A BioWare made Fallout

Irwin John Finster

Irwin John Finster

Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
Think about KOTOR I and II (although II was Obsidian). Mass Effect, Dragon Age Origins. Quite immersive worlds with a non-voiced protagonist with an emphasis on dialogue and world building with a MASSIVE CODEX. In other words, the opposite of Bethesda with its emphasis on "KILL LOOT RETURN."

Obsidian/InXile would be my first choice to make a Fallout spinoff, but these guys at BioWare would be second on the list. What does everyone think?
 
BioWare circa 2003 could have been great, but now the best they could do, At least from what they have released in the past 6 years, is basically Fallout 4 with a "more questions" dialogue option.
 
Rangda said:
BioWare circa 2003 could have been great, but now the best they could do, At least from what they have released in the past 6 years, is basically Fallout 4 with a "more questions" dialogue option.
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We haven't ever seen BioWare post-2003 without EA's influence. Maybe, hopefully, they might be able to do better if EA wasn't spearheading all the decisions? But then, the original founders and a bunch of the good writers have already left, so I don't know.
 
ZigzagPX4 said:
We haven't ever seen BioWare post-2003 without EA's influence. Maybe, hopefully, they might be able to do better if EA wasn't spearheading all the decisions? But then, the original founders and a bunch of the good writers have already left, so I don't know.
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That's what I was thinking, even if EA gave BioWare complete creative freedom over the project it still wouldn't be a classic BW game.
 
I'll wait for this whole industry going downhill thing to blow over (which should be done with by the next console generation, which should be half a decade from now) and for the current indie developers to rise up and become the big developers, taking the place of EA and Ubisoft (who will have fallen or gone Konami by then). Only then, I think, will we have a chance of finding a developer who's perfect for making a faithful Fallout sequel.
 
Lanfear said:
Since Bioware have already hemorrhaged most of their best staff, I wouldn't think much of it. Not the first company to go to shit under EA, won't be the last.
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I'm trying to have a little faith that Mass Effect Andromeda won't be a complete piece of crap. But I will not be surprised at all if it is absolutely AWFUL.

After Fallout 4 I need a game franchise I like to be good for a change.
 
Game franchises are like Old Yeller; you might love them, but invariably the day will come when you'll need to take them out back and put one between their eyes.
 
Irwin John Finster said:
I'm trying to have a little faith that Mass Effect Andromeda won't be a complete piece of crap. But I will not be surprised at all if it is absolutely AWFUL.

After Fallout 4 I need a game franchise I like to be good for a change.
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I wager to say it wouldn't even be near awful. Granted, it would probably be somewhat average and underwhelming - exactly like DA:I was, but sci-fi - but at least I would predict it will fill the RPG title better than Fallout 4 does.
 
MercenarySnake said:
I think of it like this, "Atleast it can't be any worse then what Bethesda has done". Who knows, it can only be left to speculation.
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Hey, if we took speculation out of this forum, and maybe also The Order, then we would have a very empty forum, I think.

Whenever I see something on the Internet that can only be left to speculation, I head to NMA and I find that more or less, there's at least two people discussing that subject. So, if it's left to speculation, we might as well just consider it left to us.

And I speculate that BioWare will do okay. Average. Fine. Fills the space, doesn't do anything new. Isn't that the industry standard now? Play it safe - no new ideas, no pissing off anyone. Movies, video games, cartoons, anything in entertainment. It's basically just standing still, no steps forward or back.

There was a discussion somewhere else on the site about whether Fallout 3 would leave a lasting impression. I say yes, but no to Fallout 4. If not for the divide it further tore apart between originals fans who still tolerated Bethesda and the new Bethesda fans, then there's nothing memorable about it in the least.
 
Bioware hasn't made a good game in years. They've done about as good of a job cocking up their series as Bethesda has with Fallout/TES. With Avellone gone I don't even know who I'd give Fallout to anymore....
 
A really good RPG is functionally (to the AAA mindset) an interactive novel with tactical combat between random pages, I guess? People who want more story than gameplay in their games is the smallest minority in the gaming community.

Most people who do play games don't even like books, yet several on NMA seems to, so that speaks a lot as to the difference between the parts of the community.

Even indie developers really dedicated to their work will still be averse to the idea of basing the game around a text-heavy plot.

Admittedly, I've never liked long stretches of reading in-game, such as in Baldur's Gate or Pillars of Eternity. I've always found that it completely ruins the pacing, and I've caught myself calling people who disagree "old-fashioned" unintentionally, but it's all really just my opinion.

