Hilo Oficial: Fallout 3

esos son lo graficos del juego o fotos reales?.
en serio son los mejores graficos que he visto en mi vida.¿los 2 anteriores estaban bien?

manu_eddie escribió:esos son lo graficos del juego o fotos reales?.
en serio son los mejores graficos que he visto en mi vida.¿los 2 anteriores estaban bien?

CONCEPT ARTS

YA ESTA EL VIDEO!!

-VIDEO-

¿ Alguien sabe que cancion es la que sale en el video ? es que a mi este tipo de canciones me encanta.

Salu2.

Video para descarga1280x720,132 megas


http://nibtempfile.ign.com/aburns/a...allout_720p.wmv

Portada de GAMEINFORMER de Julio donde se mostrarán los primeros detalles sobre el juego

Ojalá llegue a la altura del 1 y del 2...

Sería el mejor juego de ROL (Puro y duro.) que hay en una consola...

tiene una pinta muy buena!!

para cuando lo tendremos?¿

ast_adri escribió:tiene una pinta muy buena!!

para cuando lo tendremos?¿

Segun ponía al final del trailer,finales del 2008,este tipo de juegos(rol occidental) es lo que tiene,que lleva la de dios y su madre programarlos

Avance meristation
http://www.meristation.com/v3/des_avances.php?pic=GEN&id=cw4665d801f2a49&idj=5866&&iframe=1

si se parece solo un poquito a sus dos anteriores, y con los graficos next-gen será flipante..... la de horas que le he metido al fallout2

no me puedo creer que tengamos que esperar tanto

Si es la mitad de bueno que el 2, va a ser la bomba!

En la página oficial ahora requieren verificación de edad,me imagino que será por el contenido que irán mostrando en el juego.

Se puede ver como una manera de decir que nuestro juego será cafre,ya en una entrevista comentaban que estaban barajando la posibilidad de meter niños en el juego.

varga escribió:En la página oficial ahora requieren verificación de edad,me imagino que será por el contenido que irán mostrando en el juego.

Se puede ver como una manera de decir que nuestro juego será cafre,ya en una entrevista comentaban que estaban barajando la posibilidad de meter niños en el juego.

Prfrfrffff... Los Fallout son muy cafres y gores xD

Lo que pasa, es que con los 2D no parecía mucho, pero Dios, aún recuerdo cuando de un escopetazo, volatilizaba la mitad del cuerpo de un asalta caravanas...

A ver con qué nos sorprenden en éste tema, me espero cualquier cosa

Yo no tendría muchas esperanzas en este juego. No creo que Bethesda se hubiera gastado tal cantidad de dinero para comprar una marca si estuviera pensando en hacer un buen trabajo. Lo único que quieren hacer es sacar jugo al nombre, aprovechándose de la ilusión de los fans. Para hacer un buen juego no se gastarían tanto dinero y gastarían mas en imaginación. Si se gastan tanto es que querrán sacar ese dinero gastado y mucho más todavia, para lo cual habrá que hacer el juego asequible para mucha gente que no quiere complicaciones.

Lo digo por avisar. Porque luego la gente vuelve a picar una y otra vez y se cabrea cuando ve los pobres resultados porque los juegos ya cuestan 70 euracos. Demasiado. Y hay que seleccionarlos muy bien.

En la revista de Gameinformer publican un email donde mandar todas las preguntas que uno tenga sobre FALLOUT 3 pues uno de los editores de la revista ha visto el juego en acción.

askmiller@gameinformer.com

http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200706/N07.0608.1040.10718.htm

SCANS GAMEINFORMER
http://nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36877

