Some details from GI's Fallout 3 article *spoilers*
Found this on another forum
The article is based on an hour long demo GI was given. I'll list the high points- Game runs on an evolved version of the Oblivion engine. Third person view has been reworked since the verdict was that the Oblivion version sucked balls.
- Game starts with your birth and your mother's death in a vault hospital. This is essentially the character customization part of the game. Your father hands you up to have your DNA analyzed and you get to pick out all your character traits. Your dad takes off his mask to reveal similar traits to the ones you picked.
- You grow up in the vault and as you grow you get your first book titled "You're Special" which allows you to choose you baseline stats for each of your 7 primary aptitudes. You'll also get your first weapons and wrist computer (menu) as you get older you'll take tests to determine the initial layout of your skills and traits.
- Every aspect of character creation is based on S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system. Of your 14 skills you can tag 3 to grow at a faster rate than the rest as you level up.
- Battle system is called the Vault-tec Assisted Targeting System (V.A.T.S.). The article states. "While you'll certainly be able to tackle enemies in real time using first person shooting, V.A.T.S. lets players pause time and select a target at their leisure". Battle system still uses action points, but once you've used them up you'll still be able to fight targets in real time while they charge back up.
- Game is still violent and gory. One of the featured screens is of a guy's head exploding in super gory detail. Apparently all gory deaths in the game will be in slow motion.
- More than one way to play the game. Go balls out and kill people, or sneak past situations, or perhaps talk your way out of situations.
- Enemies can target you just like you can target them, so you can get injured in very specific points on you body. This is in addition to an all new health/radiation system. This new system has you measuring how radiated certain things (like water) are and how they affect you when you consume them.
- Karma system returns
- XP based system, most XP comes from quests
- Level cap is 20
- 9 - 12 possible endings based on your actions in the game
- No level scaling like oblivion, you walk into a high level area, you die horribly.
- There are NPC's you can hire, but this is not a party based game.
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Sounds good to me, although it's sad to hear that they won't have a developed party system.
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Sounds okay, but
Buh?
Fedaykin98 wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
yea, the part about combat confuses the hell out of me too.
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There should be electric prods which activate anytime someone on the Fallout 3 team thinks first person. Or when I find it amusing.
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Yeah, that combat description is . . . confusing. Sounds like you can play real time all the time, but if you want to pause and think you have to accumulate your action points . . . but if you're out of action points you just keep fighting in real time? That attempted description of mine just made my own head spin.
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Awesome! I was a bit worried about this... It worked for Oblivion's dungeons but if I get into a gunfight with Raiders I want to know I'm really risking my life and not just having a level adjusted experience.
It sounds to me like the combat system is a cross between Fallout's Action Point style gameplay and the psuedo-turn-based combat found in Knights of the Old Republic. Special moves or aimed shots will probably require APs to pull off or you can resort to a freelook realtime combat.
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It sounds like the action points purchase special targetting attacks. That would explain why you are normally in realtime (I assume that's pausable) but then would need time stopped to select targets. So probably the use of VATS gives bonuses, body part selection and that sort of thing, as balanced against the usual spray-and-pray realtime combat.
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And the low points?
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Usual realtime FPS isn't spray and pray. If it takes AP to aim, that implies that the weapons are very R6-like accuracy wise, or something like that to keep the player from just manually aiming at kneecaps.
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It sounds a bit like an evolution of Fallout Tactics system. In Fallout Tactics everything cost action points but they accumulated over real time. Plus you could pause at any time.
In this, I think the deal is you can pause and issue commands at any time, but when you unpause your action points will start to accumulate again. When you don't use action points, I'm not sure what happens but either your attacks aren't very accurate or it's just the basic attack that doesn't do as much damage as the targeted attacks.
So in Fallout speak, realtime == untargeted attack, pause w/ action points == targeted attack.
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Sounds really interesting, I have faith in Bethesda that they will hit a homerun with Fallout 3.
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You see, this is the kind of stuff us skeptics wanted to see; actual details on the gameplay. It'd be interesting to see how they'll try to implement this pausing system in what's essentially a first-person RPG.
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Level cap 20? *sniff* No more driving around the desert in my ottomobile looking for bad things to shoot for days on end? *sniff*
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Yeah, to me, this sounds like pseudo RPG talk for bullet time.
