Preview This you've gotta see - IGN FO3 preview

[Vault Dweller]

Tags: Bethesda Softworks; Fallout 3

And another <a href=http://pc.ign.com/articles/800/800570p1.html>Fallout 3 preview</a>, this time from IGN.
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<blockquote>The things that initially attracted Bethesda to the Fallout franchise are the same things that make the Elder Scrolls games so appealing. Though you have a tremendous range of choices, your actions also matter a great deal in both series and the worlds will respond to your choices in very realistic ways. The work that Bethesda put into Oblivion is already paying off in the design of Fallout 3.</blockquote>We can hardly wait.
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<blockquote>To create the world of Fallout 3, Bethesda simply took the future as people in 1950s America imagined it and then dropped a nuclear bomb on it.</blockquote>These Bethesda folks are very creative.
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<blockquote>In case it sounds like Vault 101 is built solely around tutorials and character creation, there are plenty of quests and meaningful interactions to be found during the hour or so that you spend here. Those very bullies who showed up at your tenth birthday eventually develop into a gang of obnoxious greasers who delight in terrorizing young girls and you'll be confronted with a decision about whether or not to intervene.</blockquote>Bullies? Terrorizing girls? In a vault?
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<blockquote>Loads of mutants, giant ants, slavers, death claws and <b>rat scorpions</b> are scouring the wastes looking for others to prey upon and you definitely don't want to become their latest victim.</blockquote>Rat scrorpions? Too funny.
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<blockquote>...the impressive Vault-Tech Assisted Targeting System (VATS). The feature is essentially a more detailed version of the combat system in Knights of the Old Republic. ... Using a pool of action points determined by your Agility, you'll <b>queue up fire actions</b> to the targets you want to hit on your enemy. </blockquote>As we thought.
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<blockquote>All those pointless rocks and <b>Barbie heads</b> you find on the ground can be loaded into a makeshift Rock-It Launcher and put to good use.</blockquote>You shoot Barbie heads at your enemies? No, seriously?
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<blockquote>To get the Protectrons up and running, you'll need to hack into one of their control terminals. Once you find one, you'll have to play a short mini-game to gain access to it. The game displays a list of possible passwords and you're given a certain number of tries to guess the correct password before you're locked out of the system. Each time you guess you'll be told how many letters of the password you selected match the letters in the correct password. If you're smart and lucky, you can narrow the field down with each guess until you arrive at the right password.</blockquote>Using Science/Repair skills wouldn't have been Fallout-y enough?
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<blockquote>The main Brotherhood group here is the Lyons' Pride Platoon, led by Sentinel Lyons. They'll be patrolling the bombed out buildings, plazas and alleys of downtown DC, taking out mutants wherever they find them. The platoon members are equipped with powerful laser rifles and if you stick with them long enough you're bound to be able to loot one of these impressive weapons. In addition to taking direct shots at the mutants, you might also consider making use of the derelict cars that line the streets. Some of the still have a bit of juice in their nuclear-powered engines. Hit them just right and BOOM! Instant mushroom cloud.</blockquote>Awesome.
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<blockquote>To take out the abnormally large Super Mutant Behemoth, you'll probably want to shoot at him with more than just your laser rifle. If you're lucky enough you might be able to get hold of a Fat Man, the game's personal mini-nuke launcher. This is essentially a bazooka that fires nuclear bombs. <u>Even with the small mushroom clouds sprouting up right on target, the Super Mutant Behemoth doesn't go down that easy</u>.</blockquote>So, not even a direct nuclear explosion is powerful enough to bring him down?
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<blockquote>Your basic stats aren't going to change much during the game (except as a result of radiation poisoning), but <font size=4><b>you can collect bobble heads found throughout the game to bump the stats up a bit.</b></font size></blockquote>WTF?
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[Lumpy]

An improved radiant AI system allows for even more behavior and dialogue options on the screen

Oh my god, Radiant AI has pushed the number of dialogue options forward!!!
How retarded are they?
But yeah, the dialogue sounds good. Maybe they'll get it right.

 

[Rohit_N]

I said...

 

[Starwars]

My personal favourite is the bit about the bobble heads. They really hit the nail when it came to getting the Fallout feel right guys!

 

[miles foreman]

But the question is, are they Vault Boy bobble heads? They are, right?

Fuck V.A.T.S., I'd rather no more about the bobble heads!

 

[Section8]

The work that Bethesda put into Oblivion is already paying off in the design of Fallout 3.

Creativity--;

Bullies? Terrorizing girls? In a vault?

Actually, that sounds like a fairly fifties thing to do. Maybe if you scare them off you can take the little girls to the diner and share a milkshake. Also, I hope one of the "greasers" is played by Billy Zane, and another one has 3D glasses on all the time for no reason.