You were born in the Vault. And you'll die in the Vault. It's what you've always believed. For 200 years your people have survived down here, in this test tube of a home - bleached clean steel walls, sterilized floors, and dozens of fellow survivors crammed into this self-sufficient hole in the ground. Xenophobia is a lifestyle. The world above is gone, annihilated centuries ago in one brief radiation-filled flash, leaving you here to live out your sad existence behind a massive metal gate. At least that's what you believed until just hours ago, when it became clear that your father - the only family you have in the world - disappeared from the Vault without warning or explanation. So now you stand before that imposing portal, the great bolts that hold it in place sliding free from their mooring, ready to pursue him into the wastes. With a shudder, the breach slides open before you. Having never seen the glare of sun, the world beyond appears first in a haze and slides slowly into focus as you step out onto real soil for the first time. A shattered land lies spread out before you, the ancient husks of crumpled cars broiling beneath the midday sun, ruined and forgotten buildings dotting the ground out to the horizon. But as dead as the world appears, life has survived - normal humans struggling as much against irradiated food and drink as the mutated monstrosities that roam the wasteland. Even 200 years after that civilization ending holocaust, you and all the others who were left behind live under the perpetual threat of Fallout.

Into the Wasteland

Hunger for a new Fallout game began years ago, and deepened when the team that brought gamers the original masterpiece disbanded. One of the great PC gaming franchises was left in limbo, without anyone there to bring it to a new generation of players. When Bethesda bought the rights to the franchise in 2004, many were overjoyed that their favorite RPG developer would be reviving the series. Some Fallout fans immediately decried the move, sure from the start that Bethesda would change too much about their beloved series. Meanwhile, the folks at Bethesda quietly began to craft early concept art, research the original games, and brainstorm story and gameplay ideas. Now, after years of work, with the full force of their studio focused on their project, the team that brought us The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is ready to reveal their vision of the Fallout universe. "The spirit of Fallout - we've missed it. We've wanted to see it in games again," executive producer Todd Howard tells us. "It's humbling and exciting all at once to be the group that makes that game."

We got the chance to visit Howard and the rest of his team at their studio in Maryland. Ushered into a giant movie theater with enough seats for dozens of people, Howard sat in a booth high to our left as he played through a demo of the game while we watched on the massive screen. The nearly hour-long walkthrough (detailed in the narrative segments on these pages) revealed technology in stellar shape for a title that is over a year away from release. With almost no technical hiccups, the demo revealed how characters are crafted, the flow of combat, the structure of morality and questing, and wide stretches of the land upon which the game is set. As longtime players and fans of both Fallout and the Elder Scrolls franchise, that one hour as we sat in rapt attention made one thing abundantly clear: This is the best of both of those franchises, without any compromises, and with enough amazing new details to excite even the most jaded or skeptical RPG enthusiast. "Differences between how we approach this and how we approach The Elder Scrolls are pretty huge," Howard assures us. "It's its own game. We don't assume anything we did in Elder Scrolls fits."

"In Fallout 2, you start the game at birth," lead designer Emil Pagliarulo details. "In the original Fallout game, your character had been born in a Vault. We wanted the player to experience that process." As your mother dies during childbirth, you masked father lifts you up to where the other vault dwellers can analyze you with a DNA scanner - one that will reveal how you will look as you grow older. Here you are given the chance to choose your gender, body type, ethnicity, facial structure, and physique. All the classic elements of character creation with a huge amount of detail are present, but with more realistic facial options than were available in Oblivion. Once satisfied, your father will remove his mask, and his ethnicity and facial features will reflect your own - not a perfect match, but a clear familial link that reveals your parentage. From there, the early hours of the game will check in throughout the long years of childhood in the vault, reinforcing the prison-like environs of your home.

While still a baby, your father will give you a small infant-style cardboard book. As you flip through its pages, which is cleverly titled "You're Special!", you'll choose the baseline stats for each of your seven primary aptitudes. A brief stop as a toddler teaches you to walk, familiarizing you with movement controls. At age 10, you are gifted with a BB gun and your Pip-Boy 3000, a wrist mounted computer that will serve as your menu system throughout the game. At 16 you'll take your G.O.A.T. (Generalized Occupational Aptitude Test), where your answers to various questions will help determine an initial layout of skills and traits. Finally, at age 19, your father escapes and you pursue him into the world beyond. Sometime before the Vault's door opens, you're offered one last chance to alter the character you've crafted throughout childhood.

