Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 15:21 Post subject: Fallout 3 Preview Madness
And more and more previews come trickling in:
Destructoid has released a Fallout 3 preview. The most notable snippet:
In the meantime, ponder this: between areas, the loading screen will display various character stats and figures, like how many miles walked. One of the stats was simply "Corpses eaten." When asked about that fascinating statistic, Todd Howard smiled and hesitated before refusing to go into more detail. But I'll say this much: any game where you can eat a corpse is worthy of your attention, and Fallout 3 from Bethesda Softworks looks like it's definitely going to be worth the wait.
After a quick pan through of lots of conceptual art and screens from the original game, Howard finally got behind the controls of an X-Box 360 and fired the game itself up for us to bear witness. Immediately he began to explain the most obvious design choices as to why the game is not in an isometric view but is primarily first person. The reasoning is quite simple; they want to make the game feel like it is real. The best part of this, while he seemed to be saying that the game plays in first person, is shortly afterwards he zoomed out to an over-the-shoulder view that really blew us all away.
[..]
Everything that is visual about this game looks stunning in motion, so much so to the point that it looked natural to be playing the game from over-the-shoulder, and at one point Todd zoomed all the way out and up to an isometric view while running and it still looked beautiful. For all of you purists out there, I’m not sure if you can play the entire game from that view. We didn’t get to see how it would act when indoors or in more confined spaces, but outdoors it worked like a dream. Forget calling this game ‘Oblivion with guns’, that’s like saying that Half Life 2 is just ‘Doom< with a story’.
[..]
The combat has been a hot bed of questioning lately, and from what we saw it is a complicated thing to convey properly. The game is in real time, not turn based, and enemies will move and act in real time when you fight them. The key is when you activate the VATS (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System) button that it becomes interesting: the game pauses entirely as your view zooms into an enemy and you see the parts of their body highlighted with different percentages. While the game is paused the player assigns actions to be taken using their given number of Action Points. i.e. – shoot them in the head 3 times) Once this has been done, the system is deactivated and the assigned actions play out in a matter of seconds in what is really a seamless mini-cinematic. And if the player has succeeded the mutant’s head explodes in glorious 3D with guts and eyeballs flying all over the place. It is vague at this point about how fast action points refresh and therefore how often this can be done, but in the demo Todd was using this system repeatedly in each combat over and over again. It seems that when used in the game, it really borders on becoming a turn-based game where things simply happen in real time between player turns which really just means the turns are more fluid. We will have to wait and see exactly how this turns out.
They also have a Fallout 3 developer Q&A that seems to confirm that there will be no killable children in the game and a few unkillable NPCs, although they want to have as few unkillable NPCs as possible. The total playing time is estimated at 40 hours, including all sidequests.
Thanks Briosafreak and Duck and Cover! _________________ No Mutants Allowed, your Fallout resource - Fallout 3 modding
Sander is a finely tuned instrument of death, and as such is only used when the need arises. He hates posters no more than a Tsunami would hate a Japanese coastal village, or a Hurricane hates black people. - DirtyDreamDesigner
My main consolation is that only silly people follow silly advice - E.W. Dijkstra
I like how they use the 'immersion' defense for the first-person perspective.
*sigh* _________________ No Mutants Allowed, your Fallout resource - Fallout 3 modding
Sander is a finely tuned instrument of death, and as such is only used when the need arises. He hates posters no more than a Tsunami would hate a Japanese coastal village, or a Hurricane hates black people. - DirtyDreamDesigner
My main consolation is that only silly people follow silly advice - E.W. Dijkstra
Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 432 Location: Germany Status: Offline
Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 15:49 Post subject:
Awww... I have said it before:
FUCK IT!
I have lost my interest in Fallout 3 since the first preview was released.
Actually I have been quite liberal in my approach towards FO3 and Dethesta... I was disgusted by some comments of Fallout fundamentalists, as I was always believing in the credo:
"Everything can be changed and enjoyed as long as the people behind it use their creativity and their imagination"
From what I have seen, read and interpreted know their is nothing Fallouty in FO3 anymore, nor can I see any creativity.
