How to Develop a Perfect FALLOUT Sequel

Just like most of you I have invested hundreds of hours to the Fallout franchise and until today I am still captivated by both the beauty and terror of the nuclear wasteland. The charm and its whole appeal – there is nothing like it.

Trying to explain why Fallout needs to have a better sequel might sound a bit redundant, the fact is that Fallout has become one of the well-known mainstream RPG with the latest entry generated over 750 million dollars in its first day in retail. As of June 2017 - roughly two years later, it has sold over 13 million copies making it the franchise best-seller.

But behind the success of Fallout 4, thoughts from fans of the series are divided. Fallout and its development is rich with history, as it went from humble beginnings to a hit with its own cult following, through troubled development and bad decisions, to change in ownership of its intellectual property and towards its eventual revival.

The game evolved from being an isometric open-world RPG, into a first-person open-world RPG, together with a major change in design philosophy and game direction. Are these the actual cause to such divide among fans, why does the latest entry in the series received much criticism despite being the most profitable, and how do we learn, and adopt from the previous entries so that any future sequels would be able to cater to not only the fans of the new but the old as well?

Fallout from the get-go is set out to be a different kind of beast, at which it covers mature theme such as prostitution, murder, drug abuse and even child killing, and the player’s complete freedom to do whatever they want, say whatever they want is given a great focus. Fallout went all the way, no constraints whatsoever a feat no developer nor publisher dared to venture these days. The level of choice is so vast it is unparalleled and no other titles even come close to what Fallout can be.

The most recent entry in the Fallout series was criticized for losing the touch of the original series, and their refusal to learn and take inspiration and adapt from the advances of previous Fallout, especially New Vegas – which arguably had better writing, quest design and meaningful factions did not win them any favors from fans. While most people pointed out that Bethesda Game Studios simply playing it safe and trying to cater to the mainstream – I for one believe that the problem primarily arose from their writing and game direction.

But this does not discount the previous entries from mistakes either – the previous fallout games themselves are littered with problems.

New Vegas was not warmly received and was initially criticized from being too buggy and nearly unplayable – save game gets corrupted, some questlines are broken, and Fallout 2 early on was panned due to its constant barrage of pop culture references, they basically turn the jokes and references up to 11, it doesn’t take itself too seriously. However despite these weaknesses, both of these games are not without charm and until today they are referred to as the best entries in the series and stood as the benchmark for the future instalments, something which Fallout 4 may or may not become.

ADOPT A NEW GAME ENGINE

Fallout 4 released on November 10, 2015, to a critical acclaim thanks to the reputation of Skyrim, Fallout 3, lets plays, dedicated YouTubers and the active modding community that to this point – two years later still actively churning out mods, free or otherwise. Fallout 4 is given a facelift running on a newer engine which brought improvements to its graphics, dynamic lighting, weather system and cloth simulation, overall the wasteland never look this good. While Bethesda’s proprietary “Creation Engine” was adapted from the old Gamebryo and constantly received improvements over the years, to this point however it is not even on par compared to other commercially licensed game engines such as Unreal by Epic, and Cryengine by Crytek, which arguably has become an engine so powerful and robust it was used by triple-A developers and indies alike.

It is not unheard of that some Triple-A developers prefer to run and market their games through a proprietary game engine – Ubisoft pretty much developed their own game engines and has spawned multiple varieties to fit their gameplay needs, for Bethesda however, Creation Engine has quickly become outdated, and arguably has reached the limits of the possible. Instead of having their workforce and budget syphoned into upgrading the game engine, why not license an engine, or even run on one of their other proprietary engine Id Tech? Not only that Bethesda Game Studios are able to focus their whole development on making the actual game, but commercial game engines are streamlined and easy to work with for both professional and amateurs – hence their experienced development team are easily up to speed. Unlike any other great RPG’s such as Stardew Valley, FTL, and Darkest Dungeon that run with minimalist graphics, Fallout as a modern RPG definitely benefits from a better game engine.

IMPROVED GUNPLAY MECHANICS AND CUSTOMISATION

While Fallout in its core is a role-playing game, the addition of first-person shooting is pretty much a match made in heaven. From here going forward, the Fallout series probably will continuously embrace its first-person shooter gameplay because it’s easier to get into by newcomers and the flexibility to cater to most demographics is in favor to Bethesda. However the gunplay mechanics was heavily criticized on previous Fallout 3 for being awkward, wooden, and nearly unusable but it was given a minor facelift in New Vegas through scope aiming, gun modification and bullet types, and eventually received a major overhaul in Fallout 4. Responsiveness and accuracy have never felt this good in Fallout thanks to the help from ID Software team, the First Person Shooting mechanics was modelled after Bungie’s Destiny.

