The Rhythm of the Quest in Fallout 3 and New Vegas

The writing in that article is uneven, barely coherent, and occasionally contradictory. The author should pay more attention in his writing class. Sea, your writing is far more articulate than that guy. It's a pity that the writing you do doesn't pay better.

 

I agree with the man that there is a difference in rythm. I also spent much more time exploring in Fallout 3. But that was because I didn't care about the world, the people and their stories because of the overall stupidity and clear pattern I figured out after going through few dialogues and plot twists.

 

Not only that. Despite the fact how well done the visuals are in Skyrim the world feels ... unlogic in its size. I blame the "teleportation" for that and teh fact how nothing conects really with each other. Eveything feels so "small". Even the stuff which is meant to be epic. Same issue like Fallout 3 and Oblivion. The world is supposed to be a whole province ... but it does feel from its size like the garden of a small house and not like traveling trough a "land" to speak so.

 

The only way you can play Skyrim and enjoy it is to play it as it was designed to be played: you can't give a damn about the game. It was made with "it's just a game" mentality, it's played with "it's just a game" mentality.

The end.

Granted, most games that are not made with such mentality end up being under-designed messes with some nice ideas... That's one of the reasons Bethesdurh games are successful.

 

If you don't use the quick travel the game world is surprisingly large for FO3 and Skyrim.

THAT SAID, there is zero logic to their layout. One of the biggest questions that Bethesda never asks themselves is "why is this HERE?" and "how did it get here?"

Game logic should believably complement real logic. Settlements and such don't just get made out of thin air, there needs to be a REASON for it to exist. Settlements created without resources in real life become ghost towns quickly.

How does this town create revenue or continue to grow? Why did the original settlers choose this place? How does this town relate to its surroundings?

Megaton is the closest perfect example of doing EVERYTHING wrong. The town is not strategically placed (there is no river, no renewable food, no trails, no mine, nothing of continued value in the surrounding area) there is no reason for traders to go there as it is a small town in a poor location with not enough to offer for the dangerous journey.

This is the problem with Bethesda's designs, the lack of design.

 

To be frank, I think this a big problem in New Vegas as well. I really appreciate that they went to great lengths to model the "real world" so to speak but the scale of it all just feels entirely wrong. Granted, I've never actually been to the US but at no point do I feel like I'm traveling a post-apocalyptic version of our world (well... it's not 100% the real world but with the whole 50s thing and all that).
I'm sure each place is carefully modeled but the distances feel completely off.

Something like STALKER gives me a far greater sense of being in a twisted version of our own world. And again, I think a lot of it has to do with the scale of things. And again, why I feel Fallouts (that typically feature a fairly big slice of land, with numerous settlements, to play around in) feel better with a classic overland map when you travel between settlements.

I think Skyrim is overall really succesful in its area design. It's great fantasy stuff to explore, a truly beautiful world. I think they also did a good job with including many different land types in the world. From beautiful forests, to swamps, to snow-covered mountains. But yeah, the "transitions" between these are very abrupt if you keep an eye out while travelling.

Skyrim falters though as soon as you try to interact with the world in any meaningful way besides bashing monsters in dungeon. No surprise there but a shame considering how beautifully crafted the world is in a visual sense.

 

Both FO3 and NV did it terrible in terms of ignoring what the original games were made of. The overland map travel didn't only give some sort of scale to the world instead of the ridicolously small and compressed gameworld in the newer games, it also made it easy to show "here is the next quest hub - have fun" without all the boring running from point a to b or holding "W" all the time and stare at your gun wobbling/the characters arse shaking until some point of interest approaches.

Sure, you had the random encounters, but these could be skipped by raising your outdoorsmanskill, it made your travels faster and safer too, not even mentioning the car. Infinitely supieror than walking around in a boring space, to me atleast.

But I guess an actual real worldmap would be too "oldschool" and not streamlined enough.

 

yes of course for towns and a "world" even New Vegas felt way to small. But you cant avoid that really except you do a game of the scope like Arma (the military simulation where you can spend 20 min. flying around with a jet plane and you will not reach the border of the map).

Neither Fallout 1 or 2 had the same issues like Vegas or F3. Simply for the fact that the world was in the abstract. Many things have been left to your imageination. Similar to Jagged Alliance which has more or less the same travel system with the map and your character moving around on it with random encounters and such. For a world to feel well made size is not as important like the illusion of size. Neither Oblivion, Fallout 3, Vegas or Skyrim offer you that. The locations all feel like a a stone's throw away from each other yet the game always tries to give you the feeling those all would be "isolated" places. In some cases this works. In others not so much. Vegas as town for example was in my eyes a disappointment compared to the "hype" the game made out of it and the trailers showed it. I had the feeling it would be a huge trading hub of some sort. Yet it is only "lulz casinos!" everywhere. Still vegas is doing a much better job then Fallout 3.

