Fallout 3 Continue After Ending

[Latanya Hariri]

I have Fallout 1 and I already beat it, but when I defeated the Master, I got the dialog sequence with the Overseer (when you are expelled from Vault 13) and then game was over (pretty sad, that ending sequence).

There's a relatively new mod called "Fallout Et Tu" or "Fo1in2" that allows you to continue playing. It's actually a port of the F1 campaign to the F2 engine, and thus it works the same way - when the campaign ends, it asks you if you want to continue playing or not.

If you want to carry on exploring the western wasteland of Fallout: New Vegas after you've finished the game, you'll have to start again from scratch or travel back in time. That's the word from Director Josh Sawyer, who has just clarified recent statements that once the game is done, it's done. There will be no post-endgame exploration, and if you want to complete more side-quests you'll have to go back to an old save, Zelda-style. Or just start again.

The reasoning is that the ending Obsidian wants to give the game will be stronger if the player can't continue after it. But is a strong narrative resolution more important than maintaining the illusion of a real, persistant, living world in a game like this? And how will the probably inevitable DLC get around this? Won't we end up with the same problem of narrative dead-end thatBethesda saddled itself with at the end of Fallout 3, which then resulted in the need for a messy plot retcon with the first add-on? More explanations and quotes are beyond the jump.

"We want to make it a definitive ending. Initially, we talked about trying to support post-game play, but because the changes that can happen at the end of the game are pretty major, this is what it basically came down to: either have the changes feel really major in the end slides and then have them not be very major after the end of the game, or make them really minor and not that impactful."

That's Sawyer's explanation, and in a lot of ways, I agree with his sentiments. Having to re-engineer ahuge open-world in order to accommodate multiple variations of big narrative events would be a nightmare, and having played througha huge open-world for tens of hours, I bloody well want big narrative events come the climax.

But I also - and this is a personal thing, so feel free to disagree - absolutely hate finishing an RPGset in avibrant world which I know contains plenty more stories I haven't even touched yet, and then being forced to reboot that world back to an earlier save in order to see more of it. Yes, I can still play everything without restarting the whole game, but it murders the narrative flow and my sense of progression through a real, reactive world.

At the end of a game based entirely around those concepts, essentially being told that my final actions and climactic struggle didn't count for anything (and in fact didn't even happen) as soon as I want to play more is a bit galling, as well as a bit archaic. Fable IIunlocks new quests after the main game has been completed, which lead directly on from the events of the finale. And after 'completion', Dragon Quest VIII even opens up hours-worth of new gameplay that fills in every gap from the game's already huge main story. And that, to me, just feels like a much more evolved way of doing things.

Sawyer explains that Fallout: New Vegas' endings will tell the stories of the game's characters for decades after the main story, and obviously anything the player did post-endgame to change those events (say, killing a character who we've been told lives to old age) would make a mess of things. But surely there's a better, more organic way of doing things than just skipping back to before the last boss fight, like nothing ever happened. That approach felt creaky in A Link to The Past. And what will happen with the DLC? Will it all be set before the ending, thus messing with the levelling and character progression? Will it be based on side-stories and different protagonists? Or will it be another Fallout 3-style retcon?

But what do you think? Would a lack of post-ending exploration be a jolt for you, or could you not care less about narrative flow? And how do you think this means the DLC will turn out? Let me know in the comments, or via our throbbing social portals onFacebookandTwitter.

The DLC for Fallout 3 actually made the game keep playing past the original story ending. But I just got Dead Money and Lonesome Hearts yesterday (thanks to PSN taking forever to give me a new password), and even with them installed, if I finish the "No Gods, No Masters" quest, the game ends.

The only thing that pisses me off about this is that my first character only has a saved game DURING the battle...I assumed that the game would go on after the ending like in FO3...guess I was wrong. So I lost one of my best characters...oh well worse things have happened.

