Over the past two years, I've probably played Fallout 3 and its downloadable content for over a hundred hours. To have spent that much time with the game, I obviously must've enjoyed it but over time certain things started to annoy me. It's a bit like being stuck on a long car ride with a friend. Though it was one of the best role-playing games of the past few years, there are still plenty of areas of improvement. Here's what I hope to see in its follow-up, Fallout: New Vegas.

Better stealth system

Fallout 3 had numerous perks and items to boost your ability to sneak, suggesting that it's a pretty handy thing to do in certain situations. It is, but it's very rarely fun. The thing is, my success with stealth always seemed to be determined by chance. F3 has a very rudimentary stealth meter that only tells you if you're A) hidden, B) about to be found, or C) found. You'll go from B to C in a matter of seconds, too. A more informative meter would allow players to have a better understanding of how well they're sneaking. Thief's interface, for example, has a gem at the bottom of the screen that gets lighter or darker depending on how hidden you are. Recent Metal Gear Solid entries took it a step further by listing your visibility as a percentage. If you take a step forward and the meter spikes, you know you're screwing up and you can adjust. Creeping around is a lot more fun if you actually feel like you've got some control over your success.

Companions that understand the word "stealth"

Sneaking around on my own in Fallout 3 was hard enough, but doing it while accompanied by an NPC companion? Damn near impossible. Sure, my companion would crouch down and pretend to be covert... but as soon as an enemy appeared, they'd jump up and start attacking. I'm not sure whether they did this because they simply don't like stealth or because their Sneak roll failed. The latter would be unfair because well, crap, it's not like I have any control over what skills they improve in when they level up. At any rate, why does the game bother with this notion of NPC's sneaking? Just make them hidden when I'm hidden and exposed when I'm exposed. Apologists will say, "Just tell your NPC to wait outside the enemy base if you want to be stealthy." The hell with that; I'm not leashing up my NPC outside like a puppy. She's a trained member of the Brotherhood of Steel - she ought to be able to be restrain herself from randomly shooting people. What would be the point of traveling with another character if I'm just going to leave them outside, anyway?

Talkative companions

For me, the Fallout 3 companions never really felt like, well, companions. They just don't really have much personality. Open a dialogue with one and the only options you'll see are commands: "Follow me," "Stay here," and so on. It's a stark contrast to BioWare role-playing games where you can spend hours chatting up your party members. It's even a step backward from Fallout 2, which gave NPC's at least a cursory backstory. You could argue that fleshing out these characters is unnecessary because they can't be resurrected when killed in battle. Why not just have them fall unconscious for the remainder of the battle when they hit zero hit points, then? If the developers insisted on NPC death, though, giving these characters distinct personalities would make their passing all the more impactful on the player. I lean toward the "fall unconscious" option, though, because players would probably just reload their games and replay the battle rather than let their dear friend bite the dust.

Companions that can follow you down a hillside without falling to their death. I mean, Jesus, will you look where you're going?

Seriously.

Hide helm option

Like Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Fallout 3 gave you a huge amount of control over your character's appearance - bone structure, hair style, and so forth. You may end up spending a good twenty minutes just trying out different looks. Ten minutes later, you're wearing a big metal hat and can't see any of your hard work. Most MMORPG's allow you to hide your helm and the same feature would be nice here. Granted, the game's meant to be played in the first-person perspective but occasionally you want to admire the character you've built. It's one of the cheap thrills of role-playing games.

Reworked skill advancement system

At the beginning of Fallout 3, I was a runt who could sneak around dangerous enemies and talk my way out of fights. By the end, I was even more skilled at both but I was also an unstoppable juggernaut whose mastery of all weapons and technology was unrivaled in the wasteland. It's easy to max out the majority of skills, given the amount of upgrade points you're given and the bonuses you accrue throughout the game from Perks, items, and so forth. It felt good to be awesome in so many ways but the result was that my character became featureless. My level 20 character was quite similar to anyone else's level 20. The easy solution would be to dole out less skill points for every experience level. A more satisfying solution, however, would be to raise the cap on skills and allow players to specialize further within a given field.

A fixed version of V.A.T.S.

As a nod to the series' turn-based roots, Fallout 3 employs a combat mechanic called V.A.T.S.. In the middle of a fight, you're able to pause the action and queue up shots at specific points on an enemy. Rather than complementing the real-time FPS-like combat of the game, V.A.T.S. completely overwhelms it. By the end of the game you'll have enough Action Points to almost exclusively use V.A.T.S. in battle. It's just so much easier and more ammo efficient than real-time combat. V.A.T.S. isn't a bad feature but it needs to be tweaked so that you can only use it a handful of times per fight. Or perhaps it could be altered so that, say, aiming for a headshot is more complicated than simply selecting an enemy head and clicking on it. Maybe put a time limit on selecting your shots or make the damage scale with how quickly you queue them up?

A story more closely tied to Fallout and Fallout 2

This particular item on the wish list seems like a sure thing. Fallout: New Vegas is set in the same general area as Fallout and Fallout 2 and is being developed by people who worked on those two games. Still, it's worth reiterating how awesome it would be to see some of the characters from the old Fallout games return. Plus, it would be interesting to see how the former southwestern United States has come along since the end of Fallout 2. One of the best parts of Fallout 3 was Harold's cameo. That's one of the few bits of nostalgia from that game, though.

More detailed endings

I liked the side missions in Fallout 3 a lot but they had one shortcoming: they're not really mentioned in the ending. In the closing montage, you might see a picture of some character you saved but that's it. In the first two Fallout games, the narrator told you in voiceover what happened to this character or that village after the game due to your actions. It makes the player feel like their decisions had some real weight and is a satisfying cap to the game.

A 2010 release

When New Vegas was announced last April, it was pegged for a 2010 release. Since then, we've heard basically no information on the game. The last half of 2009 was pretty turbulent for Vegas developer Obsidian Entertainment, too. They cancelled their Aliens RPG and delayed Alpha Protocol just a couple weeks before its release. With all this in mind, I can't help but feel a bit skeptical that Vegas will arrive by the end of the year. I'd love to be proven wrong but delays are par for the course when it comes to big, open-ended RPGs.

Robot butlers for the win

While the rest of this list is primarily inspired by Fallout 3's shortcomings, that game is still a pretty solid foundation for a new Fallout adventure. There's certain things that I hope remain the same: the vast open world, the strong art direction, and - perhaps most importantly of all - the robot butler. Who could resist another batch of corny science jokes?