PSM's preview of Fallout: New Vegas isn't in the stands yet, but magazine network site CVG previews the preview.
Lead producer of Fallout New Vegas, Larry Liberty said: "We had to modify the dialogue engine from Fallout 3 to include the types of dialogue and options that we wanted.
"We want real, memorable characters. I think it helps you to remember parts of the world you'd otherwise forget."
As part of its world-exclusive cover feature, PSM3 played an extensive demo of New Vegas. The mag reported that it was 'apparent that Obsidian are much more comfortable behind the keyboard than the team that made Fallout 3 and, before that, Oblivion. The scripting is wittier, the characters more distinct.'
The team for Fallout 1.5: Resurrection would like to assure everyone that indeed they are still active.
Recently we have received quite a few questions asking whether we’re still alive and whether there is going to be an update soon. That’s quite understandable, considering that the last update came a year ago Ok so we’re not releasing a lot of info, but that’s because we’re trying to put all of our free time into the actual development. In order to compensate at least a little, we’ve uploaded two new images into the gallery. One is a screenshot of the player visiting supermutants, the other is a new loading screen featuring an ad for post-apocalyptic New Mexico’s favorite cigarette brand.
You can head on over to their site to view the new pictures.
With the scans widely available, we thought we'd chuck up the images from PC Gamer, including two shots (the last two) that don't seem to be on the most commonly available scans.
New Vegas developers have offered some more clarifications on the information being released. Primarily, it appears that Area 51 might not be in the game:
The Area 51 thing was pure speculation on PC Gamer's part. We did not show it or confirm whether or not it's in there. PC Gamer put it in because it's Nevada, and they think that means it will be in there.
I'm not saying it is or isn't, just that we haven't said either way.
* In the same way that a locked safe beyond your Lockpicking skill indicates, it lets the player know that there's an option here.
* Some of the NPC responses to low skill checks can be pretty entertaining.
I also do want to clarify what is meant by "no penalty for failure". All it means is that you won't wind up in a worse position than you were before selecting it. If a dude bursts in and is intent on killing you, he's still going to want to kill you if you fail the Speech check to talk him out of it.
It's true that a lot of people have modded in those features, but a lot of the things in Hardcore mode are also things that I personally wanted to play the game with. I realize not everyone does, but it's the only way I play it.
When taken in the context of all of the VO that needs to be recorded for the game, alternate responses for low-skill dialogue checks account for a very small percentage of lines.
F3 also (often) had alternate lines for failed skill checks; they just originated from the same player line. Player lines aren't voiced, so there's no real increase there.
Josh Sawyer, lead developer of Fallout: New Vegas, has clarified how skill-based dialogue options work:
This is how it works. Each skill-based dialogue option has two different texts: one for high skill (which will result in success) and one for low skill (which will result in failure). If you do not meet the required threshold, you see the latter.
Apparently, a number of people have received their copies of PC gamer, which includes a feature on Fallout: New Vegas. The ever vigilant Ausir has of course listed all features that have been mentioned.
There is an optional hardcore mode, the character needs to drink water, ammo has weight, healing isn't instant etc.
Normal mode is more similar to Fallout 3 gameplay.
The storyline is focused on the New California Republic vs. Caesar's Legion (slavers from the east) vs. New Vegas residents.
You are not a vault dweller but are given a Pip-Boy by someone who is one.
There is a screenshot of a vault suit as well.
There is an assault rifle looking like the M4, as well as a new big gun with a backpack, held like a minigun.
There are special moves for melee weapons in VATS - specifically a move for a golf club called "Fore" which seems to be a groin shot.
The Hoover Dam is in the game and is supplying electricity to the city.
There is a quest to rescue a ghoul from some super mutants. The ghoul can then become your companion
The Geckos are back.
There are both dumb and intelligent super mutants, including the elite Nightkin. On at least one occasion you can convince them to fight amongst themselves.
Some super mutants look similar to the ones in Fallout 3, while others are new. There is e.g. a female super mutant with a 1950s hairstyle who apparently is one of their leaders.
Screenshots include a guy with a beard and straw hat, a ghoul and an NCR Ranger.
The only picture of New Vegas itself is concept art and not a screenshot.
Some location screenshots include a huge model dinosaur advertising a hotel, some satellite dishes, an array of solar panels
A character generation shot showing a "vigour machine" instead of the skill book
NCR base is the McCarran Airport, Caesar's Legion is based in the Vegas Strip, while super mutants are based in a place called Black Mountain.