If Obsidian were to program legitimately good post-ending gameplay, New Vegas wouldn't be out TODAY. Broken Steel had a few extra quests but it's implementation into the game-world SUCKED, practically nothing in the Capital Wasteland changed except for new quests and some aesthetic effects around Jefferson Memorial, and that was with two possible endings for the whole game. Now imagine four possible endings, and endings which in their own way effect the ENTIRE gameworld. Four new dialogue trees would have to be made for practically every character, the appearances of locations, especially New Vegas, would have to be changed. There would have to be four different questlines because each ending would have a totally different effect. There's no way in HELL that could have been done in a reasonable amount of time. Really, stop complaining about it. Here's a newsflash, practically every other game you play ends. Fallout 1 ended, Fallout 2s post-ending gameplay is non-canon, Fallout Tactics ended. There will be no post-ending DLC for New Vegas, it ISN'T going to happen. Laziness wasn't the problem, time constraints were. FinalWish 17:45, June 14, 2011 (UTC)

well if it were a game company full of talentless writers (Bethesda, im looking at your fallout interpretations) it would be that simple. But No. Its not. Legion would have Helios One Dismantled straight away, The casinos burned down, all of the towns that resisted (and there would have been a FUCKTON of them) raised to the ground, endless NPC's including many named NPC's would be forced into slavery, the NCR outposts would have been destroyed (that would go for the House and yes man endings too), NPC's would have to have even more dialogue, and with the amount of options already present, Im pretty sure just the New Vegas Voice actors would have started their own union.

You want Freeplay, but if you got what was possible you would complain. This isn't just fanboyism. its Reality. At least we understand what the current limitations are especially with Bethesda's ass of a game engine. 5t3v0 05:14, June 15, 2011 (UTC)

Everything has to end at some point and I think drawing a line at the end of the Battle for Hoover Dam is a good point to wrap up the story. You're to utterly free roam and RP and ignore the central quest line totally and pretend that there is really no major battle waiting to take place. You don't have to start the end game sequence at all. Sure its fun to constantly roam the wastes but even that gets boring after a time. Nah, all good things must end and FO:NV is no exception. Accept it and move on Captain Taipan 05:44, June 15, 2011 (UTC)

Also, they could have simply given you the option at the end to continue with a warning that not everything depicted would be as told in the ending narration. I would have been perfectly happy with that as well.

During my game play for the ncr i found a curious bit of dialog. the commander of the ncr forces at hoover dam before the battle can be seen if you go all the way through the damn with ought setting off the valves. She is getting attacked by legioners and you can save her if fast enough. when i talked to her she had scripted daologe talking about events after the damn and complaining how the ncr wernt chasing the remnants of the legion. She also went on to say how she had been promoted to i think was general but might have been cornel. Anyway this had might have been a glitch but the game might already have a bit of after hoover dam battle daologe options built in to it it just doesnt have the programing yet to be told to continue after the game. This all could be a trick obsidian is doing with there game and really are planning to release an ending. I really would put it past them to do something like that since they are pretty well known to keeping some rpojects secret. Shaggynutmgee--70.190.188.240 07:43, September 29, 2011 (UTC)

Given all the different options and choices they'd probably need a DLC for each ending, and producing 4 separate DLCs for people who may only buy one wouldn't be a good financial decision. Besides it's kind of fun to use your imagination and console commands to build the post-ending world yourself. Fallout: Shades of Grey, coming 2012 02:50, September 30, 2011 (UTC)

Just becuase the ending slides tell a story, doesnt mean it all has to happen at once. Obsidian developers could have made a few changes to the 3 major factions for each ending and called it a DLC. Those ending slides are bullshit anyway becuase christines dead money ending talks about a battle between couriers reaching her ears, (me and uylesses) but i didnt battle him, we talked things out. Also, not every NPC has to follow and begin doing whatever the ending slide says right away. Its just to let you know what happen to thoses NPCs after you stop playing NEW VEGAS and start playing Fallout 4.--Robandbig 15:48, October 1, 2011 (UTC)

ERRMMM...Excuse me, but you can't really say your not a fanboy if your willing to sit here and argue over whether or not it would have been easy to script. Thats pretty fanboyish, nitpicking over details like that. Anyway, I agree with what Final Wish said. Making and ending worth extending would have impossible considering the time restraints. For gods sake, the whole reason the game was buggy at release was because of time restraints. They had to release it, completely ready or not. Crossfire XVI 20:14, October 1, 2011 (UTC)

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