Guardian Fallout 3 interview, the follow-up

[Per]

Last week when Guardian posted an interview with Pete Hines, they promised they'd try to get answers to more of the fan-submitted questions. Now they have.<blockquote>Is the Intense Training Perk (permanently raise one SPECIAL) a one time use Perk for one attribute, or one time use PER attribute, meaning you could spend 7 Perks/Levels upping each of your SPECIALs?

You can use it more than once, so yes you could keep upping each of your SPECIALs, but that's going to come at the sacrifice of being able to do quite a bit of other stuff with available Perks, skill boosts, etc.

In Fallout 1, there were only three key locations that you needed to visit to complete the game - The Cathedral, Military Base and Necropolis (the last one being optional, actually) . These places could be done in any order, creating Fallout's exceptional nonlinearity. Is Fallout 3's main quest structured in similar fashion?

Hmm, parts of it are, parts of it aren't. There are several large sections of the main quest that you can actually skip if you do things right.

Specific body parts cannot be targeted when fighting with melee weapons or in hand to hand combat. What is the reason behind this decision? Does melee/HtH fighting offer something else to compensate?

We tried many ways of doing melee with VATS, and having messed a lot with "missing" in melee, it just felt really bad. So once we changed VATS melee to "always hit", assuming you are in range, the body part selection became a bit unbalancing, so now it's a "whole body attack", but you still do end up hitting a specific body part when you swing, but it's based on what you actually contact with, as opposed to what you aim at. This avoids the "always punch in the head" problem, whereas with guns, we can balance out certain body parts with hit percentages, like the head.

Can you tag Medicine, Repair and Barter, and focusing on those skills, still be able to complete the game?

Sure. We recently had someone play through the game and finish it while only killing one thing very early in the game...a Radroach. I'm not saying I recommend everyone run out and try to play the game as a pacifist, but if you want to give it a try, it has been done.</blockquote>Thanks to The Idiot.

 

[God is Dog backwards]

Can you tag Medicine, Repair and Barter, and focusing on those skills, still be able to complete the game?

Sure. We recently had someone play through the game and finish it while only killing one thing very early in the game...a Radroach. I'm not saying I recommend everyone run out and try to play the game as a pacifist, but if you want to give it a try, it has been done.

That's great news.

 

[MrBumble]

So once we changed VATS melee to "always hit", assuming you are in range

HAHAHAHAHAHA...What ?

So they designed a combat system, THEN discovered it was broken ( i.e : console kiddies would have found it boring ) and instead of fixing it, they made it so it's impossible to miss ? The fuck ?

 

[Bofast]

Sure. We recently had someone play through the game and finish it while only killing one thing very early in the game...a Radroach. I'm not saying I recommend everyone run out and try to play the game as a pacifist, but if you want to give it a try, it has been done.

This is probably the best piece of news I've heard about FO3 yet

 

[Seymour the spore plant]

We tried many ways of doing melee with VATS, and having messed a lot with "missing" in melee, it just felt really bad. So once we changed VATS melee to "always hit", assuming you are in range, the body part selection became a bit unbalancing, so now it's a "whole body attack", but you still do end up hitting a specific body part when you swing, but it's based on what you actually contact with, as opposed to what you aim at. This avoids the "always punch in the head" problem, whereas with guns, we can balance out certain body parts with hit percentages, like the head.

And another moronic design decision is made based on what "feels good", immersion and all that crap. Can't be bothered to make a dodge animation and the target audience cannot grasp the concept that a visual hit might not be a successful roll, so let's gimp melee altogether instead.

Don't these guys realize how awful will melee be compared to any firearm skill once they reach high levels and to-hit starts becomes less of an issue? On the one hand, you have the usual advantages that come with ranged combat plus the ability to aim at sensitive locations at will, possibly resulting in higher damage overall; on the other, you have a (probably) less deadly weapon which only works at close range and that renders VATS effectively useless - auto-hits, manual aiming, why even bother with APs in the first place?

So they designed a combat system, THEN discovered it was broken ( i.e : console kiddies would have found it boring ) and instead of fixing it, they made it so it's impossible to miss ? The fuck ?

Yeah, those guys at Bethesda sure are quick to hand auto-hits in their games, even though it usually ends fucking up the balance like with Oblivion's enchantments.

 

[H.A.D.E.S.]

Why can't you just make an animation where the enemy blocks or dodges your attacks?

 

[Ausir]

Can you tag Medicine, Repair and Barter, and focusing on those skills, still be able to complete the game?

Sure. We recently had someone play through the game and finish it while only killing one thing very early in the game...a Radroach. I'm not saying I recommend everyone run out and try to play the game as a pacifist, but if you want to give it a try, it has been done.