There is also a town called Fremont and another called Primm. A topless reuve is mentioned as being in the latter. Area 51 also appears.
NCR Ranger armor is similar to a brown combat armor with sleeves, there are concept arts of a Ranger.
Skils have a bigger effect on conversation choices. E.g. someone with a high Explosives skill may be able to have a coversation about explosives where appropriate.
There is a Reputation system in addition to Karma.
First-person action RPG with the same engine as Fallout 3.
Set in the Mojave wastelands. Vegas didn't get many nukes. More intact buildings, as well as desert vegetation. Vegas itself is mostly intact.
Both karma and reputation are tracked. If I'm reading it right there's separate reputations for each of the settlements, as in 1 and 2.
All dialogue options are shown to all players, regardless of whether you have the stats to succeed or not, though there's no punishment for failure.
Bartering is not just lower prices but negotiating for better rewards.
Weapons also now have knock-back upon death, with shotguns sending people flying.
Followers can be managed through a context-sensitive menu, with orders like "follow", "stay" or "attack".
You're a courier, wounded and left for dead in a shallow grave. A friendly robot, Victor, digs you out, and his doctor owner Mitchell patches you up. You take a "vigour test", which is some sort of electric parlour game. This decides who you are and sets up SPECIAL. You can also take some Rorschach tests, but the mag says this is for fun. The Doc then gives you a Pipboy as he was once a Vault dweller.
"Hoover Dam", and "Helios" (a solar plant, confirmed by the mag to have been built by Poseidon) are fought into and then you can direct the power to wherever you choose. In the case of Helios you can also keep the plant for your self, use the energy to call down a powerful laser, or even try to distribute to all equally, however there is a risk of overloading the reactors.
There is a "reputation system", in which all three factions (NCR, Ceasar's Legion and the locals) will either see you as good or bad toward them individually.
There is a screenshot of three Capital Wasteland mutants running toward the player, who is wielding what *looks* to be a heavy incinerator, but has a TV screen and no flamer fuel tanks. He's also wearing NCR combat armour, which is in gold/mustard colours.
There are two separate screens of supermutants that look to be more local, grey skin, and the two are wearing very different clothes. One is Tabitha, who is hearing a blonde wig and love heart glasses. The mag implies she's "not all there".
On that quest, you rescue Raul, a ghoul who Tabitha kept alive to fix her favourite robot. He appears to be a follower, as the mag says you can give him items, and also commands, such as "stay, follow or attack", and also tell him to switch to melee, in which case he'll mutter "sure, I'll put away my rather effective gun, and switch to this piece of um, metal tubing here".
From what I read, the "all dialog" thing seems to imply there will be failures for skill checks as well as speech checks, though, as the mag states, there is no penalty for failing a skill check. In fact, the mag gives an example: A woman who the player tried a Sneak skill attempt on in conversation failed when convincing her an ambush would help the town be rid of a gang of raiders. She simply says "Good luck with your, uh, ambush"
Vault 21 is in the game
More info added as it is unveiled, thanks King of Creation, Ausir and iii
Bethesda has updated its blog to give us more precise information on what magazines will have New Vegas stories, and where.
Next week in the UK be on the lookout for New Vegas cover stories in OXM, PSM3, and PC Gamer. All three publications will be on newsstands on February 11th.
Stateside, PC Gamer subscribers can expect the New Vegas cover story next week (on newsstands on March 2nd). Meanwhile, both OXM and PlayStation: The Official Magazine will have features on the game – subscribers can expect to see these later in the month.
We hope to see some summaries and writeups for our non-Anglo-American readers soon after the 11th.
FOnline: 2238 brings you back to the world of Fallout once you knew it, only this time as a MMO-RPG hybrid. Cross the border where the unique game setting of the original Fallout & Fallout 2 games meets the unique MMO design.
Our friends at GameBanshee also ran their somewhat belated game of the year awards, and stack one more up for Fallout 3 DLC as Broken Steel is runner-up Best Expansion/DLC. They're also the first to award New Vegas, I think, as most anticipated.
When we learned that Obsidian Entertainment was actually going to get their hands on the Fallout franchise again, Diablo III took an immediate tumble down our most anticipated list. Despite the near certainty that it will be another FPS/RPG hybrid, Fallout: New Vegas overcomes a lot of the associated fears of riding on Fallout 3's FPS-inclined system by doing what most of us would consider a lost dream - returning the Fallout license to some of the people it originally belonged to.
