Bioware use cliches


Bethesda and Obsidian dont

I'm all for Fallout having its own engine and "mold," but I wouldn't ever have the main way of exploring the map node system again, or strictly turn-based combat. Bethesda's worlds are much more interesting to me, and without the little nooks and crannies to explore, I wouldn't have nearly as much fun with the games. I won't even go into turn-based combat.

Who says you can't explore with a map node system? Especially if they went with each node being a map the size of some of the DLC maps?

That makes a lot of sense. My only argument is that the world ceases to be a cohesive wasteland and rather a series of levels.

Widely separated settlements make far more sense and provide a more cohesive setting overall than the cramped gameworlds we're presented with now.

Also most of the wasteland should be exactly what it is called: wasteland. It wasn't called that because you were meant to go exploring in it and find cool things. It's a dangerous barren place that should exist principally as an obstacle to be surmounted. It doesn't all need to be handcrafted with content.

TBH, the internal cities and metro levels are already like this.

but i think there would only need to be a few nodes. for reagional areas.

like the LA/Orange county area.. the san fernando valley area, and so on..
no need to break it up too much.

Agreed but it's a videogame... It would make more sense to have things have more space in between but map nodes would be unessecary...

I've been thinking about that alot Sebor. I hear "it's just a videogame" a lot, but is that all? Do videogames and videogame designers deserve more than "it's just a videogame"? I've been thinking. Videogames are works of art, in the same respect that a novel, a movie, and a painting is.

Sure, to the connoisseur "it's just a videogame", but to us Fallout is a lot more. It's a story of humanity, and how humanity recovers out of complete devastation.

More later, my laptop battery is running low.

Again with the "It just" argument?

Then why argue about Twilight? its only a movie

Why argue about Justin Bieber? Its just a singer

Why argue about "When They Cry" series? its just a novel

For my own two cents on the matter of "map nodes" vs "contiguous world:"

Regardless of which method is implemented, you're probably still going to be talking about roughly the same amount of actual, playable, in-game real estate. I mean, you only ever have so much time and resources to design levels and make maps - it's really more of a matter of how it all gets cut up. You're dealing with the same amount of content either way - in general.

With the one exception I can think of possibly being procedurally-generated environments. This used to come up every once in a while in previous discussions, actually. The idea being that, with modern technology being what it is - those times in Fallout 1 and 2 where you were travelling on the World Map and dropped into an instanced environment for a random encounter, could now be a lot more detailed (and more importantly - specifically tailored to the area you were dropped into.) ie, if you were travelling through a bombed-out part of a city at the time, then the environment and what you find in it would reflect that. If going through the Wastes, then you'd drop into a more desert environment. With procedural technology being what it is these days, you'd have a lot more variety at your disposal than than the same instanced map time and again, for your random encounters.

And, with noded travel, you'd have a lot more lee-way in regards to the sort of random encounters that would appear - you wouldn't be limited to what you could realistically incorporate into an already-defined topography.

Personally, I think it simply comes down to the area and sense of scale that Bethesda wants to create, with the next Fallout game. I think for something like New Vegas' size - then their current system probably works just fine. You're only dealing with a specific, localized area, centering around what's left of Vegas. If they want a story that's more broad in scope and scale (say, an entire state,) then I'd rather had noded travelling, personally. (Not to mention that Old Fallout-style travel would help a lot with the constant Fast Travel arguments...)

As an aside - I still prefer turn-based gaming, with pretty much anything. But at the same time, I think it depends a lot on the game you're trying to make. With the new Fallout games (and to an extent, the first two, as well - ) the game is more about you being in control of one person. There's a reason that you only get to have one or two companions with you in the new series. And I have to say that, bias aside, I think that real-time combat is probably a bit more appropriate for a game that's putting you in control of just the one character. Old Fallout wasn't the most amazing example of turn-based mechanics ever, but I did enjoy it. That said - it could at times feel a bit... wonky, considering how much time you spent waiting for the computer to plan and act it's turns out. Versus how much time you spent actually working on your own turn. It just seemed a little off. I found it worked a lot better for Fallout: Tactics than anything.

Anyway - for us "Old Fallout Fans," our dissatisfaction with Bethesda's take on it isn't necessarily stemming from only a lack of turn-based combat and no World Map travelling.

( I agree with Sebor here, and it was one of the reasons i enjoyed FO3 so much, was the wide expansive wasteland to trek and explore, that was one of the things that was kind of unnecessary was a big map, and a little pixel running around on that map getting to a node where the town was. Granted it was nice in the first two games, but it is outdated now, and resources are better spent on quality exploration of the area.)

Outdated? Why? And what is this quality exploration that can't be done with nodes?

