Places you'd like to see a Fallout game take place

I think northern New Mexico, would be interesting. There are big cities, small interesting towns, deserts, forest covered mountains, and snowy winters.

 

First, a caveat: these are places that I think could make for interesting visitations into the Fallout universe, not necessarily places that I think they should set a game anytime soon. I think these would be disasters if they were to be subject to the expectations of the "Less talky, more 'mersion, atoms go BOOM!" subset of the fanbase. That said, there are two locales in particular I have always, always wanted to see:

I second Detroit. Hard.

• I wouldn't like to see a take based on the city's current circumstances, though; it's basically Fallout there already. In keeping with the retro-future theme, I'd want the prosperous Motor City of the early '50s, projected into the 21st century and ruined. A huge, densely populated area, crucial to American industry and wartime production (and thus, likely boasting its fair number of vaults/hardened shelters), in the midst of a huge production boom (thanks to both wartime demand and America's acquisition of the last known oil deposit on Earth) when the bombs dropped. Huge industrial facilities to play around in; heavy presence of robots.
• Highly diversified neighborhoods: crowded slums, bedroom communities on the outskirts, gilded-age mansions, stunning and intrepid neoclassical/art deco skyline, old gothic revival churches and monuments.
• Two words: Underwater vault. I don't think an underwater vault or facility would be at all out of keeping with the pulp sci-fi milieu Fallout was founded on-- objectively, it isn't any more out there than the Vats, the Enclave rig, or the nuclear-armed satellite you were going to visit in the endgame of Van Buren-- and nothing adds an extra layer of foreboding like doing your exploring under a few extra atmospheres of pressure in a leaky tube surrounded by the crushing blackness of the abyss. If the gov't needed an underwater facility, it would make a lot more sense to place it under a huge, guarded inland lake than offshore. I can easily picture something very cool in connection with Poseidon's aborted space colonization plan. Yeah, this may be stepping on Bioshock's toes, but who among us didn't stop from time to time in the cramped, retro-future corridors of Rapture and drink in just how much inspiration they must have drawn from Fallout? Turnabout's fair play, eh?
• As the cherry on top, Detroit is probably the only place in Fallout's America that was even remotely likely to have given rise to Mad Max-style motor gangs after the bomb (albeit probably not on quite such a pervasive scale).
• It has a riverfront and a lakefront, and is within a stone's throw of several military bases, forts, armories, and occupied Canada. You couldn't ask for more fertile soil than the strong car culture and metropolitan attitude of Detroit at its height if you were looking to develop an interesting and unique post-apoc culture for a game. Honestly, I wouldn't be at all surprised if we get something set there before the end of Fallout 5's DLC cycle. It has absolutely everything you could want in a Fallout setting, apart from desert.

Occupied Canada

• The American military presence there, its existence as a supply line to the Sino-American front, and the fact that (for better or worse) Bethsoft has canonically established that Vault-Tec was operating there provide plausible justification for just about all of the iconic mainstays of the franchise.
• At the same time, pre-occupation Canada didn't suffer from the same jingoism and red paranoia as America, and they had both a relative abundance of natural resources and a severe lack of the ones that mattered (petroleum and uranium), which would provide a very distinct backdrop for the bombs to drop against-- far saner and more self-sufficient than America in some ways, far worse off in others. Even before the war, I can't help but picture the rural areas as something akin to a tidier version of The Den's Trapper Town and environs, nationwide. The cityscapes probably would have either quickly fallen in line under strict civil authority and/or American martial law before the war, or would have devolved into dog-eat-dog anarchy.
• After the annexation, pockets of Canadian resistance would have turned some areas into urban battlescapes with an atmosphere not far off from Fallout: Tactics (and though tactics may have botched a lot of the canon aspects of the setting, their take on postwar urban ruin remains one of the best in the series). Captured resistance fighters and sympathizers (so, let's be honest, whoever else Uncle Sam felt like railroading into camps) would provide ample test fodder for some new scientific wartime atrocity in the name of a better tomorrow, this game's answer to (and, please God/Todd/MCA, reason for not having to re-use) FEV or the New Plague.
• Depending on where in the country the game was set, it could furnish a very different kind of climate for Fallout fans to explore. I'm not honestly clear on whether a true northern winter is still possible in Fallout's world, but I am sure that it would still be colder and greener up there (or at least boasting a much higher density of dead trees). Canada is so vast and, in places, remote, it would stand to reason that they may not have been carpet-bombed quite as ubiquitously as the US, with some areas left relatively pristine. The diversity of Canadian wildlife would provide fertile ground for a new and nightmarish menagerie of mutated beasties to spring from.
• One would imagine that the lack of Second Amendment zealotry and dearth of industrial/military capability in Canada as the resource crisis stretched on would mean guns and military-grade armor/equipment would be a lot harder to come by after the bomb than in the U.S. wasteland, allowing for much of the game to evoke the same sense of deprivation, struggle, and self-sufficiency as early-mid Fallout 2 and some of the more realistic wilderness mods for New Vegas. For me at least, that would be a plus. Guns, ammo, and armor would be valuable commodities again, and anyone who found themselves in possession of one of the (RARE!) suits of power armor left or passed down by the American invaders would be a true force to be reckoned with, as God and Nature (and Anderson and Cain and Boyarsky) intended.
• Again with the possibility of the underwater Poseidon/Vault-Tec/whoever facility. I might be a little too married to this one.

