Planescape Torment Versus Fallout Versus Morrowind

In PS:T the player character choice was most restrictive.
You could only play as the nameless one.
The reason for it was the great story .
The story restricted the choice of the player character.
The story in PS:T also restricted the non-linearity of the game.

But the story was great.

In Fallout you had a only competent story but that story did not restrict the non linearity of the game. It also only moderately restricted the character creation . You could play only as human.


In Morrowind well in my opinion the story did not restricted player creation or non-linearity at all . But as a result the story was extremely weak.


So my question is

Since it seems that the ability to write a perfect story interferes with the freedom of character creation and the nonlinearity of the game and assuming that you cannot have a perfect story and non linearity and an unhindered player creation

Imagine a slider that has PS:T in the left Fallout in the middle and Morrowind in the right


Where would you like that slider to point in the next game that you will buy?

Imagine PS:T in zero degrees Fallout at 90 degrees and Morrowind at 180 degrees

And please explain why you make that choice .

90 Degrees aka right smack in the middle of the whole damned mess. A great story might be an interesting playthrough once just to see how things develop & unfold but offers not much in the way of replayability. Games divided into proper chapters, levels or scenes tend to seem more linear in nature & in the long run more of an interactive movie than a role playing experience.

Now the above statement in relation to PS:T may be entirely off base. I couldn't say for sure as I have not had the experience. For all I know it may have decent interactivity but when it comes down to the line, if I have nothing to do with shaping who my character will be I will have difficulty inserting myself into the experience.

Running the middle ground with a competent story allows me to explore whom I wish to be in my adventure. I might choose to be an elf hating dwarf or perhaps a brick wall of a gunslinger. I expect that during such an experience I will not see all of the possible quests nor react to the NPC's in the *best* way. I may be a son-of-a-bitch & want to shoot the peasent/farmer & loot his home instead of taking his quest. I may not be smart enough to notice some clues or not perceptive enough to see something that would be obvious to another, fine, this laves me room to come back into this world as another sort of character & explore some of what I have missed.

Hopefully some of the quests will tie into the main storyline. I find a piece & wonder what the heck is going on. The pacing allows for a good deal of fed-ex oriented side quests but I should have some sort of a goal to head towards. I should feel an urge to get there & see what I can do about the situation that is driving me.

On entirely non linear adventures. Nah. There has to be something to drive the PC. If I wanted non linear I'd start knocking on my neighbors doors & ask them if they needed any work done...

Having the ability to interact with most NPC's might be interesting to some extent but if no one seems to have a clue as to what is going on or the progression is too open, I as a game player will end up feeling like a bit actor in a larger scheme. Doesn't fit well with the escapism I seek in RPG gaming.

I am sure that many here have better rounded & fleshed out explanations... now onto them & I shall cease my open ramblings.

You are the nameless one.
It is little more than not being able to choose your Sex in FO. Like I said, micr-nonlinearity. Linear storyline, non linear way to get there.

<sighs> Must be time for some reading on threads bearing PS:T as a subject, or better yet buying a machine that I can game on. This one doesn't fit that bill anymore. To be honest I'm somewhat hesitant to give PS:T a shot. Micro-nonlinearity describes a game which is highly linear in nature with small areas that are not. I highly doubt that this is what you were trying to describe as a selling point as that is exactly what I was fearing from this title & why it didn't hit high on my "must purchase" list.

The best way to describe Planescape would be as a series of bottlenecks between a series of open areas. When you first start the game, you are restricted to a single smallish portion of the city, but there is a lot to do there (99% of it optional) and a lot of different ways to do it, all viable, if not all equally preferable from a powergaming standpoint. Then you have a series of dungeons and quasi-dungeons to get through (though even these have their fair share of open-endedness: you can take time out in the middle of a crypt crawl to hang about in a city of the undead and solve numerous conversation-based tasks or you can take the other path and just hack your way through a bunch of wererats, for instance) before the game opens back up. At this point you have the run of the city and a couple optional planes to just kind of hang about and explore at your liesure until you choose to enter the very tightly plotted endgame.

