My sentiments exactly.

I'm not saying both aren't obtainable. I'm just addressing your comparisons to FO3 and Oblivion. These games didn't have replay value because there was little room to do things differently. Sure, having both would be great. The point I was trying to make is that FO3 seemed to have sacrificed replay value in favor of allowing the player to experience everything the game has to offer in one play-through. The quests are mostly on rails outside of things like Megaton and Tenpenny (huge decisions that have surprisingly little effect on anything), and FO3's character development system and lack of uses for many skills in-game left little incentive to try other character builds.


I won't deny that Oblivion had a lot of quests. The Dark Brotherhood quests were interesting. The guild quest-lines were pretty underwhelming, but that's ok. My biggest problem with the guild quest-lines in Oblivion (and most quest-line in Oblivion) is that they led to nowhere. I could rise to a leadership rank in guilds...and then what? A couple of nobodies acknowledged my rank in passing. I would have rather been given some kind of unique item or something if they were going to stop short of making these quest-lines lead anywhere...throw out the guild rank altogether and do something I care about. It was disappointing. Ideally there would have been some additional perks, responsibilities, quests, or something associated with becoming the head of a guild, but I would have settled for something more tangible. I'd much prefer to have fewer quests with more depth and player feedback than just having a longer laundry list of things to check off. The fact that I could become the leader of every guild in the game didn't help to make these quest-lines more weighty either.

FO3 had only a fairly short main quests and a handful of side-quests as well, and there were very few choices or variation involved in them. It did have more random "here's some thing for you to see" than NV does, but the game world, to me, felt less than thought-out and believable.

I'm finding NV to have a lot more questing, interesting conversation, interesting histories behind places and factions, interactions between factions, etc. than FO3 did. I can see how someone might think there's less meat to NV in the content area, but I don't. NV's world has a level of richness and justification that neither Oblivion's nor FO3's had, and that takes a lot of thought and planning. It's not easy. Not only that, but the quests in NV are so much deeper, multi-faceted, and full of choices that you really can't compare them to the quests in Oblivion and FO3. Heck, even Morrowind blew Oblivion out of the water when it comes to choice and depth in quests. It's a lot easier to create moar content when it's mostly unrelated to anything else and there isn't much interactivity or feedback for the player involved.


Here's where you completely lose me. Lots of games that aren't sequels share game engines. This does not in any way make them expansions. To be honest anyone that claims that NV isn't worth the asking price because it uses the same engine has no idea how much work goes into making something like that. What Obsidian did is not easy to do whether you get a legacy engine to build on or not.


So, simply building your story in such a way that it has no effect on the environment and NPCs is what good story planning is all about? Isolated factions, disconnected sub-plots, and little to no environmental after-effects are all good things? Interesting.


In that case Oblivion fails miserably. Gear was so irrelevant in that game that there was almost no point in dungeon diving for loot at all.

I'm going to stop comparing FO3 and NV to Oblivion, though, because Fallout is not post-apoc TES.


I'd be absolutely amazed if you need to start a new character to play the DLC. Then again, they did it with Dragon Age, so...

Oddly enough I was one of those who complained heavily about FO3 having a difinitive ending, but it does not bother me at all in FO:NV, creating new characters and taking different routes have been the fun in this game, and if I want to stick with a particular character for a while longer I just don't enter the final battle.

Wow. VERY active thread. Got me to recollecting various business models that seem to apply.

1. To paraphrase J.P. Morgan (I believe it was): "You can satisfy some of the people some of the time. You can satisfy some of the people all of the time. But you CAN'T satisfy _all_ of the people _all_ of the time." No matter how GREAT a product may be, there will be those that _loudly_ complain about its inadequacies. Thus we have so many people saying, "They _should_ have done it this way."

2. Unlike the original paper-and-pencil RPGs, a CRPG single-product _must_ be finite. You want to turn a CRPG into a game setting with an "endless horizon"? That requires a constant influx of additional material to keep ahead of players questing for the "Dragons dwell here" label on the map. In the p-n-p RPG, that's what the Game Master was doing.

3. The bigger the world, the greater the number of details needed to fill in those otherwise dull, blank areas on the map. How much more? Imagine a circle of a given radius. Now double that radius: How much did the area of the circle increase? Now double the radius again and again and again and note the area increase each time. Literally, the amount of additional area is about how much additional programing is required to just simulate the map. Filling that additional area with interesting stuff, quests, and plotline increases the program almost exponentially. The more programming that goes into a game, the longer it stays in development. Which would you prefer: a game the size of FNV now, or to wait for FNV+ which would be four times as large, but wouldn't be released until 2012?