...the impressive Vault-Tech Assisted Targeting System (VATS). The feature is essentially a more detailed version of the combat system in Knights of the Old Republic.

I'd still love to hear about not using VTATS. Is there going to be an enjoyable shooter alternative to dull event queues?

You shoot Barbie heads at your enemies? No, seriously?

Yes, we liked Half-Life 2's gravity gun too. Creativity--;

The game displays a list of possible passwords and you're given a certain number of tries to guess the correct password before you're locked out of the system. Each time you guess you'll be told how many letters of the password you selected match the letters in the correct password.

And Mastermind! Though I'd be willing to bet this is "inspired" by an identical minigame in Bookworm Adventures, because Mastermind was a product of its time, and the world has moved on. Creativity--;

The main Brotherhood group here is the Lyons' Pride Platoon, led by Sentinel Lyons. They'll be patrolling the bombed out buildings, plazas and alleys of downtown DC, taking out mutants wherever they find them.

Because the sectarian, isolationist nature of the BOS was also product of its time, and the world has moved on. Funny. You'd think future Fallout developers would learn from the mistakes of Fallout Tactics:BOS and Fallout:BOS.

To take out the abnormally large Super Mutant Behemoth, you'll probably want to shoot at him with more than just your laser rifle. If you're lucky enough you might be able to get hold of a Fat Man, the game's personal mini-nuke launcher.

"Your choice of laser rifle is an invalid one. Press X to swap it for the Fat Man." I'm glad Bethesda plan to maintain the integrity of character builds.

Your basic stats aren't going to change much during the game (except as a result of radiation poisoning), but <font><b>you can collect bobble heads found throughout the game to bump the stats up a bit.</b>

Duh, the "splash screen" for Junktown has a little hula girl figure, which completely legitimises this sort of thing. This isn't 1998, you know, the world has moved on. Get over it.

[edit] Also:

Your conclusions attract the unwanted attention of the Vault's insular and narrow minded leader, the Overseer. The Overseer suspects that you had something to do with your dad's disappearance and feels threatened by the possibility that you might follow dad up into the outside world. Before things get too bad, you'll decide to escape the Vault and see if you can't track down dad in the dangerous wasteland that lies just beyond the massive Vault door.

Of all the people who might have some kind of control over whether or not the vault door opens, you'd think the Overseer would probably be the first on that list, and very possibly the last. Sadly, it seems Oblivion is contagious and the Overseer has caught a bad case.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Gamespot have also put up a preview.

It seems every preview I've read so far compliments Bethesda on their tradition of freeform roleplaying filled with choices. Yes, because I really had lots of choices when it came to closing the gates of Oblivion didn't I? I could choose to close them, or to ignore the whole main quest! Yeah, those are good choices there.

I hate it when these retards lie. The Elder Scrolls games were LINEAR in terms of quests. Why the fuck do they say Bethesda are continuing their own tradition by pumping Fallout 3 full of choices?

 

[REX]

Say what ?

Barbie heads ?

Bubble heads = what ?

I am confused........ and very sad no mention of e.g. eating bull balls or becoming a porn star?

 

[DiverNB]

I thought the mini-nuke launcher / hand held nuke catapult mahbob was just a joke. It really fucking pains me that they were serious. And didn't Bethesda learn that the minigames in Oblivion sucked hard core? WHY INCLUDE MINI GAMES WHEN YOU HAVE SKILLS.

Well, there goes any doubts about whether this is an RPG or not. Maybe it'll be a decent FPS.

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

Bobble heads? Thjat gave me a good laugh. With all the the action and minigames and stuff, it sounds like Bethesda might have been better served with aquiring the DeuxEx license.

And do miniature mushroom clounds make any sense at all?

 

[Lumpy]

Collecting Bobble Heads as power-ups and Barbie Heads as weapons reeks of 90's arcade sidescrollers. But it's in 3D, so it's next-gen.

And there's a possibility there'll be a quest compass too:
http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index ... 0929&st=20
Here's a comment:

If you ever played Morrowind, where you didn't have a quest compass, you know how these directions were mostly useless. You had to run around in circles for hours just to find some cracked door under a hill, or a blurry path leading to a hidden camp... considering Oblivion is a Morrowind "upgrade", the quest compass is actually one of the few things they got right. Yeah, it makes the game much easier, but if I have to choose between almost-impossible and easy, I'll take easy any time. Most of us casual gamers would.

I agree that having an optional quest compass is the best way. Feel adventurous? turn it off and follow the blurry directions they give you. Have about an hour to play and want to accomplish something? turn it on, and get to the spot quickly.

