Interview IT IS POSSIBLE TO TOTALLY AVOID COMBAT IN FALLOUT 3

[DarkUnderlord]

Tags: Fallout 3

<a href="http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/games/archives/2008/08/11/pacifism_and_your_other_fallout_3_questions_answered.html">According to an interview with Pete Hines at the Guardian</a>:
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<blockquote><b>Can you tag Medicine, Repair and Barter, and focusing on those skills, still be able to complete the game?</b>
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Sure. We recently had someone play through the game and finish it while only killing one thing very early in the game...a Radroach. I'm not saying I recommend everyone run out and try to play the game as a pacifist, but if you want to give it a try, it has been done.</blockquote>
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Unfortunately Bethesda's Fallout 3 needs the alternative question: Is it possible to actually kill everyone or are half of them immortal again like in Oblivion? Pete also says you can totally max out your SPECIAL stats:
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<blockquote><b>Is the Intense Training Perk (permanently raise one SPECIAL) a one time use Perk for one attribute, or one time use PER attribute, meaning you could spend 7 Perks/Levels upping each of your SPECIALs?</b>
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You can use it more than once, so yes you could keep upping each of your SPECIALs, but that's going to come at the sacrifice of being able to do quite a bit of other stuff with available Perks, skill boosts, etc.</blockquote>
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Other Fallout 3 perks include "+5 skill points to Melee" and "+5 skill points to Every Other Skill". And finally, punching people in the groin is out:
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<blockquote><b>Specific body parts cannot be targeted when fighting with melee weapons or in hand to hand combat. What is the reason behind this decision? Does melee/HtH fighting offer something else to compensate?</b>
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We tried many ways of doing melee with VATS, and having messed a lot with "missing" in melee, it just felt really bad. So once we changed VATS melee to "always hit", assuming you are in range, the body part selection became a bit unbalancing, so now it's a "whole body attack", but you still do end up hitting a specific body part when you swing, but it's based on what you actually contact with, as opposed to what you aim at. This avoids the "always punch in the head" problem, whereas with guns, we can balance out certain body parts with hit percentages, like the head.</blockquote>
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Yes.
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Thanks <b>Brother None</b> (kudos also for the title)!

 

[Darth Roxor]

So once we changed VATS melee to "always hit"

we changed VATS melee to "always hit"

VATS melee to "always hit"

 

[bozia2012]

If those guys are not dumb, then... I dunno. First they decide to make "auto-hit" melee, then they remove targeting so nobody would abuse it. What a nonsense.

 

[peak]

Eurogamer has a new preview up. Clicky. Amazingly, it's not an apology of their last piece, but still rips into it quite a bit for stupid design choices. The writer totally swallowed the hype train for Mass Effect though:

Bad news first: when it comes to dialogue, Fallout 3 remains something of a stubborn throwback, unwilling to step away from traditional one-on-one interrogation mechanics and explore the new possibilities of a post-Mass Effect world. With no hint of radial selection or keyword attitude choices which seemed likely to become the RPG's version on Halo's rechargeable shield - a genre standard by virtue of near-unanimous theft - instead, a quick introductory conversation with the mayor of Megaton reveals that Fallout 3 is sticking with a system largely unchanged from the days of Monkey Island.

 

[Brother None]

Sure. We recently had someone play through the game and finish it while only killing one thing very early in the game...a Radroach

But what if I don't want to kill that Radroach, can I use my diplomacy skills to talk my way out of the encounter?

I want to be a Radroach diplomat!

 

[Shoelip]

Bethesda follows the imperial space marines school of diplomacy.

Cue KC random pic.

 

[sportforredneck]

Cue KC random pic.

...wait....that's not what you meant.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

I'm gonna miss the F1/F2 SPECIAL system. In my opinion, that was pretty flawless. They could have easily transferred that into a 3d system while perhaps taking out stuff like Outdoorsman....

They are just spoiling it with the 'no traits, only perks' thing.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

If we're allowed to notice positives, I have to say that the bit about pacifism does sound promising.

 

[thesheeep]

VATS melee to "always hit"

I will definately play a 100% melee guy first

 

[Micmu]

They just can't stop dumbing their games down.

"Fallout" 3 rule set: collision detection and HP substraction.

Who would have thought of that

 

[Uz0rnaem]

If we're allowed to notice positives, I have to say that the bit about pacifism does sound promising.

Yeah, it does, but it's something I have to see in order to believe it. Bethesda designing a game, where not a single story-related quest involves mandatory combat is just utterly inconceivable to me. Up until now, I was convinced that even their dreadful non-skippable ingame tutorial would force players to kill something as proof that they've indeed mastered the controls. I'm still expecting this to be true.

