Fallout 4: A Strange Settlement
Game Summary
“A Strange Settlement” begins near the long abandoned Red Rocket gas station with a woman named Alexandra who is camping near the road. She will inform the player that her husband has been taken near Hope settlement. It will all culminate to making the player decide whether to kill the owner of the mansion, Latimer, and leave the town defenseless, or go back to Alexandra and inform her that her husband is already dead.
Engine: Creation Kit
Platform: PC
Development Time: 10 weeks (90 hours)
Team Size: Individual
Design Goals
Dynamic Encounters
Problem of making multiple floors work for melee players
Instead of making all the combat on a flat surface, I wanted my combat spaces to feel interesting for both ranged and melee players. I designed my encounters to where the combat spaces added verticality, but in a way that was not punishing to melee players. I tackled this in 4 particular ways:
If there are enemies on a story higher, there are two entrances to that floor so the player can keep moving and not be funneled at one spot.
If multiple entrances to the second floor are not feasible, give the player the height advantage at the start instead of the enemies.
Always have an easy point for melee players to jump down from the higher floor without hurting the player.
Most full and half cover are positioned where the player won’t be placed against a wall so that they can keep moving.
Different enemy types
I used 3 main enemy types to create variety in combat. I used turrets, ranged “raiders”, and melee “raiders”.
The turrets were put in locations that allowed the player to either survey the area before engaging, allow for a stealthy route, or a way to disable them.
Ranged enemy types made elevated combat more complex as players had to fight them on floors above and below them.
Melee enemies were used typically in conjunction with ranged enemies as a way to help encourage moving to different cover points and not staying in one spot.
Reusing Space
Using a two-phase approach to these combat scenarios in which the player will need to “fight up”, then once they have the height advantage the player will then have to “fight down”.
Foyer Combat
The foyer combat area inside of the mansion is a particularly interesting combat sequence. For starters, depending on which entrance the player comes into the mansion creates entirely different dynamics. However, for the first portion of combat, the player is having to fight enemies on both the ground and upper floor while being occasionally rushed by melee enemies.
Multiple entrances create unique combat situations.
Player fights upward to press on the enemies.
After fighting upward, enemies spawn in and the player fights downwards.
Various elevations with different enemy types.
Library Combat
This combat sequence starts very similar to the foyer combat encounter. The largest difference is that it is easier for the player to fall back into the hallway and take another doorway into the library.
Multiple entrances into combat space.
Good retreat point for the player to fall back if needed.
An intense fight in which the player fights up and then fights from an advantage point.
Narrative beat to break up combat pacing.
Meaningful Choice
Hope Settlement
To help give the final choice more weight at the end, I wanted the player to feel like the town was sprawling and full of life. Recognizing it wasn’t practical to make a full city, especially one where the player would not even use most of it, I tried to fake this feeling by blocking line of sight and placing key buildings to make it seem like there was more.
two choices
It all culminates to making the player decide whether to kill the owner of the mansion, Latimer, and leave the town defenseless, or go back to Alexandra empty handed, where she will try to kill Latimer herself.
Iteration
Initial concept
This was the initial design for Hope Settlement. Over the course of the project, this design changed drastically to better suit the needs of the level and the timeframe. At the beginning, I wanted an open city concept that allowed the player to wander around and get the full effect of a establish settlement in Fallout 4. This openness caused a lot of problems early into development that made it difficult to gate the player as to not allow them to complete later portions of the quest before it was time.
Adapting to the timeframe
The problems with the first design became very apparent with how long it took to do the initial blockout and from how easy it was for playtesters to “break“ the level. I adapted the city to be more of a guided experience that eluded to much more of an open city that was just out of reach for the player to go to. It was a just one example of taking what elements worked from the initial design and to modify what is there to give a better experience to the player.
The image on the right is the final redesign of the level.
The image on the left is the rough “block out” before the pivot.
Further iteration
Hub City
Wanting to expand more on my original project, I decided to revisit it and make Hope Settlement more of a hub city. So, I added two entirely new spaces and added two new quests for more medium level players. The first quest involves getting the quest giver’s sister back from the No Hope gang, in which the player can choose to bribe, persuade, or shoot their way through the gang.
The second quest is primarily a stealth oriented mission, geared for higher level players. The General Store Store owner accidentally turned his security robots hostile to everyone. As the robots are pretty expensive, the store owner said he would give a bonus for every robot you do not kill. With the only way to change them back to normal from the security terminal, the player needs to stealthy maneuver around the grocery store without being detected.
