Plot for Fallout 4

[Talwyn224]

It is not completely intact. The sheild gave towards the end, and a couple of blasts hit the city. So while mostly intact, it is still infested by raiders, ghouls etc

 

While I respect your idea, it still isn't going to convince many of the people here that it has real merit.

 

It has real problems.

 

Why was New York given this miracle shield and not D.C? Surely the nations capital should have had this magic shield to stop the nukes instead of NY? Also, a big mostly intact city of ghouls/raiders/mutant-pokemon/whatever is just not all that interesting to be honest.

 

In addition, New Vegas [the game & the place] really trashes this idea and makes it unworkable.

 

We know that Mr House predicted roughly a dozen or so years that WWIII was coming and prepared for it. Yet even House, with all of his wealth and massive laser canon defences, failed to stop nuclear fire from raining down on Vegas. So why then did a city get this [mostly] impervious shield and succeed from getting trashed while one of the most brilliant industrialists of his time, with a head start of 12 or more years, fail to properly defend his own city?

 

In addition, if there was a mostly intact city on the eastern seaboard, perhaps there'd be some mention of it in the fallout canon. From all of the game releases going from FO 1, 2 3 plus New Vegas, FO Tactics & Brotherhood of Steel and Van Buren [which never got released but much of it's design content has been used and an loosely be considered "canon"] we never hear of any place that's survived unscathed, except New Vegas and even then it has problem. NV is seen/portrayed as the least irradiated/damaged area and that's because Mr Houses laser defences mostly worked. This is why there's so much plant life in the area compared to the capital wasteland etc.

 

I understand your desire to pursue this concept but what does it offer to the player aside from having a city to explore and have things to kill? Where is the hook, the thing that a story is based on, which will draw the players in and make them want to go right through the game? You need something that is more than just a place, you need a narrative. It needs to be thought provoking and challenging and add texture and depth and emotional content.

 

I think you need to look at building a story first before the setting. Get a good story and the rest will follow.

Edited July 31, 2012 by Talwyn224

[macaren15]

If you look at their writing from TES4 to F3 to TES5 you can see it's improving with each new installment, it's still light years behind Obsidian or Bioware but it has reached a mostly decent level by now

[DoctorZ]

i just hope they didn't choose to go with a "online fallout" game

 

http://www.gamespot.com/fallout-online/

Edited July 31, 2012 by DoctorZ

[Nihilisaurus]

mostly decent level by now

 

 

 

They still don't understand the whole 'choice as something important' thing. In skyrim (so far as I know) the civil war takes a back seat to the old fashioned fantasy staple of hunting dragons, which is mandatory if you want to follow the game's story. This strikes me as a silly choice, focusing on (boring) dragons as opposed to (interesting) massive upheaval of the whole region. The dragons do give me hope we could see vertibirds as NPCs not furniture; however, so at least if they do bring back the enclave for another round of deus ex machina plot devices at least we'll have something more interesting to fight other than waves of soldiers in badly designed power armour,

Edited August 1, 2012 by Lt Albrecht

[RooksGambit]

My 2 cents:

 

Fallout 4: Welcome to Florida

 

Instead of focusing on 1 city, focus is on a state. The bright vibrant pastel colors of Miami contrasted against the nuclear wasteland. Terrains include swamps, marshes and some forests (and wastelands of course). Include island hopping, underwater exploration. Orlando along with disney & universal theme parks (imitations of course). And of course NASA.

[scottym23]

It is not completely intact. The sheild gave towards the end, and a couple of blasts hit the city. So while mostly intact, it is still infested by raiders, ghouls etc

 

We know that Mr House predicted roughly a dozen or so years that WWIII was coming and prepared for it. Yet even House, with all of his wealth and massive laser canon defences, failed to stop nuclear fire from raining down on Vegas. So why then did a city get this [mostly] impervious shield and succeed from getting trashed while one of the most brilliant industrialists of his time, with a head start of 12 or more years, fail to properly defend his own city?

 

 

I loved fallout New Vegas, however this was the largest and most blatantly obvious plot hole in Bethesda game's history. Just a single man (granted he is rich and powerful) can afford on his own defenses capable of stopping a large chunk of missiles and protecting a designated area, and has the means to install them as well? When I first read that dialog from Mr. House telling me, I laughed a tremendous bit and was also furious at the same time with how ridicules the entire concept was (and still is). If a single man can buy and install them, why didn't the U.S government install a hundred fold of the same defenses at important military bases and/or around vaults housing military personnel and equipment? This just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. So keeping that in mind, maybe his idea of an entire city being "pristine" isn't so out there. What if there was a city labelled important and of high priority because of it's military presence/significance? They could have installed these laser cannons and saved the city from any nuclear bombs entirely. Remember, Mr. House was only a day too late getting the platinum chip which would have upgraded his weapon systems and made New Vegas completely intact.

