Fallout 3

[Flawless]

Re: Fallout 3 Website Is Now Up

New Fallout 3 website is up

...

Fallout 3 Q&A - E3 Thoughts and More
Executive producer Todd Howard discusses Fallout 3's impressive E3 showing and what's next for the promising role-playing game.

GS: Everyone's interested in the VATS combat system. Can you tell us more about how the system works? For instance, you go into battle, pause and access VATS, target an enemy's body part, and then what happens? Does the game take control from there? Does it automatically pause once combat actions are complete?

TH: It's hard to describe without seeing it, but you stop time and are allowed to queue up attacks based on how many action points you have. And then you press the "go" button. The actions you chose are then played back for you cinematically--but fast. It only lasts a few seconds unless something amazing happens, like someone's head explodes. Once the playback is done, the camera warps back to where it had been.

[Flawless]

Re: Fallout 3 Website Is Now Up

OXM screenshot scans and article excerpts

• "When we started this, we would go to great lengths to explains the differences from Oblivion," explains Fallout 3's executive producer, Todd Howard. "If you're talking to an enthusiast, there are so many differences, and we feel it's under-selling the game to say it's Oblivion with guns. But when we started talking to more consumer-oriented magazines, we'd have, like, two seconds...and we'd say, 'it's like post-apocalyptic Oblivion with guns.' And they're like, 'Awesome!' To Joe Public, it's mainly first-peron, wide-open game and you get to do what you want. The game it's closest to is Oblivion. So now when someone asks, 'Is it Oblivion with guns?' my main answer is, 'in all the best ways.'" The truth is, the list of comparable titles is pretty short. As Lead Designer Emil Pagliarulo puts it, "How many massively single-player role-playing games are there?"

• [on character creation] For instance, if you're hypothetically called on to eliminate rad roaches from the cellar, would you smash them with a pipe or shoot them with a gun? Pete Hines, Bethesda's VP of public relations and marketing, says your answers determine "the three [skills] you're oging to focus on that get a big boost at the start. Every time you level up, you get points to spend on improving any of your skills, so that's what is increasing as the game goes along."

• As is the Bethesda standard, if you can see it, you can visit it. You'll need to navigate shattered roads of crumbling pavement, and your travels will frequently take you through the hollow husks of schools and office buildings - chilling reminders of what used to be. One such remnant is Dot's Diner, which must have looked gee-golly keen when it was all decked out in chrome and neon. Now it's rusted and ruinted - and from the look of the fresh corpses and traps inside, the brutal wasteland wanderers known as Raiders recently used it as a base.

• Guns like the Chinese Assault Rifle or Fallout's signature 10mm sub-machine gun wear out over time; as a weapon degenerates, its rate of fire slows and it loses accuracy. But two crappy guns can be combined to make on really reliable one...aat least, until it, too, wears out and needs to be ditched or combined. We enjoyed conventional weapons like the flamethrower (are they ever not fun?), but we got the biggest blast from the Fat Man, a shoulder-mounted launcher of miniature nuclear bombs, which detonate with a small but horrific mushroom cloud. Other weapons are purely DIY affairs - as you rummage through wreckage, you'll find schematics for weapons such as rocket launchers or the clever shrapnel bomb, made out of a Vault-Tec lunchbox and bottlecaps.

• Whether you're fighting hulking Super Mutants in the trenches outside of what used to be the capitol steps, blasting irradiated zombie-like Ghouls in the hollowed-out offices of the Durwich Building, or squaring off against Talon Corporation mercenaries in the wastelands

• Bethesda's using the turn-based pause (sic - NMA) to deliver a powerful payoff: When the shots are fired, you'll see them land in the flesh of your enemy from one of several cinematic angles. And it's from those dramatic fly-bys and follow-cams that you'll realize the Vault's quaint 1950s vibe is merely a distraction for the fountains of blood and gleeful amounts of gore that highlight Fallout 3. "I think it's more in the Tarantine fashion, which is to have some fun with it," says Howard. "It keeps it almost surreal. All these posters and the music are winking, but when the guys die, it's over-the-top. It's rendered really nicely, so on some level, it's believable - but it's ridiculous. That's the point."
  
  "It would be a lot less fun without that level of gore," adds Pagliarulo. "It's part of the visceral experience. You laugh your *** off when you see a mutant's leg get blown off. It never gets old - it hasn't yet."

