New Vegas Definitive Ending Explanation

I feel kind of sorry for Obsidian by choosing to go this way. We all know that it is acceptable and probably felt the same way about Fallout 3's ending. But there were heaps of people (really dedicated fans of elderscrolls) who were shocked to discover that it had an ending, they hadn't paid attention to any of the previews that mentioned that.

You just know that Obsidian will receive the same sort of response.

"What!? Why does it have an ending? RPGs are all about playing after you've finished, this wouldn't have happened if Bethesda made it."

"Huh!? Didn't Obisidian learn from Bethesda, WE WANT OPEN ENDED GAMES!"

"Great work Obsidian. Way to ignore what your audience wants."

"Last time I buy an Obsidian game."

Etc, etc.
 
Lingwei said:
I feel kind of sorry for Obsidian by choosing to go this way. We all know that it is acceptable and probably felt the same way about Fallout 3's ending.
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Well Fallout 3's ending was crap no matter how you cut it but Bethesda managed to divert attention from that by clinging to the less prevalent (from what I read) complaint that Fallout 3 ending was bad and saying that they fixed it with Broken Steel. Hell, if I remember right, in a Q&A a journalist asked them about the crappy ending and they went sideways to talk about how they learned that their audience didn't want an end and addressed it with Broken Steel. It's all about how you control your PR.

Lingwei said:
"Huh!? Didn't Obisidian learn from Bethesda, WE WANT OPEN ENDED GAMES!"
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I've already seen this one.
 
Well Fallout 3's ending was crap no matter how you cut it but Bethesda managed to divert attention from that by clinging to the less prevalent (from what I read) complaint that Fallout 3 ending was bad and saying that they fixed it with Broken Steel. Hell, if I remember right, in a Q&A a journalist asked them about the crappy ending and they went sideways to talk about how they learned that their audience didn't want an end and addressed it with Broken Steel. It's all about how you control your PR.
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I didn't mean so much the ending itself, rather that it had an ending. Even if it had been a good ending from a design and storytelling viewpoint the 'fans' would still have demanded open ended gameplay.
 
Lingwei said:
I didn't mean so much the ending itself, rather that it had an ending. Even if it had been a good ending from a design and storytelling viewpoint the 'fans' would still have demanded open ended gameplay.
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I know, I was just going off on a tangent ;)
 
I think when players continue to play after the game's story has finished they tend to get the "uncanny valley" feeling where the player begins to lose immersion once content is noticeably depleted. Even with a Fallout 2 ending, adding fluff and flavor text only goes so far. I'd rather have a game designed to"end" rather than me getting bored of hearing the same "You're a hero!"/"You're an asshole!" dialogue until I eventually decide to quit.

That sort of "ending" leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Sort of like a movie where the story arc and everything interesting is over, but the movie only ends when you get fed up and leave the theater.
 
sea said:
Lingwei said:
Well Fallout 3's ending was crap no matter how you cut it but Bethesda managed to divert attention from that by clinging to the less prevalent (from what I read) complaint that Fallout 3 ending was bad and saying that they fixed it with Broken Steel. Hell, if I remember right, in a Q&A a journalist asked them about the crappy ending and they went sideways to talk about how they learned that their audience didn't want an end and addressed it with Broken Steel. It's all about how you control your PR.
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I didn't mean so much the ending itself, rather that it had an ending. Even if it had been a good ending from a design and storytelling viewpoint the 'fans' would still have demanded open ended gameplay.
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I'm not convinced of this. The biggest problem with Fallout 3's ending in the eyes of its fans, from what I gather, isn't that it exists, but rather that it is infuriatingly stupid and contrived. Even the most faithful Bethesda fans refused to accept the "it is your destiny" bullshit, which shows just how contrived and stupid it was. If Bethesda had simply had the foresight to a) make an autosave before the ending that made sure all players could continue and b) presented an ending that doesn't cheat the player in the most absurd way imaginable, then I don't think anyone (of any importance) would have complained.

Rather, I think the worry over a fixed ending is more a case of devoted fans reacting in a knee-jerk fashion to the fact that the "original" developer is losing its "baby". Black Isle have an extremely devoted contingent of fans who are happy to take everything they do as gold. If another developer improves upon it, or hell, even does the same thing Black Isle would have, however, then they get cursed into the ground as "amateurs" who "ruined" the game. For instance, Bethesda frequently receives criticism for "sub-par writing" or "repetitive and inconsequential gameplay"; if Black Isle were making this game themselves, I imagine the same people would praise them for "listening to the fans" and "putting a refreshing coat of paint onto the game [they] love".