tl;dr, I know. In short, Detroit and Canada: two locales that had a lot of significance and saw a lot of activity in the years leading up to the great war, that provide ample excuses for smoothly and logically inserting beloved franchise touchstones into the game but with plenty of unique flavor for distinctive post-war settings to develop from.

 

I think these are great ideas, and it would be interesting to see the game take place in both locales, given their proximity to each other; we could once again have a Fallout that spans multiple regions! There's a underground tunnel that connects Detroit and Ontario which might be an interesting location. Or maybe this tunnel has collapsed, forcing the player to travel through the underwater Vault-Tek/Poseidon facility to reach the other region. It might be interesting to have half the game take place in Detroit and the other half in the Canadian wilderness, with both areas isolated from each other. We could do this one of two ways:

(1) The player character begins in Canada, and must make their way south to Detroit. The first half of the game would feature extremely scarce ammo and resources, human settlements would be small and far apart, and mutant wildlife would run rampant across a strange wilderness dotted with the remains of abandoned pre-war settlements. In contrast, Detroit would seem like a bonanza of people/robots/weapons, assuming the player survived long enough to reach it.

(2) Alternatively: The player begins in Detroit and eventually must make their way to the far north of Canada. When they begin their trek north they start out with plenty of weapons and armor, but as they progress they find themselves running out of bullets and their armor and weapons become harder to maintain as the environment becomes increasingly harsh and the wildlife and locals increasingly hostile. It would be a real test of the player character's ability to strategize and budget resources, as well as whether they had developed the skills that would enable them to survive even without gear.

 

Hey Yanu, you would not happen to have read some of my old design notes have you, some of your stuff is very familiar (as in basically the same) as some stuff I made up for a Fallout mod that was not made.
Detroit like in your take was instead of what it has become today a major production center for military vehicles, equipment, and so, and a jumping of point into Canada.

And I also had imagined a sort of underwater Vault like you suggest, though in my take it was a environmental monitoring station that had been built a project between the state, local universities, and EPA.
Its main purpose was to monitor the quality of the water with all the additional industrial output but also to check that Chinese agents, sympathizers, or disgruntled Canadains would not try to poison the great lakes.

Later on it was converted into a full underwater shelter on order of some of the more rich political or corporate figures.

Kind of funny we both came up with the same ideas.

 

I don't recall seeing your other thread, but I've been lurking these boards forever so it is entirely possible, and I'm sorry if I'm stepping on your toes at all. It sounds like your thoughts on the area are far more developed than mine, at any rate. I doubt I'm ever going to do anything with my version, but if I decide I want to I'll not go ahead without your approval.

I usually try to stay away from threads like that (and this) and "Here's How I'd have done Fallout 3" ones because of this very concern-- a lot of us here are fanatics that have been paying attention to the extended canon for the last ten years and have a lot of our own pet ideas, and since we're working from a very detailed canon I know there's always bound to be some overlap. Certain areas like Detroit and Alaska/the Pacific Northwest are a lot more prone to it because of all the established events that have taken place in and around them and their notable pre-war histories. I remember it happening a lot in the fanfic/Fallout RP community concerning the Utah area and the greater southwest, too, years ago before the Fallout Bible and (far later) Honest Hearts quashed speculation. Everyone and their brother was paying special attention to Route 66 and the Grand Canyon and filling the area with tribals and Mormons. I don't think a single one of them didn't have a huge Mormon shelter or a vault beneath Salt Lake Temple.