[Talwyn224]

@scottym23

 

I agree to an extent that House's laser defence system was a bit of a narrative stretch but it was just plausible enough for me at least to believe he'd somehow managed to build this incredible defence array in the 12 or so years before the war happened. But it is a hell of a leap of faith the developers are asking us to make in any case and it doesn't bare well under the harsh glare of logic and scrutiny :facepalm:

 

What was a real facepalm moment for me was listening to Raul's eyewitness account of the day the bombs fell. He said that he saw House's laser defences in action... from way down in Mexico :rolleyes: WTF? Oh come on... that's just utter nonsense. Vegas would be over 800 miles at the very least [making huge guesstimates here] and take into account the curvature of the earth, there is no way that Raul could have possibly witnessed the pyrotechnic display of House's laser light show shooting down the incoming ICBM's unless he was 20 or so miles high in the atmosphere wearing a pressure suit! Then he'd have seen everything!

 

Also I think the US government [and the Enclave for that matter] might have somehow got wind of a private citizen installing his own Star Wars ICBM defence system on top of a Casino? Wasn't that the time when paranoia was rife and everybody under suspicion?

Unless House managed to bribe dozens if not hundred of people to stay silent, then the projected would have been discovered and either confiscated or shut down by the Government. Any which way you look at it, the laser defence MacGuffin is yet another bit of lazy writing on the part of the developers.

 

Anyway... back on topic.

 

Just as a side note, lets focus on the plot rather than locations for Fallout 4 :thumbsup:

 

It's what the thread is entitled btw ;)

 

Now for a plot idea - I had thought of this not long after FO3 came out but to my eternal regret, I never got around to putting it down on "paper" so to speak.

 

My concept was this:

 

The Game starts October 15, 2077, roughly 8 days before WWIII. You are a new recruit in the US Army going through accelerated basic training using the new VR pods developed by General Constintine Chase via his Operation: Anchorage simulation [it's not Op.Anchorage though but a recreation of basic training that any new recruit goes through plus "live fire" exercise etc]. The player is in the army as a volunteer so that his loved one gets a place in a vault. The player goes through basic training in the VR pod for a few days, being shown how to use weapons, learn tactics, power armour etc. On Oct. 21 they are asked if they like to "volunteer" for another program - cryostasis. They have no choice in the matter and are put on ice. Their pod gets loaded onto a truck and is being driven away from the base when the nukes hit. The truck is blown over and crashes into a ravine and buried in debris but the pod remains intact and unopened for 200 years....

 

Cut to 2282 - tribals discover the pod and open it, awaking the player. The player has discovered that everything they knew is gone and they now have to adapt to surviving in this nightmare post apocalyptic world.

 

So that was my concept and then last year... RAGE came out and I died a little inside as it was my idea basically, in a different setting but never the less, making the concept I had envisaged appear like it's a rip off of RAGE. Now there's no way to for me to prove it as I never published my idea on the net, it was just something I'd written down in a word document which I no longer have.

 

[shrug] No matter.

 

I still think it's a good concept as it allows a fresh look at Fallout. We could get a glimpse of pre war America in the opening chapter before the player goes into the Cryo-Pod. The game could be set anywhere really, but preferably where there hasn't already been a Fallout game. My picks would have been Oak Ridge, Tennessee as that's a major nuclear research facility IRL, Huntsville Alabama is another good spot, Hawaii for a tropic themed place or Seattle Washington. Location wasn't really important though rather the story was. The plot would be that the "man/woman" out of time has to piece together clues about what happened to their loved one, try to locate the Vault in which they were in. Also help [or not] the struggling communities along the way with their knowledge of pre war tech. One of the key aspects of the game would be that the player has dogtags, and that these dog tags allow access into locked down military facilities which are full of loot and other horrors...

 

Another aspect would be that one of the surviving bases has a RoboBrain which is acting like a radio DJ. One of the quests the player would have would be to find new music holotapes - appropriately named after each quest given to the player. The player finds the tape in the quest and then has the choice to give it to the DJ and new music is included in the play list. I always liked the music but it gets stale after hearing the same old tune for the 100th time. This way you could have an expanded play list that goes into the dozens and thus add a touch of variety to the game.

 

There is a whole lot more of this concept but I'll leave it here for now.

