The Shandification of Fallout

"The Frankly embarrasing number of Hours I spent in New Vegas" : 163

Gah.jpg


Sh-Shut up man. What do you Know?


Very Interesting video. I am gonna find that book, sounds interesting too.
 
Crni Vuk said:
The world is just to damn small, the game wants to give you a feeling of epicness, but how to achieve that with fast travel and using your horse to get from town to town in less then 5 min.?
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If I remember correct, what made the Skyrim world feel so damn small to me was the quests, which had send me from left to the right all the time. I was in the bottom right corner of the worldmap and got a quest that was sending me to the top left corner of the world because of whatever stupid reason. This made me feel as if the world of Skyrim is a village and everyone knows each other.
 
Yeah, the world feels incredibly small when some random sap in Winterhold can apperently go for a stroll and lose his magic doodad in a frotress like half the map away from the city. Or when I can apparently go from one corner of the map to the other in a night of drinking.
 
Ilosar said:
Except he was talking about setting and world building, not narrative and choice. He could have, it's another big difference between FO3 and New Vegas and even more important IMO, but it's not the point of the video.
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Actually, he was talking about a design in which the story and the setting become blurred to the point that they are not easily distinguishable. That describes New Vegas almost perfectly, as the Mexican stand-off over the Hoover Dam forms not only the backdrop of the game, but also the main quest. You can choose to complete the game in a variety of iterations which actually feel meaningfully different from one another.

In Fallout 3 you have one path on the main quest, and that's just how it works. The player has a couple of choices at the end of the game, but because they're essentially made right there and then, they don't feel very meaningful.

It fits perfectly with the point the video author was making, and it's a stronger illustration of the concept.
 
Mr Fish said:
North of the skingrad city there was a farm, think they also produced wine.

Then right outside of the vampire lord's city there was another farm.

Then there was a farm which two families had which a daedra lord wants you to screw up.

I don't remember all of the locations but there was definitely life going on beyond city walls.

Mines, farms, smaller settlements, breweries, monestaries.

As to marketplaces, the main city had one, I think, more of a shop district than a marketplace I suppose.

Been a while since I played it so I don't remember everything but I do remember that it had a lot of life going on beyond the cities. So just saying, what Skyrim had isn't new.
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There are no functional mines. Not even a single one. I found that not only strange, but terribly sloppy, cus it wouldn't have cost them anything to leave a couple of mines active, with some friendly NPC's roaming them, but nope.
In Morrowind many mines were active.

Also, I wasn't overly impressed with the farms in Oblivion. They all seem "symbolic", like "here you go, a farm, happy now?" while in Morrowind farms were part of plantations, and north of Vivec there are large areas scattered with farms. There were even different types of farms, some farmed vegetables, some specialized in guar.
 
zegh8578 said:
Mr Fish said:
North of the skingrad city there was a farm, think they also produced wine.

Then right outside of the vampire lord's city there was another farm.

Then there was a farm which two families had which a daedra lord wants you to screw up.

I don't remember all of the locations but there was definitely life going on beyond city walls.

Mines, farms, smaller settlements, breweries, monestaries.

As to marketplaces, the main city had one, I think, more of a shop district than a marketplace I suppose.

Been a while since I played it so I don't remember everything but I do remember that it had a lot of life going on beyond the cities. So just saying, what Skyrim had isn't new.
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There are no functional mines. Not even a single one. I found that not only strange, but terribly sloppy, cus it wouldn't have cost them anything to leave a couple of mines active, with some friendly NPC's roaming them, but nope.
In Morrowind many mines were active.

Also, I wasn't overly impressed with the farms in Oblivion. They all seem "symbolic", like "here you go, a farm, happy now?" while in Morrowind farms were part of plantations, and north of Vivec there are large areas scattered with farms. There were even different types of farms, some farmed vegetables, some specialized in guar.
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Totally agree man. I miss Morrowind...
 
Great video that really captures the strength of Obsidian's world building, and the unique opportunities available to video games.

It's a strange phenomenon, but in pretty much every game I play, I will always go the opposite direction of where I think I'm supposed to go, just to see what will happen when I do. The exceptions to this are games like Fallout, where the open setting means that there are countless opposite directions, and so using the clues the game has provided becomes necessary.

