The Fallout 3 That Should Have Been!

How about connecting each community with main stream?
each community can offer you informations about father or components to fixed water purifier.
to acquire them, you have to visit or search every communities to find out clues to beat the game.
of course, you can learn destinations before do all the quests by accident or by logic.
this can make fo3's mainstream far better.

for me, the most ugly thing of fo3 is totally broken main quest..
it can be better but beth didn't.

 

Heh, I did one of these (two I think) years ago.

 

My take on the main quest was about about a modified GECK. The player's father had created the technology at the Oasis which served as a testing ground, with various factions such as Rivet City, the Overseer of Vault 101, Ghouls, and perhaps Tenpenny being after the device for control of the Capital Wasteland. (It could make it all green and fertile again)

The Talon Mercs would have played a greater role, being more of a nemesis to the player.

Tenpenny Tower would have had this little shanty town around it inhabited by people who work for the people living in the tower, dreaming one day of getting to live there as well.
The raiders at Evergreen Mills would have actually been working for Tenpenny, being his source of money.

Canterbury Commons would have been pretty much the same as your take but would also include Brahmin rustlers, and a cult that had taken over the nearby Robot Repair Center.

 

I like those ideas. =D

I too contemplated "story fixes" for the game to work in tandem with TONS of mechanical fixes.

-The events of the game took place around roughly 2100, not 2277 (which is largely an agreed-upon given by most here, considering the setting not matching the timeline).
-As a consequence of the timeline "fix", ALL characters who could not physically appear here would not be included (Harold, for example). This would be all for the best, no doubt.

-Little Lamplight would remain as is, as far as population and their relationship to Big Town and Paradise Falls, because the timeline alteration would finally allow this into conceivable possibility.
-Vault 87 would not be accessible through Little Lamplight, so the absurd dilemma of "for almost 200 years a group of children can hold off Frankensteins that grow more powerful as they age" would be removed.
-There would still be "Yellow Mutants", the only nod to FOBOS, though not necessarily FROM Vault 87 itself. There would just be a faction of Mutants that grew stronger with age, as in FOBOS/FO3.

The locations, communities, and major factions would receive a huge appearance overhaul, to give them something to do, a power struggle, and reasons to HAVE any stake in the desolate Capitol Wasteland.

-The East Coast Brotherhood were more like the FO1 Regulators, a military group that originated from a Vault that had the same split as in the game, but not because of any BOS ties or conflicts with the Codex.
-The East Coast Enclave were more like the Reavers from FOT, a fanatical group of technologically well-off psychos that had nothing to do with the actual Enclave.
-Eden could still take the same form and role in the game, and finding him would have explained why the group had managed to organize, because he was revered by these technophiles as some sort of god.
-The conflict between the "East Coast Regulators and Reavers" would have been MUCH greyer as a result, since neither of them were outright good or evil, just out for their own agenda.

-The abundant Raiders littering the wastes would officially be revealed as the biproduct of Vault 106's experiment, a clear nod to the film Serenity, and explain why they're mindless hostiles who can't be talked down.
-The Raiders and the "Yellow Mutants" would serve as the only sporadically antagonizing "groups" that could not be dealt with as recruitable or joinable major factions.

-Paradise Falls acts as a major faction (and possible retroactive founder of Slaver Guilds found in FO2) and they as well as Talon Company would conflict with the "East Coast Regulators" instead of the 87 Super Mutants.
-The "Underground Railroad" would be done away with, but there would be escaped slaves tracked down by Slavers. Function in the story would remain effectively the same, but remove all the cheese from it.
-Talon Company Mercs are more than hostile antagonists. You could assault Fort Bannister, if you chose, or you could sick other factions against them, or possibly find a diplomatic solution to get them to join your side.

