1UP's Fallout 3 Gameplay Video and Interview

[Taskeen]

edit: Gray areas:
1. The power armor bit. I HATED it when in Fallout 2 you could rush off to the enclave, get a suit of power armor and from then on just pretty much break the game. But I am not sure how good it will be to make it require a perk to use (although in a way it does make sense to not be able to use a technological armor off the bat)

That's my favorite part of Fallout 2 . Kicking the shit out of what would have been difficult enemies, early game, in your power armor is awesome.

 

[Seymour the spore plant]

the one thing that I noticed about the first two games is that it was kind of "rush to the power armor"

On Fallout 1, rushing to the Power Armor? Really? Because it seems to me that you would have been absolutely unable to get it by repairing the one in the Brotherhood, much less by rescuing their member on the Hub, at a low level. I would very much like to know how he accomplished such a feat, since even entering the Brotherhood requires going to The Glow.

Even in Fallout 2, though it was a lot easier, this rush was a deliberate and game-breaking exploit which wasn't all that easy to figure out. Maybe it shouldn't have been there at all, but this would have been fixed by simply having the folks at Navarro not handing it to you.

I definitely don't like the sound of an "armor proficiency" perk, though.

 

[Ixyroth]

My general feeling watching that was... meh.

The guns look terrible and the character models have that same awkward cardboard feel as those in Oblivion. The AI just sat in the same place for the most part. In S.T.A.L.K.E.R. the AI would make you work most of the time. Sometimes it would be incredibly stupid, but the positive outweighed the negative. At least they were capable of moving around.

Even taken for what it is, a run-and-gun shooter, it just doesn't look fun to me.

Dismemberment by teddy bear...

 

[whirlingdervish]

However, one thing that bugs me on all the videos: Why is he waiting for the Enclave to get off the Vertibird? Before the ramp comes down why not lunch a nuke? Is this the kind of Nuke that only kills people and does no harm to aircraft/vehicles? I know it may be to "show off" the demo, but I would not be surprised if it turned out the fatman only harms people. Not just kids are indestructible but perhaps so are Vertibirds... just wondering.

that bugged the shit out of me as well.

It screamed "heavily scripted disembarking sequence!" and I have a feeling he didn't shoot the vertibird because it would have done no visible damage to it, killed all of the enclave troopers, and yet the vertibird would have lifted back off and flown away so you couldn't steal it.

This goes hand in hand with a post I made a few days back about one of the previewers referring to it as the enclave guys repelling out of a vertibird. Even though that sounded stupid to most of us, it would have at least made it easier to explain why you can't shoot them all dead and steal the vertibird.

I remember a similar sequence taking place during my recent single player playthrough of Quake 4, where a drop ship cruises in and disembarks 10 tactical strogg, and no matter what I shot at the ship (even the anitmatter gun) it still flew away unscathed after neatly depositing the shock troops in the path of my barrage of rockets, slugs and little energy balls.

It was one of the few times that the scripted enemy AI really dissapointed me with an atmosphere-breaking action.

For the most part, up until that point, everything was killable by some means, and I felt like a real badass toting around a deadly arsenal and crushing all resistance.

Unfortunately for F03, In a shooter style game no matter how badass your guy is, the first time you run into some enemy that's totally indestructible, you feel completely impotent and it takes something very important away from the experience.

btw, I still want to steal the damn vertibird.

 

[Sam Ecorners]

the one thing that I noticed about the first two games is that it was kind of "rush to the power armor"

On Fallout 1, rushing to the Power Armor? Really? Because it seems to me that you would have been absolutely unable to get it by repairing the one in the Brotherhood, much less by rescuing their member on the Hub, at a low level. I would very much like to know how he accomplished such a feat, since even entering the Brotherhood requires going to The Glow.

Even in Fallout 2, though it was a lot easier, this rush was a deliberate and game-breaking exploit which wasn't all that easy to figure out. Maybe it shouldn't have been there at all, but this would have been fixed by simply having the folks at Navarro not handing it to you.

I definitely don't like the sound of an "armor proficiency" perk, though.

In F1, the first thing I always did, was to go to hub and free the BOS member. On low levels. It was hard, and I often had to reload, but it worked. Then I'd go buy some radx from that other guy in hub, and head to glow. The rest of the game was easy.

In Navarro, I didn't even know they can hand it over until few years ago. I always went there, killed the attendant, go through the trapdoor behind him, sneak to the lockers, grab the PA and begone.

So yeah, I do like the PA perk, finally a decent addition that's attempting to solve a previous problem.

 

[whirlingdervish]

It was only a problem on your second or third playthrough, and really more of a balance issue than anything.

In FO2, you could cheat the game by running and reloading every time you got fire geckos and aliens and enclave patrollers on your way straight to Navarro to steal the APA, but by design, the game had those obstacles there to smack down any low level character who travelled that way from arroyo.