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On the topic of the OP...

Baja California

...is another place I've wanted to see developed for a long time, but between Fallout 3's reuse of factions and New Vegas' geopolitical location, anything set there at this point would just be superfluous.

• Harsh dry western frontier, ambivalent about their NCR neighbors' occasional-but-increasing encroachment. I fear this has now been done, though. Fortunately, according to Hanlon, the NCR presence isn't all that strong there, so this might be more of an opportunity than an issue. An isolated detachment of rangers without the full might of the NCR to back them could make for interesting NPCs.
• Likely area for Enclave rig refugees to have escaped to en masse (and in fact, considering Baja was probably roughly the same distance from the rig as San Francisco or Navarro and not nearly as crowded or well-organized as northern California, it's likely that the Enclave had refueling stations or even depots in Baja. They would have made apt evacuation destinations for vertibirds full of soldiers deserting the rig, and the scant remains of the Enclave could be the "ghosts" Hanlon alludes to the Rangers chasing down in Baja). Again, though, The Enclave has been done to death now, and this is far less of a selling point than it was in the way back when. I still think there's a lot of potential in the remnants of The Enclave-- have they adapted? Tried to blend? Become high-tech masters of their own little Pitts or Vault Cities? Would there be conflict between purist patriots and forward-looking pragmatists? Time marches on, and an isolated, decently-sized group of Enclave expats could give rise to all sorts of interesting social dynamics-- but I don't think a commercially released Fallout game would handle them properly, at least not anytime soon.
• Baja would also be a convenient exodus destination for remnants of the Master's armies and perhaps even whatever was left of the CoC. I doubt the latter would have survived into the "modern" wasteland era, but if they went with the muties there might be some kind of descendant group there for the finding, and it would be interesting to see what had become of them. Even just an all-mutie stronghold with an CoC graveyard and a bunch of old purple robes lying around could be kind of a neat nod.
• The invasion of Mexico wasn't as large-scale or publicized as the Canadian annexation, but it did happen. There wasn't any oil in Baja, but their minor supply of iron and gold and their manufacturing centers might have been enough to ensure a modest occupying presence. This would allow for U.S. army leavings without having to bring The Enclave into things.
• Said manufacturing centers would give some variety to exploration, though they wouldn't be nearly as extensive as what one would find in Detroit, and would likely have been mostly shuttered due to supply shortages before the war.
• Coastal shipping facilities for Baja's largely export-focused pre-war industries would provide a possible concentration point for postwar refugees (I'm quite fond of the idea of a tenement community built from shipping crates, myself), and perhaps even serve their pre-war purpose after a fashion, serving as a wind- or slave- powered sea caravan hub for tribal/survivalist communities living on the islands off the coast. Beware those aquatic mutations-- the Baja's pacific coastline, canonically, was contaminated with a huge amount of radioactive effluvia by dumpwater from the Enclave rig.
• The adobe-style architecture of the region could lend a Dead Money or Shady Sands-style aesthetic, especially with the preponderance of tourist villas and resorts in the area. I doubt Tijuana would have been revitalized to the same degree as Vegas, but with its history as a shady den of vice and given the heavy Raider presence in Mexico after the war, I can see T.J. existing in the game as an anything-goes pleasure hub, kind of a combination New Reno and Paradise Falls, with less of a focus on gambling and a heavy trade in human trafficking providing the engine for the economy.
• The wildlife in Baja (pre-apocalypse) had to deal with conditions even more demanding than those found in the American deserts, so there's a lot of stock for core-region style critters to have mutated from. Black Bears, scorpions, crabs, rams, coyotes, geckos, and most of the other genetic forerunners of the franchise's extant creatures already live there, and turtles, several sizes and varieties of desert lizards, tarantulas, manta rays, vultures, condors, pumas, and no end of poisonous snakes are there to provide fodder for further mutations. (There are also manta rays, whales, sharks, dolphins, and a huge population of sea lions, but I imagine all of those would either have died out or would seem too cheesy and desperate to try to include. Rays could be cool, I suppose.)
• Like Zion Canyon or (theoretically) the Canadian wilderness, the scrublands and deserts of Baja are liable to have escaped the worst of the bombing. Depending on the size of the game map, the region's salt Flats and (no doubt, very dead) mountain pine forests allow for variety in both fauna and wilderness exploration, and notable features like the (disputedly) active Tres Virgenes volcanoes, the Catavina boulder fields, and the La Bufadora marine geyser would offer plenty of interesting and visually striking locations to find, as well as possible sites of significance for local tribal cultures.
• The area's legacy of lawlessness, vice, and organized crime would mean guns and drugs would be fairly easy to come by. Good armor, not so much.
• Ensenada, in the northern portion of the state, boasts a strong Mexican military presence, with a naval base, an army base, and an airbase. Military checkpoints exist down the length of the peninsula, and could serve to provide points of interest in the game, from small-time raider bases to a truly monumental, far-as-the-eye-can-see traffic jam or two. Perhaps such a jam could have provided raw material for a Junktown-like settlement or improvised fort.