This is why I hate it when games inject a false sense of urgency, with characters saying things like "We have to hurry, go now!" All it takes is a momentary lapse of obedience to completely break the immersion, so it becomes hard work on my part to try and maintain it. Games need to find their own sense of pacing and story-telling that matches more closely with the mechanics.

Anyway, good video.
 
Jabberwok said:
This is why I hate it when games inject a false sense of urgency, with characters saying things like "We have to hurry, go now!" All it takes is a momentary lapse of obedience to completely break the immersion, so it becomes hard work on my part to try and maintain it. Games need to find their own sense of pacing and story-telling that matches more closely with the mechanics.
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Heh, I hadn't even thought about this, but I agree completely!

I often end up taking my time anyway, perfect example of that is the beginning of FO3, where you are rushed up and out of your room, with the music being all dramatic, while I'm taking all the time I need (not realizing yet of course, this game has little of real value to explore. Oh joy, randomly generated clipboards!)
 
hey in Oblivion you had an whole deadra (deamon) invasion taking place which took years or even centuries, depending how much time the player needed to explore the landscape and sniff on the flowers.
 
The most amusing thing about free-roam games like F:NV, Skyrim or whatnot is that the population ratio of bandits:everyone else is usually 10:1 or something - made worse by re-spawns.

It's all suspension of disbelief, I guess. TBH, to me personally Skyrim did a better job of it than F:NV (though I spent more hours in F:NV than Skyrim). Sure, the quests and characters in F:NV are a shitload better, but the Skryim world is pretty fleshed out with the amount of history, books, emergent stories etc. behind it. To use a dirty word, it feels more 'immersive'.
 
I still think that Fallout ought to be turned into a sort of Dwarf Fortress with guns and given a procedually generated plot.
 
I would like it if fast travel was limited in some way... like it takes X amount of food to travel a certain distance or you have to have consumable maps (that are expensive) and end up degrading/tearing etc. randomly during use which would force you to walk longer distances and expend resources to move (rather than just being hungry) it would require calories/food etc. plus water to be able to go on the fast travel journey not just "oh you made the trip and you are hungry and thirsty"... lets eat a gecko and drink out of a toilet... Problem solved.
 
Not so sure that I agree with all that is said in that video, but there are three main things that I want from the game world:

- don't be static and too predicable
- be logical.
- don't hand-cuff my freedom in some way without some good reason.

Also, don't know much about other genres, but in most RPGs that I played in last few years, ordinary NPCs are way under-developed in terms of character, AI, their motives etc., so there is one thing that I want from NPCs:

- don't be plastic, clean, polite and mindless.

IMO, in later case, procedural AI is the key, although muc hcould be done and in the game world itself (animals, terrain and underground generation, dynamically generated side-quests etc...).

All this is how alive and real gameworld is to us.
 
Jebus said:
The most amusing thing about free-roam games like F:NV, Skyrim or whatnot is that the population ratio of bandits:everyone else is usually 10:1 or something - made worse by re-spawns.

It's all suspension of disbelief, I guess. TBH, to me personally Skyrim did a better job of it than F:NV (though I spent more hours in F:NV than Skyrim). Sure, the quests and characters in F:NV are a shitload better, but the Skryim world is pretty fleshed out with the amount of history, books, emergent stories etc. behind it. To use a dirty word, it feels more 'immersive'.
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I sort of disagree. The Elder Scrolls games have a ton of well-developed lore and backstory, but it doesn't feel as well-connected to the game to me. Part of this is probably due to technical limitations. Oblivion, at least, had a decent-sized city, but Skyrim is so under-populated that it's really hard to believe that any of the various towns could sustain themselves (the 2 or 3 kids per city don't help). Skyrim feels more post-apocalyptic than New Vegas, judging by population, and it really shouldn't. I read books and notes in the game about battles, but capturing a city involves me and five guys running up a road for a few minutes. The story treats Skyrim like a whole country, with different 'holds', but the game itself feels more like walking around an over-sized backyard.

