do you think or hope fallout 4 will be open ended at the end of the game so we could explore or cause havok in the wasteland?

It will probably just end and show the iconic slideshow that tells you about the outcomes of your decisions. As it should.

Fixed.

I hope this. Just do it like New Vegas and have a clear warning and a save point is made.

FO3 had it as well until Broken Steel came along.

If the story requires the game to end, it should end. But then it would be nice if we could get some kind of freeplay mode or something.

Why is this still an issue? Just go back to the save before the big finish

Well, they made a dlc for FO3 specifically aimed at allowing you to keep playing after the main quest.

As much money as they'd stand to make doing that song and dance again, I doubt they will. I'd wager that you'll get a slide show, but afterwards they'd plant you in your home, just waking up or something, no dlc required.

The problem with continuing immediately after the endgame is that your choices won't hold any weight because many of them will take months/years/decades in the game world to seem noticeable. That's what's great about the slideshows, they tell you what effect your choices had. Many major decisions you make in-game won't make a difference 20 minutes after you finish the game.

Yes. Seeing how they had to change it with a DLC for 3.

I won't mind either way as long as both ways are handled well. I liked how the Broken Steel DLC for FO3 handled how the main story ends because, lets face it, the ending was garbage IMO. Glad I was able to continue on after the MQ. New Vegas, however, I liked how you cannot continue after the war because the Mojave Wasteland would be boring if there was one or more factions gone from it.

I hope it will be open ended.. I want to keep on playing.

The average person wanting to play afterwards doesn't seem to put much care into their actions or the future, sadly.

I hope it's open ended.

They'd be crazy to make that mistake again. I imagine it will be an open ending to the MQ.

If one had a problem with an open ended main story, then they could just start a new game. Problem solved.

If that's the case, people who are fans of the choice and consequence part of FO will not have the option to know the long-term effect of their decisions. They would just be left with whatever small changes were made shortly after the events of the story, which, in reality would be extremely minor changes that would most likely begin and end with NPC's making small comments about your actions.

That should be said in the reverse for those who want an open ended main story. Just start a new game, or as the simplest solution has been always suggested, play the save before the big finale, if you don't want to finish the game yet with that character, and still roam around the wasteland.

I'm sorry, what? On what planet are long term consequences and post-story play mutually exclusive?

Especially since, you know, this is exactly what was done in FO2 and FO3 after Bethesda corrected their mistake which Todd Howard described as "We messed up. Fix it."

Actually, now that I look at what I wrote, the main story should not be open ended, it should absolutely have an end. The game itself should just be open ended. But to each their own I guess.

Yes. There was such an uproar the first time around that they had to DLC free roaming after the MQ. Bethesda always learns from their mistakes!

I actually have come to prefer a definitive ending.

Personally, I do everything I want to do before the main quest anyways, and then if I wanna continue playing that character, I make a save before the damned ending. It's effectively the same. Post-ending gameplay only cheapens the ending because it shows you what little impact you actually had because programming in actual change is too large of an undertaking to be feasible. Thus, you get "YOU STOPPED THE ENCLAVE AND GAVE US CLEAN WATER," but lo and behold the water's still dirty and the Enclave are still everywhere.

Seriously, just save before the ending. It's not that hard.

Again, even having the main story be finished at the end, having the game open ended afterwards still causes problems. As it's already been said, the effects the PC has in the Fallout Universe don't just happen overnight, they take months or years, which is why we have the slides at the end, to tell us how, starting from the end of the game, things started to unfold from our actions in the wasteland.

I honestly don't care; as long as I am able to play, I am fine with it.

I think it should allow you to continue playing after the main game, if you want the definitive ending and that story to end after completing the main quest nothing stops you from just putting the game down satisfied you completed the story. Everybody can be happy

it won't have a game ending quest, no need to, bethesda games don't have game ending quests, and fallout 3 was the one and only exception and it got fixed and todd howard they wouldn't do that again, so i'm not even in the slightest way even remotely thinking thats a possibility.