This is better this way in my mind. If the Courier was known by someone, then there would be a back story provided by the game. Which may not be my backstory. My character has his/her own motivations that may or may not fit in with the New Vegas scene depending on my setup. If the game starts providing me a history of myself, then whatever I come up with for my character has to take that into consideration. Then I have to justify any changes to that history as reflected in the character build.

While a number of RPGs give you a history, and it may be brief, it is still a hook to hang a story on. That hook may not be the one that my story is best attached to. For those RPGs that give me a back story, I will work with it. For those RPGs that let me create my backstory, I will revel in it.

I'm totally fine with it - make the overarching conflicts more "general" to allow greater roleplaying freedom.

In Fallout 1, your motivations are decided for you - leave the Vault, procure Water Chip, defeat the Master.

In Fallout 2, the same could be said, but the player character's origins were dubious, at best. How could a Tribal have an innate understanding of computers and energy weapons?

In Fallout 3, you leave the Vault, search for your daddy, and defeat the Enclave. The main quest presented same-y options, but you could at least have different motivations for doing so, i.e. reunite with your father/revenge on your father, etc.

New Vegas, in my opinion, is the first to do things right by presenting the player character as an anonymous third party to events. They have no stake in things but revenge and discovering the truth - your actions are being dictated by no one other than yourself (or a faction, if you choose to go along with them). I hope the Fallout series continues down this path - let us write the histories of our own characters. I don't need them to be dictated.

This.

Doesn't mean the courier didn't have one...A house, a friend....a life...

From what I've read Obsidian wanted to make NV a prequel so they could make the setting closer to the time of the war, but Bethesda told them they wanted every game to move the time line forward and they weren't able/allowed to do it.


Maybe that's what you did. One of my characters sided with The Master and didn't give a crap about his "home." The theme, in my opinion, has not been "save your friends/home" so much as "start off with a goal that leads you to a situation where you decide what to do." This is why FO3's plot made me feel a little railroaded, because the only option I had to really deviate was at the end where I could choose whether or not to use a certain canister, and that didn't really do much either way...it felt like it was tacked on just to give you a choice to be "evil."

I also don't necessarily buy the idea that "revenge" is the motive in NV. You're going to find out why you were shot, not necessarily for revenge. To me it seems perfectly plausible that you'd want to find out just so you know who your enemies are...even if it's just so you know who to avoid/hide from in the future.

I am all for greater role playing opportunities in fallout and I enjoyed New Vegas a lot as well as 3 but not as much. I would like to at least have some idea of where I came from and things of the sort. But I guess that i can see why they didnt give you a background at all this time around. Like I do get bored when I go to start a new character again in Fallout 3 and have to sit through the vault back story (yes i do play on the pc like a real fan and know there is mods to skip it). And like I said I dont know how I feel about the whole thing one way or the other. I just find it interesting how they have gone away from helping your people to "helping" the whole wasteland and thought that we should all talk about it. I just hope you all don't think i am dissing the games at all, as Fallout is my favorite series. So I guess we can talk about would you rather help your tribe, village vault or w/e else you might be from (even if it is the mundane task of go out and fetch this item for us) and then get caught up in some huge event or would you rather start out with some mundane task and no home to go back then get caught up in a huge event? (I guess they do sound very similar but one has a back story and the other doesn't kind of)

For me fallout is about struggle for survival, when that is removed from fallout games, its no longer fallout for me.... If the world is progressing and happy, there is food , water and power for everyone then where is the fallout in it, the fallout essence.... I don't want to go 200 or 300 years into the future

You forgot a bit. Given the terms and conditions in your contract is should read:
"Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night, nor gunshot to the head, stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. Otherwise we'll send out assasins after them and declare them criminals".

All useless if he/she doesn't know who, or where, they are.......and if the shooting does not take place in the area he/she lives in.

The current formula works and has changed for the better in many ways, but storyline and formula can change with whatever can be dreamt up to give a good game. Sequels can be an evolvement or devolvement of previous happenings. What happens in the next sequel of Fallout will not necessarily be a progression of previous events, but a regression.

Such as.

There is a bottle-cap bank financial meltdown which brings about social and economic chaos. There are two evil religious groups whose minds have been destroyed by drinking always Coca Cola that had been contaminated by radiation from the past, and both have just one interest, and that is in killing the rest of the world. They take advantage of the chaos that happened, one of the groups with their nuclear bombs, takes the world back to the apocalyptic scenario of before, the other group roams the world intent just in death to all.

Your task is bring sanity back to those who always drink Coca Cola contaminated by irradiation from the past, by injecting them with an antidote, which was found to be beer, or failing that, killing them. It’s your choice. Rid the world of the evil Coca Cola and sort out the bottle-cap bank meltdown and world chaos.

You help your father restart and protect his pet project, escort his team to safety, and retake it from the guy responsible for his death to take revenge on him?
Fallout 3 MQ simply had no path other than good/neutral and helping out dad (other than the mFEV, at literally the last second).

As many have said in this thread and all over the place... The next fallout should be somewhere in between fallout 1 and 2, right around the time shady sands is turning into the NCR.

The first fallout was very grim and post apocalyptic. The second one showed the result of the choices made in one. Their is a 80 year difference in those two games if I'm not mistaken.





Fallout 3 takes the title and throws it 100 years later on the east coast... Then FNV brings it back to the westcoast with the same time as FO3.

Most people forget that the FO universe was inspired by wasteland 1987.. 200 years into post apocalyptic is way too far to be anything like mad max.





Lets hope the next fallout is somewhere in the 100-130 years after the bombs dropped. The whole point of post apocalyptic is to take into consideration ammo reserves food etc. In fallout new vegas you practically are equipped with hundreds of rounds of ammunition within the first few minutes.

I remember using a spear with my character in fallout 2 for the first few hours even though I had small guns tagged and almost no melee skill. When I found my first 24 rounds of 10mm, I still used a spear in fear of needing the bullets later...