-Tenpenny and his tower would stay as is, since it would now make sense for a class-conflict to erupt, started by an elitist Brit, as he emigrated BEFORE the Great War, thanks to the timeline change.
-Oasis still exists, though mostly because of its seclusion sparing it from most nuclear fire, not because of Harold. The conflict with the regional factions would give credence to the fanatics choosing to keep it secret.
-No Vampires. Just..... no.

The Main Campaign would be overhauled completely, both because the major factions involved are either gone or totally different, as well as because Liberty Prime was just stupid.

-James' role is practically untouched. He's still a scientist who flees to 101 after his wife's death, and abandons the Vault 19 years later. He's still tracked from location to location.
-James' fate is determined based on how quickly the player tracks him down, if at all, but it's not central to the ending of the game.
-GECK remains a key component to finalizing Project Purity, but it's the same unremakable (but vital) object as it appeared in FO2; it hasn't undergone some supernatural terraforming reimagining.
-Project Purity is effectively the same, but what happens to it is based on time elapsed, not the player's progress in a main questline. The "Reavers" will take over the Memorial eventually.
-The final battle will either be tackled solely by the player (which is suicidal), OR recruit the factions in the game to form a combined assault, which can be approached many different ways (classic Fallout formula).
-The goal of recruiting factions for a final assault gives PURPOSE to your player wandering the wastes; you might not wanna piss everyone off.

The end of the game and the series of events leading up to the game would have an ACTUAL impact based on "choice", both felt in the game and during the ending slides.

-If enough factions joined your cause, the player COULD participate in an important debate scene between NPCs where the leaders' egos and interests of each group causes a massive political struggle.
-Diplomatic players can get the leaders to all agree to who benefits from what aspects of recapturing Project Purity, based on their contributions to the assault on the Memorial.
-Players could just let them bicker amongst themselves and see how things turn out during the ending slides if you didn't politically intervene and the factions were left to decide on their own who wins in the end.
-Your choices on how to recapture Project Purity, either by force or subterfuge or diplomacy, will determine how easy the final assault goes. The fewer allies at your back, the more fighting you have to do.
-Which factions rise to power as a result of your interventions throughout the game determines the ending, whether the Capitol Wasteland prospers, stagnates, or falls apart. It's not just "FEV water vs purified water".

Naturally, these ideas/changes couldn't really coincide with the OP's, as his timeline change merely rewinds the clock 34 years, rather than 150+, but our ideas don't HAVE to overlap. I just find it fun to take an assembly of bad ideas, but with some really good central concepts within, and find ways to make it better. It's a mental exercise I delight in undertaking, since many years ago (when game developers were smaller, garage band sized "companies") I aspired to be a game creator, and revisiting those aspirations by just creating solutions for a game's problems was always nice.

 

I like those ideas SnavSlav, it would definitely flesh the game more out that way. But I only have one problem with it.

It might just be me but I don't know about "the Memorial be captured over time" idea. However, I guess there could be some kind of "countdown" system for it like Fallout 1 had with the water chip so it could possibly work.

In addition, what would happen to Rivet city? Nobody has mentioned them yet, would they stay as is or would changes happen there too?

 

That's what I said. It would be captured if enough time elapsed, just like the invasions in FO1 and a few time sensitive quests in FO2. I'm basically saying my ideas wouldn't ignore time elapsed, so players who absently wandered the wastes confusing a Fallout title for a hiking simulator would essentially miss most of the game. By the time they'd show up to the cities and start dealing with NPCs, they'd start telling the player about "did you hear what happened to such and such place?" and they'd wonder what the FUCK they had just missed. That's not to say you couldn't be present to see the takeover of Project Purity, but it wouldn't WAIT for you. You could trigger it if you rushed through the game, but if you fucked around for too long, the story would proceed without you.