If you do everything in 3D then you have as well to keep in mind that everything has to be shown to the player. That everything has to be done with "visuals". Though this requires way to much attention in some cases.

For example in Fallout 2 you have a situation where the game explains you that the bed you want to use has lice. There is no reason to "show" them. The text is more then enough to tell you the whole situation. But all done with 3D and visuals ? Now you have to create a bed with visible lice suddenly. Way to much trouble for just one scene to speak so. It is sad though that gamers and developers alike think that it has always to be done that way. That everything done with 3D is the BEST solution. I mean yeah. Movies completely replaces books no ? They don't serve any purpose anymore right! People should not forget that any kind of medium or choice here is a form of communication. Visuals are always a form of communication.

 

I completely agree and it's the reason why I find 3d cRPG in most of the times inferior. However, Dead Money did it right and included such descriptions for your imagination to fill the holes. It felt a bit awkward, but it was a step in the right direction to show that these things can still be done if the developers actually care about it.

 

This is why I want cities, towns, and other locations in future Fallouts to have their own world spaces if the IP continues in this direction.

Various places as big or as small as is required but not conflicting with other stuff as it does not share the same big map.

One world space could for example exist of Austin and some surrounding towns, move beyond those and you enter the big overhead map and travel to the next location.

You may see Austin from there in the distance but you can't travel to it in real time.

 

But this all doesn't have much to do with the "quest rhythm," it's just the visual presentation of the gameworld.

 

I think it has a lot to do with quest rhythm. Fallout 1/2 almost exclusively only have quest hubs - it is very rare (or atleast I can't remember) or not existing at all that you stumble over a quest while you are travelling over the overland map.

 

You did't get the point. He is talking about the placement of the quests not the quality of those quests. FNV leads the player down a road until he gets to a town, there he picks up a bunch of quests and procedes down the same road untill he finds another town. F3 leads the player too but if you stray from that path (you know explore) you can find a settlement that has little or no connection with other quests, which means you accidently found quests. Oasis, Girdershade, Arefu, Fort independence are an example of those settlements. Reilly's rangers is a good example of finding quests in the wild.

 

Except you can stumble across quests in New Vegas too.

You can pretty much beat the game without ever going to Jacobstown, Black Mountain or Camp Forlorn Hope (just to name a few).

It's really more that there are more quests in New Vegas combined with the sense of nostalgia these people have with Fallout 3.

It messes with the brain.

 

I agree completely, but the problem is not 3D, the problem is First Person View (or even Third Person, if its of the KOTOR kind). I'm still waiting for an isometric 3D sci-fi RPG. By being 3d it can be nice looking and you can rotate the camera, by being isometric you can rely on abstraction to produce the lice from your example and ANYTHING else your imagination can conjure up. Like that time in FO2 you find (the hilarious) Vault City travel guide, you learn that different towns have hundreds or thousands of inhabitants, so what you see is just an abstract representation of the towns and their people (except of course for named characters and key buildings), and it's all heightened by text descriptions. This silly notion of "realism" and "immersion" is killing my inner child.

 

Sure you can if you decide to ignore the quests that lead you there.

There are only two locations that are not tied with quests and therefore have to be found while exploring: Vault 19 and Techatticup mine. I'm not sure about Camp Forlorn Hope i'll have to try it out.

What im trying to say is F3 was beter at rewarding the player for exploration.

 

How so? It gave you generic items in generic chests all around, but not much else.

 

The boring quest structure and dialogue was hardly an adequate reward for trekking through a bland wasteland.

 

200 year old food.

Is that nothing ?

 

Why, exactly? You can stumble upon plenty of stuff in New Vegas just fine. You can ignore tons of quests or complete the objectives before they are given to you. You can clear out those locations, take the valuable loot, have a fun time and move on. They almost never lock you out of content if you get there before you are supposed to (unlike Fallout 3 and Skyrim, it's worth noting). Giving you quests as motivation to visit those places does not cheapen them or reduce the incentive to explore; all it does is give you a reason for being there, instead of "I want to wander around for hours." Even beyond that there are still plenty of places to go that have no story value, and sometimes some excellent loot and mini-narratives to follow.

I mean, really, what are you complaining about? That New Vegas gives you too much context for your actions? That there's too much interesting game content? That there are too many official game quests, and they shouldn't have marked as many in the journal? Nobody's forcing you to follow the quest compass if you don't want to, and you can have plenty of fun by ignoring it. Do you prefer a static game world with no interesting characters to talk to and a hundred random dungeons full of level-scaled enemies, or do you prefer a vibrant world with distinct NPCs, locations and conflicts to soak in, and unique locations with purpose and utility? I just don't understand the argument you're trying to make.