So I'm about 72 hours in on Fallout 4 and about 20 hours or so in to my second play-through on Fallout: New Vegas and doing a compare/contrast between the two has got me thinking about what I'd like to see from the the next Fallout game, be it a numbered sequel or a tie-in like New Vegas.
First, move the game back out West. The desolate beauty f the desert wasteland is a much better backdrop than the Northeast. For one thing, you don't have to do a lot of work to make the setting desolate because... it already is that way. With both 3 and 4 Bethesda had to do a lot of work in setting the stage with a lot of bombed out forests and the like, but, really, burnt up trees just don't quite pack the same apocalyptic punch as the basically unending ocean of sand with a relentless sun hanging overhead like the desert does. That, and when working with a barren landscape over a scarred one, the natural thematic curve of the story focuses around the player imposing their will on the Wasteland instead of trying to heal it, which is more in line with the series' emphasis on player choices anyway, so, that would be my hi-art reason if pushed to name another reason beyond aesthetics alone. So I'm hoping that the next game takes place in Arizona, the lower portion of California in the Mojave, or Wyoming, and as far as plot goes, I would want things to pick up pretty much where New Vegas left off.
My real, true hope is that the game takes place in Arizona, where a bolstered NCR is trying to claim all the lost territories of the a defeated Legion while trying to stamp out the remnants that are still scattered about the remaining territory. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to go with the NCR ending of New Vegas as the canon ending, so, the Brotherhood still exists under a shaky truce, the Khans left to Wyoming, and the NCR annexed New Vegas and much of the surrounding towns and communities. The reason why I want it to go this route is because it will offer players to a lot of opportunities to decide what the future of the area will be. Do they, for example, help the NCR in annexing and claiming even more territory and make the republic an empire? Or, does the player help all the wasteland tribes subjugated under the Legion reclaim their individual identities and try to govern themselves independently, or, along the same lines, does the player help them band together like the old Indian nations? Maybe, instead of all that, the player decides to rebuild the Legion, this time more in the mold of the military dictatorships of the Severan dynasty than the proto-imperial Cesarean legacy.
Point is, there's a shit ton of possibilities here with the chance to have multiple factions with lots of depth already there for the taking. I also think Bethesda should take Obsidian up on their desire to make a new Fallout game basically whenever because, honestly, doing that kind of world building and character depth is just not in Bethesda's wheelhouse. Better to give to people who've already proven they can deliver that kind of content and who also already know the lore of the universe that they're building off of.
As far as game play goes, there is actually a lot in 4 that I'd like to see kept in future installments. For one, actually creating the mods for your weapons and armor is so much better than just buying them from the store. Instead of jumping around to every place you can buy weapons from hoping that they'll randomly generate the thing you want/need, having crafting tables where you use materials you've gathered to create basically whatever the hell you want is really, the far superior option. Also I'd like to keep the option to raise the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats after your initial character creation, since it does create a much more flexible and fluid gaming experience to beef yourself up on things you may have been lacking in the first place. I will say though, I would like the leveling to go back to the 1-100 scale for each stat, since I don't really like not being able to increase my weapons damage until I've reached the appropriate level to scale it up; it's just an arbitrary ceiling imposed by the game to make sure you can't do too much too fast and it's more annoying than it is competitive.
What I'd also like to see re-tooled is the settlement mechanic. I actually think having the option to build up those communities is a great facet to add to the series and can greatly affect how people think about what they;re doing in game and how they go about shaping the world. But, it shouldn't be a mandatory thing. In my version of the next game, you'd have the choice to build up settlement spots into vibrant communities for whatever faction you choose, or, to basically use them as way stations and safe houses with AI that sees to their own needs. That way, if you want to invest the time and resources to get more out of them, you can, but if not, you can just have convenient places to stash your shit and sleep and just go on with whatever it is you want to do instead.
Oh, right, before I forget, re-add skill checks to the dialogue trees. Their absence in 4 made the dialogue feel constrained and much more limited than it had in previous installments, so, yeah, put that shit back in. It's not like there's a shortage of buttons on the controllers to assign the options to- you could put them on the triggers, for example- so please, Bethesda or whoever, get that back in there. Some of the best dialogue options have come from those skill checks, so don't sacrifice something that made your game what it is in the first place because you don't want to spend the time and money to have those lines recorded.
I always have high hopes for these games because it is my firm belief that the Fallout series is one of the main avenues we have in proving that gaming is as valid a storytelling medium as books or movies. And the glorious thing about the internet is that it gives the option to loudly, and incessantly, yell at the people who make the things we love to not fuck those things up. Plus, the better we demand games to be, the more fun we'll have playing them, so there's that too, which, I guess, is the more important thing in the end.
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