Edited August 3, 2012 by Talwyn224

[scottym23]

@scottym23

 

I agree to an extent that House's laser defence system was a bit of a narrative stretch but it was just plausible enough for me at least to believe he'd somehow managed to build this incredible defence array in the 12 or so years before the war happened. But it is a hell of a leap of faith the developers are asking us to make in any case and it doesn't bare well under the harsh glare of logic and scrutiny :facepalm:

 

What was a real facepalm moment for me was listening to Raul's eyewitness account of the day the bombs fell. He said that he saw House's laser defences in action... from way down in Mexico :rolleyes: WTF? Oh come on... that's just utter nonsense. Vegas would be over 800 miles at the very least [making huge guesstimates here] and take into account the curvature of the earth, there is no way that Raul could have possibly witnessed the pyrotechnic display of House's laser light show shooting down the incoming ICBM's unless he was 20 or so miles high in the atmosphere wearing a pressure suit! Then he'd have seen everything!

 

Also I think the US government [and the Enclave for that matter] might have somehow got wind of a private citizen installing his own Star Wars ICBM defence system on top of a Casino? Wasn't that the time when paranoia was rife and everybody under suspicion?

Unless House managed to bribe dozens if not hundred of people to stay silent, then the projected would have been discovered and either confiscated or shut down by the Government. Any which way you look at it, the laser defence MacGuffin is yet another bit of lazy writing on the part of the developers.

 

Anyway... back on topic.

 

Just as a side note, lets focus on the plot rather than locations for Fallout 4 :thumbsup:

 

It's what the thread is entitled btw ;)

 

Now for a plot idea - I had thought of this not long after FO3 came out but to my eternal regret, I never got around to putting it down on "paper" so to speak.

 

My concept was this:

 

The Game starts October 15, 2077, roughly 8 days before WWIII. You are a new recruit in the US Army going through accelerated basic training using the new VR pods developed by General Constintine Chase via his Operation: Anchorage simulation [it's not Op.Anchorage though but a recreation of basic training that any new recruit goes through plus "live fire" exercise etc]. The player is in the army as a volunteer so that his loved one gets a place in a vault. The player goes through basic training in the VR pod for a few days, being shown how to use weapons, learn tactics, power armour etc. On Oct. 21 they are asked if they like to "volunteer" for another program - cryostasis. They have no choice in the matter and are put on ice. Their pod gets loaded onto a truck and is being driven away from the base when the nukes hit. The truck is blown over and crashes into a ravine and buried in debris but the pod remains intact and unopened for 200 years....

 

Cut to 2282 - tribals discover the pod and open it, awaking the player. The player has discovered that everything they knew is gone and they now have to adapt to surviving in this nightmare post apocalyptic world.

 

So that was my concept and then last year... RAGE came out and I died a little inside as it was my idea basically, in a different setting but never the less, making the concept I had envisaged appear like it's a rip off of RAGE. Now there's no way to for me to prove it as I never published my idea on the net, it was just something I'd written down in a word document which I no longer have.

 

[shrug] No matter.

 

I still think it's a good concept as it allows a fresh look at Fallout. We could get a glimpse of pre war America in the opening chapter before the player goes into the Cryo-Pod. The game could be set anywhere really, but preferably where there hasn't already been a Fallout game. My picks would have been Oak Ridge, Tennessee as that's a major nuclear research facility IRL, Huntsville Alabama is another good spot, Hawaii for a tropic themed place or Seattle Washington. Location wasn't really important though rather the story was. The plot would be that the "man/woman" out of time has to piece together clues about what happened to their loved one, try to locate the Vault in which they were in. Also help [or not] the struggling communities along the way with their knowledge of pre war tech. One of the key aspects of the game would be that the player has dogtags, and that these dog tags allow access into locked down military facilities which are full of loot and other horrors...

 

Another aspect would be that one of the surviving bases has a RoboBrain which is acting like a radio DJ. One of the quests the player would have would be to find new music holotapes - appropriately named after each quest given to the player. The player finds the tape in the quest and then has the choice to give it to the DJ and new music is included in the play list. I always liked the music but it gets stale after hearing the same old tune for the 100th time. This way you could have an expanded play list that goes into the dozens and thus add a touch of variety to the game.

 

There is a whole lot more of this concept but I'll leave it here for now.

Your idea is really good and I would like to see that as a part of the next fallout game, however I don't think that plot is strong enough to stand on it's own. Maybe a very large side quest? The "don't know where/what's happening/ have to find wife" plot has been recycled dozens of times :/. I really like the part about getting a glimpse of the pre-war world though; that's genius.

 

I just feel as though the fallout series should focus more on evolving and maybe working on the rebuilding process, and the find out what happened to your wife plot is just a step in the wrong direction for a main plot. For a side plot though it would be amazing.

 

On a side note-- I was intrigued about the game Rage you mentioned and looked it up. I started to chuckle when I read the story of it and how similar it was to fallout, then began to actually laugh a little when I saw the starting place is named Wellspring due to it's uncanny resemblance to Goodsprings from New Vegas.