Whatever your choices, every aspect of character creation is based firmly in the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system that was utilized in the original Fallout games. Of your 14 skills, you can tag three of them to grow at a faster rate as you level up. Every other level, you choose a perk, a special talent that may give you small bonuses in certain situations. Traits give you pluses and minuses that may change your style of play. It's impossible to create a maxed-out superhero - each facet of character creation is set up to force careful choices about the path you want your character to take through life. From the beginning, Fallout 3 can be played in either a first-person camera view, or panned back to an over-the-shoulder third person angle not unlike the one offered in Resident Evil 4. In contrast to Oblivion's floaty and disconnected third-person option, the approach in Fallout 3 has been more focused. "We found with our previous stuff that if we have a third-person mode at all, then people like to play in it," Howard tells us. "So we spent a lot more time on that mode so you can play the whole game that way if you want." From either camera angle, players will be able to observe the amazing attention to detail on everything from wrinkles in characters' clothing to rough textures on the ruined stonework of old structures. This is an evolved version of the engine that ran the graphics of Oblivion, but everything from the animation of monsters to the dramatic lighting of different environments has been designed from the ground up for the ruined landscapes of the Fallout universe.

Once outside of the Vault, the focus of the game becomes finding a way to survive in the barren wilderness of the outside world. Water is a precious commodity, even though it is also one of the primary sources of radiation you'll encounter; every sip must be judged against how many rads it's likely to introduce into your body. Food, weaponry, and ammo are in short supply, so there's a constant need to ration and improvise new ways to confront obstacles. Hungry and malformed beats wander the world, and you'll have to find a way to either avoid them or take them down for good.

To do so, most players will find themselves taking advantage of the innovative combat system that Bethesda has developed for the game. The Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System (V.A.T.S.) is what assures that this first-person game so chock full of guns doesn't become an FPS. "We don't want to be rewarding twitch play," Howard says. "It's not an action game. It's a role-playing game." While you'll certainly be able to tackle enemies in real time first-person shooting, V.A.T.S. lets players pause time and select a target at their leisure. Once targeted, a zoomed-in view of that enemy will show all the places you could aim to hit the creature, and the percentage chance you'll succeed. This percentage is based on distance, enemy defense, his cover, as well as your ability with the weapon at hand, among other factors. Just like in the original Fallout, you'll have a set number of action points, largely based on your agility score. Every combat move you make will deplete this supply, at which point those AP will begin to regenerate in real time at a rate that also corresponds with your agility. Once you complete all your actions in V.A.T.S. you can continue to attack in real time, but this will dramatically slow the recharge of your action points, thereby encouraging tactical targeting over constant twitch shooting. As for those specific targets, which area you aim for will have a profound effect on your foe. Hit the arm of a super mutant, and he may not swing that massive cudgel at you with quite the same force as before. Shoot off the antenna of a mutated giant ant, and he'll go crazy and attack his brethren.

Also in keeping with the tradition of Fallout, violence can and will be disturbingly brutal. If your final shot is about to result in a dramatic near miss, the sickening crunch of an exploding head, or any other dramatic moment, the scene will play out in slow motion, with the camera zooming in and circling around the bullet as it whizzes through the air only to tear into a mutant's leg as it explodes in a haze of blood. In addition to an array of ranged weapons, you'll also have access to melee weapons like the super sledge (a sledge-hammer) and the ripper (a weaponized chainsaw). These tools of war will function under the same V.A.T.S. system, allowing for gory close range slow-motion kills that shred those enemies foolish enough to get close. Embracing the bloody source material, Bethesda is very open in its declaration that Fallout 3 will most definitely not be fit for children. Meanwhile, your foes are certainly not content to sit still and eat your bullets. "We've revamped the entire AI system from Oblivion to give us better gameplay with guns," lead producer Gavin Carter tells us. "We've altered the whole pathfinding system so the NPCs are much more knowledgeable about their surroundings. They can take cover, catch you in flanking maneuvers, and mainly react more realistically with their environments."

