Emil Pagliarulo at the GameTheory Podcast and Next Gen

Lead designer on Fallout 3 Emil Pagliarulo talks a lot about the game and Bethsoft console centric approach to it on the Game Theory Podcast.

Next Gen has a small two pages interview based on the podcast, a few highlights:

NG: Is there any truth to some peoples’ opinion–and this is a lot of the hardcore Fallout fans that are saying this–that games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 that are targeted towards a very large console audience have been, put most cynically, “dumbed down,” or more positively, “made more accessible”? Is there any truth to that? Have you made concessions for the mass market?

Emil: It’s funny. I look at Fallout when I play it every day, and I sometimes think that there’s a lot of old-school hardcore PC stuff in there too, and part of me thinks, “God, is this too inaccessible for console players?” There’s a lot of dialogue to read, a lot of just hacking computers and looking through things like “VAT.” I don’t know. Sometimes I think it’s just the opposite. So I don’t feel like we’re dumbing down the franchise.

…I think we’re starting to find that there is a market for [hardcore “PC RPGs” on consoles]. People like myself and some people that work here actually grew up as hardcore PC guys, and now we’re older, we have kids, we don’t have that much time, so we’ve transitioned. We’re console players now.

But we still have those PC game sensibilities. Those are the games we like. So I think BioShock has a little bit of that too. You can definitely feel the old System Shock roots in that game. So hopefully there’s a trend there.

NG: What do you think of the state of the relationship between PC gaming and console gaming? Is console gaming taking away the PC gamers? I hear a lot of developers say, like you just said, hey, we’re console gamers now.

Emil: I think that may be true to a certain point. I split my time between playing PC games and console games. There is something to be said about having a console and having it being able to play anything, and not having to screw around with video settings and stuff. So there’s definitely an ease-of-use [advantage] with consoles there. I think there’s still a lot of innovation on the PC side. You’re seeing a lot of the Eastern European developers with some really great games. Look at stuff like Stalker or The Witcher. There’s innovation there. I would like to see those games get their fair shot. I think there’s really great stuff there. So [PC gamers migrating to consoles] might be happening to a certain extent in this country, but certainly not in other countries.

Spotted at Kotaku.

GameSpot Video: Start/Select 02/05/08

Vodpod videos no longer available. from www.gamespot.com posted with vodpod

The interview with Pete Hines starts at minute 8:30, more or less. Spotted at NMA.

Canard PC Eight Pages Preview Yet Again

I still couldn’t get the CanardPc magazine but, with the reservations that I haven’t seen it by myself, others did and here are some impressions, starting with Seboss at RPGCodex:

Seboss:I have the preview right here. It’s 6 pages long so I won’t do a full transcript but I could give you guys some more excerpts if you’re interested.

[right after the ability points allocation] Daddy comes back in the room, is very pleased by your agility […] and cites an excerpt of the Apocalypse (“I am the Alpha and the Omega”), a passage of the Bible your former Mom used to like a lot, an element not so insignificant that should play an important role in the main quest.

Fade to black and you’re now at your tenth birthday, ready to get your Pipboy3000, “the indispensable companion of the modern man”. This scene introduces your first social interactions.
You’ll go then from a little flirt with a girl your age through the confrontation with a little bully desiring to strip you from your birthday cake, to a surrealist discussion with a schizophrenic Mr Handy.
And there, I feel reassured. The dialogs and the argument with the dumbfuck in the making come right into the series spirit. During your conversation with the little scum, the game offers you ten different dialog options: immediate cowardly capitulation, insult leading to a brawl, lies, […] spitting on the cake before offering it to him. The list is more than satisfying.

Seboss: The author states that many dialog options have tags like [Lie], [Charm], [Intimidation], [Science] and so one. Very Biowary.

A little later, you’ll eventually receive your first AirSoft Gun, the famous RedRyder that allows you to familiarize with the combat system, then you choose your skills on the benches of the Vault’s school.
Teenage hood will also be the occasion to solve a number of optional quests that influence the perception the other vault dwellers might have of you, as well as your karma and your personality. Undoubtedly, these first minutes make me comfortably euphoric.
[…]
While I was expecting an outright treason of the Fallout setting, more because of ineptitude than vice, I have the feeling the game is spot on. The ambiance, scenery and lighting of the Vault seem perfectly faithful to the series, with just the right dose of rust to enhance claustrophobia.
[…]
In opposition to Oblivion and Morrowind that just kicked you into the game without bonds of any sort, this time Bethesda clearly states its will to make you a part of a community, to create relationships right from the beginning. […] What is the better way to make the player feel lost in the irradiated desert and make him realize the importance of his mission than create a genuine bond to his home just before kicking me out.