• And that's the final piece of gear you'll need to pack before your vacation at the end of the world: a wicked sense of humor. "It's so depressing that you have to see the humor in it," says Pagliarulo. "If not, you'll lose your mind or slit your wrists. Part of your brain refuses to admit it will ever happen, so you have to look at it and laugh. The dark humor of talking to an old lady who's really nice to you, and then blow her head off, put her head on a counter, and pretend to talk to her...there's a certain charm to that."

Sidebar:

MISERY LOVES COMPANY

• You won't travel the wastes alone, but companionship will be infrequent. One sidekick is Dogmeat, the reincarnation of a fan-favorite four-legged friend from earlier Fallouts. When the junkyard dog joins your party, he'll assist you in combat, while also scavenging for food and weapons. "We're still messing with how your companions heal, but you can give him stimpacks if he's hurt," says Howard. "We're not sure how much of that [companion maintenance] is interesting. But we think Dogmeat is going to be pretty popular - 'I'm going to do the Mad Max thing and wander the wasteland with my dog.'"
  
  You'll also have the Pip-Boy's radio to keep you company. One-man radio plays on Galaxy Free Radio as well as popular hits from the 1940s offer a cheeky, cheery backdrop to the devastation. Splitting open eight-foot-tall nuclear monstrosities while whistling along to Cole Porter's "Anything Goes"...well, that's simply hilarious.

Side-notes:

• THAT'S FRESH: We visited Bethesda's offices on February 1. The build we were shown for this article was date January 31. It doesn't get more current than that.

• WELCOME TO THE PALINDROME: Fallout 3's Vault number was chosen partly for its aesthetics. The team felt the number 101 simply looked good on the back of the jumpsuit.

• GROSS: VATS gore artist Grant Struthers has such intensely disgusting reference materials in his area that he posts a three-stage "Nausea induction level" warning outside his cubicle.

[Flawless]

Re: Fallout 3 Website Is Now Up

New Screens

[ThaGenecyst]

Re: Fallout 3 Website Is Now Up

Bethesda reveals a birth, a dog, and 500 endings.

With no magazine to finish this week, executive editor Shawn Elliott and editor-in-chief Jeff Green went to a hotel in downtown San Francisco in the middle of the day, sat down on a couch, and got a demo of Fallout 3 from Bethesda's Pete Hines. Here is their report.

Jeff Green: I've played a lot of games in my life, and a lot of weird games, and a lot of weird games that have had weird beginnings. But I don't know if I've ever played a game that started with me emerging from my mother's womb.

Shawn Elliot: Prey's sphincters are as close as I've come, but sure, Fallout 3's "opening" moments are more than a perineum away. I'm sorry. I really wrote that. Seriously, though, the cunning way that Bethesda takes the thinking behind traditional tutorials and character creation interfaces and naturally integrates these game conventions into the game's narrative is impressive. You crawl around a playpen in first-person perspective; you press a button to cry and call for daddy; you learn about strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence, and other RPG traits by browsing children's books -- has any game truly attempted to tell the story of a life from birth to death?

Jeff: This is great. Now anyone who Googles "womb" and "sphincter" will come straight to this article.

Shawn: And perineum -- where heaven meets hell. T'aint an RPG, t'aint an FPS.

Jeff: Uh, anyway. Yeah, Bethesda did that same kind of cool in-game character creation in Oblivion -- but this one is so startling because of this whole birth/baby thing. I mean, it's kind of a bold and strange thing to do given how many (male) gamers need their testosterone validated in their games. And Fallout 3 does have this dark, badass image to it. So gamers are going to bring the game home, rip open the box, and think they're about to start blowing the heads off radiated mutants...and instead they're going to be crawling around in a playpen saying "Dada." Yes, this is essentially just the opening tutorial and won't take up more than 10 minutes, but still, I can see tons of guys yelling "WTF" at their screens, and praying that their brother or mom or friends don't walk in to see them playing the baby simulator.

Shawn: Ten minutes of infancy, that is. Then comes the jump cut that brings us to our 10th birthday/introduction to dialog trees. No matter how hard you try to guarantee that you'll grow into a freckle-faced, pig-nosed person in need of a Youtube video blog, you can rest assured that the other Garbage Pail kids at your party are uglier than you'll ever be. Bethesda's faces are far, far better here than any in Oblivion, but to be frank, I doubt that Vault 101, where we're born, is really radioactivity-free.