The improved shooting mechanics are a welcome change and while it is already near perfect, there is always room for improvements. In addition to the shooting mechanics, weapon customization is something that was well received by the fans. Taking inspiration from the previous Fallout New Vegas, the ability to have a pipe gun modified to fit your character and the way you play can easily drain hours and hours from you – in a good way. But mechanics and game engine aside, let us not forget, what is actually the secret to a great Fallout? What are the backbone, the blueprint to an experience of the perfect nuclear apocalypse?

ROBUST AND MEANINGFUL DIALOGUE SYSTEM

Fallout has always been about players’ choice and their ability to do things either differently on each playthrough or do whatever fits the role they are playing. The previous dialogue system works flawlessly because it blends nicely into gameplay. You know just where to ask, and the rest of the conversation is nicely laid out for you. You can ask and answer as you see fit. Previous Fallout works because of the player’s ability to learn more through questioning, utilize skills in speech checks, and simply the dialogue tree just makes a lot of sense. Fallout 4 taking inspirations from other RPG’s in the market such as Mass Effect, decided to adopt the 4 choices dialogue wheel.

While I appreciate that Bethesda willing to innovate, or in this case to adopt a mechanic, this eventually results in your character conversation to be terrifyingly limited. Limited conversation in Fallout is not at all a good thing. Most probably this mechanic was adopted due to the inclusion of voiced protagonist – which is at times I’d say rather quirky and was a nice addition – but the reason dialogue wheel works with Bioware’s RPG because that their story are predetermined –Shepard was written through-and-through as a savior of mankind from the get-go and you can’t role-play him otherwise. Hey may fail or he might win fighting the reapers based on your choices, but you cannot role-play him as a rogue specter or anything else. Compared to Fallout – the reason previous games leave you a plate as blank as possible for you to put a role in so that you can role-play as you see fit.

As you have probably experienced, previous Fallout contains speech checks relevant to certain skills and perks– skills in medicine would help you talk your way into getting more meds from doc Mitchell, and skills in bartering generally have you receive more rewards and great deals. This time however you only use charisma. Just charisma. No matter what are the circumstances, only your charisma come into play to intimidate, seduce, barter, everything.

This renders skills and perks pretty much useless in conversations. It is also hard to predict what your character is going to say and being voice acted, you cannot predict how his or her delivery is going to be. This leads to modders to mod the dialogue system to a hard list of the things the player character was actually going to say, and from the looks of it that is what fans preferred. Going forward, as admitted by Todd Howard himself, it is preferable for the next fallout to adapt the classic conversation system instead of the dialogue wheel. It just won’t work.

NO FORCED BACKSTORY/ORIGINS

In the old Fallout series, the origin of the protagonist is pretty much left to the players to decide – though you are given a predetermined backstory such as being a Vault Dweller or a Descendant of A Vault Dweller, the rest is simply up to your imagination, how you choose to play and distribute your SPECIAL skill. The developers understood that half the story is in the mind of the players. New Vegas and especially Fallout 4 suffers for giving the protagonist perhaps too much of history. In New Vegas, you are a courier with a bit of history that is revealed in the Lonesome Road DLC – although this history is rather light and you are still given some freedom to conceive and role play your character as you see fit.

In Fallout 4 however – you are an ex-soldier who married to a wife name Nora – which she had a law degree, and you two had a baby.

What if you don’t want your character to be an ex-soldier? What if you want her to be a pre-war scientist? If your name is James can’t you name your wife Mary? You can’t even choose to carry your baby all the way to the vault. These might sound like nitpicking, but it is a nitpick because Bethesda clearly missed an opportunity here. Understandably, the game intro was made to fit into the main story. Players are able to accept that a war hero are able to handle guns and use power armor, but a lawyer who shoot guns and use power armor? Suspension of disbelief can only go so far. You can applaud Bethesda for trying to come up for something new – having a wife/husband murdered and a baby kidnapped only to wake up later in an apocalypse wondering what the hell is going on was a great premise.

That being said – if only the backstory was given much more time for players to invest emotionally, give some room for it to be open-ended, it could have been a better intro.

This could be due to the criticism of the old Fallout 3 – which if you remember Bethesda was told that the intro sequence was drawn out and took too long. But it seems this was misunderstood by the developers as I believe the long intro sets up the whole atmosphere and building intrigue about the wasteland – before the eventual reveal. Although the criticism still stands for some fans that the intro took too long, this is mainly due to the players had little involvement during the intro, simply wait for dialogues and do limited actions. Intros to Fallout games should be simple, and as blank a slate as possible so that player can fill in the gaps to their backstory, straightforward so that multiple play trough is not cumbersome, and build intrigue to drive players to the main story.