With such clever adversaries, your foes aren't the only ones who'll be forced to deal with injury and pain. An intricate health system details the many problems your character will have to confront on his journey. Like most role-playing games, you will have a set amount of hit points that go down as you take damage. Food or soda will help improve your hit points slightly, and stimpacks (a sort of injection) can be a big help. As mentioned before, water can also give a boost. Sometimes the only way to completely fill up on health is to drink from some fixed water source repeatedly, like a toilet bowl in a forgotten subway station. However, when you go to drink, you'll be able to see both its health benefits and radiation level. Without medicating to reduce radiation, it will continue to rise until it begins to handicap stats and eventually kill you.

Beyond juggling health and radiation you'll also need to watch out for personal injury to different body parts. You're not the only one making targeted shots; your enemies will be aiming for particular weak points on your body as well. That means you may end up with a broken leg or a shattered arm. One might drastically slow you down, while the other will almost certainly make your once true marksmanship waver and fail. Conceivably, enough water and stimpacks could get your health back up to normal, but no amount of liquid is going to fix a broken bone. For these injuries, either beef up on your surgery skill or expect to make some long and painful treks back to the nearest town doctor.

While the simplest path to an objective is often through violence, Bethesda is committed to offering options that will fit anyone's play style, whether that means sneaking past dangerous foes or talking your way through to a solution. As with the original Fallout, a karma system is in place that will vacillate back and forth based on your actions. Ethical dilemmas are a big part of the Fallout universe, and sometimes one evil act may server a greater common good. Your place on the karmic scale will shift in response to your decisions, and different titles will be applied as you gain levels based on your current karma. In fact, many of the 360 version's Achievements will be about acquiring these different titles as you progress - getting all the Achievements is almost impossible in just one playthrough, particularly due to the nature of quests in Fallout 3.

Like Oblivion, Fallout 3 offers tremendous freedom in what actions and missions you want to take on. However, unlike Oblivion, a single character can't be all things to all people. Where your battle mage in Oblivion might have simultaneously been the heroic Champion of Cyrodil and the sadistic leader of the Dark Brotherhood, the quests you'll encounter in Fallout 3 will offer complicated choices that take you down one path or another. If you make one choice, it may close off an entire branch of missions from ever becoming available. However, because of that one decision, an entirely new series of missions will emerge that the other option would never have revealed. Subsequent playthroughs of Fallout 3 with different choices may very well completely change the path of the story. One avenue might have you taking up the insidious role of a slaver, while more righteous choices will have a town greeting you as a hero even upon your initial arrival since they've heard of your beneficent deeds. "Even within the quests we're trying to be careful to not just have the good path and the evil path, because a big part of Fallout is shades of gray," Pagliarulo informs us. With a less concrete questing path, you'll often find yourself swept up into tasks rather than being offered a formalized missions from some distressed townsperson - but you'll always have choices about how to proceed, or whether you want to participate in the event at all. "It's more about how you handle these different situations, and less which ones did you do and in what order," Howard explains.

The environmental backdrop through which you'll be making all of these choices is a detailed reinvention of the universe exhibited in the old games. "In our process of envisioning what Fallout 3 should look like, we started by going back to the first Fallout. There's a lot of great raw material to look at there," explains Istvan Pely, lead artist on the project. "Now we have so much more to work with. You're there, and you're seeing everything in a greater amount of detail. So we're going to town on that. Every single detail - just fleshing it out to a level of realism and quality that will overwhelm people in terms of making them feel like they're really there."

