In all of their games, they have about different themes you can count on one hand. Fallout for example having vaults, medical buildings, schools, underground areas, caves. However, once you enter at least one or two of each, you already know how it's going to mostly play out, killing most of the suspense of any surprises that aren't specific or uniquely scripted.

Skyrim had better designed dungeon sets which felt more organic and natural, but once you've gone through a lot of them you end up not being surprised anymore. I feel like if you're going to see the same tiles and textures all the time, that you'd better go through some amazing level design to make up for it. Fallout 4 could have more "one kind only" dungeons. I'd take 3 less dungeons in the game if that means I could have 1 unique dungeon set that isn't reused other than that. I'd like a nice amount of those. I feel like the wasteland will offer a nice variety with abandoned houses, settlements, raider hideouts etc that will keep it fresh. I'm just worried about the dungeons. All vaults don't have to be the same. They usually offer a good backstory to the place, but there's too much useless junk for what often leads to loot that isn't special.

Is Betheda going to step out of the oldschool dungeon crawling for random loot ordeal? I feel like it's a telling of lore with filler gameplay. I love the lore. Exploring the outdoors and towns is always refreshing. Dungeons are very so-so.

While I get your complaint, I do NOT agree that Fallout 3 had a problem with this (identical "dungeon" areas with the same layouts). If want a really horrific example of this issue, go play the first Mass Effect. Fallout 3 looks like a poster child for randomness compared to the 4 or 5 stock combat zones available in ME1.

One of the reasons I loved Fallout 3 is that ALL the "dungeon crawl" areas were diverse and had variation in both the layout, condition of the facility, enemies and most importantly the backstory available to investigate. EVERY Vault was different in those respects. Now if your complaint is that the same base cells were used to construct the overall architecture of any single Vault, I don't know what to tell you but if the same company builds 15 different facilities on a budget and time schedule, the are going to use the same basic structural components. While you may not like it from an asthetic standpoint, it does make sense in terms of game lore.

I actually was bored in Skyrims Dungeons. No goal to reach (the excuse in FO3 Subway to get to areas was great imo), convinient exits and planned endboss that reminded me constantly that I am only playing a game

...and draugher, draugher and another draugher.... who cares...

Didn't like them at all.

FO3's subway was much more interesting to explore.

The dungeons in Skyrim were bogged down by the overly bright lighting, the monotony of enemies, and the random anticlimactic loot at the end.

Fallout 3s metro was far better than skyrims dungeons.

Skyrims were all the same, loop around to some loot and a shortcut to the exit. After a few, you knew what you were in for before you even went in.

Fallouts metro was big enough to get lost in, and had loads of exits and different paths....

I like the metros, too.... but most of them were all too similar, just a slightly different layout. I know I mentioned Skyrim, but I'm not saying it was great, either... just a step up from Oblivion's and Skyrim was their last game. So can we expect the same treatment for Fallout 4 from Fallout 3.

I completely agree that FO3 Metro was one of the best "dungeon crawl" areas in any game I can call in the recent past.

On that note, I've never heard much about Boston's subway system, but isn't the "Big Dig" project mostly underground (or below street level) highway system? That may be interesting (if included). EDIT: Just looked up the MBTA and it's HUGE compared to DC Metro.....5 separate lines (a few with half a dozen branches) and multiple tunnels under major waterways...could be a dungeon crawlers dream!

OP - you keep complaining about how it all "looks the same" and has "similar layouts", but it's a subway system....designed to move commuters from point A to point B as efficently as possible (and built on a BUDGET). It would seriously be LESS realistic if all the tunnels were somehow different and each station had a different "motif" set of tiles and wall / ceiling designs. Having actually ridden the DC Metro last summer, it was quite inspiring to see first hand just how realistic the Fallout 3 interiors are compared to the REAL metro layouts and architecture.

I completely agree.

Every building and subway and vault was really different and interesting in FO3 in my opinion.

Please no convenient dungeon exits to pander to people with short attention spans, it just feels cheap. Only time I'd be happy with a convenient exit was if the thing was a secret door extremely well hidden.

The fast dungeons exists exited solely because they logically would. When building things that deep, people would build air shafts/alternate passageways in case the main one collapsed.

But anyways, I dont really care how Fo4s dungeons are, so long as they at least equal Skyrim's. Skyrim was a massive step up from Morrowind's "basically just 1-2 rooms with nothing on the floors, walls, and ceiling" dungeons, and an equally large step up from Oblivion's "massive labryathian forts that make no sense in design and have nothing in them to indicate what rooms were used for besides a random broken table or two".

So long as they put all the detail of clutter items into Fo4 that they did Skyrim, and make the rooms actually identifiable for the most part like Skyrim's, I will be happy.

I think to mitigate the convenient exit thing, would be to have another exit (or more) somewhere else that you have to find, otherwise go back the way you came. So you wouldn't feel like you've just gone round in a circle and you're somehow at the entrance again thinking "Wait, isn't this the way I came in?"

The metro in F3 would be a great example of this, being multiple exits everywhere. Skyrim had precious few, just wish it had had more.

