Ending video mod possibilities?

[inkblot]

Hello all. I've gotten a lot of mileage out TESNexus' excellent selection of Oblivion and Morrowind mods, but until Fallout 3 came out I was never seriously tempted to dip my hand into the pot. However, this franchise is very near and dear to my heart, and I truly think Bethesda produced a very high-quality game that totally dropped the ball at the end, and I think I see some ways to begin to fix that. I'm beginning to look into the feasibility of making a mod to change the ending FMV to include ending vignettes for the various quests and areas (a la Fallout 1 and 2), and hopefully give the game a better sense of resolution. Here are some of the ideas I have for making this work (spoilers for the end game ahead, if you haven't already finished it):

 

1. Straight-up written subtitles or text placards to accompany the existing "200 endings" still images already in the game, providing some actual information

2. The same as above, only with a voiceover replacing the text placards (this would require someone with decent narrative skills and a good recording setup)

3. A flash-forward style thing to your deathbed, after the end of the existing video and credits. This is my favorite option: basically, you'd be limited to a small interior playable area, and the vignettes would appear as notes, recordings and photographs in your PipBoy. The interior of the area (how nice it is, whether there's anyone else there, etc.) would be a direct result of your actions in-game, and it would fit in pretty well with the existing ending video. I even have some ideas for explaining how the PC would be alive to experience the flash-forward if he chose to sacrifice himself at the end.

 

Here are my questions for everyone:

-Do you have any interest in this sort of mod? I ask because as far as I know there aren't a lot of mods out there that make bold and significant statements about the future of a canon world, and it does feel a tiny bit like fanfiction.

-Do any of these ideas sound like a good way of implementing a better resolution? Do you have any other ideas?

 

And my questions for modders:

-I have extremely limited coding experience and even more limited experience with modding game files. I think the existing ending movie simply picks up flags set during the game when you complete quests in certain ways, and in theory it should be simple enough to do something that picks up those same flags... but I don't actually know. Can you think of a way to implement something that checks for these flags?

-How reasonable is it to go back and add flags to areas and sidequests that don't already have them?

-Are you willing to help out a bit with the coding element?

 

I've already got several ideas for where I want to place flags and what the various outcomes might look like, and I'm more than willing to look through the ending video slides (if I can find them all...) and come up with things that fit them and the player's actions, or create new screenshots to accompany results that don't currently exist. I just have no idea how to code this in, or if it's even possible. From my limited time fooling around in the Oblivion CS, it seems like my third idea (flashforward) above would be reasonably simple to put together if a CS is ever released, but setting and reading the flags of the existing main quests is still something I don't know how to do. I also want to mention that I'd be willing to commit to updating the plot statements and such of this proposed mod to reflect new DLC and expansion packs where necessary.

 

If there's significant interest for this, a cool idea for a mod utility would be a flag manager that integrates this proposed mod with the ability for other modders to change whatever I put in and make additions for their own custom quests, which would effectively make any user-created sidequests that much more interesting.

 

So yeah... any thoughts?

[inkblot]

Does nobody want this mod, or does nobody want to work on it? Surely some of you have an opinion either way.

[Probe1]

Its a great idea but unfortunately without a software development kit (SDK) most of the things you want are incredibly difficult/impossible. With a SDK their merely really, really, hard.

 

Also, convince Ron Perlmen for the voice actingXD

[inkblot]

Its a great idea but unfortunately without a software development kit (SDK) most of the things you want are incredibly difficult/impossible. With a SDK their merely really, really, hard.

 

Also, convince Ron Perlmen for the voice actingXD

 

Well, again, I don't really know that much about it, but from my limited modding experience all quests have to operate on some kind of a flag system so the game can tell what you've done. It seems like the tricky part of getting this to work would be either tracking down all the old flags or adding entirely news ones for every variable, and then figuring out how to get the end video to trigger in pieces according to each flag.