Fallout 4: Assured Destruction
Assured Destruction is a level & quest mod for Fallout 4. The player is sent by the Brotherhood of Steel to investigate an abandoned pre-war missile silo that seems to have come online and begun a nuclear launch countdown. Fighting through the ghoul infestation, the player learns all is not as it seems, and the Brotherhood may have something to do with the launch.
Tech
Fallout 4 Creation Kit, Python scripting
Role
Level Designer, Quest Designer
Platform
PC
Released
May 2020
Level Design Highlights
Environmental storytelling is a cornerstone of most Bethesda titles, and Fallout 4 is no exception. When building a level & quest mod for Fallout 4, I knew one of my design pillars would be environmental story moments.
Environmental Storytelling
Bodies
One of the most common elements of Fallout environmental storytelling, we can give the player hints as to what happened before they arrived, or information about what's currently happening, and sometimes even just humorous scenes.
Believable Structure
Sight Lines
The set dressing of a room can inform the player of the larger layout of the space. In designing the level for this quest, I had to identify the purpose or function of the rooms I was building - a facility commander's office, a workers' cafeteria, engineering rooms, and a hidden experimentation lab, to name a few.
I designed the layout of the space so that there were numerous views and sight lines into other areas of the level, even if the player did not have direct access to those spaces yet - this gave the player clues about future areas.