tl;dr: Baja California provides a wealth of opportunities for a comfortably familiar throwback to a rougher, less crowded wasteland, and its proximity to the Core Region allows for the inclusion of known groups and factions, but with the franchise already having trod certain ground so thoroughly (e.g. gambling dens, NCR encroachment, big bad Enclave and muties, sparse western desert and cowboy/vaquero aesthetics), it would have to be handled with care to work as anything more widely distributed than a Fallout P&P setting.

 

I am really impressed with the research you did on Baja California Yama, it really makes a Fallout game or RPG campaign set in that region sound workable.
Also like the suggestions you make for the remnants of the Master's Army and the Children of the Cathedral, I also feel that a little more should be done with them before they disappear in the pages of of history.
But the Enclave use and references should indeed be reduced as the use of the organization does become tiresome. I don't mind some remnant stuff but that should basically be it. Unfortunate a commercial release would probably make it bunkers or bases full of Enclave troopers, scientists, and officers again.

 

Don't forget that the leader would be an AI, again.

 

I was thinking brainbot. But that brain... is actually three brains. And those three...belonged to Richard Grey, Augustus Autumn, and Frank Horrigan. And the robot... is Liberty Omega. Can you and The Brotherhood stop The Institute and Liberty Omega's mad FEV-dipped android Deathclaw army from taking over and/or destroying THE ENTIRE WORLD?

 

Don't.. don't.. give them any ideas.

 

Don't forget the Ultimate Alien Alliance that brings forth thousands of their kind, resurrects Harold, Frank Horrigan and makes an army of Super Tree Mutant Psyker Behemoths wearing Enclave armor. Also there will be an Enclave base on the moon which has been creating an army ready to conquer the whole world in a swarm of completely redesigned Vertibirds.

 

And some hidden helium. [Iron Sky]

 

Back to the original subject of the topic, I would like Fallout games to return again to using regions or states and locations in it that are connected to each other through map travel instead of having one or a couple major settlements/landmarks and the direct grounds around them.

Problem with Bethesda's approach is that you end up with a lot of space you basically have to fill up with filler, and you can't use a variety of interesting locations as the distance from each other is greater than one consistent map would allow.

Plus using locations directly would also eliminate the need to compress the places into one map with ridiculous short distances from each other.

Basically this is nothing new and I have talked about it before but talking the whole time about the Enclave and how ridiculous the storylines met get under Bethesda also quickly gets old.

I would like to see settlements/places like the AG Center or Damonta from Wasteland 2 appear in a Fallout game, not direct copies but simply inspired by them.

 

Wasn't filler the purpose of their game ?

 

As about America i really don't care because every series took place in america especially in west,worst part .I'd like to see one fallout series to happen in South East America or Midwest where the Bos Of Midwest controls it.

And i Want to see Europe in post-war.The Eiffel is at the ground because nukes hit it,the big Ben also destroyed.

The Colosseum in Italy destroyed after earth quake
The remaining citizen of europe after the war would be:89 million out of 560 million

Biggest Concentration of population would be in East Europe,Spain,Romania,Bulgaria,Germany

Because Spain from my opinion never engaged into a massive war even if Europe was acting like a single-country entity.

