My take on this, and let's be honest, it's hard to say anything about the story line without talking directly about it, is that Beth realizes their writing needs improvement....that's a HUGE admission and gives me hope. Are we going to get a literary masterpiece? I doubt it, but we should see an improvement over other (recent) titles they've done.

The other reason for the way he phrased his comments (I believe) was that He flat out lied about a lot of stuff about skyrim before it came out....when it did come out, there was a firestorm about the claims he made vs what was actually delivered....I think he's trying to avoid that this time around

This, the Oblivion thief guild quest were you was told to steal the mage guild leaders staff on the other hand became a bit surreal if you already was the leader, on the other hand it was much easier

Yes you could use the same reasoning, none knew it was yourself who stole your own staff, however in that case it should be you who recommended this solution. It would just require an slightly different dialogue.

This sounds good to me. I never really cared for, or bothered with, any main story. I sandbox, explore, do small quests to get better gear and supplies. Don't really care about the politics etc.

Except that every time you enter a city, the guards are greeting you with "Hail Sithis!" and such once you've advanced along the DB questline far enough. If the common grunts know you're the leader of the Dark Brotherhood or a serious up-and-comer in it, how well-kept of a secret could that be?

Agree, it also looks like they want to make Fallout more story based than Elder scroll, it fit the legacy and stuff like voiced character and family with kid would be very hard to pull off in it simply because of all the races.

Not to be "That guy" but Morrowind did this pretty well, especially in the first act of the story.

Your character was posing as a regular adventurer, with an overarching goal of convincing the natives that you're the savior from their prophecy. Your boss would occassionally encourage you to go train or get some adventuring experience or go out exploring. There were times of urgency, but they were interspersed by quieter moments that allowed the player to enjoy the rest of the game.

By Azura, by Azura, by Azura!

Branching stories like the civil war in Skyrim? Pick a side once you join poof the other quests for the opposing side are closed off. Oh but wait that doesn't work because that goes against your narrative.

Branching stories like those in Dawnguard? Choose a side join the Vampires or join the Dawnguard. Damnit Facts aren't important to you.

I make no claims that bethesda succeeded. i only said they made more then just Pr speak statements which you can't admit because all you have are lies you've woven into a narrative to rationalise the disonance between you not subjectivly liking bethesda's take on fallout and the over whelming success they have had with their IPs.

They clearly stated they felt they have and understanding of how people play open world game. They clearly stated that they wanted to add strong narrative to the game so they looked at ways to bring this to their games without sacrificing what they had already established as a strength, their open world experience. One of the measures they took to bring a strong narrative to the game is a voiced protagonist. This is a definitive statement of what they did and why they did it, to achive a defined goal. That is more that just using PR speak to say nothing of substance.

And as i said before I don't know if they succeeded and you don't know they failed. No one here will know until december so don't try and imply i am blindy supporting bethesda. But you aren't intrested in truth, or facts or logic you are only intrested in the lies you have woven to shape a narrative that makes you feel good and soothes your soul over the disconnect of your subjective opinion about FO3 not being shared by a majority. I hate wow but i don't need to convince people who like it that it is a bad game. Why? because i am an advlt and i know full well that likes and dislikes are SUBJECTIVE and i don't need to have my self-esteem propped up by having a majority of people agree with me. I am perfectly happy to have millions of people disagree with me about wow. And i am actually glad they do enjoy it because it is zero skin of my back that people enjoy a game i don't like.

Here? Right here? What about, say... over there? No?

Except almost every guard seems to know you're in the dark brotherhood.

"Hey, I know who you are! Hail Sithis!"

Soo... you excuse Fallout 3's rubbish writing with Skyrim? Fascinating.

Of course I don't know what will the final product look like. Maybe the idiotic dialogue they showed was just something for the purpose of the demo to indulge the masses of retards who cheer at a scripted encounter with a pureblood dog. But I do know [censored] when I hear it and Howard very, very clearly doesn't have writing as a high priority considering he was actually surprised someone asked to him and wasn't able to provide a coherent answer.

And stop bloody putting words in my mouth, I've not once said Fallout 3 is as a whole bad game. It's not very advlt.

Not every guard knows you are in the Dark brother hood only a select few which I assume were guards we had bribed. And it doesn't happen to me EVERYTIME I enter a city so did you increase the fequence of npc dialogue with a mod? I also don't recall any imperials saying hail sithis but i could be mistaken. And i do agree that this was poor writing as it was assigned to any grunt vs one specific guard in each city. But now we are getting way down the path from the specific complaint. There is a VERY logical reason why you not exposed in the Dark brotherhood story arc. it was by design which is not an indication of poor storytelling. It is actually a rather tightly written set of quests so that you are not exposed even when you are found out.

So you make general comments about bethesda writing i give examples of their latest work in writing and that doesn't count becaues you really only meant fallout 3? And even if that is the case showing their improvement in Skyrim is 100% germane to the topic at hand which their goal for strong story in fo4.

Bethesda clearly stated they want to add strong story to their open world experience they gave went into detail how they added features with this goal in mind. Again more than just empty PR talk but AGAIN you can't admit this because it doesn't fit your narrative. I'd love for you to explain to me how the Dialogue in the presentation was idiotic. This is going to be great.

i'm putting words in your mouth am I? Okay IS FO3 a good fallout game?