Seboss: Well, kicking him out right away worked pretty well in FO1 if you ask me.

About the SPECIAL system:

First satisfaction, the SPECIAL system have really been kept, no facade without substance. Every actions in the game, from the combat to bluff attempts through gambling are resolved by dice rolls against your skills and abilities. However, we can observe a whole lot of discrepancies, starting with this confession painfully extracted from the demonstrator: atypical character builds, like very low intelligence characters, won’t have as many options as in the previous games. Some dialogs are heavily influenced by your IQ, however you can forget about your project of roaming the wastelands with a complete moron barely able to string two syllables together . What’s more shocking for hardcore integrists like me, you can forget about beating the game as a cowardly pacifist weasel: most combats will be inevitable especially during travels and desert and ruins exploration.

Seboss: The wastelands are 65% the size of Cyrodiil, blah blah, the game is supposed to have a lot of landmarks like collapsed buildings, junkyards, diners, motels and baseball fields. These places are inhabited by people influenced by the nature of the location. Baseball fields should have descendants of the Baseball Furries from the movie Warriors, stuff like that.
The author hopes these places won’t feel as generic as the bandit/goblin/wraith tombs of Oblivion , but he seems confident about that.

The game will have a significant dose of level scaling for the main quest. There are three difficuly levels (as you already know), but that seems a bit cheap.

Stimpacks won’t have any side-effects anymore. There are just the regular “Cure Light” potions now.

To this point, the author was pretty confident about the quality of the game. Now there’s the negative part:

Now here’s the point where things get messy. We’re going to get onto the thorny problem of the combat. […] We’ll note that the developers repeated ad nauseam that the efficiency of your shots depend on your statistics and that the FPS skills of the player don’t have any importance, and that all shots fired in real-time mode will be automatically aimed to the torso. [Here goes a lengthy description of the VATS system]
The idea seems to stand theoretically, but in facts I’m far from convinced. Firstly, during the presentation, either he was wearing a Power Armor and holding a Gatling gun and fighting hordes of super mutants armed with heavy machine guns, bakookas and supersledges or fighting ghouls with a 9mm and wearing just a leather armor, the demonstrator was just standing there, shooting long bursts without using any kind of tactics.
Besides, aimed shots, possible even with a minigun, looked far less effective to me than just “run right next to the baddy and empty my magazine in one burst”.

Seboss: Ouch. He also says that “bullet time” death animations are just as pleasant as stuffing rusty nails in your urethra after the third one. Or something like this.

360Zine Preview And Interview

If you download 360Zine you can read a Fallout 3 preview and an interview with Pete Hines:

War. War never changes.” growls the voiceover. The Ink Spots croon I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire through a crackly wireless in a battered, ruined tram, as the camera rises to reveal a devastated Washington DC. Zooming further out, we see a gas mask-wearing brute toting a gigantic gun. Cue titles.

Opening with the series’ most iconic catchphrase, it’s clear that Bethesda have gone to some lengths to ensure that Fallout 3, while very different from its predecessors, is still very recognisably Fallout. The two PC games from the late Nineties attracted a substantial, fanatical cult following, and it’s this bunch that have been watching the game’s development as closely as they possibly can. Suffice to say that Bethesda are under pressure to appeal both to franchise veterans and create an inclusive experience for everyone.

New Fallout 3 Fan Interview

From the Bethblog:

Last year, once all the dust cleared from our initial unveiling of Fallout 3, we provided you guys with a chance to ask some burning questions about the game. Given we’ve just had another blitz of previews come out, we figured now was as good of a time as any to give you another opportunity.

Starting today in the Fallout 3 Discussion thread of the BGS forums, you can start suggesting questions you’d like to see answered. You can also share your questions in the comments section of this blog post, or simply by emailing us. To help make sure we’re answering the questions you guys want to know, I’ve entrusted three of our community members to help out with the process — Alexander, Briosafreak, Gizmo. If you’ve got suggestions, or think you might be able to help them out, drop them a line.

If you want your question considered, you have between now and Sunday, May 18th to post your questions through the channels listed above. Once we’ve got the final questions, we’ll work on getting answers back to you guys.

Leave your questions on the blogpost, or in this topic on the Bethsoft Fallout 3Forum, or just send them to me or the other guys.