As far as shaping "who your character would be" is concerned, Planescape arguably does this as well or better than everyone. You have a set gender, appearance, and history (which, of course, you aren't aware of), but at the moment the game starts you are, in terms of personality and abilities, a "blank slate".

So it's not exactly Fallout, but it's not exactly Icewind Dale (or even Baldur's Gate) either.

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I agree that in the end plot and non-linearity are conflicting interests. They can both be satisfied completely in a theoretical universe of limitless resources. If the plot says Black Knight is kidnapping the princess in Act II, non-linearity demands that you have the opportunity to save her (or perhaps sell her out or even kidnap her yourself first) rather than simply rush to a futile attempt at rescue because the Black Knight is coded invulnerable during this scene. To satisfy both, you would have to have a branching plot. To satisfy both completely you would to have a nearly infinite series of branches for all of the character's possible actions and successes at every plotpoint. In a PnP RPG your character could respond to the attempted kidnapping of the princess by doing the Macarena in the throne room, and a "completely" non-linear RPG would have to have a code for this. This is, of course, unfeasable; though Arcanum takes the best stab at it that I've seen.

The most common way to get around this is to have a static situation-based plot, ala Fallout. Evil Mutants are preparing to overrun the wasteland and this basic situation will remain through the entirety of the game. This allows you to deal with the basic situation as you desire, but leaves a sort of hollow sensation to the game's plot. There is no rising action, no climaxes or subclimaxes, no character arcs, just a guy who wandering around the wasteland solving subquests until he stumbles across the mutant threat. The fact that you can only play a human is a function of setting more than plot, and somewhat irrelevant to the game's nonlinearity.

On the other hand, once you've reached the "static situation", you don't have to sink your plot further. If Morrowind has a weaker story than Fallout (which I'm honestly not certain of, largely because I've never gotten around to really tackling the "plot" portion of Morrowind and have avoided spoilers), then it's entirely due to the writers involved, because they both have the same basic plot "model" of "static situation the player must discover and respond to at his leisure" as far as I can tell. If anything, Morrowind may have more plot, given the potential for dynamic plotting during the Blades quests (whether they use this potential or not, I am uncertain for the reasons previously stated).

Now then, all rambling aside, if I had to choose from the three options presented, I'd definitely fall more to the Planescape end of things than not. While I've replayed the Fallouts a numer of times, this is primarily do to their short length and the "cool" factor of the things you can do, rather than a genuine desire to "roleplay". Expanded to a broader, slower-paced game like Morrowind, and the shallowness of the experience (to my tastes) becomes rather appearant. While I can be whatever I want to be (within the rules of the setting), none of it really matters because all the characters are bland textboxes and there is no sense of urgency to my actions.

On the other hand, while it is perfectly possible to play evil in Planescape, I've never actually been able to bring myself to. While I might take a certain sadistic glee in selling my companions into slavery in the Den, doing the same thing to Morte or Dak'kon in the Clerk's Ward just always seems unthinkable, even if it would mean getting Power Word: Kill from the Grimoire. To me, it's that level of "immersion" that defines roleplaying.

Yeah, as far as character advancement goes, Planescape is about the same as Fallout. You've got to be the Nameless One and you gradually learn about what your previous incarnations did, but for this incarnation you can be what you want. It's not so different from Fallout making you be a Vault Dweller. You can tailor starting stats as you wish and then also raise them like you want. You start out as a fighter but can learn to be a mage or thief almost immediately. Your actions shape your alignment; you start off as true neutral but your actions can eventually change that to any of 9 D&D alignments, and your alignment will have an impact on the game. You can pick your companions to suit your taste. There are numerous factions you can join, each with their own philosophy and benefits. Really the main complaint people raise about Torment is the sheer volume of text to read, but to me at least that's more of a selling point.

