After reading some of the excellent and maybe not so excellent*I'm not a developer, I don't decide what I like and what I dont..DAMN* I have thought of a few of my own...since these are only suggestions feel free to tell me why they are or are not a steaming pile...anyway...future fallout games? I believe at this point the series is screaming for a prequel playthrough to current game settings.....I believe such a game could only have a chance if it took an idea from the Call of Duty series...by changing characters during the game...call of duty as many of us know just does a blanket character change from one to another, with one of the characters dying in CoD 4. my idea is to start a potential Fallout 4 with a character BEFORE the nuclear fires, and maybe at the tail end of, or in the middle of the Operation Anchorage campaign...the US Battle to remove the Chinese from Alaska...from there, develop the storyline so that you can take a character in the future depending on whether that particular soldier? had a family that made it into a vault, or whether that soldier himself made it into a vault and the next character you play is a descendent? I would also change the setting..midwest? hmmm...Colorado does have possibilities...but I would also like to see overseas and or NYC as well...so...what do people think? does this sound worth it or is this a load of horsehooey?

Sounds reasonable to me, but it IMO it would take off the feeling of being the character. First you play as that, then as that.. It would take the feeling that you are one with the character you play. You don't get time to assimilate with the char.

good point...although after having played D&D for awhile I can safely say that falling in love with characters so to speak..can dull your edge when it comes to gaming...it also tends to take away from one's creativity in that you get to the point where you don't WANT to create new characters, because you're found yourself so fully satisfied with the one you're all agoggle over..if you take my meaning...still...good point. as I said...suggestions...

Agogle over?

Roleplayers would hate a game like that.

Good God, no. As if the series needs to be f**ked with even more.

I dont think that would be "Fallout" - I could accept it if it was just the Tutorial where you played another character (like Van Buren planned), but not any more than that.

I disagree. I'm one of those RPG nutjobs who spend more time designing characters than actually playing the game. Before I start an RPG game (in this case Fallout) I carefully plan my SPECIAL, what perks and skills I'll pick up at various levels, and I even create a backstory. After spending so much time developing my character, I want to see them through to the end. I want to see how they overcome all the obstacles in the game using what skills they have.

I love my characters, yes, but it doesn't dull my creativity in the slightest. After their story is over, I create an entirely different character (almost a polar opposite of the last one), and then I see how they fare going through the same challenges as their predecessor.

That was the beauty of the Fallout series. SPECIAL was so flexible that different stats made for a different experience every time. My hot chick could talk her way out of most situations, while my gun-toting Bruiser would overcome obstacles with sheer manliness.

As for your suggestion, I'd hate to create a character, and then halfway through the game, I'd have to ditch them in favor of a new one. That doesn't sound appealing to me. Your idea would work if the next Fallout (like CoD) was a full-fledged FPS. No SPECIAL, so that I wouldn't have any vested interest in the characters and can switch on a whim. But I wouldn't buy it. :shrug:

There's nothing good storytelling can't fix. You could create a character in "present-day" Fallout and have a side quest that reveals his lineage. Maybe a high strength character discovers that his great great grandfather was a soldier during the Great War? The future affecting the past. Or the next Fallout could be set in the months leading to the Great War. One or the other. I wouldn't want to have to switch halfway.

I don't think it's a very bad idea on it's own, but I don't how good a fit it would be for a Fallout 4, personally. I think you'd have a lot of trouble maintaining an "open-world" concept within that sort of story framework. It's worked pretty well for a game like CoD, because you were dealing with a linear storyline. It would just be a whole lot of work to allow a wide range of meaningful player choice and tying that all into that sort of storytelling, I think.

One thing to remember is that Fallout is a franchise, which means that there's more than enough room for spin-offs and side projects within the source material. (This is what Fallout: Tactics did with going for a more strategic, squad-based game than an actual RPG... and some would argue that really Fallout 3 is more of a spin-off than a direct sequel to the previous games due to the major differences in gameplay and mechanics.)

So I'd certainly buy a Fallout game that worked with an idea like this. I think it could actually be quite compelling. It might work best as a separate line apart from the main Fallout games, however. Basically all it would mean is that instead of calling it Fallout 4, you call it Fallout: Origins (for lack of a better name.) You'd have a lot more room to come up with a game that works best within that type of storyline, of the telling the stories of many different characters, I think. Something like that works best if you don't create your own individual characters, but is telling the story of a specific group of pre-determined PCs, I think.