This anti-Bethesda attitude is pretty prevalent in the RPG community, especially among Black Isle fans, who tend to ignore improvements made over the original game in favour of nebulous arguments about quality of characters, story and gameplay, which often fall apart under scrutiny (since it really just comes down to personal preference or some irrational belief that Black Isle is "better"). I'm not saying Bethesda is free of all error, mind you, but I've seen this stuck-up attitude time and time again and it's often never properly justified.
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Fixed. I thought this was pretty hilarious myself. Oh, and I don't think this is trolling. Just wanted to make a point when the opportunity shoved itself in my face, really. I personally don't care if the ending goes either way, but to tell the player they won't be coming back sort of spoils the surprise a bit. Just put a good autosave right before they make the defining action, and huzzah!
 
WolfWitness said:
UncleSlappy said:
So make a save before you finish the game.

I don't get why people complain about a game ending. You can't run around doing whatever you want if you still have a quest to complete?
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Er dude, if you're pertaining to me, no where in my last post was I complaining. All I post was my suspicions that there's going to be an expansion to capitalize people's desire to continue post game, my pass-time in fallout in general and yes I expressed my disappointment about it ending at the end but I also clearly said I can live with that. That's hardly a complaint.
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First sentence was directed at you the rest was more general. I don't get why it would be a "downer" that the game ends since you can do anything you wanted to do after the end before it just by making an save before the endgame.
 
I always save before endgame regardless of it having a definite ending or not. And the only reason I find it a downer I have a habit of doing certain things I like to do only when I finish the main storyline, for some strange reason even i don't know, I get more satisfaction that way. And like I said I can live with a game where I can't continue after the main storyline.

I personally don't get the complaining about it myself, considering NV probably will be just as moddable as its predecessor, somebody will eventually make a mod to keep the game for game from ending anyway.
 
I'm sorry but i must respectfully disagree. I think definitive endings have no place in map based RPG's like Fallout since it is essentially saying go anywhere, but here or you can end the game and have to reload to try to avoid said place like the plague. It also makes the DLC seem contrived and very illogical since you can only play them if you haven't solved the main problem. The current situation in NV is like the one in Fallout3 before broken steel it made the immersion and the challenge of it turn into one where i was afraid to go into certain places that i might trigger another ending sequence or i might find some artifact that was meant solely for the end quest.

In other words the fact that the main quest was not over held a big shadow over me for the entire game since i knew i could never really achieve anything save for a couple of closing slides that said how good or horrible i was when i finally ended the quest. I fell in love with fallout when I first played fallout 3 the game made me go get the others and play them now while I love them and respect what the creators did, I however believe our current iteration of RPG's make definitive endings as outdated and contrived as using sprites to model images on current graphics machines. The time where games had ending and you had to wait for part 2 to see what effects you did are over its time for the RPG to let you see those effects for yourself in real time.

As for Obsidian saying a end DLC would be an enormous undertaking it seems to me like a cop-out to just mark an arbitrary line in the sand and say its over because no will was left over to complete the story or undertake a possible genre changing project.

Sorry for the long post but I feel jilted by the definitive ending it makes falloutNV feel incomplete (as strange and paradoxical it may seem) in my opinion. Hope this helps you all understand the other side of the argument :?
 
Ew, bullshit. If you want to let the player continue after the ending *and* give him the feeling that the world has changed due to his actions, a *lot* more work is needed to reflect these changes in the gameworld.

Examples? Examples:


After you've beat the game, Novac will change depending on what you have done, because this change happens exactly in the moment you fight on the Dam. Novac can either be overrun by the Legion or the Bright Brotherhood comes back and so on and so on. This alone needs already new NPCs with new text and to make it even better, new graphical elements.

What if you play with the Legion? It would be needed to fill the west side of the map with Legion soldiers. They need dialogues, NCR soldiers have to be gone, NPC interactions have to change (if it wouldn't change, it would be nonsense). Like above, graphical changes that make everything looks like there was a battle could be needed.