I don't really agree with the premise. Torment's most memorable feature is the story, but I've seen games far more linear and with less player choice. If you're talking about quality, I think Torment had the best story of any RPG I've played. But if you want to have an extreme case on one end, I think it would be more that you're stuck with the exact same character who advances the exact same way each level with no input from you, who follows a straight-arrow story with absolutely no room for deviation and no room to do anything (or not do anything) not programmed into the plot, and who has their own personality that overrides anything whatsoever you might do in-game, i.e. your typical console RPG. Icewind Dale would be pretty close to that, but you do at least have control over character creation and a handful of real choices to make.

As far as the first question, I'd lean more towards the story end. I really don't mind having a few restrictions in return for a good story, to tell the truth when you give me unlimited options to create a character, my characters tend to wind up usually being pretty much the same every time I play the game. Blame the powergamer in me, but I like having the supremely efficient character for the game. Guess what, 90% of the times I've played Fallout my character was a diplomat/sniper. I wouldn't think of playing a dumb character because not only would my conversations be limited but I'd be screwed on skill points. I'd rather wear good armor and end fights early, so you won't see me with a high endurance character, either. If that means I miss out on a handful of unique dialogue choices, well, I guess that's just the price I'll have to pay. I don't usually play through games with every possible type of character because I've probably got other games to play at that point rather than spend the same time going through 95% of the same stuff just to see the 5% I missed.

Excellent comments so far, I hope I have something useful to add =)

Sustenus Paul and Walks with the Snails gave a great review of Planescape:Torment, and if you have never played it, and you enjoyed the Fallout games, I really see no reason why you would not like Torment. The only problems it has come from the infinity engine it uses. I.E. The battles are not all that fun, though at least you are not fighting yet another goblin, and your weapons/items are also not just swords (I love the flys you can eat to cast incest swarms).

Some of these ideas have been discussed in this thread, so go read it if you have not already and you care about this subject.

As I tried to point out in that thread, I think the best games are ones that have a great story, yet do not restrict the player too much. Sustenus Paul made the very valid point that the perfect execution of this is not feasible, and the best we can have are approximations. I basically see the goal as making a game that feels almost like a PnP game with a perfect DM and/or players. It will never live up to that, but it can be a whole lot better than it currently is. Also games are currently a whole lot better than some PnP games with a bad DM.

In my mind the basic problem is that you want a game that makes you feel like you, the player, are important. Everything about the game should be geared to that end. If the story is so inflexible that you can not go out of the designers narrow vision of the plot, then you feel like you are jumping through hoops to watch a rather sub standard movie. On the other hand if the story is so shallow, or so disconnected from you, that you just wander around aimlessly then you do not feel like you have any kind of impact on the world, or story, so there is no point to playing.

The reason why fallout worked so well is because it was able to make you feel important. It did this with a bunch of elements that came together very well. The story was a big part of it, but so was the ability for you to solve problems in multiple ways. Arcanum also did this well, though in my mind the story was not as interesting overall. This has more to do with me likening sci-fi settings a lot more really than any shortcoming of the game. The Planescape story was also so vastly different than the bland fantasy setting that it also got me very involved in the game.

So when I say that I agree that story is key, I mean a flexible story. So really what I want to say is that the interaction offered to the player is the key, and the story is a large part of that.

Finally, Walks with the Snails brings up another key point that I think people from Trokia have also alluded to. A choice is not a choice if no one would want to take that choice. Sure its great that you can play as the moron who can' talk, can't fight, and can beat the game using pity, but how many people would even play that? It might not be realistic, but if you choose to have a terrible intelligence (or some other stat) you really need to have other skills that at least equal the loss of ability. This is something that is very hard to pull off well. In almost all cases the power gamer will find the best way to play the game, and that is all they will ever do. Depending on the game the general public might also play the game close to the way the power gamer did just because one path is clearly superior to another.

I guess you just need to play test things to death, and somehow convince the players that they really can have fun playing in various paths. The hard thing is that so many games claim to provide this, but fail utterly, that most experienced gamers have given up on trying new paths.