The location of the game world is in some ways a familiar setting for studio members at the Maryland-based studio. Washington, D.C. and its environs offer a dramatic backdrop to the post-nuclear adventure of Fallout 3. in the alternate history of the Fallout universe, many things were different in the years after World War II - a terrifying series of events lead to the the war in 2077 that wiped out most of civilization. In 2277, as you emerge from Vault 101, the world has had a hard time recovering, and few places are able to communicate the fall from decadence like a trip through the crumpled remnants of the Jefferson memorial, or spying the chipped and battered rock that remains of the Washington monument. A large central hub called Rivet City is based in and around the remains of a crashed aircraft carrier, while outlying settlements like the town of Megaton serve as other remote bastions of life. The sprawling remains of the underground Metro line and sewer ways interconnect much of the game world. The map as a whole is only slightly smaller in size than the land area you were able to explore in Oblivion. While the land mass is still huge, and seemingly endless quests abound, the harsh conditions in this post-apocalyptic land mean there are actually fewer individual characters to interact with.

"With Fallout, the number of NPCs is reduced. We're in the hundreds instead of the thousands," explains Howard. Consequently, the development team has been able to breathe more life into individuals as they move through their daily lives. "For us it's about making better characters - making NPCs that you're invested in," Pagliarulo adds. "The Radiant AI system of Oblivion takes its next steps forward in the game, as NPCs attempt to interact in meaningful ways with the game world. Characters who know each other won't just engage in generic small talk - they may address each other by name, and talk about things that matter to them as individuals. "Lucas Simms, the sheriff of Megaton, he has a son. If you see him walk up to his son and have a conversation, you would hear that the stuff that he says is particularly tailored to his son," Pagliarulo tells us. With the mention of Simms' son, the question of the presence of children in a game this violent must be addressed. In answer, Bethesda confidently assures us that kids will be found throughout Fallout 3 - but how they live and (more controversially) die within the game world is yet to be revealed. For both children and adults, you can expect far more voice talent this time around, with fewer characters that make you think: "Didn't I just hear this guy in the last town I was in?" That broader cast is being led by the inimitable Liam Neeson, who stars as the lost father at the root of your quest into the post-apocalyptic surface world.

Feature sets and questing structures aside, there's much more to Fallout than iterating off a great rule set from an old computer game. At its core, the Fallout universe appealed to mature gamers for its juxtaposition of the realities of war and death against a dark humor that delights in the ironies of a once perfect civilization ravaged by their own destructive tendencies. It's a complex world without simple answers. Heroism and villainy seem to carry more weight in a land so near extinction. Simply put, Bethesda gets it. From the emulation of the '40s propaganda posters to the impossible moral decisions placed before players, Fallout 3 is a role-playing game in the truest interpretation of the genre. It's about choices and consequences, characters and story, survival and sacrifice. And, after what seems now an excruciatingly short time seeing the game in action, it's about a long, long wait until the autumn of 2008.



The Pip-Boy 3000 (Page 4)

"We joke that this thing has more pixel shaders running on it than Oblivion did. We really wanted it to feel like this old beat up, retro device that you have strapped to your wrist," explains Todd Howard. The Pip-Boy 3000 is as close to a menu system that Fallout 3 has to offer. Three red buttons on the wrist-mounted device are your tabs between the major screens. The first is your character's stat page, where you can check skills, health, and other personal details. The second button pulls up an inventory of items, and also includes the option to repair damaged items or scavenge old ones for parts. The third button is a data screen - here you'll find maps, quest logs, photos, and the like. Beyond that, the Pip-Boy also serves as a sort of radio. Detecting radio signals being broadcast across the wasteland, you'll be able to tune in any of the surviving radio stations. Some broadcasts will occasionally reveal new quests. Other times, the radio stations serve as a way to listen to the 20-some 1949s and '50s tunes that Bethesda has licensed.