Here’s the result of the first Fan Interview.

Fallout 3 Gets Kieronized-Updated

Fallout 3 preview at Eurogamer, Q&A with Pete Hines coming soon:

Given that the developer is responsible for the most successful Western-style RPG of recent years, Oblivion, it was a little surprising, during Fallout 3’s demonstration, to get the sense of a team with something to prove. While there’s much about FO3 that recalls Oblivion, there are also regular elements that arise as if to signify, “You know – we’re good enough to deal with a legend as big as Fallout. Watch this.” In itself, this is a tad touching. A team like Bethesda would probably be justified in going, “Damn the lot of you – our way is the best way.” The result is something that – on these impressions – seems to be the next logical step on from Oblivion, while infusing as much of what made Fallout Fallout as they reasonably can.[…]

It’s at your birthday party, and you’ve just received your Pip Boy wrist terminal and promised your first work detail, but between the amusement of robots ruining birthday cakes, you get your initial conversations. The first one is standard enough (though it introduces the concept of lying), but the next one we’re shown is with a bullying peer by the name of Butch, where you appear to have at least six cake-related options available; everything from a diplomatic, sharing-it-fifty-fifty option, to the openly perverse provocation of spitting in it and then giving it him. Bethesda’s Pete Hines, demoing, stresses that these options will all play out differently down the line. The point is to show that we’re a long way from the “Yes, I’ll help you”/”Yes, I’ll help you for three pounds fifty and a cheeseburger”/”I WILL KILL YOU AND TAKE YOUR STUFF” conversation options with which most modern RPGs satisfy themselves. Hines and co. have talked about the game being a much more dense conversational game than Oblivion, and this is them showing how they’re walking the walk as well as talking the post-apocalyptic talk.[…]

Also worthy of a quick appreciative nod is the age of one sequence, where as a Toddler you make your way around your room making the literal first baby steps in the game. You also select your future abilities in a fully illustrated kids’ book called “You’re Special!”, arranging your assorted statistics. Is it too much to read this as a pointed eye-rolling at the perennial accusation of dumbing down? I suspect not.[…]

Combat including the VATS (Vault-tec Assisted Targeting System) is also demonstrated – and here my expectations are somewhat confounded. I came not entirely convinced by the VATS system’s utility – it struck me as the worst of both possible real-time and turn-based worlds – and leaving quietly impressed. Related to your dexterity, you gain an amount of pause-time, which you can spend on specifically calling shots – for example, aiming at arms to lose their weapons or just pummelling their body to knock them down. This then plays out in a cinematic video of the conflict, with agreeably macho angles. It looks actually stylish – in fact, this turn-based-game with 360-era graphics makes me even think that a fully turn-based game would have worked. Why can’t we have a turn-based game which goes for a crazy graphic effect? It’ll have the attraction of being distinctive, anyway.

This is especially pointed as the non-turn-based side fails to convince as much as you’d hope.[…]

Which is unfair, but that’s how it is. On a personal level, I found Mass Effect had a similar problem – the hope has to be that Fallout has a similar grace to Bioware’s game. That is, the combat is just about good enough to serve the purpose the game demands of it, and leaves the rest of the game’s charms to get its hooks into you.[…]

As with any game as big of this, we’ll only really get a chance to see how it hangs together when we stride out into the waste to see what’s out there. I’m looking forward to it.

There’s a lot more there, worth a good read. The “I’m Special!” book is just an homage to the games ruleset, and there’s nothing really close to Turn Based combat in VATS, but I can see his point, I asked myself the same thing a lot of times in the last months.

Update: Kieron Gillen clarified what he meant on that “turn based” remark, on a comment in Rock,Paper, Shotgun:

In passing, if any of the NMA guys are reading, the bit where I talk about how I’d like to see this turn-based thing go further, was me badly phrasing that the “Give orders/see results cinematically” is a bit like how turn-based games work. Clearly the pause-time attacks of VAS aren’t a true turn-based game, but it shows that a turn-based like interaction lead to cute results, at least on first impression. Since that’s relatively strong and the normal-combat is relatively weak, I’d have been interested in seeing them pursue it a bit more.

I should have been a lot more explicit with what I said.

