I want an old school Fallout game again

[The Dutch Ghost]

Look Fallout New Vegas was an improvement on Fallout 3 and I enjoyed it for what it was, but it was only half way on the level of the first two Fallouts.

I really would like to see a game with the complexity and game design spirit of its founder again.

-Not a halfway stat influenced adventure FPS.
If you are going to do roleplaying, let character stats determine their strengths and weaknesses in combat, and not a combination of those stats and gamer shooting skills.

-A more large scale and complex storyline.
FNV's storyline fitted well for the size world it played it, but I found most of its story material the main game stuff you found in Fallout 1 and 2 while you were working towards the real revelation of the game, something like the Master, the Enclave President or Dr Presper who were working from behind the curtain.

Mr House, while an interesting character on his own simply isn't up to par with those mentioned people, he was simply the third party in the conflict between the NCR and the Caesar's Legion.

Also please return to the focus on the larger picture.
Stuff like a water purifier or the defense of Hoover Dam is more like a location quest the player would perform to improve such a place and in the end perform an over arching quest to ensure that his or her good work would remain.
I find it so small thinking that designers and people actually believe these are good enough for a 'main' Fallout game.

-More focus on self contained quests.
One thing FNV inherited from its predecessor were quests that send the player from one side of the map to another to perform a single task, and if you had not discovered this place yet you had to travel real time to it just to advance the quests, often with the location having no other purpose for existing.

I would like more quests that take place in the same location where it is given or close to it.

-Bring back map travel.
Sometimes the real time traveling is okay, but dammit, it gets so incredible repetitive after a while and I still have not seen any excuse why a map travel system can not be implemented other than engine limitations.

This is also the reason why regions are so damn small, it has to fit all on one main big map.

Make each location and settlement its own map instead.

 

[Insomnia]

I agree on all points and the way that every quest sends you half across the map gets real old real fast and negates all the pleasure of doing quests in the first place and i ended up ignoring allot of them for that single reason ultimately killing allot of the role playing element of the game.But the chances of a new old school fallout(apart from fan projects etc..)is unlikely to ever happen due to the massive console influence on the game market.
I did however have an idea to make a small flash game where the objective would be to steal F3VB and finish it.

 

[mobucks]

-Bring back map travel.

This is also the reason why regions are so damn small, it has to fit all on one main big map.

Make each location and settlement its own map instead.

Ten thousand % agree with this. I miss my random encounters. Open world games like bethesdas feel like the sandbox is just a gimmick, and really, it hurts the experience, if anything.

Draw distance comes to mind. They had to make so many hills/vallys (at least in oblivion) in order to control the popup. Open games need to wait a few years for hardware to catch up before they become cool again.

 

[Felspawn]

Going to have to disagree with you, there is a sense of immersion that you get with the game being a FPS that would be lost otherwise and honestly I'd rather have one large world instead of just a collection of random maps + a few key sites. There is plenty of knock FO3 for, no need for me to list them all out here, but going to a large consistent 3d world around you wasn't one of them, going back to a isometric viewpoint turned based game would be a mistake.

In regards to the story aspects though, I can agree about wanting a more complex story line, maybe a better flushed out faction (ie the Legeion was too shallow for my tastes) but i dont agree on needing to be a central figure in the world. I dont mind the smaller scale development in NV. Honestly sometimes i think develeopment of the world needs to slow down, NV already have too much of a Post-Post apocalyptic feel. For all the issues The Capitcal Wasteland had (again too numerous to list) at least it felt like humanity was struggling

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

there is a sense of immersion that you get with the game being a FPS that would be lost otherwise and honestly I'd rather have one large world instead of just a collection of random maps + a few key sites.

I question your reasoning about this.
Fallout 1 and 2 had lots of immersion where as First Person perspective has greater difficulty to portray large settlements, Fallout 3 and even New Vegas show this.

I also do not agree with one large world, because of it worlds have to be compressed is it would have been incredible difficult to show settlements ranging from Shady Sands, to Necropolis, the Hub and the ruins of Los Angeles.

Not to mention all the travel space that would have to be placed in between in order to create a realistic environment.

I stay with my opinion that loads of small maps connected through a large travel map is preferable over yet another single large map.