I do not envy the game designer trying to balance all of these factors, but when it is pulled off the game will be amazing and well worth the extra effort.

Chadeo said:

I love the flys you can eat to cast incest swarms.

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Don't you mean "insect"? Freud was right, apparently :twisted:

Don't you mean "insect"?

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When people say PS:T is different.....they mean different :wink:

I enjoyed Planescape, and it did have a good story, but if you hold up the story as the best thing about it, you should also point out the flaws. Like how it was choc-ful-o' cliches, it had quite a few plot holes, and you could see the ending coming from the first act. Also if I remember correctly as you approached the end the interesting side-quests seemed to be almost totally replaced by the horrid combat.

Better story then any other D&D rpg out there? Undoubtably. Best CRPG story? Debatable.

HanoverF said:

I enjoyed Planescape, and it did have a good story, but if you hold up the story as the best thing about it, you should also point out the flaws. Like how it was choc-ful-o' cliches, it had quite a few plot holes, and you could see the ending coming from the first act. Also if I remember correctly as you approached the end the interesting side-quests seemed to be almost totally replaced by the horrid combat.

Better story then any other D&D rpg out there? Undoubtably. Best CRPG story? Debatable.

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Dude, if you knew you were going to venture into a citadel full of shadows to battle your own mortality made sentient and then get sent on a one way trip to hell as a reward right from the first act, you should contact Miss Cleo about employment, immediately. And name one cliche other than starting the game with amnesia. There are a couple of plotholes, I'll grant you, because the team obviously wasn't quite finished putting everything they wanted to in the game by the time they had to ship it, but I definitely challenge you to present a computer game with a more complex, original, and actually moving story anywhere.

Sustenus Paul said:

Dude, if you knew you were going to venture into a citadel full of shadows to battle your own mortality made sentient and then get sent on a one way trip to hell as a reward right from the first act, you should contact Miss Cleo about employment, immediately.

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Theres a Dwarf in the Burning Man Bar (or whatever the name is) that outlines the progression of the game for you and basically tells you the ending of the game. You'd have to have blinders on to miss it.

HanoverF said:

Theres a Dwarf in the Burning Man Bar (or whatever the name is) that outlines the progression of the game for you and basically tells you the ending of the game. You'd have to have blinders on to miss it.

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I suspect you are talking about the translucent dude next to the dwarf who talks about the organization of the planes gives you the negative token and mentions the shadows in the negative plane? Yes? So you knew you'd probably be dealing with shadows at one point in time in the future. And, maybe it'd occur to you that the places he was describing in greater detail would be places you were likely to visit eventually. But he hardly "lays out the progression of the game" or "tells you the ending". Oh, and the dwarf mentions the Blood War, but that gets mentioned alot for the obvious reason that it's pretty important to the setting, and only tangentally important to the ending (the fact that you're going to Hell is the key part, not what you'll be doing there). When does anyone previous to Ravel in the endgame give you even the barest of hints who the final boss is?

I'd have to say about 90 degrees. One of the biggest hooks that a role-playing game provides for me is character development and exposition. To use a literary analogy, I liken my overall philosophy of what makes an ejoyable RPG to be pretty close to Stephen King's The Long Walk.

The Long Walk in a nutshell is a bunch of guys walking down a road. One by one they are eliminated from the competition, and from the very start you know exactly what the story will entail, and to some extent, how it will end. However, it is not the general plot line that makes for an enjoyable read, it is the fact that the whole story is essentially a stage for character development.

We see characters fleshed out in a number of different ways, the first and most obvious is the "getting to know you," the initial impressions and how somebody initially presents themselves to you. In RPG terms, this is quite common. It seems the general line of conversation between people who have just met in an RPG world tends to be a series of questions, starting with the basics, with potential to dig a little deeper. Nearly every character, no matter how minor their role may be will have some form of back story they will reveal upon meeting you.