Running around in circles. Right...

 

[Vault Dweller]

"One of the stats was simply "Corpses eaten.""
http://www.destructoid.com/pew-pew-prev ... .phtml#ext

 

[DiverNB]

No, but when has Bethesda made sense recently? As long as it has OMGWTFBBQ NUKE EXPLOSIONS the masses will be happy and rave about the plethora of choices and the graphics and the game play. I wouldn't be surprised if this game starts getting described as revolutionary when in fact it is sending us back to the god damn stone ages in terms of actual role-playing.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

That is bullshit. The Morrowind quest instructions were just right. They gave you instructions on where to go without a fucking compass on screen making sure you went the right way, or some ludicrous fast travel option letting you skip right there. There was no challenge in Oblivion, no challenge at all.

 

[Lumpy]

I don't know much about nuclear stuff, but would shooting a bullet into a reactor really cause an asplosion?

 

[DiverNB]

Probably a meltdown of some sort due to heating problems...but this is all in a car....that isn't running......so uh...


Maybe it'll make a good FPS.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

your actions also matter a great deal in both series and the worlds will respond to your choices in very realistic ways

Realistic as in wanted posters, quest lines being closed or open depending on NPC allegiances and dealing with hunters in Fallout 2? Or realistic as in paying a fine to walk away free from criminal activities and reset town inhabitant mood in Oblivion?

To create the world of Fallout 3, Bethesda simply took the future as people in 1950s America imagined it and then dropped a nuclear bomb on it.

Y'know, the staunch ignorance concerning who developed the setting would have been understandable - but no less excusable - if it had come from IGN's console department since the Xbox kiddies don't seem to know better. But when this is coming from the PC department, you know something is *very* wrong.

You shoot Barbie heads at your enemies? No, seriously?

When nuclear catapults just ain't mainly enough, it's time to bring in the big guns: BARBIE HEADS!

you can collect bobble heads found throughout the game to bump the stats up a bit.

Not even baby Jesus with a PipBoy Linguistic Enhancer, a 10 in Intelligence and the Smooth Talker perk would be able to make sense of that.

Your conclusions attract the unwanted attention of the Vault's insular and narrow minded leader, the Overseer. The Overseer suspects that you had something to do with your dad's disappearance and feels threatened by the possibility that you might follow dad up into the outside world. Before things get too bad, you'll decide to escape the Vault and see if you can't track down dad in the dangerous wasteland that lies just beyond the massive Vault door.

Of all the people who might have some kind of control over whether or not the vault door opens, you'd think the Overseer would probably be the first on that list, and very possibly the last. Sadly, it seems Oblivion is contagious and the Overseer has caught a bad case.

But it's fiction!!!

 

[Lumpy]

Yeah, you can leave the Vault because if you couldn't, there would be no game! Lol it's that simple.

 

[Section8]

Whether you decided to help Simms or Burke or simply ignore them both, you'll need to consider how your actions will affect your overall Karma, the game's sliding scale of ethical judgment. While the arguments for destroying or saving the town seem pretty clear from a moral standpoint (at least on the surface), we were especially excited to see that Bethesda is really putting some thought into offering significant rewards for taking a more neutral stance. RPGs that reward players for being only good or only evil miss out on the whole concept of "role-playing" so it's nice that Fallout 3 will rewards players who aren't so absolute in their morality.

Here, being neutral is actually a very attractive prospect. To begin with, there are certain NPCs that you won't be able to hire as henchmen unless you're neutral. Stray too far towards the good or the bad and they just won't be interested in helping you. Additionally, there are some powerful factions in the game that are working for "good" or "evil" and they'll be too busy hunting each other down to worry about neutral players. There are still some compelling reasons to take a highly visible stand for good or evil, but you'll definitely start to attract the attention of more powerful enemies.

Guh, what the hell is wrong with these people. When the choices are "Disarm the bomb for the good guys / blow it up for the bad guys / do nothing" then "neutrality" isn't neutrality. It's either indifference, which is pretty pointless in the context of a game since it requires you to ignore large chunks of content and associated rewards, or given the game has a single slider to measure karma, then you're a contrarian who alternates between good and bad resolutions to preserve a meta construct.

Game design must be fucking kryptonite to Bethesda.

Plus I love all the admissions of significant design failures, such as the level scaling in Oblivion. Oh, and it's good to know the Pipboy 3000 fits the arm of a ten year old kid just as well as it fits an adult. Scales to your level!

Last bit, I thought it was cute:

We assume that, as with Oblivion, the physics system can be exploited in a variety of ways that affect combat and stealing, but we haven't seen any of that working in practice yet.

Not even in Oblivion.