Very good news indeed.

 

[MrBumble]

Why can't you just make an animation where the enemy blocks or dodges your attacks?

Because it's not as "phun" as a 100% success system ( and requires work...work is for modders ).

 

[Scare]

Great news. I wonder if this person was sneaking mainly or using diplomacy.

 

[MrBumble]

My guess is that he sneaked a lot, ran a lot and used diplomacy a lot. The good news is not that you can avoid combat per se ( because having to run systematically everytime you're seen by an enemy just for the sake of being pacifist is a bit retarded to me ) , but that you can finish the game without killing the final "boss", which means that diplomacy IS indeed an option ( and hopefully is correctly implemented throughout the whole game ). It is indeed good news but I will have to see it for myself before congratulating Bethsoft for it...

 

[Beelzebud]

Why can't you just make an animation where the enemy blocks or dodges your attacks?

Have you seen Bethesda's animations in action? It's probably best they add as little as possible.

 

[MrBumble]

[boring cliché] Also, who wants to bet that the final boss is actually your dad ? [/boring cliché]

 

[Brother None]

The mêlée-always-hits thing is hardly a surprise. The reason they changed from skill-determines-to-hit to skill-determines-damage between Morrowind and Oblivion was because it looks really weird when you don't hit in first-person, you sword just swinging through the other person without doing damage. It never occurred to Bethesda to make dodging or missing-swing animations, they just cut the whole concept to replace with skill-determines-damage.

It sounds like they started out with more of a skill-determines-to-hit concept for Fallout 3, for both ranged combat and close combat, but they have scaled it back for the former and removed it for the latter.

Can you tag Medicine, Repair and Barter, and focusing on those skills, still be able to complete the game?

Sure. We recently had someone play through the game and finish it while only killing one thing very early in the game...a Radroach. I'm not saying I recommend everyone run out and try to play the game as a pacifist, but if you want to give it a try, it has been done.

Excellent!

Will weapons require a minimum Strength? Or only a minimum in its governing attribute? (Perception = Energy, Endurance = Big, Agility = Small).

Weapons do not check for minimum stat values, you can use any weapon you want, the skill/stat just makes you better or worse with the weapon.

And this sucks ass.

 

[Ausir]

[boring cliché] Also, who wants to bet that the final boss is actually your dad ? [/boring cliché]

I could bet on him being or not being the final boss and win, but that wouldn't be fair.

Can you tag Medicine, Repair and Barter, and focusing on those skills, still be able to complete the game?

Sure. We recently had someone play through the game and finish it while only killing one thing very early in the game...a Radroach. I'm not saying I recommend everyone run out and try to play the game as a pacifist, but if you want to give it a try, it has been done.

Excellent!

Note that he didn't actually answer the question about these particular skills - it might not be possible without investing in Sneak.

 

[Brother None]

Note that he didn't actually answer the question about these particular skills - it might not be possible without investing in Sneak.

Yeah he did, but indeed most of his answer is unrelated to the question. Like this:

Question: can you finish with focus on medicine, repair and barter
Answer: sure
Unrelated to question-part-of-answer: by the way you can also be a pacifist

Wonder how you're supposed to finish focusing on those three skills, tho'. Heck, I think you'd have a hard time finishing Fallout 1/2 with doctor, repair and barter tagged and all points invested in there. That character just sucks.

 

[rcorporon]

It's nice to finally get some good news out of Beth regarding this game.

I'm interested in seeing how the final battle plays out now that we know you don't have to actually engage in combat for it.

 

[God is Dog backwards]

Yeah, I'd have been surprised in any case if you couldn't beat the final boss with dialogue - it's such an iconic moment in FO1. I just hope it's not simply a case of having 300% speech - in FO1, IIRC, you had to do some obscure quests and research to get the option as well.

 

[Brother None]

I just hope it's not simply a case of having 300% speech - in FO1, IIRC, you had to do some obscure quests and research to get the option as well.

I wouldn't call it obscure, but yeah, the game didn't push the option in your face.

Simply put, you had to ask Vree at the BoS about supermutants. Not something every player would do on an average playthrough, but not obscure either - if you were a member of the BoS, it's pretty sensible to ask them for info about your opponent/those strange beasts you've seen (depending on where in the game you are). Here is someone telling the story of his first playthrough, which he ended by talking the Master to death.

 

[God is Dog backwards]

Ah. For some reason I was sure you had to view or get hold of a holodisk as well. But yeah, you still had to play the talkie character a bit.

 

[Brother None]

You can show the holodisc to the Master, yes, but you get that from Vree. Also, with decent dialogue skills you can get him to ask the female supermutants instead.

As far as I know, the minimum requirements for these endings are intelligence 7 or good dialogue skills.