Fallout 3 First Look at Videogamer

New Fallout 3 preview, from Videogamer.com:

It’ll take something pretty special to follow The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Bethesda Softworks’ must-own next-gen RPG ushered in the new generation of consoles spectacularly well, offering hundreds of hours of gameplay in a world impossible to imagine only a few years ago. Its success, though, must have put some pressure on the developer. With a legion of new fans and a hardcore army of long-time followers, only something of truly epic proportions could follow Oblivion. It’s a good job Bethesda had Fallout 3 up its sleeve then.

For Fallout 3 to have the success of Oblivion it’s going to have to be more than a game for hardcore fans. Vault 101 and Pip boy mean nothing to most people, and they didn’t to me either. This didn’t stop the game, demoed by Bethesda’s Peter Hines, looking extremely promising and very different to the fantasy setting of Oblivion.[…]

On to the dangers you’ll face then. During our demo these came in the form of mutants and Ghouls. Super mutants are your biggest foe in the game, with super mutant strongholds being set up across the wasteland. You’ll also face Ghouls (humans exposed to extreme amounts of radiation), with one particular variant being so full of radiation that it glows. How easily you spot these enemies depends on your perception stat, with high level characters seeing enemies on their radar much sooner than beginners.[…]

There’s far more to weapons combat than just targeting an enemy and pressing fire. For one, weapons can take damage and jam during use, meaning you need to keep them in tip-top condition if you’re entering a dangerous area. You can also acquire schematics for special weapon variations of each gun in the game – although these will take some finding. One area, set in what looked like trenches, saw numerous grenade traps. Peter was able to avoid them, but the pursuing super mutants weren’t so lucky. Fallout 3 isn’t a game for kids, so expect plenty of gore too, with limbs flying off in all directions.

Spotted on the Bethblog, that also talks about some Italian coverage of the game.

Fallout 3 and Greyness at Bit-Tech.net

Bit-tech net has a new Fallout 3 preview:

How much of this that Bethesda has really taken on board was something we didn’t really get to see and, because the game is still in alpha and filled with placeholder dialogue, Pete was understandably wary of showing us much of the game’s dialogues.

What we can say though is that it has a definite impact on other areas of the game, such as combat and puzzle solving. While we will discuss combat in a little while, it’s the puzzle solving side of things that really seemed interesting and Bethesda has made the controversial choice of using a mini-game to represent players hacking computers – something that was arguably a weak spot of last year’s darling, BioShock. Here though, hacking is more sensibly handled. It’s also just a tad more realistic and theme-fitting.

With a high enough Science skill, players can attempt to hack computers they find on the way, which is done by uncovering the password from within a BIOS dump file. Opening up these files reveals a screen filled with garbled information, including possible candidates for the password. It’s up to the player to choose the right one from the list, with higher skills giving more guesses and the player’s PipBoy companion provides feedback to help narrow down the search – telling you what letter the password ends in for example.

Ok, so it sounds a little rudimentary and will no doubt get dull after a while, but like in BioShock hacking is never mandatory and players always have another option. Unlike Oblivion it’s also possible to crash a system permanently, making the stakes much higher.[…]

Of course, if the changes in perspective weren’t enough, there’s also been controversy coming from the other side and after Bethesda’s Oblivion, many fans are worried that the enemy themselves will be spoiled. On that note we have both some good and some bad news.

The good news first then – enemies don’t level with the player. From the start of the game all the enemies are fixed, unlike in Oblivion. You won’t run across lowly raiders in Super Power Armour, and nor will rats get harder and harder to beat as you play more and more of the game. There’s none of all that.

On the downside, it does seem like Bethesda has polarised the enemies a little if you ask me. One of the things that made Fallout stand out was that there never was a true sense of right and wrong as such things as chivalry had long died in the wasteland.

On the one front, Bethesda has mirrored this once more by using Karma to track the player’s actions and popularity, but on the other you won’t be finding any friendly mutants like in past games. Pete confirmed with us that all the Super Mutants are dead – “Once a creature, always a creature.”

While that definitely makes the game a lot simpler and more accessible to players who want to boil Fallout 3 down to little more than a shooter, it does kind of feel like some of the greyness has been lost as a result. A world of black and white and clearly defined sides isn’t bad, but it is a little less involving.

They did loved what they saw, but raised some doubts about a few design choices. Not your standard Fallout 3 preview, for sure, that’s interesting.