So much to this for now. I am lacking a bit the time to write down more, but I hope you might get the point. There is just too much that would change after the ending and if you start already with the "immersion"-argument, then you should also know how non-immersive it would be to have none of these changes beeing reflected in the gameworld.
 
I think the discussion here is just as bad what it's about.

Lingwei said:
I feel kind of sorry for Obsidian by choosing to go this way. We all know that it is acceptable and probably felt the same way about Fallout 3's ending. But there were heaps of people (really dedicated fans of elderscrolls) who were shocked to discover that it had an ending
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Since most of the fanbase is probably from Morrowind/Oblivion/Fallout 3 at this point, many have an expectation to be able to keep playing after the game ends as is customary in Bethesda titles. It isn't to collect rusty spoons or console dance naked NPCs in their Tenpenny suite. I would think it's mostly to have the main quest out of the way and be able to finish up side quests/achievements or look for unique items/locations they hadn't found yet.

The reason this can happen more easily in a game like Oblivion/Fallout 3 is because a larger portion of the world is disconnected from what the main quest is. Whether you've beaten the game or not, life continues on as usual. Most of the other places and events are largely compartmentalized/separated. The main quest is de-emphasized.

With New Vegas, a great deal of the areas and quests are irrevocably connected. To have the game end and be able to keep playing, they would have had to script out the after effects of the decisions some how, it would be a nightmare. The sea of bugged quests, randomly failing quests, and NPCs who are talking about events that did/didn't happen or happened differently in the game before you even beat it is already pretty bad. Trying to tidy that up after wouldn't have been worth it. I'm sure they would have done it if they could.

That being said, before they added the BoS add-on to Fallout 3 all you really had to do was pick a save point before the end quest and restart from there. I never found it a huge problem but it was nice to be able to keep playing once you were done. I'm not expecting this to ever be possible in NV.
 
I agree that a open ending add-on like broken steal would be a massive undertaking. However I still feel disappointment in the fact that they chose to end it and cut it off. The situation is like being told to go into a nice to paint a room knowing that you can never actually paint the room if you want to continue living in the house. Its loses its freedom in a sense.

Novac is a very good point to bring up to since as far as I know (correct me if im wrong) during the battle for hoover dam they don't mention Novac once. In fact I had things mentioned in my ending cut scene that I had not encountered during my play through.

These mentions felt like they wanted to wrap the story up in a happy parcel for the cannon to later feed off of.

Is an open ending for NV gonna be easy? No.
Do i expect one? No
Do I feel like obsidian and bethesda failed to solve a problem they have seen before the answer is yes.
 
In fact I had things mentioned in my ending cut scene that I had not encountered during my play through.
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Yeah, exactly. The point is not to tell you what happened before, since you play through it; the point is to tell you what happened AFTER based on your choices. You can either have that, or an open-ended game where your choices don't matter for sh*t. As far as I'm concerned, the former is more fitting than the latter for an RPG game and a Fallout game.

So, it isn't a 'problem' that needs 'solving', it's a conscious design choice. You can't have a middle ground here without throwing story logic out of the window.

I also see the "there is an ending complaints" as strange because that's how most games work - they have an ending. This is true especially for RPG games since they're so bound to the story. It's like these people have never played story-driven games before and are surprised that stories end.
 
Nope just surprised a Bethesda game has an ending. :P The thing in Fallout as well as other games in the rpg genre is decide your role and gives a huge sandbox to the player. Then upon the freedom and learning that a game like that begets it throws a "The End" atop it in a almost about face to said freedom.

I expect endings in games where im dragged from battlefield to battlefield or ruin to ruin with no choice to how or where. Yet when I have the freedom of Fallout I expect the freedom of deciding when I think the game is over. Not just when I stumble down one quest line.



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In fact I had things mentioned in my ending cut scene that I had not encountered during my play through.

Yeah, exactly. The point is not to tell you what happened before, since you play through it; the point is to tell you what happened AFTER based on your choices.

I don't understand your point can you elaborate please. My sentence there was stating that things I never even saw or talked to was mentioned in how my actions upon them were felt. This seemed like on helluva butterfly effect to me if you want to ascribe to that theory here.
 
^ For the second part, maybe I got you wrong. You have an example? Could be one of the infamous end-slide bugs :shrug: haven't run into those yet.

