny reference). We will see...

I fully agree. In game development, creative designers and technology experts should both be able to work without needing to waste time on the respective other field.

1 That's a good and cogent point, the only RPGs that IMO (off the top of my head) have instilled a sense of urgency/thematic urgency is probably the Mass Effect series.Specifically Mass Effect 2 during the suicide mission where the lives of series long characters can be killed depending on your preparation for the mission, eventuating in them not returning in Mass Effect 3.

I think urgency has to be or is predicated on the notion of tangible loss, at times the open-world ethos is antithetical with narrative consequence and scope (which does have me a little worried for MGS: The Phantom Pain).I hope Fallout 4 explores some of the mechanics and precepts of Fallout 1 and 2, if you are dilatory people can be killed and settlements can be extirpated, invaded, pillaged and so on (necropolis and the ghost farm spring to mind).

In games your actions shape the world but you so should your inactions, the lives of people and the stability of settlements should depend just as much on what you do and what you don't do IMO

But I can't see Bethesda providing potentially fatal and indelible consequences when they totally botched Megaton

I speculate that news media will take advantage of the fallout fans in order to...oh.

I prefer exploration. Dont like the time limit on Fallout 1.

I really liked Mr. House

So, it's not from the 30's-50's, but is styled after songs of the era. ...and, if the next FO does have androids, it would be so fitting.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CJBleJJZixs

would it be possible to have some quests as having a in game time limit, something like a distress call from a town saying they are under attack by group A and they belong to group B. you have 2 game days to respond, you can go aid the defense or join the attack ( so gaining favor with the group you help ) or leave them to die maybe turn up later for any loot. this would require both main factions to be attacking towns but id say both NCR and legion probably did in NV so not a problem.

I like the idea of timed quests and timed changes in the game world, but i would prefer any related to the MQ to specify it's happening, and initiated consciously.

Two things that I came to realize about dialogue in RPGs:

Dialogue should be a fun way of expressing your character and of interacting with the world (in this case NPCs). Dialogue should never bore you and always present you enough choices so that you feel agitated to follow the lines and choose wisely what to say or do (yes, presenting the player with the choice to act instead of merely talk is something that has been almost forgotten - but there's a multitude of fun ways to implement it - for example think about Fallout 3's intro, where you can spit on the cupcake and present it to Butch). But dialogue has certain limitations that irk me quite a bit, even though they might seem fairly minor.

You can either initiate dialogue with a certain character by pressing a button yourself or you can be forced into dialogue by an NPC. In either case, it's never the PC that says the first words and I get that starting dialogue by entering face-to-face mode without the respective NPC responding is somewhat clunky. I also realize that 'pressing the button' can be seen as an abstraction of the pc saying something like: "Hey you!" or whatever.

The thing is, in games that don't feature either pre-defined pcs or cinematic dialogue, you can never force NPCs to react to your initial words. You can't aggressively approach someone and make them pee their pants. You can never whisper to someone in order to make them understand that what you have to say is for their ears only. You always have to listen to the initial: "What do you want?" which makes dialogue feel somewhat less immersive than it could be.

Second thing is that conversations almost exclusively feature two participants only. Let's say you're in a bar, talking to the bartender about life and stuff. Someone overhears this and barges in, gives their own two cents about the matter. You'd now have the choice if you want to ignore that person, talk to her/him, or talk to both, which adds another layer of depth to the conversation.

You can circumvent these limitations and it's fairly easy. For example, have an action button instead of merely a "talk to me" button that would present you (under certain circumstances of course, as it needs scripting and thus can't be done universally) with choices of how to approach an NPC and force them into dialogue. Talking to groups is quite easy, but what about a three-way dialogue that let's each participant stand as an equal interlocutor, reacting to your words and that of the respective other NPC? It's complicated if you feature choice, but there should be certain situations when it's done.

And bring back the option of buying a round in pubs.