 

[Threepwood]

-Not a halfway stat influenced adventure FPS.
If you are going to do roleplaying, let character stats determine their strengths and weaknesses in combat, and not a combination of those stats and gamer shooting skills.

Mhmm. Well, I'm currently replaying FO2 atm, and I can definitley say, the mixture of player skill and character skill exhibited in New Vegas is far more preferable to wholley skill based combat.

Now, NV's combat really does not, on any significant level reward players for twitch skills, or taking cover, if you're going to win a fight, it's probably going to be due to your character build, if you loose, it's either because one is too low a level, or has no hands.

By no means is it anywhere near perfect though, I adored Mass Effect 1's system of combat, wherein the shooting itself was governed by skillsets, as reticules for weapon types and recoil levels were determined by your statistics for the respective gun skills. Granted, twitch reflexes were even more important in that game, but it felt very fluid, and you could feel definite character progression as your skills improved, as did your combat effectivness.

Turn based combat, or variants of which that rely soley on PC skills really have no place in a modern market, I don't think there is even a nieche appeal big enough for it. Turn based, sure. Skill based, partially, but not the two to the extreme combined imo.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

Turn based combat, or variants of which that rely soley on PC skills really have no place in a modern market, I don't think there is even a nieche appeal big enough for it. Turn based, sure. Skill based, partially, but not the two to the extreme combined imo.

You might be surprised how many people still like such mechanics.

The loudest voices do not always speak for all people, nor do the biggest sales represent all gamers.

 

[Threepwood]

Turn based combat, or variants of which that rely soley on PC skills really have no place in a modern market, I don't think there is even a nieche appeal big enough for it. Turn based, sure. Skill based, partially, but not the two to the extreme combined imo.

You might be surprised how many people still like such mechanics.

The loudest voices do not always speak for all people, nor do the biggest sales represent all gamers.

Well, on a personal level, don't get me wrong, I love complex RPG's, i'm with you on your central theme, however, I find this style somewhat stale in todays new age. Maybe iv'e been dumbed down, but yet, I can enjoy say, Diablo or Torchlight due to thier fluid natures.

If you have a turn based game, you really have to have a high level of strategy, much higher than that seen in the original FO games. I.E squad based combat or something.

On a marketing level, the genius's at Bethesda will much more glady ship millions of copies of an fps hybrid out, than one million of a fully hardcore game.

 

[Felspawn]

there is a sense of immersion that you get with the game being a FPS that would be lost otherwise and honestly I'd rather have one large world instead of just a collection of random maps + a few key sites.

I question your reasoning about this.
Fallout 1 and 2 had lots of immersion where as First Person perspective has greater difficulty to portray large settlements, Fallout 3 and even New Vegas show this.

I also do not agree with one large world, because of it worlds have to be compressed is it would have been incredible difficult to show settlements ranging from Shady Sands, to Necropolis, the Hub and the ruins of Los Angeles.

Not to mention all the travel space that would have to be placed in between in order to create a realistic environment.

I stay with my opinion that loads of small maps connected through a large travel map is preferable over yet another single large map.

We're going to have to agree to disagree, its not that i dont see where your coming from, a lot of the "cities" in FO3 and NV can see empty but i see that as a limitation of an old tired gaming engine well past its prime more then anything else.

 

[Felspawn]

-Not a halfway stat influenced adventure FPS.
If you are going to do roleplaying, let character stats determine their strengths and weaknesses in combat, and not a combination of those stats and gamer shooting skills.

Mhmm. Well, I'm currently replaying FO2 atm, and I can definitley say, the mixture of player skill and character skill exhibited in New Vegas is far more preferable to wholley skill based combat.

Now, NV's combat really does not, on any significant level reward players for twitch skills, or taking cover, if you're going to win a fight, it's probably going to be due to your character build, if you loose, it's either because one is too low a level, or has no hands.

By no means is it anywhere near perfect though, I adored Mass Effect 1's system of combat, wherein the shooting itself was governed by skillsets, as reticules for weapon types and recoil levels were determined by your statistics for the respective gun skills. Granted, twitch reflexes were even more important in that game, but it felt very fluid, and you could feel definite character progression as your skills improved, as did your combat effectivness.

Turn based combat, or variants of which that rely soley on PC skills really have no place in a modern market, I don't think there is even a nieche appeal big enough for it. Turn based, sure. Skill based, partially, but not the two to the extreme combined imo.

