Fallout 4: Lasting Memories
A branching quest story that leaves the player to fight their way to deciding what is the right conclusion for them
Quick Summary
Design Goals
Develop a branching quest storyline and character backstory through dialogue and multiple dialogue options.
Support two playstyles: Combat and Stealth.
Provide multiple, varied paths for approaching combat and critical path traversal.
Develop player rewards and incentives for completing combat.
Deliver a staged combat experience.
Development Facts
Engine: Creation Kit
Responsibilities: Design, blockout, gameplay design and implementation, aesthetic implementation, lighting, quest design, dialogue writer, and papyrus script writer.
Development Time: 85 hours
Game Mode: First/third person shooter
Video Playthrough Coming Soon. Bethesda update has caused dialogue to not function.
Implementation
Map Layouts and Design
+Interior Map Basement Floor 1 (click to expand)
- The quest is designed to support new players with limited to no weapons. Therefore, the enemies are slightly weaker here and drop varied weapons to build up the players inventory.
- Designed to be linear with one major combat area. This is to adhere to a skill progression where each of the 3 basement floors increase in difficulty.
- Enemies are staged with limited movement to make the player utilize environmental cover.
+Interior Map Basement Floor 3 (click to expand)
- This final basement level features the strongest enemies of varying types. This includes both melee enemies and ranged enemies with increased health.
- The two sections of combat are separated based on playstyle. While the same playstyle is supported on either one, each tests a variety of skills.
- proficiency in close quarters combat and proficiency in ranged combat.
- The diverging paths is reinforced from the Baseement Floor 2.
+Interior Map Basement Floor 2 (click to expand)
- Enemies are more challenging in this area and are concentrated on the first floor of this 2 story area.
- the reason for this was to guide the player into using elevation as a form of cover and emphasize a vertical advantage.
- Points 3 on the map and combat areas 4 can be engaged in any order. This was to allow the player to asses the combat and pick the most advantageous section to start with. This allowed for multiple playstyles and player options to getting to the critical path.
- depending on the path chosen, the loot varies between normal to powerful, which is a direct reflection of the combat difficulty level.
Custom Item and Dialogue
+Custom Stealth Boy (click to expand)
- The custom stealth boy was created to give the player a temporary feeling of perfect stealth and provide an alternate playstyle.
- Stealth in Fallout 4 functions on the agility skill, therefore by maximizing it, the player is provided the illusion they can sneak past all enemies, unless spotted visually.
- The custom stealth boy is removed upon completion og this quest to not impact the base game.
+Dialogue Branching and Quest Development (click to expand)
- Allowing lore and backstory for a quest to unfold through player dialogue choices is a hallmark of Fallout 4. To adhere to this base game functionality, this quest is no different.
- Depending on the choices the player makes during the conversations with the NPC's (blue), a different scene (red) is triggered and contains further dialogue and responses.
(For a full summary of the main quest, see "Quest Summary" below)
Quest Description
+Quest Summary (click to expand)
Main Quest
- Player explores post war Sanctuary Hills and stumbles upon a bridge leading to Red Rocket Station.
- There is one man near the bridge. On approach, the man requests the player’s help. At this point the quest is initiated.
- a. During the dialogue, the man describes that he requires three items, each belonging to his old friends.
- b. He continues by hinting to the player where to go to retrieve the items.
- c. The player can utilize the question response to extract more information regarding the backstory of the NPC and the quest.
- The player goes in search for the hatch that has the quest marker on it. This hatch leads to the hideout.
- The player enters the hatch and quickly notices there are enemy raiders around the entirety of the basement.
- a. The player has two options;
- i. (Optional) To kill all the raiders before proceeding with the quest.
- ii. (Optional) Sneak past the raiders and continue with the quest.
- a. The player has two options;
- After the player manages to get past the raiders, they must need to investigate each of the different rooms in the basement.
- a. Each room will contain one of the items requested by the NPC from the campsite.
- b. The items will be locked behind safes on each floor and will require bobby pins to access.
- i. Bobby pins will be scattered around the floors.
- During the player’s investigation, they will come across the final floor and find a second NPC.
- a. The player will initiate the second quest.
- The player will begin the dialogue with this NPC.
- a. During this dialogue, the player will be presented with facts that say that the first NPC is the real killer and that he (the current NPC conversing with the player) escaped and sought refuge with the raiders in this basement.
- b. At this point, the player will have the choice of which quest to complete.
- c. The player will have already collected the three items needed to complete the first quest. At this point, the player will just need to either deliver the items and receive the reward(s) from the first NPC, or kill the first NPC to complete the second NPC’s quest.
- Because this is a branching quest, should the player decide to complete the first quest, they will automatically lose the second quest and vice versa.
- The rewards for the completion of either of these quests will be different.
Post Mortem
+What Went Well
- Creating tight combat spaces for engaging, Fallout 4 based combat
- Designing spaces to suit combat early on which mitigated re-constructing cells when gameplay focus pivoted from stealth to combat as primary focus
- Visual clutter and negative space to emphasize critical path
+What Went Wrong
- Tying to emphasize stealth gameplay as the primary focus early on
- Potential of frequent backtracking
- Initial performance due to Fallout shadow casting lights
+What I Learned
- Focus on combat spaces from the start and emphasize the core of the game, keeping unique features as secondary focus
- Creating a mixture of tight and open spaces to relieve players of tension after combat and encourage exploration
- Earlier dialogue passes to allow for more frequent iteration