V.A.T.S. And Power Armor

On the Gametap preview we talked about earlier there was at one point a sentence that caused some controversy:

One interesting side detail: A Bethesda representative was demonstrating the combat and had power armor equipped. While he was basically a nigh-impenetrable tank, his visibility was cut down, so the perception stat had a significant penalty–one that made VATS nearly impossible to use[…]

Lead Fallout 3 Designer Emil Pagliarulo went to the Bethesda Games Fallout 3 Forum and had this to say about the issues raised in that statement:

I know there are a lot of questions on this issue, and there’s only so much I can say, but I will say this:

Giving any kind of specifics right now is a bit of an exercise in futility. I could tell you what the stats on the Power Armor are at this very moment, but then you’d get the game in a few months, see that they’re different, and consider me a filthy liar.

The truth is, we’re in the stage of development now where systems are getting constantly balanced and rebalanced. So Power Armor will certainly affect your abilities in some capacity, but exactly what it modifies has changed, and will likely change again.

Though I will clarify one thing — nothing flat out prevents you from going into V.A.T.S. Some armors grant different bonuses and penalties, and that can affect your Action Points (and certain weapons certainly require more Action Points than others). But, as it’s the player’s job the manage this stuff, using V.A.T.S. (and using it effectively) is possible regardless of what you’re wearing.

Fallout 3: Previews Galore

Starting with Gamespot:

Our updated tour of the game started with the very beginning–how you create your character by being born to your mother, Katherine, and your scientist father, James (voiced by actor Liam Neeson). Through a hazy first-person cinematic sequence from the perspective of the operating table, you can choose your character’s gender and name, as well as preview your character’s adult appearance by way of the vault’s computer system…then become dimly aware that something has gone terribly wrong with your mother during the childbirth.

You then jump forward a year later to the age of a toddler, where you use a basic movement tutorial to crawl out of your playpen and access the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. book–a book that lets you choose your character’s abilities by way of the classic attribute system from the Fallout games (strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence, agility, and luck). You then jump ahead nine years to your 10th birthday, at which point you gain the ability to speak with other characters (such as the other children at your birthday party) and use the PipBoy 3000 portable wrist computer, which is given to you by the vault’s “overseer,” or head administrator. The PipBoy acts as a journal, status indicator, and quest log that will help you keep track of any tasks you need to perform. You’ll even get to take on a few rudimentary quests at your party or just watch the many-armed robot of the future, Mr. Handy, mangle your birthday cake with one of its buzz saw-arm extensions. Later, you’ll be whisked away to additional tutorial areas, such as a target range, where you can practice the game’s real-time first-person shooter combat.[…]

We then jumped ahead to a different sequence where we were explored a ruined tenement infested by feral ghouls. Those familiar with Fallout lore will remember that “ghoul” is just a term used to describe any human that has been exposed to such severe amounts of radiation as to become severely deformed physically, but feral ghouls have actually lost their minds and have become aggressive animals. Their deadlier brethren, “glowing feral ghouls,” have an unhealthy fluorescent green glow that sets off your PipBoy’s Geiger counter and eventually make your character extremely ill if you let them zap you with their radiation-based attacks.[…]

In fact, the Xbox 360 version of the game (and the PC version of the game, which is being planned to include Games for Windows Live Functionality) will have achievement points that will require you to play through more than once. Like in the previous games, you’ll have a karma statistic that goes up when you perform good deeds and goes down when you perform evil ones. Achievements will be given for completing the game with both a high karma and a low karma.

And now for GameShark:

Morality plays an important role in the game, influencing the missions that become available to you in your journeys across the wastelands. Whether you aspire to benevolence, remain neutral, or descend into deviance, unique avenues open up specific to your behavior. A roving gang leader may not talk to you if your karma classifies you as a goodie-two-shoes; acquire a bad reputation as a murderer and thief, however, and perhaps that ruffian may hit you up for a shady mission or two. What quests you complete and the decisions you make come together to determine the game’s ending, of which Bethesda claims there are hundreds.

Finally IGN XBox 360:

It’s during your toddler phase where dad also introduces you to a quote that will apparently play an important role in the game (We won’t print it here for spoiler reasons, but if you’re curious and don’t mind a spoiler, it’s taken from the Book of Revelation in the Bible. Look for Chapter 21, Verse 6). And, keeping up with the fun, jamming the A button when you’re a toddler makes you utter the word “Daddah.”

Once this is done, you’ll jump ahead in time again, to your 10th birthday party. This is a coming of age of sorts in Vault 101, as the administrator himself gives you your Pip-Boy 3000, a wrist computer that handles everything from inventory system to quest log to character management and more. You’ll finally get a chance to talk to people instead of making gurgling noises, and this is your introduction to the conversation system. You’ll also get a BB gun for your birthday, which is your first encounter with the combat system in the game, but we’ll cover that a bit later.

