Wasteland Ventures (Fallout) #2 – Quest Structure

November 30th, 2010

Since the last instalment I’ve made considerable headway through Fallout. With the water chip returned to Vault 13, I’m off to find the cause of the super mutant plague. Having made my way through Junk Town, The Hub and Necropolis, I’ve noticed a pattern in the quest structure. Quests, which also act as major story arcs, can be mapped out as follows:

Pre-quest Context

The pre-quest context happens before the actual quest begins. The game will draw the player’s attention to a specific issue in the surrounding area through dialogue with NPCs, access and in-access to certain points on the map, visual markers, in-game events and so on. These indicators can only be triggered through the player’s interactions which themselves fit the real world context of investigation (talking to people, asking questions, snooping around). As such these basic mechanics (talk, walk and view) work well with the devices that establish context. In this way, the mechanics make the player’s awareness of the populace’s social troubles (which necessitate quests) quite normal and life-like.

Quest Trigger

One of these indicators will prompt the quest to begin. So maybe when talking to an NPC, they will call on the player to help them or entering an area will cause some characters warn you about a current predicament.

Contacting With The Source

Most major issues in the wasteland that act as the backdrop for quests can be attributed to faction leaders exerting their force on small minorities. At some stage you’ll need to make contact with faction leaders who often remain tucked away in their fortified hideouts.

At this stage Fallout presents the player with a fairly open slate. The objectives of the quests, which usually fall along the vague lines of “stop this person from disturbing our way of life” allows for multiple solutions that fall in accordance with the player’s SPECIAL statistics and skills. The statistics directly affect what tangible abilities (and their success rates) the player can employ in such situations and throughout the game at large. The chart here identifies the tangible outcomes of the player’s primary SPECIAL stats, while this one here correlates to the player’s skill system. But let’s take some more practical examples. Say, if the player has high intelligence and perception, then they will have more dialogue options and can therefore persuade the aggressor to change their stance. If the player has good strength then they could simple barge through the fortress and blow away the leader and their goons. Maybe the player has invested in a skill, like stealing, and can simply take what is needed without confrontation. Every situation allows for more than one possibility (at its most minimal violent and non-confrontational choices), and maybe even a few you’d never even realise. (Tricking Gaul into thinking that you’re his father is a good example).

The bases for the factions are designed in such a way as to create a risk/reward system pertinent to player’s potential approaches (read: their best and most usable skills). Guards cover the entrance of bases, making it difficult to flee if one decides to attack the leader. Similarly, if the player steals and gets caught, they’re immediately in great danger. Backdoors are often included for those who can sneak their way through, yet failing to crack the lock can foil the entire plan before it even begins.

Branching

Based on the player’s actions, there may be a point where the situation branches (almost a given when 2 factions are involved) and the player can choose to support the quest giver or the opposing faction. This is where most of the moral ambiguity finds its way into the context. Requested assassination attempts are a common example. After being asked to remove a certain individual, on contacting with that individual, you may warn them and, in turn, they may request that you remove the initiator instead. My example below along with the recommended quests in the conclusion all feature this design.

Completion

Simple enough, the quest is completed and the player receives some kind of reward.

Consequences

Due to the savage nature of the wasteland, the benefits that players get from a quest is usually to the detriment of somebody else and this, more often than not, creates consequences that affect play. The best examples being that certain areas becoming inaccessible or clan members automatically launching into an assault when sighting the player.

With the quest structure layed out (and frivolous commentary added), we can now apply this model to one of the quests.

Junktown, Gizmo and Killian

Overview: There are two main players in Junktown, Killian Darkwater, grandson of Junktown’s founder and local store owner who respects the rules of the community and Gizmo, an overweight casino tycoon who employs the neighbouring Skulz gang to help him with his dirty work. Both men are at odds. Killian wants to restore proper law and order to Junktown which means the dissolution of the Skulz gang and removal of Gizmo, while Killian’s holding up the expansion of Gizmo’s flourishing empire. Killian has the local police force on his side, but lacks the evidence to lock Gizmo away. On the other hand, the bottom half of town near Killian’s store is well protected, making it difficult for Gizmo to make a hit on Killian.

The videos below are of the quest playing out, a text version can be read here too.

Starting at 5:20 in this video (there’s an overview of the area first).

