i can see your point, but bethesda games are fun to play for years and they don't have endings, its not the game having an end that makes it good or not good, its the entire game experience, its not ending slides or an abrupt ending....listen to todd howard sometime on his many interviews on how bethesda approaches their games and their philosophy on game making, its about the entire experience he says, from before you even buy the game, to all the way thru it..so its a philosophy some game developers have to "end" their games, but lots of really good games don't have the game end after main quest, and lots of lousy games have game endings, but i think it just depends on how good the game is overall, its not the ending that makes it good but its fine to have it end if its aporopriate for the story but to just make all games have those endings as a philosophy i don't think makes any sense, simply because the best games i have ever played so far over the years are games that don't put a lot of restrictions on you.

You make it sound like there are loads of games that don't end and they are all great, while there are some games that end and they svck. Really, it's like 98% of all games there is actually have an end that means "the end", and I wouldn't say that 98% of all the games are bad games. Really, many games would be completly pointless or make no sense if it continued after the climix. As I said earlier, the STALKER games. Either it ends with you dying, and you can't play after that, can you? Or it ends http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-fjIu5zI6k, and do you really want to spoil that beautiful ending? Beside, how the hell do you make post-ending gameplay from that?! And that is a really really good game, too. And in many other games it's like this "Dangerous opponent arises, with him a huge army of baddies. You kill baddies, you kill the opponents, his faction is gone and there is no more evil". What do you want to do for the rest of that game, run around and having people thank you since the baddies are now gone? But, no more baddies to fight? It's such an anti-climix to go back to such a state, after you have fought your way to the hard end, probably defeated a boss and saved some people or whatever, it's really climatic... and then, back to your everyday normal guy life? Kind of like in Army of Darkness, Ash is living that whole adventure in the medieval times, then he drinks that sleeping potion and all of a sudden, he's back at his work again at S-Mart. Although that had a special twist with that witch coming after him, kick her ass and then kiss the woman in the end - Hail to the king, baby!

Oh, and I think many game developers have the philosophy of "it's all about the experience"... No [censored]?! What the hell would it be about otherwise?

I think I have a perfect solution: The Final Slide.


[Narrator] "This is the story of Courier Six. The chapter of the Mojave Wasteland is now over. The fates of the Courier and of his comrades has been decided. However, this is not the end of the story as some may think. This is what is bound to happen. In the mean time........."


So basically, all the ending slides are still valid, however it is just the "near future". This way, my ending slides will have been "locked in" and I don't have to report to fight at Hoover Dam. Broken Steel was amazing for the fact that I can just "close the book", if you get what I mean. Take a book, read it through except for the last chapter. Never read the last chapter. That is how New Vegas feels like. An incomplete book.

Bethesda's made it pretty clear FO4 that they won't make the mistake of ending the game as they did with FO3.

Optimal is letting the player play past the end slides with what happened in them being reflected in the landscape, and I think that's what they'll do, and the game will be even better because of it.

I personally LOVED being able to do DLC after completing the MQ in FO3.
It gave it a "and the adventures of the Lone Wanderer continue.." kind of feel, and it was a blast.
Sadly, with NV, it seems all the DLC in it are locked into some grander main storyline that really should've been in it to begin with..
NV's storyline never achieved a true feeling "epicness" for some people, and I think the fact that they left what seems to be the main storyline out is part of the reason.

The fact that the main storyline is being released via DLC is kind of inexcusable in itself..

Thanks for providing evidence to support that claim, everyone- including myself, will forever believe what you just said with your pile of unbeatable evidence.

If Beth want to make TES with Guns, so be it, just give me the fillers thanks.

I wouldn't say it's a mistake to not be able to play after the Main Quest although Fallout 3's ending was pretty bad.

The Slider Idea is a good one but I think it truly depends on the way the game ends and how much of an impact the changes at the end of the game would do to the world. If it's a dramatic change like New Vegas then no the game should end but if it's something minimal or will take years to occur like Fallout 3 then you should be allowed to continue after the Ending/Main quest.

If gamesas had written a better ending for FO3, they wouldn't have needed BS in the first place. Being forced to commit suicide svcked hard...and you didn't even get a proper series of ending slides to show how you made a difference either. FO3 with BS and Oblivion were the only open ended games I actually played more than a few hours after the end. Most...GTA games, RDR and Mass Effect 2, for example....bore me to tears so bad after wandering around like a ghost a few hours I cannot even replay them. I was happy with NV's ending so I neither need or want a BS type DLC to fix it.

:read:
game developers do have "philosophies" on how they make their games.. they have a particulay way and style and certain elements etc they put all together and that constitutes their philospophy and how their games are gonna be made, for instance bethesda games don't have endings, they also aren''t full of restrictions, limitations, stupid ideologies about everything having to be "plausible". so there is a big difference on how game developers make games...oblivion no ending, FO3 no ending, stalker:call of pripyat no ending, mass effect 2 no ending, GTA no ending, FO2 no ending, WoW no ending, morrowind no ending, and those are all pretty good games so any idea a game has to end to be good is stupid. :ph34r:

todd howard already said it was a mistake for them to have an ending for FO3 and he said that won't be happening again, bethesda games don't have endings generally. and its pretty easy to find that info on google, it was an article with todd howard.