In contrast, the way areas in New Vegas were organized, and more heavily populated made it much easier for me to imagine that more was happening off screen. And I got a much better sense of their being a functioning economy and political structure in New Vegas. Also, bandits and other random encounters were usually tied to a faction of some kind, so there presence usually felt more justified than the ones in Skyrim.
 
WillisPDunlevey said:
I would like it if fast travel was limited in some way... like it takes X amount of food to travel a certain distance or you have to have consumable maps (that are expensive) and end up degrading/tearing etc. randomly during use which would force you to walk longer distances and expend resources to move (rather than just being hungry) it would require calories/food etc. plus water to be able to go on the fast travel journey not just "oh you made the trip and you are hungry and thirsty"... lets eat a gecko and drink out of a toilet... Problem solved.
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Fast travel is horrible, and I try not to use it at all. I played New Vegas without any fast travelling, and I tried to play Skyrim that way, until I got sick of being sent across the entire map on randomized fetch quests.

Unless they can drastically increase the world size, I think they should abandon the continuous world setup in favor of something more believable. I would like to see them try and bring back the travel system from the original Fallout games. They could have localized maps for specific locations, then randomly generated encounter maps for things that happen in the wasteland. Beyond that, travel would take place on a world map. That would make it much easier to have realistic distances and time without taxing the system or making things too boring. I don't think it would be too difficult to do this in first person.
 
or they could actually get an system like in Morrowind where you had several ways of transportion. Took a bit time to get the hang out of it, but once you are used to it it makes the world believable. For example using ships to get to very remove locations like a small village near the coast and the teleporation in the mage guild between large citiees.

Morrowind feelt a lot bigger then it really was thx to that.
 
Interesting video, never knew you could use the title of that book as a way to describe something though.
 
Jabberwok said:
Jebus said:
The most amusing thing about free-roam games like F:NV, Skyrim or whatnot is that the population ratio of bandits:everyone else is usually 10:1 or something - made worse by re-spawns.

It's all suspension of disbelief, I guess. TBH, to me personally Skyrim did a better job of it than F:NV (though I spent more hours in F:NV than Skyrim). Sure, the quests and characters in F:NV are a shitload better, but the Skryim world is pretty fleshed out with the amount of history, books, emergent stories etc. behind it. To use a dirty word, it feels more 'immersive'.
Click to expand...

I sort of disagree. The Elder Scrolls games have a ton of well-developed lore and backstory, but it doesn't feel as well-connected to the game to me. Part of this is probably due to technical limitations. Oblivion, at least, had a decent-sized city, but Skyrim is so under-populated that it's really hard to believe that any of the various towns could sustain themselves (the 2 or 3 kids per city don't help). Skyrim feels more post-apocalyptic than New Vegas, judging by population, and it really shouldn't. I read books and notes in the game about battles, but capturing a city involves me and five guys running up a road for a few minutes. The story treats Skyrim like a whole country, with different 'holds', but the game itself feels more like walking around an over-sized backyard.

In contrast, the way areas in New Vegas were organized, and more heavily populated made it much easier for me to imagine that more was happening off screen. And I got a much better sense of their being a functioning economy and political structure in New Vegas. Also, bandits and other random encounters were usually tied to a faction of some kind, so there presence usually felt more justified than the ones in Skyrim.
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Yeah, (lack of) population density is a problem. I'd guess it's mostly due to technical limitations, though. I never played Oblivion longer than five minutes, so I'm not too well aware of the size of cities in it, nor the number of NPC's.
New Vegas did do better in that regard, although the amount of stuff in close proximity to eachother did make the whole setting less believeable in that regard (vis-a-vis it being a wasteland).

And well, there's plenty of mods for Skyrim that remove fast travel and add travel options (ships etc.), add believeable economics, and add extra faction mechanics (Imperial-Stormcloak battles etc.).
I guess TES games will never be able to create cities as densely populated as GTA, for instance, because in TES you can enter every house and pickpocket or otherwise interact with any NPC, which is tracked etc. throughout the entire game. Savegames get bloated enough already.
I'd assume things will get better when technology progresses. So far I still think Skryrim did the best job in regards to creating a believeable world.
 
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