Fallout Fallout 1 and 2 have the best structure for RPGs

[Agame]

nazi fetishes

Fallout 1 & 2, actually a secret Nazi propaganda and recruiting program...

 

[Black Angel]

Adding to that, I will present this:


Edit: I think watching that video wouldn't be complete without the other one, so here it is:

 

[a Goat]

I don't remember exact path for both games, but iirc for fallout 2 main quest path looks like this:
And no I'm not gonna spoiler it ffs.

1. Go to Klamath to find Vic
2. Get to know from the prostitute that Vic went to the Den
3. Go to the Den
4. Liberate Vic from slavers
5. Go to vault city
6. Access the vault database
7. Get to know about vault 15
8. Access the last working computer and get the location of vault 13
9. Go to vault 13 and get the GECK
10. Go back to village
11. Go to Navarro as the shaman tells toy to
12. Go to San Fran
13. Clear the port from aliums
14. Go to the oil rig
15. Clear it in any way you find optimal
16. The end

Points 8, 13 and 14 are necessary to proceed.

The difference is that while there is main quest path, you can ignore it ans hop into at any point, so in fact the design of it is more similar to what you can see on the left here:

Ancient Codex meme image.

Of course lumping Arcanum there was a bit silly.

Where your typical RPG has main quest path written into the metal, where you can't just hop in in the middle of it.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[HoboForEternity]

Mr.btounge is the apex of those youtube video essays.

Caldwell gervais come close i guess, but he covers alot of popamole games than specialized in rpgs

 

[Master]

Video starts okay, but starts going downhill with Mass Effect praise and turns to shit in the end with F3 vs NV comparison.

 

[unfairlight]

fallout 1 2 are good
please give me brofist

 

[a Goat]

Fallout 3 is the best fallout cuz they make you care by giving you father figure.

Prove me wrong

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Fallout 3 is the best fallout cuz they make you care by giving you father figure.

Prove me wrong

cassidy is a father figure

 

[unfairlight]

Adding to that, I will present this:

That video was really pointless. Condensing that 15 minutes into a single sentence is so easy.
"You have freedom to go where you please in a open ended fashion and the world is immersive and realistic, with details filled out for the basic requirements of the characters and settlements where they live."

 

[Black Angel]

That video was really pointless. Condensing that 15 minutes into a single sentence is so easy.
"You have freedom to go where you please in a open ended fashion and the world is immersive and realistic, with details filled out for the basic requirements of the characters and settlements where they live."

 

[a Goat]

TOXO got btfo so hard he can only do ad hominems

 

[Master]

Well Chad has a point, if his point was that Fallout doesn't have some special thing like "shandfication"(what?). Its just the nature of videogames being interactive unlike movies or books which you can at most just pause, while even in the most linear game you can do at least some things unplanned. And Fallout being openworld RPG has this increased.
So just saying ... "You have freedom to go where you please in a open ended fashion and the world is immersive and realistic, with details filled out for the basic requirements of the characters and settlements where they live." ... was enough. But no, apparently Fallout is "shandified" and this needs 15 minutes of explanation.

 

[Thal]

Because you don't have to follow a linear sequence of quests in order to reach that goal. It's been 10 years since I played Fallout 3 but I doubt you could just beeline to the location your father is at right from the start.

I can recall my disappointment when I found that vault with the simulated reality quest part of the MQ. I think the player finds Liam there, locked in stasis or something. In any case, I knew I had discovered something obviously important FOR THE FIRST TIME in the game but COULDN'T DO ANYTHING about it, and so had to leave. And later on, when I had progressed enough in the mq for the game to let me access that vault, I was supposed to "find" it again. Yeah, thanks for that. Brilliant fucking design.

Also, Fallout's quest structure is great. Very natural way of immersing the player into his role.
For repeated playthroughs, Fallout's design style could also be slightly adapted: What if the McGuffin could be in several different places and so the player would have to find different clues every time? Obviously it shouldn't be next door, and the game would have to be properly designed around it. But it would do away with metagaming almost completely, since you can't play on autopilot anymore.