[Talwyn224]

@scottym23 -

 

I'm glad you like the idea of starting in pre war America. I thought it'd be a great place to start as we've only seen the aftermath of the war but never what America was like before the bombs fell. This would be a unique opportunity to show case a modern town or city with all the people walking about, cars rolling by, all the tech on display, adds for Vaults on TV screens etc, plus the shadow of martial law with heavy police and military presence on the streets.

 

The player would be on an Army base but would get at least one day free to wander around the town located near the base with a 24 hour leave pass before being snap frozen. There'd be some small side quests, nothing combative but rather speech and puzzle based ones. Time would also be important as well as player would be under a constraint and can't linger for too long or there will be consequences :devil:

 

I have the opening movie sequence all planned out as well. It'd start with this track playing in the background while the title and credits roll across the screen:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK15L55CtGc

 

The camera would pan around an army barracks at night, showing sleeping soldiers, zooming in on a calendar showing the date [ Oct.15 2077 ] and various pin up girls and propaganda posters. The camera would track slowly towards a light in the far corner of the barracks room where the player is sitting at a desk terminal, typing an email to their loved one. We don't see the face of the player initially. Then Ron Pearlman's voice cuts in with his opening narration,

 

"War... war never changes. Since the dawn of time it has always been the burden of the young to fight the wars of the old. The leaders of each society demand obedience from their youth and the youth have to make the sacrifices that their elders demand of them. Nothing has changed and it never will."

 

[then the player is allowed to determine their gender, sexual orientation, avatar look etc.] The music kicks in once more as the camera pans back to show the player busy writing a final letter to their beloved.

 

A picture of the loved one is in a photo frame showing them in a vault suit [ a shot of an person who is the preferred gender of partner for the player ] Then the lights would come on and an army drill sergeant [my dream would be to have R.Lee Ermey doing the voice acting for this role] come barging in yelling at the recruits to get out of bed and start their first day of basic training....

 

So that's the very opening scene.

 

Also in regards to you point about finding the loved one, well it is the main quest but it has a twist: they are not dead. A while back I remember reading somewhere [i can't recall where] about a concept for a vault whose purpose was to convince the occupants that they were on a space ship heading towards a planet to start a new earth. This is where the twist comes in. There is indeed such a vault and it's occupants have been alive and well for the past 200 years piloting a space ship. How I hear you ask? The Vault has the living crew which, using alien teleportation technology reversed engineered from the crashed ship at Roswell plus help from Big Mt, move back and forth between the vault that on earth and the colony ship full of colonists who are in Cryostasis. This is where the loved one is, frozen but alive. Of course it takes a lot of game time before the player can get to this stage but its one of the main plot paths of the game and major twists. The player has to find the clues in the 1st half of the game, discovering the nature and purpose of the vault in which their loved one went into as well as other vaults which had a far more sinister role. And yet there are even further twists and revelations regarding this but I'll hold them back for now.

 

I wanted to avoid having a major battle being the deciding factor or denouement of the game. It's been the case for the past 2 games so perhaps something different should be tried here instead. There was to be factions fighting on Earth, in and around where the game takes place and the player can choose to aid any of them as they see fit but that isn't going to be the prime focus of the game.

 

I also wanted to focus on some more of the super natural/horror themes like we saw with the Dunwich Building and in Point Lookout. Definitely wanted to include more monsters from H.P Lovecrafts Cthulhu mythos and perhaps that is one of the major threats facing humanity.

 

I also wanted a huge WTF moment/plot twist that would floor the player and perhaps even a 2nd one which was the result of their actions in the 1st chapter but I'm not saying anything more on that here. :devil: It'd be a special ending if certain things happen at the start, which 1st time players would be unaware of. Of course spoilers would get out eventually but I'd hope most people would avoid reading about them.

 

I will give a tiny hint. The end credits would play to this tune:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61QNNSPZ81w

 

edit:

 

I had given some more thought to your suggestion that the search for the loved one be a large but not main quest and I think I agree here now. It'll be one of the main narrative pillars that guide the player but finding the loved one is not the ultimate goal. I think instead the ultimate goal is seeing to the survival of humanity and if that's achieved by starting a "New Earth" then why not? The choice will be up to the player: go with the colonists to a alien world or stay on Earth & rebuild a shattered world. Each would have their consequences as well.

 

;)

Edited August 3, 2012 by Talwyn224

[TKDBoy1889]

The Enclave is pretty much gone for good. Any attempt to bring them back would not be believable. But it is well known that the Enclave, before the war, were well aware of the coming war which is why they had a hideout to retreat to and survive the war.So what if there were remnants of the old Chinese government who also had been able to retreat and survive the war? And in Fallout 4, they invade the mainland United States looking to do what their pre-war ancestors could not, and finish off their American enemies.

 

I think that would be cool. We already took out the remnants of one of the evil governments responsible for the war, so I'm all for fighting the other government.