You know what ruins my immersion? When I talk to an NPC and he asks me when someone's going to do something about [ insert game antagonist's name ] when I already killed that jerk and everyone should know about it. See, you're assuming that the excuse is that the consequences of the ending can't be reflected by the engine. Have you considered the amount of time it could take to create an alternate post-endgame version of the world and all of the dialogs involved? Have you considered that maybe they needed to cut doing all of that work from the budget in favor of ensuring that the main "meat" of the game was as good as it could be?

If I had the choice to sacrifice spending months creating the post-endgame in order to make the "meat" of the game better or create the post-endgame content at the expense of the main game content I'd choose to make the core game the best it could be every time. That's the part of the game that everyone is going to play. Sure, there will be some completionists that will complain that they missed a few quests, but that's better than taking time away from the part of the game that everyone will experience. The completionists could be served later by a DLC that adds the post-endgame content.

Budgeting time for large game development projects like this is tricky. It's a balancing act between what you'd like to do and what you have money and time to do. I respect the choice Obsidian made.

How are they going to warn you? I'm interested in knowing. Are they going to have a physical pop up saying "Hey, you're getting near the end of the game, so if you want to do any side-quests, now is the time" or what?

Pretty much, a small box will appear and you press ok.

Also there will probrably be some NPC dialogue to also warn you/

Main characater: Are you sure you want to go through with this? Yes!

Are you sure? / Uh...yeah?

Are you really sure? / I just said so?

Nah you didn't sound like you meant it, are you sure you don't have things to do elsewhere? / Oh brother... (grabs shotgun and kills main character) Time to finish this.

Actually, I barely passed high school and failed college.
I'm a good example of a loser. (Kids, don't be like me)

I know it's not scriptable, but I'd just like a non-ending game that has an influence on the gaming environment.

I want a boat.

Another long post, but this will hopefully be the last one I need to make in this topic.


Not particularly hard, but if you got shot in the face then you'll probably want to deal with that. If you then realize that you're a postman with a parsel then it seems obvious to deliver the damn thing, as it's really pretty much your job. Then you're two quests into the MQ. Will it remain laid back after that or are you already there going to get some spiel about the importance of you delivering the next package in a timely fashion? Who knows?


That's a story decision, though. If Obsidian had decided to be less dramatic (or epic, depending on perspective) then the change could've been implemented and this topic wouldn't be.


Easy on the cap lock there, my friend. First of all, your choices can have impact regardless of whether there's a forced ending or not. Secondly, the game can be replayed multiple times with or without a forced ending. Thirdly, it just might feel rather odd to break off the MQ at the point of no return in order to do misc stuff. I suppose it will have to do, but it will be odd regardless. Fourthly, I'd really prefer if you'd stop telling me what breaks my immersion or that I have to get over it. I don't have to do sod all unless I damn well want to. If I think Obsidian are downright [censored] for making this choice (I don't, but for the sake of argument) then that's my prerogative and you'd be the one who'd have to get over it.

Finally, you saying that a slideshow ending is a good thing is just as subjective as me saying that green is a better color than blue. Without any supporting arguments, it's a useless statement that describes a very personal truth, and one which isn't actually a truth from my perspective. While I respect your opinion, you can never convince me of anything just by screaming it at me over and over. Sorry.


You're at the very least implying that FO3 isn't a good game because the ending is fairly vague. That's a bit harsh, isn't it? How big is the ending compared with all the gameplay leading you to the ending?

A related situation, by the way, would probably be the very old game Drakan - Order of the Flame. Most of the game is fairly cool. You're changing between Rynn, a lightweight female warrior who's using agility and speed to slaughter hordes of orcs, and a red dragon named Arokh (and don't ask me how I can remember those names), who's flying around and scorching other dragons, ballista towers, giants, and orcs with extreme ease. Most of the game is actually awesome, but the ending is entirely a TV show cliffhanger that provides absolutely no answers to anything. Unfortunately, sales weren't good enough that anyone ever cared to make a sequel so the cliffhanger ending stands. Would you say that game svcked solely because the ending was utter [censored]?


I hope you're right, I really do, because otherwise it really is going to take a fair few bucketfuls of sand out of what looks like a rather nice sandbox RPG.


Whether it is extreme cost in manhours or engine limitations that prevents a post-ending game world really isn't too important. What is important is that the devs picked a scope of change that simply couldn't be reflected in the game. That takes out the "elective retirement" suggestion I made previously, but simply reverting all NPC dialogue back to their state before the MQ kicked in (i.e., the "alternate reality of no consequences" suggestion) wouldn't have been too difficult. That dialogue already exists. Even if they'd needed some more generic post-MQ dialogue, if they'd planned for the event then it shouldn't have been too difficult or expensive.

And yes, I've certainly considered that it's all really a trade-off. I realise that spending an extra week to get all this done is going to mean a significant increase in expenses that will have to be justified. I'm aware that the argument can be made that the game doesn't need that investment, in which case it's going to be silly to make it. I'm a business student with a personal focus on IT and I assure you that I'm quite aware of all the things I don't know. I'm also not at this point suggesting that Obsidian actually made a mistake. All I'm doing is speculating that making it the player's choice when the game ends is generally preferable to forcing the player's hands.