Joined: 05 May 2007 Posts: 192 Location: The Codex Status: Offline
Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 15:57 Post subject:
I can see all the fan boys now arguing the game has Iso :/
You could zoom out like that in Oblivion, but it was useless - the fact Todd didn't want to show it off indoors pretty much rules it out as a play mode. I've got to laugh at the journalist being 'blown away' by Todd demonstrating the 3rd person viewpoint, like that has never been done before!
Realistic because it's first person? Right... so VAT's and it's pausing of time and out of body cinematic is also realistic, I presume? Fallout never made any pretence of being real, it was EC comic book style all the way.
The Suck-o-Tron, and Rock-it sound retarded, someone there's been playing too much HL2 it would seem.
Cannibalism is plausible, if it has the same impact as the childkiller tag. I suspect though they will make a gory comedy feature out of it (judging from Todd's fascination with the red stuff).
Their right about this not being Oblivion with guns, it's increasingly sounding like Postal2 with vaultboy.
Joined: 18 Dec 2003 Posts: 8027 Location: Atomic Portugal Status: Offline
Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 16:14 Post subject:
Do read all the articles, the amount of new information is staggering (the GI guy really did a poor job) and some time is needed before making definite conclusions. I'm getting something new in every bit I'm reading
Capital Wasteland? Level scaling Morrowind style (not Oblivion)? Unkillable NPCs? We need a new FAQ fast... _________________ PlanetFallout
If I didn't already know enough about FO3 to know that it's going to be a console kiddy's wet dream, I probably would read all of those previews. As it stands however, I'm just going to wait for some summaries. This game no longer interests me.
Joined: 18 Apr 2007 Posts: 29 Location: Finland Status: Offline
Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 16:25 Post subject:
I just had a little peek at that Q&A thing.
Quote:
Q: Does all Radiation in the game dissipate over time?
A: There are a few events which cause extreme levels that will never go away, but most radiation from things like blown up cars (nuclear engines) and the mini-nuke weapon will dissipate given a little time.
Oh noes! To be honest, I have never really thought that "nukular catapult" was really a mini-nuke weapon. Oh dear...
Quote:
but it really doesn’t seem like children will be killable in this game simply because of legal issues.
So it is legal to kill adult, but not children?
Last edited by Wiggum on Sun Jul 01, 2007 16:35; edited 1 time in total
That would be... bad. Unkillable cats on the other hand...
Unkillable NPCs were confirmed in the Critical Hits Q&A. Apparently, though, Bethesda isn't happy with having unkillable NPCs.
Which begs the question: why can't they create a storyline that doesn't actually need unkillable NPCs? _________________ No Mutants Allowed, your Fallout resource - Fallout 3 modding
Sander is a finely tuned instrument of death, and as such is only used when the need arises. He hates posters no more than a Tsunami would hate a Japanese coastal village, or a Hurricane hates black people. - DirtyDreamDesigner
My main consolation is that only silly people follow silly advice - E.W. Dijkstra
Joined: 17 Jan 2006 Posts: 1604 Location: French Riviera Status: Offline
Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 16:42 Post subject:
Sander wrote:
Which begs the question: why can't they create a storyline that doesn't actually need unkillable NPCs?
Or simply go with the Morrowind routine : "By killing that NPC you've screwed your chances of ever completing the main quest. Would you like to load a saved game or continue your actual game ? you prick.."
Their right about this not being Oblivion with guns, it's increasingly sounding like Postal2 with vaultboy.
No, no. As it was already said by someone else around here, it's nothing more than a glorified Oblivion.
See how they keep saying "feature x is now better than it was in Oblivion".
They don't even try to make a Fallout game. They just do what they do better.
And... indeed, what the fuck is with the bobbleheads? Power-ups? Well, no wonder in a FPS.
Oh, and I have to ask about those mushroom clouds from the mini nuclear explosions. How the hell such a small explosion creates a mushroom cloud? They added them only because mushroom clouds are teh awesome, didn't they? Or maybe mushroom clouds are independent of the explosion scale.
Quote:
So it is legal to kill adult, but not children?
I never got this bullshit either.
To a certain extent I can understand children having privileges in real life (although why raping a kid is worse than raping an adult is still beyond me, for example), in games I really can't understand it. Only people who fail to see the difference between entertainment and real life can think like this. Or people with nothing better to do than militating against various random stuff. _________________ Our goal at Black Isle was to take the Planescape license and make a role-playing game that was both fun and different from anything else on the market. We strove to avoid the mainstays of such games, dwarves, elves, evil wizards, and kidnapped princesses, replacing them with talking items, unusual allies, and enemies that you had never before seen.
