go big

[asapayne276]

This maybe technically unrealistic but, I think it would be cool if they did the whole continent. Or maybe just the U.S. with inaccessible areas marked as "highly irradiated". At the end of fallout I just wanted to keep travelling East until I ran out land. Here's hoping.

[Hyaon]

Would be quite amazing if we got to visit the whole world! You would probably get mugged by a chav gang in england though :\ Different landscapes being affected in numerous ways due to the radiation/clouds etc would be interesting to see.

[axeldeath]

Bad idea, anyone here played TES: Arena? That is a perfect example as to why you should avoid so much content.

All you end up with is copy-paste worlds that lack any atmosphere or uniqueness. Quests are either randomly generated or spread incredibly thinly across the world. Just don't do it. Going for a more intimate and unique, yet smaller world is always the better choice.

[Postapo]

A map node system, similar to that of the older games' could help to cover a much larger area, maybe the whole South-West. Anything beyond that is virtually impossible, but I'd like Inexile focusing on adding new locations and npcs later on in expansions.

[PiPboy]

Just to put light on reality.
Its the wasteland, most forms of practical transporation is out of the question.
Gas is not a resource to come by. An most weight bearing animals are dead or a very rare resource.

Traveling between far away cities would take months, its not if today you could jump on a plane \ train \ automobile [pun intended]

Hence it wouldn't be practical in a postapocolyptic enviroment,

[owenmp]

This thread reminds me of the movie Damnation Alley. Denton (George Peppard) said Damnation Alley was only 100 miles wide. Outside this satellite-planned route were zones of impassable radiation.

[Azriel]

It would be cool if they did introduce some mixed transportation technology, like steam powered trains connecting two hubs(a fun fast travel system), but the trains are run by criminals/slaves(who die from work exhuastion and replaced) and are policed by robot guards. You know, crazy retro future stuff that fallout missed out on.

[jurbanek]

It would be cool if they did introduce some mixed transportation technology, like steam powered trains connecting two hubs(a fun fast travel system), but the trains are run by criminals/slaves(who die from work exhuastion and replaced) and are policed by robot guards. You know, crazy retro future stuff that fallout missed out on.

I agree with this, as I said in other post there are many alternatives to fossil fuels. There can be many many alternatives, Biodiesel, Mutant Hamsters on a treadmill, Mr. Slave and his buddies peddling away.

This would give you the ability to travel across larger distances. Not every encounter should be withing walking distance.

[PancreaticDefect]

In my opinion the Great Lakes region would make a good setting. People would naturally migrate toward the freshwater resources of the region. There would be dozens of settlements around whats left of the lakes and it would also solve the transportation issue with lake ferries and riverboats carrying people and goods all over the region. Chicago and Detroit could be a dangerous irradiated ruins for higher level parties with the smaller communities on the many lakes and rivers in between progressively more difficult as you travel toward the remains of the big cities. I know Fallout Tactics took place in the Great Lakes region but that doesn't make it any less reasonable as a setting. Hell, they could just model a post apocalyptic Detroit on the current state of the city and people would believe it.

[jurbanek]

In my opinion the Great Lakes region would make a good setting. People would naturally migrate toward the freshwater resources of the region. There would be dozens of settlements around whats left of the lakes and it would also solve the transportation issue with lake ferries and riverboats carrying people and goods all over the region. Chicago and Detroit could be a dangerous irradiated ruins for higher level parties with the smaller communities on the many lakes and rivers in between progressively more difficult as you travel toward the remains of the big cities. I know Fallout Tactics took place in the Great Lakes region but that doesn't make it any less reasonable as a setting. Hell, they could just model a post apocalyptic Detroit on the current state of the city and people would believe it.

I don't see why not have the Great Lakes as well as the rest of the USA. You can have a macro scaled map and a smaller scaled map for towns, cities and planned and random encounters. You can use vehicles, mounts, Ships, canoes or even your bare feet to move along the Macro scaled map.

[gool]

Really, no. The opposite, in fact. A small, highly detailed region is much better than big for big's sake.

[Yossarian]

I have to agree that a smaller more detailed area would be the best option for this game. However it would be amazing to have the Great Lakes region be the locale. We have dozens of major cities up here, most of the world's freshwater, 2 countries with 3 distinct cultures (US, Canadian, French Canadian). Not to mention Niagra Falls, which generates massive amounts of electricity and would no doubt be an extremely valuable asset to any Post Apoc empire. Wishful thinking I know but a man can dream.

[Woolfe]

I was thinking that too. As much as I would love to just "keep on heading east", the game needs to have some boundaries, otherwise it becomes too hard to find things without obvious pointers, and encounters become a little more simplistic and similar, as inxile will probably not have the resources to create that much content.

Gotta remember North America is a very big place, especially from the point of view of being on foot.

Look around your own local area, and see how much stuff is within walking distance.