While none of the developers credited as having created Fallout's "original game design" (Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky, Jason D. Anderson, Chris Taylor, Jason Taylor, and R. Scott Campbell) are currently at Obsidian, the studio boasts names like Feargus Urquhart (Fallout 1/2 producer), Chris Avellone (Fallout 2 designer), J.E. Sawyer (Van Buren lead designer), and Scott Everts (Fallout 1/2 designer) amongst its staff.
And so we head into 2010 excited to see what they'll do with the Fallout license, and hopeful they will be able to overcome some of Fallout 3's flaws, most noticeably its less-than-stellar writing. That doesn't seem like much of a stretch, either, considering that these are the same people that gave us Planescape: Torment.
The Obsidian devs have migrated to the Bethesda forums en masse, and requisite Meet the Devs threads ensued. While normally talkative types, it's pretty clear we shouldn't expect any information to come out through the forum channel, as it does not fit Bethesda's policies. The devs so far can only be found in the meet the devs threads, which have a strict no game info/questions policy, and that means it's only interesting if you want to know J.E. Sawyer's favourite games are Fallout/Darklands/Pool of Radiance (nice), or maybe this post from Chris Avellone is of interest.
Yep, I did area design and encounter design for F2 (worked on Vault City's third and final iteration, companions: Cassidy and Myron, special encounters, New Reno, Raider Camp, and the EPA, which got canned - and good thing, too, we already had too many locations) and some perk designs. Brian Menze, Feargus, Chris Jones, Scotty Everts, and Dan Spitzley are all here, all worked on Fallout 2, not all of them are on New Vegas, though.
The trailer is the only thing I can point to to answer your question, can't say much more than that. Josh and John Gonzalez (our creative lead and master of all things plot-related) put together a great story with some fun new mechanics, and they know their Fallout. I think we're using all the stuff we've been kicking around for the past ten+ years with RPGs and seeing how they can be applied to New Vegas on both the plot and system side.
Not telling us nothing.
Meanwhile, Bethesda producer Jason Bergman is egging us on to spot more hints in the trailer.
Bring on the #FalloutNewVegas speculation! Should be lots of little tidbits you can gleam from that teaser if you look carefully enough.
I expect detailed analysis and charts from us dedicated Fallout fans. Remember this? It was awesome, more please.
If you need a second look, IGN's Rewind Theater has gone back to dissect the trailer. To some extent.
This particular guy from the Fallout: New Vegas trailer:
Has been shockingly busy inciting speculation. Of what nature, do you ask? Well, he fits Tycho's description fairly well.
You see a man in dusty leather armor with a trenchcoat and gas mask.
Fairly spotted (thanks jero cvmi) but it's pretty unlikely that this is Tycho. But what it made me recall was Tycho's description of his faction, the Desert Rangers (a nod to Wasteland).
We Rangers hail from back east, what used to be called Nevada. Our heritage stretches back to the days of the Texas Rangers. We learn survival and combat skills in order to go out into the world and have a chance of surviving and making things better.
Nevada? Why, that happens to be where New Vegas takes place.
Now that the cat is more or less all the way out of the bag (or at the very least an ear is showing) on Fallout: New Vegas, No Mutants Allowed has launched its subsite. Of course, there's pretty much nothing to show as of now, but an about page, FAQ page and gallery are roaring to go.
Meanwhile, Bethesda is celebrating the trailer by taking over the Twitterverse and Facebocosm by running a competition where you can retweet the trailer and/or like it on Facebook for a chance to win a New Vegas poster signed by the devs. No country restrictions, apparently, which is pretty cool.
Speaking of the bloated behemoths that haunt our nightmares, No Mutants Allowed can also be found on facebook and Twitter. Both will be used for big-news updates and local articles only, so sign up to track the scoop.
In other, other news, OXM UK's preview of New Vegas should be coming next week, to be joined by a second preview of New Vegas in PSM3, or so Twitter tells us (thanks Briosafreak). No sign of PC World joining the two console-official mags. A lot of us won't feel like still dealing in paper magazines, so if there are any friendly types with subscriptions reading this, get in touch so you can pass along summaries of the preview content to us.
The Vault lost the race to post the Interplay v Bethesda filings this time, so instead one-ups DaC by posting a more detailed summary, as well as the entire log of correspondence between Interplay and Bethesda. An interesting read if you want to Herve Caen getting snubbed over and over again.
Gone With the Blastwave has gotten a long deserved update. In addition Morr posts that if you'd like a published dead-tree version of Blastwave that will last you long after the Apocalypse cuts off your internets, now is the time (it is only available in the coming eight weeks).
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat is hitting stores in the US today, according to this press release.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat Hits Stores Today!
