Finnish gaming site Plaza.fi posted a Fallout 3 preview. According to our anonymous tipper and translator, it's the second part of three (where the first one dealt with the game's tutorial stage):<blockquote>About Action points:
-It takes about 20 seconds for action points to charge full.
About Fatman:
- With nuclear grenade launcher you could calm even the suburbs of Paris. But bigsized nuclear nades are so sturdy widgets, that their after-radiation stands up even in the well-bombed Washington. It is not recommended to walk over radiation field that nukes produce. Although nuclear nades are quite effective weapons, at the same time they limit the player - the gun weights a lot and projectiles are rare. If player has too much stuff with him, it's harder to move.
- A funny detail: Enemy was shot in a VATS-mode, but the nuke missed him just slightly. But instead it hit a column behind the enemies, exploded and the pressure wave hurled mutant in to air.
About missions:
- There doesn't seem to be any "kill 50 rats and bring their tails"-style missions in the game.
About AI:
-There is still a question that has not been answered, regarding the A.I of enemies. How will enemies act and move? From what we have seen, we are hopeful. The smarter human opponents could move and take cover during firefight. Occasionally they started firing from their cover, then they hide or changed location. They are not the smartest guys around, but they're not the most senseless idiots either. Some enemies tried to escape when starting to lose, some accepted to stand still and get their ass kicked.
-Even though the AI didn't yet shine, the situation is promising. Game is still unfinished, the tested version was over a month old and there still time before release date. That means that Bethesda has time to work on AI. Lets keep our thumbs up.</blockquote>Speaking of Finland, the Bethblog reminds us Fallout 3 is featured on the cover of the latest Pelaaja magazine.
Meanwhile, German Krawall Gaming Network posted their own preview in German (thanks to Gothardt). Edmond Dantès provides some translations:<blockquote>Handling the menus and inventory is a bit more of a hassle than we had hoped. As in Oblivion, the menus are tailored to the possibilities of the console-controller. Especially the inventory could've been made easier to use by adapting it better to mouse-control. At the start, with few objects, it doesn't really matter much. Later on it can be somewhat annoying.
[..]
The original Fallout-fan can be content with what Bethesda created. But the combat-system doesn't reach the strategical depth of the originals. The dialogue also isn't as great as we remember with for example from Black Isle [translator's note: It reads like he thinks the originals were made by Black Isle, I've 'fixed' the emphasis]. But apart from all the compromises in the interest of the masses and console-friendliness, Fallout 3 clearly offers more than Oblivion did. Creating a character and character-development are more complex, player decisions seem to have heavier consequences. We were especially pleasantly surprised by the variation the game offered.</blockquote>Also there's OnlineWelten (thanks Briosafreak). Edmond again:<blockquote>While in real-time you might easily miss, in V.A.T.S. it seems almost impossible. Even a 33% shot will mostly hit, especially if you just fire three times. Secondly, the AP points fill up very quickly. [..] And thirdly, we seemed to almost always get a ‘critical hit’. If we hit the head, it exploded, if we hit a leg, it got torn off, and always did it lead to the death of the opponent. But that simply hasn’t got a damn thing to do with the old Fallout system and made the game too easy. When we asked Pete Hines about this he dodged our question, and to our renewed questioning Bethesda has yet to answer. We just can’t imagine that this will be the way V.A.T.S. works in the finished game, it would be too powerful.
[..]
In our [half-hour] demo-game we killed a Supermutant with a simple pistol – that would’ve never happened in Fallout 2. Pete Hines tells us that they didn’t want to tell the player how or what he’s supposed to do, you could just go anywhere you want. So far so good, but then he goes on: “But we neither wanted that the player would die in a minute if he’d enter a region that’s too hard for him.” Ack. That sounds a bit like when in Oblivion you’d be able to follow just the main quest which would be, thanks to leveling opponents , possible for even low-level hero’s, so that you’d be able to finish it in record-time. Instead of leveling your character for a while, exploring the world, and then with a feeling of accomplishment to ‘solve’ the game.</blockquote>On the English front, GamersGlobal posted a very short Q&A thing with Pete Hines.<blockquote>1. Was the E3 version "simplified", e.g. by making the hero's character more powerful than he would be in the finished game at that early stage? Or was every V.A.T.S. hit in the E3 version a critical hit?
Pete Hines: It was simplified in terms of giving you the highest stats for the weapons you start off with. Every VATS hit in the E3 version was not a critical hit. Far from it. It's random, so some folks may see more or less of it when they play for any period of time.
2. Will V.A.T.S. head shots be always fatal, if they hit?
Pete Hines: No. there is an amount of damage it will do to the limb, and an amount it does to the enemy's overall health. In the easier creatures you would have faced early on, they don't have much health so they die easier. As you explore out and fight tougher creatures, you find that you can cripple one or more body parts before you can kill the enemy.</blockquote>
-It takes about 20 seconds for action points to charge full.
