With the recent Fallout shitposting threads, I just realized something: Fallout 1 and 2 are the only RPGs which have the kind of structure that should be used for the genre, with a goal-based main quest rather than a linear step-by-step one.
In Fallout, you start the game with one goal: get a replacement water chip for your Vault. You don't know where to go and how to find it, so you set out into the wasteland and come upon settlements where you ask for the locations of other Vaults and do some sidequests for the locals. Ideally, the shit you do gives you new information on where to find a water chip replacement. The goal is there right from the start, and it doesn't change until halfway through the game, when you actually find the water chip (how exactly you get your hands on it is up to you - there's no linear sequence of events you need to go through) and bring it back to the Vault. Then, you get your second main quest: stop the Master and destroy the supermutant base.
And that's all. Three mandatory main quests, and if you go into the game with knowledge from previous playthroughs, you can beeline right to the main quest locations and go for a speedrun. But that's not how your first, blind playthrough will go because you have no idea where the water chip, the military base, and the Master's lair are located. And even on a second playthrough you shouldn't beeline to these locations because you'd be severely underlevelled and probably not make it through.
Fallout 2 has a similar structure. Go find a GECK. That's your first goal. Go stop the Enclave. That's your second goal after you found the GECK. The paths you take to reach these goals is largely up to you - although Fallout 2 isn't as open in how you get to the final location as Fallout 1 was (gotta go to the Enclave oil rig through San Fran).
Spontaneously, I can't think of any other RPG with a structure like this throughout the game. Both Fallout games have very open, very basic main quests that are entirely goal based. "Find item. Kill leader of bad guys." Anything in between is up to you. One thing that comes to mind that is comparable is Baldur's Gate 2's first chapter, where you have to amass 10k or so in wealth so you can pay the Shadow Thieves to bring you to Imoen's prison. How you get the cash is up to you. But once that quest is done, the rest of the game becomes more linear, following a more classic main quest structure where you go from one main quest to the next.
Next to my foot and nazi fetishes, what's also commonly known about me on the Codex is that I consider Arcanum to be the best RPG ever made, but I have to admit that it's structurally a little weaker than the Fallouts due to its more linear main quest line. While Arcanum has plenty of alternate solutions to quests (killed the guy who had the info you needed? look through his desk and leaf through his files) and tons of choice and consequence, the main quest's structure is still relatively linear. Find out who the ring belonged to - you can't visit Gilbert Bates before you visited P. Schuyler's to find out who the GB initials refer to. You can't go to the Isle of Despair before you visited the BMC mines. You can't visit the Wheel Clan before you've gone to the Isle of Despair, etc etc. While Arcanum allows for a lot of player freedom, the overall mainquest structure is still: do A in order to unlock B, do B in order to unlock C, do C in order to unlock D etc.
Fallout doesn't do that. It just tells you "do X" and then you find your own path to that goal. And that's one of its greatest strengths. It immensely improves replayability, since you won't have to trudge through the same set of main quests each time you make a playthrough. You can just do the quests you like, ignore the ones you don't, and use your knowledge from previous playthroughs to reach your goals.
This is the kind of structure all RPGs should strive for because it's very conductive towards roleplaying.
In Fallout, you start the game with one goal: get a replacement water chip for your Vault. You don't know where to go and how to find it, so you set out into the wasteland and come upon settlements where you ask for the locations of other Vaults and do some sidequests for the locals. Ideally, the shit you do gives you new information on where to find a water chip replacement. The goal is there right from the start, and it doesn't change until halfway through the game, when you actually find the water chip (how exactly you get your hands on it is up to you - there's no linear sequence of events you need to go through) and bring it back to the Vault. Then, you get your second main quest: stop the Master and destroy the supermutant base.
And that's all. Three mandatory main quests, and if you go into the game with knowledge from previous playthroughs, you can beeline right to the main quest locations and go for a speedrun. But that's not how your first, blind playthrough will go because you have no idea where the water chip, the military base, and the Master's lair are located. And even on a second playthrough you shouldn't beeline to these locations because you'd be severely underlevelled and probably not make it through.
Fallout 2 has a similar structure. Go find a GECK. That's your first goal. Go stop the Enclave. That's your second goal after you found the GECK. The paths you take to reach these goals is largely up to you - although Fallout 2 isn't as open in how you get to the final location as Fallout 1 was (gotta go to the Enclave oil rig through San Fran).
Spontaneously, I can't think of any other RPG with a structure like this throughout the game. Both Fallout games have very open, very basic main quests that are entirely goal based. "Find item. Kill leader of bad guys." Anything in between is up to you. One thing that comes to mind that is comparable is Baldur's Gate 2's first chapter, where you have to amass 10k or so in wealth so you can pay the Shadow Thieves to bring you to Imoen's prison. How you get the cash is up to you. But once that quest is done, the rest of the game becomes more linear, following a more classic main quest structure where you go from one main quest to the next.
Next to my foot and nazi fetishes, what's also commonly known about me on the Codex is that I consider Arcanum to be the best RPG ever made, but I have to admit that it's structurally a little weaker than the Fallouts due to its more linear main quest line. While Arcanum has plenty of alternate solutions to quests (killed the guy who had the info you needed? look through his desk and leaf through his files) and tons of choice and consequence, the main quest's structure is still relatively linear. Find out who the ring belonged to - you can't visit Gilbert Bates before you visited P. Schuyler's to find out who the GB initials refer to. You can't go to the Isle of Despair before you visited the BMC mines. You can't visit the Wheel Clan before you've gone to the Isle of Despair, etc etc. While Arcanum allows for a lot of player freedom, the overall mainquest structure is still: do A in order to unlock B, do B in order to unlock C, do C in order to unlock D etc.
Fallout doesn't do that. It just tells you "do X" and then you find your own path to that goal. And that's one of its greatest strengths. It immensely improves replayability, since you won't have to trudge through the same set of main quests each time you make a playthrough. You can just do the quests you like, ignore the ones you don't, and use your knowledge from previous playthroughs to reach your goals.
This is the kind of structure all RPGs should strive for because it's very conductive towards roleplaying.
Morrowind's structure was compared to Daggerfail.
