Seems I got competition..
Anyway, while I would like to see ghoul mask I don't see how it would get from east coast to west coast.

This argument seems to go on without resolution, and will likely only intensify once the game comes out and people become angry that they can't play past the end of the main quest. There was a massive backlash against Bethesda in the forums when they did it, I still recall the dozens and dozens of threads about it, the endless complaints. I don't see why it will be any different this time except that this game will likely sell alot more copies and amplify the griping.

I'm confident we'll be able to mod our pay past it, so no harm done in the end. Complaining about it 107830172480347102834 times will change nothing.

http://prylzonen.se/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/residentevil5xbox360.jpg http://ii.alatest.com/product/600x400/1/b/Sony-PlayStation-3-0.jpg.

Yeah I feel for em, but thankfully I don't have to suffer their fate (no offense intended). As a hardcoe modder, I'm already jaded in my view towards playing these kinds of games on consoles - it would be less than half as fun for me without the ability to mod the game.

Folks like me that want to play past the ending of the main quest have two options:

1. Mod the game.
2. Pray the change their minds as Bethesda did, and undo the ending.

That's true. Wishful thinking on my part.

Oddly enough I find myself on both sides of this thread. I don't fault Obsidian at all for their choices...in fact, for the perks part I look forward to trying to customize my character even more then I did for Fallout: 3. In a way I like a game ending, like for the original Knights of the Old Republic...we had a plot, we made our way through the plot, the plot ended definitely, it worked great and happy times were had by many.

What made me not as happy about the ending of Fallout: 3 was mainly that I had put all the time and effort into the character only to watch him die (heroic character after all) and I had Fawkes, and he's immune to radiation...so why couldn't I ask him to go in? Another part was that I did want to continue to explore the wastes because, for me, I always feel like I HAVE to do the quests whenever I get them...OCD on my part which made wider exploration harder to do.

I was glad that Broken Steel was coming out and I could do that, but in the end it still left me empty...I felt as though nothing had really been accomplished and it wasn't as epic as I had hoped, something Obsidian addressed in their reasoning...because programming all of it would be crazy difficult. I could now ask Fawkes, however, but I would be judged not a hero, because somewhere, apparently, in the hero category it is written that you must commit suicide if at all possible to save people instead of choosing an option where you save people AND everyone lives also.

In the end I'll accept it for what it is, thankful that they at least are warning me that the end will be coming so I have a chance to go back and do things differently if I so choose.

Wow, didn't expect this to get so popular. I would just prefer an open ended game, I have changed my mind about the perks, as FO3 was WAY to easy with the amount of perks you could get and how powerful they were. I understand that an open ended game with so many different endings would make it very hard to script, but isn't there basically two endings? You're either hated or loved. Hero, or vilain. NCR or CL.

I would LOVE to have an open-ended game, but if it's just too hard to do, I can cope with it. I'm only being wistful here.

Shades of grey/gray friendo

http://www.reflectionsinthenight.com/grey_aliens_files/image002.jpg/http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/Color_icon_gray.svg/300px-Color_icon_gray.svg.png

...
I think I have a problem, can't stop using that hyperlink[insert link] thingy.

Uh, wut?

HaHa, we may not have mods, but you have to go through Steam. I don't have to worry about Steam.

:sadvaultboy: Oh wait, no mods. :brokencomputer: Damn I wish my laptop would play F:NV. Oh well I am not complaining, at least I still get to play F:NV mods or no mods. Better than no playing it at all. :fallout:

"Ahem' Wrong!

They are both Shades of grey. Neither of them is good nor bad, and there are FOUR endings dude, Including siding with house and being on your own.
And if this is like black isles endings, all your choices will have impact, it would be pretty hard to script all of those possibilities, it'd just be a crappy dumbed down ending if they did it.

It's funny how you assume the ending will be exactly like fallout 3's, you can be good and sided with ceasars legion, bad and sided with NCR.

The difference this time is that the ending will be good.

