Fallout 4 Pre-Release Discussion [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Bubbles]

Look who else was there: https://www.facebook.com/timothycain/media_set?set=a.10207878533218516.1073741832.1151512588&type=3

Nothing reinforces my confidence in the game like bunch of unknown celebrities for hire showing up at launch party.

 

[Naveen]

"Would you risk your life for a fellow man, even if that man is a synth?"

No.

"What if it were a man-man, not a man-sy..."

No.

"What if.."

No.

 

[Utgard-Loki]

streams have changed.

 

[Bubbles]

 

[moon knight]

Tu quoque, Chris?

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

When will they understand that strings instruments and symphonic sounds have no place in post-apocalyptic game.

The first thing I did in F3 was replacing the audio files with Mark Morgan's from F2.

 

[Daedalos]

Lol you guys mad, that Chris Avellone likes FO4 ;D

 

[Fairfax]

That pic is from last month IIRC.

Lol you guys mad, that Chris Avellone likes FO4 ;D

Well, if he doesn't, we'll never know. He said it himself in the swedish conference thing: game development is a small world, you can't trash other people and their work. RPG dev world is even smaller and he loves Fallout. If he says anything about it is shit, he'll never work on a new one.

 

[Wolfe]

Tu quoque, Chris?

He just held a presentation a few days ago where he said that it's a really bad idea to badmouth people from the gaming industry if you work in it. For all we knew, he hates that shit but can't say it. Oh well.

 

[†††]

When will they understand that strings instruments and symphonic sounds have no place in post-apocalyptic game.

The first thing I did in F3 was replacing the audio files with Mark Morgan's from F2.

It has become the "de facto" practice in the industry, MUH CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE. It's there so the journos can masturbate collectively thinking that games are "art". Another sign of games becoming clones of one another.

 

[Bradylama]

When will they understand that strings instruments and symphonic sounds have no place in post-apocalyptic game.

The first thing I did in F3 was replacing the audio files with Mark Morgan's from F2.

That's not EPIC enough and you know it.

 

[Blaine]

 

[pippin]

He just held a presentation a few days ago where he said that it's a really bad idea to badmouth people from the gaming industry if you work in it. For all we knew, he hates that shit but can't say it. Oh well.

If you want to survive in any industry, you shouldn't badmouth people unless you have evidence of bad behaviour or stuff like that. It's common sense.
Besides, MCA was hyped for the game when the original trailer was shown.

 

[Killzig]

 

[Jarpie]

+ makes us :mrpresident:

 

[Bradylama]

 

[pippin]

The internet made obvious that review copies ended up being the source of leaks for music and movies, even when review copies have the explicit warning about not sharing those.
Can Bethesda actually do anything against those retailers? I guess there's some sort of agreement or contract, but I don't know if they are actually forced to not sell the game until a certain date and time. But can Pete close down german Gamestop, for instance?

 

[Bubbles]

 

[Infinitron]

Brian Fargo, Feargus Urquhart and MCA doing some more piggybacking: http://www.gamestm.co.uk/features/how-s-p-e-c-i-a-l-is-fallout-4/

How S.P.E.C.I.A.L. is Fallout 4?
We find out the TRUTH about the biggest game of the year and reflect on what has made the series such a success

Much like the series as a whole, Fallout 4 is a game that straddles the past and future, which may go some way to explain the mixed reaction it seems to be getting from some quarters. It’s a game that’s bridging the gap between one of the experiences of the last generation, and a new era of hardware that has yet to fully establish its identity. And it is somewhat ironic that a series that has always warned of the repetitious nature of history when it says ‘War, war never changes’, should find itself once again having to convince fans that it has what it takes to deliver the Fallout experience the hardcore expect.

Looking back now, it seems ludicrous that anyone would have doubted Fallout 3, but that was the situation Bethesda was in as it took over the franchise for the first time, and it’s worth remembering that this is only the studio’s second game in the franchise. Fallout 4 should represent Bethesda establishing its vision, cementing its hold on the licence having done so well with Fallout 3. It will continue to recognise the heritage of the past and make a space for what this series can be in the future.


But there’s a passion and devotion to the wastelands of Fallout that rivals any fandom out there, and it’s sceptical; something that fans of other series might do well to learn from. Sure, many will have snapped up those Pip-Boy preorders pretty quickly (and who can blame them?), but that hasn’t saved Fallout 4 from its critics. For many it feels too much like an incremental step for the series; not enough of a generational leap. While we might choose to quibble with that analysis, we were interested to hear from one of Fallout’s original creators for his view on what it takes to make a sequel in this franchise.