The Behemoth (Page 9)

Here you can see the layers of work that go into producing a single enemy in Fallout 3.
High resolution model used to define basic structures
Modeling of subsurface veins and blemishes, painted on in 3D
A texture pass for muscles and bone structure
A similar image with veins removed to aid in texture layering
Final image



Narrative Segments

Page 3:
In the wastes beyond Vault 101, a dusty wind blows as the sun beats down on your pale skin. In the ruins of the forgotten town below, you chance upon a stashed rifle and some drugs in a battered mailbox. Not far away, near a broken children's swingset, you find a still-functional water faucet. Taking a sip, you're alarmed as your personal radiation meter begins to climb. A sound turns you around. Two impossibly large ants crawl towards you. Thinking quickly, you target one of the broken down cars near where the mutated insects are passing. A few shows find its engine, one of those old nuclear generators, and the ants and car alike disappear into a small mushroom cloud. Your radiation detector beings its ominous tick.

Page 4:
The sign above the gate reads: "Megaton." The robot outside doesn't judge you a threat, and instead barks an advertisement for the local watering hold as the doors grate open. Inside stands the town sheriff, a stuffy fellow named Lucas Simms. Never a fan of authority, you dismiss his commands to stay out of trouble in his town and descend to the strange sight below. A massive undetonated bomb sits in the crater at the center of town, apparently the settlement's namesake. Some insane religious zealot kneels at its base, espousing the bomb as a miraculous sign from God. You push past him and head to the bar.

Page 5:
Inside Moriarty's Bar, static-laced, ancient pre-war music blares from a transistor radio. Beyond the local riffraff, in the corner you spy an imperturbable businessman, the kind of man that looks like he might know something about your father. As it turns out, he doesn't. But Mister Burke, as he calls himself, does have a job that might net you a little money to survive on out here. He'd like to get rid of Megaton - something about "a blight on the burgeoning urban landscape." He's got a fusion pulse charge that could arm the live and ticking bomb at the center of town. It's not as if this town as done anything for you yet. Sure, your father might disapprove. But he's not here right now. You take the charge and head back outside. The radio croons: "I'm in love with a wonderful guy!"

Page 6:
With the charge set, you descend into the ruined Metro subway lines below ground. Dust motes float slowly through shafts of light from the surface above. You march off in the direction of your pre-determined meeting place with Mister Burke, far away from Megaton. Rounding a corner, you're greeted with a hail of gunfire. A massive beat of a mutant stands beyond, armed with a rusted Chinese assault rifle, dwarfed by its too-large hands. In the fight that follows, you take some hits, but nothing a stimpack won't fix. In the corridor beyond, two more mutants pace, grunting back and forth to each other. Unwilling to risk another open battle, you sneak to a nearby passage and the security terminal housed within. Hacking the computer is simple enough, and a security bot emerges from its cocooned pod - unused these last two centuries. Rolling out onto the main platform, its tin can voice intones: "Tickets, please." As the mutants outside laugh and threaten to tear its puny metal arms off, the bot decides they must not have tickets, and opens fire with its laser cannon.

Page 7:
Emerging from the Metro into the ruins of the old capital city of a dead nation, it only takes moments to realize you're in over your head. A swarm of mutants crawl across the old marble stonework, and your scavenged rifle just isn't going to cut it. Squeezing off a few shots, you know you're in deep trouble, when suddenly across the street more shots begin to ring out. Their powered armor gleaming, a squad of knight-like soldiers begins to drop your would-be killers. Approaching your unwitting saviors, one of them peeks out from her metal shell to declaim your stupidity for coming here, and offers for you to come along as she and her fellow Brotherhood of Steel members clear out more mutants. They're heading your way, so why not?

