Fallout 3's "200 endings"

[Madbringer]

Keep in mind you get this stuff served by the Prince of Deceit. Who the hell knows what's true and what's kekshit with these people.

 

[Jack The Knife]

Keep in mind you get this stuff served by the Prince of Deceit. Who the hell knows what's true and what's kekshit with these people.

Just remember this easy rule of thumb when interpreting Bethesdas hype:
Whatever seems good is a lie, and whatever seems like shait is true.

 

[Voice Of Reason]

keep in mind that the primary goal of this PR message would be not only to inform about the number of endings (which is quite meaningless, and as we see now, unimpressive) but to demonstrate how fast the game is developing etc.

so i'm pretty sure that they never checked the number of endings in fallout 1 and 2.

 

[Brother None]

Whatever seems good is a lie, and whatever seems like shait is true.

I don't like that approach much.

keep in mind that the primary goal of this PR message would be not only to inform about the number of endings (which is quite meaningless, and as we see now, unimpressive) but to demonstrate how fast the game is developing etc.

so i'm pretty sure that they never checked the number of endings in fallout 1 and 2.

Probably, yes. It was "the game is finished" and "it's twice as big now" that were supposed to resound.

They made a misstep, though, and inexplicably the message that got through everywhere was "200 endings!"

Which sucks, because people don't actually want 200 endings. It's not just bad PR in the sense that people will be disappointed when it turns out to be slightly different, it's also bad PR when you consider most of the Bethesda target audience are amongst those gamers that don't finish games anymore, let alone more than once.

If you have 2/3 ending cutscenes, preferably of high quality, you can lure them into replaying. Nobody is going to actually replay a game 200 times, which makes Destructoid's angle particularly silly.

On top of that, the Xbox gamers will now really worry about their achievements and how much work they'll have to do for 'em.

So 200 endings wasn't part of their PR, they miscommunicated and it came back to bite them in the ass.

Now we'll wait with bated breath for Bethesda to post a correction...oh wait, they never post corrections outside of the PR schedule. Silly me.

 

[gc051360]

^ I think the jump from 12 to 200 was part of their PR. When Bethesda hypes, they like to go way overboard. That's why you got a lot of "You will never need another game" type reviews for Oblivion.

The sad thing is, this seems to be a similar type of end cutscene as the original, but Bethesda's target audience, will think it's something new and different.

 

[Brother None]

Well, it's a complex way to deal with ending cinematics. I can't think of anyone other than Troika to take it up after the Fallouts.

But no matter the silly PR, it's a good sign that Bethesda is taking it up. Even if it's limited to a few key choices, it is a sure sign of some level of choice and consequence. Which is

 

[Morbus]

The main concern seems to be "how can I get all of the achievements now omg!!!".

Fucking stupid assclowns

Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm gonna regret saying that), but doesnt FO3 use the engine to render the 'cutscences' in 3d rather than actual pre-rendered movie files. If so then each alternate 'ending' or permutation could be quite easily be scripted for the engine to just render a different animation and then just play it all in the correct order with the relavent voice over.

So the endings will basicaly be the same style as FO1/FO2 but have a 3D animation for each "Location Epilogue" instead of a still slide. I think this will be a nice touch, but it's kind of just an obvious next step if you are using a 3d engine rather than a sprite based engine.

But like the other are saying to get to 200 hundred differnt variations you onyl need to have two outcomes for each location if you have eight town locations.

Gamebryi supports pre-rendered cutscenes, and both Morrowind and Oblivion used them. It's unliked that Fallout 3 will render the cutscenes in the engine for many different reasons. First of all, Bethesda seems to like the "halflife curse" somehow. If you look at Morrowind and Oblivin, the game is wholy first person and you never leave that (like Stalker, for example, where the camera goes away to show you something else). Secondly, and possibly the most important point, rendering cutscenes in the way Fallout organized them is just too much and stupid slow weak consoles and most computers wouldn't be able to handle the pressure that well. Don't forget you have to load a lot more things to render the cutscenes. And loading different areas to show the different slides would be impossible.

 

[Sander]

If that's how they're counting endings, how was 12 ever a viable option? This makes no sense.

One 3-way choice, two 2-way choices makes for 12 different permutations.

Also, 8 decisions make for 256 endings, not 255 endings. You can represent 256 different items with 8 choices. The '-1' is only supposed to be there when you're counting from 0 to 255 (ie. 256 different items).
Funny that an AI programmer gets that wrong.
His argument for it was that the option where they're all 'false' isn't an option, which seems kind of ridiculous because it'd be akin to saying that it isn't an option to get the evil ending for all the towns in Fallout.

 

[Madbringer]

Keep in mind you get this stuff served by the Prince of Deceit. Who the hell knows what's true and what's kekshit with these people.

Just remember this easy rule of thumb when interpreting Bethesdas hype:
Whatever seems good is a lie, and whatever seems like shait is true.

Nah man. We think like that, we're no better than them "OBLIVION ROCKED, THAT MEANS FALLOUT 3 WILL ROCK" dudes.

Rational analysis of what we see and read, and pulling the meat out of that, using it as the base point of opinion building. They do get some things right, let's not succumb into drooling rage mode, it's pointless and ultimately, it destroys our (community as a whole) credibility. And that gives ammo to those fanboy clowns who like nothing better than to flame people who have a problem with the Game of the Year 2008.

