New Broken Hills
Project Summary
New Broken Hills is a mod for Fallout 4 that was developed using Creation Kit. This is a mod that has one branching fetch quest where a player must travel to a given location to receive, keep or return an item for Paladin Cohen, an NPC of the Brotherhood of Steel. Cohen can be seen seated in a caravan outside of the Wicked Fleet Supply Station just outside of his bunker. This branch quest is focused on whether or not a player can or can not successfully return a canister of Nuclear Material for Cohen to be able to construct a Distress Pulser to contact his men for reinforcements.
Game Name: Fallout 4
Engine: Creation Kit
Platform: PC
Development Time: 12 weeks
(2019)
Downloadable LDD:
Level Overview
New Broken Hills will provide the players with the choice of making moral decisions that will require the player to side with factions within the Fallout 4 lore. The quest requires the player to speak with an Paladin Cohen, an injured, desperate member of status of the Brotherhood of Steel. Cohen will inform the player of a location he has failed to breach that has humans being held captive by Supermutants using heavy artillery. Cohen will inform the player that after previously travelling to the location, he was wounded and his power armor was damaged, thus requiring the player to go retrieve the Distress Pulser so that the NPC can seek help as a result. If the player agrees to help Paladin Cohen, they will travel to the Robotics Disposal Grounds to discover the location of the settlement and further progress through the quest.
Level Overview Responsibilities
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Developed documentation detailing level layout, quest flow and initial design goals
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Created branching quest with scripted events, dialogue combat encounters and custom enemies
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Developed mod from initial design to set-dressing, final aesthetics and lighting
Design Goals
The design goals of this mod was to develop a quest that supplied the player with the information and choices necessary to make meaningful player decision(s). To achieve this goal, this quest design required speech checks, several NPC’s to inform the player and a small amount of scripting to trigger events that occurred as a result of the player’s choices during the quest. In addition to player choice, I wanted to give the player more of a challenging combat experience with heavy weapons, moderately powerful NPC’s, and a combat area with line of sight blockers.
Map & Layout
New Broken Hills is consists of three interior cells those including Cohen's Bunker, New Broken Hills, and the Boiler Room of New Broken Hills. Quest features and map details will be listed below with images and in-depth layout descriptions.
Cohen's Bunker
The double hatched door just outside of Paladin Cohen's caravan is his bunker where he resides. When designing the space I wanted to provide the player a location that they could loot materials and ammunition to prepare for the mission given to the player by Cohen. Inside of Cohen's Bunker, the player can find lockers throughout the space with items such as: shotguns, rifles, ammunition, food, and medication. This would serve as the first resting point the player would receive before embarking on the quest to venture across the Commonwealth to New Broken Hills.
Paper map of Paladin Cohen's Bunker
In-game Screens of Cohen's Bunker
New Broken Hills
After the player travels across the northside of the Commonwealth, the player will stumble across a double door hatch just inside of the Robotics Disposal Grounds. New Broken Hills was the largest cell designed within this quest. The space was created with the intent to convey an inhabited settlement that once used to be a Nuclear Power Plant. Here, the player will encounter Supermutant's and humans and later learn they coexist within this settlement. Many NPC's are seen walking throughout the settlement that the player can speak to to gain more information on the main quest. Players can loot the settlement for more weaponry, food and drugs to aid them as they progress through the main quest. This cell served as not only one of the largest spaces, but also one of the optional combat portions of my quest. Because of this feature I made the addition of large turbines and generators that could not only serve the purpose of decoration, but also line of sight blockers for the player.
Paper map of Paladin Cohen's Bunker
Paper map of New Broken Hills
In-game Screens of New Broken Hills
New Broken Hills: Boiler Room
The boiler room of New Broken Hills was the second largest cell in my quest and also contained the location of the quests' fetch item as well as branch decisions for the player. The space was a drastic contrast from the New Broken Hills settlement as the walls were a lot more tighter and assets were packed together. The halls are dimly lit by barrel fire and the floors are accompanied with debris and puddles of radiated water. The player has there first combat encounter with a half dozen vicious radroaches before they are able to confront the Supermutant NPC, Grool the fetch item holder. To guide the player to Grool there are barrel fires just beside him as he stands beside a cauldron awaiting player interaction. Once the player greets Grool, they are given multiple player options and the necessary information to enforce those player decisions.
As the designer I gave the player two dialogue branch options that could change the course of the quest depending on the players actions. The player can 1) choose to leave the settlement with the Nuclear Materials necessary for the Distress Pulser by fighting and defeating Grool, or 2) the player can collude against Paldin Cohen and instead present to him a canister of fake Nuclear Material. Choosing to fight Grool only results in the members of the New Broken Hills settlement going hostile against the player. Choosing to return to Cohen with the fake Nuclear Material could potentially lead to Cohen's suspicion of the player which ultimately leads to failure of the quest. The Addition of speech checks in my quest allowed for an extra layer of potential player options that the player would be provided with. Returning to Paladin Cohen with the real Nuclear Material results in a successful quest completion... unless the player chooses to keep the item.
Paper map of New Broken Hills Bunker
In-Game Screens of New Broken Hills
Post-Mortem
What went well
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Establishing overall cell layouts and designing those as soon as possible.
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Figuring out what needed to be scripted.
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Using sound attenuation and VFX to make the place come to life later in the development process really helped set the overall tone of my cells.
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My dialogue provided the player with the necessary information to make a choice(s).
What went wrong
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Not much attention paid to detail on ceiling meshes.
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Wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do initially so my quest flow seemed unnatural.
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The player ultimately didn’t have much to do.
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The player didn’t have as many options within the quest to create the actual illusion of choice.
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Two of my cells felt as if they had more attention paid to detail than one.
Be Better If...
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I should be updating my LDD with all the changes made from my original design plan.
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Forcing a player down a particular path choice without other options isn’t fun and can frustrate the player.
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The sooner I figure out what my place is, the better. I struggle with deciding what my settlement was before the bomb, and how it was ultimately effected after the bomb dropped.
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Making cuts sooner makes it all the more easier to work on polishing the quality elements of your Fallout Level
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Specifics for your quest should be ironed out in the pre-production process. This will save you much time in production as everything you accounted for is already planned for within your documentation.