It is a horrible Fallout game.

Black & white morality is already boring in itself but damned be if it was made even more boring to be classified as Fallout morality.

He's acknowledging that Skyrim's somewhat lacklustre story was a sacrifice to deliver an unrestricted open-world experience. He hopes Fallout 4 can deliver both this time.

It's pretty clear why he shows that part because there are so many people that haven't even played a bethesda game before and its all about trying to get every kind of audience interested in the game, people that like fps and people that like building including exploring open world boundaries.

As someone who thinks fonv is the greatest fallout game evah! and enjoys the originals and will even admit that I love fallout 3 as well, I will admit I played fallout 3 for the story.
Now what I mean is that my main purpose behind exploring was to see what stories the locations I found gave me. I loved going into an abandoned house and finding a story about the history of its occupants or a cave with a foreboding story about the Bears etc.
Hell I played so many damn hours in fonv to see how I could change the story from last playthru and see what turned out.

As someone who loves fallout 1, 2,3, and fonv, the trailer has me....eh on its focused. I've even stated in here blasphemy of how I wanted the next fallout 3 to be more like 3 than new Vegas in its focus. The trailer and what's being shown seems like this is focused towards neither fallout 3 OR new Vegas fans but more to a new type of breed of players.
I'll buy it and see how it is for me if I enjoy or not and if their focus includes me or not.

Mate, really? Not only you're putting words in my mouth, but you're wildly changing statements. Or maybe, and this might be the cause root of everything, you don't understand the reason between "good game" and "good Fallout game", hm? Just like you don't understand the ambiguity of the word "strong".

As for the examples, you gave two primitive branching examples, one of which is a DLC (yes, that can be a different experience entirely). Improvement, but nothing stellar.

I don't see how you can't have a good story within an open world game. New Vegas and Witcher 3 both come to mind and both allow you to go out into the world and explore. Gstaff confirmed in another thread that the main quest is optional, I don't see nothing wrong with that. You can have great writing within sidequests, through exploration, etc. Like for example, Vault 11 in Fallout New Vegas is one of the best side quests that I've played in an open world RPG, climbing down the vault hearing the backstory about the vault, the choices that they made. I'm hoping for more of that in Fallout 4, where we find a place, explore it, hear the backstory and find out what happened there. Skyrim was somewhat on that track but not completely. The quest where you get Ancient Knowledge is an example of this in Skyrim. Where you go to Avnchinzal and hear the story about the 4 explorers who go into this Dwarven Ruin to find the lexicon and while it's not the greatest story told it wasn't horrible.

I'm hoping for more story with Voiced Protagonist but don't compromise what your best at, which is World Building and Freedom of Exploration. Both New Vegas and Witcher 3 allowed you to explore and have great writing. Fallout 4 will be no different, although I hope it's better written then the other Beth games but still allows you the freedom that we always had, fingers crossed.

Put it this way: anything's better than Destiny's "story"

If you're willing to go through all those mental gymnastics and contortions to convince yourself that this whole Empire/DB hot mess in Skyrim is some example of brilliant quest design and story telling, then all I can say is try not to injure yourself too badly.

Again, no one here is demanding Shakespearean-level quality of writing or story-telling in a video game, but can't most reasonable people agree that the level of head-canoning, hand-waving and such that a writer or developer demands of the reader/player to justify what they've produced eventually reaches a point where that writer can be considered to have abdicated his/her responsibility to the consumer?

BGS games are about the story of the world, not the story of specific characters, as well as how the PC fits into such a world. They do world writing better than almost anyone, certainly better than anyone in Western dev studios that I can think of. By "world writing" I mean the world context: notes found, notes on terminals, background info about various elements of the world, etc., all of which (in FO) are homages to historical elements of different kinds. This is why people play Bethesda's games. People who want character-focused stories should not expect BGS to make such games because that isn't what they do and they have been quite honest about stating their intent.

For games with strong stories focused on characters and relationships, I'll play Japanese visual novels, adventures, and various RPGs, because they focus on characters and relationship development over world context, although the latter is often important for addressing various social issues that are frequently a subject of their stories.

It would be very bad to sacrifice world context for character focus when BGS wants open world freedom. Todd has said that open world exploration is his preference and why he doesn't like Japanese games (my one big complaint against him as a game designer since it is critical professionally speaking to be able to compare and contrast various elements from different backgrounds/cultures in any field of endeavor, at least any with a global reach).

People need to stop claiming that FONV had "great writing" because it clearly did not. I have given numerous examples of its poor writing and can give many more. Let's hope we never have to see Bethesda Softworks publish another such example of poorly conceived world design with such silly written context that breaks suspension of disbelief anywhere you play in the game.

Fallout fans didn't become fans because of a compelling story. It's all about the universe. The main plot of Fallout 1 was, "Get sent to find water chip. Return with water chip. Get sent back out to eliminate Super Mutants. Return to Vault 13 after destroying the Master. Get kicked out."

Just watched one of the E3 trailers for New Vegas, you're right. I loved NV, but having just watched that after watching a load of Fallout 4 stuff, it looks pretty rubbish in comparison I reckon!!

I think misleading PR speak is misleading.