Fallout4: "Power Strife"
"Power Strife" is a single player Fallout 4 level where the player helps the Falcon Arms Dealer Jack rescue his father Chief Falcon from the Killer Bee's arms dealer. Players will explore unknown enemy bases with Jack, investigate clues, fight with enemies, and deal with accidents.
Parameters
• Walkthrough is about 30 minutes.
• An exterior and an interior.
• A main quest and a side quest.
• Including two player choices and two corresponding story endings.
Trailer Video
Postmortem
What went well?
• Finding help – When I ran into bugs in production I could not solve on my own, I was able to find help online and through my classmates.
• Immersive Aesthetics – The overall art atmosphere of the level is relatively consistent and makes the player feel immersed.
• Cool moments – Cool moments allow players to experience the game and have more fun with the story.
What went wrong?
• Late, Wrong file, Credit – Due to personal scheduling problems I was sometimes late delivering milestones.
Solution: Reasonably arrange the time to complete milestones, remember that completeness is more important than perfection, and do not hand in late or wrong files. The referenced document or picture needs to have a well-known source, and the original text cannot be quoted directly.
• Big picture corrected too late – The big picture plot of the level was changed too late to have enough time for polishing.
Solution: Change the big picture in earlier milestones to avoid premature polishing of art assets. After there is no problem with the overall flow and plot logic, the details can be polished.
• Could not catch the main point to update for each milestone – With my feedback, I did not always grasp the key points well, or ranked the priority of my tasks incorrectly.
Solution: Confirm the focus of the feedback with the professor or peers who provided the feedback, repeat the feedback video, and understand the final summary of the feedback video. Check the feedback of the review and adjust the order of priority of tasks.
What I learned?
• How to create a narrative level with an understandable plot – For a single-player open-world narrative FPS game, telling the story in different ways for players to understand is very important.
• Use different ways to fix problems – Generally speaking, there are different solutions to a problem and which one that is needed should be decided by the requirements of the assignment and the technical difficulty of its implementation.
• Players needs to encounter with NPC before fighting with him – The player needs to have multiple encounters with the NPCs in the level before the real final battle. If you fight at your first meeting that will make the player confused. Who is this person? Why should I kill him?
Level Map
Overview Map
Exterior Space
The exterior space is composed of two cells. The area the player reaches first is the outskirt of the Killer Bee headquarters, as shown in the left area. After passing a gate, on the right of the cell is the surveillance area for Killer Bees.
The interior space is divided into two floors. The first-floor structure includes three prisons, offices, and warehouses. The second floor is a lobby, with Harry's office and Rudolf's office on both sides.
Interior Space
Goals
The design goal of this level is to create a main story quest and an auxiliary side quest. The story should be easy for players to understand, and the transition of plot elements should not be too abrupt. Battles should start simple and gradually become harder as player adapt to the combat with player being given a variety of weapons and props to choose from. Players should enjoy fighting while getting invested in the plot.
Smooth Main Storyline
The main quest is about the player assisting Jack to rescue the Falcon Chief from the Killer Bee base, only to find that he has been killed. Jack, who believes Harry is the real murderer, finds clues in the base that his brother Rudolf is the top leader of the Killer Bee and the murderer of the Falcon Chief.
Players go through 4 major plot points:
1) Attempt to rescue the Falcon Chief from the Killer Bee.
2) Kill Harry, avenging the Falcon Chief.
3) Discover the truth about the Falcon Chief and Rudolf.
4) Defeat Rudolf and make a choice: kill him or exile him.
Set Meaningful Side Quest
The side quest helps supports the story line of the main quest, making the turning point (discovering Rudolf was behind it all) more reasonable.
The side quest lets the player learn that there was an undercover Falcon agent in the Killer Bee base. He collected clues about a mysterious person named R who is taking the Killer Bees from Harry slowly.
Multiple Gameplay Options
There are many types of weapons provided in the game, such as medium-range laser guns, short-range laser shotguns, missile launchers for range damage, melee weapons and so on. Players can obtain different weapons in different ways in different stages of the game.
The levels is also designed with flame traps, which are in line with the theme of the flame arms dealer and enrich the gameplay and lore of the area. Players can use these traps to burn enemies rather than fighting them directly.
Challenging Battles
For novice players, it is hard and not very fun to enter a fierce battle from the beginning. Therefore, at the beginning I provided the player with a missile launcher and raised the building where the player is located to gain a height advantage.
Later, to increase the difficulty, ordinary enemies will attack the player from different angles.
When the player meets first boss, Harry, they are still relatively weak. To combat this, the player can still take advantage of the terrain to kill the enemy.
The final boss, Rudolf is an enemy with high hit points and invisibility and is the most difficult enemy in the level. Jack still fights with you, helping even the challenge out. This design allows players who want to challenge him to have a fair shot at defeating him. In addition, I set up automatic saving before and after each battle to prevent players from losing a lot of game progress.