 

[Black Angel]

Well Chad has a point, if his point was that Fallout doesn't have some special thing like "shandfication"(what?). Its just the nature of videogames being interactive unlike movies or books which you can at most just pause, while even in the most linear game you can do at least some things unplanned. And Fallout being openworld RPG has this increased.
So just saying ... "You have freedom to go where you please in a open ended fashion and the world is immersive and realistic, with details filled out for the basic requirements of the characters and settlements where they live." ... was enough. But no, apparently Fallout is "shandified" and this needs 15 minutes of explanation.

Mrbtongue's point was that these kind of narrative was already a thing, and became much more possible in video games despite the fact that the medium is still relatively young compared to movies, and books even more so. Hence why he spend the first 7-8 minutes of the video bringing up The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, because the book wasn't exactly written in a linear fashion, or so I heard because I haven't actually read the book. Hence, he called Fallout: New Vegas as having a 'Shandified' narrative, because the setting IS the story where, as JarlFrank pointed out already, you don't have to follow a linear sequence of quests in order to reach the goal of the main quest.

Of course, it might confuse some people why I shared a video talking about New Vegas when the thread is about Fallout 1&2, because upon seeing that Codex meme Roguey shared, I was instantly reminded of the diagram made by Mrbtongue as shown in his video. Also, I think the video could be altered to discuss about Fallout 1&2, and the topic would fit nonetheless. Yes, you could just go like Chad and condense Mrbtongue's point into a single sentence, but only if you just want to make a one-liner and not elaborate on it in any way (and the way of Mrbtongue is exclusive to Mrbtongue).

It's like saying why OP made a post like this:

With the recent Fallout shitposting threads, I just realized something: Fallout 1 and 2 are the only RPGs which have the kind of structure that should be used for the genre, with a goal-based main quest rather than a linear step-by-step one.

In Fallout, you start the game with one goal: get a replacement water chip for your Vault. You don't know where to go and how to find it, so you set out into the wasteland and come upon settlements where you ask for the locations of other Vaults and do some sidequests for the locals. Ideally, the shit you do gives you new information on where to find a water chip replacement. The goal is there right from the start, and it doesn't change until halfway through the game, when you actually find the water chip (how exactly you get your hands on it is up to you - there's no linear sequence of events you need to go through) and bring it back to the Vault. Then, you get your second main quest: stop the Master and destroy the supermutant base.

And that's all. Three mandatory main quests, and if you go into the game with knowledge from previous playthroughs, you can beeline right to the main quest locations and go for a speedrun. But that's not how your first, blind playthrough will go because you have no idea where the water chip, the military base, and the Master's lair are located. And even on a second playthrough you shouldn't beeline to these locations because you'd be severely underlevelled and probably not make it through.

Fallout 2 has a similar structure. Go find a GECK. That's your first goal. Go stop the Enclave. That's your second goal after you found the GECK. The paths you take to reach these goals is largely up to you - although Fallout 2 isn't as open in how you get to the final location as Fallout 1 was (gotta go to the Enclave oil rig through San Fran).

Spontaneously, I can't think of any other RPG with a structure like this throughout the game. Both Fallout games have very open, very basic main quests that are entirely goal based. "Find item. Kill leader of bad guys." Anything in between is up to you. One thing that comes to mind that is comparable is Baldur's Gate 2's first chapter, where you have to amass 10k or so in wealth so you can pay the Shadow Thieves to bring you to Imoen's prison. How you get the cash is up to you. But once that quest is done, the rest of the game becomes more linear, following a more classic main quest structure where you go from one main quest to the next.

