Power Loss
Basic Info –
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Engine - Fallout 4 Creation Kit
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Development Time - 8 weeks (80 man hours)
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Genre - FPSRPG Mod content consisting of a new mission for players
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Design Goals - Create a mission in the Fallout game that will fit neatly into the experience as Fallout 4 content and utilizes Fallout's core experiences
Quest Overview -
Power Loss is a quest in Fallout 4 where players are tasked with exploring an old decrepit bunker to gather a Power Coil for a mechanic named Desmond. Desmond usually scavenges them himself, but raiders moved in to the only place he knows where to find them, and he needs help getting another coil. His shop runs on those power coils, and his last one is about to burn out.
After accepting the quest, players head to the Edmonton Army Base to retrieve a power coil. Once there, players enter the base, and must cross a bridge to progress further. However, this bridge quickly breaks and drops the player into a small nest of mole rats. The player must now get out of the cave system and back into the bunker before they can get the power coil.
Once the coil has been retrieved, the player can return to Desmond for their reward.
Side Objectives and Optional Content –
Players can kill all the raiders in the bunker, effectively clearing it out for Desmond or future scavengers, for a greater reward from Desmond at the end of the quest.
Players may also find a suit of X-01 power armor locked behind a security door and a master lock. This is an optional reward for players with high level hacking.
Players are also able to acquire a fusion core and a Gatling Laser by swimming through the submerged cavern.
Terminals are placed around the bunker detailing the story of this base before the Great War. Players can read these terminals to learn of what happened here 200 years ago, and what this bunker was for.
Editor View of the Gameplay Space –
This is a top down view of the gameplay space. The blue door at the top is where players enter from, and the breaking bridge is next to it. Players fall down, and then proceed through the cave system.
Inside the cave system players can go three directions, one leads to a dead end, another leads back to the bunker, and the last option leads players to a cave with some mirelurks in it.
The optional cave contains some valuable loot (a mini nuke) since a few mirelurks could be trouble for lower leveled players, and this quest is intended for players around level 10. My goal in with the mirelurk cave was twofold. I wanted to give the player a difficult side objective, and provide a story that is told while going through different parts of the mod.
Inside the cave, the player can find a few raider corpses near the mini nuke. I'm combining these corpses with a few other details to explain that the mirelurks and raiders have fought before.
When leaving the cave system the player runs across a few bear traps and tin can alarms. This is being used to clue the player into the fact that the raiders and mirelurks have attacked each other before. The raiders set these traps for the mirelurks, not for anyone else.
A little further beyond, the player can see a dead mirelurk near a cooking fire, and a bunch of mirelurk meat on the fire. This is further reinforcement to show that the raiders and mirelurks have fought each other before.
A close up of the cave system –
This is a closer image of the mirelurk cave. From here you can get a better view of it's construction.
The radioactive barrels were placed here to signify a dumping ground the raiders dug out. This space was not present before the war, so I needed to make it look like the raiders had created it to dump the radioactive waste.
Which then gave me an idea, what might have been attracted to the waste? Well, glowing fungus tends to grow around waste, and if left unchecked it would probably cover all the walls. And something probably eats that fungus, right?
So I added some molerats into the area. And if something is alive, it's pretty likely it gets eaten by something else. So I wanted to add in mirelurks, they served that purpose, and could also function as a more challenging fight for the player while also providing a food source for the raiders in the bunker.
This was the kind of process that I find to be effective for me when creating smaller stories to tell through the environment. I allowed the story to 'tell itself'. By leaving open 'space' in the environment design it was a lot easier for me to build out these small stories in the bunker.
This small area was not planned, but it was pretty successful. If we divide players of Fallout 4 into two very broad archetypes, shooters and readers, both player types managed to enjoy this section. The shooters enjoyed a small 'boss fight', and the readers gained the opportunity to read into the situation and learn about this area. Based on playtesting I've done with this mod, I believe this to be an accurate statement.
The Remains of the soldiers –
This is another example of the environmental storytelling I focused on in this mod. I'm using items to build the narrative around this soldier's death, and to build up a possible view of a story.
The intended story for player's to see is that this solider died here, and likely tried to spend his last hours drunk, instead of sober. I did not want to give much more guidance than that though.
I want players to be extrapolating from small story snippets and to put pieces together in their head in this mod. I'm not trying to tell an epic narrative. I'm trying to leave little puzzle pieces for players to put together so they can understand the past.
I didn't plan this type of storytelling in documentation, and no focus was placed on it until later in the project. That process worked well for me, as it left me more freedom to experiment with these small stories. On top of that, it left me more space to let the story write itself and to build the story as necessary. As I mentioned earlier: the process that works well for me is to let the story build itself over time by asking questions like 'Who was here? What did they do? Why would things have ended in this way?'.