A clearly marked point of no return obviously comes close to this, but it's not without its very possible pitfalls in an RPG.


He he, been there, done that. Well, I didn't have issues passing high school (since it was a business high school, it wasn't too challenging), but I have tried flunking out of college. Computer science, to be specific. Then I started studying business and admin instead and five years later I'm at least approaching the level of education I wanted to begin with, if not the right area of expertise. I suppose that makes me a rather well-educated loser, if nothing else. :foodndrink:

Hah...I played Drakan. It was a fun game. It's not that old, though. *looks at copyright on wikipeida* Crap. I'm getting old. :cryvaultboy:


What it comes down to is that we don't know what kind of ending they have planned, so it's useless to speculate on how much work it would be to create the post-endgame world. From my perspective, though, given that they had less than 2 years to make the game, it would make a lot of sense to not worry about the post-endgame until after the core game was finished. I'm a software engineer and we do things like this all the time. Our first iteration of a piece of software often includes core functionality only. When that's complete it goes off to QA...a couple of devs split off to work with QA on pre-release bug fixes while the rest of them start working on the next point release of the software that will include more functionality. Developing in iterations like that is actually pretty efficient. It oftentimes alleviates a lot of the management overhead associated with doing QA and bug fixes on a huge feature list all at once, which frequently leads to budget creep. If they do release post-endgame content for NV I really wouldn't mind if there's a DLC that unlocks gameplay after the ending. Of course, people will accuse them of holding their games hostage for money like they did when Broken Steel was announced, but from a development standpoint it actually makes good sense.

so your saying that you want your choices to have no real impact, because then you can keep playing? You want everybody to just remain in the same limbo, as if you were never there?
You want to spend days, going through the story, then all of a sudden they say, "thank you, you saved our asses, here's a discount!" You don't want to end his journey? Some of the best movies and novels have the character die at the end, (Godfather, Sandman,etc), what are some things you would do post game, that wouldn't svck the life out of the game?

No, I don't mind my choices having an impact at all, but how do you define "impact"? Is it "impact" that you simply can't continue playing your character anymore? That instead of seeing the changes first-hand, you simply get a slide telling you what your character will do in the future, what the people close to the character will do, and how everybody lives or doesn't live happily ever after? Is that really "real impact"?

Personally, I'd really prefer to get a story that isn't so overly dramatic that the changes can in fact be implemented into the engine. That way Obsidian could've made the game carry on in the changed world and people could see the impact first hand. That would've been textbook awesomeness, at least in my eyes. Obsidian decided otherwise, however. They went with a story so "epic" that the changes happening at the end can't feasibly be implemented and so all you get is some Perlman narrative and some slides. All things equal, it's a much cheaper option. If you hold the story as a fixed element then it's possibly even the only option that made sense to Obsidian, but why would the story be fixed?

And before you ask, yes, I would be completely fine with my choices having no more impact than what the FO3 engine allows for. I'm fine merely playing a part in eventual changes rather than being the sole catalyst of immediate world change.

Indeed. Of course I wasn't all that old when it was released (and it took a couple of years before I actually realized just how silly the enemy dragon targetting algorithm actually was), but it was indeed a funny game.


"How much work" is of course impossible to quantify but the fact is that we know it's either outright unfeasible (and that's in the context of a two-year development time) or impossible due to game engine limitations. I believe we can draw conclusions from that. It would seem to essentially mean that the ending will have a huge scope or merely just a [censored] gargantuan scope.

Anything less than massive and the Obsidian crew will grow entirely new asses from the abuse they're going to get, once people realise that the forced ending was a stunt to save time rather than something that was actually required, and Obsidian's been down that road before, haven't they? I doubt they'll intentionally do that again, which means I'm feeling confident in guessing that the ending will have a rather large scope. Something along the lines of either poisoning the entire west coast or unifying it or relocating everybody to somewhere else. Maybe make a big effing crater out of everything. As you say, we don't know exactly, aside from the fact that it's so big they didn't want to (or plain couldn't) implement it.


Sounds like you're working with an agile development variant. Definitely not the waterfall model they taught back when I started out on computer science in 03. Then again, I flunked out in early 05 so maybe they've updated to agile methods there as well. And yes, I did actually like the waterfall model. It was so neat and orderly and easy to explain and everybody could grasp it. Finish this phase, move to the next phase, and [censored] maim anyone or anything trying to force you back up the waterfall. Neat and orderly, even if it worked rather poorly.

That said, I do of course agree that they're focusing on core functionality first. I'd guess that this means creating the basic game world and gameplay variables, throwing in a main quest, and then they start expanding the world with all sorts of funny ideas.


I agree. While they're making the main game, they're focused on just that and so they spend their time only making content and waste as little as possible on post-game stuff. If tasked with a game-opening expansion, that will be the point in time when they choose to incur the manhour costs of implementing the MQ consequences in the game world, presumably with a suitable compensation for the effort. Very sensible for Obsidian but the thing is, I'm not on they payroll and so their interests and mine aren't necessarily the same.

