First of all I would like to congratulate Bethasda on a Fallout game, keep up the good work guys.

I feel that there is lots of things missing in the game:
There MUST be a love story, will not go in detail on this section BUT the game totally missing out on this part
Game storyline is pretty basic in in itself go kill that and that. However, I feel like there is should be missions which are COMPLICATED in structure. What I mean is not go do point A - kill everyone, point B - report back. More, than one step to accomplish it. For example:
Step one, 'love twist in a story' Enclave capture your significant other and they will kill her unless you get rid of ghoul city in order to get an atomic bomb.
Step two, 'repair mission' convince ghouls to team up with humans in order to protect the city from invasion of death claws, in order for ghouls to agree you have to repair their energy station and to get parts for it you have to do bunch of side quests. While searching for parts to repair energy station you encounter deactivated ROBO - plant.
Step three, 'science mission' reprogram and activate the robots to invade the city which is being protected now by humans and ghouls!
Step four, 'speech mission' now when ghouls defenses are weak its time to invade the city of course with a help of Brotherhood, so you complete a lot of side quests for Brotherhood in order to become one of them, tell brother hood leader that ghouls about to drop atomic bomb. Than you convince a leader to attack the ghoul city. Now that when you invade the city and all ghouls are dead. Enclave show up, big fight happens between Brotherhood and Enclave while you detonate the bomb and get out of there in less than five minutes, explosion is killing EVERYONE!
Step five, now you get to choose side report back to enclave saying Brotherhood kill em all with atomic explosion or vise verse report back to Brotherhood saying the same thing.

As one can tell this script which I come up in 5min is already more complicated than any of the missions in Fallout 3, which lets face were pretty basic, there is no element of surprise so the excitement of the game story wise is really low.

You must work on storyline in order to make a game EPIC. Develop it more, maybe next time even make it Mature content since the players who played original fallout 1 & 2 grow up now and previous games had way more explicit content which generated twice us much excitement storywise.

Love twists dont work in games... Games are not yet at the stage where they can make you care enough about an NPC that much - hence the number of people showing ambivalence to the father character going missing.

Other than that, your stucture has a huge fault - You've made a flat stucture that requires a generalist - Thats not fallout or Western RPG'y, that would only really work in McGyver - The game. Each mission needs at least 3 possible ways of doing it (eg - Speech, Combat, Stealth)

I think you need a heck of a lot more than 5 mins to do this, and I dont think you understand the amount of work thats needed to truly flesh out the idea.

There's a marriage in the game....

And really, love's never been that important in the Fallout games. Except for maybe a love to survive.

I think games have reached that level, agent_c. Take Metal Gear Solid 4. Over 10 years of gaming, I had grown very fond of Snake and I cried at the end of this game. Granted, Kojima is a genius but I think there must be someone else out there who can tug on the heart strings like Kojima did...

MGS is a possible exception, but only because its more film than game these days.

I think I'd have to agree with god-of-madness here. Right now I'm replaying Mass Effect and have played games like KOTOR in the past. I've again noticed that I find it very hard to choose the insulting ways of conversation to certain NPC's, because I somehow enjoy their company and their ways of talking with me. Mass Effect has a critical choice in-game where you . Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that it is very much possible to feel a kind of affection for a certain NPC, just because of the way they carry themselves or whatever their personality is. It's even possible that you like an NPC because he or she reminds you of someone you know in real life.

Really? I've been caring about NPCs for the past 10 of my gaming years. That to me differentiates a good RPG from a bad one, when the NPCs actions and dialogue are able to make them seem human enough for me to care about them instead of just sprites to be helped or killed. The most recent game that did this for me was Mass Effect. When I reached the point where I had to make "the choice," I left my computer hanging at the dialogue option for almost an hour because I had grown so attached to the characters. Fallout 3 had bad dialogue coupled with bad voice acting, which is why I never thought of any of the characters as anything more than AI, including the Dad. Maybe I'm just overly sensitive. But books and movies have the ability to make people relate to and sympathize with their characters, and I don't think games are any different. A love twist can work in a game, if handled correctly.

Anyway, I agree with the OP that the quests in FO3 lack a lot of depth and there's less of an emphasis on skills when completing missions. I would've liked to see missions affect the game world is dramatic ways. Some may say that the story is decent enough for an RPG. But I agree with the OP that it has to be EPIC. The game world is so vast and inhabited by so many characters, that the stories just seem to pale in comparison. It seems that you only affect a small number of people at any given time - and your reward rarely extends beyond XP, caps, and a 'thank you,' instead of the feeling that you're actually making a difference in the world.

love interests are a bad idea in games in my opinion but if other people would enjoy why not make it an optional route you can take but only if you choose to

I thought there'll be love between my character and Amata until she cast me out of Vault 101. Biatch!

