Fallout 3 Revolution

Game Revolution will feature on Monday * a quite detailed article on the one hour demo of Fallout 3 they saw at Bethsoft, here are some highlights:

Following the story of the first two Fallout entries, while gleefully glossing over both Tactics and Brotherhood of Steel completely, Fallout 3 occurs long after humanity has retreated to underground vaults, escaping the irradiated landscape for 200 years.

Good.

Lead designer Emil Pagliarulo wanted you to feel what it was like growing up in Vault 101, and so you start the game as a newborn, while other “vaultaneers” run various DNA analysis tests on you. Here, Bethesda sneakily slips in their evolved Oblivion-esque character editor, where you define your sex, race, facial and bodily traits. You want to be a diesel, attractive person? Here’s your first chance.

Hmmmm…

As you grow into an infant, your father gives you your first book outlining where you can spread points among seven different RPG-style attributes, including agility, intelligence and charisma. As a toddler you’re taken through the basics of movement and at ten years old, you get your first firearm (aww!) as well as the robust Pip-Boy, which serves as the streamlined and intuitive menu system used throughout the game. Just like everyone else living in the vault, you take the Generalized Occupational Aptitude Test (G.O.A.T.) as a teenager, which determines your starting skills, such as hacking and engineering.

Hacking and engineering?

The gorgeous wasteland is populated with grotesquely mutated creatures of all kinds, from giant ants intelligently attacking in waves to cannon-wielding Behemoths who charge with abandon. The frequency of combat is tuned down far below a typical First Person Shooter’s fragfest to let the game’s pacing introduce a unique sense of desolation set right into the pit of your psyche as you roam through the rubble. Just like your room!

My room isn’t like that.

But unlike previous Bethesda games, the world’s creatures do not scale to your current level; so if you wander far enough, a Super Mutant is likely to blast you into chum. Inversely, if you’ve accumulated the weapons and the skills, you’ll be able to exercise that power on the weak. Because, as executive producer Todd Howard put it, “It’s fun to be able to kick a little ass”. Indeed it is, and with the genre-bridging, innovative V.A.T.S. battle system Bethesda has evolved, Fallout 3 will let you have a kickass time along the journey.

No level scaling would kick ass, no doubt, we’ll see if things will be exactly like that.

During any encounter you can toggle to this Vault-tec Assisted Targeting System with the push of a button, which will freeze time and let you switch between multiple enemies and their body parts, helping you plan out your attack. Any piece of anatomy, such as a mutant’s arms, legs, torso, head, or weapon can be targeted, each displaying a hit percentage dependent upon the enemy’s distance, position, and stats. If you target his leg and get a critical hit, it’ll blow off in gory Fallout glory, and the mutant will fall to the ground, painfully crawling in pursuit if it’s still alive. If you didn’t blow his weapon out of his hand, you can pick it up and use it yourself. Or if you already have a weapon of the same type, you can bust out some engineering skills, break it down into parts, and use them to beef up the strength, precision, and firing rate of your own weapon. As weapons get worn with use, this is smart option if you’re skilled at it.

Engineering skill? Anyway the combat still seems confusing, Max Payne with called shots?

You’ll also be struggling with moral dilemmas through voiced NPC dialogue choices. The number of NPCs in Fallout 3 is about 300 (as opposed to Oblivion’s 1000), so Bethesda has put alot more alcohol and devtime into making their individual A.I. more realistic and natural. Instead of NPCs walking around doing very simple tasks talking basic gibberish, they will roam with more personalized agendas and socialize with other people about topics that interest them. Who needs those flesh-based friends anyway?

I really hope they get this right this time.

Although it is running off a shiny Oblivion engine with a few more notches on its armor, Fallout 3 is definitely its own game, so don’t be confused by some of the screenshots. The camera defaults as first person view so you can be swallowed by all the little details of the blasted world, but it can be toggled with a flick of a switch to a Resident Evil 4 over-the-shoulder cam. Then you can zoom out even further to get to the franchise-beloved 3rd person perspective.

Is this for real? I doubt it, we’ll see.

It has all the makings of being the first solid bridge between the rapidly growing RPG genre and the immensely pop FPS category, with play options, paths, and ironic wit galore.

Er that crown was taken by DeusEx and the System Shock series, sorry about that.

There is a lot more coming up on Monday, stay tuned.

*they were online earlier today, but the embargo on info is still on until Monday, so they had to remove it. Take this blog post as a Back to the Future thing.

Bethesda 2.0

All the gaming blogs are chearing the grand opening of Bethesda Blog, just listen to Kotaku:

Just in time to leech it for information about Fallout 3, Bethesda has launched a company blog. The Beth Blog has been quietly in the works by the Maryland crew for quite awhile, Pete Hines, tells me. But apparently there was some sort of hang-up with permission slips. The currently the blog is a little sparse, with absolutely no revelations about Fallout 3, not even a nice crisp high-res screen shot. Get on that guys, will ya?