Page 9:
After a running firefight through roofless buildings punctuated by blasts of laser fire and intermittent explosions, you finally find yourself near your destination, the Galaxy News Radio Building. Before you can enter, you're thrown back as a huge building crumbles nearby. From its wreckage saunters a behemoth of a mutant - a giant by any definition. As the soldiers you're with desperately unload, you see a fallen body nearby with a strange device in its hands. Picking it up, you recognize it for what it is - a Fatman. Arming this portable nuclear catapult, the tiny bomb slides into place with a ding that sounds disturbingly like a diner lunch bell. As the giant mutant turns its eyes on you, you pull the trigger, and the bomb hurtles over to the beast's feet. The creature crashes down in a cloud of nuclear fallout. Slipping away from the surviving soldiers, you enter the nearby tower and climb to the top. Up above, you emerge onto a wide balcony. "It's about time," Mister Burke says, and hands you the detonator. In the distance, you can see the town. There's no turning back after this. The money's not really that good, now that you think about it. You press the button anyway...

Page 10:
War. War Never Changes.



Captions

Page 3:
*The art team on the game talks a lot about the importance of having "no arbitrary detail." Every gun, console, switch, and rivet should have a purpose, even a fictional one. When it does, the game world simply feels more genuine.
*Your father's facial features will be different based on the design of your character - he'll even appear to age throughout your childhood.
*As you travel, weapons will degrade with use, or may be damaged directly by attacks. As you find new armaments, you can use the scrap from your old beat-up arsenal to add to the new

Page 4:
*"There's destruction everywhere. Destruction requires a great deal of randomness," lead producer Gavin Carter relays. "So one of the things we're playing with is how we apply decals to the world - not only when you shoot things, but we can actually apply very large decals to any kind of arbitrary geometry."
*Most of your experience points in the game come from complete quests - grinding for experience just isn't that useful. Whether you use guns, stealth, or diplomacy to complete those missions is a choice left to you

Page 5:
*Unlike Oblivion, Fallout 3 does not scale your encounters to fit your current level. Wander into a dangerous zone alone, and you shouldn't be surprised when that Super Mutant beats your head in
*Extensive visual effects like this use of depth of field puts Fallout 3 in a whole new graphical category from Bethesda's previous work
*You'll be able to hire followers who might help you out in a fight, but it's definitely not a party-based game. And for fans that are curious, Bethesda hesitantly confirms there will be a dog in the game, but they're reticent to speak on the subject for now.

Page 6:
*The V.A.T.S. combat system keeps the game firmly grounded in the tactical decision-making of good RPGs
*Fallout has always been unabashedly graphic in its depiction of violence, and this installment appears not to shy away from the tradition.

Page 7:
*Like in the original Fallout, the opening cinematic of Fallout 3 (of which this is a screen shot) will include music from the classic '40s and '50s band, The Ink Spots. The ironic song choice: "I Don't Want To Set the World on Fire"

Page 8:
*Fallout 3 has a more defined narrative structure than many previous Bethesda games. You'll play your character as he or she progresses from level one to a cap of 20, and after dozens of hours of play you will reach a definitive end to the story. That end, however, may be any one of many - nine to twelve unique endings are planned, based on your actions throughout the game

Page 9:
*The Fatman is a handheld nuclear catapult. We'll say that again in case you missed it. In Fallout 3, you'll have access to a handheld nuclear catapult


Rumor sobre el artículo de GameInformer sobre FALLOUT 3 .Hasta el 18 de junio que es cuando sale la revista no se sabrá si no es mas que un fake.

Cita:

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.

Traducción

- El juego correrá en una versión mejorada del engine de Oblivion, la vista en tercera persona ha sido completamente renovada ya que (literalmente) la del Oblivion era una mierda xD

- El juego empieza con tu nacimiento y la muerte de tu madre dandote a luz, en ese momento entra la fase de personalización del juego, una vez elegidas estas, tu padre (que te está sosteniendo) se quita una mascara y revela tener los rasgos que has elegido.

- Vas creciendo en el hospital, en una especie de zona de tutorial, encuentras un libro que dice "tu eres especial", en el te dan la opción de elegir tus 7 habilidades principales. Tambien conseguiras tus primeras armas y un ordenador que hace las veces de menu (o diario), segun creces podrás ir probando tus habilidades.

