As others have reported, Bethesda seems to have done something kinda miraculous in terms of recapturing the original games' look and feel while simultaneously transforming it into a modern, 1st-person world. It reminds me, kind of, of the way Blizzard transformed the 2D, tabletop strategy look of the early WarCraft games into the 3D, you're-soaking-in-it World of WarCraft. Bethesda has taken Interplay's late 90s isometric RPG and swooped the camera down to the ground (though you can still angle it upwards)to put us right in that burned-out post-apocalyptic universe--and, at least as far as the demo goes, it's freakin' revelatory. I had no idea going into it how Bethesda was going to pull off the SPECIAL system, the PiPBoy "PDA" device, and, most importantly, the turn-based combat that was at the heart of the original games, but dang if Bethesda isn't making a smart, thoughtful, and faithful go of it. It actually looks like, if you wanted to, you could play through parts of the game in a more real-time "shooter" way, but clearly players are going to get huge advantages by going into the "V.A.T.S" system (Vault-tec Assisted Targeting System), in which you pause the action, and, as in the original games, target specific enemy body parts, the success of which operates on percentages, and the damage of which can be extraordinary.

Most important, right now, is what others have said about this work-in-progress: that Bethesda has captured the essence of what made the originals so unique: the odd juxtaposition of apocalyptic future nightmare with retro-50s kitsch, folksy humor mixed with mutant monsters, --a creative challenge that in the wrong hands could be utterly cheeseball, but that Bethesda is so far recreating beautifully.​