Atomic Postman
Vault Archives Overseer
This originally started out as a wishlist of minor changes to make Fallout 4 better in my own eyes, but ended up spiraling out of control into a pretty major overhaul. I wrote this with the intention of just getting the tornado of ideas and fixes out of my head and into written (or rather, typed) words. I don't particularly care if you read it or not, but I just wanted to put it down and put it out.
Anyway, for your reading pleasure (Or not) here it is: Fallout 4, my way.
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The Introduction and Player Character
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Where to begin. Well, the start might be a good place.
First off, let's scrap all the military veteran/lawyer Sanctuary Hills character stuff, including the voiced protagonist and the baby. Vault 111 and the pre-war backstory can stay, but are significantly altered. I'll get on to that.
Okay, so our introduction begins similarly to the first Fallout 4 trailer: A suburban house, post-war. We get flashes back to October 22, 2077 as a family sits comfortably in the living room with an overture of the Ink Spots. As the camera pans through the house, we see panic rise. Cups spilt. Bags being packed. But it's too late, and a flash reduces the family into nothing as the song stops, and we're left with a silent ruin. Cut to black.
Ron Perlman.
We get the generic introduction. 21st century resource scarcity led to conflict, yadda yadda, tribes, settlements, armies all rose, forming a new society carved from the ashes of the old, yadda yadda. Towards the end we get a brief introduction to our player set-up. Scars of the war have not yet faded, lights of the old world still flicker across the wastes but are soon to fade etc. One such remnant of the past is Vault 111, where the residents were placed into quiet, cryogenic slumber, intended to be preserved for future generations to discover, but time has not been kind to the vault, as systems have failed, lights flickering and fading away, the sleeping chambers have become silent tombs, one by one. You are the sole survivor of Vault 111, kept in blissful sleep for over two hundred years, unaware of the world above you and the decay around you. But now, time is about to catch up with Vault 111.
We get a cold (heh) opening as the player awakens and stumbles out of the cryogenic pod. Character creation would likely be after the intro cutscene but prior to waking up. The player is greeted by an old, pre-recorded introductory tutorial that sounds like a jolly 50's TV commercial. The recording guides the player through the Vault as they discover the remains of the other pod residents and the vault staff, both groups reduced to skeletal remains. The recording was intended to inform and welcome the residents after wake up, but now only serves to give the player a basic idea of their background and what's going on. There's some light combat with radroaches and other such vermin as the player makes their escape through the vault, following the voice of the recording.It's through this recording that we get the basic set up for our character motivation: The Institute. We're told several times that Vault 111 is the result of a very productive partnership between Vault-Tec and CIT, and that for more information, residents should head there. This plotline is also set up by data logs and terminals found scattered around the Vault, which give a few more details on the Vault-Tec/CIT partnership and the technology of the Vault itself, and of course some logs about what happened to the staff after the war.
As the player reaches the end of their escape, and begins their elevator based ascent into the Wasteland, they're sent off by the recording: "You prepared, and now you're here! Welcome to the future!".
As the player's eyes adjust, and the musical overture begins to settle, the player is given their main quest:
"For More Information..."
-FIND THE INSTITUTE
-CIT has all the information on Vault 111 and its residents, including you. Find it.
And that's it. No forced backstory/character, no family, no voiced protagonist. A simple objective/overarching goal that will lead the player into the greater story within the Wasteland. From here, the player is free to go wherever they wish (Although some areas are much, much more dangerous than others) as their only path is to find the Institute, which will always lead them to a few eventual locations, but they can start their journey from anywhere.
In terms of main story, the first half would be a fairly simple tale of chasing around the Wasteland looking for a way to get into the Institute, and getting tangled in all sorts of politics and issues with the various factions of the Commonwealth. The player would become more central to the story as they become an object of interest to the Institute due ot their pure Pre-War genes, and there'd probably something related to Synths too. Eventually the plot would boil down to the factional conflict between the Railroad, The Brotherhood and the Institute (In my version, the Minutemen are just a fancy mercenary group that are closer to the Companions in Skyrim rather than a full faction) with the player acting as an agent of change. You'd get a classic ending slide showing the results of your choices at each settlement narrated by Ron Perlman. The Synths, no matter what ending, would be absolutely contained to this one game. With the Railroad, the Commonwealth becomes a Synth safe-haven, with the Brotherhood the Synths are captured, destroyed and the information and technology related to them safely locked away in Brotherhood archives for safe keeping. With the Institute, the Synths act as a personal work/slave force for their experiments and machinations, and are under full control.
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Character Building: Skills and Perks
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Gameplay wise, I'd make a return of skills, but they're a little more specialized. SPECIAL would be back to the old system but with bobbleheads and cybernetics being the only way to gain additional points.
The layout of the skill/SPECIAL would be inspired by the current Fallout 4 tree, in that it'd be stylized and interesting to look at with the whole Vault-Tec theme. I'm unsure as to whether I'd seperate or merge the perk/skill trees with SPECIAL as the roots at the top to create an intertwining, sprawling tree (Not literal). That might make it unnecessarily convoluted, so for now I'm sticking with two seperate menus.