The neat thing is, as you choose to be bratty or craven with these kids, your karma stats change to reflect your behavior. Oh, and the other 10-year-olds whispering about forming a Greaser Snake gang? Bethesda's Pete Hines leads us to think that we'll encounter them later in life after they've done just that.

Jeff: Yeah, with all due respect to Bethesda's immense talent in many areas, I don't think I'd go to them for plastic surgery. Anyway, yes, karma factors big in Fallout 3, and the choices you make, starting way back from that 10th birthday party of yours, will follow you throughout your life, affect how NPCs will react to you (start being a bad guy, and other bad guys will come out of the woodwork to...do bad things with you) and even affect the game's ending. Bethesda is promising something like a zillion endings -- okay, 500, but that sounds equally preposterous -- all based on the decisions you make and actions you take, however minute they might seem to you at the time. And though what I wrote makes it sound like I don't believe they can pull it off, I actually do. The original Fallout did that very thing.

Okay, so back to the demo: They skipped the rest of the childhood stuff at this point -- including the key narrative events that lead you to leave Vault 101 and begin the real game -- and then show us hooking up with good ol' Dogmeat, the canine companion from the original game who fanboys prayed would make it into this one. Well, he did. Note, however, that this is not the same Dogmeat, since this game takes place over 100 years after the first two games. I think I might like this Dogmeat better though -- he does some cool tricks. Being able to send him out on missions to fetch items you need should reduce time spent wandering the world yourself looking for crap. I thought that was a cool touch.

Shawn: Totally. He fights for you, too. And when you order him to hunt for weapons or food, he'll wander around the world actually searching for stuff. In other words, he won't simply slip off-screen and suddenly return with whatever bounty an algorithm bestows on him. And if you take proper care of your pet, he'll follow you to the finale of what Hines is now saying is a 70-hour long game. And that's about as much time Jeff has spent with his real bitch.

Here's what I'm wondering. Players develop addictions to the performance enhancing drugs they take, as well as the curative alcohol they drink. We know that Dogmeat heals with the same stimpack treatment, but does he develop similar addictions? Is that an asinine question? When Fallout 3 allegedly offers over 500 outcomes, it's tempting to think that things are as deep as that. After all, this is the developer whose Elder Scrolls RPGs made vampirism a viable survival strategy. However, I was a bit bummed when Hines said we won't be able to become mutants.

Jeff: And that bitch's name is Shawn Elliott. So Dogmeat -- well the other Dogmeat -- fought for you in Fallout as well. Dogmeat 2 here is more versatile and better trained. And, yeah, I liked the fact that the canine will only find items that actually really exist in the game world -- items you yourself could find. Very cool.

I don't think the dog can get addicted to drugs, no. You'll have to make that game yourself. (And, wow, I'm glad you didn't ask that question at the demo, or I would have had to pretend I didn't know you.) I do hear you though -- Bethesda does tend to go deep when thinking things through in their world-building. And to be clear, when they say "500 endings," I think we are talking about granularity mostly. Like, there are probably just a few real endings on the big plot points, but you'll hear anecdotes in voice-overs, and/or maybe with art montages, saying what happened to this person, or that town, depending on your actions throughout the game. Or maybe I'm just making all that up. And I keep wanting to type now that your idea of the player becoming a mutant is a stupid one, except, unfortunately, the more I think about it, the cooler that sounds.

Shawn: Nor did I ask about downloadable Dogmeat armor. That wouldn't have been funny, but then it wasn't funny when another media dude at this demo watched what has got to be one of the finest opening scenes in a first-person game this side of BioShock and Half-Life 2, and then decided to ask about downloadable content. Really? Hines says 500 endings and, what, you want to buy a five-hundred-and-first?

Interestingly, the fact that we'll have different Fallout 3 stories to tell when we meet at the nonexistent watercooler or Brawndo vending machine bothers a few anal-retentive types. I've read message board posts by people saying they'll feel shortchanged if they can't experience every possible outcome in a single play-through. They'd rather not miss a moment than make any meaningful decisions, such as whether or not to nuke the town of Megaton (where detonating the dormant atom bomb in the city's center will wipe the place and its population off the map).