In Europe there would be some raider gangs:
1.The British Bulldogs(raiders) territories in South England ,Normandia ,north france.Their purpose is to rebuild their country.
2.The Neo-Communists,territories in Moscow,Crimeea,Caucasus,East Poland. Their purpose is same to the British Raiders.
3.The New Fifth Reich(New Germany,or New Nazi),you taught that the nazism was erased in 1945 but no, some acolytes revived the fascism regime after the great war when they found a book.The Fourth Reich was European Commonwealth who was controlled 49% by Germany so it also was called Fourth Reich,but now after the great war is now called Fifth Reich.Their Territories are at Ruhr Zone,Austria,Czechoslovakia,Berlin,Netherlands,Denmark.Their Purpose is to conquer all the Europe and slowly rebuild their country.
4.The Conquistadors,small raider gang situated in Madrid ,Portugal,Barcelona,Gibraltar.They are nomadic gang of raiders who seek to conquer and devastate but they also have a plan to get to south america by Ships from 2077 the remaining ones at Lisbon.
5.The New Vatican,small order of religious people in South Italy and Rome,they seek to bring people the old pre-war religion,the leader is a Pope
6.The Dacians,a gang of raiders situated in Romania,Serbia,Hungary,Bulgaria.They call themselves Dacians from the old ancestors of Romanians,their religion is Orthodox.They main city is at south east Romania.Main Language is Romanian with some modified words along the time because of other remaining nations.Their purpose is same to British Raiders.
7.Greeks,a post-war state in Greece,Macedonia,Croatia.They still got the Democratic regime and they created the currency in the post-war time,they are also the first remnants to know Banking and Advanced Maths.
8.The Scandinavian Tigers,nomadic raiders in Sweden,Norway,Finland. They some how still know the good manners of pre-war era,they main purpose is none,just to live and hunt.
9.The New Sultanate,nomadic raiders in Turkey,Syria,Istanbul,South Bulgaria(Rumelia),Algeria,north Libya,they are raiders ruled by a sultan,they got this regime after a raider found a video and a tape about a Turkish Film about history of 16th century.So the one who found this convinced them that he is their sultan.Their main language is Turkish,Arabian
10.The Corsicans,small gang of raiders in Corsica,they are same to Scandinavian Tigers,they hunt,and don't want to conquer because they are on a small island and they got 5 years to achieve a wood ship tech.Their main Language is French combined with Italian.


Those are 10 known raider/tribes in Europe,there are other 126 city-sized raider gangs not listed.And not all the Europe Land is taken to the raiders.There are some zones called Free Lands where are ppl making their homes and claiming land,this will change next 300 years when the world will get free from radiation

And Europe don't have to much radiation like north america or China,no one wanted to bomb Europe when they got bankrupt thanks to the oil deficiency.

The Most clean continent is South America it got just 3% of the surface radiated,which is rio de janeiro and some cities,the forest in Amazon still lives even if the world is infested by toxic gas and radiation,that amazon jungle is helping the world to recover from the radiation,without that jungle,the world would be a desert and the planet will revive from radiation like 600 to 1200 years.But with that jungle world will revive within 300 years.

And this is Europe in post-war era.

 

To be honest, I really don't want to see another Fallout take place in the South-West. We've seen enough from there and I want something different. I can only take so much NCR related plotlines .

I would like to see Canada, for much of the same reasons as Yamu. It would be a much different environment to anything we've seen yet. Ashur in The Pitt mentions a city named Ronto, which is probably Toronto, so that would be an interesting place to visit. The city is also close enough to the border, so there still could be some of that "Fallout Americanism" in there.

 

Might be an opportunity to adress the prejudices the canadian suffered from the americains befor the bombs fell. (as shown in the first game intro)

 

I wrote this whole list one night when I got kinda bored.

(No order, by the way) Denver
Denver's in the Rockies, and if Fallout 4 is built on Skyrim's engine, we could look forward to more gorgeous mountains everywhere. The mountains would also be a big change from Fallout's typically flat environments. From what we know of Denver, there are hordes of mutant, rabid dogs and cyber dogs. This could really push the survival aspect some people go for, and the fact that it's Legion territory could finally give the faction the depth it deserves, not just a swarm of jerks in skirts. A complex civilization, that actually has admirable qualities. Oh, and the place's got NORAD, (North American Aerospace Defense Command) which fits perfectly with everything Fallout's about, and might make for an interesting main plot. There's also plenty of military bases nearby, which is always nice.

