In late August I reported that No Mutants Allowed got inside the Fallout 3 demo presentations and got a few Q&A sessions with Pete Hines. Following the example of Ron Burke of GamingTrend they went to the Bethesda Games Fallout 3 forum and replied to questions about their viewing of the Fallout 3 demo. I’m starting a series of posts with an edited version of those sessions, might be interesting to compare what they say with the info that is coming out.
So let’s see what SuAside and Brother None had to say:
To my knowledge [BN], you do not have to have had visual contact with an enemy for them to go on the view board (what a sentence)
Basically, you can auto-target anything which is tagged by your perception to be within your “sensory range,” which probably includes hearing and seeing. I don’t think Pete spotted the supermutant before auto targeting him.Is there a enemy locator such as it was in Far Cry displayed in the main HUD all the time which will show hostiles and friendlies as dots in red or green color?
Yes, but with the note that I don’t remember seeing it when NPCs were *far off*. It seems to be a compensation for the lack of first-person peripheral vision more than anything. Though I *think* it functioned in the vault when the NPCs were behind the wall, but I’m not sure on that.
There’s a good chance that both this red/green dot stuff and the VATS auto-targeting is influenced by the same calculation made by perception, but I don’t knowThinking about that kind of thing, how does VATS work out movement for the player?
To my memory, the PC never moved while V.A.T.S. actions were playing out. Whether or not this is possible I don’t know, but it seems to me like it’d be manual, not the computer figuring it out
There is something I am really worried about you didn’t talk about the environments like they were amazing?
Environmental graphics were great. The use of parallax mapping really shows and some of the ruins look fantastic. Like I said, the “style” is kind of up and down, but the quality is consistently good.Did they remind you of any movies. Where they really detailed.
Ugh, good question, but no, unless…The Silent City, perhaps. Not so much the classic Fallout influences, like Brazil and City of Lost Children, didn’t notice much of that.
Did it really look at all convincing?
Not sure what you mean there. If you mean, did it look realistic, did it convince me of being a real world…kinda halfway in between. Probably will with better graphics
Is exploring going to be fun?
Couldn’t tell, the demo is railroaded (because you can’t really show a freeroaming demo)
What are the top ten things you liked and disliked personally?
TEN?!Uh, roughly listed
Like:
1. The look of nuclear explosions
2. the Protectron robot
3. The local cult sign
4. The scenic overlook sign
5. The look of the vault
6. The look of the PipBoy
7. The rough impression of dialogue mechanics (not knowing yet how it’ll work on choice and consequences inside dialogue, though)
8. Bits of Megaton
9. The view of the city from Tenpenny Towers
10. The “nice hat, Calamity Jane” lineDislike
1. The amount of nuclear explosions
2. The Brotherhood of Steel
3. The Supermutants
4. Mr Handy
5. The DPS concept
6. The overseer’s “goons”
7. The apparent lack of consequences of drugs
8. The look of dialogue
9. The pace of combat
10. The dead people outside of the vault door
Fallout 3: A Post Nuclear Blog 
Brother None, if you’re reading this, how do you think non-ranged combat will be executed in VATS then? Suppose you want to target one enemy that is within your range, and then proceed to the next enemy who is out of your range, what will happen then? You’ve queued up two actions, but how will the second one execute if you’re not within range?
Another thing that is bothering me is this: VATS is supposed to be a replacement for the aimed attack in TB combat. I am guessing that number of APs should be equal to that of one turn in TB combat. I am wondering how is it possible that you will be able to queue up actions when in normal circumstances you were able to have only one or two aimed attacks in the original Fallout. It seems to me that it would ruin the balance. What happens to the remaining queued actions if you spend your APs? Do they get canceled or do they start executing once your APs recharge enough?
Fixed things for you Gimli.
Pete queued up to 3 aimed shots in my demo. I believe the last actions weren’t necessary though, since if i recall correctly the target was dead by that time. However, it is possible to queue a lot of stuff, but I haven’t seen how that plays out if they are all needed. (it also should be noted that Pete queued a reload in VATSn while Todd said only aimed shots are taken in VATS. this could be interpreted in many ways, i guess.)
We’ve seen no melee combat at all, so we can’t answer anything about that. I dont believe Pete knew the answer to our melee questions. I don’t think it has been implemented yet in any other way than how Oblivion used to work. So they’ll need to adapt it to VATS before answering any questions about it.