Fallout 3 at E3 - NMA/SC interview

[SuAside]

Other interviewer: Could you actually play the game without using the VATS system?
EP: You could. If you were to do that I would compare it to Deus Ex 1, which would have a similar feel. You certainly could. It would be harder. It’s harder to play the game that way tactically. In VATS, we are sort of still playing with that. For example, if you are trying to shoot the antennae off a giant ant, it’s really hard to target that in real time. So we might jack the percentage up a little bit to make it a viable option. But you could certainly play the entire game without using VATS. But we've found in the office playing the game that the third person playback (which only happens in VATS) is a lot of fun to watch. When Todd and I first started prototyping VATS, we played other real time games like Call of Duty and Halo. We'd sit there and say "if I were playing this game and could freeze this moment and go into some kind of targeting system, how would that feel?" Sometimes you want to take a breath and think tactically and not feel rushed. We struggled a long time with the first versions of VATS whether the game should be paused or should we do some slo mo thing. We decided to pause the game and let the player think, be more tactical and not pressure them.

so basically just an FPS with a cheatmode to help you aim.

SC: No shots to the eyes?
EP: No, and I'll tell you why. We talked about that, we prototyped it, and when you play the game and see it in such high def, when you shoot someone in the eyes you expect the head to blow up anyway. Shooting someone in the head has the same effect. If you get a critical on them they get dazed and stuff.

because obviously, shooting a BB gun into someone's eye makes their head explode. or when you poke it with a cattleprod. or when you his him with your fist.

SC: Is the Enclave in the game? The presentation mentioned their radio station.
EP: I don't know what you’re talking about. (laughter) We're not talking about that.
SC: Thank you.
EP Quite welcome (laughter)

like, lulz, it was in teh presentation but we like totally dont want to talk about it.

SC: So is the DC Brotherhood of Steel the same Brotherhood of Steel that was on the West Coast? Is it nationwide?
EP: You’re the only person that asked me that question. I'm surprised that no one else has. Let me just say that its come up a lot that "How did the Super Mutants and the Brotherhood of Steel get on the East Coast?". We answer those questions in the game and there's a reason why they're there. They are somehow connected to the other Brotherhood of Steel but we cover those bases within the game.

mostly because other journalists are clueless turds soaking up the hype instead of doing actual research on FO and its past, amiright?

 

[Max Power]

Perception affects to-hit percentages, high perception functions like the old Awareness perk.

Agility affects action points and regeneration of APs.

Both affect weapon skills, I think

So I read today that perception affects to-hit chance.
But APs won't be probably so important as earlier since most of shooting is in real time. And as to weapon skills it will affect them only in early parts of the game, later you can make it up with high intelligence=lots of skill points. So it might be little useless... (of course i won't know until i play it)

 

[Bad_Karma]

You're missing a point.
Ever thought about shooting on BoS-'Knights' ? So, is it the same to shoot at some 'helmet glass' (visor?) as to shoot at the metall parts of a helmet?
And even if you hit the glass, a bullet might change it's shape and become soemthing like a shrapnel, only wounding the eyes/meat but not going fully into the head...
And therefore Blinding an enemy.

I don't know if this 'glass' thing was taken into consideration in F 1 & 2, but in a sequel with modern 'they didn't had the engine in the past times to do all they wanted', it should be a thing to think about...

 

[Vault 69er]

The eye thing is a pathetic excuse, Emil seems to think that every single eye shot would be made with a minigun against a normal unarmoured human.
I love this crap about "high def" too. Playing the realism card again? "We must have proper firearms realism! Now back to designing the nukular catapult!"

 

[Jiggly McNerdington]

The eye thing is a pathetic excuse, Emil seems to think that every single eye shot would be made with a minigun against a normal unarmoured human.
I love this crap about "high def" too. Playing the realism card again? "We must have proper firearms realism! Now back to designing the nukular catapult!"

I sort of understand removing eye shots because that's something that always struck me as silly in FO1/2. The majority of the things you're shooting don't have fancy eye protection, and shooting anyone in the eye with almost any sort of a gun should do a hell of a lot more than just a little extra damage and lower perception. It didn't ruin the combat at all but it kinda irritated me.

And what's wrong with having fairly realistic "Real" guns, and then having laser rifles plasma grenades alien blasters laser gatling guns power fists and nuclear slingshots?

 

[Kyuu]

I sort of understand removing eye shots because that's something that always struck me as silly in FO1/2. The majority of the things you're shooting don't have fancy eye protection, and shooting anyone in the eye with almost any sort of a gun should do a hell of a lot more than just a little extra damage and lower perception. It didn't ruin the combat at all but it kinda irritated me.

Fallout combat was not based on emulating real-life. It was based on emulating a tabletop PnP system. What's silly is saying that if it's not possible in real-life, it shouldn't be possible in a game. Shooting people in the eyes was damn fun, and had a point (blinding) that could've very easily been worked into Beth's VATS system (not that it wouldn't still sound convoluted and tiresome... and yes, convoluted is my word-of-the-day). So their excuse that it seemed "pointless" speaks of laziness, a complete inability to think outside of their self-imposed "bullets always explode body parts, especially the head!" rule, or a simple disdain for keeping anything from Fallout in their game, even when there's no good reason to get rid of it.