I think that's honestly the hardest thing to balance. In FO and FO2 your stats defined your character, good at combat? it shows in game. A lover not a fight? that shows too. in NV i can pump all my stats into non combat skills and still hold my own in combat due to my experiance playing FPSer. Thats not how it should be, NV doesn't do enough to make your combat stats effect non-vats play VATS s still needs to be balanced better as well/

 

[Felspawn]

On a marketing level, the genius's at Bethesda will much more glady ship millions of copies of an fps hybrid out, than one million of a fully hardcore game.

Yep, for all the Hate i see on these and other forums about FO3 i would never have been introduced to FO1 and FO2 (and subsequently have picked them up on Gog) if it wasnt for FO3. And for all its many many issues without FO3 we would never have had FO NV which was a fantastic game (sure i can pick faults in it but i still loved it) And so on and so forth with FO4. I'd take a Hybrid FPS fallout to no fallout at all.

 

[SerbianWarrior]

Look Fallout New Vegas was an improvement on Fallout 3 and I enjoyed it for what it was, but it was only half way on the level of the first two Fallouts.

I really would like to see a game with the complexity and game design spirit of its founder again.

-Not a halfway stat influenced adventure FPS.
If you are going to do roleplaying, let character stats determine their strengths and weaknesses in combat, and not a combination of those stats and gamer shooting skills.

-A more large scale and complex storyline.
FNV's storyline fitted well for the size world it played it, but I found most of its story material the main game stuff you found in Fallout 1 and 2 while you were working towards the real revelation of the game, something like the Master, the Enclave President or Dr Presper who were working from behind the curtain.

Mr House, while an interesting character on his own simply isn't up to par with those mentioned people, he was simply the third party in the conflict between the NCR and the Caesar's Legion.

Also please return to the focus on the larger picture.
Stuff like a water purifier or the defense of Hoover Dam is more like a location quest the player would perform to improve such a place and in the end perform an over arching quest to ensure that his or her good work would remain.
I find it so small thinking that designers and people actually believe these are good enough for a 'main' Fallout game.

-More focus on self contained quests.
One thing FNV inherited from its predecessor were quests that send the player from one side of the map to another to perform a single task, and if you had not discovered this place yet you had to travel real time to it just to advance the quests, often with the location having no other purpose for existing.

I would like more quests that take place in the same location where it is given or close to it.

-Bring back map travel.
Sometimes the real time traveling is okay, but dammit, it gets so incredible repetitive after a while and I still have not seen any excuse why a map travel system can not be implemented other than engine limitations.

This is also the reason why regions are so damn small, it has to fit all on one main big map.

Make each location and settlement its own map instead.

Hmmmm after reading your post i have only one thing to say...
You do realise Bethesda not Obsidian owns the rights to the fallout franchize?
And you do realise that Bethesda probably looked from the shadows on the development process of FNV...
I can only imagine all the ideas that people at Obsidian had, and how Bethesda just said no...

 

[Little Robot]

I think that an easy way to bring back map travel-- not really bring it back completely, but probably as close as it would get-- would be to add random encounters to fast travel. Even if it was just in Hardcore mode, it would make travel actually feel a bit more like travel.

How hard would it be to mod something like that into the game?

 

[Lexx]

Fallout 3 / FNV should have been like Vampire: Bloodlines. The game can take place in some ruined city, but this still would allow map travel. I really liked how this works in Bloodlines and I see no reason why that shouldn't work in a Fallout game as well, if the game so seriously has to be a FPRPG thingy...

 

[Bad_Karma]

Fallout / FNV should have been like Vampire: Bloodlines. The game can take place in some ruined city, but this still would allow map travel. I really liked how this works in Bloodlines and I see no reason why that shouldn't work in a Fallout game as well, if the game so seriously has to be a FPRPG thingy...

I've to agree on that.
Especially because the loading time of new 'world-cell' wouldn't be more immersion breakind than the loading times when entering some house in a world cell.

 

[cratchety ol joe]

I think what this comes to.

There are a core of people who are at heart pen and paper role players. I know I am one.

We enjoy the aspect of completely 'becoming' the character and having at our disposal only that characters ability, and that does NOT require any gfx for us. More importantly we want to know what our characters percentile chance of jumping a fence might be based on our characters agility or other factors.

