An Open Letter to Bethesda on How to Fix the Fallout Franchise

Although to be completely fair, they could do a soft reboot or a hard reboot. Something among the lines of what they've done with the East Coast, but more dedicated and breaking all the bridges and doing a bit like TES, where each game is a different beast if its own due to having a vague canon. Problem is that the Fallout setting isn't fantasy, unless it was stuck in a cycle of everything resetting every 200-300 years. Now a hard reboot would be basically making a parallel universe. Fanfiction, maybe? but it doesn't mean that its writing should be worse by any matter. Good writers could pull it off. Forget the Master, Supermutants, Ghouls and Dogmeat. Make your OWN new world, Bethesda. Possibilities are endless.
Show us what you've got.
 
Not gonna happening.

For Bethesda, Fallout is summarized as follows: vaults, vault boy, BoS, SM and Nuka Cola.

Edit: oh yeah, pre war stuffs too. Let's set our timeline 200 years in the future, but never stop talking about the old world.
 
This, and I doubt heavily Bethesda would actually try things like this. The profit is in their mind, and to make a spinoff would require to be moneyproof investment.

The reason for thinking Bethesda as greedy is because of this.

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Hmmm... Have you actually posted it in the Beth forums? I mean, Bethesda won't ever look at it for sure. They don't pay attention even to their most loyal fans except when marketing is in play, but still. r/fallout being a good palce too.
 
Bethesda could realistically bring back the skills/perk dichotomy; let go of the player's hand and cut out essential characters and vibrant quests; snap back to a coherent and creative storyline that doesn't focus on Mutants-BOS-Enclave; and plot a plot that doesn't water down to 2 main choices and 4 big ones (and hopefully throw off anything with the word 'family' in it); return to standard dialogue, maybe a voiceless protag again, advance their AI more and creature variety; and give the players adequate modding tools to expand on the game.

Anything more than that is unlikely. Best to hope for the bigger errors to be fixed than to pine on the small stuff, really.
 
So basically treat Fallout like they treat TES. Hell, they were in a good streak for the Skyrim main quest. Civil wars are tricky. It wasn't "there are factions on and about a MacGuffin" that *totally* is what Fallout is about.
 
Most stories introduce some form of MacGuffin to progress plot. However I have observed that the stories that focus their plot on a further plot tend to do much better.

Think about a game like Mass Effect; in this game players are introduced to a potential and relatively "human" threat that is causing issues for everyone. As the player gets closer to their "enemy" they learn about a larger threat and that the "main" bad guy is simply a peon they control.

In a case like this the story can develop naturally and utilize "discovery" moments to guide player progression towards the over all enemy and theme. Even once the main threat has been identified the player must find a way to grapple with it since approaching the threat would be foolish and in most cases impossible.

At this climax of the story we can see some very interesting points develop, such as redirecting the player efforts from a "brute" force attempts to solve the issue to a much more cerebral adventure in order to accomplish their goal.

In Fallout 1 the player is sent off to get a MacGuffin, but in this case the MacGuffin is defined as something more than a whimsical object to progress the plot. In this case obtaining the Water Chip can have dire consequences for the ghouls of Necropolis. However the game allows the player to think their actions through and find a reasonable solution to prevent their population for dying out.

In this case the Water Chip is only a primer for the main threat, as we are all aware the main threat in this case is the Master and the Super Mutants trying to practice a rather extreme form of eugenics and genetic manipulation to achieve world peace.

Once again the progression changes from brute force attempts, (However in Fallout you can just go straight for it if you want to.) to something more cerebral that focuses on the player preparing for their end game encounter to achieve their goal. However Fallout differs greatly from most games since the characters and side quests typically paint a picture of the dire world they inhabit. A ever present reminder that life isn't so peachy, as well there are real struggles going on in even the more civilized locations. Plus Fallout engages the player to think outside the box a bit, to attempt to find different answers to otherwise simple questions, or in some cases bizarre ones.
 
Jogre said:
Says who?, Who is the ultimate decider on how badly something was handled?

I guess our only hope is hoping that BGS goes bankrupt, because an AAA Company having its paws on Fallout is about the worst thing that can happen to the series, if it's not willing to cater to the small niche of gamers the series once did.
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Which essentially leaves fans like me, who think New Vegas is the best of the bunch, totally screwed.
 
Ben Soto said:
Which essentially leaves fans like me, who think New Vegas is the best of the bunch, totally screwed.
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I mean, if hypothetically Bethesda did go bankrupt and Obsidian(Most likely to be interested in Fallout) acquired the license(Probably won't ever happen), then surely Obsidian would be constantly making games in the spirit/likeness of New Vegas. After all, they did make New Vegas.
 
It's high time the series is restarted in Europe. How many more games with Pip-Boys, Vault Boy, Nuka-Cola, Deathclaws, BoS, Vaults, the same looking robots and everything else?!

Go back a century (or two) and let's "reboot" the series with new iconic stuff. Each Elder Scrolls game has different everything with each new installment but Bethesda is just rehashing the same looking stuff that Fallout 1/2 introduced.

Changing how things "look" is not enough Bethesda...
 
Jogre said:
I mean, if hypothetically Bethesda did go bankrupt and Obsidian(Most likely to be interested in Fallout) acquired the license(Probably won't ever happen), then surely Obsidian would be constantly making games in the spirit/likeness of New Vegas. After all, they did make New Vegas.
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I highly doubt we'd get a proper follow-up to New Vegas. I'm extremely worried that if Obsidian gets their hands on the property in it's entirety, we're getting another isometric RPG. They seem to be doing well with those. The problem is that I don't care for the isometric gameplay. It was the weakest part of both Fallout 1 and 2 and I can't see them making it any better. That said, I'm fine with there being isometric games, so long as we have good FPSRPG entries to satisfy New Vegas fans like myself.