Seattle
The nature around Seattle is pretty much a jungle, so I'm thinking a green Fallout were Seattle the choice. It's got pretty unique wildlife, the space needle, varied environments, and they could play it up as a stopover to Anchorage. Who knows, maybe even drivable boats? Most appealing of all though is that it would almost certainly be populated by completely new factions.

Nawlins/New Orleans
Like Seattle, the wilderness would be completely different from anything we've seen so far (desert, desert, desert, green desert, orange desert) and the Louisiana culture might be refreshing for those that are kind of tired of the whole nuclear family, coca cola shtick we've had in all the games. New kind of music too. (jazz) It'd also be far away from every faction we know of, and I could see the Southern history of slavery and racial segregation being heavily utilized as a moral and ethical theme, for which Fallout is known. Ghoul/human segregation anyone?

Florida
This one might be my favorite. In Florida, specifically around Miami, there would be heavier themes of capitalism vs communism than ever before, being so close to Cuba. Lots of philosophical potential for a game like this. The cultural diversity, including Americans, Cubans, native seminole peoples and god knows what else (Florida's weird) could allow for tons of new, interesting factions, like communist remnants or something. The huge missile stockpiles around there could be worked into the plot extremely easily. New environment and wildlife too, unlike all the deserts we know and love. Plus, being close to another country could provide another nation's perspective on World War III.
EDIT: Disney World! Or whatever they wanna call it, to avoid copyright issues. A rusty, creepy theme park with raiders riding rollercoasters, and cults devoted to Mickey Mouse. So many jokes here, and such a different environment. It'd also be fun to find a wrinkly, Mr. House-esque Walt Disney hidden in a secret bunker under the park.

I also think Detroit, Honolulu, Anchorage and Houston could be cool as well, but this is already becoming quite the TL;DR already.

 

Pacific Northwest FTW

The Spokane / Coeur d'Alene area, Boise, Portland (Oregon)/Vancouver (Washington), Vancouver (B.C.), and the Seattle / I-5 corridor would be good locations for a Fallout game, and in fact that's the main idea I have been mulling over since starting to think about building my own F2 mod. My reasons differ from Octagon's, though; I'd see the Seattle / I-5 corridor as a major developed area for late-game exploration. Not only is it a large industrial / commercial zone, but also there are military bases all along there (including a naval base), Boeing facilities, Microsoft / Intel / Google (high-tech locations), and lots of other areas to explore - and to have been occupied by armed, well-organized groups. Granted that Seattle probably would have been hit in the initial nuclear salvo, but that doesn't need to have wiped out the entire city nor most of the surrounding sprawl.

North of Seattle is Vancouver, B.C., Canada, so there's your natural hook into the Canadian plot elements people are touching on here; I think that would make a lot of sense.

Spokane would be a good intermediate locale; it's a large city in an area otherwise surrounded with pretty small towns, so it's geographically (and game-play-wise) different from Seattle / I-5 / etc., and it would be a logical location for several vaults. More important, northern Idaho (north of Coeur d'Alene) has a large number of survivalists and still a fair number of neo-Nazis, so there are lots of opportunities for exploring the story plot there, especially for early in the game but also for mid-game or later.

And yes, there are a lot of green spaces around Washington and Oregon, but I'd see those simply as different wilderness areas, maybe supporting more hippie / naturalist communities but also where you'd find more of the paramilitary / armed survivalist groups. However, there's a lot of flat, arid land, too, especially east of the Cascade mountains - areas that should be especially arid once the irrigation systems that draw on the Columbia River (in the federal reclamation project connected to Grand Coulee Dam) break down. (The Dam would be another great location / quest area, as would the Yakima area army proving grounds and, farther south, the Hanford nuclear facility.) So there's plenty of terrain that would be akin to the desolate landscapes in the first two game settings.

Boise might be another good intermediate locale, with an interesting demographic due to Idaho's more-conservative bent and location next to Utah. Maybe a bit out of the way, but could flesh out the map.

Speaking of which, the set of locations I mentioned here would fit nicely on the square(ish?) map layout that F2 offers.


I agree with the locations others are suggesting here, too; given my druthers, I'd say it would be fun to explore Europe as the location for a new Fallout game, but I gotta say, the Pacific Northwest looks mighty good from both story and game-play perspectives.

-m