Obsidian seems to be pitching a New Fallout Game as well.

[Gracinfields]

It seems that Obsidian the makers of Fallout: New Vegas is looking to make a new Fallout game that follows their work on Fallout: New Vegas. In a recent talks with Rock paper shotgun they stated they were intrested in following up on New Vegas and even thinking of possible new scenarios and places that could be explored.

 

 

My thoughts on this, only if they make sure they do a decent job of debugging their game before release and ensure anything not needed is removed to avoid bloating the game software. Not to mention removing the completely unneeded invisibile walls.

[Xaranth]

A good number of those things 'not needed' that you suggest be removed have been implemented by modders. I'll grant you that that the ESM for NV could have done with some scrubbing prior to release, but a good chunk of those assets point to things that might have otherwise gone unnoticed by casual modders.

 

And then there are things one WANTS in the game that they just left out (There's a couple tilesets missing what I consider nearly fundamental pieces).

 

Honestly though, if Obsidian DOES make another Fallout game, I'd like to see them do the writing, design, and art direction, and contract the actual implementation to one of those companies that actually knows how to write code.

[hector530]

they have being pitching it or at least talking about for a while. there's a couple of interviews saying they would love to make another fallout or an spinoff elder scrolls like what fallout NV was to fallout 3.

[Gracinfields]

@Xaranth I know modders created some major bug fixes for Fallout NV but that shouldn't be the primary job of the modders. I think I read that one of the ones I looked into fix nearly 300 bugs and kept unused scripts from running and using more processing time. That there is some major fail on the QA department.

[Vagrant0]

A good number of those things 'not needed' that you suggest be removed have been implemented by modders. I'll grant you that that the ESM for NV could have done with some scrubbing prior to release, but a good chunk of those assets point to things that might have otherwise gone unnoticed by casual modders.

 

And then there are things one WANTS in the game that they just left out (There's a couple tilesets missing what I consider nearly fundamental pieces).

 

Honestly though, if Obsidian DOES make another Fallout game, I'd like to see them do the writing, design, and art direction, and contract the actual implementation to one of those companies that actually knows how to write code.

First off, it's not supposed to be up to modders to fix game bugs, but instead is a fortunate case that we have the tools available to do it before the company who made the game can even be bothered.

 

That said, some of those bugs were bugs and complications stemming from trying to work with the engine and pushing that engine to do things it wasn't designed to do. Many of those same bugs and weirdness was also present in Fallout 3, but was less noticable in FO3 due to not being as linear (game makes few assumptions about what routes were taken and what quests were done) (you still had creatures caught in terrain, invisible collision boxes, broken AI, ect). Have to remember, the engine at this point was essentially an engine heavily modified from Oblivion, which was tweaked further to add in many of the differences between FO3 and FO:NV, all by different sets of people. And any time you have different groups of people working on code, the old stuff and the new stuff usually doesn't mesh too well unless some of those people went back and worked through most of the code to polish it up and blend things better. This re-working part didn't actually happen till Gamebryo went out of business and Bethsoft started making the engine their own for use in Skyrim. The other part is that FONV was essentially built on top of a stripped down FO3.esm, and from a construction perspective is probably closer to being a mod than a stand-alone game. For a point of comparison, you can think of it in a similar way to how Oblivion and Nehrim are. The only real difference between Nehrim and FONV is that Obsidian actually talked to Bethsoft about selling the game as a stand-alone product. And this was mostly possible due to the number of entirely new assets and Obsidian being more established as a commercial game company who already had connections to the franchise.

 

Linearity is actually what was what caused many of the remaining issues with the game, since it is extremely hard, if not impossible to make a linear game when using a game environment that forces an open world. This is because in an open environment players will always find a way around whatever plot points you happened to have laid out between point A and point B, requiring you to either restrict the player to follow a specific route between those points, or trimming that plot to just the stuff that will be immediately encountered at either point. This is one of the reasons why the storyline for FO3 felt a fair bit weaker, and why many of the event sequences limit travel outside them (the whole childhood portion, the VR portion, The monument portion, the actual way that the sewers and worldspaces inter-link, pretty much everything (Oblivion, Morrowind, and Skyrim are much the same)). It just seems like an open world since those parts where the player was pretty much on a linear path was broken up into smaller pieces. FO:NV differed from this in the way that the whole first part of the story is laid out among a few dozen points as the player walks south around the mountains, then makes their way north. This is also where most of those collision boxes were used... as a means of funneling the player along certain paths.