About Fatman:
- With nuclear grenade launcher you could calm even the suburbs of Paris. But bigsized nuclear nades are so sturdy widgets, that their after-radiation stands up even in the well-bombed Washington. It is not recommended to walk over radiation field that nukes produce. Although nuclear nades are quite effective weapons, at the same time they limit the player - the gun weights a lot and projectiles are rare. If player has too much stuff with him, it's harder to move.
- A funny detail: Enemy was shot in a VATS-mode, but the nuke missed him just slightly. But instead it hit a column behind the enemies, exploded and the pressure wave hurled mutant in to air.
About missions:
- There doesn't seem to be any "kill 50 rats and bring their tails"-style missions in the game.
About AI:
-There is still a question that has not been answered, regarding the A.I of enemies. How will enemies act and move? From what we have seen, we are hopeful. The smarter human opponents could move and take cover during firefight. Occasionally they started firing from their cover, then they hide or changed location. They are not the smartest guys around, but they're not the most senseless idiots either. Some enemies tried to escape when starting to lose, some accepted to stand still and get their ass kicked.
-Even though the AI didn't yet shine, the situation is promising. Game is still unfinished, the tested version was over a month old and there still time before release date. That means that Bethesda has time to work on AI. Lets keep our thumbs up.</blockquote>Speaking of Finland, the Bethblog reminds us Fallout 3 is featured on the cover of the latest Pelaaja magazine.
Meanwhile, German Krawall Gaming Network posted their own preview in German (thanks to Gothardt). Edmond Dantès provides some translations:<blockquote>Handling the menus and inventory is a bit more of a hassle than we had hoped. As in Oblivion, the menus are tailored to the possibilities of the console-controller. Especially the inventory could've been made easier to use by adapting it better to mouse-control. At the start, with few objects, it doesn't really matter much. Later on it can be somewhat annoying.
[..]
The original Fallout-fan can be content with what Bethesda created. But the combat-system doesn't reach the strategical depth of the originals. The dialogue also isn't as great as we remember with for example from Black Isle [translator's note: It reads like he thinks the originals were made by Black Isle, I've 'fixed' the emphasis]. But apart from all the compromises in the interest of the masses and console-friendliness, Fallout 3 clearly offers more than Oblivion did. Creating a character and character-development are more complex, player decisions seem to have heavier consequences. We were especially pleasantly surprised by the variation the game offered.</blockquote>Also there's OnlineWelten (thanks Briosafreak). Edmond again:<blockquote>While in real-time you might easily miss, in V.A.T.S. it seems almost impossible. Even a 33% shot will mostly hit, especially if you just fire three times. Secondly, the AP points fill up very quickly. [..] And thirdly, we seemed to almost always get a ‘critical hit’. If we hit the head, it exploded, if we hit a leg, it got torn off, and always did it lead to the death of the opponent. But that simply hasn’t got a damn thing to do with the old Fallout system and made the game too easy. When we asked Pete Hines about this he dodged our question, and to our renewed questioning Bethesda has yet to answer. We just can’t imagine that this will be the way V.A.T.S. works in the finished game, it would be too powerful.
[..]
In our [half-hour] demo-game we killed a Supermutant with a simple pistol – that would’ve never happened in Fallout 2. Pete Hines tells us that they didn’t want to tell the player how or what he’s supposed to do, you could just go anywhere you want. So far so good, but then he goes on: “But we neither wanted that the player would die in a minute if he’d enter a region that’s too hard for him.” Ack. That sounds a bit like when in Oblivion you’d be able to follow just the main quest which would be, thanks to leveling opponents , possible for even low-level hero’s, so that you’d be able to finish it in record-time. Instead of leveling your character for a while, exploring the world, and then with a feeling of accomplishment to ‘solve’ the game.</blockquote>On the English front, GamersGlobal posted a very short Q&A thing with Pete Hines.<blockquote>1. Was the E3 version "simplified", e.g. by making the hero's character more powerful than he would be in the finished game at that early stage? Or was every V.A.T.S. hit in the E3 version a critical hit?
Pete Hines: It was simplified in terms of giving you the highest stats for the weapons you start off with. Every VATS hit in the E3 version was not a critical hit. Far from it. It's random, so some folks may see more or less of it when they play for any period of time.
2. Will V.A.T.S. head shots be always fatal, if they hit?
Pete Hines: No. there is an amount of damage it will do to the limb, and an amount it does to the enemy's overall health. In the easier creatures you would have faced early on, they don't have much health so they die easier. As you explore out and fight tougher creatures, you find that you can cripple one or more body parts before you can kill the enemy.</blockquote>