I can't believe the "must play after the ending" thing is such a huge deal to so many people when it's so easy to work around. :wacko: Not only that, but with the changes to the RPG mechanics there are more reasons than ever to start a new character and enjoy the character development process (one of the main reasons I play RPGs) again.

What's with all the assumptions about the ending(s)? Isn't it a little silly to pretend to know anything about it yet?

As much as I will miss never ending gameplay....the changes you spoke of and the "epic" nature of the ending conspire to make me quite alright with the concrete ending.

Plus it will give me an excuse, and motivation, to play through as polar opposite characters.

If skills and stats actually make a difference I can play it through more than twice and have different experiences for at least what....6 play throughs?

Something like that.

There is somthing to be said about an open ending. while the diffenative ending give closure to the story it also means that you cannot finish your characters story. all the lose ends will not have been tied up. True you could probably just do what you did in fallout 3 and save before completing the main quest line then get finish up but it takes away from the role playing experience to not do things in the order you think they should be done in. The first two fallout games were made so that you finished, got your big fancy ending and then could continue playing if you chose.

the point being, you can always quit after you finish the main questline if you want too. why force people to stop playing? esspecialy on a game that is as open as this one is going to be?

Well, you do have the full freedom to end the game when you please, or to not end it at all.

Your character's story ends when the main quest ends. Then you get to see the consequences of his/her actions on the wasteland. An endless roam after the ending does nothing to tie up loose ends and finish your character's story. It does the opposite, in fact.

How many loose ends are left to tie up by the ending of the main quest is a result of your leaving side quests unfinished or ignored.

Here's an idea. It would be a terrible thing to do, but I'm sure it would shut a lot of people up...

At the end, there would be a prompt that says "If you would like to continue playing, then your choices will be decided for you. You will make a nuetral ending no matter how your story ended, and you may keep playing, or you can know your ending and stop playing."

As it would be a bad thing to do, it would be a good thing to do also...

I'm sure a lot of you will just strike this down, but it's only an idea.

(By the way, I know that NCR and CL are both shades of gray, but as we all know, you can carve your own path, but NCR has more good karma objectives than CL does. DERP.)

Or... Players could save before the final quest and reload after seeing the ending.

The degree to which that is true remains to be seen, and having seen the NCR in Fallout 2 I'm not so certain that the NCR will be all that Good Karma

So! The player has battled most of the way through the story, usually to the start of the final climactic battle scene, or last epic mission, and the friendly NPCs are all excited, talking about how time is short, gotta save the world, building suspense, blah blah ...

and then the hero of the story is like:

"Whoops, I forgot to run some random errands, I'll be back in like, 2 weeks!" and peaces out.

- everybody left standing there, scratching their heads, the villains are checking their watches and trying to bum smokes.
the forces of darkness politely bide their time and wait for the player to get back.

the fate of the world hangs in the balance while the hero wanders off and does some random looting and gathers herbs or something.

THIS HAPPENS IN AMOST EVERY RPG I PLAY. DAMNEDEST THING

:lightbulb: Idea for an open ending... I have a cheap cost effective, lazy time saving way of showing the characters impact on the game world after beating the game. Basically after doing whatever you gotta do for the ending(saving the wasteland, etc.) you become so famous that all remaining of the 2200 Npcs become your adoring fans. :gun:

Well could say the same thing for post-final quest gameplay.
You've accomplished an impossible task and are now the hero or the villain of the world/area/town/cave/teapot and now what?
Go around with no might or power and have everyone go "Hey you saved the world, thanks man" "Well no problem, all in a days work, hey can I at least get a discount" *no response*.
After you've done that big final quest all of the sudden there's nothing more to go on.
Do some random small sidequests and go around exploring.
But what is there to look forward to?
Nothing.
You've done it.
You're the hero/villain.
...
...
...
...
etc.

Maybe the developers will do something like Bioware did with Mass Effect 2. if you decide to do random stuffs for long periods of time.

People die?
Which people?