That was our taste of the character development system, and we didn’t get to see what happens when you get older and take the GOAT (Generalized Occupational Aptitude Test), basically an SAT for post-nuclear war survivors. But next up was something that all Fallout fans can get giddy about: Dogmeat.

More to come.

Fallout 3: It’s Raining Previews Halleluja

Let’s start with Gamespy:

Turns out that super mutants have taken hold of the nation’s capitol following the nuclear holocaust. Bethesda’s Pete Hines, our host during the demo, gave a guided tour of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (the park area between the Capitol building and the Lincoln Memorial, which has incidentally been stripped to its foundations in Fallout 3‘s world), which wasn’t much more than a series of tunnels and trenches surrounded by the ruined husks of former museums and ministries. Hines did battle with super-mutants armed with all sorts of weapons, including RPGs and powered sledgehammers called “supersledges.” He himself was decked out in power armor, and strapped with a mini-gun.

After making short work of the mutants occupying the trenches, a conflict-in-progress came into view as he approached the Capitol building. According to Hines, the humans going up against the mutant occupiers were mercenaries working for the Talon Corporation. Rather than join the battle in earnest, though, to mark the end the demo, he simply lobbed a few Fat Men (those mini-nukes that caused quite a stir when the game was first announced), and unceremoniously hurled himself in the wake of one. Thank you for watching. We’ll be seeing more of Fallout 3 come E3 in July.

Now for TeamXBox:

As an example, you might be taking on a ghoul in a dark room filled with debris, where you only have clear sight of the creature’s upper body. Activating V.A.T.S. shows that the head has a much better likelihood of damage, followed by the left arm with a slightly lesser percentage and the rest of the body having nearly no chance of getting a shot in. Indicating to V.A.T.S. to focus on the head, it then takes control of your gunfire and starts shooting rounds at your target. “Action points,” which are based on your character’s Agility attribute, determine how much V.A.T.S. will be able to do in a single “turn.” (Other stats, of course, come into play, such as a better Perception stat will enable you to aim at targets farther from you or will make you more aware of targets in your vicinity sooner.)

You can choose to try blasting the ghoul with a more shooter-style free-aim method, but getting the computer-assisted targeting will come in handy when you’re in a critical situation or if you’re the kind of player who isn’t as inclined toward being a shooter savant. It would seem that this should broaden the range of players who’ll want to play Fallout 3—it isn’t strictly a shooter and it isn’t strictly a roll-the-dice type of RPG, but rather enables you to tailor the action more toward the genre you prefer.

And Games Radar:

At first, all you can do is cry (hit the A button) and listen to the doctor speak, who happens to be your father. This is just the first of several quick stops through your childhood, which cleverly form the tutorial and character creation section of the game. When someone asks if you’re a boy or a girl, a selection box opens and your dad’s response is dictated by your decision. You choose your name, and then customize your face on a Growth Projection Machine. Fallout offers several preset character faces, or you can construct someone from scratch – don’t worry, there are dozens and dozens of facial hair options. After finishing that, the game skips ahead one year.

At age one, your father’s face is no longer masked by a surgical mask, and the A button triggers “Dada” instead of crying. His face is a reflection of the choices that you made for your own appearance. When he leaves, you can crawl around the room. The very first mission is to unlock your metal playpen and find the book You’re S.P.E.C.I.A.L., which is another character creation device.

They are a bit too alike for my taste, but go check them if you have the time.

Fallout 3: Kotaku Preview

It’s time for the Kotaku preview:

When I saw Fallout 3 at last year’s E3 I thought it looked cool but not being one of the cult of Fallout, I viewed it with the same sort of interest that I do most games I know nothing about: Curious, but not what I would call overly excited. All this changed however, this past Tuesday when I headed downtown to check out the new build of the game that Bethesda was showing off.

From a training system tied to a child’s development to the fifties-meets-Steampunk look of weapons, Fallout 3 may not have a solid date yet, but after seeing this build, I can honestly say I am well and truly smitten.[…]

Everything I saw about this game was impressive, but what really got my attention was its overall art style. The optimistic fifties design juxtaposed against the destroyed landscape is a great choice and is seen everywhere from the HUD to the atomic design of Vault 101. Seeing it sprinkled around the world gave me the same feeling I got the first time I saw the art-deco wonders of BioShock. It’s nostalgic yet at the same time seems so fresh and new because we rarely see that style of design in modern games, especially FPSs. It also gave the design team a chance to inject the game with a subtle humor that is evident throughout, even seeping its way into the dialog choices and sound.

