E3 Hands On At TGR

Capitol City

Fallout 3 preview at The Games Reviews:

Perhaps the only thing better than actually playing Fallout 3 was watching everyone else do it. Looking at the ten or so consoles around the room, I was struck by how no two people were doing the same thing. One soul had headed straight for Megaton, found out some more of his character’s backstory, and immediately set off for the next objective. Another player was simply wandering the world blasting raiders and looking for loot. Still another soul had wandered to Megaton, shot the sheriff, and was now being pursued by an angry mob of citizens who were demanding his head. Hines took a particular joy watching this poor chap as he was chased across the map by gun toting and bottle wielding townsfolk. I suppose even in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, some people just don’t take kindly to folks who shoot the only existing authority figure in cold blood. Also, since the sheriff was a figure important to the story, Hines hinted that now the poor soul who slaughtered him would have to work that much harder to get the missions necessary to advance the plot.

Still, with a game this massive, engrossing, and fun, who needs objectives? You could just wander the wastelands, Dogmeat by my side, snapping pretend pictures of former DC landmarks. We can see the postcards now, “Greetings from the smoking hole that used to be the White House!”

New Fallout 3 Pictures

New Fallout 3 pictures at the official site. Megaton and PipBoy3000 are interesting, the breakdancer Supermutant is weird. Spotted on the Bethblog.

Fallout 3: The New Pictures At PcGames.de

Now that I’ve talked about the new info and pics about Fallout 3, it’s time to see the said pictures by yourselves. PC Games.de has a gallery with almost all the new pictures.

A warm thanks to King of Creation from DuckAndCover for finding this.

BOS blasts MiniGun

Car explodes with a nuclear mushroom, Supermutants close by

Behemoth

Post Apoc town

Inside Megaton

Vault Dweller blasts Supermutant leg

Feral Ghoul

A Boy and His Dog

Megaton

10 years birthday party

SuperMutant shooting MiniGun in Capital City

BOS shoots Feral Ghoul

vault dweller and dogmeat

360 Magazine Fallout Special

As I’ve written before UK’s 360 magazine made a special 9 pages article on Fallout 3. I bought the mag, now here are a few notes on what you can find there:

Intro:

“Change is just about as inevitable as things come” is what we can read in the beginning of the piece. That sets the tone for a long introduction where the events that took place since Bethsoft got the license are shown, with a few historical inaccuracies in the middle.

This prepares a narrative that we can find throughout the entire article, of the “most rabid and dedicated fans” there is attacking Bethsoft for “the crime of purchasing the rights” of the Fallout franchise, while Bethsoft, that has key players that are “huge fans themselves”, try to reinvent and inovate.

Bethsoft is lead by someone that “those that worked for him openly refer to him as a genius”, named Todd Howard, and they do take Fallout 1 as their standard for cannon. While they take into account Fallout 2, and even a little of Fallout Tactics and Fallout: BOS, they always go back to the original for inspiration.

And here we get on to Fallout 3.

Development:

Now in here there’s nothing new from all the others previews, I’m afraid to say. Todd mentions that radioactivity is treated in a less realistic way than it should because that’s how people in the 50′s movies and Hiroshima documentaries thought nuclear power operated, they don’t confirm or deny the Enclave Radio Stations, Todd confirms return of the 10mm Submachine Gun, and they talk about a fight between Glowing Ones (special Ghouls) and Raiders, where both factions can turn against you, fight with you or you can ignore them.

It ends with Todd Howard saying they expect to do more games in the Fallout world.

The good stuff:

Besides an interview with a spokesperson for the British Ministry of Defense about nuclear weapons and contingency plans for a nuclear war, there is also a lot of info about the old Fallout games. Areas, factions, some characters (they speculate Marcus might show up on another game one day) and a detailed timeline are a real treat for hardcore fans, and a nice intro to newer gamers. I had a feeling while reading it that all that stuff was taken from The Vault, but they don’t credit anyone.

The pictures:

Besides a montage on the first two pages, with the title of the article (“Welcome to your future or how I learned to stop worrying and love Fallout3″), there are a few known images, with a character already seen on the OXM preview, a Brahmin drinking from an almost dried up pond, and a large picture of a BOS knight hitting a Feral Ghoul with shots from a minigun. The ghoul is hurt and drips blood Gears of War style. With burned down grass and an old car burning in the background the picture is quite bigger than the one shown on OXM.

Then there are small pictures of the Vault Dweller shooting a SuperMutant that it’s er, upside down, cutting part of a leg of the creature, the Behemoth in VATS, a Feral Ghoul attacking the player character in a Fallouty room, and this picture that we’ve seen before.

Next there’s a large picture of Dogmeat approaching the Vault Dweller, an example of the G.O.A.T. test showing Charisma, a picture of Megaton, the Vault Dweller’s birthday party, with a wonderful jukebox, and this pic.

So what now?

If you want to have a mini Fallout encyclopedia, need an introduction to the Fallout setting and timeline, or still haven’t found all the scans with the new pictures than do get the mag, if not there’s nothing really special there.