Good luck running from a gauss pistol.

You really had to exploit the game (or have a computer so fast that the random encounters didnt happen often enough) to get there.


In FO1, after all these years I've never "rushed" to get the PA even though it was an eventual goal in every playthrough.

I'd try to get the .223 pistol quickly, but that's about it. I also didn't go for the low level run to the vats and beat the game in a few minutes method.

They were all possibilities but I actually enjoyed the questing and the searching and having a good chance of dying parts of the game, not just the winning.

 

[Brother None]

The way they approach karma sounds pretty good. Better than Fallout 1/2.

You've seen screens and videos of the dialogue, then?

I have.

And if they felt confident to include a wad of dialogue in a demo a year ago, then the "we need to polish" excuse doesn't stand.

Add to this that they already did the VO work. And are already full-flung into localizing.

i.e.: bullshit

Maybe they just mean the "camera zoomz to head and dialog options are shown"-thing.

There was a riot about this casual remark before, and yes, that's it: visually, it takes some queues from Oblivion. Mechanically, there's no minigame nonsense, it's branching, full-line dialogue.

 

[nyibelunger]

I have.

And if they felt confident to include a wad of dialogue in a demo a year ago, then the "we need to polish" excuse doesn't stand.

Add to this that they already did the VO work. And are already full-flung into localizing.

i.e.: bullshit

OK, but tell me why they don't want to show any dialog? Is it because you guys could be disappointed and wouldn't buy the game (like you all here are going to buy it )?


Ad vertibird.
Notice that although there was several footages they were showing the same thing...highway->raiders camp->bridge->robot->vertibird
ask yourselves "why".....answer is "because they want to demonstrate some things and some not"
or do you guys believe that you can wear only vault suit because they didn't show you other armors?

 

[Xenophile]

I have.

And if they felt confident to include a wad of dialogue in a demo a year ago, then the "we need to polish" excuse doesn't stand.

Add to this that they already did the VO work. And are already full-flung into localizing.

i.e.: bullshit

I think you are confusing what they are probably polishing.

Dialog is options and voice over is set and can even be off in localization.. what I think they are probably polishing is the transition into dialog, the presentation and animation of the actor NPC's this can be worked on up until the gold copy (hell even patched after).

Calling bullshit, is really short-sighted.

 

[Jesuit]

I have.

And if they felt confident to include a wad of dialogue in a demo a year ago, then the "we need to polish" excuse doesn't stand.

Add to this that they already did the VO work. And are already full-flung into localizing.

i.e.: bullshit

Seeing is believing. Not that I'm doubting their propensity to bullshit, but I can see why any company would feel fine showing dialog to a group of journalists, and not so fine showing it to the whole world.

It's one thing if you read "the dialog seems stiff and wooden" and a completely different thing if you see it for yourself.

I mean they're gonna have to show dialog at some point... right?

 

[Brother None]

OK, but tell me why they don't want to show any dialog? Is it because you guys could be disappointed and wouldn't buy the game (like you all here are going to buy it )?

You mean in the public gameplay demo?

Because that's not the kind of thing PR-wisdom says you should show in a public E3 demo. Violence sells, words don't. At least, not for Bethesda's target audience.

ask yourselves "why"

Because Bethesda always makes a single walkthrough for demonstrations, polishes it, makes sure nothing can go wrong and then show it of. This is the third time they do that, the previous two demo-rounds were the same.

what I think they are probably polishing is the transition into dialog, the presentation and animation of the actor NPC's this can be worked on up until the gold copy (hell even patched after).

Calling bullshit, is really short-sighted.

Why, because your assumption is better than mine?

They're still polishing every graphic and animation until gold copy, it's rather leaping to conclusion to think that VATS (which looks more polished than when I saw it) and combat animations are a-ok while the dialogue animations are not.

 

[nyibelunger]

Because that's not the kind of thing PR-wisdom says you should show in a public E3 demo. Violence sells, words don't. At least, not for Bethesda's target audience.

I agree that beth target this presentation to audience who prefer action and violence, but it doesn´t mean that showing one small dialog (lets say 30sec) would result into rejecting the title (f3) by its target group. There must be another reason. Maybe they are tweaking face animations like xenophile said.

 

[Havok4]

That was a good interview, also that was probably the most revealed intelligent game design choices I have seen in a Fallout3 preview.

 

[Jenx]

(...) So, if you're NOT going to rush to get the power armor (either you don't want to, or don't know how to), then what's the problem of having to take a perk later in the game so you could use it?

Huh? Have I mentioned anywhere that I have a problem with perk? I'm writing that it's silly to think that getting power armor early was an easy task in previous Fallouts and you're writing about Bethesda's perk. You've got problems with reading with comprehension.