Jeff: Well, yeah, but the game is an RPG, and RPGs are ostensibly about making decisions. At some point you need to (or should) commit. If you need to see every available outcome of every action, then play the game 500 times or shut up. Let the rest of us actually enjoy taking the risk, since most games don't offer any.

The other big decision that I guess you'll constantly be making is how to approach combat. Do you just play it shooter-style, guns blazing? Or do you take the time to pause and use V.A.T.S (Vault-tec Assisted Targeting System), which approximates, sort of, the turn-based combat of the original Fallout games by letting you spend action points to target specific body parts. The latter will provide more precision, and will assist those who are shooter- or twitch-challenged. And thank god for V.A.T.S., because without it, well, the game really is just a shooter. Which is another thing -- or maybe the biggest thing -- that is pissing off the angrier of the nerdcore fans. We asked if you could just play the game and win without ever going into V.A.T.S, and the answer was "yes". You can run and gun your way through this game if that's how you want to do it. And I don't know how I feel about that yet either. Maybe I'm an angry nerdcore guy too.

Shawn: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion isn't an RPG? I agree that role-playing means making decisions, but not with the assumption regarding die rolls, real or virtual. I appreciate that I can choose to manually target opponents or opt for V.A.T.S. In fact, I suspect that every player, no matter how comfortable he or she is with FPS-style combat, will want to flip back and forth between both options. If I'm bleeding and boxed in, a V.A.T.S.-enabled string of slo-mo headshots increases my odds of surviving. But say I'm feeling fine and stumble upon another Radscorpion -- why prolong a petty encounter? I appreciate that I can play the entire game from first- or third-person perspectives. Oh, and I appreciate that I'm able to be good or bad or anything totally in between the two. Hines' says it best in this snippet from our interview:

See the V.A.T.S. battle system in action for yourself here.

http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3167330

[fishepa]

Re: Fallout 3 Website Is Now Up

This is only for PC right? I don't have a PC that will be able to run this game.

[ThaGenecyst]

Re: Fallout 3 Website Is Now Up

Joystiq impressions: Fallout 3 (360/PC/PS3)

click to enlarge

In a hotel conference room, Bethesda's Pete Hines recently demoed the latest version of the Fallout 3. He trudged through a collapsed building, firing a machine gun at ambling, radiated mutants. The gore made me wince a little, with blood gurgling from zombie limbs. Earlier, he shot the head off another enemy, and blood arced straight out of the neck, as if it was trying to reach the brain one last time.

Only minutes earlier, he'd shown me how the player's character grows up in an underground bunker, with those moments acting partly as tutorial and partly as a character creator. Your father, for example, stays hidden in the shadows after your birth until he checks out how the infant will look grown up. Players use a medical gadget to see (read: design) their appearance, then he emerges with roughly similar, paternal features.

We've covered the game a few times before, so in addition to my general impressions, I talked with Hines about some recently revealed features.

The number of Fallout endings has been a talking point. "We're up to over 500 now," Hines noted. I asked further about what that means. "That's the big thing. 'What does it mean?' It's not 500 completely different things that happen at the end of the game." Fallout 3 follows the spirit of the prior two games by mixing together a slurry of possible cut-scenes and story elements.

"For folks who played the original games, this isn't news. It's what the original Fallouts did, where you know, did you do this or did you do this? And which one of those you did plays that part of the cut scene."

As Hines moved around dark corners, he showed off the system that lets gamers choose to play as a real-time or turn-based shooter. Basically, you hit a button to activate turn-based mode, pausing the scene, and queuing up specific attacks to enemies. After running out of your attack slots -- these are based on the firing rate and clip size of a weapon -- the action plays out in a brief movie-like sequence. Other times, he lobbed grenades around corners in real time, giggling once when a random zombie arm flung back across our field of view.

Above ground, he showed off some of the Washington D.C. landmarks, saying that the city makes up about a fourth of the game. Fallout 3's entire area is smaller than Oblivion, but Hines says it's denser, with more to do and less traveling.

click to enlarge

I asked if downloadable content would follow in that game's path. Hines answered, "[Downloadable expansions are] certainly something -- given the popularity of the ones we did for Oblivion -- that we'll be looking into. Until we get through the content creation part on the [full] game, it's all theoretical."