The team is still on target for a release in the fall of this year but we still weren’t able to wrangle a solid date out of them. One thing we did hear however, was a promise of a hands on at E3 so you can bet I will be signing up for that one.

DeMarco has some sort of SteamPunk/FPS fixation. Or does he?

Fallout 3: Now With 500 Plus Endings

New Fallout 3 Preview at Destructoid:

In proper following of the previous Fallout games, your character will eventually come across the ultimate bad ass doggy companion, Dogmeat. His owner destroyed by some means of carnage or another, you approach a wandering Dogmeat in an elaborate junkyard and engage in conversation to eventually convince him to tag along. Naturally his responses are limited to friendly woofs and barks, but with enough persuasion Dogmeat determines to aid you in your journey in search of your father across the post-apocolyptic landscape. This companionship proves to be highly beneficial as you can request Dogmeat to search the surrounding area for helpful items such as weapons, food, and drugs. The diligent dog that he is, Dogmeat will search your surrounding area for up to an hour to scour every inch of land for items you could use. However, mistreatment of Dogmeat and assigning him to dangerous tasks could result in the loss of a faithful friend forever, so it’s wise to be pre-cautious when sending him off to dutifully fulfill your requests.[…]

What’s waiting to be demonstrated now is the procedure through the various in-game quests that eventually determine the nature of your character’s morality. According to Pete, the writing for the game is a combined effort between game designers, engineers, and producers – selective game development teams build individual quests and eventually take their finished work back to the rest of the team for review. Will this approach generate a cohesive yet diverse set of side-quests for the player to explore? Furthermore the main quest can be completed in a mere 20-25 hours, and amidst discussing the hussle and bussle regarding the proposed 200 endings Pete revealed that they were up to 500-something endings now. It’s important to note that these ‘endings’ could easily be something as minimal as a variation in the narrative depending on what you managed to accomplish, but the question still remains as to how (or why) one would possibly experience all of the endings.

As it is, Bethesda has given us something crunchy enough to chew on until the next teaser. As for me, I believe the ultimate success of Fallout 3 solely depends on the complexity and variety of experiences derived from the individual quests. I hope for and look forward to participating in the reverred moral ambiguity and rich dialogue that was so preciously celebrated in the past Fallout games, but has yet to be revealed to the public. When asked whether the moral choices in Fallout 3 were presented as black and white options, such as is the case in BioShock, Pete replied that there were a lot of gray areas in this game. With hope, these gray areas are what will truly define Fallout 3 and aptly set it within the ranks of its predecessors.

Interesting read, although they seem to confuse Feral Ghouls with regular Ghouls, and no new pictures are shown.

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.

Fallout 3: First and Third Person

Emil Pagliarulo clarifies what you can do in the several viewpoints used in Fallout 3:

Hey all!

Sorry for the confusion. Let me clarify that a bit.

I meant, in general, the game is fully playable in third person. You can run around, adventure, get into combat (“run and gun”) etc. all in third person, and the camera was designed to accommodate that kind of gameplay, unlike the third-person camera in Oblivion, which was more of a “vanity mode.”

You can zoom the camera back pretty far in third-person, but there comes a point where it becomes less and less effective the farther back you pull the camera, just because you’re so damn small and it’s hard to gauge where the crosshair is at that point. So yeah, you can use third-person for combat, but the game wasn’t really designed to be played with the camera pulled ALL the way back, isometric style. That’s more for fun, and to survey the scene. It’s really no different than any game that lets you zoom a third-person camera back.

A couple other points of clarification:

— When you enter dialogue, the camera zooms into first-person.
— When you enter V.A.T.S. the camera zooms into first-person.

If you were in third-person when you went into one of those mode, you’re back in third-person when you come out.

Fallout 3: Distinctions Between VATS and RTwP

What is the V.A.T.S. system? Is it only a variation of Real Time with Pause Combat? Jay “RadHamster” Woodward disagrees, and here’s why:

One key distinction between VATS and RTwP is that VATS provides a tactical view, complete with chance-to-hit percentages, much like the aimed shot display from the original Fallout, presented in the actual game view as a HUD overlay. This isn’t just eye candy; the percentages are exactly reflecting what’s going to happen “behind the scenes.” That’s quite unlike any RTwP system I’m familiar with.

