Fallout: New Vegas PC Gamer preview scans

Uh Fallout Tactics is only considered semi cannon due to the large amount of inconsistencies, there's actually an article about it on the wiki you linked.

Though I agree with you on the power thing. Sammy is forgetting about the Hoover Dam and as the citizens of New Vegas aren't retarded like the D.C ones it's quite feasable they could fix any power related problems caused by the war.
Though the large amount of working computers with no power supply in Fallout 3 is rather puzzling.
 
New Reno, yes. Vault City got power from the vault itself I think, and the NCR could have scavenged parts from the vault they came from, vault 15. As long as there's a believeable explanation it's ok for me...

What I sort of miss are NPCs that look ordinary until you talk to them or interact with them. I guess all RPGs have the problem where you know the name of a character by mousing over them etc before even talking to them. Maybe it's hard to get past or perhaps it doesn't really help streamline the game, if that's necessary.

I just remember playing Torment for the first time, walking around the mortuary seeing a bunch of mindless zombies and ignoring them for a while, but if you look closer a large portion of those generic looking zombies are very interesting to interact with. Torment just blew my mind before I even left the first area. That's one of the things I consider exciting and interesting exploration, not running around a huge repetitive FPS-level.
 
qJohnnyp said:
Are Vault City, NCR and New Reno unfallouty?
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Actually, New Reno is about as unfallouty as it gets -- and even it's designer, Chris Avellone (who now works on New Vegas) admitted to that. Then again, this has more to do with it's premise than that it has power sources.
 
coliphorbs said:
qJohnnyp said:
Are Vault City, NCR and New Reno unfallouty?
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Actually, New Reno is about as unfallouty as it gets -- and even it's designer, Chris Avellone (who now works on New Vegas) admitted to that. Then again, this has more to do with it's premise than that it has power sources.
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They had jetheads running on hamster wheels.
 
generalissimofurioso said:
There are automatic grenade launchers in the world.

They're big, loud and excellent for wide-area suppression.

Provided that big gun from the scans is that grenade launcher, I have no problem with it.
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And they demand two damn persons to be moved
Yet I'd agree that it's not the problem. As far as I'm concerned it's just the design of the weapons who is to blame, not the weapons themselve.
 
Alphadrop said:
Uh Fallout Tactics is only considered semi cannon due to the large amount of inconsistencies, there's actually an article about it on the wiki you linked.

Though I agree with you on the power thing. Sammy is forgetting about the Hoover Dam and as the citizens of New Vegas aren't retarded like the D.C ones it's quite feasable they could fix any power related problems caused by the war.
Though the large amount of working computers with no power supply in Fallout 3 is rather puzzling.
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I would expect hoover dam to be a high priority target actually, taking out the power is always a goal of a war. So hoover damn in perfect working condition is a stretch IMO.

Also, would there even be enough water to run the thing? I know it would be radioactive water but i could see the dam maybe existing and there not being enough water to run it. Would make a really cool fortress for super mutants of the games main bad guys though.
 
Hoover damn was actually created to keep the Colorodo river from flooding during the rain seasons,and it also acts as a storage place for irrigation water for farms in California.Floods caused the loss of alot crops and homes before the dam was built.It supplies power to Arizona,and parts of Nevada and California.Any major military or government facility here in the U.S. has its own power supply and wouldnt even be affected by the destruction of Hoover Dam.Its realistic to assume it would still be intact since it has no value as a military target.
 
I'm definitely looking forward to the game. I hope the aiming is more refined than in Fallout 3.

Anyone remember that bullshit rumor of NV on the wiki a while ago? Being able to play as a ghoul chinese dragoon? LOL! xD
 
Slammy's right, it would be a high priority target. Keep in mind that military bases don't produce anything and power is essential for food, water, and manufacturing. Add in the reason for the war is an energy shortage and hydro plants become major targets.
 
I have to disagree actually. If you look at the ww2 plans, hoover dam area was actually pretty well defended. Add the fact that it is deep inside the missle defence coverage due to it's geographic location, it's not really unrealistic if the new game assumes despite the number of missles fired at the region, no hard hits were achieved (Counter Missles, Defence Systems, AA and AAA). Sure the region probably got a lot of dirty fallout but probably not many direct hits.
 
I wonder if it'd be in working condition after 200 years of no maintenance, even if it survived the bombing. Pointless, if fun, speculation either way.
 
The setting has robots and such a place probably has repair robots. If there was some kind of automated repair and fabrication machinery (read: semi or fully automated machine shop) the basic AI could be toiling year after year, repairing all it could to pre war specs, building new bots out of scraps of others and so on...

Some kind of sadder and stupider version of Wall-E

(Edit: Stupid as in it's AI's IQ not the concept)
 
Its mentioned in the article that the area around was never directly hit by a bomb.Its very likely that people in the area could have just kept on the maintenance afterwards.
 