“For RPGs it’s all about the next adventure, it’s not necessarily about a reimagining of technology or anything like that,” Feargus Urquhart, Obsidian CEO, tells us. “I don’t think that every iteration of a role-playing game needs to be something completely new. I think people play role-playing games for the story and characters, and you eventually have to move on, but I don’t think that there was anything that we were really trying to do that different that we ever talked about or wanted to do differently between Fallout 1 and Fallout 2.” Urquhart was a division director on Fallout 1, producer on Fallout 2, and got the chance to work on the series again with Obsidian on Fallout: New Vegas. As we reflected on the origins of the series, it’s clear that Fallout remains a deeply important game to the veteran developer.

But with his insight in mind, it begs the question, what are the core tenets of a Fallout game? If we shouldn’t expect monumental change then these at least must be embellished and built upon, so what are they? “Adventuring in a world that feels like what people in the Fifties thought the future would look like, then dropped a bunch of nuclear warheads on it,” states Chris Avellone, former colleague of Urquhart’s at both Interplay working on the original games and a co-founder of Obsidian. Avellone is also credited as the author of the Fallout Bible, a lengthy tome that chronicles the timeline, factions, vaults and rules of this world. He adds a second important pillar too; “Quest and exploration freedom that, at the least, can be accomplished by a stealthy, combat, and “talky” character. Often, many more options are presented.”


Interplay founder Brian Fargo agrees that player choice is absolutely key. “One of the edicts from the original Fallout was that you could solve every problem either by brute force, by trying to charm them or by trying to sneak your way around,” he tells us. “So, to take those three options and apply them to every possible scenario, I think that was a core tenet from a design perspective of what Fallout was supposed to be.” One example was that even the final encounter with The Master in Fallout could be talked out.

So how does Fallout 4 build on player freedom of choice? Well, for a start we need only look at a total lack of level cap in the game, supported by an augmented perk system that could potentially mean 275 levels of enhancement through the game and any subsequent DLC, depending on how levels and upgrades are handled post-launch. That level of player character customisation is extraordinary, and a huge change from Fallout 3’s original 20 levels and hard ending to the story missions. With no level cap also comes no game-ending climax to the narrative. Whatever it is that Fallout 4 has you building towards as the sole survivor of Vault 111, their tale won’t end with it. What’s more, those 275 perk levels point to incredible degrees of skill customisation through the game. Immersing yourself in the Commonwealth could be even more rewarding than any of this series’ previous worlds.

Player choice is further reflected in the gargantuan script Bethesda has reportedly put together for this game. With your player character being given a voice for the first time in franchise history, you might think that some of your control for moulding and shaping your hero has been taken away from you, but some 111,000 lines of dialogue have been recorded for the game, which according to Bethesda is more than Fallout 3 and Skyrim combined. That would indicate that not only is Fallout 4 an immense new location to explore, but that there’s a good chance player agency will be well-supported by dialogue options throughout the game.


It’s a tough balance to make, between player choice and offering that compelling story Urquhart mentioned earlier, that in many ways is more important than graphical leaps or major changes to gameplay mechanics. Offering your freedom within the world of Fallout 4 to develop your character while also supporting those choices with a fully-voiced hero is potentially a very big change for this series. It could help add another layer of richness to the wasteland and a greater degree of connection to this world than we’ve ever experienced before.

And that’s been a secret to this game’s success from the beginning, giving players things to connect to over and over again. “The world felt deep, it felt rich, and it reacted to you in many ways – which in turn, makes your character’s actions feel more impactful, heightening the experience,” says Avellone. It ties back into one of those core tenets we discussed earlier, a vision of the future through the lens of Fifties, cold war America. And even in this area, Fallout 4 appears to be excelling. The very premise of this story has you live in that world starting on the day the bombs fell on 23 October 2077. It’s an opportunity to see the pre-apocalypse world like we’ve never had the chance to do before. It should also help us to feel the loss of that world even more acutely than we might have previously. We’ll get to see their television, listen to the radio, look at the cereal and furniture. We’ll get to turn away a salesman and interact with Mr Handy.

What’s more, it’s very likely that the whole prologue will be an extended character creation setup, melding narrative with the all-important construction of our hero. This is something uniquely Bethesda-like, having experienced the childhood of The Lone Wanderer or the prisoner transport of Skyrim. We’ve had a glimpse at this with the trailers so far, but there’s much still to reveal. What’s more the player characters of Fallout thus far have always either grown up in vaults or in the wasteland itself, so what will this new insight (and 200 years of bed rest) give us that we’ve not experienced before? This new setting for Fallout appears to be a community past the point of mourning for the world that was lost, but that may not be the case for our hero. How will they adjust and interact with others?