[jurbanek]

Really, no. The opposite, in fact. A small, highly detailed region is much better than big for big's sake.

I disagree. I believe that Wasteland can easily portray all of the Post Apocalyptic changes to North America, even the world on a grand scale. Remember this is a top down isometric view. You can easily zoom out to a world view Map and Travel then zoom in to a close scale tactical map for Cities, Towns, Special points of interest and for encounters. This is not a first Person game where you have to plot the location of every rock and tree. When you look at epic stories such as the Lord of the Rings, The fellowship just didn't walk around the Shire.

[Drool]

Hope there's nothing important going on. LA to DC is about 2600 miles. At an average walking speed of 2.8 miles per hour, and 12 hours of walking per day, it'll only take 77 days or so to make the walk.

Of course, that's just a straight jaunt down I90. For all of North America... well... covering 9,540,000 square miles is a bit of a task. Not only is it a huge amount of work just to populate that much territory in a game, but the task of adventuring across it is, well, a little absurd. Bethesda's Arena covers an entire continent and is frequently considered to have breadth but very little depth and it "only" covered 2.3 million square miles of randomly generated continent. Daggerfall, generally regarded as being freaking enormous, was only about 161,000 square miles.

To be blunt, having a game cover an entire continent is simply too big. Too big to code, too big to write for, and far, far too big to play in.

Edit: Skyrim looks to be about 16 square miles, for comparison.

[jurbanek]

Hope there's nothing important going on. LA to DC is about 2600 miles. At an average walking speed of 2.8 miles per hour, and 12 hours of walking per day, it'll only take 77 days or so to make the walk.

Of course, that's just a straight jaunt down I90. For all of North America... well... covering 9,540,000 square miles is a bit of a task. Not only is it a huge amount of work just to populate that much territory in a game, but the task of adventuring across it is, well, a little absurd. Bethesda's Arena covers an entire continent and is frequently considered to have breadth but very little depth and it "only" covered 2.3 million square miles of randomly generated continent. Daggerfall, generally regarded as being freaking enormous, was only about 161,000 square miles.

To be blunt, having a game cover an entire continent is simply too big. Too big to code, too big to write for, and far, far too big to play in.

Edit: Skyrim looks to be about 16 square miles, for comparison.

Skyrim is a first Person game. Wasteland never was and either will Wasteland 2. Zoom out to a world view Map and Travel then zoom in to a close scale tactical map for Cities, Towns, Special points of interest and for encounters. This is not a first Person game where you have to plot the location of every rock and tree.

Without the ability to zoom out and quick travel this game will become a snooze fest. Imagine reading the Lord of the Rings and Tolkien described every foot of their travels through Middle Earth.

[gool]

I disagree. I believe that Wasteland can easily portray all of the Post Apocalyptic changes to North America, even the world on a grand scale. Remember this is a top down isometric view. You can easily zoom out to a world view Map and Travel then zoom in to a close scale tactical map for Cities, Towns, Special points of interest and for encounters. This is not a first Person game where you have to plot the location of every rock and tree. When you look at epic stories such as the Lord of the Rings, The fellowship just didn't walk around the Shire.

The Fellowship didn't just walk around the Shire, yes. They also didn't walk around Rhun, or Enedwaith, or Lindon, or Mirkwood, or Erebor, or the vast majority of Gondor, etc.. And those places they did visit, they only saw a fraction of. How much of Rohan do you think is represented in the books? It's a pretty fucking big place. And the Shire wasn't an irradiated desert.

And LotR took 12 years to write! If you expect that level of content (that is, an incredibly linear game that permits you travel to only selected areas of the world, with the exception of a short few months of a split party) then you should expect a similar development time.

This isn't an issue of whether such an area can be visually represented in the game, it's whether it can be represented in a believeable fashion (it can't). The result would be Oblivion-style themeparkiness with each (supposedly major) city having 12 people living in it, and smaller settlements being scaled out of existence.

[Bob]

I think focus should be on a highly detailed region (wherever they choose for that to be). As they get more money and have time they should expand the map as much as possible while retaining detail.

What would also be nice if they made it such that additional expansions seamlessly add to the map so that you could continue to travel anywhere. Eventually with enough expansions perhaps you could have the entire US.

Yes, I am optimistically hoping that this is successful enough to drive continued development.

[jurbanek]

I think focus should be on a highly detailed region (wherever they choose for that to be). As they get more money and have time they should expand the map as much as possible while retaining detail.

How large and how detailed of an area are you thinking we should have?

[Bob]

I think focus should be on a highly detailed region (wherever they choose for that to be). As they get more money and have time they should expand the map as much as possible while retaining detail.

How large and how detailed of an area are you thinking we should have?

How can you spec those kinds of details when you don't yet know the plot or any of the mechanics yet?

But I think starting with a level of detail something like JA2 would be good. Once you have the level of detail worked out then they can make it as large as needed for the story and even larger if the budget allows.