A fallout intro that could be interesting.

[bounty227]

I started thinking this up earlier this morning and I wanted to jot it down as I feel it's a very good way a potential fallout game could start. The pre-war sequence is over the span of 3 days and is to determine who lives or dies, who's loyal and who isn't. I wish for  people to build off this idea and perhaps maybe someone important will see it and make it a reality. I hope you enjoy the read and input is always welcome!

CHEAT

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A cheat can be activated similar to tranquility lane except without the sound effects. This cheat will only be revealed via a note added to the pip-boy that it had always been there and how to activate it. The cheat is an alternate start that can only be activated once and only before leaving to grab the mail. The player will activate a sequence of objects that give no indication of being intractable or being interacted with. Once activated, you will be given the option to fast forward to Day 2, Day 3, Entering the Vault, or a choice between the 2 time skips. It will then have you kill out the SPECIAL stats, then ask what transpired so that players who have already played may skip what may feel like tedious gameplay.

 

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Intro

Beginning starts pre-war with the protagonist as one of two twins. A twin is drawing a picture when the father/mother approaches and asks to see. As they look, the picture shows up as two crudely drawn figures representing the twin sister and twin brother before transitioning to the character creator which as an overlay around the screen to make it feel like paper. From there you create both twins with a function to copy the facial features to the other if wanted or make them separately. When done, the father looks away from the paper and down at the twin to reveal the twin that you chose to be. The father will give you a pat on the back and then task you to help your mother with something.

 

She will asks you to go grab the mail from the community mail box down the street which will introduce you to the pre-war neighborhood that will be free roam until further notice. In this area you can go and introduce yourself to various people and kids who you go to school with, complete tasks and such to gain karma or reputation with various groups or factions(ei: Bullies, jocks, nerds, ect.). OR you can grab the mail and see a Vault Tec survey meant for your parents but decide to fill it out for shits and gigs. This will be your SPECIAL stats.

 

When you are done, kids will run to you informing your twin is in trouble...Go to Scenario 1A for female player character or 1B for male player character.

 

Scenario 1A

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If you are female, your brother will be entangled in a brawl while playing, idk, baseball or something. You can either solve the situation diplomatically, forcefully, karma, strength, or other means if you had finished quest or tasks before reaching the mail box. Depending on your decision will influence the outcome of the intro later on(via, who lives the nuclear apocalypse). Your sibling will thank you or curse you depending on what happens before saying it is getting late, we should head back.

Scenario 1B

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If you are a male character, your sister is in trouble in ways either getting bullied or seemingly lost in the woods nearby. Perhaps she is bullied in ways of being forced or coerced into the woods. Either way, diplomacy can be done by convincing the bullies how wrong it is and they will help you search or force them or get help from anyone you may have helped before getting the mail(neighbors two dogs maybe??) You will find your sister deep in the woods, based on the personality is figured to default her two will determine in what state she is in.

Scene A

-She is being attacked by wild animals

Scene B

-She is just sitting their crying

Scene C

-She found a cool lair that she liked and quickly set up traps to ward of intruders. Anyone except you and dogs will run off scared, but she will pop out and show you around. You're sibling will thank you or curse you depending on what transpires and promts you that ya'll should head home.

 

Dinner

Once home, your mother will exclaim how she sent you out ages ago and asks what happened. You can either lie and gain loyalty from your sibling but lose karma or tell the truth which will result in lecturing from the parents and possibly having the neighborhood kids hate you as the parents contact theirs resulting them getting in trouble.

 

After dinner, you can roam around the house, or neighborhood if you wanna become a more mischievous player and introduce more wicked kids. Doing your homework will grant +1 intelligence or help your sibling for +1 charisma. You can talk to your parents and get to know them. Clean your room, play games. You will have 6 in-game hours to do all these tasks after dinner which the timescale will be longer to adjust for it. Once done, you will go to bed.

 

School

The next morning will have you get up, get ready and be off to school on the bus, which will introduce you to any character you haven't met in voice over by the player character. While at school, the entire point is to gain a following of some sort or get an idea of who you like best. Because eventually the player character will stumble upon a vault underneath the school that had been abandoned. Doing various tasks and such throughout the day contributes to the outcome. Later, it is found out that the principal knows about the vault and has a pip-boy to open it. Pip-boy is on display in his office and perhaps you catch a glimpse of some news from his terminal that the time has come(Perhaps). You store this knowledge for later.

 

At the end of the day, you go home and can decide to talk about what you discovered with your twin or keep it to yourself.

 

Judgement Day

On this morning, you and your sibling are at school, all morning you have seen people behave differently. Some packing up their cars while waiting for the bus, the bus was empty compared to usual, you even thought you caught a glimpse of a tear running down your moms face as she looked out the backdoor window smoking a cigarette, which she doesn't smoke. With class not starting yet, the TV automatically turns on displaying a news anchor as they start relaying information as cities being destroyed entirely, causing an uproar.  In this situation you have options.

 

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Option 1

-Sneak away without anyone noticing, yes, even your twin(agility)

Option 2

-Sneak away with your twin.