Supporting characters in Fallout are vital to the experience. Speaking to Urquhart about his return to Fallout with New Vegas, he picked this element out as one of his proudest achievements with the game. “It was always our intention – and we do this in all of our games, but in Fallout we did it even more – to have interesting characters that make sense and have interesting motivations, that people can relate to. And it seems that particularly in Fallout: New Vegas people really see people like Mr. House as these real entities and not just figments of our imagination.”

From friends to enemies, the characters in Fallout always have motivations that explain and to some degree justify their behaviour. Having that connection and being able to side with who you choose is an important element of choice that fuels so much of Fallout’s great water-cooler moments. The classic example from Fallout 3 was choosing to help the people of Megaton or destroy the town at the behest of Allistair Tenpenny. Fallout 4 appears to be placing even more emphasis on personal relationships, not least thanks to that enormous new script and fully-voiced player character.

There will be 12 companion characters in the game for you to meet, with Dogmeat and Mr Handy included. Of the rest, all of the human characters can be romantic interests for your character if that’s something you choose to pursue. As an example of the level of attention given to companions, Dogmeat is a good place to start. You may be interested to know, for example, that your canine companion is actually fully motion-captured by one of the development team’s own dogs, named River. Moreover he could be one of the game’s most useful additions as Bethesda has confirmed that Dogmeat cannot be killed, so he may prove a handy exploration tool and defensive measure.


Another confirmed companion is Piper, whose back-story speaks to the degree with which the Commonwealth has adjusted and renewed itself since the Great War. Piper is the editor of a local newspaper called Public Occurrences and seems preoccupied with Diamond City, the community built within the old baseball stadium, Fenway Park. This unique perspective, added to her own relationship with her younger sister, should add a new dynamic to this world that we’ve not experienced before. Having a journalist exist in this community indicates a settled and connected population. That’s going to be something very different from what we’ve seen before.

It speaks to the constant growth and world-building of the Fallout series, a process that has not stopped from the moment the first game was released. As Avellone’s Fallout Bible attests, this is now a universe packed with its own history, factions, alliances and possibilities. Strange then that none of that was really on the mind of the game’s original creators. “I’d like to say that we were thinking about that, but that would be disingenuous,” admits Urquhart as we discuss how the original games helped establish this world. “To set the scene or set the stage correctly, this was all so early in all of our careers. We were just having fun making games. It’s not that we weren’t thinking of the future, but we were just doing what we did when we were playing or making the pen-and-paper RPGs.”

Those tabletop traditions still permeate much of how Fallout operates, and there’s much more of that for Bethesda to explore. Even when Obsidian was approached to take on New Vegas, a great deal of freedom was given to the developer to mark out its own extensions to this franchise and the canon of the world. “The great thing is that Todd Howard [Bethesda producer] is awesome and so is Todd Vaughn [Bethesda vice president of development], and it always sounds arrogant to say this, but there was no one else they would ever have had do this because they trusted that we would just do it,” Urquhart tells us. “They knew that we understood it, that a lot of us had created it and we were very conscious of what Fallout was to them now. And that’s not just how bleak Fallout 3 was, they had some ideas about certain timeline stuff that was important to them.” It also helped that an East and West coast split was established between Bethesda’s in-house titles and this spin-off, giving the Fallout veterans a piece of their old landscape and the New Californian Republic to play with. It leaves plenty back in the East to explore too and there have been plenty of hints in previous titles of there that might go.


We know from Fallout 3 that what was known as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has now become home to an organisation known as The Institute, stockpilers of advance technology and seemingly the creators of the androids known as Synths (met as enemy combatants in trailers so far). Working in opposition to the Institute is a group known as the Railroad, inspired by the underground railroad network famous for freeing slaves in the 19th century. It’s their wish to free sentient androids from the hands of the Institute, which would suggest that not all Synths you meet in the Commonwealth are necessarily enemies. Both sides of this argument will already be familiar to those who completed the Replicated Man quest in Fallout 3.

Another group mentioned in Bethesda’s previous game is the Synth Retention Bureau, a division of the Commonwealth police tasked with capturing escaped Synths. The android Harkness who is at the centre of the Replicated Man mission is himself a Synth who worked as a hunter of his own kind for the SRB. Beyond these region-specific groups we can expect to see plenty from the stalwart factions of the wasteland. The Brotherhood Of Steel are known to operate in the area and even command an airship named the Prydwen. The trailers would suggest it can be destroyed and brought down in Fallout 4. Where the Brotherhood exists, the Enclave are rarely far behind, while super mutants, ghouls and many more are all likely to play their part somewhere in the Commonwealth. As with previous Fallout games, picking your alliances is likely to be one of your toughest challenges.

