Problems with Pip-Boy 3: Instances

Over the past two weeks on mashedmarket, I’ve been scrutinizing Fallout 3’s sometimes counter-intuitive and quirky Pip-Boy 3000. This will be the final post in that little series. It won’t, however, mark the end of my writing about design, which has been weirdly inspiring. Expect to see more such work here in the future. As always, thanks for stopping by, and feel free to share your thoughts or otherwise drop a line.

When building Fallout 3, Bethesda set out to “create an interface…that was functional, unique and entertaining” by melding its menu system to “an important object in-game.” The series’ classic Pip-Boy (now a Model 3000) is worn on your avatar’s left wrist and manages everything from radiation levels to radio stations. Want more protection from that Radroach charging toward you? Just pull up your 3000 and change clothes. Too much stuff in your backpack? Only check on your Pip-Boy and toss some out. Need a snack? Simply glance to your P-B3 and eat some Fancy Lads. But while marrying object and interface in this way is exciting, it’s also quite a challenge.

For starters, the Pip-Boy’s very shape  is troublesome: when you get to thinking about the device’s actual knobs and switches being operated by hand, it becomes difficult to concede the abstractions necessitated by controller operation. What’s more, you might start wondering why the 3000 isn’t worn on one’s other wrist, since, given the way that the dial and scroll wheel are oriented, it’d be hard to operate at left without your right hand obscuring the tiny television. Of course, these are pretty trivial details. Much more important are Bethesda’s own criteria for success. Their design diary was written during development, but notes that

The hopeful end result is that when the player activates the Pip-Boy, immersion isn’t disrupted. He hasn’t stopped playing the game in order to check something in a menu. But rather, his character has simply paused and looked down to fidget with his personal analog assistant for a moment, still in the wasteland.

Unfortunately, this isn’t quite how it feels with the final product. In fact, your 3000 is practically a pause screen. So what could change that might help create a sense of uninterrupted play?

Problems with Pip-Boy 2: Interface

Last week on mashedmarket, I started thinking about the minor shortcomings of Fallout 3‘s amazing Pip-Boy 3000. This and next Monday, I’ll be detailing how Bethesda might alter that device’s versatile but labyrinthine interface in order to improve players’ interactions with the game. I’m no seasoned pro, but it’s been fun exercising my design sensibilities. Here’s hoping you enjoy what I’ve come up with. Thanks for reading, and please feel free to comment!

Fallout 3 is an innately convoluted ecosystem of emergent complexity in which manifold player choices create a feeling of agency, but also give way to some unforeseen situations. Want to carry that armor back to Megaton and make a sale? Crap — too heavy. Feel like a nice long nap to heal your crippled limbs? Tough luck — that’s not your bed. Hoping to talk your way out of running an errand? Not gonna happen — you’ve got low charisma and a gun in your hand.

When players roam the Capital Wasteland, all kinds of seemingly tiny decisions wind up effecting what happens. As Bethesda notes in their unusually revealing design diary, the key to navigating this overwhelmingly intricate system of choice and consequence is

Pip-Boy, a classic element of the [Fallout] series that exists as both an important object in-game as well as the player’s primary method of interacting with his character.

The 3000 is, indeed, a great tool, and, as a menu system, it does just about everything right. However, as I hinted in my last post, it’s this uneven relationship between the menus and the device itself that causes player problems. To put it another way, the Pip-Boy 3000 is an interface first and a contraption second, but it should be acting as both simultaneously in order to maximize gamer immersion.

Problems with Pip-Boy 1: Introduction

In an old “Design Lesson 101” post over at the ever-insightful Design Rampage blog, Raven Software Game Designer Manveer Heir contends that

Fallout and Fallout 2 use choice and consequence to deliver a world of enormous opportunities to the player and give the player agency over the type of character they develop.

I never played those first two games, but I’ve just begun Fallout 3, and I can attest that Bethesda’s first entry in the series is no exception to that legacy of choice, consequence, and agency. Options are EVERYWHERE in Fallout 3. Want to play first-person perspective, or third? Ewww, better change that outfit; turns out you look awful goofy in a sheriff’s costume. Now that you’re dressed, what about quests? Feel like wiping Megaton off the map? How about turning the settlers of Arefu against The Family? Or maybe you want to try rescuing some hapless folks from a band of Super Mutants, instead? 

The flood of available choices is seemingly endless. And, to manage these, players use the handy-dandy Pip-Boy 3000. Fortunately, this wondrous little device is (more or less) up to the task.