 

[DiverNB]

YOU CAN EAT CORPSES? JUMPIN' FUCKIN' JESUS MY ROLE-PLAYING PRAYERS HAVE BEEN ANSWERED.

Because it has that stat, I don't need anything else. Corpses eaten has me fucking sold.

 

[Hazelnut]

I don't say this lightly at all, but... Motherfucking rapists!

And is it just me, or are all these previews really trying to bang home how Beth are 'staying true' to the original fallout game, and that Beth are safely on course for avoiding backlash from the fanbase? Absolute complete and utter bullshit of course, but that seems the underlying current of this round of preview hype.

If this becomes accepted by the great unwashed, then Beth are probably home and dry hype-wise. All I want to do is clap my hands over my ears and sing "la la la I can't hear you" - it's so much worse than I thought it would be, hopeful optimist that I am.

 

[Lumpy]

Whether you decided to help Simms or Burke or simply ignore them both, you'll need to consider how your actions will affect your overall Karma, the game's sliding scale of ethical judgment. While the arguments for destroying or saving the town seem pretty clear from a moral standpoint (at least on the surface), we were especially excited to see that Bethesda is really putting some thought into offering significant rewards for taking a more neutral stance. RPGs that reward players for being only good or only evil miss out on the whole concept of "role-playing" so it's nice that Fallout 3 will rewards players who aren't so absolute in their morality.

Here, being neutral is actually a very attractive prospect. To begin with, there are certain NPCs that you won't be able to hire as henchmen unless you're neutral. Stray too far towards the good or the bad and they just won't be interested in helping you. Additionally, there are some powerful factions in the game that are working for "good" or "evil" and they'll be too busy hunting each other down to worry about neutral players. There are still some compelling reasons to take a highly visible stand for good or evil, but you'll definitely start to attract the attention of more powerful enemies.

Guh, what the hell is wrong with these people. When the choices are "Disarm the bomb for the good guys / blow it up for the bad guys / do nothing" then Netrality isn't neutrality. It's either indifference, which is pretty pointless in the context of a game since it requires you to ignore large chunks of content and associated rewards, or given the game has a single slider to measure karma, then you're a contrarian who alternates between good and bad resolutions to preserve a meta construct.

Game design must be fucking kryptonite to Bethesda.

Plus I love all the admissions of significant design failures, such as the level scaling in Oblivion. Oh, and it's good to know the Pipboy 3000 fits the arm of a ten year old kid just as well as it fits an adult. Scales to your level!

That sounds an awful lot like Bioware stupidity.
It makes sense for Good guys who join with you to help people to be pissed of if you're an evil bastard. But it makes no fucking sense for Neutral or Evil guys to be pissed at you for being Good, especially since if such a character joins you, he has some sort of selfish motivation, which should have nothing to do with your morality.
Like I've heard about Edwin in Baldur's Gate. He joins you to keep you under watch or something, while he actually hates you, but if you happen to do good deeds, he leaves the party. WTF? Even an evil guy should prefer being friends with a good person, since he'll likely get more advantages than from an evil acquaintance.

 

[Vault Dweller]

@ Hazelnut:

What did you expect? Did you really think that the media would say "what the fuck are you doing, crackheads?! This isn't Fallout"? Of course they would praise the new Fallout as the best game in the series, saved from "1896" by Bethesda and done right using the best and the latest technology available.

Edit:

"But this is first-person for a reason. It's about being inside the world. It's about being a person in a large, elaborate story, searching for your moral compass, the man who raised you. It's personal in a way Oblivion is not. So far it's looking true to its origins, while appropriately forward-facing. It's clear these people love Fallout."

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?ar ... 752&page=2

 

[spacemoose]

well from what I've seen they've at least got the look of fallout right.

shit combat and minigames... there better be A LOT of situations with choice and consequence to compensate, which I doubt they can deliver since they haven't ever done it before.

really though - they're not making the game for me. they might as well be EA Sports, and I don't rage against EA Sports for clonestamping NFL200X.

so they're trying to pass off as an rpg something that has so few qualities of what we consider an rpg. that's why we should start using a different term - 'rpg' has become so nebulous that it doesn't tell you what the game will actually be like and leads to drama with some people expecting oblivion, others expecting fallout, and yet others expecting halo with elves and numbers. more classification would eliminate this drama

 

[Claw]

"One of the stats was simply "Corpses eaten.""
http://www.destructoid.com/pew-pew-prev ... .phtml#ext

Hey, that's easily the best thing I've heard about Fallout 3 so far.

rest easy -- Brotherhood of Steel and Tactics have been ignored

That's the problem right there. You can't learn from mistakes if you ignore them.