Because there’s no urgency to follow the story, players are encouraged to march off in any direction from the start. In terms of structure, these games also benefited from a timer, discouraging players from exploring the vacant wasteland in favor of following the story.įallout 3, on the other hand, placed Vault 101 in the center of a fully explorable, fully lootable wasteland.

Fallout and Fallout 2 addressed this by placing Vault 13 and Arroyo in the far north while crafting a narrative that relied on unlocking the location of new, more difficult settlements. From a design perspective, one of Fallout 3’s biggest hurdles was managing the difficulty curve in an open world.