The next method we see are prior events, unrelated to the walk itself, but they serve as a window into a character's history and told through stories from one character to another. This provides a very controlled release of information, governed by familiarity and trust between the storyteller and those listening. In CRPG terms, this is easily done (if Bioware can do it, anybody can do it) as a simple means of progression. A character who has adventured with you long enough to trust and respect you is likely to reveal things about their history.

Finally, there's the here and now. As the characters continue down the road, with numbers dwindling, they develop. The come to realisations, see friends and acquaintances bow out but most importantly, come to know who they are, and reflect on what that means. This is the meat of CRPG character development. Growing, advancing and changing.

However, unless there is a means for the character to project who and what they are, and for their advancement to be reflected in more ways than simply being better at doing something, it all falls flat. Unless the player has a means of conveying the character they are role-playing, then there isn't a great deal of point. It would be like P&P role-playing without any communication between fellow players.

To continue the analogy, we have the shapeless, faceless Crowd, the multiheaded beast that exists as both God and mammon. Crowd will be pleased if you please it, and being fickle in it's nature will just as easily despise. CRPGs have their own crowd, the general populace, who don't see any intimate details, they merely react to hearsay and general reputation.

The final point of the analogy is the sole thing lacking. The Long Walk follows a predefined path along major roads, however a good CRPG should allow the player to take forks and turnpikes even if those choices result in nothing more than a differing journey to the same destination.

To sum up, I believe the guts of the story should not follow the traditional path of narrative. The main plotline should be the skeleton, and the flesh comes through character development and interaction, something which the player is largely in control of. The player then feels as though they are governing what happens, and that they are effectively writing the story as they go along.

Getting back to the whole Planescape thing.

Planescape has the best story in any game I've played so far. As Sustenus Paul said, it's complex, deep and moving. I don't cry, but PS:T made me want to.

However, PS:T had it's faults. The interface took a while to get used to, combat was a bitch, and I found the small range of useful items disturbing. Basically, it was a break from the norm of RPG's for me, in that the slots for items you used weren't typical. Eventually, of course, I got used to it, but I initially found it disquieting.

Morrowind, however, had heaps of items. Very predictable story though. You had zero effect on it whatsoever, and playing through multiple times is only worth it to see the different stuff you can do, because very few people have the patience to level every skill to 100 (and besides, you can't join all factions). It's a very good game, but the simple combat system and standard story let it down. Don't even get me started on Tribunal. This didn't, however, stop me from sinking a few months of my life into the game, because it is fun to play.

Fallout, however, has the best combat system of the three (and overall, one of the better ones I've encountered, if not the best). Additionally, it has a pretty good (if short) story, and is fairly unique, in that the main plotline is only a few steps, compared to pretty much every other RPG, which has more steps than you've got fingers and toes. Overall, Fallout is definitely my favourite of the three, although PS:T comes a very close second. If PS:T had a few more options, didn't use the Infinity Engine (with all it's inherent faults), then it's probably take first. Morrowind comes a distant third.

Now, I'm going to go off on another tangent, and what I feel makes certain RPG's stand out from others. If you have an effect on the game world, like if you feel that your actions are important, and have repercussions, my rating of the game goes shooting up. Fallout, Fallout 2 and Arcanum did this very well, through the use of the slides at the end of the game. Replaying to see the different slides made it worthwhile to play the game through again, because the multitude of options and their interconnecting paths made the game so much better.

Morrowind didn't do shit in this department. All you got was a different stronghold in each Great House, but other than that, you couldn't so much as push a rock over (well, with the exception of the Goldbrand quest I guess). PS:T didn't do much either, which also hurt the replayability. I also felt that PS:T was also more designed for a mage character, because of their mass killing abilities, which fighters and thieves couldn't match. You could also make a mage who could easily hold his own in the close combat department, which I thought was somewhat unfeasible, although given the Nameless One's history, it was possible I guess.

