Presenting Themes 2: The Comparison of the First Hour in 3D Fallout Games

In the previous article we compared the opening cutscenes of 3D Fallout games and discussed the ideas they convey. Building on this, we will discuss how the first one or two hours of the each game (roughly the amount of time passing before you are in the crust of the game) decides to introduces itself, what they show and don't show.
Fallout 3 begins with...life. As, in the player character's literal birth. Then you play through the bits of your childhood, your teenage years, then suddenly you find your dad is gone and almost everyone who lived with you for 20 years in the same place is trying to kill you now.

(I need to admit, there are not much video games where you see from a baby's POV)

There are a couple of problems with this opening. First, while it's mildly interesting to play as a child, it is slow and boring. Second, if they wanted to give the feeling of childhood and teenage years, this is too short to actually achieve this. Third, it is completely detached from and antithetical to the gameplay for the most part, in more ways than one.

• While you occasionally visit vaults and closed-places, majority of the game takes in open areas, the fights that take doesn't have the feeling the rest of the game has.
• The game's primary strength is wandering around a metallic wasteland, encountering wacky stuff and truly be immersed in a postapocalyptic world. And the game is actually really good at this but you can't experience this for the first hour.
• It is designed as a tutorial area to give you a taste of the character you created but there is not much opportunity to do this, Speech checks feel irrelevant. There are no Barter checks. There are no explosives you can use. Science and Lockpicking feels irrelevant because you can get what you want without them anyway.
• The player is encouraged to play the game multiple times by the way of different character builds and different endings but opening is very counter-initiative to this, it feels like a chore you have to do before start playing the actual game.

These alone would make the opening merely tedious to play. However, it is also bad from a writing perspective. After seeing bits of your childhood, you get to the present day and informed your dad is missing. After you exist your room, you see a security officer of in front of you. He is hostile and will attack you without end. The only options are killing him or running away. You can't attempt to converse with him at all. That's right, the guy who literally watched you growing up will kill you without a second word.

(He is hit)
There is a good opportunity that is missing here, a Speech check would be really good for example. Actually showing player that there are sometimes  alternatives to violence. This would also have the benefit of making the officer feel like a human being instead of turning into yet another faceless enemy you fight.
Why would developers do this? Because this is supposed to be a mystery story. Main story is supposed to be mysterious, so you would  be curious about what happened to your dad. This is why the prologue cutscene says so little and this why everything feels so sudden and out of no where.
Of course, a mystery plot doesn't actually fit to a game that encourages player to play more than once. Furthermore, this brings back us to the second problem. The opening is too short to establish a real bond with the father character and player. There is little reason for player to feel any tension at all.
While the opening fails to capture the feel of the good parts of Fallout 3, it absolutely achieves a good demo for the main story. They are both very linear and player doesn't have much agency save for some token choices. It's actually funny that following your dad in the opening is so similar to following the Liberty Prime, a giant robot, in the main quest and makes me almost think that it was intentional.
The opening didn't have to be like this. When you leave the Vault 101, the first town you will likely encounter is Megaton. By its aesthetics and quests it contains it is a much better introduction to Fallout 3, it feels like a beginner town too. By this way, developers themselves implicitly admit the opening isn't that great.
Now, let's look at opening of Fallout: New Vegas, made by Obsidian .After you are shot, you wake up in kind Doc. Mitchell's house, in the town of Goodsprings. The brilliant piece sets in, establishing the unique mood. You build your character by answering some questions, he gives you items relevant to skills you have chosen. And there you go, after you leave his house, you are now ready for your adventure.

(when you even eat the food in a fatherly way)

Well, it needs to be said that by the world structure, Fallout: New Vegas is more linear than Fallout 3. You are encouraged to follow certain routes for a while by the way of putting high-level enemies in certain areas. So it is not that fair to say F: NV Yet even then, in a micro scale, F: NV feels so much freer than F3.
The opening fixes every problem with Fallout 3's opening. Character creation is short and friendly to replays. Even the tutorial quest feels like an actual quest and it is optional. In less than one hour, you can initiate a quest that will change the fate of the town and you affect the game world with your skills. Certain things will not be available if you don't have the right skills, the combat in the quest just feels like a regular fight. and you will be quickly introduced to the Reputation system. and the town Goodsprings itself just fits "post-post apocalyptic wild west" theme quite well.
All and all this opening is really good. I can't stress enough how it seemlessly teaches you the game, because it really doesn't feel different from rest of the game: Impacting the game world by the skills you are good at.

(not mıch to say here, just an opprtunity post cute dogs)

So, did Bethesda learn anything from F: NV, in Fallout 4? Unfortunately no, not in the opening at least. It has every problem that F3 opening had, arguably worse.
You find yourself in your suburban home, along with your happy family. Then a person comes in and says you are accepted into Vault 111 and this way, you create your character. Then, the news announce full nuclear war occurring in US, you escape into the Vault, just mere seconds after nuclear bomb hits. You and your spouse is taken to cryogenic suspension chambers and put into stasis. After a while you awaken and see your spouse murdered your child kidnapped. After that, you awaken again, but this time due to system malfunction and escape the Vault.