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If you played X-Com: Apocolypse you saw something like this, I think. There were, essentially, two modes of play, one TB and the other real time. Real time you coud issue orders and your characters would get around to it. In TB you could take your time, plot and plan. Both systems used the action point model, it's just in the RT mode you didn't see the AP accumulate in the hour glass, so to speak, you just saw the actions unfold. However, instead of limiting your actions to a single turn the AP continuously refill in RT mode and the turns run back to back.
This was nice because it ended the need for the hide-and-seek you usually played to find that last alein in X-Com:Enemy Unknown. You could slow down to TB for an intense firefight, then speed up to RT and jog aorund the map and find your contacts, then back to TB for the fighting.
I'm hopeful. I have yet to play KOTOR. It's in the pile.
wordsmythe wrote:
Crouton wrote:
Sounds generally good. I loved the recent trailer.
Wandy, KOTOR was so good that I finished it. I finish like .7 games per year. (I also finished Fallout 1)
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I'm thinking more of a we-go system... based totally and completely on conjecture derived from minimal information written in questionable grammar.
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So third-person is the normal interface, kinda isometric-y? Or first-person is normal, with this pausable-active-targetting?
Firing your weapon probably takes N AP, a targetted shot would take N+M AP..
Actually, I can think of some pretty damn cool ways this could work.
It's still like turn-based isometric, but pausable realtime would also be pretty cool.
Mystic Violet wrote:
I guess. It's still a horribly mangled description of a system.
The whole point of real-time AP accumulation in Fallout Tactics was to control how often a character could attack. A character who was quick and agile would accumulate, let's say, 3 AP in a second. A character not so fast might get 2 AP per second. So the agile character could fire a weapon requiring 3 AP once a second while the slower character could fire it once every 1.5 seconds.
If "standard attacks" are decoupled from the AP system, does this mean a quick character and a slow character can make the same number of standard attacks over a given period of time? And that the quick character only gets more targeted attacks? Are they ditching the Fast Shot trait (which reduced your weapon's AP by 1, but meant you couldn't do targeted attacks)?
Fedaykin98 wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
Funny, [i]I was under the impression that they removed the "all turn-based all the time" stuff because people would get bored that way. Beth just can't win with you people!
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I think they're just trying to make sure we don't end up with a system too close to Fallout 1 and 2, where if you had a 10 in Agility (maximum AP) you could kick anything's ass.
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Really? Hmm, where did I put that Fallout 2 savegame editor...
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Colour me excited. This is all good news except the level cap. I'd prefer no level cap. I hope it's 3rd person can be used all of the time. First person RPGs don't feel right to me.
Edit: Also I loved the party members you could get in Fallout 2. Sulik, Marcus, and Cassidy were great. I'd love to see that somehow implemented.
I'm actually looking forward to Fallout 3 now. I only have 2 minor gripes and those will probably be non-factors.
McChuck wrote:
Why is everyone stuck up on the 3rd person jibbajabba. Why does a Fallout have to be 3rd person.
Fallout is still Fallout if it is not 3rd person. Fallout is about the setting, the openendednes and the message it presents, not whether it is first or third person.
Look at Final Fantasy 12, it didn't switch to a combat screen for battles, does that make it any less of a Final Fantasy?
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Elysium wrote:
That's because combat screen was crap. Third person on the other hand isn't.
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Just because people prefer 3rd person doesn't mean that Fallout has to be "about" it. Third person is simply superior to 1st person if the game has any kind of party or companion NPCs, as this allows you to see what's going on around you.
Fedaykin98 wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
Think of the battle system like this: Turn based is based upon Action points, real-time is based upon energy/mana/rage/whatever your local MMO uses. When you are low on the mana/energy/rage you can't really do much. Thats what I get out of it.
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Since it's shipping to the 360 as well there's a chance we could see and over the shoulder system kinda like Gears*, with vats being something akin to a pause button on the sniper scope. Move into position, activate vats, pause, take a shot. Good chance you'll be able to take a normal shot or a called one as well provided you haven't taken Fast Shot, accuracy based on what's in the skilldex(tm). Once your action points run out staying in cover would be a good option until they 'recharge' for lack of a better term. If this applies to melee as well I hope you're able to defend yourself while your action points rebuild as well.
*Pleads for the cover and doorway systems to be 'borrowed'. Great mechanics are great mechanics.
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