DEIMOS is a mod with no multiple endings, alternate quest paths or non linear story progression.
If you make a game set in the prewar you would either have to make it a war shooter, and there would be no way of having multiple endings as that part of the backstory ends with the whole world getting blasted to hell. No options, no open endedness, just a linear adventure. I mean, are you seruously using a mod that lasts 1 and a half hours to show how a proper full Fallout game could be made out of that?
So what? Sorry, but ...
The Deimos mod was but a short example of what could be done, part of it takes place immediately after, or during the Great War. Yes, it is a brief 1 hour long mod, written and created by one person, used as a small illustration, of what can be accomplished with a little imagination and creativity.
Yeah, seriously, you could still do it, easily, well the writing anyway.
In what I was referring to, yes, the back story does end with the whole world blasted to hell, but that isn't the ending of the story, nor the main point of the story. The War is just the background, not the story. What the main plot is about, is how the main character survives the Great War as described in the Fallout series.
Think of it this way, The Great War still happens, just as the back story of the Second Battle of Hoover Dam happens, no matter what the Courier does, only the outcomes of the battle are different. The NCR wins, or House wins, or the Legion wins, the Second Battle of Hoover Dam happens irregardless because that is where events beyond the main character's ability to control are leading, there is no way to stop it.
The "back story" of the entire Fallout series is:
The War Happened, nothing the character does can ever change that fact.
BUT, there can be all sorts of choices the character can make even in those circumstances, with completely different outcomes.
As far as I know, the Fallout Canon does not go into detail about who won the nuclear war, but the world didn't end there. The Fallout series just explores how people deal with its aftermath based on the decisions they make in that world.
1) The inexorable events of history have pushed the world to a nuclear war and there is nothing one person can do to stop it. Now, we can build our multi-layered story and create some possible outcomes for the character, ... there are only the limits of the chosen game engine and amount of content to be included.
2) During the introduction, some role playing decisions can take place pre-war, say a week to a few days before. You hear stuff on the radio, read news reports, talk to people, make decisions about what you should do, prepare? don't prepare? get out of town? gather your friends and family? What if there are problems gathering your friends and family? all kinds of stuff. This is just the introduction, you know the war is going to happen, what do you do?
3) Next, you experience the initial first strikes a few different ways based on what your initial decisions were, ... could be an option to become ghoulified in there. You could end up somewhere that didn't experience the full brunt of the war, but have to take care because of fallout and panic driven populations. You could make it to a Cyro-Facility and wake up several years later, man, ... the possibilities of the imagination just go on and on.
4) during the immediate aftermath (or several years later) there would be plenty of moral decisions to make and multiple game endings to experience based on what you, the main character, set up through out the entire story.
Just because background world events remain immutable does not mean you can not tell a good story with multiple local outcomes based on how the main character attempts to survive based on his or her actions and decisions.