New York, NY February 2nd, 2010 – Today ushers in a new day for the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise with the release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat. The game, published by Viva Media and bitComposer Games, hits stores today, February 2nd, 2010. CEO Carlo Voelker commented, “The ‘Call of Pripyat’ is the third installment in the highly acclaimed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. With its dedicated and loyal fanbase, we anticipate a strong launch.”
Players will live the life of undercover agent Major Degtyarev, an experienced stalker, as he eats, drinks, and sleeps in the Zone. Call of Pripyat is non-linear game play at its best, as the player seeks allies and makes enemies in the treacherous and fragile balance between rival factions, bandits, and mercenaries.
Where most first person shooters rely on relentless action to engage their players, Call of Pripyat goes in an entirely different direction, allowing for long moments of silence amidst a desolate landscape and an ever changing vista. The environment is dynamic: day and night alternate and are filled with thunderstorms and sunshine, and the game's artificial intelligence interacts with itself beyond the peripheral of the player. The game truly takes on a life of its own.
Game Details:
• Photorealistic graphics depicting the Zone, a contaminated area neighboring the Chernobyl disaster site.
• New story, a number of unique characters.
• Over 70 custom missions and extended side quests
• New monsters: Chimera and Burer.
• New A-Life system, created using the players’ best-liked elements of the first two games in series.
• Sleep function added into the game.
• New player’s interface.
• Possibility to continue the game after completion in freeplay mode.
• The game is developed on X-Ray engine v.1.6
• Supports DirectX 11.0
•S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:Call of Pripyat Collector’s Edition includes an area map, tech-tree poster, and stickers!
Platform: Win PC
Price: $39.99
Genre: Shooter/RPG
Release Date: February 2nd, 2010
Minimum System Requirements: Windows XP/SP 2, Intel Pentium 4.22 GHz/AMD Athlon XP 2200+, 768 MB RAM/6GB free hard drive space, nVidia GeForce 5900/ATI Radeon 9600 XT 128 MB VRAM, DirectX 9.0 compatible
The first bit is Interplay demanding Bethesda pay all of their legal fees, including attorneys' fees. It's of no real interest unless you want to be reminded of how much money attorneys make.
The longer, more interesting bit from our buddies at DaC comes from Interplay CEO Herve Caen's statements to the court. It doesn't really contain anything we don't already know, though.
Interplay has not sub-licensed its rights to Masthead, but rather entered into a development agreement for Masthead to work with Interplay to develop the MMOG. Interplay has not assigned any rights in the Fallout mark or in its MMOG to Masthead or to anyone.
(...)
The advanced state of Masthead's technology and Interplay's extensive pre-production phase resulted in a playable demonstration in March 2009. The demonstration is a portion of the post-apocalyptic game world, incorporating buildings, locations, objects, non-player characters, and controllable player characters. At the time of the hearing, or if requested by the Court prior thereto, we will submit the video demonstration of the game from March 2009.
It also contains this highly specious argument.
It is interesting that in or about August 2007, just four months after Interplay had entered into the TLA with Bethesda, Bethesda's parent compabny, ZeniMax Media LLC, announced the creation of its own MMOG development house, ZeniMax Online Studios. Based on Bethesda's subsequent conduct it thus appears that Bethesda never intended to permit Interplay to develop an MMOG under the terms of the TLA and planned from the outset to terminate Interplay's rights and grant them instead to affiliated ZeniMax Online Studios for a Fallout MMOG.
Bethesda's attempt to terminate the MMOG rights undert the TLA is consistent with its overall conduct designed to interfere with Interplay's exploitation of rights granted undert the parties' agreements, including Interplay's Merchandising Rights to the Interplay-developed Pre-existing Fallout Games.
In other news, Interplay's stock seems to have been ticked down a little bit as someone dumped 300k stocks into the market. Why? Who knows.
A talented and experienced modder, Jorge "Oscuro" Salgado, joined Obsidian Entertainment fairly recently to help with developing Fallout: New Vegas. He is quoted as being extremely knowledgable about the TES editor and scripting, and is renowned for developing the epic level spell game re-balancing mod Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul. I guess it's good to have a man knowing how to right wrongs on board.
Ok so we’re not releasing a lot of info, but that’s because we’re trying to put all of our free time into the actual development. In order to compensate at least a little, we’ve uploaded two new images into the gallery. One is a screenshot of the player visiting supermutants, the other is a new loading screen featuring an ad for post-apocalyptic New Mexico’s favorite cigarette brand.