As for Boston and the region around it, the city appears to have fared pretty well all things considered. Many of its buildings are still standing and a community has grown within it to quite an advanced extent. While the prologue for the game depicts a bomb falling close to the city, ground zero for this impact is not within the centre of Boston. The region, now known as the Glowing Sea, remains heavily irradiated and in a nice new touch for Fallout 4, it will occasionally generate radiation storms that will spread out from the region and affect other local areas.


And then of course there’s the fact that you’ll be able to build your own settlements in the game, attracting other wanderers to make their home in the accommodation you build. As you collect materials on your travels you can return to this shanty town for a bit of post-apocalyptic interior design, turning another patch of irradiated dirt into a basecamp to be proud of. As well as building and defending this community you’ll also be able to establish trade from this town to others with Brahmin caravans taking goods back and forth between communities. It’s another level of connection to this world for us all to sink our teeth into. It also happens to be the area of the game that’s most impressed Avellone. “The locations are beautiful, and I love the player character base designs I’ve seen – it’s a great next evolution in having a ‘house’.”

The crafting and building mechanics of Fallout 4 are the standout additions to this iteration of the series, bringing greater importance to the kleptomania most of us have experienced in the wasteland and giving us ways of benefiting from the trinkets we collect on our travels. As weapons are upgraded and modified we can begin to match our loadouts more closely with our perks and SPECIAL levels, bringing greater continuity to our approach to the game. But while weapon modification could well see us approach combat in new ways, that’s not the only improvement.

VATS (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System) has been Bethesda’s greatest contribution to this series in many respects, honouring the pen-and-paper traditions Fallout was built upon with its skill-based probability while also honouring their own preference for first-person combat that doesn’t fall into the basic FPS format. With Fallout 4 that’s being modified a little. VATS no longer freezes time for instance, rather slowing it down to a crawl. It means that you’ll need to make decisions about how you shoot faster, but it could also mean that patience will open up better percentage chances of hits to vital areas on an enemy’s body.


Outside of VATS, levels, stats, gear and probability will still play their part in FPS combat, but our proficiency as players will also be given more credence. There’s been some speculation as to whether the shooter expertise of MachineGames or id Software may have been brought to bear in this area, but regardless, it should mean more aggressive FPS approaches could be rewarded and a little less back-peddling while shooting can be expected. Another pleasing addition is the chance to activate a critical hit by filling up an action points bar. This will be another important feature to think about when taking on groups of enemies, especially if there’s a super mutant or Deathclaw about.

So, Fallout 4 is not without its advancements and augmentations, even though they have proved challenging to spot on the surface for many. Graphically it may not be the leap forward some might have hoped for, but the level of detail, colour and texture quality, as well as the character models in the game do all appear to be greatly improved on Fallout 3, and a good bit better than Skyrim. What Bethesda has doubled down on is that core element of story and connectedness that Urquhart and Avellone identified as being vital to this series. There’s a massive new landscape to uncover, more NPCs to meet and several times more dialogue to work your way through if you want to. What’s more, the refinements to the levelling system and dropping of a level cap means you should be able to express your own playing style with even more freedom than before. All told, it’s been speculated there could be more than 400 hours of gaming packed into this release, which is intimidatingly large for any RPG.

And as close as the original team clearly still feels to the Fallout titles, there’s a sense that they believe that the licence is in the right hands now. “One of the things that I like is that they do a really good job with taking ideas that would normally be mundane and giving them a lot of personality,” Fargo tells us. “Everything from character creation with you looking in the mirror with somebody looking over your shoulder choosing your character, to even using the crafting table and the way that works. Even with Fallout 3, starting off as a baby, it was very, very clever stuff. I always tip my hat to the way they take the mundane and make it much more interesting.” And with Urquhart admitting to us he already preordered his Pip-Boy edition of the game too, all that’s left for all of us to do is await the launch of Fallout 4 on 10 November.

 

[Daedalos]

That pic is from last month IIRC.

Well, if he doesn't, we'll never know. He said it himself in the swedish conference thing: game development is a small world, you can't trash other people and their work. RPG dev world is even smaller and he loves Fallout. If he says anything about it is shit, he'll never work on a new one.

Doubtful, very doubtful. A man like Chris Avellone has enough prestige in the game dev world, that he can pretty much say what the fukc he want, ain't nobody can do shit about it.

He's pretty much the rock-star of game development. so.

 

[pippin]

What do they mean with 100% Uncut? If the game is rated 18+ it shouldn't be censored. I guess they are talking about Germany's "special" methods of censorship.

 

[Excidium II]

 

[Talby]

This piece of shit deserves to flop at this point. Bethesda has always been lazy but this is the most phoned in piece of garbage I've seen all year.

 

[Jack]

 

[Excidium II]

I find it kinda funny how the prologue is obviously written with male character in mind. You have to wonder where the hell are your maternal instincts if you play a womyns.