GameTrailers interviews Pete Hines

[Brother None]

GameTrailers interviews brand manager Pete Hines.<blockquote>Coming out into that wasteland and not knowing anybody or where to go, it's very much a case of well you can...we lead you where to go for the main quest but you can really head in any direction and do whatever you want. You can play the game for 40 hours and never once do anything related to the main quest.</blockquote>Non-linear game, linear main quest?

Thanks Dr. Oblivious.

 

[JESUS]

Well a lot of games do that too, railroad main quest and other minor ones around to find.

At least the main quest is not like the Oblivion one you know, it seens we don´t have to hurry too much to find the father, so the minor quests won´t look stupid in the face of total world destruction via demon gates.

And the mere fact that he´s your father from a vault nobody seens to know where, it won´t affect the world around you if you take too long to find him, unlike the afore mencioned game lack of impact in NPCs conversation.

 

[Phil the Nuka-Cola Dude]

Bleh, no new footage.


At least that guy isn't as painful to listen to as todd though.

 

[Morbus]

Well a lot of games do that too, railroad main quest and other minor ones around to find.

That god "a lot of games" is not Fallout.

Oh, wait.

 

[shihonage]

Fallout 1 was a non-linear game with a linear main quest.

 

[TheGM]

Fallout 1 was a non-linear game with a linear main quest.

But that was Fallout 1....this is Fallout 3*shutter* it should improve upon the originals without compromising the story and lore set forth by the old ones.....or something.

 

[Brother None]

Fallout 1 was a non-linear game with a linear main quest.

Fallout 1's main quest wasn't linear.

Linear means that beyond a beginning and an ending the game has several nodes in between you have to go through. Even finding the water chip isn't obligatory, which means the only nodes in Fallout's main quest is start and end. Not linear.

 

[Polynikes]

I never tried NOT getting the water chip... What happens? Video of how your vault died and that's it? Or does your quest to kill the Master continue?

 

[Brother None]

If your timer runs out the Vault is dead (not much of a video), however if you beat the Unity before solving the water chip quest the game ends as it always does, with slideshows and credits.

 

[Kikseo]

Wait, wait, wait..

If there is a linear main quest in FO3, how is there 9-12 different endings?

Promblem solved.

 

[oihrebwe]

linear just means you have to solve the components of the quest in order it has nothing to do with whether you can alter the outcome with different choices

 

[Kikseo]

Well, if there are different endings, then you must be able to make different choices to reach said different endings.

Which means that... hey! You alter the main questline! I don't think that's linear.

 

[sonicblastoise]

i think linear means

you must go a->b->c->d->end. hence the term "railroading" because you can't leave the track or else you can't get to the end. or in other words, "you can't do d if you haven't done c and you can't get the end if you haven't done abcd in that order"

it wasn't about CHANGING the ending or not, it was about the order in which you could, or perhaps WHETHER you HAD TO in order to proceed. fallout never really required too much of a preset order beyond FO2's temple of trials or saving the world. even then though, you didn't have to do them any specific way.

don't get things mixed up! multiple endings doesn't mean nonlinearity!
look at chrono trigger!!!!!

also, concerning "altering" the main questline being nonlinear is like saying "getting on another track on a railroad" is not railroading. you're still on a railroad, dummy. fallout didn't even have a railroad. it barely had a road. it barely had anything. but then again it had everything

 

[Anani Masu]

I think it's also been stated that it's not strictly linear. One of the earliest things I recall them talking about was letting people do end runs around the prescribed chain of events. You can uncover things that let you skip steps sometimes. Pretty sure this was reconfirmed recently.

::EDIT::
Found it

In Fallout 1, there were only three key locations that you needed to visit to complete the game - The Cathedral, Military Base and Necropolis (the last one being optional, actually) . These places could be done in any order, creating Fallout's exceptional nonlinearity. Is Fallout 3's main quest structured in similar fashion?

Hmm, parts of it are, parts of it aren't. There are several large sections of the main quest that you can actually skip if you do things right.

 

[Matt K]

I think it's also been stated that it's not strictly linear. One of the earliest things I recall them talking about was letting people do end runs around the prescribed chain of events. You can uncover things that let you skip steps sometimes. Pretty sure this was reconfirmed recently.

It sounds good, but they must have changed the system that Oblivion used because that one required a pretty strict chain of events for each quest. Hopefully it's not like Morrowind where you'd end up skipping steps and get dialog where the PC seemingly knows more than the player. That ended up being pretty bad since the dialog was the same as though you completed step X and even referenced info from it when you the player never encountered X nor it's info before.

 

[shihonage]

Fallout 1 was a non-linear game with a linear main quest.

Fallout 1's main quest wasn't linear.

Linear means that beyond a beginning and an ending the game has several nodes in between you have to go through. Even finding the water chip isn't obligatory, which means the only nodes in Fallout's main quest is start and end. Not linear.

The whole Master thing is the main Fallout quest, and you can choose to not complete it, if you don't want to. I don't see what here suggests that Fallout3's handling of this design is different.

I guess you can interpret

we lead you where to go for the main quest

as being "more linear than Fallout 1", but it's kind of vague. In Fallout you also had to go "somewhere specific" to complete the main quest, you just didn't have the "leading arrows".

 

[ComradeNu]

I'm pretty sure I remember Todd or Pete or some other Beth guy saying that many of the subquests of the main story could be approached at any time...

EDIT: Bleh, I hate reading

 

[MrBumble]

The whole Master thing is the main Fallout quest, and you can choose to not complete it, if you don't want to. I don't see what here suggests that Fallout3's handling of this design is different.

That's because Pete Hines clearly suggests it and also because we've seen in the leaked screenshots that the main quests consists in precise "missions" that are even given a name and that completing one leads to beginning another, unlike in Fallout 1. SO, it seems that you cannot really avoid half of the main quest just because of your own investigations, or at least not as much as in Fallout 1.

 

[Public]

Fallout 1 was a non-linear game with a linear main quest.

Fallout 1's main quest wasn't linear.

Linear means that beyond a beginning and an ending the game has several nodes in between you have to go through. Even finding the water chip isn't obligatory, which means the only nodes in Fallout's main quest is start and end. Not linear.

The whole Master thing is the main Fallout quest, and you can choose to not complete it, if you don't want to. I don't see what here suggests that Fallout3's handling of this design is different.

The VD was suppose to find the water chip, that was his mission. Accidently he fell into saving the world crap

 

[Joervol]

Well, the fact remains that you can do a nonlinear game that sucks and a linear game that it is pretty good. For example baldur's gate had a story that was pretty straightforward but still had choices and was done in a pretty good way. I won't mind if they change fallout's style in the linear/nonlinear, but they better do it good. FO did have a unique way of handling it, but it is something i don't care, as long as they don't screw up!