(Statements like that shit above is why I stay the hell off RPGCodex. I think they would probably shoot me on site.)
 
People tended to hate Inquisition because of the "radiant quests" and the fact that there weren't many ways to be evil, but honestly, even though I played Origins first, I still enjoyed Inquisition quite a lot. The game was very fun to me, I absolutely adored every single companion, the romance system felt really good, and so forth.

Let's give Bioware credit, in Inquisition they at least did the dialogue wheel right. There were more than just 4 options, a lot of the time you could hit a key and be able to pick 4 more options from a different wheel. There was actual variety with the dialogue, in my opinion. Oh, and let's not forget that they actually gave us a choice of who voice acted our character. Sure we only got 4 total to choose from but it's better than only have a single voice actor who sounds like a boring white guy that's never emoted in his life.
 
Well, I find myself generally indifferent to Bioware games these days. So while I'm posting the chart, it's not with a great deal of vitriol. At the most, Bioware games come across as uninspired and have been steadily going downhill.
I'm just amused by the intellectual exercise of how Bioware would've made Fallout.

Here's what I have so far:

1) You are a humble member from a group of nomadic tribals known as Ciphers.

2) One day, an outside force (an army or men with guns) attack and destroy many of your sacred sites in Mesa Verda. They have seized many pieces of Cipher technology, blueprints and inscriptions, destroying much of what they could not take and killing many of the permanent settlers. The artifacts concern themselves with knowledge of one very specific piece of Pre-War tech, but nobody remembers its purpose anymore, only that the knowledge was considered most dire and forbidden.
The few Ciphers to survive were away from the main settlement. Fortunately, your people are mostly nomads and the survivors can keep themselves safe for the time being.
You undertake the quest to uncover why the village was attacked.

3) In your travels, you soon meet a wise tribal shaman, who might have some latent psychic ability, and an itinerant Steel Knight. They become valuable allies and companions.

4) You must visit sites of great Pre-War technology to uncover clues. These include a derelict Vault, a Vault City that is now a part of the NCR, The Glow and a Pre-War military installation teeming with robots.

5) You discover that the men who attacked your village are agents of the Circle of Steel, an extremist hardline faction of the Brotherhood of Steel which are quietly at war with the NCR. They hound you and obstruct your quest. They have some sinister purpose for the knowledge that they have stolen from your people.

6) During your travels, you dream of technical schematics and equations which describe the sublime workings of the cosmos. They reveal ominous hints about the future. Science-minded characters, or those with high Intelligence, are able to make more sense of these visions.

7) By the nature of the franchise, you are frequently exploring the ruins of an ancient sprawling civilization . . .

All I'm missing is an elite order that inducts you into their ranks and charges you with saving the world and all of humanity as we know it.
 
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Well...

0. If Troika had still been around and had been more successful with Vampire: Bloodlines they would have owned Fallout.. Lots of 'IF's and purely hypothetical, but I am not really sure that Fallout would have gone 3D the way Bethesda did it - it would probably have happened eventually along the lines of Bloodlines. It makes me cringe to think that Bethesda actually did some good for Fallout, but I think they deserve a bit of recognition for it. It's just really too bad that they own it.

1. If InXile wanted to, they could do it. Even though the constant name-dropping of Fallout in the Kickstarter context of Wasteland 2, and the incessant boasting about the Godfather of CRPG being back, made the end result look much worse to me, it was pretty good and entertaining game.

They would need some help with party dialogue and content and an all-powerful executive critical eye to avoid mixing crap-design with huge walls of text.

2. If BioWare did it, I think it would only be great if it was something like "Fallout: The Old Republic" divided into at least two opposing sides, Humans vs. Mutants, each with four separate classes, with two branches each.. and regular updates and new content.. Lots of replay value.

But that bloody dialogue wheel, that I just never can get used to, would have to go in favor of fully fleshed out dialogue lines.

3. If Obsidian did it, erm.. After what a colossal disappointment PoE was to me I don't think they have the nerve, passion and skill to produce anything I'd like. It would just be some boring, bland and balanced bullshit. They would have to go back in time and pick up the old crew, including the guys that went to form Troika to produce anything worthwhile.. Most unlikely.

Well, I really enjoyed Old World Blues, which was the only real Fallout to me, but it was like the last 'gasp', a blast of the past of that special Fallout spirit that seduced and turned me in the first place back in the nineties.

Also, I always wanted to be able to play as a Mutant in the Masters Army. It was a huge disappointment to me that being dipped in the Vats went straight to Game Over.. But that was in context with Fallout 2.
 
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