But there's nothing in that concept that makes it not "Fallout" enough, just not in line with the rest of the series. I think it might work very well as an Adventure Game, with lots of puzzle-solving, for example, or a straight FPS, even. But it would be a lot of work trying to create a compelling story when you don't know what sort of character the player is going to have at any given time. So I don't think it would be a great fit as this sort of an RPG. (Frankly, as an RPG I think there's some real room for improvement even with Fallout 3, but that's another topic entirely.)

mmm....good points....yeah it could be said that Fallout 3 is a spinoff rather than a main vein game...especially with the fact that Bethesda used the previously Action Adventure FPS viewpoint for the game...possibly the next game could cover the years before the war and have the character end up the game with going into a vault right before the big blast? *shrug* I just thought that the early years should be covered and was looking for a way to connect that with the original games...continuity of storyline.....

That's not a bad idea, either. I mean, we are 200 years after the War, now. If we get any farther along, I'd expect to start seeing some actual rebuilding going on. (Which could be interesting, you'd be going into a fairly new genre - post-post-nuclear I guess you could call it. And yes, I realize that there are stories/ games that deal with a society that is built on ashes of the previous one.) So it might be a better idea to go back in time a bit as opposed to moving the timeline drastically forward.

It might not be a bad idea for Fallout 4 to do a prequel of sorts. I mean, there's a lot of time you can cover, and whole areas of the country ripe for exploration.

First of all, maybe a higher level cap?

What I think would be interesting, would be to see a bit of rebuilding, with actual powerful factions. Not so much all these groups that you have to randomly fight in the wasteland, but actual, large factions.

A major power struggle devolopment maybe, Enclave, the ORIGINAL BoS, focusing on recovering Tech, an organised Super Mutant faction, Unified Mercs, now fighting for themselves, working to carve out a piece of america for themselves. Maybe, various factions peak at one point in the nation, and war.

Or, maybe
Make it a bit more .. free.
Perhaps the option to become, like one of the characters you see throughout Fallout 3.

Become part of a merc co.
A raider,
MAYBE a slaver, like Euology Jones.

Maybe you could even become mayor of a town, lead a caravan across the wastes, start a settlement.

In other words, make ANYTHING possible.

*hate prequels - it destroys your ability to imagine all the possible things that could have happened before and ruins any sense of continuity a player has that has been with the game from its infancy.
*lvl cap should be what it was in the first two fallouts - so you can get all the perks you want if you want.
*no death upon completing story line - fallout did the death thing and it made the game feel short. fallout 2 fixed it so that you could go exploring without obstruction.
*switching chars mid stream? - not a good fallout idea. it disconnects you with the character your role playing in the game.
*six, drugs, alcohol - these are things we deal with on a daily basis, it hits home and makes the story more believable. the bishop family in new reno is a perfect example of what i mean, their whole family is screwed up by their life choices. you can even mess around with the daughter and the mother if you feel inclined. really wish fallout would hit more tward this direction even if it means a nc-17 (or what ever the hell that code is that moms against real life invented.)
*3rd person - fallout three gives me that nauseous im still playing oblivion feeling. sometimes it needed to stay the same as the first two. diablo 3 is the ultimate example of this. same layout, same hud, make it prettier but it will still run on my mothers computer. cutting edge graphics are nice if you want to fiddle with them but they aren't what fans are looking for, fans want a good story full of choices with characters you that grow with you and a lot of modern game developers out there have forgotten about that. (after all, we still remember what happened in the 90s to make fallout one of those obscure backshelf cult classics, a victim of what i like to dub the game merchandising wars.)(game merchandising wars - short version they spewed out so many clone games with movie titles that no one wanted to risk buying games and they had to start giving out demos of the games before people would trust a title enough to go out and buy it.)
*the party - i guess i can see why the party size was limited so much. but i miss having my posse running around with me leveling when i level and, since i like to play the good guy in the first two fallouts, helping them with their own personal demons as the story progressed.
*skynet - never got to talk to even one of the skynet super computers responsible for the wastelands creation.
*wild west - the first two fallouts reminded me a lot of those old wild west movies. kind of that wild frontier with no rules outside of town, ive seen a high noon in the middle of town and even gotten caught playing doctor with a gay lover and forced to attend my very own shotgun wedding.
*monty python - .., i think that about covers it.
*vehicles - what happened? i was spoiled with fallout 2. i stuffed all kinds of junk in my trunk.
*fast travel - boo, half the fun was wondering if i was gonna have a random event happen to me in my travels. give me the option to find my own way there or let me dot dot dot across the map with a chance of random encounters. oh, and since im here, random events happen randomly, not, you walk up to a point of interest and a random event is triggered. kind of kills the sense of adventure.

yeah I'm not fond of prequels either, however this is what you get when you get a game that starts a story in the middle of the damned timeline...*sigh* when are developers and game companies in general going to learn to start things AT THE BEGINNING???? However at this point I do think the series pretty much demands that the back story(ies) be told....heh..maybe the back stories should even be done in a two game release with the second game being the pickup where Fallout 3 leaves off and the first game being the prequel so to speak...I think that would be about the only fair way to clear the air about things and leave players where the storyline has led so far...