However, overall I find that a game with many options regarding followers, skills that don't improve only when you use them (Wizardry 8 may be an exception, I haven't tried it yet) and most importantly, one in which you can see and feel your effect on the world are the best RPG's. Morrowind is too simplistic in this department, and PS:T really doesn't have much either. Fallout and Arcanum, however, do it very well.

To be honest, PS:T's combat system was unique in the fact that in some ways it was closer to the Final Fantasy series.
Take some of the higher end spells, for instance. You see a nice little cut of the spell taking place.
While if this was a step in the right direction or not is debatable, I at least give them credit for that.
Anyway, the fact that one story is longer does not make it better. Is Gosford Park better than 2001 because Gosford has more diolouge and characters? Of course not. PS: T's style was very in depth, and probably is (when played fully) as long as War and Peace. On the other hand, FO's was minimalist but at the same time had more depth. If anything I applaud the old BIS's work at delivering such a fantastic story on such a small canvas.

Frankly, I thought Morrowind was trash from a character development perspective. The Major/Minor skills only mattered as far as stat point development and all skills could easily be trained to max with enough cash (which was easy as hell to get so long as you used Creeper - or even if you didnt). Ugh what a cheesefest. The thing is, even ignoring these issues, the character development meant nothing cuz around level 20 the game became such a freakin cakewalk. A blind man on drugs could beat that game. Dont even get me started on the enchanting system..ugh...terrible...so terrible...

Ya ya, I know, that has little to do with the question at hand. Hmm...I would have to say Fallout. Some freedom is good, but too much leads to issues. I mean, its like a machine, the more parts it has, the more things can go wrong. Ultimately, I like a decent story with a fair amount of choice in how I handle all key (and a decent amount of non-key) situations. This is why Fallout (1&2) and Deus Ex rank amongst my favorite games.

Sustenus Paul said:

I suspect you are talking about the translucent dude next to the dwarf who talks about the organization of the planes gives you the negative token and mentions the shadows in the negative plane? Yes? So you knew you'd probably be dealing with shadows at one point in time in the future. And, maybe it'd occur to you that the places he was describing in greater detail would be places you were likely to visit eventually. But he hardly "lays out the progression of the game" or "tells you the ending". Oh, and the dwarf mentions the Blood War, but that gets mentioned alot for the obvious reason that it's pretty important to the setting, and only tangentally important to the ending (the fact that you're going to Hell is the key part, not what you'll be doing there). When does anyone previous to Ravel in the endgame give you even the barest of hints who the final boss is?

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Well, you might not guess fully what's going on, but HanoverF is entirely correct that the ending is heavily foreshadowed. You'd have to be foolish to know that the Blood War wasn't going to play a role in the Nameless's past and most likely his future as well because of all the emphasis on it.

Also, the question of mortality and getting it back. That was kind of obvious as well, much like him discovering his identity. After all, that immortality is more of a curse than it is a good thing. Being immortal but not remembering your past isn't a good thing. It's the Nameless's cross to bear. You may not suspect that his mortality has become personified, but you know at some point he's going to be freed from his bonds of punishment.

Discovering his identity is the first step in getting dealing with his punishment. That's treating the symptoms of the curse. After that, you have to deal with the curse itself so it never happens again.

Honestly, though, is him going to Hell to fight the Blood War that shocking? The game tries to be like Fallout in a large number of ways. It's really not that surprising that they'd go with a less than perfect ending.

Fiver said:

Frankly, I thought Morrowind was trash from a character development perspective. The Major/Minor skills only mattered as far as stat point development and all skills could easily be trained to max with enough cash (which was easy as hell to get so long as you used Creeper - or even if you didnt). Ugh what a cheesefest. The thing is, even ignoring these issues, the character development meant nothing cuz around level 20 the game became such a freakin cakewalk. A blind man on drugs could beat that game. Dont even get me started on the enchanting system..ugh...terrible...so terrible...

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The things that annoyed me the most about Morrowind wasn't the character system, it was more the dialogue system. A dialogue browser really isn't the most proactive system you can have for speech and it's not as easy to deal with as your typical speech tree system, either.