Nah, I think cronicler's right. It could've been people, but robotic maintenance would be possible under a wider range of circumstances.

The debate as to whether the dam or even area was actually bombed (and according to you, OzzymO, the article says it wasn't) raises another interesting issue. If there was no nearby bombing, were the effects of the fallout much less severe in Vegas?

In the originals, the whole map area was almost uniformly flattened and wiped out. Indiscriminate of strategic value, everything post-fallout by principle was wasteland.

I wonder if indeed this'll be a new type of environment --- the screenshots indicate there's clearly a lot in tact (e.g. the solar power farm), though that's also a precedent introduced by Bethesda's reinterpretation. Or if it's another detail lost in translation by the previewer.
 
qJohnnyp said:
Slammy said:
M4s? Doesnt fit with the timeline
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http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/M16A1
if you take it that what doesn't contradict canon becomes canon.
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Thats a M16, not a M4.

I have to disagree actually. If you look at the ww2 plans, hoover dam area was actually pretty well defended. Add the fact that it is deep inside the missle defence coverage due to it's geographic location, it's not really unrealistic if the new game assumes despite the number of missles fired at the region, no hard hits were achieved (Counter Missles, Defence Systems, AA and AAA). Sure the region probably got a lot of dirty fallout but probably not many direct hits.
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An ICBM Closes at something like 8 time the speed of a rifle bullet (18000km/h i believe) and flys nearly in space to the target. Ground based AA would not be able to engage until beginning its its descent at nearly 4km/s, during which conventional defense systems would be unable to target or fire on it with any sort of accuracy. Assuming you launched with Mirv warheads or multiple ICBMs, which China is capable of doing, it would be fairly easy to hit Vegas and i agree with the assessment it would be a priority target because of the power production there. Assuming a hit was achieved, im fairly sure "Repair" would become "Rebuild", not to mention the Nuclear blast's EMP would short or damage any unshielded robots, computer systems or other electronics, making automated systems redundant.
 
Think of current day Detroit. A lot of places need the whole country (or even planet) wide infastructure to stay habitable (Food, Shelter, Job and Resource). So it is't too hard to imagine an artificial town die on the wine because even though it wasn't hit, nearly everything it depended on dissapeared.

How many current day Vegas or Orange Country citizens could survive in a 1800+ or 1700+ frontier existence?
 
Actually there were a number of CAR-15 Carbine variants used in the '60s. I can't really tell for sure from the pic but this may not technically be the later M4...
 
Sawyer posts:

...the 10mm pistol is one of the most iconic Fallout weapons. The 10mm Auto caliber was developed in the 80s and Chris Taylor chose it specifically because it was a new/unusual round at the time. Additionally, miniguns are most definitely a post-50s invention. While an M4 carbine certainly has a very contemporary look/materials, it has underpinnings in the AR-15 (M16) and AR-10 families going all the way back to the late 50s. Once the U.S. military finds a good firearm, it tends to keep it around for a long time. It's actually kind of weird to look at the AR-10 and realize that it was developed over 50 years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AR-10
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Sorry Aphyosis, I somehow missed the second part of your post back there.

What and ICBM does in fallout-verse is not too important. Neither is Laser AA or killer sattalites or the %50 rule (assume at least half of the nukes will go haywire; low yield detonations, unbalanced reactions, duds, over reactions, navigational errors and so on; and don't do what you want them to do in a tactical sense).


The new story says that one way or another, Vegas and Hoover weren't directly hit. Maybe Ellis took down every nuke, maybe the nukes all went for Martha's Roadside Diner 75 km S-SW of Vegas. It doesn't really matter becouse The city and dams survival is not that unbelivable.


And on a related note, Fallout-verse uses vacuum tubes for general computers and optics for advanced computers. No transistors or chips as we are used to think of them so Fallout-Tech is much more resistant to EMPs than it would look.

Also lets not forget the cliche; every mountainside has a 50% chance of containing a secret combat robot protected and shielded outpost. :)
 
cronicler said:
And on a related note, Fallout-verse uses vacuum tubes for general computers and optics for advanced computers. No transistors or chips as we are used to think of them so Fallout-Tech is much more resistant to EMPs than it would look.

Also lets not forget the cliche; every mountainside has a 50% chance of containing a secret combat robot protected and shielded outpost. :)
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The Nuclear blast's EMP still damages vacuum tubes, albeit not as much as modern kit, but its safe to assume sufficient damage would be done to wipe any software and damage the hardware supporting automated facility's.

Your right we can overlook all this for the sake of a game, i'm just saying in a real world scenario expecting a target to be missed is naive. Normally i wouldn't mention it, but to be perfectly honest with you i forgot Fallout forgets about transistors and the like :oops:

wolfsburg said:
Actually there were a number of CAR-15 Carbine variants used in the '60s. I can't really tell for sure from the pic but this may not technically be the later M4...
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Now that you mention it, that Magazine looks rather boxy. M4's have a slightly curved one don't they?
 
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