Skills have been revised somewhat so that it allows players to diversify and specialize more, creating more distinct character skill sets. It always bothered me that my character being good with computers also meant he was a boffin at nuclear physics and chemistry, and the like. So this should fix that. With power armor and crafting taking a bigger step forward in the gameplay department, I also decided to account for them when looking at the skill system.
Combat:
-Small Guns
-Big Guns
-Melee
-Unarmed
-Energy Weapons
-Explosives
Technology:
-Mechanic (Repair, Power Armor, Crafting)
-Science (Physics, Chemistry, Biology. etc. Used for dialogue, recipes, crafting, settlement building)
-Computing (Terminals,Robots)
-Lockpicking
Wasteland:
-Outdoorsman (Survival from New Vegas)
-Speech
-Barter
-Sneak
It may seem asif I forgot medicine, but I didn't. Instead I decided to split it between Outdoorsman and Science. For example, stuff like how to mend a broken arm or remove a bullet from a wound are now under Outdoorsman, but stuff like how your kidney works, medical diagnosis and diseases are under Science.
Skill checks from New Vegas are back in full force for every skill apart from Speech and Barter. Speech and Barter run on the Fallout 1/2/3 system of percentage based checks. Your skill level and perks influence the percentage outcome more than they did in Fallout 3 though, so you won't be save/reloading nearly as much. On "Survival" difficulty your percentage for speech/barter drops by 8% every time you reload.
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Power Armor
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Now, onto Power Armor. I don't know about anyone else, but I loved the way Power Armor itself was done in Fallout 4, but not the role it had in gameplay.
Power Armor, fundamentally, is the same as it is in Fallout 4 by default. It's like a vehicle that you can customize and modify (With the mechanic skill). However in my version of Fallout 4, only the T-45 requires fusion cores. Every other power armor runs infinitely. The catch is that much like 3 and New Vegas, PA requires training, and it's not very easily found at all.
Power Armor isn't covering the entire wasteland. The player can find the odd armor piece in sensical areas, if they're really lucky or they fight their way through some of the most difficult areas in the game, they can find full suits that are old and in disrepair, but in one piece. They're not insanely hard to find, but they're still rare enough that finding a suit is a highly rewarding.Getting training is even rarer, though. Even finding it on the body of a Brotherhood Knight would require 50 mechanic to even crack open.
Power Armor also has it's downsides: It's slow, lowering your agility and movement speed. You literally can't fit into some areas, and some settlements don't like people who wear it. You also can't lockpick, hack, craft or use a campfire whilst wearing it and your reload speed with small guns is reduced, as is your aim with handguns. It is tough and strong as hell though, very useful for those high level areas.
There'd be plenty of variants and customization elements, for instance a T-45d model helmet is slightly different to that of a T-45a in aesthetics and also some areas of performance.
In terms of suits, however, there'd still only be four main suits, and they'd be in the following order from most powerful to least. Same goes for most rare to least.
X-01 >T-51 >T-48 > T-45
"T-48" is what is currently named "T-60" in Fallout 4. To me, it makes absolutely no sense. T-51 is the pinnacle of pre-war power armor and that is that. T-60 has obvious similarities with the T-45. Why would the U.S Army drop one design for several iterations, and then suddenly go back to it?
In my version of Fallout 4, the T-48 is the bridge between the T-45 and the T-51. It's got the general design model of the T-45, but with the added mobility, armor and of course the energy reactor of the T-51.
Now, X-01. I like the name, actually. Advanced Power Armor was always so vague, and for a force like the Enclave it wasn't very uniform. X-01 fits with the naming theme, but it's still distinctly seperate. And yeah, in my Fallout 4 the X-01 is definitely Enclave. You know it is, too.
Because there's only one suit.
Picture this, you fight your way into an Old World army bunker in one of the most deadly areas on the entire map. You've had to hack, lockpick and mechanic your way through various systems to reach an old rusty elevator. You take the elevator and descend into darkness. Total silence and a black void await beyond the elevator as you go down. Suddenly, music. A distorted, whining rendition of the star spangled banner begins to play out of old speakers as you touch down at the bottom floor of the bunker, but the gate blocking you from stepping off the elevator hasn't opened yet. The room you're in is vast, but cloaked in darkness.
Suddenly, a spotlight clicks on. In the center of the room a skeleton sits upright, wrapped in the flag of the Old World like it's a cloak. A keycard clutched in it's hand. Suddenly, another spotlight clicks on. Behind the skeleton, a tall protective case, glowing with electronic locks and protective systems stands. Inside is a suit of X-01 Enclave issued Power Armor.
The keycard in the hand of the skeleton is only one of four required to crack open the case and get the armor, the others are scattered in some pretty dangerous and obscure places. Thus triggers the scavenger hunt to get the best power armor in the game.
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Survival and Crafting
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Crafting in Fallout 4 is an interesting, and thematically fitting, direction to take Fallout in. The obvious influences from the recent successes of the "survivalcraft" genre are a little too strong for me in default Fallout 4 however, and I feel that they detract from both the RPG and the casual open world experience all the same, and make the game chore-ish and samey. So I chose to revise those elements considerably also.
First off, guns. Fallout 4 sucks at them. There's not much variety. So, as a start I'd add in all the base guns in New Vegas and Fallout 3(i.e not the unique/DLC weapons) minus all the cowboy guns (357., Lever Actions etc.) and add in a few classic Fallout weapons for good measure (the AK-112, the Pulse weapons). Pipe Weapons would take more design inspiration from Metro 2033 rather than IKEA.
In terms of modifications, whilst cool the "TURN IT INTO WHATEVER YOU WAAANT!!!" thing loses it's novelty after a while after it removes most of the chararcter or RPG-ness of guns and you end up min-maxing your guns, essentially. So I'd tone down the customization of weapons just a little. Modifications should be just that, modifications, not total reconstructions of the gun. That stuff should be reserved for pipe weapons. For instance, you can turn a Laser Pistol into an automatic with a night vision scope, but it's still a pistol at it's best.
The key is that there should still be a hierarchy of weapons. A rifle you get in the early areas of the game should not be able to compete with a higher rifle type you find in a higher level area.
Ammo crafting and campfires also make a return. As well as craftable weapons like time bombs and nuka grenades.
Building/Settlements is an absolute chore in vanilla Fallout 4 and Preston Garvey is the bane of all Fallout 4 players as a result, in this version of Fallout 4 the settlement stuff is restricted to one homestead, sort of.
There'd be a side-quest line to assist a group of settlers who have arrived in the Commonwealth settle down. Here you'd have a more developed version of the settlement system seen in Fallout 4, with more permanency and some dedicated quests about getting the place up and running. Much like AC3 you'd find characters around the Wasteland who you could send to Sanctuary to help out. It'd be less shallow and more developed with actual characters other than just "Settler". As expected, you get different ending slides depending on how much you build the settlement up and who you choose to lead it.
Still, if that's not your style you can still build your own home at various places across the Wasteland, but it'd be less developed than the homestead and you wouldn't be able to do stuff like set up shops or establish Brahmin routes. It'd be your own personally designed slice of heaven just for you and your companions.
Survival Mode as it is in Fallout 4 would be implemented, but with two key differences : The first being that it would be an add-on to difficulty, rather than a difficulty on it's own (ala hardcore mode), so whether you and your enemies would be bullet sponges or glass figures would be dependent on your difficulty scaling independent of survival features. The second would be that saving would be dependent on beds AND campfires, so your character doesn't have to be narcoleptic.
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The Commonwealth: Factions
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Bethesda made an improvement on factions from Fallout 3, but that's not saying much. Their portrayal of the Brotherhood was much, much better and having a choice of factions was a welcome improvement, but they still managed to not pull it off brilliantly.
Since they're a Fallout regular and they were quite prominent in this game, I'll start with the Brotherhood of Steel.
The Brotherhood
If you ask most Brotherhood members about their history, they'll tell you that their origins lie in the "Distant West" or "Far West" on the other side of the World, and then they'll start talking about Lyons.
The history of my BoS is similar to the one in current Fo4, in my version both Sarah and Elder Lyons are dead and young Maxon took the reigns, but their reasons for coming to the Commonwealth are somewhat different. They're on a "Great Crusade" to chase down the Super-Mutant horde they started fighting so long ago, and has since migrated northward to the Commonwealth. As part of this Great Crusade, they're also claiming the Commonwealth for all the legendary, and dangerous, technologies it is said to have, and they are vowing to civilize it, just as they did with the Capital Wasteland.
This gives them a righteous cause that they all feverishly believe in, rather than simply wishing to contain and destroy technology almost routinely. The D.C Chapter of the Brotherhood has become radicalized, they're the Brotherhood turned up to 11. They're a Brotherhood who've got their hands on an Enclave military complex worth of technology and weapons, under the leadership of a vigorous young man who's dedicated to living up to his mythic legacy. Very 40k-esque.
Their task in the Commonwealth is to essentially colonize it, cleaning out the Super-Muties, claiming all the technology and setting up a small chapter.
The ranks/heirarchy of the Brotherhood and the way they work in gameplay would be as follows:
Elder - Maxson
High Paladin - T-51b - There's only one High Paladin, Vargas (Fallout 3), and he's on the Prydwen
Paladin - T-48 - Gatling Lasers, Miniguns, Rocket Launchers, Super-Sledges (of the NV/3 variety) - Rarely seen on the battlefield. Tough.
Knight - T-45 -Laser/Plasma Rifles, Heavy Machine Guns - pretty common on the battlefield.
Squire - Wear the "scribe" clothing in vanilla Fallout 4, use assault rifles and shotguns.They're essentially the cannon fodder and errand boys for the knights. They're typically young. I considered having them be children on the battlefield, but decided against it.
Scribes - Book worms on the Prydwen, wear classic red robes.
The Railroad
The Railroad in my version of Fallout 4 are far more widespread, and they help human slaves as well as Synths. They've still got the Man From UNCLE styled spy theme kinda going on, but they use really dirty guerilla tactics. Bombings, sabotage, assassinations etc. to get their way. I'm not particularly interested in delving into the main plot, so I'll leave it at that for them.
The Institute
That Vault-Tec/CIT partnership went both ways. CIT helped Vault-Tec with the technology for Vault 111, and in return Vault-Tec built them a special underground complex of their own design, which they have since expanded and refurbished. Institute aesthetics are more scholarly/library esque then straight up Star-Trek.
If the player searches deep enough, they can find logs detailing the severe rivalry between CIT, West-Tek and Big Mountain. CIT was falling behind in this rivalry, and as a result a secret group was formed dedicated to stealing information/technology from their competitors. Shortly before the war, an insider at Big MT managed to leak huge amounts of information to the Institute. They have since had time to work on and develop these technologies without the insanity of Big Mountain and the total destruction experienced by West Tek. They're finally in the lead.
The Minutemen
In my Fallout 4, they're just a fancy mercenary group that dress nicely and have a theme. They're joinable and act like a Warrior's Guild in TES games, and take action against various raider groups. If you don't join them, it's possible to end up on the wrong side of their gun if you piss the wrong people off. They've got a long standing conflict with Libertalia.
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Commonwealth: Raiders
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Why, oh why, do Bethesda treat people like animals?
By that, I mean that Bethesda seems to treat Raiders like generic hostile animals in the wilderness. All identical, all utterly savage, dumb with no identity of their own. New Vegas got it right by giving each Raider group a tribal identity, even if it was only name deep. Here are some basic ideas for raiders/settlements, some entirely new, others reworked.
Forgemasters
Based off of the Forge raiders in vanilla, who were almost interesting. They're hardcore raiders who live inside an Old World forge. They worship the Forge and have their own cooky cult religion based around it, with some pretty gnarly entry ceremonies. They're damn good at making armor, though. Which is why they're safe from other raider groups, as they trade and sell armor and weapons in exchange for food, water and protection from the other gangs/tribes. They're aggressive, but not hostile, to the player when they first arrive, but are VERY easily provoked. Their armor is metal and of high quality, they almost look like something from the Elder Scrolls had a baby with the Warboys from Mad Max. They use Flamers, Shiskebabs and Forge-axes. If the player manages not to piss them off enough to speak to their leader, they can learn he came from The Pitt, and brought his knowledge of steeling and forgery with him.
Blue Devils
Once, they were a mighty raider tribe up to the far north in Nova (Nova Scotia.) They were one of several tribes that split the territory, until tensions exploded and all out war came between the tribes, and the Blue Devils were ganged up upon by two united raider groups. The Blue Devils were shattered and chased southward, where they've ended up in the Commonwealth. They're disorganized, scattered, but still great in numbers and deadly. They'll be a real threat if, or when, they get their shit together. Still, what's more worrisome is the idea that whatever broke them apart and chased them away might come south to finish the job. The raider warzone that's been tearing up the north moving into the Commonwealth would just be on the icing on the cake for the troubles plaguing the wasteland. The Blue Devils are identified by their bright blue tattered ponchos/capes, which are the reason for their namesake. They're hostile to the player on sight.
Libertalia
Based on the already existing settlement, but expanded. A water-world esque flotilla with a combat arena at the center (The Combat Zone) where high-risk, high-reward gladiator matches are held, which the player can participate in. Part Thorn, part Thunderdome. Libertalia is a fishing settlement, other than the gladiator match. Libertalia is a bit of a grey area as although it's home to all sorts of scum and villainy, and sends out raiding parties into the Wasteland, they're accepted by places like Diamond City as they also trade in fish and sea-based goods. Libertalia essentially works as a free city, where the only law is not to kill eachother. Even then, you're excused most of the time. The residents refer to themselves as "Freemen" but the rest of the Wastes refers to them as "Scoundrels". The player is neutral to Libertalia when they arrive at the city, even if they're made to feel a little unwelcome by the locals. They can earn respect in the arena, however.
There's quite a few raider groups in the Commonwealth, and not all of them are big enough to have their own detailed backstories, so here's a few names to stick on various raider gangs:
-Road Wolves
-Wildmen
-Dead-Eyes
-The Unseen
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Finishing Touches
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In general, I'd have a lot more locations around the map that aren't just shoot and loot dungeons that loop back to the beginning. Labrynths, puzzles, old world obstacles/secrets.
The visual theme would be one of overgrowth, but that's already pretty much present in the game.
In terms of writing, there would be themes on the depths of humanity, with human purists like the Brotherhood having brainwashed soliders who are less human than the Synths they're trying to kill etc. All that good Blade Runner esque stuff.
There'd also be a light theme of lost memory and the forgetting of the past/old world, reflected in the Old World growing ever distant with only a few flickering hold outs remaining, this would tie in with the player's pre-war backstory and plot of amnesia/search for answers.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with how this "design document" has turned out. I think I've successfully made a step forward for the Fallout formula without dropping any of the key elements (in my opinion) whilst also not scrapping everything in Fallout 4 as is. It's a shame nobody but me is gonna read this, but oh well.
Anyway, for your reading pleasure (Or not) here it is: Fallout 4, my way.
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The Introduction and Player Character
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Where to begin. Well, the start might be a good place.
First off, let's scrap all the military veteran/lawyer Sanctuary Hills character stuff, including the voiced protagonist and the baby. Vault 111 and the pre-war backstory can stay, but are significantly altered. I'll get on to that.
Okay, so our introduction begins similarly to the first Fallout 4 trailer: A suburban house, post-war. We get flashes back to October 22, 2077 as a family sits comfortably in the living room with an overture of the Ink Spots. As the camera pans through the house, we see panic rise. Cups spilt. Bags being packed. But it's too late, and a flash reduces the family into nothing as the song stops, and we're left with a silent ruin. Cut to black.
Ron Perlman.
We get the generic introduction. 21st century resource scarcity led to conflict, yadda yadda, tribes, settlements, armies all rose, forming a new society carved from the ashes of the old, yadda yadda. Towards the end we get a brief introduction to our player set-up. Scars of the war have not yet faded, lights of the old world still flicker across the wastes but are soon to fade etc. One such remnant of the past is Vault 111, where the residents were placed into quiet, cryogenic slumber, intended to be preserved for future generations to discover, but time has not been kind to the vault, as systems have failed, lights flickering and fading away, the sleeping chambers have become silent tombs, one by one. You are the sole survivor of Vault 111, kept in blissful sleep for over two hundred years, unaware of the world above you and the decay around you. But now, time is about to catch up with Vault 111.
We get a cold (heh) opening as the player awakens and stumbles out of the cryogenic pod. Character creation would likely be after the intro cutscene but prior to waking up. The player is greeted by an old, pre-recorded introductory tutorial that sounds like a jolly 50's TV commercial. The recording guides the player through the Vault as they discover the remains of the other pod residents and the vault staff, both groups reduced to skeletal remains. The recording was intended to inform and welcome the residents after wake up, but now only serves to give the player a basic idea of their background and what's going on. There's some light combat with radroaches and other such vermin as the player makes their escape through the vault, following the voice of the recording.It's through this recording that we get the basic set up for our character motivation: The Institute. We're told several times that Vault 111 is the result of a very productive partnership between Vault-Tec and CIT, and that for more information, residents should head there. This plotline is also set up by data logs and terminals found scattered around the Vault, which give a few more details on the Vault-Tec/CIT partnership and the technology of the Vault itself, and of course some logs about what happened to the staff after the war.
As the player reaches the end of their escape, and begins their elevator based ascent into the Wasteland, they're sent off by the recording: "You prepared, and now you're here! Welcome to the future!".
As the player's eyes adjust, and the musical overture begins to settle, the player is given their main quest:
"For More Information..."
-FIND THE INSTITUTE
-CIT has all the information on Vault 111 and its residents, including you. Find it.
And that's it. No forced backstory/character, no family, no voiced protagonist. A simple objective/overarching goal that will lead the player into the greater story within the Wasteland. From here, the player is free to go wherever they wish (Although some areas are much, much more dangerous than others) as their only path is to find the Institute, which will always lead them to a few eventual locations, but they can start their journey from anywhere.
In terms of main story, the first half would be a fairly simple tale of chasing around the Wasteland looking for a way to get into the Institute, and getting tangled in all sorts of politics and issues with the various factions of the Commonwealth. The player would become more central to the story as they become an object of interest to the Institute due ot their pure Pre-War genes, and there'd probably something related to Synths too. Eventually the plot would boil down to the factional conflict between the Railroad, The Brotherhood and the Institute (In my version, the Minutemen are just a fancy mercenary group that are closer to the Companions in Skyrim rather than a full faction) with the player acting as an agent of change. You'd get a classic ending slide showing the results of your choices at each settlement narrated by Ron Perlman. The Synths, no matter what ending, would be absolutely contained to this one game. With the Railroad, the Commonwealth becomes a Synth safe-haven, with the Brotherhood the Synths are captured, destroyed and the information and technology related to them safely locked away in Brotherhood archives for safe keeping. With the Institute, the Synths act as a personal work/slave force for their experiments and machinations, and are under full control.
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Character Building: Skills and Perks
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Gameplay wise, I'd make a return of skills, but they're a little more specialized. SPECIAL would be back to the old system but with bobbleheads and cybernetics being the only way to gain additional points.
The layout of the skill/SPECIAL would be inspired by the current Fallout 4 tree, in that it'd be stylized and interesting to look at with the whole Vault-Tec theme. I'm unsure as to whether I'd seperate or merge the perk/skill trees with SPECIAL as the roots at the top to create an intertwining, sprawling tree (Not literal). That might make it unnecessarily convoluted, so for now I'm sticking with two seperate menus.
Skills have been revised somewhat so that it allows players to diversify and specialize more, creating more distinct character skill sets. It always bothered me that my character being good with computers also meant he was a boffin at nuclear physics and chemistry, and the like. So this should fix that. With power armor and crafting taking a bigger step forward in the gameplay department, I also decided to account for them when looking at the skill system.
Combat:
-Small Guns
-Big Guns
-Melee
-Unarmed
-Energy Weapons
-Explosives
Technology:
-Mechanic (Repair, Power Armor, Crafting)
-Science (Physics, Chemistry, Biology. etc. Used for dialogue, recipes, crafting, settlement building)
-Computing (Terminals,Robots)
-Lockpicking
Wasteland:
-Outdoorsman (Survival from New Vegas)
-Speech
-Barter
-Sneak
It may seem asif I forgot medicine, but I didn't. Instead I decided to split it between Outdoorsman and Science. For example, stuff like how to mend a broken arm or remove a bullet from a wound are now under Outdoorsman, but stuff like how your kidney works, medical diagnosis and diseases are under Science.
Skill checks from New Vegas are back in full force for every skill apart from Speech and Barter. Speech and Barter run on the Fallout 1/2/3 system of percentage based checks. Your skill level and perks influence the percentage outcome more than they did in Fallout 3 though, so you won't be save/reloading nearly as much. On "Survival" difficulty your percentage for speech/barter drops by 8% every time you reload.
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Power Armor
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Now, onto Power Armor. I don't know about anyone else, but I loved the way Power Armor itself was done in Fallout 4, but not the role it had in gameplay.
Power Armor, fundamentally, is the same as it is in Fallout 4 by default. It's like a vehicle that you can customize and modify (With the mechanic skill). However in my version of Fallout 4, only the T-45 requires fusion cores. Every other power armor runs infinitely. The catch is that much like 3 and New Vegas, PA requires training, and it's not very easily found at all.
Power Armor isn't covering the entire wasteland. The player can find the odd armor piece in sensical areas, if they're really lucky or they fight their way through some of the most difficult areas in the game, they can find full suits that are old and in disrepair, but in one piece. They're not insanely hard to find, but they're still rare enough that finding a suit is a highly rewarding.Getting training is even rarer, though. Even finding it on the body of a Brotherhood Knight would require 50 mechanic to even crack open.
Power Armor also has it's downsides: It's slow, lowering your agility and movement speed. You literally can't fit into some areas, and some settlements don't like people who wear it. You also can't lockpick, hack, craft or use a campfire whilst wearing it and your reload speed with small guns is reduced, as is your aim with handguns. It is tough and strong as hell though, very useful for those high level areas.
There'd be plenty of variants and customization elements, for instance a T-45d model helmet is slightly different to that of a T-45a in aesthetics and also some areas of performance.
In terms of suits, however, there'd still only be four main suits, and they'd be in the following order from most powerful to least. Same goes for most rare to least.
X-01 >T-51 >T-48 > T-45
"T-48" is what is currently named "T-60" in Fallout 4. To me, it makes absolutely no sense. T-51 is the pinnacle of pre-war power armor and that is that. T-60 has obvious similarities with the T-45. Why would the U.S Army drop one design for several iterations, and then suddenly go back to it?
In my version of Fallout 4, the T-48 is the bridge between the T-45 and the T-51. It's got the general design model of the T-45, but with the added mobility, armor and of course the energy reactor of the T-51.
Now, X-01. I like the name, actually. Advanced Power Armor was always so vague, and for a force like the Enclave it wasn't very uniform. X-01 fits with the naming theme, but it's still distinctly seperate. And yeah, in my Fallout 4 the X-01 is definitely Enclave. You know it is, too.
Because there's only one suit.
Picture this, you fight your way into an Old World army bunker in one of the most deadly areas on the entire map. You've had to hack, lockpick and mechanic your way through various systems to reach an old rusty elevator. You take the elevator and descend into darkness. Total silence and a black void await beyond the elevator as you go down. Suddenly, music. A distorted, whining rendition of the star spangled banner begins to play out of old speakers as you touch down at the bottom floor of the bunker, but the gate blocking you from stepping off the elevator hasn't opened yet. The room you're in is vast, but cloaked in darkness.
Suddenly, a spotlight clicks on. In the center of the room a skeleton sits upright, wrapped in the flag of the Old World like it's a cloak. A keycard clutched in it's hand. Suddenly, another spotlight clicks on. Behind the skeleton, a tall protective case, glowing with electronic locks and protective systems stands. Inside is a suit of X-01 Enclave issued Power Armor.
The keycard in the hand of the skeleton is only one of four required to crack open the case and get the armor, the others are scattered in some pretty dangerous and obscure places. Thus triggers the scavenger hunt to get the best power armor in the game.
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Survival and Crafting
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Crafting in Fallout 4 is an interesting, and thematically fitting, direction to take Fallout in. The obvious influences from the recent successes of the "survivalcraft" genre are a little too strong for me in default Fallout 4 however, and I feel that they detract from both the RPG and the casual open world experience all the same, and make the game chore-ish and samey. So I chose to revise those elements considerably also.
First off, guns. Fallout 4 sucks at them. There's not much variety. So, as a start I'd add in all the base guns in New Vegas and Fallout 3(i.e not the unique/DLC weapons) minus all the cowboy guns (357., Lever Actions etc.) and add in a few classic Fallout weapons for good measure (the AK-112, the Pulse weapons). Pipe Weapons would take more design inspiration from Metro 2033 rather than IKEA.
In terms of modifications, whilst cool the "TURN IT INTO WHATEVER YOU WAAANT!!!" thing loses it's novelty after a while after it removes most of the chararcter or RPG-ness of guns and you end up min-maxing your guns, essentially. So I'd tone down the customization of weapons just a little. Modifications should be just that, modifications, not total reconstructions of the gun. That stuff should be reserved for pipe weapons. For instance, you can turn a Laser Pistol into an automatic with a night vision scope, but it's still a pistol at it's best.
The key is that there should still be a hierarchy of weapons. A rifle you get in the early areas of the game should not be able to compete with a higher rifle type you find in a higher level area.
Ammo crafting and campfires also make a return. As well as craftable weapons like time bombs and nuka grenades.
Building/Settlements is an absolute chore in vanilla Fallout 4 and Preston Garvey is the bane of all Fallout 4 players as a result, in this version of Fallout 4 the settlement stuff is restricted to one homestead, sort of.
There'd be a side-quest line to assist a group of settlers who have arrived in the Commonwealth settle down. Here you'd have a more developed version of the settlement system seen in Fallout 4, with more permanency and some dedicated quests about getting the place up and running. Much like AC3 you'd find characters around the Wasteland who you could send to Sanctuary to help out. It'd be less shallow and more developed with actual characters other than just "Settler". As expected, you get different ending slides depending on how much you build the settlement up and who you choose to lead it.
Still, if that's not your style you can still build your own home at various places across the Wasteland, but it'd be less developed than the homestead and you wouldn't be able to do stuff like set up shops or establish Brahmin routes. It'd be your own personally designed slice of heaven just for you and your companions.
Survival Mode as it is in Fallout 4 would be implemented, but with two key differences : The first being that it would be an add-on to difficulty, rather than a difficulty on it's own (ala hardcore mode), so whether you and your enemies would be bullet sponges or glass figures would be dependent on your difficulty scaling independent of survival features. The second would be that saving would be dependent on beds AND campfires, so your character doesn't have to be narcoleptic.
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The Commonwealth: Factions
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Bethesda made an improvement on factions from Fallout 3, but that's not saying much. Their portrayal of the Brotherhood was much, much better and having a choice of factions was a welcome improvement, but they still managed to not pull it off brilliantly.
Since they're a Fallout regular and they were quite prominent in this game, I'll start with the Brotherhood of Steel.
The Brotherhood
If you ask most Brotherhood members about their history, they'll tell you that their origins lie in the "Distant West" or "Far West" on the other side of the World, and then they'll start talking about Lyons.
The history of my BoS is similar to the one in current Fo4, in my version both Sarah and Elder Lyons are dead and young Maxon took the reigns, but their reasons for coming to the Commonwealth are somewhat different. They're on a "Great Crusade" to chase down the Super-Mutant horde they started fighting so long ago, and has since migrated northward to the Commonwealth. As part of this Great Crusade, they're also claiming the Commonwealth for all the legendary, and dangerous, technologies it is said to have, and they are vowing to civilize it, just as they did with the Capital Wasteland.
This gives them a righteous cause that they all feverishly believe in, rather than simply wishing to contain and destroy technology almost routinely. The D.C Chapter of the Brotherhood has become radicalized, they're the Brotherhood turned up to 11. They're a Brotherhood who've got their hands on an Enclave military complex worth of technology and weapons, under the leadership of a vigorous young man who's dedicated to living up to his mythic legacy. Very 40k-esque.
Their task in the Commonwealth is to essentially colonize it, cleaning out the Super-Muties, claiming all the technology and setting up a small chapter.
The ranks/heirarchy of the Brotherhood and the way they work in gameplay would be as follows:
Elder - Maxson
High Paladin - T-51b - There's only one High Paladin, Vargas (Fallout 3), and he's on the Prydwen
Paladin - T-48 - Gatling Lasers, Miniguns, Rocket Launchers, Super-Sledges (of the NV/3 variety) - Rarely seen on the battlefield. Tough.
Knight - T-45 -Laser/Plasma Rifles, Heavy Machine Guns - pretty common on the battlefield.
Squire - Wear the "scribe" clothing in vanilla Fallout 4, use assault rifles and shotguns.They're essentially the cannon fodder and errand boys for the knights. They're typically young. I considered having them be children on the battlefield, but decided against it.
Scribes - Book worms on the Prydwen, wear classic red robes.
The Railroad
The Railroad in my version of Fallout 4 are far more widespread, and they help human slaves as well as Synths. They've still got the Man From UNCLE styled spy theme kinda going on, but they use really dirty guerilla tactics. Bombings, sabotage, assassinations etc. to get their way. I'm not particularly interested in delving into the main plot, so I'll leave it at that for them.
The Institute
That Vault-Tec/CIT partnership went both ways. CIT helped Vault-Tec with the technology for Vault 111, and in return Vault-Tec built them a special underground complex of their own design, which they have since expanded and refurbished. Institute aesthetics are more scholarly/library esque then straight up Star-Trek.
If the player searches deep enough, they can find logs detailing the severe rivalry between CIT, West-Tek and Big Mountain. CIT was falling behind in this rivalry, and as a result a secret group was formed dedicated to stealing information/technology from their competitors. Shortly before the war, an insider at Big MT managed to leak huge amounts of information to the Institute. They have since had time to work on and develop these technologies without the insanity of Big Mountain and the total destruction experienced by West Tek. They're finally in the lead.
The Minutemen
In my Fallout 4, they're just a fancy mercenary group that dress nicely and have a theme. They're joinable and act like a Warrior's Guild in TES games, and take action against various raider groups. If you don't join them, it's possible to end up on the wrong side of their gun if you piss the wrong people off. They've got a long standing conflict with Libertalia.
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Commonwealth: Raiders
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Why, oh why, do Bethesda treat people like animals?
By that, I mean that Bethesda seems to treat Raiders like generic hostile animals in the wilderness. All identical, all utterly savage, dumb with no identity of their own. New Vegas got it right by giving each Raider group a tribal identity, even if it was only name deep. Here are some basic ideas for raiders/settlements, some entirely new, others reworked.
Forgemasters
Based off of the Forge raiders in vanilla, who were almost interesting. They're hardcore raiders who live inside an Old World forge. They worship the Forge and have their own cooky cult religion based around it, with some pretty gnarly entry ceremonies. They're damn good at making armor, though. Which is why they're safe from other raider groups, as they trade and sell armor and weapons in exchange for food, water and protection from the other gangs/tribes. They're aggressive, but not hostile, to the player when they first arrive, but are VERY easily provoked. Their armor is metal and of high quality, they almost look like something from the Elder Scrolls had a baby with the Warboys from Mad Max. They use Flamers, Shiskebabs and Forge-axes. If the player manages not to piss them off enough to speak to their leader, they can learn he came from The Pitt, and brought his knowledge of steeling and forgery with him.
Blue Devils
Once, they were a mighty raider tribe up to the far north in Nova (Nova Scotia.) They were one of several tribes that split the territory, until tensions exploded and all out war came between the tribes, and the Blue Devils were ganged up upon by two united raider groups. The Blue Devils were shattered and chased southward, where they've ended up in the Commonwealth. They're disorganized, scattered, but still great in numbers and deadly. They'll be a real threat if, or when, they get their shit together. Still, what's more worrisome is the idea that whatever broke them apart and chased them away might come south to finish the job. The raider warzone that's been tearing up the north moving into the Commonwealth would just be on the icing on the cake for the troubles plaguing the wasteland. The Blue Devils are identified by their bright blue tattered ponchos/capes, which are the reason for their namesake. They're hostile to the player on sight.
Libertalia
Based on the already existing settlement, but expanded. A water-world esque flotilla with a combat arena at the center (The Combat Zone) where high-risk, high-reward gladiator matches are held, which the player can participate in. Part Thorn, part Thunderdome. Libertalia is a fishing settlement, other than the gladiator match. Libertalia is a bit of a grey area as although it's home to all sorts of scum and villainy, and sends out raiding parties into the Wasteland, they're accepted by places like Diamond City as they also trade in fish and sea-based goods. Libertalia essentially works as a free city, where the only law is not to kill eachother. Even then, you're excused most of the time. The residents refer to themselves as "Freemen" but the rest of the Wastes refers to them as "Scoundrels". The player is neutral to Libertalia when they arrive at the city, even if they're made to feel a little unwelcome by the locals. They can earn respect in the arena, however.
There's quite a few raider groups in the Commonwealth, and not all of them are big enough to have their own detailed backstories, so here's a few names to stick on various raider gangs:
-Road Wolves
-Wildmen
-Dead-Eyes
-The Unseen
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Finishing Touches
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In general, I'd have a lot more locations around the map that aren't just shoot and loot dungeons that loop back to the beginning. Labrynths, puzzles, old world obstacles/secrets.
The visual theme would be one of overgrowth, but that's already pretty much present in the game.
In terms of writing, there would be themes on the depths of humanity, with human purists like the Brotherhood having brainwashed soliders who are less human than the Synths they're trying to kill etc. All that good Blade Runner esque stuff.
There'd also be a light theme of lost memory and the forgetting of the past/old world, reflected in the Old World growing ever distant with only a few flickering hold outs remaining, this would tie in with the player's pre-war backstory and plot of amnesia/search for answers.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with how this "design document" has turned out. I think I've successfully made a step forward for the Fallout formula without dropping any of the key elements (in my opinion) whilst also not scrapping everything in Fallout 4 as is. It's a shame nobody but me is gonna read this, but oh well.
