Random stuff? Like what?

I dont see what you mean, the map-node map travelling, the way you move over the map with the time frame, random encounters, it feels like you are really travelling for days, a realistic timescale, and you could still find mini-sandbox mini-nodes with locations for story and such.

what he means is that it feels like something completely out of the context of the rest of the game, which is, as i've stated 16 trillions time now, exactly what Bethesda is trying to avoid, and IMO for good reason. I don't mind having a slightly smaller area to work with, in exchange for the ability to roam freely through the world in 1st person - thereby not breaking that feeling of immersion, of actually being inside the game-world; ie Bethesda goal in making FPS RPG's, and a super cool way to play a video game. I got lost in Fallout 3, NV, and Oblivion for HOURS at a time, and actually had genuine moments of surprise, excitement, fear, etc. ... as if i were really there. the minute you put in this world map / city map separation, you're reminding me that i'm just playing a game.

read the quotes ... they were proud of what they'd accomplished. its definitely not ALL 100% true, but that's in hindsight, and I'm sure it's hard to see that when you're so hyped on what your team has been able to do. also i find Oblivion gets a lot of flack in comparison to Morrowind... I'm actually playing it for the first time through ATM (morrowind, that is) and have played Oblivion... well you don't wanna know how much I've played Oblivion. I don't wanna know. anyway honestly the dialogue in MW is largely crap - incredibly robotic, and you can ask like every NPC in that game like 16 trillion questions, which they ALL give the exact same answers to by and large... AND most of it is scripted, which is a [censored] of a lot easier and cheaper to do than voice acting. there is definitely a lot more depth to the world, and the lore around MW than Oblivion, I will give you that... and its something I really hope they bring back with Skyrim. and definitely, Oblivion took on much more of the "godmode" thing you peeps all [censored] about, where skill abilities were not as well represented in-game.... but i digress.

I loved Oblivion, it was tons of fun to play... same for Fallout 3 and NV, and I'm excited as [censored] for Skyrim and Fallout 4, and have no doubt they'll make me happy at least (and probably hundreds of thousands / millions of others). I want my deep plots and storylines, I want to be challenged in the gameplay and would like to be able to specialize in a set of skills rather than just be great at everything... but I also want games that are tons of fun to play and have really dynamic, visceral action. I find Bethesda has done a pretty damn good job consistently of negotiating what is a f*&^ing s*&^load of different features for any one game.

It is purdy, yes. And I think it's obvious that the Creation engine will be used for Fallout.

Let's just hope the engine mutates, a lot. More than it did between Oblivion and Fallout 3.



And I know it's off-topic, but I am an advocate of Sandbox/Node hybrid. I feel like I'm too tied down in New Vegas. I don't like that I'm confined to a small geographical area, I want my character to travel for weeks across endless wastelands between fleshed out settlements (with some wilderness surrounding it for the sake of sandbox).

Have you guys read about the changes they're making to the game? I've heard they are gutting the stats even more, then Oblivion did to Morrowind.

i wont sandbox the size of a state! then it could take you a long time and youd be abl to see the gourges nuked landskape and heres an idea of how big and long it can be! so has any one traveled from megaton to the pit without fast travele well i have and its LONG now just imagine that X3 and put mini towns and locations along it and put like gas stations like evey 6 miles and make it so you have to choose to go around a big lake that would take 3 extra days OR get an old boat up and running and use that but then you have to watch out for mirlirks and stuff and say when walking you get captured by slavers! and they take you to there HQ and you have to escape and so when you finally get to the city you need to get to your like finally!!!!!!!!!!!!! and very happy and proud of your self and then you remember this isnt the largest track you have to make cuz this is just the first medium city (like junk town) and the largest city is still maby 5 to 7 jurnys left before you get there and then you relise thise is just half the quest completed! now i think this is better than node cuz instead of it telking you you just traveled for six weeks you actually do!!!!!!!

Not possible with a sandbox, unless you want the wasteland to look like crap with horrid textures and obscure models, node based maps are much better, and can even span several states.

Like gabriel said many posts back. To me graphics and animantions are just a bonus to me. I want great writing and logical locations and realistic setting appropriate to Fallout lore/canon and time period. Map Node System would be great. I am getting tired of huge areas being crammed into a small space. I want the wasteland feel of Fallout, Fallout 2 and Tactics. Settlements surrounded by miles of nothing but wasteland.

Turn based: I would like the Fallout Tactics option where we can pick RT or TB.

As for Frank Horrigan, he's dead :stare:

guys, guys.... why hasn't a single person even acknowledged the idea that you CAN do a huge sandbox map? (maybe not quite as big as a node-map, but still considerably larger than Fallout 3 or NV) it simply requires vast areas of "wasteland"... places where they don't have to be rendering complicated landscapes, with buildings and so on. huge, empty, deserted areas in-between your points of interest. areas that you could rip around in, say, a vehicle.