4. CRPGs _do_ get bigger: they're called "expansions", "sequels", and/or "DLCs".

5. A game in development does not make money for the manufacturer -- but the bills still have to be paid. Keep a game in development too long and _everybody_ loses -- because the manufacturer went bankrupt before the project finished. MMOs, otoh, have a constant cashflow coming in, thus affording the developer the money he needs to keep programmers plugging away creating new content to constantly dump into the arena.

On a different note, my personal preference for a RPG would be to do away with the whole leveling concept entirely. "Growth" should be organic. That is, the skills you build up are the skills that you actually use. And like bodybuilding and a nutritious diet, your hit points increase as you do whatever it is that promotes a better Constitution (or whatever you want to call it), one point at a time. You want to become better at picking locks? Then pick locks. It shouldn't be a matter of, "I just leveled up; I'll put 15 Skill Points into Lockpick now!" Using this approach to character development might make a character VERY competent in several areas, but also VERY unlikely to ever become a godlike character with 100s in _every_ skill.

The thing I don't understand is, if a game having an open ending or not is absolutely essential to the player's enjoyment and if not having what the player wants is going to completely ruin said game for said player, why does the player not perhaps just wait a few days after release and find out if the game is in fact open ended or not? I'm sure the information is out there. New Vegas was very obviously going to be very different, so if something like the ending of the game was so important to some people, perhaps they should have determined whether or not the game is worth buying before buying it.

I don't know if this comment is either relevant or coherent, but I just had to chip in because I don't really understand why people are complaining about the fact that NV doesn't have an open ending. I was a tiny bit disappointed when I first realised that I had completely finished the game, but then I went back to my old save and carried on without finishing the last quests, until I got bored of shooting the same people over and over again (Does Christina Morales EVER stop respawning??) and started the game again. It's a matter of accepting that New Vegas is New Vegas, not Fallout-3-with-Broken-Steel-but-in-the-Mojave-desert-now.

As for being an expansion of Fallout 3, I've seen people state this many a time, but I simply don't ever see this comment justified. No-one can explain why it's 'just an expansion.'

And there's my probably useless ten cents.

i started playing fallout 3 late i got the game of the year edition so my fallout 3 game never ended i was disappointed that it ended i like games with out endings my game on fallout 3 i played it for a long time i still do i want a dlc that will make it to where u can play it after words

Apparently certain people need to be spoon fed another endgame prompt and save file dubbed the 'epilogue' like they did in Dragon Age, and that save still was canonically before the final battle.

One of the complaints that I think is absurd is the one where a person complains that he can't experience all four endings in one run-through. Doesn't he understand that some events are mutually exclusive? Like imagine being in a plane crash at sea with two other people, neither of which can swim but you can. The only trouble is, you're only strong enough to save ONE of them. So your choices for ending are 1) Save this person, or 2) save that person, or 3) or **try** to save both = all three of you drown. Or if you happen to be a serious bastard, 4) abandon both of them and just save yourself. There's no way that you can possibly all FOUR possible outcomes in one linear path. So in FNV, you have a choice of being The Hero to the NCR, the Legion, the Strip, or by being your own hero and making yourself El Supremo. Choosing any one of those paths makes the other three impossible. THAT'S THE WAY LIFE WORKS; get over it. Or maybe recognize that you actually get four times the value because you can play the game as four distinctly different characters and arrive at an appropriate conclusion for _that_ character.

The information is indeed out there, and was well before release. But it seems utterly irrelevant, as clearly shown by the number of threads created (ongoing...watch, there's sure to be a new one soon) that don't ask "will there be a DLC that removes the finale," not "Is there any chance of them raising the level cap," but "When will the DLC that removes the ending and raises the level cap come out?"

I'm not sure what it is, or where it came from, but it's out there- this bizarre belief that there is One True Way to make any type of game, and anything else is some obstinate company trying to shaft people by daring to think the developers should have any say in how the game is made.

And I don't mean as in One True Way to make a proper RPG, and One True Way to make a shoooter, etc.- I mean these days, any game that doesn't follow "THE One True Game Formula For All Games, Regardless Of Genre" is vilified by the http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/howlers.htm who...well, apparently can't stand the idea of any variation from the bland vanilla universal game style that all games must follow else be shunned.

Well this whole thread took a while to read!

One thing is for certain, right now there is a gap in the gaming market for a genuine FO3 style post apocalyptic game which gives players the type of gaming experience they want. New Vegas although good in it's own right doesn't live up to the expectations of a lot of fans of the game. Doesn't matter if you like FO3 over new Vegas or vice versa, that is irrelevant, what is relevant is there are gamers (including myself) with ￡30/40 in our pockets waiting to spend it on a game that we want to see and play.

The question is, will FO4 satisfy me and in time, or will a new game developer (or existing competitor to Bethdesa) come along and take my ￡30 or ￡40 before FO4 can be released?

