No Mutants Allowed

[Brother None]

You may remember Game Informer had offered readers to ask Matt Miller questions about Fallout 3. Well, the answers were released in this month's Unlimited. For obvious reasons, we're not revealing all of them, but here's some choice quotes:

Q: Is this another Oblivion but with a Fallout theme?
A: In short: no. Sure, Fallout 3 plays primarily from a first-person perspective like Oblivion, and conversations with NPCs use a similar style of dialogue tree, but combat, questing, character creation and most importantly the tone and style of the gameplay shares more in common with Fallout 1 and 2 than Oblivion.

Q: Is the game turn based or real time?
AND
How’s the V.A.T.S. combat system work again?
A: I talk about this a good bit in the July magazine article, but to be clear, Fallout 3 plays in both real time and a paused tactical combat mode. It’s not really turn based, however. Instead, you can pause the real-time action in order to make aimed ranged or melee attacks on your opponents, smashing their legs to slow them down, or perhaps shooting an arm to hurt their weapon aim. Like in the original Fallout games, doing these aimed shots take action points, but since there are no turns, those AP recharge over time after unpausing the game. You can shoot in real time, but that will then slow your recharge rate. In practice, this means players have the option to play the game very much like an RPG, but with a good bit more action than traditional RPGs. Are there other details to the way this system works? Almost definitely, yes. Do we know all the answers to how V.A.T.S. works after seeing it in one demo? No. We’re waiting just like you to find out more.

Q: Will porting the game to consoles hurt the PC version?
A: Hmm... Well, the game’s not really being ported anywhere. It’s being built from the ground up for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. [...]

Q: Is the game first or third person? Isometric?
A: It’s both first and third–a point I mention in the article. It does not use the isometric view of the original games. It is possible to pan the third person camera pretty far back, but it definitely isn’t meant to be played in a view that is anything like the original. However, almost half of the questions we received were about the camera view, so I thought I should address it here. To clarify, unlike in Oblivion, with its wonky third-person camera, a big focus has been placed on making Fallout 3 fun and playable in both first and third person. [...]

Q: Can you play the game without doing any combat?
A: I never got a hard and fast answer on this point, though I did ask the development team about it. On a general level, they did say that they’re trying to build multiple solutions into almost any quest or situation you encounter, and that using stealth and diplomacy were very useable routes to overcome different obstacles. Whether you’ll be able to play through the whole game without committing any violence is a point they’re still hammering out, to my memory.

Q: What is your overall impression of the game?
A: To be clear, I was and continue to be a big fan of the original Fallout games. Believe it or not, so are the guys over at Bethesda. From my perspective as someone who loved the originals, I have to say that my feeling of the direction that Bethesda is taking the franchise is very strongly positive. If you are a fan who is adamantly against some significant changes to the way gameplay occurs in the Fallout series, I’m going to tell you right now and save you the disappointment: I don’t think you’ll like Fallout 3. However, if you’re a fan of the Fallout universe, of the unique look of the world, of the moral ambiguity, of the dark and often violent humor, and the invigorating branching story paths, then everything about what I’ve seen of Fallout 3 should please you.

He further notes that it looks like there are no vehicles, that it'll be M-Rated, that it'll be open-ended but with consequences, that it'll be full of dark humor, that he doesn't know the map system (if any), that you can play only humans, that there's lots of drugs, that there'll be more voice actors than in Oblivion, that it won't have level-scaling "like in Oblivion" and that the area covers more than just Washington D.C.

Also, here's the cliff notes of the video interview with Fallout 3 executive producer Todd Howard and lead artist Istvan Pely:

Todd Howard:
- Videogames 10 years ago and videogames today are different canvases that we paint on.

- He wants to keep this: the shades of gray, the different choices a player will make, texture of the world, making tough decisions, going out and doing things that affects the world.

- He wants you to be emotionally involved in the game, especially now that we have the technological advances in videogames.

- He wants you to see the game in first person and in third person because he wants the players to feel the world but he doesn't want to reward player with twitch play because stats really matters.

- It's going to be violent. they spent time making the kills gorier and gorier so when you blow a bad guy's head, you'll say "yes!"

Istvan Pely:
- It will have 50s vibe in it.

- He is saying how the old fallouts had sprites so they had to re-work things again for fallout 3.

- He just wants to make you feel the world.

Thanks tree_frog.