(...)
We wanted a powerful story, and we didn't want to be afraid of it being too deep for mass market; we just wanted to make it good.
We sought to take the role-playing genre in a different direction from most RPGs on the market; building a truly interactive environment for the gamer, where what you believed actually had an impact on the game.
~ Chris Avellone - Planescape: Torment Strategies & Secrets
Joined: 26 Oct 2004 Posts: 923 Location: XXV Century Status: Offline
Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 16:58 Post subject:
Sander wrote:
Which begs the question: why can't they create a storyline that doesn't actually need unkillable NPCs?
What storyline? Abandon every hope, ye who buy this.
No, really, after the fuckup with bobble-heads, nuke-launchers and God-knows-what-not, what should we expect from the storyline? _________________ Vault Rats Moments v1.02
Joined: 23 Jan 2004 Posts: 2430 Location: Leeds, Yorkshire, England Status: Offline
Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 17:03 Post subject:
Wiggum wrote:
Quote:
but it really doesn’t seem like children will be killable in this game simply because of legal issues.
So it is legal to kill adult, but not children?
I took that to mean that there will not be any children in the game. Something of a leap, but given their absence in Morrowind and Oblivion, not that big of one.
Also, if there were children, even "unkillable" ones, you could still attack them, which I gather is also something of a legal issue.
Critical hits Q&A wrote:
Q: Is this just the Oblivion engine?
A: It is a very supped up version of the same engine, with shorter load times
I'm not convinced that they haven't used some of the character models too. The pose of the mutant with the warhammer looks too much like the Minotaurs in Oblivion. _________________ Been away awhile, so I've no clue what's going on.
If this has been here for more than a few weeks, I'm probably away again.
Joined: 08 Nov 2003 Posts: 12700 Location: Den Status: Offline
Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 17:08 Post subject:
Fahrplan: "Detesta Softworks"? I like it :D
Also, just the other day I played Might and Magic IX for the first time ever (having played MMVI and completed MMVII and MMVIII) and I found out one fundamental truth: The only thing worse that NPCs being inkillable by virtue of bing huddled away in buildings where combat can't be initiated are NPCs unkillble by virtue of simply taking on immense amounts of punishment without even a blink.
God, why unkillable NPCs? At lease try to make them G-Man style unkillable...
And before someone trolls, yes, I knew Fallout 1 had an unkillable character. Although I prefer t think of him as "ultimately badass armoured" :) (would be easier to take if the gun nest was domed...) _________________ International Tiger Day 2009!
Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 17:09 Post subject: Re: Fallout 3 Preview Madness
Quote:
Nuclear Catapult
Quote:
Cars with nuclear engines that explode and leave radiation everywhere.
Quote:
Agility increases your small guns...have a nice day.
Quote:
"Corpses eaten."
The question is not whether it is true to Fallout anymore but whether or not there are actually adults on the design team. It sounds like a bunch of children playing make believe;
"BANG! I GOT YOU, I HIT THAT NUCULAR CAR BESIDE YOU WITH MY NUCULAR CATAPULT SO YOU GOT DOUBLE NUKED AND NOW IM GOING TO EAT YOUR CORPSE!"
"But your agility isn't high enough."
But I've come up with a theory... Maybe it's just some prank. Perhaps they really did do a good job at making fallout 3 and they are using all this to play a practical joke. (yeah wouldn't that be nice.)
Joined: 23 Jan 2004 Posts: 2430 Location: Leeds, Yorkshire, England Status: Offline
Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 17:18 Post subject: Re: Fallout 3 Preview Madness
Unillenium wrote:
Quote:
Agility increases your small guns...have a nice day.
Erm ...
Quote:
"Corpses eaten."
I'd have no problems with having some kinda food/water system, in which you might have to eat a corpse to survive, in a PA game (provided it was done in a sensible manner), but I can't think of a way to fit it into the Fallout universe. _________________ Been away awhile, so I've no clue what's going on.
If this has been here for more than a few weeks, I'm probably away again.
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