As long as the market provides me with the gaming experience I want I don't care who comes along with the product that fits my requirements. It would be a shame if Bethdesa missed this opportunity becasue I was very pleased with the work they did on FO3.

Good luck Bethdesa I hope you win.

But what would be the point of that? What would be the difference between that and just doing something as simple as loading a save from before the ending?

This is how I feel about Vegas and its factions.

(A line of text in an ending slide is not tangible enough... it doesn't matter who you side with, you play the same quests anyway, just for a different team. It's Deus Ex: Invisible War again.)

On level caps and endings: I'm not overly dismayed that NV has an ending, but I hope Fallout 4 has open-ended play, no level cap and the ability to raise skills past 100 again. I really thik this would be ideal.

Agreed & I'm crossing my fingers and toes

But a line is better than FO3! Owens said I was a knight in the BOS...but nobody said I was!

There needs to be some sort of cap so that you do not become a god character. It think that the ideal system would be this:

1. You get exp 50% slower.
2. The level cap is at 99.
3. Skill caps are now at 400

Hey, I didn't mention Fallout 3. Just talking about Vegas here.

I think "god characters" are alright so long as it takes a hell lot of work to get there. If I've played enough to reach level 99 (which is unlikely anyway) I really do expect to be a god tbh, either as a super-specialist or a master of all trades. Raising the skill cap allows for both, which is why I agree and think it's such a good idea. Slower levelling's probably no bad idea either.

Well, according to my knowledge, Bethesda saved the Fallout franchise. They're the ones who bought it and actually made a new game that brought hundreds of newcomers and oldcomers alike.

They'd have to overhaul the whole skillsystem to make it support a 400 cap - for the skillraises to that amount (or even 200 or 300) to be worthwhile to the player and yet balanced.



Saving is a wrong word to use as there were other companies bidding to buy Fallout too.

Right, if Obsidian had tried to do post-main quest content that was of at least decent quality they would have required a minimum (I think) or at least 2 years more to take account of the various permutations that we the gamers could get up to during the course of the main quest. Probably more like Ten Years if they were to include absolutely every single variable and still end up with a decent quality feel to the post-game content.

With regards to the OP's arguments about learning things from MMO's, I would say that with regards to the new area's/expansions that is equivalent to DLC/Sequels for the single player games, no if's but's or maybe's about it.
In response to the area's which will result in you being flattened in nothing flat, Fallout New Vegas has those (and they are being complained about because they restrict how some people want to play) the prime example would be 'Deathclaw Alley'.

Personally I have found that most games with post main quest content are such that they force me to choke down their force feeding of that content, mainly due to at least for open-ended RPG's that the post-end game content is bland, meaningless and in a lot of cases flat out contradicts at least some if not everything I did during the run up to finishing the main quest. It is as if they are 'rewarding ????(aye right, pull the other one it's got bells on)' you for completing the game by then turning round that everything that you did during the main quest does not matter at all and was totally meaningless and thus a complete waste of time.

While I don't mean to boast Bethesda as heros of the gaming world. I don't think anyone else would have done better.

-Imagines 'Fallout 3:An EA Games product'-
-Kills self-

First, source on your claim that Bethesda went on record (not saying they didn't, but you need to cite a source to make a claim like that)

Do some research dude. (I'm not going to cite, since both these claims are information readily available on these forums)

a. The devs explained why they did a hard ending. You have the choice of NOT doing the final questline until you feel you are done. All your choices you make until you finish are accounted for in the ending. I really don't see what the big deal is between completing all the side quests and content before you go on the final quest vs having the ability to do it afterwards. For me, I'd prefer that there is a definite ending that takes into account all my choices vs a vanilla one style ending that is the same no matter what.

b. The devs have said they will not provide a broken steel type DLC which allows you to play after the ending. Their DLC will potentially open up even MORE alternate endings, but it still ends up leading you to the end. So I guess you won't be getting any DLC

I would love it if you could shape the world to your own image. That would be a massive undertaking however and we'd be waiting another two years for the game. However, that still wouldn't change the hard ending. In a game like this, where your choices matter and affect the ending, you cannot possibly make permanent changes to the entire gameworld based on all the various player choices. So you have to have a hard ending to tell the story in a more traditional way. JUST DON"T FINISH THE GAME dude. It really is not that hard.

Not to bash EA but I'd be jumping on that grenade as well. Bethesda did a standout job and deserves the recognition.

Imagines Fallout 3 as an Activision Product:

Shudders in Horror.

Your ending slide lasted 9 minutes? Damn, even when I completed every side quest and most of the Companion quests mine lasted a measly 2 and a half minutes.

Its still better than FO3.

I completely disagree, but thats irrelevent to the thread.