yeah I know....here's let's spew out [censored]LOADS of the same damn thing...and here's title whatever that HAS content and whatnot trying to survive amidst a sea of clones...and we all thought Star Wars had the monopoly on attack of the clones.....

are you thinking that fallout 3 is the only game out with this name? fallout and fallout 2 were baulders gate style games released by black iles studios and interplay. they released past storyline by giving it out in small doses and clues here and there that you have to search for the same way the elder scrolls does with the books. prequels just make you not have to work for it at all ... kind of like kids now days with their cell phones, its a new form of instant gratification without any sense of accomplishment. =/ guess that explains the low self esteem issues we face today. anywho, backing away from my dr. phil moment, i think interplay still sells copies of fallout series which includes fallout tactics (dunno about it, never played it, but i saw it played once =P ) they call it the trilogy pack. not sure you can call it a trilogy since fallout tactics was almost a separate game entirely, but whatever makes them happy.

Level cap in Fallout 1 was 21, only Fallout 2 had no level cap (well, it was 99 but that's high enough as makes no difference.

Not sure what you mean here. You didn't die in either Fallout 1 or Fallout 2. Fallout 2 gives you an option to continue playing, if that's what you mean.

fallout 2 and fallout 2

No, I knew that there were at least 2 games that came before Fallout 3...and I remember seeing them get buried in Diablo and StarCraft's press. What I DIDN'T realize was that the first two fallout games had managed to gather the now obviously loyal fanbase that they have. wasn't trying to ruffle anybody's feathers...

none taken, i guess i just didnt understand what you said

I don't see a need for a prequel. There is so much out there already as far as Fallout history (because other games have already existed for over 10 years) that it would be a bad idea to rehash it.

There's no reason Fallout 4 couldn't take place in relatively the same timeline as Fallout 3, only in a whole new location. Chicago? Miami? Atlanta? Or how about NY?

NY wouldn't be bad...but it would have to be rather careful at the same time...largely due to the sheer # of movies, stories etc that involve NYC and large amounts of destruction...and then, you ALSO have to keep in mind those that are still hurting from the 9/11 mess...and yes I realize that just MENTIONING 9/11 is asking to open a rather explosive can of worms, it's something that doing nuclear aftermath in NYC, would force you to take into consideration. I think if the next fallout game is going to be in another location, it should be somewhere else...San Fran or LA possibly? big enough city, and not NYC, so as to avoid the somewhat cliche NYC disaster label. Or maybe detroit? Chicago could have possibilities...maybe in the wastes the old style mobs have popped up again and the city *or what's left of it* is run by Mafia style characters? And I do have a question..while the 40's, 50's, etc style of things in Fallout is one of it's hallmarks, does anybody else find it cloyingly out of place given what YEAR the blast is said to have occurred? yet another reason I said the next fallout game should get some consideration as a prequel...I'd LOVE to see the What If story behind some of the details of the game atmosphere....

Well yes, the War occured in 2077, but the short answer is that 2077 ended up looking pretty much how they'd imagined it would in all those '50's sci-fi pulp novels and movies. You could pick the thing to death and come up with all sorts of reasons (the cyclical nature of society and fashion, the similarity of the political and social influences of 2077 with that of the Red Scare of the '50's...) but it is a little easy to over-think it, as well.

Basically, the timeline split from ours somewhere around 1950 with technology advancing along different lines. 2077 saw a lot of really cool technology coming out (and retro-50's fashion being en vogue) and then was subsequently blown up.

Everything you've mentioned has appeared in the first two games.

Ahh ok. Well, As I don't currently have the first few games in the series, I was unaware of that.

Well, Detroit didn't appear in any game, and Chicago (or rather its surroundings) was in Fallout Tactics, not in FO1/2. Chicago is actually being run by the Midwestern Brotherhood of Steel:

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Midwestern_Brotherhood_of_Steel

But there is one city run by the mafia in Fallout 2:

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/New_Reno


Fallout is set in an alternate timeline that diverged from ours in the 1950s. In the 21st century, it looked like the future as imagined in the 1950s pulp science fiction. E.g. instead of transistors you have huge vacuum tube-based computers with artificial intelligence and monochromatic terminals, robotic servants, a pseudo-utopian society based on 1950s values, black and white TV, music from the 1950s considered all-time classics, and most modern musical genres never appearing, etc,. Weapon development was also different from ours and thus plasma and laser weaponry was introduced, 10mm became the most common ammo type, etc. The modern high-tech weapons were never created - instead, weapons based on how people in the 1950s thought 21st century weaponry would look like are used.

For more information, see:

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_world
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Divergence
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline