Fallout Expanded

[Slaughter Manslaught]

This is something I've been germinating in my head, with Et Tu and such. This is just ideas of course, but I feel the community might like them.

Essentially, think of it as a RP-style unnoficial expansion pack. Building upon what FIXT and Fallout Et Tu did with cut content and going beyond, to expand the original Fallout as a game by adding cut content back and perhaps maybe some referred content as possible material for further quests and such.

Principles:
- Stick to the Lore as much as possible
- Add more possibility for character build variety, more diverse stat and skillchecks.
- Re-implement cut content as much as we are able.
- Make the game harder and more challenging, if possible
- Increase roleplay opportunities
- Tie everything together and cohesively

Its late and I think I forgot a lot of my old ideas, but here's some thoughts:

Shady Sands:
- Perhaps expand on Agatha and her stories? Could even build on that regarding Repair/Science characters, considering she's an elder and no doubt lived on Vault 15, could even still retain some useful gadget that needs to be fixed.
- An outdoorsman-based solution to help the farmer?


Raiders/Khans:
- New ways of rescuing Tandi?
- You can join The Khans if you enter their camp before Tandi is kidnapped, which you do by shooting some women and... that's it, nothing ever comes out of it.
- The idea is that joining The Khans should open a few new doors and quests.
- For example: The game has Shady Sands endings for killing Tandi, Aradesh, and both. But how would Aradesh die in a normal game?
- If you join the Khans, you are the one who kidnaps Tandi. Which, depending on your build, may end in violence or not.
- Remember how Diane the Armorer kept complaining she was busy repairing things? A repair-oriented character could help her, and perhaps earn Fallout 2-style weapon upgrades from her. Maybe even get that date, hah!
- Joining Khans should also give opportunities for raiding quests. Think Caravan raids and such. Perhaps lead to Khan Khests down in Junktown and Hub.
- Khan Khompanion? Essentially, an equal exchange for losing Ian after doing the Khan quests.
- Challenging Garl for leadership of the Khans.
- Khan Khests should tie to the Water Chip somehow?


Junktown:
- Joining Khans can help talk down the Raider in the Hotel
- Bring back the original Junktown endings but provide a little implication that Gizmo is not that bad and Killian is not that good, either?

Hub:
- There's a reference in Junktown to an underground fighting ring in Hub. Which sounds like awesome content.
- Hope the Singer and whatever quest she was meant to be tied to.

Boneyard:
- AFAIK its the location in FO1 which suffered the most cuts. We had two gangs (Blades and Rippers), Tangler, Blades as a real gang (rather than barely above hobos)... feels like it was meant to be more than it became.


Brotherhood:
- The Brotherhood has two endings (three originally if we count Mutant Invasion), with the Steel Plague ending being triggered by the death of Rhombus. Buut... why would we kill Rhombus aside from going psycho or getting in a fight attempting to steal from him?

The Glow:
- This always bothered me: The Brotherhood Holodisk describes defenses capable of ripping apart Power Armor, but we never ever meet such defenses.

Vipers, Jackals, Burrows, and generally how to fit cut areas into the game:
- My first thoughts about Vipers and Jackals is that they should be mid-game areas, places you go after finishing Act I with the Water Chip. The early game has pretty clear Shady Sands -> Vault 15 -> Junktown -> The Hub -> Necropolis path. Sure you might do a detour to the Brotherhood or Glow or Boneyard, but that's going out of the path.
- One problem I have with it is because we're told the Khans are the biggest, baddest gang in the Wasteland. And yet, if Vipers and Jackals come later, then they need to be stronger than Khans by default - well unless we buff the Khans, but that has problems on its own.
- On Burrows: Definitively needs to be the kind of out-of-the-way area you likely visit after the Water Chip, like Brotherhood and The Glow. Burrows ties into The Glow so it should definitively be somewhere you visit before or after The Glow, likely before.
- If those are midgame areas, they should tie into the Act II plot as well (Master and Super Mutants).

Mutant Invasions:
- I really like the concept, because it makes the villains more active and less passive, and puts on a timer for the player to go and fight the mutants before they trash everything.
- My problem with it is that the Mutant Invasions are very, well... meta. You don't have any idea they can be a thing, except metaknowledge. Which is bad. Its a timer you don't know is a timer. With the other invisible timer (Vault 13 invasion), you get a hint with the Water Caravans at least.
- It also sucks because the first part of the game (Water Chip) is the one where you are supposed to be on the clock, the second part of the game should be when the player can finally relax a little, explore out-of-the-way locations, run some caravans, the works. You shouldn't be thinking about Mutant Invasions until after getting the Water Chip.
- So far my idea is that the player should get some mean of monitoring mutant communications. One possibility is the radio in possession of the dying Super Mutant from the Missing Caravans quest, the one in the Deathclaw cave. Another possibility is getting a radio from Harry if you kill him (or steal it from him). Jain down in Hub or even a Super Mutant random encounter in caravans might be another possible source.
- Monitoring mutant communications allows the player to have an idea of how close the Invasions are to happening.
- Alright, so we know the Mutant Invasions are happening. What now?
- Well, the idea is that you can set them back, making the Mutant Invasions into more of a soft timer. Remember from Necropolis: The mutants aren't just invading those places for its own sake, they're after the Vault Dweller.
- So anything which undoes the Super Mutants and the Children of the Cathedral should slow down the Mutant Invasions. Decker's quest to kill Jain, for example.
- Still, I think the main way to slow them down should be to attack Super Mutant outposts and camps across the Wasteland. Staging areas for Super Mutants attacks. We know there is a base near The Hub from which they send out Scavenger Teams to attack the caravans. That one, for example.
- Flipside: Remember how The Overseer says that you should go and defeat the mutants as fast as possible before he gets stronger and makes more and new mutants? Well... the idea here is that the longer you take to head to Mariposa and the Cathedral, the more numerous and stronger the Master's hosts should get. This might actually get triggered by the attempts to slow down the invasions.

 

[The_Proletarian]

Yes! This is needed!

 

[2bak]

Man, this is something I've been thinking of as well, since I ran Fallout as a tabletop campaign for some friends and made a bunch of changes to the story. I've got some ideas to add to your list of suggestions:

Vault 13:

• Opening sequence: you wake up to a normal (very boring) day in the vault, go on about your (very mundane) job, and then get called to the Overseers Office ("we need you to find the water chip..") which is when Fallout normally starts. This is something that one of the devs has talked about at some point, but I think it would do a great deal to establish what life in the vault is all about, and make the player more interested in the vault and it's population.
• In Fallout as is, the vault is closed at the start and you start in the caves — but a day later, the vault actually opens up and there's a bunch of early game quests and lore in there that many players have no idea about, cause the vault is closed to begin with and players will start exploring the wasteland instead. Let's start the game in the vault, or at least make it open to the player from the start.

Shady Sands:

• So many players have been thrown off by how there is very little reactivity in the town if the player takes care of the radscorpions. It'd be cool to include some more dialogue or floating text among the citizens (maybe Ian will be more likely to join you for free?).
• Clearing the radscorpion cave with dynamite is super tricky. It'd be nice if the dynamite didn't need to be placed so precisely. Maybe an NPC (Easy Pete) could also hint to the fact that you can blow up the entrance?
• The whole "multi-religious" theme going on is really downplayed, maybe more could be done with that? Like dialogue or a quest? The fact that they are all from Vault 15 is also sorta downplayed.

Vault 15:

• Again, it'd be cool to reference the whole "multi-religion" aspect more in the actual vault. When the devs made Fallout, they hadn't really fleshed out what the purpose of the vaults were, so it's not really written into the game — but maybe that's something this expansion could address as well? (NOTE: I don't think lore should be vomitted at the player, we can keep the purpose of the vaults hidden and mysterious, but perhaps have subtle hints?).
• I also think some Khans should be hanging out here, you'd need to haggle/convince/fight them to gain access to the vault.

Junktown:

• I think it'd be cool to make the Killian vs. Gizmo conflict more nuanced — one of the devs had an ending where killing Gizmo would effectively kill Junktown, and I think that's really cool and grim (but absolutely impossible to figure out as a player right now — dialogue/and or quests would need to be modified/created to support this narrative and clue the player in on it). Make Lars and Killian slightly more facist, make the fact that Gizmo is bringing a lot of caps to the city slightly more obvious.
• Is it even possible to fight in the ring? I was never able to do it, I think. Let's make that a possibility?

Necropolis:

• I think it'd be awesome to have a little quest that introduces BoS here (I think it's said somewhere that they'll go to Necropolis just to practice shooting. Maybe something went wrong and now an Initiate is being held at Zet's place?).
  
• I had this idea, that the sewer ghouls (the good guys) should actually instead be all of the ghouls in the vault — so instead of being all zombie like, they are all delirious but super friendly and dedicated to the vault (I think in the lore, the population of the Bakersfield vault won the "Pressed Vaultsuit Award"). So the vault is shit, nothing works, but the ghoulified vault dwellers still try and uphold their standards. They'll be super excited to see the player, finally another Vault makes contact and they'll finally be saved.
• To support the point above, there's no longer a waterpump in Necropolis, forcing the player to make a hard choice (take the waterchip from the friendly ghouls or look for it elsewhere).

The Hub:

• Something needs to happen here. The Hub as is, is super forgettable. I think there was a dystopian concept here early, that life in the Hub was hell for the average citizen. Everything, and everyone, is owned by one of the big three — the water merchants, and the two caravan companies. This concept needs to be re-applied to the whole location, with supporting quests and removal of things like the Police.
• Thieves Guild IMO is just out of place. Scratch the whole thing.

Boneyard:

• This is described as the ruins of L.A., with the large part of the city destroyed but among the rubble you can find these small factions. So, I have this idea that instead of Boneyard being one location, it should be split up into many small locations. So on the world map, L.A. would consist of many small green circles, those being: Adytum, Blades, Gunrunners (+ deathclaws), Cathedral and the Followers (and maybe one for the Rippers?).

More encounters (both random and special!)

• I think one of the best things we could do is populate the game with a bunch of new encounters! It could be really easy to crowdsource ideas and get people here to make their own encounters, NPC's, mini-mission or really small locations, or even just interesting combat encounters, in order to make the world feel richer and support the concepts that makes Fallout Fallout. Here's a couple of ideas for encounters, these might be a bit too specific or should maybe be special encounters, feel free to come up with your own!:

1. A caravan rolls by. They're carrying cargo to a new client, to the north west. The caravan won't be heard from again.
2. A family is traversing the wastes, but have run out of water. If the party won't share, the father will be forced to pull out his rifle and rob the players of their water.
3. Trappers hunting for Gecko. They'll tell anyone who'll share their booze about the fabled Fire Gecko.
4. The party comes across a small farmstead, with a well. Light emerges from the well, from the glowing ghoul that is stuck at the bottom. He's gone feral long ago, but survives by feeding on the animals that are attracted to the light.
5. A "synth", apparently Generation Delta, approaches and is in dire need of Microfusion Cells!! It begs the players for some, in a robotic noise. This is actually just a guy from the hub, dressed in shiny sheet-metal, doing his normal scam.
6. A super mutant! Hide! Shoot! Or actually talk to the guy, he is quite intelligent and turned out to have defected from the Masters Army.
7. Slavers sending in their slaves with rusty knives, while they shoot from a distance (it'd be cool if the slaves turned non-hostile when the slavers are killed).
8. An actual car speeds by in the distance! (just expressed through console, like the dehydration events).

This is what I could find in my notes for now, and in sort of broad strokes, but I made a bunch of smaller changes as well... I think this whole expansion pack idea is great and a really worthwhile project that could do a lot to make Fallout feel even more cohesive and also a smoother experience for new players.

 

[The_Proletarian]

I put my idea here but basically it would add the world space of Fallout 2 to the world map of Fallout 1. That would allow you to go to Vault 8 and try to get their Water chip, but you have to do quests for them first in order to receive it. It's mainly to give some variation to the game.

I just thought of a New Game+ mode that would be interesting to add to Fallout 1.

You have completed Fallout 1 and want to replay it but you know the game all to well and want to mix it up a little. Then select New Game+ and you will play Fallout 1 with an expanded world map that adds the Fallout 2 world space area to the north. However this is how that part of the world looked like in 2161, 80 years prior to the events of Fallout 2.

You start as usual and will probably travel to Vault 15, on your way there you will encounter Shady Sands. You wont find the water chip at Vault 15 this time either, however you will learn the location of Vault 8 from Aradesh.

So in this New Game+ mode you can either go the usual route south and eventually find the water chip in Necropolis. Or! You can choose to go up north and find one in Vault 8. However the citizens of Vault City wont give it to you and you have to do quests for them in order to get the water chip.

You get to see how Vault City looked like in its beginnings and you can also explore San Francisco and New Reno and see how they looked like back then.

If you choose to go north and get the water chip from vault 8 the second part of the main quest will still be about the Master and his army.

What do you think?

e:

Vault 13:

• In Fallout as is, the vault is closed at the start and you start in the caves — but a day later, the vault actually opens up and there's a bunch of early game quests and lore in there that many players have no idea about, cause the vault is closed to begin with and players will start exploring the wasteland instead. Let's start the game in the vault, or at least make it open to the player from the start.

I think it should be closed from the start but open when you return to report about your findings from V15. The Overseer would probably like to know what you found there. Add a little reactivity when he finds out about the fate of V15.

The Hub:

• Something needs to happen here. The Hub as is, is super forgettable. I think there was a dystopian concept here early, that life in the Hub was hell for the average citizen. Everything, and everyone, is owned by one of the big three — the water merchants, and the two caravan companies. This concept needs to be re-applied to the whole location, with supporting quests and removal of things like the Police.

Big agree on adding quest-lines involving the Water Merchants. Maybe something like how it works wiith the families in New Reno? You can do the first quest for each but then you have to choose who you work for. There's a lot of backstabbing and power moves.


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Here's some of my thoughts on Fallout 1 when I re-played it last year. You can improve stuff based on that.

Shady Sands

• I couldn't ask Aradesh much about the background of Shady Sands however Seths brother told me it was Aradesh's father who founded the settlement. I was expecting some background on how they came from Vault 15.
• Most NPC:s in Shady Sands have the same dialogue.
• The doctor in Shady Sands mentioned that Tandhi and Seth had a little fling for each other. Maybe Seth should have some dialogue that acknowledges that when Tandhi is kidnapped...
• Add Baby Radscorpions to the cave.

Vault 15

• I remember when I first found that dynamite in a locker in Vault 15. -Aha! I thought to myself, you need to use this dynamite to blow one of the stone piles away in order to find an area that was previously blocked by it. So I saved and loaded and tried to explode that dynamite everywhere but to no effect. However it would be cool though if you could clear some rubble away [with dynamite] and access a new room or something (at least for a character that has invested in Explosives to reward them a little).

Junktown

• I was just in the Bar in Junktown when the Skulz started a shoot-out in there. One person died and the barkeep yelled at them to leave. But after that I couldn't talk to him or anyone in there about what happened. The only reaction I could get was from the girl on why she cried for Saul. If the game was more fleshed out you would be able to talk to the barkeep about the incident as well.
• If feels like there's something more to Saul and Trish but they wont talk to you. Trish works at the bar and was hit by the member of the Skulz. She cries for Saul and you can ask here why she did. But you can't tell Saul or Neal about the incident.
• You can't tell anyone in [Junk]town that he [Doc Morbid] serves Human Meat even though that would be of great interest to the residents there. Who are the people that are being made into Iguana Bits? Shouldn't you be able to supply Doc Morbid with fresh corpses?
• After you have killed Gizmo there's no special dialogue with Killian about it.
• There's much room to make Junktown better by adding little reactions everywhere to reflect your actions. There's also some empty houses and not that much dialogue. And where's all the junk? This location could be heavily expanded.
• Add a broken down vehicle that a character skilled in repair can fix!

The Hub

• There are Donkeys in the Fallout universe. Irwin who you meet in the Hub and whose farm has been taken over by raiders mention that they killed his donkey named Pugsley. So maybe add some donkey sprites?
• Too many empty houses.
• You can't talk to Mr. Hightower even after you've saved his life by killing Decker or by not robbing him for the Thieves Circle. He should be grateful to you!
• You can report Decker to the police after he’s given you a quest to Kill Mr. Hightower, but you cannot report the Thieves Circle when they asks you to steal from him. Add questline for Decker.

BoS

• You should be able to live with the BoS after having become an initiate and choose if you want to become a Scribe or a Paladin.
• BoS would be interested to know about the hardened Power Armor that Miles in Adyton can help you with. But you can't tell them about it.
• After you have read Dr. Vree’s studie of a Super Mutant specimen you can’t mention your findings at The Glow to her. By reading her report you get the impression that she would be highly interested in the Holotapes from there.
• You can’t tell Maxon about blowing Mariposa or that you found a holotape from his grandfather Roger Maxon who served there. The only thing you get is one of the Elders giving an appreciative floating text saying thanks.

Boneyard/Los Angeles

• Add more Deathclaws to the basement!
• Zimmerman should have dialogue if you save him from assassination.
• You can’t tell Harold that you killed the Deatclaw. Not the lady in the Gun Store either. That's a little bit of reactivity that I would have liked.
• The Followers mention Nightkin on several occasions but even though the player character know nothing about them you cannot ask who/what they are.
• Can you even say to Talius that you are from Vault 13?
• No dialogue with Nicole after you have destroyed the Master and Mariposa. Even though she sent you to the Cathedral to find out information about their leader. Some people in the library have floating texts that acknowledge it though. Talius would be interested I think but you can’t tell him.

General

• Add more creatures like for example ants.
• Add more ending slides that cover more of what you did in the game.