Pre-quest Context

All of that information just above is communicated to the player in several ways, here are some examples:

the player isn’t allowed into Junktown with a weapon holstered (law enforcement)
the player may not be allowed into Junktown at night (law enforcement)
if the player aggravates the police, they will open attack (combat)
there is a town jail (sight)
local police force warn the player of Gizmo and the skulls (text overlays (representing dialogue made out in the open) during gameplay; perception)
further clarification if the player initiates dialog with these people (speech)
similar speech can be gleamed from the Skulls and NPCs in the upper areas (Gizmo’s town; speech)

The primary piece of context is the assassination attempt on Killian which plays out entirely in-game. An unassuming NPC (Kenji) will walk into Killian’s store when the player is in the vicinity and shout out “Gizmo sends his regards” in an on-screen text display before proceeding to fire at Killian. At this point, if the player chooses to help Kenji take out Killian (and therefore align with Gizmo) then they’ve already passed the Quest Trigger and there is no Branching phase. (This path brushes over the meat of the quest). The player can also choose to let Kenji be killed, in which case nothing happens, or they can attack Kenji at least once (ie. defending Killian). The last option leads to the Quest Trigger.

Quest Trigger

The assassination attempt is the breaking point for the two sides. After saving Killian, he will ask the player assist him in gaining the evidence needed to bring down Gizmo. His request activates the quest proper. If you turn him down then the asshole throws you in jail and heads off with some officers to take down Gizmo by himself which is pretty harsh considering that you just saved his life. This path ends the quest.

Killian requires the player to either voice record Gizmo saying something incriminating with a supplied tape recorder, or to plant a bug on Gizmo.

Contacting With The Source

To spring Gizmo, you obviously need to be near him, right? So, you make contact with him at his casino north of Killian’s shop. You can avoid any communication with him by just planting the bug, which therefore doesn’t allow any branching in the quest structure. If the player records Gizmo’s voice on tape, then the easiest way to have Gizmo say anything incriminating is to tell him that his previous attempt (Kenji) failed and then make a proposition that you’ll make the hit and get it done right.

Branching

After obtaining the evidence, the player is left with 2 objectives that they can fulfil: give the recording to Killian or kill him and give him dog tags to Gizmo as proof.

Completion

Gizmo will either be sprung and Killian will let the player take something for free from his shop or Gizmo will hand over a healthy amount of bottle caps (currency) as a reward for killing Killian.

Consequences

Option A) You give the evidence to Killian which later opens up a mission where you can kill Gizmo with other NPCs. In which case, his casino will be deserted and the local law enforcement will be happy with you.

Option B) The police populating the bottom half of the screen will turn on you for betraying Killian. (Fortunately they have a lot of armour which can be auctioned off for a handsome price). If you remove all the officers including the gatekeeper, you are free to enter Junktown anytime you please. Gizmo won’t give a rats about you. You can always kill him off too and clear him of loot.

Conclusion

As you can probably tell, there are opportunities that arise in the quest which circumvent parts of the structure I’ve laid out here and that’s to be expected as the quests are quite flexible. The questing structure I’m proposing isn’t a fixed model, but instead a complete model of what a quest looks like when played out to its maximum extent. It’s a mark of quality that Fallout allows the player to intervene with this model, offering solid interplay at every divergence.

If you’re interested, the quest with the mutants, Set and water supply at Necropolis and the quest in Boneyard in dealing with the Blades, Gun Runners and Regulators are other meaty examples that flesh out this model to its fullest.

Wasteland Ventures (Fallout) #1 – Tutorial and Beginnings

October 22nd, 2010

On to the wasteland. I’ll return to the review the comments made in the previous article once I’ve completed Fallout. In the meantime though, I’d like to analyse Fallout on the grounds of freedom of expression and interplay alongside with my regular “ooh, this looks interesting” commentaries. Freedom of expression speaks for itself, interplay though requires an explanation and fortunately I’ve taken one from Richard Terrell, who coined the term:

“Interplay is the back and forth encouragement of player mechanics between any two elements in a game. Put simply, interplay is where actions and elements in a game aren’t means to an end, but fluid opportunities that invite the player to play around with the changing situation.

The easiest way to think of interplay is offensively/defensively or in counters. Consider two elements of a hypothetical action/fighting game. The first element is the player’s character, and the second is an enemy. If an enemy can attack you, does this attack/enemy have a way to be countered? What happens when you counter the enemy’s move? Does the enemy die, does it reset itself, or does the situation change? If the situation changes, is the enemy still a threat? If so, can you counter the new threat? And the cycle repeats.”