FREEDOM OF CHOICE

Fallout is probably the first of its kind when it first came out. Unlike the also well-known Ultima series which forces the players to be heroic and constantly on the righteousness path, Fallout is extremely graphic for its time, it took players into mature themes such as murder – which makes it entry into European market troublesome and results in various forms of censorships. The freedom of choice in the series is beyond comparison even to any closely related RPG and is groundbreaking at the time. Save a town or destroy it, work with convicts or against them, fight for humanity or against them, these are the things that players should be able to do in Fallout, and it is up to the player to ponder and decide the weight their actions and accept any ramifications that come after.

Players should also have the ability to outright disagree if they wanted to. One best example is when I was in Junktown, upon entering a casino this local boss, intrigue in seeing me as an outsider intend to hire me for a “cleanup job”.

Considering I was at low level and simply trying to rush through the town, I decided to decline the job and went back to it later. Now in modern games and some RPG, if you were to say no to a quest they would usually handle it by leaving the quest idle and expect you to accept them later. But to my surprise – the casino boss feeling compromised ended up having me killed. So I promptly took my gun out – take my time – and shoot him. Losing the opportunity to do the quest. I was surprised that the game are not afraid to let me face the possible consequences, compared to Bethesda’s design philosophy of constantly rewarding the player. Play Fallout again and you see a lot of things can happen against you – push a man too far and he will have his guards to deal with you, you can barter as much as you want, but too much can do you no good, you can even get extorted by a doctor.

Another great example is how you decide what to be of Benny when you finally face him at the casino in New Vegas. You can shoot him there and there. You can have him pay you your contract and he runs off, talk his way into the penthouse and kill him there, or discuss your wish to work with him, or forgive him, or maybe if you play as a female character you can seduce him and kill him afterwards. Or let him escape and eventually captured by the legion – fight with him in the arena, have him crucified, let him go, or just kill him there and there. This level of choice is unfortunately missing in the main story of Fallout 4 and Bethesda was criticized heavily for not being able to reproduce this level of detail, despite having longer development time and overall greater budget. Unless the writers and the quest designers of Bethesda are able to provide this kind of fidelity in its design, Fallout will most probably stagnate over the next few releases.

WELL WRITTEN QUEST

Questing is the backbone of an RPG. Without a good well-written quest – game mechanics, great lore and the whole labour of love put into game design were pretty much useless. The players simply won’t have the drive and the intention to progress – the whole experience ends up being lackluster. Take dying light, for example, the main story is at most lackluster, a villain so cliché – it’s laughable. But when Dying Light is lacking in its main storyline – it shines in its quest design, quest writing and overall execution. Dying Light may not be a RPG, but in many ways it surprises you. If you were to start any side quest in this game you will often be tricked to think that this is just another fetch quest. Grab a chocolate for this crazy guy, check up on this guy at this point on this map here, or even answer to a distress call here. But this is where the excellence of this game really show, as it often subverts your expectations and pulls the rug under your feet.

This guy says his mom needed chocolate for a special occasion, you got him a chocolate, and look at that, his mom need dead for a while and he is mentally challenged. Or a simple quest of checking up a group of other survivors shows a grim reality of relying on and trusting a man who is not only unreliable, he won’t put his trust into others killing everyone as the result. Even your noble intention to help survivors in need may result in your own demise. What makes these quests great are not necessarily in its twist, but rather the whole quest was built with the theme of apocalypse in mind. Each quest is made to make players take a deeper look into what society may become in the event of an apocalypse, how everything is morally grey, how the rest of us trying to cling to how little humanity we had left, and how others, just like the player see the zombie apocalypse as a playground, waiting to unleash the animal within them. The quest are so fitting with the theme. The whole quests are great to talk about and are worthy of a video of its own, perhaps I’ll make one and talk about quest designs. The fallout series itself is full of great quest designs it was definitely have been talked to death. One of the best example in recent memory was Beyond the Beef in Fallout New Vegas.

A channel on YouTube called GameMaker’s Toolkit has made a great video at which he discussed an in-depth analysis of quest design. In short – the amount of choices given to the player in handling the challenges and finishing the quest really shows the potential of great writing and well thought out execution. Fallout 4, on the other hand, tackles it quest design rather differently, the best example can be seen in The Lost Patrol quest which would start when you either stumble upon a battle site or picking up a distress signal. What ensues is a hunt for these remaining distress signal and discover a series of tragic events for a Brotherhood of Steel and its units. When your PipBoy picked up a distress signal it gives off an audible beep which will get stronger the closer you are to a source. You will often stumble across these signals in challenging areas – sometimes in a mutant-infested solar array, a well-bunkered military site, etc. You will discover holotapes which give you an insight to what has actually happened, collect enough of these holotapes and you’ll eventually be lead to an old bunker, which you discovered their commander ran off and leave his units behind. It is up to the player to feel sympathy or disgust for the commander. The whole quest was great and pretty much a hunt for clues results in it being rather linear compared to other quests in the series.

