Game News The Fallout Game Informer article

[MountainWest]

Desslock, Fallout 3 rumour spreader extraordinaire and one of the few to have seen the games a long time ago, had this to note when a lot of people on the QTT forum were jubilant about there being no level scaling in Fallout 3:

You're reading too much into the Gaming Informer statement. The actual situation is more "complicated". Sorry, but I'm obliged to be cryptic right now.

Anyone want to take a guess? Minimum levels for evil monstars, then level scaling? Max and min levels for evil monstars, level scaling inbetween? Or the 'best' scenario: game informer are idiots and there is some sort of level scaling all the way.

 

[Top Hat]

...at 16 you'll take your G.O.A.T. ...

Pandering to their furry fans AGAIN I see.

 

[galsiah]

...or drinking water repeatedly from a broken toilet...

I see it as a step forward for that "I'm really there" feeling. All too often I'm not fully connected with my character when playing a Bethesda game. Certainly I get a drawn-out sense of sickening humiliation and self-loathing as I play - but does my character get that feeling?


I do wonder what they're playing at with this VATS nonsense. It's almost as if they actively search for incoherent solutions.
Real time? Hmm - might make sense.
Turn based? Abstract, but not really nonsense is it.
Real time with pause? Still fairly reasonable.
...
Absurd combination of real time action and paused tactics - where paused actions power up in real time play?? An incoherent mess! - let's do it!

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

The graphics aren't very good

 

[Kotario]

Fallouts original visual style seems completly lost. Note how they have replaced theVault Dwellers 50s comic style skin-tight Jumpsuit with more modern looking clothes.

 

[sheek]

The water/food system is kinda worrying. It's not clear but sounds like they could just be HP boosters. I do not want to drink out of a toilet bowl for thirty minutes game time to bring my health back to max.

 

[Zomg]

I think it's like EvoG's thing where he wanted eating/drinking to be optional buffs instead of necessities, and I called him an asshole that should be hanged from a meathook.

Edit - Also, the pause thing sounds kind of like Space Hulk, which I was talking about last week without foreknowledge. It doesn't sound automatically bad to me, since the net effect will probably be to make an actiony combat system where you don't do all the stereotypical FPS shit. It's pretty likely the game will be balanced for guys that refuse to use the system, though.

 

[sheek]

Ideally you'd just have a hunger meter and a thirst meter alongside your hitpoints. They decrease continually with time (1% per game-time hour) and once they fall below say 80% it affects all your healing rates (basic HPs, radiation, poison etc). A typical meal on the road restores 10-15 hunger/thirst points. A big cooked meal in a diner might restore 25 points.

Say there's a 15% heal rate reduction per 10% hunger (more for thirst) below that 80% threshold. You don't eat for two days and you'll heal 45% slower. You don't eat for four days and your heal rates become negative (you take damage).

Why can't game developer's implement something like this?

I also wonder, is this PC going to be a chronic insomniac? You could use the same system and give skill penalties for not sleeping, maybe they could be off-set by drugs. Sleeping in the wilderness would be dangerous, just have an area-based chance of a hostile encounter.

Fallout would benefit hugely from more survival RPG elements, and they're not exactly hard to come up with.

 

[galsiah]

...eating/drinking to be optional buffs...

But come on - is a game based around survival in a harsh environment really the place to introduce survival mechanics?

Personally I'd like to see a similar approach to combat mechanics. All too often avoiding bullets can become a chore. I'd prefer to have the player get an optional bonus for each successful bullet avoided. That way you still encourage the same gameplay, without forcing the chore of bullet avoidance on the player.

 

[Amasius]

This is the best of both of those franchises, without any compromises, and with enough amazing new details to excite even the most jaded or skeptical RPG enthusiast.

Well, I'm not excited.

Take the few obvious Fallout references like Vault Boy away and you wouldn't recognize Fallout. Just a PA shooter with stats. And a retarded combat system. A handheld nuclear catapult... *shudder*

 

[spacemoose]

yeah, the handheld nuclear weapon and an engine sized nuclear reactor exploding are rather silly. but I suppose that not many of the new audience would know about critical mass.

 

[filogreek]

I like how Game Informer classes it as an Action RPG. And uses screens from an Xbox360 demo of it. I love Bethesda this----------------------------------------------------much.

 

[sheek]

But come on - is a game based around survival in a harsh environment really the place to introduce survival mechanics?

Yes? Is that sarcasm?

 

[galsiah]

Indeed.
Including drink as an optional bonus in a Deus Ex type situation is arguably reasonable (though I'd still say it was a pointless distraction); doing it in a Fallout situation is pretty daft. Either water shouldn't be included at all, or it should be required. Anything else is nonsense (unless there are abstracted periods of time where some water can be assumed to be found - unlikely I guess).

 

[MisterStone]

Ideally you'd just have a hunger meter and a thirst meter alongside your hitpoints. They decrease continually with time (2% per game-time hour) and once they fall below say 80% it affects all your healing rates (basic HPs, radiation, poison etc). A typical meal on the road restores 10-15 hunger/thirst points. A big cooked meal in a diner might restore 25 points.

Say there's a 15% heal rate reduction per 10% hunger (more for thirst) below that 80% threshold. You don't eat for two days and you'll heal 45% slower. You don't eat for four days and your heal rates become negative (you take damage).

Why can't game developer's implement something like this?

Eating and drinking aren't fun, man! Ask any game fan or developer. Anything that slows the game down- sleeping, having to buy ammo, having to figure out where things are through exploration, having to heal. Its just not fun.

On the other hand, this game gives you non-stop action. Whoa, look over there on the ground, its a mini-nuke! How convenient! Look at that big ass mutant over there... blammo! Damn, I'm hurt... I'd better go back to that toilet and heal up! Good thing I can set it to auto-slurp so I don't have to keep pushing the mouse button...