Option 3

-Speak up and tell everyone you have an idea. Now, depending on all the events that transpire prior to that point will determine who goes with you. You can, however, do speech checks to convince those you had not done tasks for or lowered your position with to listen and come along.

 

Assuming you bring your twin, you tasks your twin to securing the basement with your classmates while you fetch somethings. In the principals office, you see the case for the pip-boy smashed open and the room a mess. So you hurry down to the basement where you see your classmates being held at gun point by the principal. Things transpire and now the principal is not a problem or may become a bigger problem, who knows. Taking the pip-boy onto your wrist, you wave everyone to follow you as you approach a bare wall. interacting with a hidden switch somewhere, the wall comes loose where you have your twin help you push the door open to reveal the vault. Opening it, you hear the bomb sirens go off for the entire school, everyone frantically rushes inside.

 

Both you and your sibling being the last ones, you both turn to see a window on the far end of the basement up toward the ceiling. Seeing a bright flash of light, you both rush inside and close the door behind you. Flames barely reach the inside before the door closes on it.

 

The Vault

The vault goes lower using stairs, you can see the other kids cowarding at the bottom. When you reach them, they asks what that sound was, what was all that shaking. You break the news to them, tell them everything. Once things settle down, you asks everyone to stay put while you and your twin to check things out. Eventually, you find the generator and turn it on with them as well as a library with all the manuals and stuff you need to keep everything running. Heading back, you break things down for everyone. How there is no leaving the vault, that this place needs everyone to pitch in to maintain. Eventually, everyone disperses in sadness or confidence if you speak to them a certain way or if you have a good standing. Throughout the day you are tasked with menial task, such as finding the overseers room, which is locked, water purifier, agriculture center and ready to eat food. At the end of the day, you and your twin find a room, talk for a bit then go to sleep where it will fade to black and "several moths later" pops up.

 

Several Months Later

Several months pass and your group is in the midst of a crisis. Need of real leadership as everyone is divided into two groups. This entire scenes purpose is to determine what will happen for years to come. You may become overseer, your twin, or various other advocates. If anyone else but you wins, they will set the rules for the vault, perhaps they will go well, or not you will find out years from now. If you become overseer you will get a chance to set the rules to your liking before another fade-to-black that reveals 10 years later or what not. 

 

10 Years Later

The culmination of all of your decisions will determine the fate of the vault and the reason you leave it. Examples, sabotage from someone who doesn't agree with the overseers rules, you sabotage, you are kicked out, you leave to find someone, you leave to find something, or you are the last one remaining as everyone else died or left long ago and the vault can no longer sustain you.

 

[landess]

Reminds me of a more in depth version of the FONV mod: New California. Great beginning, but it shows it's faults more after leaving the vault.

 

Unless your actions during this new intro have a real impact in the world after leaving the vault, then after being played once, most players might likely dismiss it since they want to get on with the game in the wasteland. New California attempts to reward the player with new items which are then kept during the remainder of the New Vegas playthrough.

 

As it's own 'mini game': I've played FO3 a "few" times, and can say it almost seems like the beginning to it as well.

 

All the views and no comments prior to me make me wonder if people even read.

[Dallas-Arbiter]

One little problem, if you stick to the long established lore (since Fallout 1), there wouldn't be any school. The Great war happened on Saturday October 23 2077. I googled what the day of the week would be on October 23 2077 in the real world, and it's a Saturday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Dallas-Arbiter]

Also, setting the game 10 years after the great war would mean the removal of every faction, since none of them existed at that time. Even super mutants would need to be removed, since they were created nearly 3000 miles away in the year 2103, and they're not nomadic.

 

Then you'd have to remove every settlement too, because none of them existed at that time.

[steelpanther24]

I was thinking this is more akin to the start of Never Winter Nights Two or Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines in that you "build" your character as they go through the opening scenes.  I won't ding the technical errors, as this is a game, so yea we don't need to be exact on how a nuclear bomb goes off.  

 

Since this is your idea, what is your "motivating factor"?  Is it simple survival (that is not a bad thing as there are plenty of games and mods out there that clearly show that people enjoy survival games).     Also, will you have to make morally tough choices (think the Twilight Zone episode where friendly neighbors turned into enemies when a nuclear drill was taking as real and only one family had a bomb shelter.)?    Posting the idea here, means to me that you are ok with some tough issues.   

 

Things that come to mind:  Recognizing places in the neighborhood with flash backs.    You may find two skeletons clinging together and in a flash back you realize that is the old couple  Johnson's who would tell you some funny stories while drinking lemonade for the darker bleakness, or a bit of come uppance when you find the local upper class twit from your grade who made sure everyone knew that he or she was destined for greatness and is now a skeleton at the entrance to the vault.      Then how to handle the environment.   If Fallout lore is used, 10 years is not enough time to reduce the radiation (though in reality, depending on the kind of warhead used, 10 years could be ok .......as long as you don't plan on living to old age as cancer and leukemia  would likely kill people in their 40s-50s).  

 

 

[bounty227]

21 hours ago, steelpanther24 said:

I was thinking this is more akin to the start of Never Winter Nights Two or Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines in that you "build" your character as they go through the opening scenes.  I won't ding the technical errors, as this is a game, so yea we don't need to be exact on how a nuclear bomb goes off.  