Heh, ad hominem much?

 

[Kadayi]

Pretty good interview overall. I thought Todd was quite honest in his answers, admitting to Oblivions shortfalls and why they hadn't shown any dialog. I kind of almost expected him to mention Mass Effect when he said about other games out there connecting you much much better with with NPCs. I guess they are polishing away like crazy to get somewhere near to that (not that Mass Effect didn't have it's shortfalls as well).

 

[Per]

I'm paraphrasing, but he said something to the effect of "There's no screen where you make your character, you'll be playing the first 30 minutes of the game going through childhood."

So I guess it's even too much to ask to have a quick character creation sheet like the first two games....

It's been known for about 8 years that after the growing up sequence you get to change your character around before starting the game proper, and you can skip directly to this part.

On Fallout 1, rushing to the Power Armor? Really? Because it seems to me that you would have been absolutely unable to get it by repairing the one in the Brotherhood, much less by rescuing their member on the Hub, at a low level. I would very much like to know how he accomplished such a feat, since even entering the Brotherhood requires going to The Glow.

With an Electronic Lock Pick you can enter the Brotherhood and have them recognize you as an initiate because of a bug.

 

[Brother None]

It's been known for about 8 years that after the growing up sequence you get to change your character around before starting the game proper, and you can skip directly to this part.

Wait, you can skip directly into that part? It's one hour in, ain't it?

 

[DarkCorp]

Yes you could use an electronic lockpick.

Since you get one from Loxley, well its kind of a no brainer.

The thing is we shouldn't need a perk for power armor. If a player wishes to ruin a game its his fucking fault.

As someone else stated, one usually has togo through the game anyways to realise when and where power armor is needed.

For example, I thought getting the combat armor made me the toughest shit around. Until I ran into deathclaws (hence the actual playing and exploring of the game) or running into the brotherhood or the supermutants.

I mean one has to know that there are electronic lockpicks in the first place. That has to be figured out through gameplay and questing/levelling. Also being able to lockpick the brotherhood door without being shot at. A player doesn't know that in advance.

Also in F2, you had to have played the game and beaten it before to know where Navarro was. Also as someone else said, theres a boatload of enclave patrols in the area so unless someone knew right off the bat that one could simply sneak through, they would have had to find out the long way IE playing through the game. I mean im not going to waste the time to do tedious reloading and running if I didn't know it would get me anything. I would have assumed that area is dangerous and when I am better geared I will go back.

What I am trying to say is that people don't really do speed runs unless they have played the game through once and in doing so aquiring the knowledge for a speed run.

 

[golfmade]

Also in F2, you had to have played the game and beaten it before to know where Navarro was. Also as someone else said, theres a boatload of enclave patrols in the area so unless someone knew right off the bat that one could simply sneak through, they would have had to find out the long way IE playing through the game. I mean im not going to waste the time to do tedious reloading and running if I didn't know it would get me anything. I would have assumed that area is dangerous and when I am better geared I will go back.

Really? Sure, on your first playthrough you wouldn't KNOW where Navarro was or maybe even what it was. But if you're the type of gamer like me, that likes to just go exploring and see what's what, it is possible to get to Navarro. Upon arriving at Navarro you see the dudes wearing power armor and wonder "Damn, where can I get me some of that?"

 

[DarkCorp]

Really? Sure, on your first playthrough you wouldn't KNOW where Navarro was or maybe even what it was. But if you're the type of gamer like me, that likes to just go exploring and see what's what, it is possible to get to Navarro. Upon arriving at Navarro you see the dudes wearing power armor and wonder "Damn, where can I get me some of that?"

Well had you been exploring like that in F2 the chances were large that you got gunned down by enclave patrols or most likely got blown to bits by the minefield. That is saying you survive the slaver patrols, the yakuza, remnants of the masters army, wanamingos, etc, etc.

Second, you never see Navarro in the first screen. All you see is an empty gas station with a robed dude outside. So what could possibly give you the idea that a military base existed there had you not played through it already?

What I am saying is that things in the game reveal themselves and honestly the chances that a person can "break" the game their first time through without any sort of outside knowledge is highly unlikely. Therefore if a person breaks a game, its most likely his or her own damn fault. The game should not punish players who want a speed run just because a few idiot kids cannot resist the urge to look at gamefaqs.

PS: Yes if you still did manage to find the enclave dudes and wanted their armor, you had no way of knowing how to get it. Unless you knew about the mission to infiltrate the enclave and had the skill to trick the man into get giving the password, you wouldn't have made it in.

Before you mention San Fran its the same deal. Its way the hell south and without a car or high outdoorsman skill, or armor, good luck. Most likely people have played through, decided they wanted to play a game where they had the armor right at the beginning so they can play a power/optimize game therefore they cheese saved their entire trip down south.