Print

[TheDarkJay]

TheDarkJay

Fallout 3

http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/pc/fallout-3/800771p1.html

For the demo being given to the press, Executive Producer Todd Howard provided a lot of narration and commentary, while Lead Designer Emil Pagliarulo was the one actually playing the game (they demoed on the Xbox 360, though the game is slated for simultaneousrelease on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC). Howard commented, "We recognized that the Dark Brotherhood quest line is the best one in Oblivion, and we decided that since Emil did such a great job with the Dark Brotherhood, we're giving him all of Fallout 3 to play with."

The Dark brotherhood was in no way a good quest line. Storywise it was decent-ish, but the charecters were not evil assassins, they were more "ooh we're evil! fear us!" emos! They simply lacked the realism of the Morag Tong in Morrowind, who were professional, and lived as if they never killed every other week.

The first thing we noticed after the footage of the trailer (which is part of Fallout 3's overall intro) is that Fallout 3 is indeed in first-person. Howard explains, "If you're going to play this character and feel like you're in the world, nothing beats first-person." He points out that it's easier to appreciate the retro-future look of the Vault in first-person, as you can walk right up to the goofy chairs and computers. Howard does recognize that players played Oblivion in third-person view, and Fallout 3 has an improved third-person camera. In fact, not only is it perfectly playable from third-person, but you can zoom out the camera to make it almost isometric, in a nod to the previous two games.

The 'almost' in 'almost isometric' scares me, the already numerous comparisons to Oblivion scare me, and above all the fact it's 1st and formost FPS really scares me.

When you hit ten, you get a little Red Ryder BB Gun for your birthday. Here, you learn the basic elements of combat, which is basically real-time with a bit of turn-based-pause thrown in. That is, you normally aim and shoot in first-person like a shooter, but you can activate the "Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System" (V.A.T.S.) to momentarily pause time. During pause, you can then target specific body parts, queue up shots to said body parts, and then resume time to have V.A.T.S. automatically fire at your designated target spots.

Ah, but to prevent you from just abusing the heck out of V.A.T.S., and in a throwback to the turn-based combat of the previous games, each shot in V.A.T.S. costs Action Points. In the demo we saw, each shot took about three APs and the player had nine total, meaning he could try for three aimed shots at any moment. Howard said they're still futzing with the exact system, but at the moment, AP automatically recharges over time when playing in real-time (with the recharge speed dictated by the player's Agility stat), but that recharge rate is slowed down a bit when you're just shooting stuff. Additionally, all the combat we saw is gun-based, but Howard did comment that melee combat (and we saw the "unarmed" skill listed in the character screen) is still a possibility.

This keeps the old Fallout style of body selection, but I wish it'd stayed fully turn-based when combat starts...you just couldn't beat the Fallout turn-based style.

Melee combat was something I used a lot in Fallout (especially at the start), and I'm dissapointed to see it feels like an after-thought in Fallout 3.

Howard commented that the G.O.A.T. will be "more skill-based" as opposed to the traditional Q&A-style of character generation found in previous Elder Scroll RPGs.

More references to ES...

Not only does Pagliarulo accept, but he tries the dialogue option that will use his Speech skill in an attempt to get even more money (he fails the roll).

OH !@#$% YES! Finally, the roll-based system I thought had vanished from modern games!

Howard interjects to comment that this quest is another good example of player choice. Not only is the player choosing to either let the town stay intact and partake in whatever quests its denizens can give or wipe it out and lose any potential quest/karma opportunities, but the player can also play Simms and Burke against each other. "Emil could have gone back to Simms and say 'hey, this Burke guy just gave me a job to take this town out', or furthermore, after telling Simms, he can still go back to Burke and either say that the Sheriff is onto him, the quest is over, or pretend to work for Burke, but work for Simms in reality." Whew. But for demo purposes, Pagliarulo takes Burke's initial offer and heads down to the bomb itself to initiate part one of the quest.

Sounds VERY fun I'll have to play this through a few times

Any further questions about the size of the world, and whether there are even fast travel options are met with a "you'll see" type of response.

Fast Travel baaaad!

Pagliarulo proceeds to heck a security/ticket-vending robot, and Howard describes one of the hecking minigames.

Mini-games? Dammit! I wanted a more roll-based system! Another step away from Fallout And my hopes were so high for them keeping the age old RPG die feel

After performing this heck, the robot simply walks up to each Super Mutant, asks for a ticket, and proceeds to open fire when the perplexed Super Mutant fails to present one.

Still, this DOES sound fun

Before meeting up with Burke, Pagliarulo's Pip-Boy acquires a radio signal from the Galaxy Network News tower that plays some music. Howard comments that Bethesda has licensed about twenty songs from the 40s for Fallout 3, and that you can pick up these radio stations by wandering the wasteland and keeping an eye on your Pip-Boy for a signal. Additionally, the radio can also be used as the initiation of a quest chain, or, if tuned properly, as a way to eavesdrop on some raiders when they talk to each other.

Now THIS sounds good. Very very good. A nice little addition IMHO, that'll hopefully add to some immersion.

There is so much left to cover, such as the Karma system, the return of titles, the decision to have attackable children in the game, and the retuned level scaling (at least we can safely say it's not like Oblivion's, if you hated that system, Fallout 3 will be a-okay).

Attackable children = GOOOOOOOD! Finally, a company not afraid to have massacre-able children! (note to self: have bloody mess feat when you do this evil act).

Words cannot describe my hatred for the levelling system in Oblivion, so whilst I dislike that they are including a system that levels enemies with you (it just isn't an RPG if enemies stay as tough as you. Being able to PWN is a vital part of any RPG, and one that Oblivion lacked), this will not be hopefully possibly maybe not SO bad...