Cause with out a map node system the Wasteland would make the game a very boring place. The world map of the originals represents you walking miles over x-amount of time with random encounters tossed in. Without it walking around huge amounts of wasteland will be stupid and boring. A Vehicle would help but what about he times you don't have it? Or it gets destroyed. Are you really willing to walk first person for a very long time through nothing?

and what would you see while you traversed this "wasteland" in a vehicle, you moving over the map towards the destination? what if you didnt have a vehicle, would you have to do the same thing but at a slower pace, taking longer in the time-scale? You just loosely described a node-based map.

eh, if you basically took the map of fallout 3 and tossed in like 75-100% more space, then interspersed the existing content in a reasonable fashion, toss in your odd gas-station, raider camp, or creature cave/nest, along with some geographic features (lake/river, hill/mountain, swamp, etc.) or even some environmental hazards (poison clouds, dust-storms) and add in random encounters (making the wasteland some of the most dangerous places to be) would actually be really cool. it would also really make hardcoe mode come alive. while travelling some of these vast distances early on, it would be a fun challenge to have to bring enough ammo, food, water, etc. to be able to actually make the trek between settlements. i like the idea even of having sleep be a more prevalent factor, and actually having to bring a tent and such - and then the possibility of having to wake up to a random encounter, either with a nasty creature or maybe a bunch of raiders have you got you tied up and dragged you back to thier camp or something.

Would still be boring as hell. Map node system/world map in the originals removes the long boring walk through miles of nothing. It also breaks up the travel with random ememie patrols, encounters and special random encounters. It would give the outdoorsmen/survival skill more meaning. Higher it is the better/faster you travel through the wasteland with less enemy encounters or gives you a the option to go into the encounter.

You notice his idea is basically a boring version of a map-node system?

except for in my idea it would be in first person, which is better because

a - more fun, because its more immersive. the greatest thing about fallout 3 was its ability to convince you that you were really in the game-world (i'm not saying it didn't have its faults... lots of them. lets not get into that.) i don't like the idea of breaking up the gameplay with some different mode for travelling within a city to travelling in the "world map"

b - more likely to happen - for the same reason as above. Bethesda is making FPS RPG's out of the series, with a focus on immersion. that's what it is now, and that type of gameplay sells to a hell of a lot more people than otherwise. i know you don't like it and i'm sorry, but i don't see that changing.

a. How is watching a car roll forward, or walking through the wasteland for days more fun? I'd rather see my progress on a map, also displaying the time passing. If you think that settlements should be minutes from each other, that aint right.
b. it is more likely to happen if people keep writing off node-systems as impossible, it is possible if Bethesda could be convinced. waitasec, how would map nodes conflict with it being FPS RPG, i am not suggesting iso and tb, i am suggesting node travel, which would coincide well.

i don't see how its boring... in the beginning of the game, it would be difficult and realistic, and having the right amount of random encounters and such would keep the player engaged IMO ... it wouldn't be like walking for an hour in real time to get anywhere (though i suppose depending on where you were going to and from it could) but it would be just about say twice the distance you had to travel in Fallout 3. which is long, but not THAT long. plus you've got your fast travel, and you could even have a taxi system - hitch a ride on a caravan or something. and then in the mid-to-end game you've got some kind of vehicle (car, motorcycle, etc.) that makes that travel fun and faster. plus you could of course have battles in your vehicle, with raiders in other vehicles and stuff - your companion can drive and you shoot, or the other way around.

iso and tb?

So it is still tiny unrealistic distances between settlements, "isolated" settlements less than an hour away, it is cramped. What you described is basically node-based travel, but from a FPP, which would dullen it, instead of a map view, allowing you to gauge distance and time, a long with random and special encounters to keep it lively.

Isometric View and Turn Based combat, you brought up that nodes would somehow interfere with the FPP, which i didnt understand how that would happen.

as i experience the map-node system in the first two games, its a different view from the city-map to world map. if you're saying it switches to Isometric view and the whole system of space gets distorted to like showing your dude walk around on a "world map" (where if we were being "realistic", your dude would suddenly have grown into some kind of giant) ... then you're no longer in FPP, and no longer feel like you are in the world. it breaks immersion.

so yeah in my idea the distances would not be as big as with a node map, and no the distances between things even if they're slightly larger is still not "realistic" but then niether are super mutants ...?
the best method to use depends on what your goals are. if your goal is to make an immersive game, nodes are not a great idea for that.

what the heck, i never said it would switch to Iso, i am saying that when you traveled away from a settlement or some sort of landmark or structure, you would go into the world map, and from there it would be like the originals, where you would travel to your destination whilst time passed. and immersion is entirely subjective, super mutants are unrealistic on a biological level, geopolitical and resource availability were plenty realistic in the originals, a factor of the old worlds that is a rather important aspect of the Fallout series, it is better if it makes sense.

... but in the originals, the space around your character completely changes... you go from being a guy in a room, to a giant standing on a map (if we're judging the size relationship of objects)... i don't see how that works in FP...? also, if hardcoe mode is kept and enabled, how would you eat, drink, sleep during these enormouse travels? i'm saying that the gameplay changes completely in the world--map. i'm having a difficult time conceiving even how a random battle plays out in FP... like you just get dropped into a generic "wateland" map that's basically infinite, and you're forced to fight whatever random creature or raider or whatever is there? you don't see how that breaks immersion and stops me from feeling like i'm inside the game-world?

Okay, now i know you haven't played the originals, it looks like the fast travel system we have know, but the "you are here marker" moves slowly towards the destination, and a small clock-thing tracks the time in travel.

also agreed that greater realism in the explanations of settlements, factions, and so on and so forth make for a better, more realistic game. i really don't think Fallout 3 or NV felt all that cramped, and it certainly didn't feel unrealistic - it is intellectually unrealistic, but it "felt" fairly natural to me, which is why i say just expand the space between points of interest but keep it in the exact same gameplay as the rest of the game. not by huge amounts like on a node map, but just 75-100% larger, with more space separating settlements.