My ideas will be presented in a journal format. This first entry will cover the tutorial parts of the game Vault 13-Kahn raiders camp.

Vault 13

I can’t honestly say that I enjoyed my first few attempts at playing Fallout which is steeped in needless trial and error and some arbitrary stat abstraction.

Your journey begins with the player “rolling” their own character. With wariness of a supposed difficulty spike early on in what is meant to be an already difficult game, I consulted a FAQ and maxed out the most useful stats while minimising the useless ones (known as min-maxing). Useless, or rather relatively less useful, statistics include endurance, outdoors man and luck. The FAQ I used also listed some variables that I shouldn’t raise as I could do so later through books. All very complicated and not so balanced. Fallout penalises players who don’t choose, and then subsequently boost, the appropriate statistics from the outset. It’s quite hard for players to get the gist of the usefulness of certain statistics from the brief descriptions from the menu alone, so rolling your own character has many unnecessary hazards. Fortunately, players can choose a pre-rolled character.

After rolling your character, you leave your isolated home of Vault 13 to a gloomy cave. The introduction to Fallout doesn’t offer any real tutorial on the functions of the game which leaves the player to figure the game out for itself. Fortunately, the cave acts as a fail-safe playground to practice the primary mechanics, despite the fact that they are never introduced to the player. The cave is inhabited by rats which initiate the use of the turn based combat system based on action points and allow for a little practice and experimentation.

Fallout requires some kind of peripheral reading to substitute the lack of tutorial, I pieced together bits of information from the internet as opposed to reading the appalling 130 paged manual (read here) which is written out in long form instead of using a freaking screenshot to tell you what everything means. Argh. After an unnecessary amount of time wasting and trial and error you’ll eventually get the hang of it.

After finally making your way through the army of kamikaze rats, you’re presented with a top-down world map marked with the nearby town of Shady Sands. You’ll learn that venturing out much further will only lead to overpowered enemies and a series of stop gaps that don’t have much use at this stage in the game due to your limited supplies. The map doesn’t disallow players from diving head first in the deep end, it is entirely open-ended, but the initial state of the player binds them to nearby safety zones. Metroid appears to be open-ended but caps players with power-ups, Fallout does so with the heightened difficulty because of a lack of inventory, weapons and ammo and decent statistics. This form of limitation radiates out from Vault 13 so it’s a very natural form of persuasion.

Just making it this far is a challenge—a 2-part one at that, as you’ll need to first grasp the rules of the game and then figure out a way to survive the harsh landscape of the wasteland. Both of these factors have undoubtedly caused many players great frustration. My brother is an example of someone who gave up early on.

Shady Sands

If the rat cave was a tutorial on combat, then Shady Sands is a tutorial on social mechanics. Well, actually Shady Sands could be an extended tutorial of combat if the player so well chooses because Shady Sands is a really an introduction to player freedom before anything else.

When players enter Shady Sands they are greeted by 2 guards. If the player still has a weapon equipped (which in all likelihood they will as there is no reason to de-equip it) the guards will ask the player to remove it. Right here is moral choice and freedom. The player can choose to ignore the guards, in turn starting a fight or conceal their weapon and have access to the village. The interplay here is just fascinating, I tried both approaches on different saves and here’s what I got:

Aggressive Option (player doesn’t holster weapon)

-the doormen will attack the player

-the player can flee or attack

————attack

—————-if you defeat the guards, you can take their loot from their bodies

—————-other people in the village will pursue you as well, reverting to attack/flee option

———————attack

————————you can effectively kill everyone in the city and raid the whole place dry

————flee

—————–leave the doormen and the screen, state of doormen is back to neutral

Peaceful Option (player holsters weapon)

-the player is treated as a wanderer which means that all the facilities in the town are available to you such as the advice from the doormen, a healing centre, bartering and trade

-the peaceful option opens up a microcosm of other choices each with their own separate avenues

As we can see, a very natural occurrence in the wasteland (defending one own’s turf) leads to numerous ever-changing possibilities for the player to react to (interplay). I took the peaceful option, so let’s continue the game from there.