FF7 was an amazing game that played on your fondness for NPC's


A large number of Party Npcs, and every single one of them has their own story, and structure to set up their personality

And every character impacted Cloud, just as Cloud impacted every party member.. they were right there with him, the entire time he questioned himself as a person, thinking he was a clone

Pretty amazing story


But, its just that.. the whole Game was a story driven game


Fallout, is an open ended game.. there are tools there to make your own story, and allow your own experiences to affect it

What this thread is asking for, is that the game forces you to go in certain directions.. forces you to do this, or that

Story driven plots like those belong in games such as KOTR, which is a game i love, but its a Linear driven game



While i agree i wish there was more sub plots, and quest, and a longer main quest

But to have the quest dictate my actions, or interfere with what i have planned.. Then it wouldn't be an Open ended RPG, this is the reason why everyone is upset with the ending of FO3, they can't continue their own experiences.. and quest throughout the game


I blame the lack of Depth is due to the quest arrow


Morrowind, was made up of hundreds upon hundreds of "Go Fetch" quest that everyone complains about, but.. what Morrowind had, was exploration.. a NPC would have given you a set of directions, and land marks to look out for to get to the location needed.. so you would set out, keeping a keen eye on the enviorment.. some times you'll litterally get lost, and have to back track, and back track farther to right yourself on the right trail

Also, since the game was text driven.. there was a lot of room for side stories, and the Main quest tied your character to being a God, and Savior of Vardenfel.. but still


There was no quest arrow


Asking for story driven quest, such as there were in KOTR and almost every other game

Would cause for a more controlled game enviorment.. to script a story such as that, in an open ended game would just be impossible

Great post. By the time I finished reading it I realized you covered nearly everything I was going to say myself. I'd only add to the notion of "caring" that I found it particularly hard to care about any single character in Fallout 3. Even the ones my "good" character was supposed to care about because the sub-par writing and dialog made them seem contrived and/or irritating.

This was an excellent post.

My ideal game would be one which has an unfolding storyline...call it a main quest, that the character bumps into, as he moves about the world. The character doesn't know what's going on and unravels it as the game progresses. The story doesn't control the character per se. In this way, we can have a sandbox game and still have some purpose and direction.

I'm thinking of Ultima 6 here. As the Avatar moves about, he becomes aware of the Guardian, and the story unfolds, piece by piece, until the character, and the player realize what's going on, almost like a murder mystery...and the game starts with a murder, even. Beth games do this in a shallow sort of way, and I wish they would improve on that generally in all their games.

I agree that Fallout 3 was way too linear and plot driven. I could finish the game in hours if I did the main quest.

But, the one thing in Fallout 3 that in the words of Peter Griffin, grinds my gears, is the fact that there is no romance.

SERIOUSLY.

You can enslave and decapitate, yet you can't get laid? The lines between me and Amata heavily implied there would be an option for romance. Yet, I was dissapointed to find out that Bethesda skipped that entirely.

To be honest, with the way organizations are blaming Video Games for all evil in children today



A game, where you can take a large number of drugs, drink alcohol, Get addicted.. Murder (Mutilate), Steal, enslave little kids...AND get "Laid"


Would probably have been rejected by every country, except Europe, and even then.. i'm unsure


Hell, Fallout 3 was Rejected from Australia, because Med-X was actually refered to as what its based off of, Morphine


Besides, Even if you could get Laid, it would just look like it is with Nova.. and i'm sure the Dialog would barely be suggestive


No Gta 4 Audio is going to be happening when the screen goes dark as you go to sleep beside Amata

You're making much more of a big deal out of it than need be which is exactly what the media love to do in these situations. Remember the lady from Weasel Fox news who had to retract her false statements about Mass Effect after actually viewing the game in question? Hell, we don't even need to see butts. Just give a nice little fade to black screen with some innuendo.

I'm going to have to agree that relationships and/or romance in games is a great addition to the game owner's perception of the reality of the environment. Even in KOTOR, a completely contrived universe where your character is a freakin' Jedi for crissakes, you start to develop attachments to certain characters and because of that attachment most people normally choose their party based on it, and because of your choices in party choosing you end up with more and more personal dialog with your companions. I had to larf when I first "seduced" Bastilla into a kiss. I thought it was a well-played little scenario there and the fade to black was all they needed to get the point of the moment across.