An even more fundamental distinction between VATS and a real-time-with-pause system is what happens when you leave the “pause” mode and the action resume.

In a RTwP system, when the action starts again, you’re simply back to real-time.

In VATS, when the action starts again, you’re not back to real-time. Rather, you’re in a mode where your character acts quickly, while the rest of the world is heavily slowed down. Again, the results of your actions are purely statistics-driven, based on the percentage chances that were presented in the tactical view. And again, that’s different from any RTwP system that I’m aware of.

Obviously VATS is different than taking a turn. But I can tell you, in my own entirely subjective and personal experience, that when I enter VATS, queue up some shots, and fire, it does indeed feel very much like I have chosen to “take a turn” at that moment, in the sense that the world stops and what I choose to do happens more-or-less “immediately” and in a purely stat-based fashion.

Do note that I’m not saying anything new about VATS here; I’m just contrasting the major points of distinction with RTwP. As Brio pointed out earlier, all of this detail and more can be found in the official fan interview; I recommend checking it out.

This and other issues of combat in Fallout 3 are being discussed here. What do you think?

Fallout 3 at OXM: First Impressions

I still haven’t seen the new issue of the XBox Official Magazine, with the six pages special on Fallout 3, but xXShankstahXx already posted on the Bethesda Games Fallout 3 forum a small preview of what’s in there, a few highlights from the new pics:

Pic 1 – A picture of a Feral Ghoul. Partially torn pants, skinny to the bone body, and loose eye. Looks like same detail amount from the zombies in Oblivion, but a lot different appearance.
Pic 2 – A picture of the Pip-Boy. On the bottom has the 3 basic section buttons (stats, items, data). It seems like it has the same sub-sections feature from Oblivion where in the stats section it displays status, SPECIAL, skills, perks, and general. The screen with a green background is in the Stats/Status section stating the HP, AP, XP, a guy named Albert – Level 5, 6 different body parts each with bars (head and left leg crippled, so says crippled instead). Behind the bars is that main blonde creepy guy. Apparently a dotted line on the crippled face/leg while rest is whole lined (crying face included). Also says CND, RAD, and EFF on side of screen.
Pic 3 – Picture of Vault 101. Likely your 10th birthday with the party hats. Mostly gray, metal architecture with red chairs.
Pic 4 – Picture of the book called you’re SPECIAL!. It’s on page 4 stating, “C is for Charisma, it’s why people think I’m great! I make my friends all laugh and smile, and never want to hate!” (I feel like an idiot after typing that. Moving on.)
Pic 5 – Picture of Super Mutant Behemoth. Reminds me of that super buff guy from 300, but skin is copper looking with metallic parts attached. Using a firehydron(sp?) as a weapon. Some of the interface shown. Enemies health on the bottom center of screen which looks like the line with bars when you’re changing radio stations on an older radio (I bet this only makes sense to me). Bottom right is the AP meter and bottom left is the HP. Below HP bar is some weird dots on a line (maybe the compass). Below bottom right are something that says CHD with a bar and split off on the other side is simply a 1/6 (grenades amount?)
Pic 6 – Picture of a man blowing the leg off of some mutant. A lot more blood then in Oblivion shown, but not anything unrealistic like GoW. Sub-machine gun used and the person shooting has no face protection.
Pic 7 – A talking screen with someone outside the Vault. The man has a gun on his back, bald, with some facial hair. Has this armor that seems like connected piece of iron or some other metal, but is varied to the extent that it may be scraps latched together by leather. The dialogue options are, “You could come with me. I could use a hand.” and, “Finding a crew might be tough. Good luck though.” (Guess he’s a raider)
Pic 8 – Picture of a well armored person using what seems like a mini-gun.
Pic 9 – Over the shoulder picture of player running towards Dogmeat. Gun shown on back.
Pic 10 – A distant view of Ramshackle, which states, “was built from the parts of a downed airliner.”
Pic 11 – A picture of the player shooting the Behemoth in an over the shoulder view. The number 101 is shown on the back of the players shirt.
Pic 12 – Picture of the character and Dogmeat in the middle of a rural, ghost town.

There’s also talk more talk of Dogmeat and other companions, the creation of new weapons with pieces of used weapons, the Galaxy Free Radio, inspiration for their death sequences comes from Burnout with their crash mode, and when your character is born and you choose your sex and appearance “you can press A to cry (360 version obviously)”.

Any comments? And thanks xXShankstahXx.