I just read that in an interview somewhere, apparently, the devs of this game made it so that you don't get to continue your game after their main quest line is completed IE: fallout 1 style instead of fallout 2.

Fallout 3 was not so difficult to mod this problem out of (the usual mod we use is called FreePlayAfterMQ). Soon after NV comes out, PC users should be able to keep an eye out for that mod's New Vegas equivalent. You as a player aren't likely to end up stuck with this problem, not even necessarily on your first playthrough, because of the game's moddability.

That's all I came to say. Just be sure you are on PC and not a non-moddable console.

I don't mind a definate ending...
...on my first playthrough.

On all my other playthroughs I will mind. I will keep from finishing the main quest until I'm bored with my current character and then I will probably not even start the ending because... I'm bored with my current character and want to play a new one.
So, I don't really care if the ending is great or svcks, I will only see it once. Or maybe twice to see how different the endings are

Someone said it ages ago (On this thread) that why don't we, after we finish the MQ, a message appears "You are now playing in a non-canon alternate universe. Enjoy!" or something like that. Best of both worlds.

So we shoot the overseer again?

Don't care

hehe, it does seem to be a common occurrence...

I like definitive endings, yes there's always something weird about the whole "Once we go in there, there's no turning back"
"Oh okay, I'll just go do side quests for twenty in game weeks"
But it still works, it's a slight break from immersion in order to stop people slipping up and breaching the point of no return.
A definitive ending lets it end as it should, I hate it when people always push on until they drop, you see it with sports stars all the time, they refuse to quit and go from true powerhouses to below average but we keep 'em for the publicity. Hell, Bruce Forsyth. The man should've retired decades ago, now he's a cringe worthy buffoon, kept around to laugh at. Games are the same, once the story ends everything else just feels...put on, it makes the game seem fake, what was the point of saving the world, slaying the big baddy and getting the girl if at the end the world is still just as depressing, no one told the big baddy's men and the girl has yet to cotton on to things.

If the devs could make an end game world that suited your choices and was real then there'd be no problem but there are options to the ending, to your playthrough, that means at endgame it will be different, that means an endgame world would need to be made for each scenario, which is time consuming and costly. In an ideal world, hell yeah, but resources are limited in game development, as with all things and I'd rather see the time go to the actual game, working on things there as opposed to making multiple free play endings.

It is, actually. More over it can be much more of an impact that way, than visually recrafting everything and the just dropping the player back in. And it is so (imo) precisely because you are not shown anything, but told. It feeds your imagination and can be much, much more comprehensive than visual presentation (which, in cases like this, are bound to be lacking in some way or another).

Personally: I feel very distracted and unsatisfied if I am just dropped back to the game after I've finished the MQ - there is no sense of accomplishing anything major (which is the point of the main quest). Like how Oblivion ended, I felt I just did one of the larger scale sidequestlines. And more over, after the MQ there really is no driving force anymore. Nothing to push you forward. There are no big decisions to be made that could affect the endgame, there is no reason to continue characterbuilding as there is no goal anymore, there is no point in going on since nothing really affects anything anymore and nothing has had an effect since nothing major has changed despite all the efforts that have been gone through. It's just pointless running around from there on. That's my view on it.

the one thing everyone is forgetting is its OBSIDIAN, so if they do DLC thatgoes after the ending... guess what! Its not goingto be another Broken Steel

If people finish the main quest and dont want to continue, they can start a new game.
There is no one putting a gun to their head and making them play on is there???
I dont agree that there should be a forced ending.

I think most people who want to play after the ending want to play in a canon environment for 'role playing' reasons. A non-canon post-main quest play ALA Fallout 2 probably wouldn't appeal to these folks.



If you can play after the main quest this generally means that the ending will have less impact than it could have had if it just ended. When it comes down to it, the Morrowind/Oblivion/Fallout 3 w/ Broken Steel endings weren't that good. You basically just got a pat on the back and went on your merry way with minimal changes to the game world. Fallout 3's ending was horribly executed, but I still prefer it over the Broken Steel ending because your character dying to bring clean water to the wasteland has more impact than "you defeated the Enclave, good job, now go fetch us some cameras."

Only if it's a good ending that doesn't feel like it's lacking.A definite ending would make the most sense for this game instead of just letting you continue on with nothing that changed.

One problem: Bethesda is in charge of DLC. *horrified gasp*

The "Real-Time Settler" mod would have been a fantastic "ending" to Fallout 3, and would make even more sense in NV given the faction system. So yeah, I'm all for an ending to the story, but I have the sneaky feeling at, just like in Fallout 3, I will want to play beyond the ending. And yeah, as a previous poster said, collecting cameras just doesn't cut it as a game extension. So if Bethesda are considering DLCs for New Vegas, give us one that open-ends the game in a way that makes sense, that changes things.

This isn't confirmed. All we knows is that Bethesda "has plans", which can mean many things. Best case scenario is that Bethesda plans to have it released, and does not have a big role in actually developing it.