Way to use two of Bethesda's previous games as examples. Morrowind it made sense to continue because Tribunal and Bloodmoon were intended for play after the end as they were both fairly sizable expansions. Oblivion becuase there was Shivering Isles and KOTN.



Bad example. It wasn't play-after-end originally.

Only one game out of the three in the series.



Only one game out of two. And there was nothing to do post ending. Very bad example.



Makes sense. Especially with GTA4 with it's really bad story. However, it's not a RPG, so bad example.



Very bad and stupid example. MMO's have no bearing on this discussion.




And so is the idea that a game has to allow play after end to be good.




Got a link to the exact quote rather than all the reposts?

Silent Hill.
Silent Hill 2.
Silent Hill 3.
Silent Hill 4: The Room.
Left 4 Dead.
Left 4 Dead 2.
Half-life.
Half-life 2.
Sims. (It can end if all sims in the household dies.)
Torment.
Baldurs Gate.
Baldurs Gate 2.
Populus: The Beginning.
Mass Effect.
Dead Space.
Unreal Tournament 3.
Fallout 3.
Fallout.
Fallout New Vegas.
Fallout Tactics.
Dead Rising.
Dead Rising 2.
Bioshock.
Battlefield Bad Company.
Resident Evil.
Resident Evil 2.
Resident Evil 3.
Resident Evil: Code Veronica.
Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles.
Resident Evil 4.
Resident Evil 5.
Chrono Trigger.
Alpha Protocol.

all of the games i mentioned were great games and they don't have "endings" and don't expect too many bethesda games to have endings, and a lot of other games like the stalker series is also getting on the bandwagon, so its just a philosophy some game developers have, bethesda purposely makes their games in a way that doesn't force you to stop playing after the main quest, its optional so regardless of the genre, in games where its fun to just cruise around doing more stuff, like GTA, Fallout , Elder Scrolls or Stalker, it serves no purpose to have a hard ending on those games, they let you decide when the game ends, not someone with an ideology of forcing you to stop playing, thats old style.

having games with hard endings is old style, go back to when you had to put a coin in a machine to play a game and you only got to play for like 2 minutes, then when video games came out and tons of them had some type of timer where you had to do everything in a set time, so this entire "game endings" business is falling by the wayside, its also easier to have an end, the game developers don't have to make as much content, like in new vegas, they made most of the map an empty desert, its a time and money saver, its not the mark of a good game. game endings don't make a game good or not good, you wonder why mass effect 2 and stalker call of pripyat don't have hard endings like the earlier ones did? or why bethesda games don't have hard endings? its a decision the developers made, cause most people want to be able to finish with the rest of the side quests after the main quest is over and just pick their own time to end the game.

Sorry, took me a while to stop laughing before replying to this. If anything you said was remotely true, we'd see a lot more game allowing freeplay after the end IN A MEANINGFUL WAY.

Dragon Age - Could play after end - Two or three DLC quests availiable, NO other quests, even the ones that you hadn't done when you completed the game.
All the other DLC are played completely separately from the main game.

Mass Effect 2 - Done simply to sell the DLC which they continue to dribble out.

The idea that having a game ends allows devs to put less content in is completely rediculous, show me evidence. And don't just trot out the 'New Vegas is a boring desert, wah! wah!'' recording again, -which I see you've once again slipped in- otherwise I'll consider any credibility you may still possess to be non existant.

I can bear a devil's advocate or two in here, even a bad one

Alright, a challenge. For the Legion ending, figure out a way to allow for post MQ play that even remotely makes sense and still has content to play. A Legion win means vast amounts of content must be removed, or play through that content before crossing the point of no return. A large number of merchants go *poof* as well.

Obsidian tried to have New Vegas keep going after Hoover Dam as Col. Moore has sound files to prove this that are still in the game. Too many factors, too many inter related quests and not enough development time to pull it off. Allowing for post MQ play in New Vegas without the changes as a result of Hoover Dam would've been flamed to hell'n'back...Maybe to the point where the forums would be taken down.

If New Vegas only had one possible ending, like Fallout 3 did, then it would be easy and I would be right with ya. It has four and all those endings consequences need to be displayed in the game world for post MQ play to have any meaning. Otherwise all that work you did was for nothing as nothing changes.

I don't even think Obsidian could add in everything needed for post MQ play via DLC. It would take a full ($20US) expansion to pull it off, not a sub-$10US DLC.

One potential problem I can see with just letting them do it, is the people who want dual wielding/multiplayer/more fps style of game/moar xploshun action etc will then start demanding that their wants are added into the game which will at least in my opinion lead to the game being destroyed as a Fallout cRPG game.

I wasn't to upset with the ending of Fallout 3, then again, I'm not to hard to impress when it comes to games, but the complaints werent that the ending svcked, it was that the game had an ending, and Bethesda foolishly caved in to demands.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/no-level-cap-in-next-fallout

This is possibly the worst thing I've read in this thread. I seriously hope to god that's a troll response. :confused:

I can't wait.

That's dire :sadvaultboy:
(And you can't just mod it out if they design all encounters with that as a given.)

Post a direct quote, I can't use google currently.

EDIT: Oh sweet jesus what the [censored] is wrong with Bethesda?

Fallout has no hope now, and the soul has been sold to the devil.