How about Joystick:

Those frisky Fallout 3 forgers at Bethesda have enlisted into the League of Extraordinary Bloggers. The Bethesda Blog certainly looks like a blog: posts listed reverse chronologically, tags, an RSS feed. Yep, everything seems there. If they want any advice, try here.

The blog will provide more community-oriented information about the developer and its games, such as fan art galleries, according to VP of Public Relations and Marketing Pete Hines. (Check out their Forza 2 car designs.) Also published is the first in what is planned to be a series of short Q&A’s with Bethesda staffers. The premier Inside the Vault post features Fallout 3 lead designer Emil Pagliarulo answering “fan questions from the forums” but reveals no new details on the game.

Well Destructoid went a bit too far, this much excitement is a bit silly:

Let me show you our industry pals. Our industry pals, let me show you them. All of our fans already knew that Destructoid was made of epic win and sugar-coated awesomesauce, but for those who are yet to be swayed by the velvet rogues who give you the best news from the best writers in the business, perhaps an endorsement from, I don’t know, Bethesda Softworks might help? The Oblivion guys? Yes, those are the ones. Now proud affiliates of the Bethesda Blog, the Destructoid crew adds yet another badge to its blazer proclaiming that we are kind of a big deal.This is yet another strawberry on the cheesecake of triumph that Destructoid has been eating from during just this month alone. We’ve been breaking personal bests, making some magnificent friends and proving wrong all who said we’d never hang with the cool crowd. There are many big fish in small ponds who’d look down on Dtoid, but now we swim with sharks. All these metaphors and more can be yours for just $9.99.

Honestly, it’s been such a fantastic month for Destructoid and we wanted to share some of our great personal news with the readers who come here and share their love daily. Daily and intimately. It’s not that we have arrived, it’s just that the world is finally realizing it. Play on, maestro!

FO3:PNB take on the new Bethesda Blog:

Bethesda has a new blog.

Brother None

On the latest issue of the Escapist there’s a letter from Brother None, administrator at No Mutants Allowed:

 

As for “the industry has moved on,” it has and it hasn’t. It’s not that much different. For instance, Cain once said about Fallout’s combat: “It also showed how popular and fun turn-based combat could be, when everyone else was going with real-time or pause-based combat.” That’s no different now, everyone else is going with real-time or pause-based, only this time so is Fallout.

 

So if anything has changed it’s that the unique situation behind Fallout can’t be reproduced. Not because the people aren’t there, but because the companies have closed ranks, and even a proclaimed independent like Bethesda joins those ranks. Only Blizzard remains, I guess, with their hearty sod off to the, as CVG put it, “‘big new feature’ kind of showmanship.” … I’m sure Bethesda’s Fallout 3 has the potential to outsell the Fallout 3 BIS was working on, but BIS didn’t need to sell a million copies just to break even.

 

The base investment cost of the license and ludicrous expenses like their PR department (including a community manager who doesn’t really do anything, from what I can tell) or hiring Liam Neeson are choices Bethesda made, and only because of those choices do they have to compete in three markets to so much as break even. That’s not inherent of today’s gaming market, but I’ll admit it’s predominant, and it will have to collapse in on itself someday. These high-risk high-profit ventures are a way to instable base for an industry. Heck, you don’t see any other industry doing it.

- Brother None

Controversial as ever, if you agree or disagree with him you can tell him that on the NMA forum.

 

Forza

More Meet the Devs, now Gavin “Kathode” Carter speaks:

2. Do you own a console? If yes, what is it? If no, do you plan to buy one someday?

I have and regularly play an Xbox 360 and a PS2. Oh, also a DS.

3. what’s the specification of your computer at home?

2Ghz MacBook Until recently I kept a PC around for gaming, but after years of patching up problems with duct tape both metaphorical and real, it finally kicked the bucket last month. Looks like I’ll be a console-only gamer for a while, but I remembered I’ve always wanted to try some of Jeff Vogel’s games, and this is probably a good excuse.

He’s also very proud of his Forza Motosports cars:

Moving on to Gary “VXSS” Noonan:

What PC games are you playing right now?

Just beat C&C: Tiberium Wars and started playing STALKER again.

Which PC games are you looking forward to playing this summer?

Hmmm, dunno. My eye is on console titles for this summer.

Is the PC game genre still dying after all these years of magazines saying it?

Sadly, I see a decline and I myself have been slowly converted over to the Dark Side of the Consoles. Just my opinion though.

Warhammer Online recently decided they would not have an online forum after seeing how poorly things have went for the WoW boards. Do you think it’s a smart move?

I guess they have their reasons. I have never seen the WoW boards, so I dont really have enough knowledge of it. Perhaps they should try our boards for a day.

I would like to know what the devs think about general negative feedback from Fallout fanbase all around the world after Game Infromer Q&A goes public (read: main game design decisions are known)?

Well, with negative, there is always some positive too. Its the positive feedback that keeps me going personally.

There’s more here.