The Entryway –
This is a closer image of the bridge in editor. This bridge is intended to be a surprising and interesting moment for players. The bridge is programmed to quickly fall apart when the player walks on it.
I think that there are a few main thoughts players will have about this bridge.
A. The player has encountered these bridges before and knows how they work. In the base game, these bridges break behind the player if the player simply keeps moving. This is not how this bridge works. These players will be surprised when they cannot easily cross the bridge.
These players will be surprised when the bridge quickly breaks underneath them which is the intended goal with this gameplay moment.
B. The player has not encountered these bridges before and doesn't think much of it. This play will be surprised and flustered when the bridge breaks which is the intended gameplay moment.
C. The player understands the system to be a game and expects the bridge to break underneath them and drop them down. This is something I don't think can be avoided in design, as some players just think this way.
But, making the jump across the pit is only barely possible. If you don't have a solid understanding of the timing required, it's very difficult to make the jump.
In my testing these kinds of players (the C players in my reasoning) attempted to make the jump and either got very close and didn't make it, or barely made the jump. These players enjoyed this moment. It provided a measure by which they could test their skill, and even if they were disappointed they're left with a feeling of "Ah, I almost had it." and the outcome isn't particularly punishing. Falling down gives players a new area to explore.
The goal with this bridge was to create a surprising moment for players, and it seemed that most players were surprised by it, though not always in the same way. So while in this case (case C) it did not achieve the intended goal, players still enjoyed the moment.
This was a moment I wanted players to remember.
Polishing the Project -
Everything I've described previously about the project was not the end of it however. I worked on this project a second time because I wanted to improve issues I had found with it in my first pass of the project. The main issues I identified and wanted to fix were:
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The spaces just didn't feel realistic. The base was too small to justify the work that would have been carried out here before the great war
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The quest was bland to the point of being forgettable
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The space did not succeed on providing layered story telling as much as I wanted it to
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The gameplay through the space had too many hills and valleys in tension and difficulty
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The level didn't really succeed on incentivizing and rewarding exploration from the player
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The mod just didn't really feel like Fallout yet
These issues were my main focus when working on the mod a second time. Immediately above this text is a gallery of images from the second pass I did on the level. The mod was built from the ground up but still focused on the same core gameplay ideas and aesthetics.
Unfortunately, .esp and .ba2 files are not supported on wix so I've provided a link to a google drive where you can download the necessary files to play the mod.
Exploration -
I wanted to really incentivize players to learn and explore the bunker they were sent to with the second iteration of the mod. I created a lot of blocked pathways to prevent players from easily accessing different areas or items. The above screenshot is an example of this. The blocked doorway in the kitchen leads to a generator room containing a fusion core and a gatling laser. However, the only way the player can access this location is to swim through the flooded caves below the bunker. These valuable items are placed to give the player a reason to explore the space, which the first iteration lacked.
These items are not in an extremely clear position intentionally and aren't even on a required path, but they can reward observant and explorative players with some valuable treasure.
Tension Throughout the Level -
In order to improve tension throughout the level I began placing weak enemy ambushes throughout the level. The two pictures above are of what players can see before the ambush from a Glowing Radroach and two molerats. These encounters are not particularly dangerous and they aren't intended to be. The purpose they fulfill is to surprise and cause them to stay on their toes while moving around in the level. I also purposely placed the ambushes so that an observant player could see a hint of them before they occur and react accordingly.
Improving Theming and Layered Storytelling -
The above images are some examples of new areas of changes to old areas I made to improve theming and layered storytelling in the mod. Most of the images are spaces that were added in to lean into the idea that this bunker was a testing facility for power armor that the American Military used before the bombs fell. A shooting range, power generators, and engineering facilities are all necessary to make this area seem like it was used for that purpose and had not existed previously, or simply weren't built well enough to convince players of it.
I also added some simpler changes. Like in the first iteration of this mod I left a few small stories of dead soldiers around. The skeleton in the pictures above is of an engineer that was trapped in maintenance tunnels as the bombs fell. I also added in some more subtle assets to give life t the space and the characters that would have lived here. Since this is a power armor testing facility, I gave the engineers tiny little power armor suits that look like action figures. While this is a military facility small changes such as this breathed a lot of life into the space.
On top of all this I added some more terminals and lore entries to give players more context as to what happened in this bunker. I wanted players to get a feel for the people that lived here before the bombs fell.
Changes like this also influenced the way I handled the design of the quest that takes you here. I decided to leave the quest as being pretty bland by itself because I wanted players to focus more on the bunker and the story of the space itself moreso than the story of Desmond needing a power coil. I added in an optional objective where players could be rewarded more by taking proof of defeating the raiders back to Desmond, but I felt that anything more than that would distract from the focus of the space.