As you can see, once again we start with something detached from the rest of the game. Bethesda got progressively worse about this in each of their Elder Scrolls and Fallout titles. In Morrowind, you just disembark from a ship, create your character, then get a task you don't need to hurry. In Oblivion, you escape from the prison along with the king, it's fairly long but at least it's a decent tutorial and doesn't feel too detached. Then we have Fallout 3, After that, we get the disaster that is Skyrim's opening, and then finally, this... It's almost amazing in a way to watch a studio get worse at something with such consistency.
Pre-war environment has the exact same problem with childhood sequences. It's mildly interesting but a chore to replay and fails at what it is trying to do. If developers wanted us to explore the pre-war US, 10 mins before the apocalypse is way too short. Just like F3, all we can get is a mere glimpse.
Before that however, we have to face with an obvious problem. The opening clearly favors the male character:

• The prologue narration is done by the male voice, the first thing you see in the game is his face.
• The male PC is a veteran soldier, which explains how he is capable of combat but female PC is a law student graduate, which fails to explain that. This wouldn't be a great problem if player chose skills like in older games but skills are removed win Fallout 4. Now you can easily master all weapons in a short amount of time.
• If you play as female PC, your husband will be the one the carry the baby into the Vault, the baby stays in his arms when he enters the cryostasis chamber and the baby is kidnapped from his arms. While this is a unreasaonable situation, it is a little weird that the mother doesn't ever take back the baby as mothers generally keep their babies close to them. Obviously, it would be difficult to devise a situation where baby is taken from your arms and husband still dies. This is a minor point but it still signals the game is designed for male MC first.
• Trailers and advertisement material show the male MC as well. This isn't be a problem on its own but it adds to the feeling that female MC is an afterthought

Why A game that is advertised as a role-playing game limits your options to roleplay in the first five minutes. While discussion of the roleplaying in F4 is out of the scope for this article, this still leaves a sour taste if you wanted to play as a woman.
After we play several minutes of 50s nostalgia, we run to the Vault and nuclear bomb falls. The problem here is that people can't look at a nuclear explosion without going blind, they can't get away without being injured or at the very least getting poisoned heavily by radiation. This is a minor nitpick but it does create problems with the story which I won't spoil here.

(Yeah, I don't think this is very accurate...)

When you wake up and escape from your cryostasis chamber, you find your spouse dead and your child kidnapped. Again, just like F3, there is a lack of tension from the player POV, why they should feel anything for a character they had dialogue for 3 minutes. This time it's even worse because the PC is voiced, which expresses deep pain from the death of their spouse. At this point, the opening clearly signals the PC isn't really the player's character, but that's true. In reality, the PC just occasionally gains independent thought from player, creating a weird limbo where PC is not a character on it is own nor it is a character that is shaped by player.
The part where you wonder in the abandoned vault is actually decent. The atmosphere is good. The player isn't being railroaded by fake tension anymore. Just you, a few radroaches, the cold and empty vault, a few computer entries. The environmental story telling is on point. This makes me think that, if the game started right after you get out of from the cryostatis chamber it would make a much better opening. It would actually set up the mystery Bethesda wanted without wasting the player's time.

(Let it go, let it gooo)

Unfortunately when you leave the vault, it doesn't get much better. It really takes a quite a while before you reach a town and can speak with an actual character and get quests. Instead, you engage in a lot of combat inside abandoned towns. At this point, it is actually accurate for the rest of the game. It is just not very appropriate for a Fallout game, or a game that is marketed as an RPG.
I like the opening of Fallout:New Vegas the best, in terms of player-friendliness and presentation, but all three openings say a lot of about their respective games.

• Fallout 3: The opening is a completely linear and railroaded series of quests detached from the openness of the rest of the game.
• Fallout New Vegas: The opening is an open-ended questline where your choices and the character you build impact the world and the way you play.
• Fallout 4: A confused presentation and plot that ultimately exists to serve the combat and exploration.

The opening of the game is often a microcosm of the whole experience. The idea that you need to play a long amount of time or even finish a game to be able to critique it well is false. I myself held such an opinion for a long time, but no, you shouldn't have to play a game for hours just to find something enjoyable, especially in the age where you can play small games that offer you much more in the same amount of time. Respecting players time should be a fundemantal objective for all game designers.
(Source for Fallout 4 screenshots, here )

(Source for Fallout 3 screenshots: here )

(Source for Doc Mitchell screenshot: here)

(Other one is my screenshot)

his article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Acelin, Alexandra Morgan, Laura Watson and Spencer Gill.