 

Unfortunately most of this was needed due to the fact that players will always try to find hidden routes and such simply because that mountain is there, and rather than going through each mountain, cell by cell, trying to place rocks and steep slopes so that a player can't jump their way up (and they enevitably still will), you place collision boxes to prevent most of those routes. Almost every game with an open world (and even those that don't) use some method to limit where the player can walk. It was just more of an inconvenience in FO:NV because you are given an impression of being able to just go wherever you want right from the start, which is usually somewhere other than where the plot points tell you to go. Except that instead of acknowledging the fact that players will always try exploring other areas than where they're supposed to go, FO:NV just uses physical barriers and enounters with things that are only there to kill you very quickly, should you stray from the path. At the end of the day, it's just a game design decision.

 

 

Hopefully they'll be either using their own engine or will have enough access to the internals of the Creation Engine to get around most of these issues.

[JimboUK]

It didn't help that they were given so little time and Bethesda were less than helpful, they couldn't do anything without approval and that approval always too way too long. All things considered I think they done a bloody good job.

[Ihoe]

oh As much as I love their games, I'd really love to see them ruin another great Idea with their fossil feuled Design mojo and less than imperfect injections of the said designs. Alpha Protocol, KotOR 2, NwN2, Dungeon Siege III. These guys dream good, but way too much.

[Vagrant0]

oh As much as I love their games, I'd really love to see them ruin another great Idea with their fossil feuled Design mojo and less than imperfect injections of the said designs. Alpha Protocol, KotOR 2, NwN2, Dungeon Siege III. These guys dream good, but way too much.

Actually, I would be tempted to say that much of their weakness is their way of revealing the story to the player, and what sorts of characters they've been using. For example, you can't really build the story around the Path of the Hero, but not have a player who manages to go through most of the steps. If the character the player is controlling is special, and the story is built around that character finding out how special they really are, you can't have the character just instantly come to terms with it and set off on a series of adventures using their special talent. If you do, the story ends up fairly weak, like NwN2 with the player mostly just dealing with all the societal issues of being this special person. For another example, you cannot make the player have instant freedom to go wherever they want right off the bat, but take it away over time, especially with an open world environment since this discourages the player from continuing through the game and story because they end up being locked out of most areas until everything is said and done, or suddenly having to deal with all sorts of new problems any time they return to that area. FO:NV kinda suffers from both problems.

[TailAbNormal]

 

oh As much as I love their games, I'd really love to see them ruin another great Idea with their fossil feuled Design mojo and less than imperfect injections of the said designs. Alpha Protocol, KotOR 2, NwN2, Dungeon Siege III. These guys dream good, but way too much.

Actually, I would be tempted to say that much of their weakness is their way of revealing the story to the player, and what sorts of characters they've been using. For example, you can't really build the story around the Path of the Hero, but not have a player who manages to go through most of the steps. If the character the player is controlling is special, and the story is built around that character finding out how special they really are, you can't have the character just instantly come to terms with it and set off on a series of adventures using their special talent. If you do, the story ends up fairly weak, like NwN2 with the player mostly just dealing with all the societal issues of being this special person. For another example, you cannot make the player have instant freedom to go wherever they want right off the bat, but take it away over time, especially with an open world environment since this discourages the player from continuing through the game and story because they end up being locked out of most areas until everything is said and done, or suddenly having to deal with all sorts of new problems any time they return to that area. FO:NV kinda suffers from both problems.

 

The only thing that hinted at the Courier being special Was him/her surviving being shoot in the head. Everything else was attributed to gameplay/story segregation, and the fact that YOU (your character), traveled across a monster and madman infested desert in the middle a war to kill 1 guy.

House picked you because you had the mad on for Benny, and looked like the perfect new tool for him to shape.

The NCR and the Legion treat you like crap until you PROVE to them your the Perfect soldier.

 

You Aren't Locked out of any game areas Until the very LAST MISSION, or if you'r actually working against one faction, Like the Legion, Your locked out of their missions because the game assumes you Already Hate Them, BUT, at a certain point in the story, it resets you alignment with the 2 major factions in case you screwed up or want to reevaluate.

[JimboUK]

New Vegas doesn't lock people out of anything, the player does that through the choices he/she makes, the game offers choices and there are consequences for those choices.