The essence of the matter, we, the 'hardcore' RPG guys could literally not give a damn how flashy or how much immersion a games graphics might be or give.

To this end all we really want if a graphical interface to make role-playing more fluid. The original fallouts (and others such as neverwinter) achieve exactly what we want, a graphical front end for a number crunching role play game.

What we do not require is any amount of cell shaded nonsense, or refractive material polygons from 1st person, 3rd person or a special view from the moon in which the character is nought more than a dot, albeit a perfectly formed 1080p HD cell shader 4 with Ambient Occlusion and multisampling.

I think those that are in this school of thought will understand the following:

4d6 drop lowest-

12, 15, 11, 13, 11, 14

That is pretty much all we need. anything else is just titivation. And in this game style we the apparent few that enjoy a proper RPG have no games currently (or coming soon) from any major developer. Heck, its hard to find such a game even among indy titles.

So while I do not dispute that clearly there is market for the current splattering or RPFPS games, or indeed other big selling genres it seems almost insulting that a so call outmoded style of computer gaming is simply being let behind even though there are clearly RPG fans world wide clammering for a new title to sink their teeth into.

I for one (among thousands) want a turn based (or well implemented real time), stat driven large scale RPG. one in which I can (as in Fallout 2) travel thousands of miles on my characters journey, meet interesting and amusing people, come across memorable places and undertake challenges which really test my (read as my characters) abilities THIS is what makes immersion in a game.

PS I make no apologies for the blatant non fallout reference, but it's how I started long ago.

 

[shihonage]

I agree with all sentiments in the OP. That's why Shelter has an old-school travel system.

 

[Crni Vuk]

Ten thousand % agree with this. I miss my random encounters. Open world games like bethesdas feel like the sandbox is just a gimmick, and really, it hurts the experience, if anything.

Draw distance comes to mind. They had to make so many hills/vallys (at least in oblivion) in order to control the popup. Open games need to wait a few years for hardware to catch up before they become cool again.

That comes from the Player base Bethesda is aming at. Their fans enjoy sandbox games a lot so thats what Bethesda is delivering. Of course when it comes to the core of the RPG qualites such a world somewhat is flat and short on those characteristics.

Fallout 1 and 2 had only locations in your map that would be of interest, somewhat. No reason to fill the squares you have there with random ruins just for the sake of it ~ if not only for the random fighting in the wasteland. The content here was far more important then to model some fork or broomstick that you can pick up.

Vegas sadly is suffering from this issue that its trying to please both worlds here the Sandbox-freeroam experience and the story with good characters. Its somewhat a success in the later part with very well written NPCs but it doesnt give you any feeling of size when you consider how close all locations are to each other but at the same time it tries to give you the feeling that those communities are isolated or something. It would have been better if Vegas had the distances like in Fallout 1 or 2 with the travel over some map that gives you the ilusion you are crossing a huge state and not just some 200 meters.

I would love as well to see here a new Fallout game that is creating seperated maps similar to Dragon Age over a huge map you can use to navigate. It would work better for a RPG like Fallout. Somewhat at least. Or they should try to go for a REALY huge world presented like in military simulations (Arma II or something) but give you a meaningfull transportation system with it as well like caravans or something like that.

 

[Surf Solar]

Fully agree with you Dutch Ghost,

even if I liked FO:NV it still is not real the "Fallout" for me. I am just hoping all the Total Conversions like Lexx's Shattered Destiny, BGAE, Mutants Rising etc are coming along nice, so I can finally play a good Fallout again. I do such a thing too, but I just started and it will take a while.

I think it's up to the Modders to recreate the original Fallout Feeling - the official newer games won't bring it back (atleast for me).

 

[ramessesjones]

Map travel is important if you want the game to take place over a larger area. Fallout 3 and New Vegas can't really cover more than Vegas/DC metro areas, but if want to show the full range of the Legion or NCR lands you need map travel. Map travel also allows bigger cities, especially if you have even more map travel within the city. Dragon Age or KOTOR are good examples of how map travel allows you to scale the game much larger than open world; making a city that feels as large as Denerim or Nar Shaddaa is pretty much impossible using an open world system and both those cities exist in even larger feeling game worlds. It also allows for vehicles to travel around with, which can be fun.