 

Since this is your idea, what is your "motivating factor"?  Is it simple survival (that is not a bad thing as there are plenty of games and mods out there that clearly show that people enjoy survival games).     Also, will you have to make morally tough choices (think the Twilight Zone episode where friendly neighbors turned into enemies when a nuclear drill was taking as real and only one family had a bomb shelter.)?    Posting the idea here, means to me that you are ok with some tough issues.   

 

Things that come to mind:  Recognizing places in the neighborhood with flash backs.    You may find two skeletons clinging together and in a flash back you realize that is the old couple  Johnson's who would tell you some funny stories while drinking lemonade for the darker bleakness, or a bit of come uppance when you find the local upper class twit from your grade who made sure everyone knew that he or she was destined for greatness and is now a skeleton at the entrance to the vault.      Then how to handle the environment.   If Fallout lore is used, 10 years is not enough time to reduce the radiation (though in reality, depending on the kind of warhead used, 10 years could be ok .......as long as you don't plan on living to old age as cancer and leukemia  would likely kill people in their 40s-50s).  

 

 

I had a lot of this in mind. My motivating factor is a more compelling RPG. Personally starved for an RPG that makes me have to think before I choose. This is why I love the idea of have sometime to set the story up before it gets going. Your actions in the prologue determines who is getting into the vault. Will it be just you? You and your siblings? a slew of classmates? What will the choices once in the vault affect? Will they see you as their leader or will you stick someone else up on the peddle stool? As far as what happens outside the vault, I didn't think that far, I was pondering this idea and jotted it down real quick and wanted to share it. I am glad I am getting responses because you all are giving me really good feed back. 

[bounty227]

On 2/26/2020 at 6:17 PM, Dallas-Arbiter said:

Also, setting the game 10 years after the great war would mean the removal of every faction, since none of them existed at that time. Even super mutants would need to be removed, since they were created nearly 3000 miles away in the year 2103, and they're not nomadic.

 

Then you'd have to remove every settlement too, because none of them existed at that time.

On 2/26/2020 at 6:14 PM, Dallas-Arbiter said:

One little problem, if you stick to the long established lore (since Fallout 1), there wouldn't be any school. The Great war happened on Saturday October 23 2077. I googled what the day of the week would be on October 23 2077 in the real world, and it's a Saturday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am really glad you shared this, I did not think about that one bit, I just jotted the idea down quick while it was fresh and didn't fact check. Thank you! I have always wanted to see a more desolate Fallout game, less people and more danger.

[bounty227]

On 2/26/2020 at 5:19 PM, landess said:

Reminds me of a more in depth version of the FONV mod: New California. Great beginning, but it shows it's faults more after leaving the vault.

 

Unless your actions during this new intro have a real impact in the world after leaving the vault, then after being played once, most players might likely dismiss it since they want to get on with the game in the wasteland. New California attempts to reward the player with new items which are then kept during the remainder of the New Vegas playthrough.

 

As it's own 'mini game': I've played FO3 a "few" times, and can say it almost seems like the beginning to it as well.

 

All the views and no comments prior to me make me wonder if people even read.

Won't lie when I say it does take inspiration, especially the time skips. And the choices in mind do carry weight later on. I feel the beginning of Fallout 4 would have been amazing if they did more with the beginning too. 

[steelpanther24]

The issue with the branching story line (choices have impact) is the amount of work that will be required.    For example, the the excellent game of Dragon Age, there is 3 hours and 42 minutes of unique banter between the companions.   That is about 22 minutes of dialogue for each of the 10 companions.....and that is just party banter.    While getting music was the thing that took me the longest when I build my mod, the follow on mod has suffered because 1) real world jobs for both me (the writer) and the Voice Actor, 2) the inability to pay for voice actors means it will take long to get all the voice parts filled, and 3) it balloons the game size. 

 

Also getting popular music to use is tough, as more music is not owned by the artist but by the record company. 

 

That said, one thing you may wish to consider is using static shots indicating action (look up the opening scene to Battletech or Atom RPG).  That would preserve your goal, while making it easier to produce.   

[bounty227]

23 hours ago, steelpanther24 said:

The issue with the branching story line (choices have impact) is the amount of work that will be required.    For example, the the excellent game of Dragon Age, there is 3 hours and 42 minutes of unique banter between the companions.   That is about 22 minutes of dialogue for each of the 10 companions.....and that is just party banter.    While getting music was the thing that took me the longest when I build my mod, the follow on mod has suffered because 1) real world jobs for both me (the writer) and the Voice Actor, 2) the inability to pay for voice actors means it will take long to get all the voice parts filled, and 3) it balloons the game size. 

 

Also getting popular music to use is tough, as more music is not owned by the artist but by the record company. 

 

That said, one thing you may wish to consider is using static shots indicating action (look up the opening scene to Battletech or Atom RPG).  That would preserve your goal, while making it easier to produce.   

I really appreciate your replies. The info you lend me is incredible and it's helpful to keep these things in mind. The party banter fact is an eye opener too, but honestly sounds exciting to write!