As for Rivet City... it falls under a bunch of aspects of the game that I'd simply forgotten all about. I thought it would be much cooler and make a helluva lot more sense because it would be closer in time to the dropping of the bombs, but as for what else Rivet City contributed to the game, it might have just been one of the factions to recruit. More than likely they'd be able to offer SOME manpower for the final battle, but they'd make rather unreasonable demands because of their proximity to the Memorial, so they'd contribute significant friction to the political chaos without the player's intervention, but they also wouldn't offer the most sizable boost to the coalition forces, either.

I love some of the suggestions about Canterburry Commons, because I hated how tiny and inconsequential it was in the game, despite being the TRADING HUB. It would simply stand to reason that it would be a power player of some kind in the Capitol Wasteland, not just a place off in the distance with some kooks making a scene regularly.

 

I too wish that Canterbury Commons was bigger. In my first playthrough of Fallout 3, I kept hearing about how Canterbury Commons was one of the biggest trading hubs around. I kinda pictured it as a bustling place with activity regarding the caravans. Instead I got a superhero showdown in a town about the size of an apartment complex. Pretty underwhelming so to say. It should of had more quests regarding the caravans rather than what Uncle Roe offers in the vanilla game. Also to be honest, as much as I enjoy Fallout 3, I do feel like the superhero thing did feel out of place in it all. Little Lamplight felt more normal in comparison to me oddly enough.

Now Crimson Caravan in New Vegas was exactly what I pictured as a major trading hub for sure.

 

The Fallout 3 that should have been, is basically WL2 in terms of gameplay and presentation. ~Technically, Bethesda could have done an amazing job on the visuals, and would have had the editing tools publicly available, and we could have had something rather [loosely] like this:



*As for the actual situations/ quests/ dialog/ and writing... well that's probably another battle they would not want to pick... but at least in theory they had enough money to hire a couple of ringers to layout the main campaign and the effects of one choice over another ~throughout.

 

I am not sure that the Fo1-Fo2 gameplay would fit well with XBox/PS4 gamepad.
If they can't sell their main games on consoles, i am not sure they would go for it.
Spin-off, on the other hand...

 

It was disappointing that they did go for it. However... I don't see why FO1 gameplay [IE. Fallout series game play] would not work on any console platform ~considering that it's turn based and that timing [quick & accurate mouse movement] is not a condition of failure in this type of game. Fallout made great use of hotkeys, but there were none that were required to play. The entire game used the mouse, and while the stick could move the cursor, it could also be done so that the buttons were hotkeyed for specific menus, and that that in those menus, buttons allowed you to cycle through the fixed options (like the TAB key on Windows).

 

That's true. You can use your mouse for everything in Fallout 1/2. The keyboard just acts as a hotkey option for people who prefer to use the keyboard also. They had Red Alert 1 on the PlayStation 1, I don't see why Fallout 1 and 2 couldn't be on a console, or Van Buren.

 

It is specifically because the original Fallout are mouse-based that i cannot imagine them being on console.
How the gamepad could allow the same freedom of moving the cursor that allow the mouse.
The only console i've seen trying to emulate the mouse was the Wii and it wasn't that great.

 

But we can.

The fact that the mouse need not deliver pixel perfect accuracy, means that effectively, it could be like clicking squares on a picture of a chessboard. Also the developer can anticipate usage and use a clever acceleration method to nudge the cursor towards where is should be. Pair that with the fact that the player cannot usually lose for not clicking somewhere fast enough.

 

I like this thread it basically shows that people on the internet, can write a better story than a multi million game company like Bethesda. Good work!

 

Put the bible away..
Fallout isn't about story of messiah or bible.

 

It would've never sold gamers don't want turn based isometric games anymore, they want first person shooter exploration games. Also hating Fallout 3 just because it wasn't isometric makes no sense at all. Fallout 3 sucked because of it's poor combat system, terrible writing,bad story, and it's terrible engine that crashes and causes alot of bugs. The game also suffered from having a few good voice actors and alot of mediocre ones.

 

It is not a member of a big publisher marketing departement to decide what, as a player, i want.

You can't say that what the players want the most is clone games.