GREY MORALITY AND CONSISTENT THEMES

The recent Fallout 4 also suffers as everybody in the wasteland is treated as either the absolute good guys or the absolute bad guys. Gunners, Raiders, are default factions that simply shoot and rob you on sight. While the Minuteman, The Railroad and The Brotherhood are the default good guys with a sprinkle of dilemma here and there. You can’t criticize these factions, you can’t debate with these factions and simply an errand boy most of the time, and somehow treated as a saviour at the end of the journey. In fallout new Vegas, if you were to analyze and give the factions much deeper look, you’ll realize how none of them is an “ultimate good and bad guy” and if anything they sat in between, being grey. On your first or any early playthrough, you can’t help but assume that the New California Republic were the good guys – they don’t shoot you on sight, they willing to trade with you, they erected farms and revived old technology, they seemed like the recognizable old governments watching over the Mojave to maintain peace and order.

It is much later you’ll realize that most of the time they’re not doing a very good job at it. Their administration was stretched too thin, their paperwork is mostly a burden to the settlements, their currency and exchange rate are not exactly fair, their trade routes are littered with bandits and raiders, most of the army is in a standing order(meaning they sit around doing jack shit) while they supposed to protect their people. Their farms were plagued with problems, and they lacking in specialists that they ended up hiring a complete idiot to help them with delicate technology. The NCR has no actual endgame – they just simply expand, spread too thin and try to grab a hold of as many resources as they can. Compare that to the Caesar’s Legion that you’ve been hearing bad things, to your eventual rendezvous in Nipton and seeing their atrocities, you would think that they are the main protagonist for this game. While you’re most probably correct, you’ll soon learn that in the legion’s territory, it is much safer for traders to walk through without any worries of raiders attack as most of them are too scared to roam the land. Heck, you can even pretend to be a trader and went into their camp.

The taxation rate is fairly low. The legion is disciplined and ultimately loyal to their leader, they reject drugs or any form of modern medications which resulted in them being one of the strongest armies in the wasteland. The legion possesses a strong leader, feared by both his army and his foes. However, their progress is lost due to being a highly centralized government and is at risk when his power fell to a wrong person. Maybe Bethesda should keep the hero fantasy in their Elder Scrolls series, but treat id differently for Fallout. Fallout should make players ponder and judge for themselves the ramifications of their choices and decision, it should reward and not afraid to punish. Fallout should stay to its theme of civilization coping with rebuilding at the end of time. Factions should be the type of people who cling to old world ideologies, an ideology which resulted in the demise of the old world, which eventually resulted in theirs. Keeping the right theme and staying consistent with the lore is essential.

FINAL VERDICT

Fans of the series are harsh on Fallout 4 because they loved the game, and rightfully so. Majority of people won’t spend 60 dollars randomly on a game and hating on it without any valid reasons or having prior expectations.

Fallout is a series that people love and hold dearly. Fans who bought the game are at the end of the day – customers and end users, and they have the right to complain, voice their opinions and giving feedbacks – constructive or otherwise so that the developers would listen and improve their future products.

Sure some criticisms do go unrealistic, nitpicky and sometimes outright outrageous, there is a thin line between constructive, and hate speech but that is something that no one can control and no other form of media had any exceptions on. Music, Films, Literature and another form of arts did not escape from feedback and criticism, and for games to become and treated as arts – it needs to listen.

References

Gamespot in Fallout 4 Gun Mechanics

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/fallout-4-gunplay-modeled-after-destinys/1100-6431981/

Todd Howard on Fallout 4 Dialogue System-By PC Gamer

http://www.pcgamer.com/fallout-4-lead-todd-howard-dialogue-system-didnt-work-as-well/

Eurogamer on Fallout New Vegas Quest Design

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-07-12-the-murky-genius-of-fallout-new-vegas

Fallout 4 Need New Game Engine http://www.pcgamer.com/did-fallout-4-need-a-new-engine/#comment-jump

Discussion

Reddit on Fallout 4 Creation Engine https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/4gdrc8/whats_wrong_with_the_creation_engine/

Reddit on Fallout 4 Gun Mechanics https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/70oxr3/fallout_4_gunplay_why_do_people_say_its_improved/