I expect endings in games where im dragged from battlefield to battlefield or ruin to ruin with no choice to how or where. Yet when I have the freedom of Fallout I expect the freedom of deciding when I think the game is over. Not just when I stumble down one quest line.
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So, only linear games should have endings? That doesn't make sense. And it's not like it ends suddenly either, the game sticks a giant warning message in your face saying "this is the point of no return". You can then choose to proceed or go back.

I would also argue that NV is trying to get as far away from the 'sandbox' game design as is possible within the constraints of the engine. There's a difference between a 'do whatever' sandbox of Bethesda-like games and a constrained open-world environment built around choice&consequence story elements. The latter requires a closure in order to implement most of the long-term consequences as it is impossible to show them in-game.
 
HyperionOmega said:
Nope just surprised a Bethesda game has an ending. :P
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New Vegas is not a Bethesda game (aside from being published, not developed, by Bethesda, that is).

I don't understand your point can you elaborate please. My sentence there was stating that things I never even saw or talked to was mentioned in how my actions upon them were felt. This seemed like on helluva butterfly effect to me if you want to ascribe to that theory here.
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You don't understand how a big battle for control over the region can influence the individual communities even though you did not encounter them?
 
Ausdoerrt
My specific point of reference were[spoiler:ff2fa7a61a] the powder gangers in vault 19. At the end of one of my play throughs it said how they continued to plague NCR refugees. I had ran into the powder gangerd but had no idea they had a vault.[/spoiler:ff2fa7a61a] (Don't want to ruin it for anyone)

But this was one example as for NV getting away from sandbox I sincerely hope your wrong. I liked Fallout 3 I wanted New Vegas to encapsulate that same feeling of despair and dark humor with the freedom that post Broken Steel did. It has not in my opinion. Now I understand that in a lot of ways this was a throw back to the old Fallout games. I enjoyed it up until The End. I feel its much better if the DLC could show said changes and expand the Mojave wasteland as you learn the true consequences from your actions in the game proper. Just one idea.

Ausir
Excellent point however i think its cheap to mention a location that you have never located much less interacted with in the ending cutscene where you have very little power to do anything but go back reload and find said settlement and fix it. Another thing[spoiler:ff2fa7a61a] is Novac why does it get attacked that became my home in game and im a bit angry that I couldn't help defend it especially since I heard no plans of Legion advances coming through there.[/spoiler:ff2fa7a61a] It felt like "oh ps your adopted hometown is dead you also cant go back and try to rebuild or at least have a good side quest of revenge either. The End"

As for Bethesda publishing they still have the IP and should still hold responsibility for what ever changes a developer under their auspices are doing to their newly acquired IP's

I really am sorry as I seem to be alone in this argument. Maybe its the fact that Fallout 3 was my first introduction in to Fallout. I see a definitive ending in NV as a handicap that hangs over my head as I play it much as pre-BS iFallout 3 did
 
Excellent point however i think its cheap to mention a location that you have never located much less interacted with in the ending cutscene where you have very little power to do anything but go back reload and find said settlement and fix it.
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You probably still at least heard of the location, didn't you? And your actions in other parts of the game's world influenced that. The world in New Vegas is much more interconnected than the disjointed locations in FO3.

Anyway, do you understand how much time and resources making the post-ending game world reflect the final outcome? E.g. having all the towns overrun by the Legion in case of Legion's victory, all the new dialogue? The way your endgame choices in Broken Steel were treated was pretty cheap, and New Vegas has a lot more choices and their consequences than that.
 
No I had never heard of the vault nor its residents in fact after the ending i reloaded and eventually got the explorers perk to find said location.

And as I stated before I do fully understand the amount of work needed to be put in we are talking about a year maybe two for all the needed patches and that is an optimistic estimate. Would I wait that long, yes gladly. if it meant new quests and spiffy dialogue. there are a couple of ways obsidian could link these ending or just provide a more comprehensive DLC. But NV is fantastic but has some drawbacks and I think Obsidian has it in their power to do fantastic things with NV and I hope a mind blowing open ended segment is one such thing.
 
I don't think a DLC could be enough to cover all the changes in the game world. Accomplishing that would probably warrant a full-blown expansion or even a sequel game to do it justice, but I doubt many people would appreciate another game set in the exact same location. In short, it's not just the amount of work in question, but rather the work vs the payoff for the work.
 
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