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

Well, if half of the talk about choice and consequence, multiple paths, less but detailed NPC's, and multiple endings turns out to be true and really means something substantial, then it will at least be infinitely better than Oblivion. If it's a true Fallout game remains for the fans to decide, but it could then be an interesting RPG. Combat system and perspective dont faze me personally, although I feel for y'all.

 

[spacemoose]

I like your sig

 

[Jaime Lannister]

Combat doesn't sound that bad, I just don't get why you can still shoot when you have no APs left, even if it's in real-time. The rest is basically Fallout in first-person. Not as bad as I thought. But why oh why is there still Radiant AI? It's just fluff! It doesn't make the game any better! Gothic's world feels real enough, and that game is 6 years old. No need to have NPCs telling each other their names all the time.

"My name is Killian, what's yours?" will become the new "I saw a mudcrab the other day."

 

[aboyd]

So, in our thread about the teaser video, I said some of you were acting like shrieking women over what was effectively non-information. I felt it was silly to judge the good/bad elements with so little to go on.

But with all the new information released, I personally feel that there is enough to start forming opinions and making decisions. I've fully read the article. I have found myself feeling happy about the choice & consequence aspects. But I have found myself feeling miserable about the screenshots, and the fact that so many negative guesses about the game were accurate. First person, real time, action rpg, "I saw a radscorpion the other day" dialogue, no real companions, etc. Basically, just as many of you predicted, it truly is Oblivion with guns.

From this, I would predict a few other things. I see a lot of talk about violence, and zero about sex. So I will guess that this game will reflect USA-based thinking -- violence OK, sex bad. Anything sex-based is -- I guess -- going to be conspicuously absent from the game. I would also predict that children are unkillable, simply because Bethsoft doesn't want to talk about that yet. My impression is that they were thinking, "indestructible children will make everyone moan & complain even MORE, so let's not lump that disappointment on top of others yet."

Also disappointed to hear Desslock contradicting the article's claims about scaling monsters.

Overall, for me, I'd say this was a pretty bad moment for Fallout. I think it could still be fun as an action RPG. But today I've seen that it is just not Fallout on too many levels. I don't think they should even use the name.

 

[Gwendo]

Weapons will degrade with use and could be damaged directly by attacks.

Weapon erosion (tm)

This you've gotta read: "Two impossibly large ants crawl toward you. Thinking quickly, you target one of the broken down cars near where the mutated insects are passing. A few shots find its engine, one of those old nuclear generators, and <u>the ants and the car alike disappear into a small mushroom cloud</u>." WTF?!

I guess this fallout setting is different. Civilization was at an higher level before the nuclear war. (?)

You'll need food and water to survive. Water is an excellent source of H2O and radiation. You'll often have to drink from toilet bowls. Seriously.

Hum... Does that mean that the plumbing systems are still working? Or that nobody uses those toilets for any other purposes?

About the VATS. It's not turn-based. In the VATS mode the speed of your actions is measured in APs (as of opposite to seconds). The APs regenerate in real time.

Sounds like Vagrant Story with APs (a la Final Fantasy games)
Could be interesting.

For some odd reasons, the supermutants are everywhere, hiding behind every corner.

That's not kewl.

Complex, game-changing moral choices and awesome quests are promised, but no examples are given.

They are still in the graphics development phase.

The good news is <a>the handheld nuclear catapult</a>, a classic Fallout weapon beloved by every Fallout fan, is definitely in. THANK YOU BETHESDA!!!

And I guess you'll get the ammo from those wrecked cars with nuclear fusion engines that nobody else scavenges! Thank you, BETHESDA!!!

 

[aboyd]

Ideally you'd just have a hunger meter and a thirst meter alongside your hitpoints. They decrease continually with time (1% per game-time hour) and once they fall below say 80% it affects all your healing rates (basic HPs, radiation, poison etc). A typical meal on the road restores 10-15 hunger/thirst points. A big cooked meal in a diner might restore 25 points.

Say there's a 15% heal rate reduction per 10% hunger (more for thirst) below that 80% threshold. You don't eat for two days and you'll heal 45% slower. You don't eat for four days and your heal rates become negative (you take damage).

Why can't game developer's implement something like this?

I also wonder, is this PC going to be a chronic insomniac? You could use the same system and give skill penalties for not sleeping, maybe they could be off-set by drugs.

You need to stop. I will never see these ideas implemented in a good CRPG, and that is depressing. Better to just not talk about it.

 

[aboyd]

Combat doesn't sound that bad, I just don't get why you can still shoot when you have no APs left, even if it's in real-time.

It's not really two modes. There is no "AP mode" and "real-time mode that just uses APs to process the battle live." There is one mode. It's real time with slow motion, basically. Think Max Payne bullet time. Real time uses no APs, not even underneath as part of the calculations. Therefore depleting them has no effect on real-time. The APs are simply a bonus layered on the real-time.

 

[Kingston]

Wheter or not its a good game we can definetly conclude that war does change.

 

[Texas Red]

And as usual the Codex has been right in their predictions.

Bethesda. Bethesda never changes.

 

[Mr. Teatime]

My biggest concern over everything is the lack of the FO3 atmosphere. Where are the bright colours of FO1 and 2? What's happened to that supermutant?

Fallout isn't supposed to be going for the photorealistic look. And the nuclear catapault... :/ FO generally hand low grade, messy, downndirty weapons, with the energy weapons coming near the end of the game.

All that talk about Fallout's soul, and I can bear bad combat, first person viewpoint if they get the atmosphere right. But I can't see the 50s thing anywhere beyond the pipboy and odd advertisment.

Of course, then you've got the canon concerns. Masses of supermutants, the BOS - 'knights' - uh oh.