He showed off a few voiced characters, including your father played by Liam Neeson, but most of the dialogue was still placeholder. Bethesda is working on finishing the rest of the game before the company can go back and add final lines, but Hines expects more than Oblivion, with roughly 50 to 60 different character voices.

As far as the total time of recorded lines, he worked me through the math, saying, "I don't know how many hours it is, but I bet it's a lot. 'Cause we're talking about having like three sound studios running 24 hours-a-day for the better part of a month just to get through everything we've got to record, then process and output. There's a lot ... more voice actors than we used [in Oblivion.]"

At the end of the hour-long demo, I especially learned that Fallout 3 will take days and weeks to ease into. From wry touches at the beginning -- the A button calls out "Da-da" -- to a helpful dog that understands your commands to bring back food and useful items, Fallout is full of depth. I'm looking forward to seeing the game's other layers with its worldwide, simultaneous release for 360, PC, and PS3 in Fall, 2008.

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/04/10/joystiq-impressions-fallout-3-360-pc-ps3/

[ThaGenecyst]

Re: Fallout 3 Website Is Now Up

This is only for PC right? I don't have a PC that will be able to run this game.

PC/PS3/360

[allBthere]

Re: Fallout 3 Website Is Now Up

This is right up there for me for most anticipated titles in 08. It's going to be awesome

[Flawless]

Re: Fallout 3 Website Is Now Up

I hope it makes out this year, but I can't help to be skeptical given Bethesda's track record.

[Kearnzo]

Re: Fallout 3 Website Is Now Up

Speaking of Bethesda.....any word on a follow up to Oblivion? Don't mean to hijack the thread.

Anyways, looking forward to checking it out. I may be in a different boat than others though. I've never played a FO game, so i'm actually looking forward to it because Bethesda is making it. Oblivion already owns my soul, so i'm looking forward to another game from them.

[Flawless]

Re: Fallout 3 Website Is Now Up

Fallout 3 gets Collector's Edition

A recent Gamestop mailer revealed the existence and contents of a Fallout 3 Collector's Edition. The CE will be made available for PC, PS3 and 360 this fall. Expect to pay an extra $20 for the CE (that's a $79.99 on PS3/360 and $69.99 on PC). But it sounds like a worthwhile pick-up.

The Collector's Edition comes in a Vault-Tech lunch box guaranteed to survive a long nuclear winter. Inside, along with the highly anticipated RPG, is an Art of Fallout 3 hardcover book, Making of Fallout 3 DVD and Vault Boy Bobblehead.

[Flawless]

Re: Fallout 3 Website Is Now Up

Day 1

[Cebby]

Re: Fallout 3 Website Is Now Up

Speaking of Bethesda.....any word on a follow up to Oblivion? Don't mean to hijack the thread.

There's about a 5 year wait in between each ES game.

It hasn't even been 2 years since Oblivion. I would think we'll hear something within the next year or so.

[Kearnzo]

Re: Fallout 3 Website Is Now Up

There's about a 5 year wait in between each ES game.

It hasn't even been 2 years since Oblivion. I would think we'll hear something within the next year or so.

Son of a....

Oblivion is my first ES game (rented Morrowind once but never gave it enough time), and i've been looking everywhere for news on a new one. Looks like it'll be a while.

[Flawless]

Re: Fallout 3 Website Is Now Up

New Developer Diary: Conceptual Design

• Designing The Super Mutant

“Don’t shoot him, you’ll just make him mad.” The famous line from Blazing Saddles describing Mongo, was my guiding inspiration for these guys. I wanted them to look like they would step into a tree shredder, for relaxation. Their musculature was to be straining at the bone structure underneath, creating a hyper jacked up caricature of a person in the throes of radioactive testosterone poisoning, and liking it.



This led to a lot of visual gags costume wise too. Not only did they wield parking meters like police batons, but they carried their victims caged in shopping carts strapped to their backs. You know, just in case they got peckish after a fight, and wanted a snack.



Their armor is total salvage yard, car hoods and fenders resourcefully but crudely pounded into chest plates and pauldrons. Lawn mower blades welded onto helmets. I wanted recognizable elements twisted to a more violent purpose to reflect a sinister resourcefulness to surviving in a highly dangerous world. This “junkyard wars” approach to their armor and weapons generated whole categories of unique and often hilarious Homemade Weapons that I’ll speak about next.