Just... Not Bethesda's. Fallout 4 was good, but it was not Fallout. It was Borderlands with a Fallout skin.
 
Ben Soto said:
I highly doubt we'd get a proper follow-up to New Vegas. I'm extremely worried that if Obsidian gets their hands on the property in it's entirety, we're getting another isometric RPG. They seem to be doing well with those.
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I disagree about the isometric issue, of course (about it being worrisome and rather having and FPS instead). But I don't believe they will ever get the chance again.

If they did however, rather than yet again making a post apoc story-FPS from Bethesda's scraps and leftovers (like with New Vegas), I'd rather they made it something like this:




Not just a slightly modified copy/paste design, but a new game. Smaller than Bethesda's stuff, if need be and resources are too limited. That's not a problem, it doesn't need to be 100+ hour long game.
 
Kohno said:
I disagree about the isometric issue, of course (about it being worrisome and rather having and FPS instead). But I don't believe they will ever get the chance again.

If they did however, rather than yet again making a post apoc story-FPS from Bethesda's scraps and leftovers (like with New Vegas), I'd rather they made it something like this:




Not just a slightly modified copy/paste design, but a new game. Smaller than Bethesda's stuff, if need be and resources are too limited. That's not a problem, it doesn't need to be 100+ hour long game.
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I mean, it's fine if you'd prefer an isometric game. I understand that's the prevailing consensus around here. I just think it's troubling to fans such as myself. It's the opposite problem that Bethesda has. I like much of their gameplay, but their RPG mechanics and their writing are both awful.
 
Ben Soto said:
It's the opposite problem that Bethesda has. I like much of their gameplay,
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Tbh, New Vegas's gameplay was absolutely terrible, doesn't matter as an Action-RPG or even a straight up shooter. New Vegas was some kind of a miracle made from Obsidian learning about the engine from zero and actually improving the shooting mechanics over Fallout 3's, and even then it was still terrible.

Also, Fallout 4's shooting mechanics was the way it was no thanks to Bethesda themselves, but thanks to id Software. But does id Software understands Fallout at all? The next FPSRPG hybrid would not have 'RPG' on them at all. It would be a full-fledged popamole shooter with absolutely zero RPG mechanic.

On the other hand, looking at Obsidian and considering Feargus wanted to make 'the next Skyrim', I guess we can say goodbye to another isometric Fallout games if they're gonna have any opportunity to make the next game.
 
I prefer the NV gameplay to the gameplay of 4. We talking about combat, right?

The 4's had all the chances of being superior, but of course, they had to FUCK UP everything by making the enemies be bullet sponges (they simple love this for some reason), crappy perks, withdrawal of all the rpg elements that NV at least tried to apply like DT/DR, special moves for melee/unarmed, ammo crafting, healing by time and ammo weight in hardcore mode* and the icing on the cake are those magic weapons that irritate me deeply, such as guns that shoot twice, at cost of one bullet.

At least it has a dedicated button for the grenades.

* I know they then implemented a hardcore mode that I did not get to test, but I already know for the concept that even the intention being good, is another Bethesda failure.

You can´t simply demand that in this mode you can only save in certain places. You can´t do that, that's not how it works. This is a Bethesda game, so it will suffer a CTD, sooner or later. The player can not be punished for the bugs that the game presents.
 
Cobra Commander said:
The 4's had all the chances of being superior, but of course, they had to FUCK UP everything by making the enemies be bullet sponges (they simple love this for some reason), crappy perks, withdrawal of all the rpg elements that NV at least tried to apply like DT/DR, special moves for melee/unarmed, ammo crafting, healing by time and ammo weight in hardcore mode* and the icing on the cake are those magic weapons that irritate me deeply, such as guns that shoot twice, at cost of one bullet.
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I really miss ammo crafting. Knowing to craft hand load rounds or Max-Charge cells was satisfying and even more so when dealing with tougher enemies. In fact when I was handling yet another bullet sponge in 4 (back when I was playing it), I kept instinctively hitting the key for switching ammo types.

On the point of bullet sponges, legendary enemies should go to hell. It's vexing to know that you can waste ammo on those things only for them to reach half health and inexplicably regenerate back to full. Plus it's baffling to find out that robots can mutate somehow. The game really does encourage stealth archery so that you can take out the legendaries first (or trigger their mutations to avoid it happening during the firefight).

It sucks how many stupid token RPG elements was tacked onto 4's combat and how many decent mechanics that NV brought in was taken out (especially since NV's mechanics would have been good to add onto 4's combat).
 
Actually, Fallout 4 is remarkably stable now, at least for me.
Fallout 4 feels a bit "crispier" when it comes to movement and hit detection and so on, a bit more fluid (more like a proper shooter than the rather weird feeling of the previous titles), but the perks and legendary mods and legendary enemies completely fuck up everything. The removal of damage threshold and ammo types didn't help, either. The problem is that most of the weapons are more or less useless as soon as you find some more special weapons. Overseer's Guardian is completely overpowered and will rape everything in its path, and it makes every other weapon obsolete (unless you find it with the double damage enchantment). It even makes automatic weapons pointless because why waste ammo when you can one-shot-kill everything, anyway?
The perks that just pile on more damage to the point where you again do double damage and stuff are also just boring.
While Fallout 4 tries to bring in the ammo types by using magic receivers and mods, the whole system is just not really useful at all. It would have been great to have switchable ammo types and DT ratings and maybe even a button for single/auto fire (to go full STALKER combat, which was pretty damn good imo), but no, it's just bland.
 
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