Fallout creator Tim Cain wants to make a sequel that drives home how much “power corrupts” as players misunderstand the series’ “grey morality”
Fallout creator Tim Cain wants to make a sequel that drives home how much “power corrupts” as players misunderstand the series’ “grey morality”
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> “I also like tough black and white decisions,” the developer explained. “People consider this to be grey… [but] there’s nothing gray about the decision, there’s an obvious right choice, there’s an obvious good choice, but the evil choice is way more rewarding.”
This guy directed *The Outer Worlds*, which is about as fun to play as being kicked in the balls. May he never touch Fallout again.
He also has a great Youtube channel where he discusses video game development and such.
I don’t really understand if he wants a watered down story with little to no nuance to create those obvious right and wrong answers or actually make a realistic story where you have no way of knowing all the details and every choice could have many unintended consequences like with the trolley problem (if you actually create scenarios to it where the problem is not all there is, rather one piece of a complex puzzle, something that online discussions actually are about). I prefer the latter, a good story should challenge the notion that an obviously good choice is always good, instead it should show how it may just yield very bad results, and vice versa. If you always know what you should do and nothing ever surprises you, nothing ever backfires, nobody ever stabs you in the back, etc., that gets boring fast.
So “gray” morality to Tim Cain is having an obvious good choice and a far more rewarding bad choice, and not every faction being arguably right or wrong within the context of the game world.
I agree with Tim Cain from a gameplay perspective because joining the Legion in New Vegas was NOT rewarding to the player and was still clearly the evil choice as much as they wanted to write around it by contrasting the failings of other major factions in the game. The Legion was the evil choice but offered no rewards, and the game punished the player for it.
Fallout 3 was structured around Tim Cains morality philosophy, but Bethesda has always been poor at tuning risk vs. reward. The obvious evil choice of blowing up Megaton is so close to the mark, but then you only get 500 extra bottlecaps and lose out on vendors and quest givers. Arguably still punishing the player rather than coaxing them to be evil with greater rewards.
If they could get the tuning right, it would make for far more interesting morality choices rather than a quick save and reload after the evil choice punishes the player.
I punch Deathclaws. Power corrupts.
From title alone it sounds like “Stop having fun and listen to my preaching”. Good luck selling this.
Cool, sounds like I get the good ending by never playing it
thats on Fallout 4 AND its horrendous look a like Borderlands humor brands back in the day.
but the game was fun tho. atleast the exploration. not Fallout 3 level but OK
Are we going to get the Joker 2 of the Fallout franchise??
I remember one of the dlc in fallout 3 having a very head scratching choice about what to do with a baby. Both choices weren’t clear cut about good and evil and both had good and terribly bad assumptions about what would happen afterwards. You mever get to know the outcome too.
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I want the OG Fallout method. Bethesda says this is how things continue after the bombs and the OG Fallouts were all about what comes from the ashes.
Outer Worlds 2 Developer. His experience on fallout 1 and 2 matter very little to today’s gaming spectrum. But outer worlds? It compares. He gets that morality question in there for sure. And then a game that’s boring and repetitive with only a few weapon types and a few enemy types. For the whole game. I genuinely don’t mind the ideas and stories he adds. Please have a video game not be sad and make me question how this is the same company that made New Vegas in less than a year.
This was sort of the point of Fable, and it even went so far as to try and push the player narratively in to making choices for expediency and personal profit.
It would be interesting to see a game that did this in a way that did show the grey in a more narratively subtle way.
I just want a good fallout game that has no micro transactions in it…
‘Member when the most popular meme on the internet was that fallout meme about how obviously the series was about capitalism and anyone who didn’t realize that was dumb and didn’t understand the creator’s intention?
And then Tim Cain came out and said “No it was about power corrupting and authoritarianism” and suddenly everyone was like “Well the intention of the creator never mattered in the first place”?
I ‘member. It was funny.
I dislike everything Bethesda has done with Fallout, and I consider F2 in my top 5 PC games of all time.
Problem is that power doesn’t actually “corrupt” anyone. It reveals who they truly are, who they’ve been the entire time beneath the masks required to live within the bounds of polite society
I just want a real Fallout sequel.
Not another Elder Scrolls: Post Apocalyptic.
Watching The Institute get nuked was quite the “Are we the baddies” moment.
Bethesda owns the rights…so fat chance this is happening…