Interactions in Shady Sands

From the onset Fallout establishes a high precedence for player vulnerability and the interactions and decision-making in Shady Sands are all pertinent to this element of survival. Depending on your decisions, NPCs will cough up tangible goods and money, act as safety net for levelling up and so on. How you get them is up to you. Here are some further examples of player choice and interplay:

Problem: Earning money and goods

Solutions: Trading you wares up with good deals until you earn more, pickpocketing the cash and goods

Example of Interplay: There’s a risk that you will get caught pinching money and the villagers will turn on you. Trading wares requires many interactions with people in order to nab the best deal.

—

Problem: Getting Ian to join you

Solutions: Choose the dialog option that pleases him or pay him a fee of 100 bottle caps

Example of Interplay: Having Ian on your side radically changes the combat portions of the game as he’s another character with their finger on the trigger. He makes the exploration of Vault 15, the radscorpion caves and latter exhibitions considerably easier.
—

Problem: Radscorpion invasion plaguing the town and making villagers sick

Solutions: Go to the radscorpion cave and defeat the scorpions or don’t

Example of Interplay: If the player defeats the scorpions then their tails can be gathered and given to the town doctor who will use the tails to make an antidote for the poison and give you a sample. Later you can use the antidote to heal people and gain experience. The town elder will respect you, the gate keepers will offer additional advice. Later they will call on the player to save Tandi from an opposing faction, leading into another story arc.

Comments on The Rest of Shady Sands, Vault 15, Radscorpion Cave and The Raiders’ Camp

The rest of Shady Sands

As I mentioned previously, I can’t bear reading “too much” text in video games. Playing Fallout, I was still stubborn about this point and it was to my own detriment. This first tutorial chunk has taught me that to survive the wasteland you need 3 things: goods, decent statistics and proper intel. You’re simply far too underpowered to be lacking in any of these. By knowing the lay of the land, you can avoid venturing off aimlessly and wasting precious time and resources. The advice the NPCs doll out then is just the kind of support you need. The dialogue also has a dual function of adding to the lore of the game as well as simultaneously dropping hints. NPCs are thoughtfully spread out too so that prioritised characters with something to say are marked by their unique appearance and convenient placement, while peasants are placed apart and interaction with them doesn’t launch into the dialogue/trade menu.

In Shady Sands, the gatekeepers are placed right at the front and communicate the most necessary information, hold the most useful items for trading/stealing as well as tell you who can give you more info.

Vault 15 and Radscorpion Cave

The radscorpion cave is a little obscure as you can’t reach the location on foot, but are instead teleported there by one of the gatekeepers who reckons he knows the way. The location of Vault 15, on the other hand, is marked on the map after you prompt your partner Ian for directions. Both areas are extensions of the rat cave tutorial at the start of the game with the ante raised some. I found that these areas helped me fall into the rhythm of combat since fighting and looting is all there really is to do in these parts. On reaching the bottom floor of the abandoned Vault 15, I was surprised that there wasn’t some kind of reward. I suppose this is part of the Fallout charm.

The (Kahn) Raiders’ Camp

After obtaining the antidote from the town doctor, you learn from the gatekeepers that one of the girls in the village Tandi has been kidnapped by the Raiders (who you learn earlier have been ransacking the village). The village leader obligates you to save her and you can do if you wish.

The Raiders are one of the wasteland’s many factions. Their base is in an decapitated house just south of Shady Sands. Guards are settled out in smaller tents around the make-shift base. Like Shady Sands, you need to holster your weapon before you’re allowed access. Once holstered, you can walk straight in and negotiate with the leader Garl on Tandi’s release. There are several ways to tackle the situation:

Barter 650 bottle caps worth of goods for her
Fight the leader in a one-on-one cage match
You can smooth talk your way to her (given you have the necessary stats)
Shoot through the guards and kill Garl
Follow Garl’s request and shoot one of the slave girls

There is clearly a great deal of flexibility in how the player can tackle the situation and each option supports key strengths that the player could have rolled into their character. In order of my listing above the options support bartering, combat, conversation skills, weapon skills or just utter failure (let’s just assume that killing innocent an abused ladies is the failure option).

Conclusion

At this stage I hope that you get a basic idea of the degree of freedom and the resulting interplay present in Fallout. It really is quite fascinating to explore the different outcomes of the player’s choices. Some of the stories I’ve heard of inspire me to be more experimental with my approach. It will take some time before I get to the next entry, so there’s still time to join in if you want. Otherwise, please enjoy the reading below.

Vintage Game Club – Fallout

Retronauts Podcast – Fallout

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