This isn't blind pessimism, or stubborn naysaying either. It's just reasonable to take everything they say with a grain of salt, considering Oblivion's pre-release hype.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Bad news first: when it comes to dialogue, Fallout 3 remains something of a stubborn throwback, unwilling to step away from traditional one-on-one interrogation mechanics and explore the new possibilities of a post-Mass Effect world. With no hint of radial selection or keyword attitude choices which seemed likely to become the RPG's version on Halo's rechargeable shield - a genre standard by virtue of near-unanimous theft - instead, a quick introductory conversation with the mayor of Megaton reveals that Fallout 3 is sticking with a system largely unchanged from the days of Monkey Island.

Wat.

 

[Gerrard]

We tried many ways of doing melee with VATS, and having messed a lot with "missing" in melee, it just felt really bad.

Because it's really hard to make the enemy dodge if you miss, especially with that "cinematic" camera.

 

[Seboss]

I'm playing Mass Effect on the PC right now and I fail to see what make its dialog system any different from other games, except for the wheel thing that hints the player on the tone of the reply depending on its position on the whee, and that replies are represented as a couple of words except as full blown sentences (which is confusing more often than not).
Where's the revolution in that?

 

[Micmu]

Because it's really hard to make the enemy dodge if you miss, especially with that "cinematic" camera.

True, Kotor's parry/dodge animations were superb (imho).
It's just that Bethesda still utterly sucks at animations.

It's funny to read their oh-so-old excuses "we tried, didn't feel ok, so we scrapped it, derp derp derp, IT'S MORE FUN THAT WAY LOL". And yet they say that transition to 3D and different camera doesn't dumb down the game. It does, if you suck at 3D and need to simplify the mechanics greatly.

 

[Brother None]

I'm playing Mass Effect on the PC right now and I fail to see what make its dialog system any different from other games, except for the wheel thing that hints the player on the tone of the reply depending on its position on the whee, and that replies are represented as a couple of words except as full blown sentences (which is confusing more often than not).
Where's the revolution in that?

Well, it doesn't really matter what option you pick, dialogue will pretty much go in the same direction regardless.

That's pretty revolutionary.

 

[Shoelip]

No it's not. It's the same in most Bioware games.

 

[Ismaul]

Sarcasm. Detect it.


As for melee auto-hitting, it's the only solution if you suck too much to have a dodging system. Because swinging a pipe on someone 's head and not making contact really is worse than auto-hitting.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Because it's really hard to make the enemy dodge if you miss, especially with that "cinematic" camera.

True, Kotor's parry/dodge animations were superb (imho).
It's just that Bethesda still utterly sucks at animations.

It's funny to read their oh-so-old excuses "we tried, didn't feel ok, so we scrapped it, derp derp derp, IT'S MORE FUN THAT WAY LOL". And yet they say that transition to 3D and different camera doesn't dumb down the game. It does, if you suck at 3D and need to simplify the mechanics greatly.

That screenshot was from Jedi Academy.

 

[MonkeyHead]

To be fair to F3, KOTOR's attack/dodge animations are already timed out since the combat timing is not based on player input where as in F3 the attacks are based on the player's clicks which makes it slightly more difficult to animate properly. Bethesda could say a super mutant model the size of a good sized car will look slightly silly twisting out of the way of a blow in the 1/3 second it takes to swing your bat.

Similarly if a player is able to attack three times a second with a sharp stick then having longer 1/2 second dodge animations like KOTOR will cause graphical abnormalities as the pointy stick intercepts the completion of the first dodge animation. Of course, there's no reason why smaller faster creatures can't have jumpier movement to get out of the way.

I do have to give +1 point for having a completable non-combat path, whether or not that involves running past every single critter in the game remains to be seen.

 

[Gerrard]

True, Kotor's parry/dodge animations were superb (imho).

That one is from Jedi Academy actually, which only goes further to show that it's entirely possible to have to hit rolls in an action RPG without making it look retarded.

 

[Vault Dweller]

So once we changed VATS melee to "always hit"

we changed VATS melee to "always hit"

VATS melee to "always hit"

"Apparently, Oblivion no longer uses an abstracted "to-hit" model based on your character's skills, so you won't have the frustrating problem of stabbing your sword right through an enemy's face, yet having that swing register as a "miss"."

We don't want to frustrate ADD kids, do we?

 

[Sisay]

This was the first thing that came to my mind.

 

[MLMarkland]

Melee-attack auto-hitting arm and leg. Oh god, it's heavan.