I'm not a big fan of node systems myself. Obviously they're a necessary compromise if the story you're trying to tell has great geographical sweep, but I am much, much, much more keen on persistent open-worlds. When playing, say, Mass Effect 2, whilst enjoying it I never really felt like I was exploring the galaxy, but rather exploring the galaxy's airport departure lounges. Nothing in it ever felt like an actual city or whatever, but rather just a 'level' or a 'map'. I like my level design a bit more discreet and organic. Let me explore a province or state, not just pick a stage from a list of destinations.

My thoughts exactly. While it may seem tedious, I want every feasible inch of space possible to explore and the ability to fast travel when I want/need to get somewhere. Shrinking the game world is understandable, as someone mentioned awhile back, so that you can walk somewhere in twenty minutes instead of three hours. And given my states, for instance, which is roughly 420 miles across, I have no reservation with taking three or four hours to go from one side of the map to the other. And especially if the Commonwealth were used, Massachusetts would be cake to develop as it's a relatively small state. That leaves room for random bits of other areas in the vicinity. I think some spoofing on Jersey Shore could be hilarious.

It doesn't take hours to go across California in F1 and F2. Hell, it takes seconds in real time. Especially if you have the car.

Defenitions of "wasteland" from a few sites:
Barren: an uninhabited wilderness that is worthless for cultivation.
Land that is desolate, barren, or ravaged.
Land that is uncultivated, barren, or without vegetation.

It's strange. I run into wildlife, and wastelanders, and raiders every hundred meter. Btw, when watching everything that has post-apocalyptic written over it, the landscape looks like http://images.wikia.com/fallout/images/0/02/Death.jpg or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmf-HCCZYOg or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6grBH-bMg_s or even something like http://www.learnnc.org/lp/media/uploads/2009/08/3a50202u.jpg.
Now wouldn't that be boring to explore like in Fallout 3 an NV, and if that very wasteland was stretching for miles just to be able to fit a whole state or more, and not just a very scaled-down city, and the surrounding area? Just skip that boring bit by travelling by a map node system to more interesting parts, which could be a settlement, and a pretty big circle area around it.

Yup. Map nodes with the outskirts of settlements and such featuring the hand crafted wasteland Bethesda players love with the space in between filled with procedurally generated content could easily satisfy both sides.

I can't see it happening though. Realistically we have to accept that current Bethesda is highly unlikely to diverge from their open world formula and frankly why would they?

That wouldn't satisfy me in the least.

Are you suggesting that be an option or the main game world build? I feel like eschewing the open world as an option would be cool, even making rare items acquirable under different circumstances or replacing them with unique items for that style of play, but having a node-only game would be career suicide for Bethesda.

Why not? You could do all your exploring in the hand-crafted wasteland skirting the settlements and map nodes. Depending on how complex the procedurally generated content could be you could even explore the spaces in between and find much to do.

You dont seem to get that a node-based world is over a hundred of times bigger than the current sandbox bethesda world, and the individual nodes themselves are larger than most "large" places in the current system, all in all it makes for a bigger world with more interesting things, and i is much more dynamic, with an actual system for random encounters.

Given that the last two games were completely sandbox, I think it would be unreasonable to take that away as long as Bethesda is controlling the series. If another developer came in with a new approach, ok, submit to the overloards. But as I've said before, given dynamic gameplay options to appease both sides, then map nodes would be cool. I just want to be able to play all games from F3 on with sandbox, because that is the kind of game I enjoy most. An absence of that would be a huge bummer. But perhaps I'm still missing the point on the whole procedurally generated content. Doesn't that imply randomly generated levels like the F1 and F2 battle screens?

Bigger? Yes. But strictly speaking not as open to exploration as the sandbox world. I want random encounters back, for sure. But I like "dead space," or places that aren't settlements or otherwise somehow tied to civilization in the game. I like wide open spaces in the games.

How can the map-node system (1997) out date Bethesda's sandbox environment when it came out a year after Daggerfall (1996)? Sure walking everywhere wasn't feasible but you could still do it.

You can have ruinous places with the map-node system. You can have a ton of different places with the map node system.

But what difference does it make if the game uses map nodes if you can still do everything you wanted to in an open world with the map nodes? If you really, really wanted to you could thanks to procedural content even walk from one settlement to the next. It would be a long trip but you could do it.

Yes procedurally generated content is random terrain generated on the fly. Arcanum used a map node system but you could walk from one node to the next on the world map over procedurally generated terrain. It was long and boring but you could do it. Given the way technology has advanced since then I think it'd be pretty easy to generate enemies and maybe even basic dungeons as well as random terrain.