Often times, especially late in the game, you'd be confronted with NPCs that knew a lot about a lot of things and the result would be that you had to scroll through 20+ subjects to talk about. Most of those subjects were things you'd heard before, but you still had to scroll through the list just to make sure you didn't miss anything. That's the part of Morrowind that really annoyed me.

The combat system wasn't that great either. Of course, this system stems greatly from the fact it it's a first person CRPG, but repeatedly clickclickclicking while facing an enemy is rather boring. The only way to add options to this combat also means you'll be less effective in combat, so what's the point of even having them?

There are other things about Morrowind I could fault, like the journal system and the lack of consequences for evil things if you had money, but if the above two were fixed.. I'd have liked it a hell of a lot more.

What's this about going to Hell at the end of Torment? I don't remember that. I just killed myself with the knife of the immortal and was done with it. Was it another possible ending?

I like all three type of games. Morrowind have so many mods out there like afew that allow your attridutes and skill to go over 100 to the max in the games over time.

In Morrowind well in my opinion the story did not restricted player creation or non-linearity at all . But as a result the story was extremely weak.

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That's true, but this lack of restriction was used extremely poorly. I felt a much stronger connection to my character in PS:T and Fallout because over the long term I could shape my character. Morrowind gives the illusion of a wide variety of character possibilities at the start, then spends the rest of the game shattering that illusion.

I like all three type of games. Morrowind have so many mods out there like afew that allow your attridutes and skill to go over 100 to the max in the games over time.

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I like Morrowind as a game, and I agree (well I would ) that mods to promote long term stat diversity improve it as a game [and the lasting diversity is the main point here - whether or not stats go over 100 is a detail]. However, I don't think they do that much to make it a better RPG - I think stat diversity is important in an RPG, but it's more important to feel that my character's actions matter.

The most involving points of Fallout / PS:T / Deus Ex... aren't in deciding whether to get better as a mage/fighter/shooter/hacker, but when important decisions need to be made. Morrowind lacks these decisions, so there is little opportunity to define my character through his impact on the game world. The wiki interface is probably not helpful here either, but I think that's secondary to the substance (or lack of it).

I like Morrowind as a game (once it is modded), but though I've played it significantly longer than Fallout/PS:T, my experiences with Fallout/PS:T had much more impact.


I don't think it is too helpful to use Morrowind as one end of the scale: there is no reason that a game couldn't be made with the story and non-linerarity of Fallout, without restricting character creation.

In any case, how is the "only play as human" really more restrictive? In (unmodded) Morrowind you can't start as: a vampire or any other undead, a werewolf, a Dwemer, a Chimer, a Falmer, an Ayleid, a mudcrab, a cliffracer...
Given that Fallout is set in the real world, it isn't really more restrictive. Granted, you don't get to choose to be black / asian etc., but that could easily be included without the story suffering.

I'd say the important restriction in Fallout is the backstory restriction - you have to come from the vault. However, I don't think this needs to be the case for a Fallout type game.


I thought PS:T did a great job of allowing character diversity, given the relatively linear overall story and fixed character. I'd certainly be less likely to replay it than I would Fallout though, since the majority of game time would be spent reading the same stuff (mostly), rather than in influencing the world.

One criticism of PS:T I do have is the companion death cop-out. I was upset when my companions died at the end (and more than a little annoyed they didn't put up more of a fight - I had prepared everyone like a paranoid obsessive for that fortress). Having them all be resurrected just seemed a little cheesy.

To answer the original question, I'd probably agree with most people, and go for something closer to Fallout than PS:T. If player actions can be made to influence the game world in more different and important ways, then the player can see the story in the world, rather than reading a pre-written version. I'm all for a bit of PS:T writing where appropriate, but I think taking Fallout further should be the focus.

Death to the Necromancers!!

I really should check the post dates on such threads. Oh well

Well, Barenziah was the necromancer here..

Damn had me scared there for a moment. Thought Beddoes had returned.