 

[ivpiter]

Glad to see the ending structure move closer to Fallout... that being said...

This does seem to be getting a mixed reaction on the big sites and the Big T's vague comments are causing some PR back-fire.

BN is right, had Todd just said, "We're doing it like Fallout" there would be alot less grief all the way around.

So far I see two major groups of irked players over on the other sites:

<blockquote>1. X-Box Achievments!?!?!??! oh noes, 200 endings I'll never get them all.

2. 200 endings, WTF, looks like I'll miss 199...</blockquote>
I suspect Pete will come along today or tomorrow and clarify Todd and espically to appease the X-Box fanatics achievment achievement point concerns.

 

[Brother None]

Also, 8 decisions make for 256 endings, not 255 endings. You can represent 256 different items with 8 choices. The '-1' is only supposed to be there when you're counting from 0 to 255 (ie. 256 different items).
Funny that an AI programmer gets that wrong.
His argument for it was that the option where they're all 'false' isn't an option, which seems kind of ridiculous because it'd be akin to saying that it isn't an option to get the evil ending for all the towns in Fallout.

Eh, I don't think he was actually talking about Fallout 3, just showing the forumites how this kind of calculating works by example of an ice cream parlor, where indeed all = false is impossible.

 

[Sander]

Eh, I don't think he was actually talking about Fallout 3, just showing the forumites how this kind of calculating works by example of an ice cream parlor, where indeed all = false is impossible.

Yer, but then he's just adding to the confusion by giving that example.

 

[Neptune]

Well this sounds somewhat mroe promising, but did they mention how detailed each ending was? For all we know these "200 Endings" could be as 'detailed' as just having someone wear a different color shirt. Now fully animated, interchangable cut scenes (Or better yet, how about different gameplay per ending) would immediatly snag me, but it just doesn't seem that way.

This, to me anyway, sunds like a small piece of 'hopeful' news in an otherwise sea of shit.

 

[Per]

Also, 8 decisions make for 256 endings, not 255 endings. You can represent 256 different items with 8 choices. The '-1' is only supposed to be there when you're counting from 0 to 255 (ie. 256 different items).
Funny that an AI programmer gets that wrong.
His argument for it was that the option where they're all 'false' isn't an option, which seems kind of ridiculous because it'd be akin to saying that it isn't an option to get the evil ending for all the towns in Fallout.

When I calculated the number of permutations for Fo1-2, I didn't count "no ending" as an ending. So, for instance, the single Myron ending in Fo2, which you may not get, doesn't contribute to the number of permutations, just like the single fixed ending for Arroyo doesn't. If you do count "no ending" as an ending, the number of permutations becomes much greater, but I agree it's most likely this guy was just firing something off and it's not indicative of how they're counting at Bethesda. But what if it is?

 

[Briosafreak]

Yo Per:

Seriously, though: there are discrepancies between my formulation of the ice-cream-parlor problem, and the question of how the Fallout 3 endings work. They're intentionally not exact parallels.

My goal is simply to encourage mathematical thinking about the information you've got already.

 

[Touquet]

BTW, In the same article Todd Howard come back on the artifical dog (vyberdog) who can be sen into combat or recon and the possibility to have only ONE NPC. More NPC will make the game too complex to manage... Wow Bethesda, Go Go Go

So many ending possible but only one NPC, unbelievable

 

[Per]

So if you had done this or not this, you’d get this other tweak to the ending. And we kept doing that. And you know even just two weeks ago someone had this idea, “Oh we should add this idea to the ending” (sorry I’m not going to spoil what that is). And I said, “oh that’s a genius idea, we have to do that.” But then it became, “oh, but there’s four versions of that.” So i was like, “okay there’s like four different versions of that part,” and that multiplies by, at the time we were at about 60 endings…so now there’s four versions of that, so now there are around 240 versions.”

Reading this makes me think he's not just talking about slides, although those would be a part of it. For instance, you could have a group photo of surviving NPCs. Or whether a particular NPC is alive or not could be reflected by inclusion in a picture or animation that is otherwise the same and has the same voiceover. You could get a lot of variations that way with very little work. Or he's talking about something that'll blow our minds. It seems they're just not telling us enough to draw conclusions, mathematical or otherwise.

Edit: Which doesn't mean their goal isn't to confuse people about the meaningfulness of the number 240.

Alsoedit: Wtf, lasercat?

 

[Sander]

I think people are jumping to the conclusion of movies or slideshows just a weeeee bit too quickly.

 

[Brother Mon]

I think people are jumping to the conclusion of movies or slideshows just a weeeee bit too quickly.

Maybe someone bought the jump-to-conclusions-mat

Sorry, I just had to.

 

[Dracon M'Alkir]

Ending #231: You have achieved the rank of toliet expert. Your massively obsessive habits of slurping the filthy green waters have made you this.
Ending #232: You have achieved the rank of autonuclear specialist. Your intent on blowing up almost every single car in the game has made you this.
Ending #233: You have achieved the rank of headshot expert. Your persistence to aiming for the head and decapitating everyone and anyone has made you this.
Ending #234: You have achieved rank of dark humor specialist. Your laughter at the decapitated talking head has made you this.
Ending #235: You have achieved the rank of [censored]. Your enjoyment of this game and your cash votes have made you this.

/sigh