Ugh the metros were so annoying, I didn't mind them for a while but after a certain point of trying to get around to different points in the DC ruins they became a huge pain in the rear. Other than that though, I never got the feeling that any of the moderate/major locations were repetitive. there were some types of locations like the town houses that could be entered in greyditch were very similar. I was ok with that though, I'd rather there be a ton of similar buildings to scavenge through rather than just one or two completely unique looking buildings in a whole area.

Of course every persons logical! But instead of being for the benefit of the original dungeon occupants it seemed more for the players.

After looking at many of Skyrim's dungeon designs in CK most them were very well done and they were creative........apart from those convenient logical exits.

I fully agree that fast exits were a cop-out to aid the player (tho some of them potentially had a logical reason for the original builders to put in....like a lookout post high on a ledge). On the other hand, if I had to run back thru the entire dungeon I just slogged thru for an hour and a half (an extra 10-15 minutes), we'd all be here in these forums complaining about how the Dungeons were too long and took FOREVER to get back out of. Imagine having to run back thru the entire Ustengrav dungeon after NOT finding the Horn for the Greybeards? Seriously runing from one end of it to the other would take 15 minutes. While the easy exits might not be "immersive" but I'm guessing most players would sorely miss most of them if they were not there.

Skyrim's dungeons svcked and if I call correctly, there were no dungeons in Fallout 3. Metros and caves, yes, but no dungeons.

I agree with the OP. Sure, the layouts are somewhat unique, but from there, they are just filled with generic clutter, enemies, and loot. An improvement would be to design more of these places around a unique story or scenario so that exporing actually pays off with discovering something interesting. Unfortunately, this takes time that could otherwise be spent creating more places instead of better ones.

Identical dungeons in F3? What game are you playing?
The metro tunnels had some similar looking features, because... That's what metro tunnels are like.
Anything that looked similar in those 1) logically would be similar 2) attempted to confuse you on where you were at/how to get to where you wanted.

I don't get everyone's hate for the metros. "oh, noes, they are challenging to get through"
I dunno how you all like your games, but I like the challenge.

The bandit caves and locations was more interesting then the catacombs. Design had far more variation and the enemies used more combat methods.

One thing I liked about Oblivion was that dungeons was none linear and you had roaming enemies you could run into on the way back they could even come up from behind

Fallout shared that non linearity as they used more realistic structures.

Still more variation yes an subway tunnel is an subway tunnel but stations are very different.

Topic title made me think of the "endless cycle of the past" that were Daggerfall's dungeons... Bethesda really has come a long way in mitigating art fatigue. All I really want from the "dungeons" in Fallout 4 that Skyrim didn't have is non-linearity. But Fallout 3 had non-linearity in spades, so I'm not too concerned.

OP (and some others) make false claims when they claim that BGS games have indoor areas that all look the same. This is totally untrue and has been untrue since Morrowind, at least.

As was pointed out in a reply above, anyone making some type of shelter, building, etc is going to use the same materials. We do the same thing today with few exceptions, and we've done the same thing throughout history.

The tiles and textures are not the same nor are they boring to look at. There was an excellent article posted to Gamasutra by one of the BGS developers who was showing actual examples of the many tiles they create for their indoor areas and how they use these tiles to create all the different interiors in their games (think of it like pieces of a puzzle being put together in different ways or perhaps like Lincoln Logs or Lego bricks).

Any similarities of one indoor area to another are extremely superficial, at best. Even in the example of Mass Effect 1 that was given, any exploration and building of outposts on various planetary bodies would almost certainly use plain, prefabricated materials (function over form as well as cost savings/efficiency).

The problem with various Skyrim dungeones (aside from the lousy fake lighting, of course, which hopefully will finally be left behind in FO4) was the fact that they included really stupid elements just for the sake of "difference" (or perhaps to look "cool"). For example, there was the vampire lair for the Daedric quest where the cave was an ice cave but the walls had flaming torches stuck in them... with no water running down the walls or along the floor. That's totally unrealistic. I'd forgive such things if the torches were magic but of course that's not the case in Skyrim. Those types of design decisions wind up looking very silly (and are certainly immersion-breaking).

I'm hoping the Vaults are more like New Vegas, especially ones like Vault 34 and Vault 11.

There is alot of variation in the environments in F3, but there are also so many places that you start to see repetition. This wouldn't be a huge problem, but when combined with the lack of concept design for each place, it becomes easy for some to feel that the devs were leaning a little more toward quantity over quality.

examples, please?
I cannot think of a single place,(other than random stretches of metro tunnel, which again- make sense in looking similar) that are repetitive. Please, list some out for us. I have never been able to see why people complain about it, even though i have seen people say it on these forums for years now. I genuinely would like to know. Cause I haven't seen it in several thousand hours of playing.

Most factories look pretty similar, same for residential houses, random shacks, etc. The other issue is the repetition in what you find in each place--generic enemies, loot. Reusing models and textures is expected, but it stands out when the only point of so many places is to fight the same old enemies and collect minor loot.

The point of those places is to be there because they logically would be there in a realistic world, not because of the loot.