Next to my foot and nazi fetishes, what's also commonly known about me on the Codex is that I consider Arcanum to be the best RPG ever made, but I have to admit that it's structurally a little weaker than the Fallouts due to its more linear main quest line. While Arcanum has plenty of alternate solutions to quests (killed the guy who had the info you needed? look through his desk and leaf through his files) and tons of choice and consequence, the main quest's structure is still relatively linear. Find out who the ring belonged to - you can't visit Gilbert Bates before you visited P. Schuyler's to find out who the GB initials refer to. You can't go to the Isle of Despair before you visited the BMC mines. You can't visit the Wheel Clan before you've gone to the Isle of Despair, etc etc. While Arcanum allows for a lot of player freedom, the overall mainquest structure is still: do A in order to unlock B, do B in order to unlock C, do C in order to unlock D etc.

Fallout doesn't do that. It just tells you "do X" and then you find your own path to that goal. And that's one of its greatest strengths. It immensely improves replayability, since you won't have to trudge through the same set of main quests each time you make a playthrough. You can just do the quests you like, ignore the ones you don't, and use your knowledge from previous playthroughs to reach your goals.

This is the kind of structure all RPGs should strive for because it's very conductive towards roleplaying.

When he could just post this:

Fallout 1 and 2 are the only RPGs which have the kind of structure that should be used for the genre, with a goal-based main quest rather than a linear step-by-step one. This is the kind of structure all RPGs should strive for because it's very conductive towards roleplaying.

 

[laclongquan]

Fallout 3 is the best fallout cuz they make you care by giving you father figure.

Prove me wrong

cassidy is a father figure

Fuck you, no! Vic is a father figure.

He's a passing by trader to your tribe for fuck's sake.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Fallout 3 is the best fallout cuz they make you care by giving you father figure.

Prove me wrong

cassidy is a father figure

Fuck you, no! Vic is a father figure.

He's a passing by trader to your tribe for fuck's sake.

you never met your dad, huh?

 

[laclongquan]

Whut? Nothing ever mention about my family other than my sister~ Still lost and being searched for, as of now~

 

[YanBG]

Nice to see you again JarlFrank! Fallout 1/2 are just more fun than other RPGs, there is the cool factor too. You get bigger weapons, fight mutants and the power armor, makes you huge Arcanum looks very similar with the graphics(green medium-size orcs and even bigger ogres or something). But the elves were stupid and the gnomes etc maybe too. Basically they got the only boring stuff from BG 1/2 and added it to Fallout 1/2 and that's Arcanum.

Speaking about quests/story only, that goal you mention reminds me of Gothic 1/2. It's not something generic like saving the kingdom(or maybe it is lol but in more realistic world).

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Whut? Nothing ever mention about my family other than my sister~ Still lost and being searched for, as of now~

try installing the content restoration patch

 

[unfairlight]

Wow, you sure "BTFO" me, bro.

Mrbtongue's point was that these kind of narrative was already a thing, and became much more possible in video games despite the fact that the medium is still relatively young compared to movies, and books even more so. Hence why he spend the first 7-8 minutes of the video bringing up The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, because the book wasn't exactly written in a linear fashion, or so I heard because I haven't actually read the book. Hence, he called Fallout: New Vegas as having a 'Shandified' narrative, because the setting IS the story where, as JarlFrank pointed out already, you don't have to follow a linear sequence of quests in order to reach the goal of the main quest.

That's better. I should have added on "with a usually non-linear narrative or story progression, as is often typical of computer role-playing games." and I would have all bases covered. I got too caught up in the last 7 or so minutes of the video when he was talking about the fact that the world of New Vegas was immersive and with details filled out for the characters and how they live their day to day life, that I forgot the first portion of it.

 

[Master]

Mrbtongue's point was that these kind of narrative was already a thing, and became much more possible in video games despite the fact that the medium is still relatively young compared to movies, and books even more so.

I see what you mean but the book is a bad example then because its still as linear as your typical corridor shooter. I guess he meant the story in the book is meandering with individual stories seemingly or completely unconnected? But thats not the same. There are books that could be read from any chapter or from any point that are much closer to something like Fallout. But ok i see your point.