Addendum: the interview with Todd and Istvan is now available on Youtube (thanks KreideBein); part 1 part 2 part 3


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No Mutants Allowed, your Fallout resource - Fallout: New Vegas - Brother None counts down his favourite games
"There are two novels that can change a bookish 14-year-old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.
The other, of course, involves orcs." --John Rogers

[Kukident]

the questions and answers are both very great (in terms of how they are written and their length) ,... but, however, their content isn't..

it again points towards "oblivion with guns"..

[Tannhauser]

So no one misses it:

[Pink Viper]

Everything we've feared appears to be coming true.
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[trustno1]

I just can't find any words to comment on this "similar style of dialogue tree". Christ.

[Kukident]

If you are a fan who is adamantly against some significant changes to the way gameplay occurs in the Fallout series, I’m going to tell you right now and save you the disappointment: I don’t think you’ll like Fallout 3. However, if you’re a fan of the Fallout universe, of the unique look of the world, of the moral ambiguity, of the dark and often violent humor, and the invigorating branching story paths, then everything about what I’ve seen of Fallout 3 should please you.

i dont like how he reduces the things we might not like about fallout to only the gameplay and then mentions like 10 other things we would perfectly like about the fallout 3 as it is...


come on, just look at those or... i mean, mutants, or if i just think about the dialogues.. ugh

[Tora]

So um.... when/where's the funeral going to be held? =/

On a side note, I love how the answer to the first question is made contradictory by the next few answers.

[Wiggum]

Ouch! This pain! We get a fucking oblivion "dialogue"! Great job Bethesda! I really hope you got some blisters to your dick when you anal raped Fallout without lube!

[MrBumble]

Ok...now it's official...There's no hope left. They screwed the dialogues. It's done. Over.

[Nim82]

To be fair this does clarify quite a lot for me, in terms of stuff I actually give a damn about:

> Oblivion Dialogue? - Buzzz Wrong answer!

Rest of it pretty sums up what a lot of us had already put together, glad there's no vehicles though. But that doesn't reconcile the stuff they have trashed in any way whatsoever. He may state the universe and the world etc are the same, but from the artwork you can tell they are not. Nail in the coffin. At least he is honest and states as much, with respect to those of us who glitter.

Heck thinking about it, the lack of car's may actually be a bad thing. Driving a 50's technical through the ruins of DC mowing down Orc's with nuclear catapults sounds like a fantastically surreal arcade game, seriously it would give Halo a run for it's money. Todd your missing out on an even bigger cash in ffs!

[Role-Player]

[Mad Max RW]

The SAME FUCKING DIALOG TREE! It's like they're deliberately trying to find ways to make Fallout 3 suck as much as possible. Even the idiots at Something Awful can't deny the suckiness of Oblivion/Morrowind's dialog trees.

[Brother None]

[wyatt]

My god.....what do we do now?

FP, no iso

Nuclear Catapults

Shoting old nuclear cars to kill ants

Toliet drinking

Must be 19 years old

RTwP

Bad dialog(obliv style)

forced action

Canon rape(BOS and mutants in DC)

So that about does it, they screwed us.

Where do we go from here?

1. Declare war? Spam the board?

2. Silet protest, leave their forum 100%?

3. Go on their forum and plead or side, try and reason?

Whats it going to be? 1 2 or 3?
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Don't RAPE Fallout

[The Dutch Ghost]

[Lost Metal]

shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittttttttt those dumb motherfuckers they just had to go and fuck it all up

and then try to make us feel bad for not agreeing with the unreasonable changes they've made

I'm going to whipe my ass with every fallout 3 copy I see in any store and I won't purchase the copy either.

WE WIN!!!!!!!! POOPY!!!!!!!!!!!!

EDIT: Sorry. I seem to have gone temporarily insane with the news.

[Belinik]

Well basically find the shovel and lets make a nice grave for fallout game cause its oficcially dead sigh

Guess im back to fallout 1-2 and enjoy those again seeing that was the game i played over and over , these days most games are so mainstream and to alike to be good, sigh

[Tannhauser]

[The Duke]

Using only the necessary logic, Most of us who know what fallout is all about know that there's a 99 % probability that the so called "Fallout 3" will be a well done mod for oblivion, with it's main influence being resident evil 4, and actually worse than BOS.

With no hope left, we can only, lament and bitch about how unfair the world is.

There's also the option of terrorist action against Bethesda... or hiring Mr.T to rape Todd Howard (just for fun) but it probably ain't gonna happen

If there were some way to make the game be a commercial failure, perhaps there would be a "Fallout 3: this time for real" from Troika, but we all know that's impossible. There's no way to kill or change all the mentally handicaped individuals who are already pre-ordering this piece of shit.

[neopl]