- El sistema de habilidades esta basado en el SPECIAL de los primeros Fallout, de 14 habilidades puedes elegir 3 para aumentarlas rapidamente.

- El sistema de combate sera una mezcla entre el clásico y tiempo real, tu puedes elegir jugar en tiempo real todo el tiempo que quieras, pero tambien puedes pausar el juego y elegir los objetivos como se hacia antes, sin embargo, necesitaras una serie de puntos para poder pausar el juego, dan a entender que es recomendable hacerlo, ya que la dificultad en tiempo real sería casi extrema.

- El juego sigue siendo tremendamente gore y realista, una de las escenas más impresionantes es la cabeza de un tio explotando a camara lenta con severos detalles sangrientos.

- Diversas formas de afrontar el juego, matando a todo cristo, infiltración, conversación (en los primeros fallout podias pasarte el juego solo convenciendo a la gente de que hiciera lo que tu quisieras xD)

- Los enemigos pueden usar el sistema de pausa tambien, aunque tu no te darás cuenta, vamos, simplemente serán jodidamente infalibles atacando, habrá un sistema de radiación/salud nuevo para medir la cantidad de radiación de ciertas cosas que debes consumir (como el agua) para saber que consecuencias tendrán en tu organismo.

- El sistems Karma regresa.

- Sistema basado en puntos de experiencia, la mayoria vienen de quests

- nivel maximo 20

- de 9 a 12 posibles finales basados en tus acciones en el juego (interesante)

- No hay escalado de niveles, si vas a una zona de nivel alto mueres horriblemente.

- Hay NPC's, pero no es un juego basado en grupos

FAQ de gameinformer sobre FALLOUT 3

Q: What is your overall impression of the game?

A: To be clear, I was and continue to be a big fan of the original Fallout games. Believe it or not, so are the guys over at Bethesda. From my perspective as someone who loved the originals, I have to say that my feeling of the direction that Bethesda is taking the franchise is very strongly positive. If you are a fan who is adamantly against some significant changes to the way gameplay occurs in the Fallout series, I’m going to tell you right now and save you the disappointment: I don’t think you’ll like Fallout 3. However, if you’re a fan of the Fallout universe, of the unique look of the world, of the moral ambiguity, of the dark and often violent humor, and the invigorating branching story paths, then everything about what I’ve seen of Fallout 3 should please you.

Q: Is this another Oblivion but with a Fallout theme?

A: In short: no. Sure, Fallout 3 plays primarily from a first-person perspective like Oblivion, and conversations with NPCs use a similar style of dialogue tree, but combat, questing, character creation and most importantly the tone and style of the gameplay shares more in common with Fallout 1 and 2 than Oblivion.

Q: Is the game turn based or real time?
AND
How’s the V.A.T.S. combat system work again?

A: I talk about this a good bit in the July magazine article, but to be clear, Fallout 3 plays in both real time and a paused tactical combat mode. It’s not really turn based, however. Instead, you can pause the real-time action in order to make aimed ranged or melee attacks on your opponents, smashing their legs to slow them down, or perhaps shooting an arm to hurt their weapon aim. Like in the original Fallout games, doing these aimed shots take action points, but since there are no turns, those AP recharge over time after unpausing the game. You can shoot in real time, but that will then slow your recharge rate. In practice, this means players have the option to play the game very much like an RPG, but with a good bit more action than traditional RPGs. Are there other details to the way this system works? Almost definitely, yes. Do we know all the answers to how V.A.T.S. works after seeing it in one demo? No. We’re waiting just like you to find out more.

Q: Are there changes being made to the SPECIAL system?

A: Bethesda hadn’t hammered out all the details of what perks, skills and traits you’d be able to have and choose between in the game, or if they had, they didn’t show us those details. With that said, I’d be surprised if every skill, perk or trait is exactly the same as before. In my humble opinion, (which I’m sure many of you will disagree with), the original skill system was at times a little misbalanced anyway, so it’s my hope that Bethesda does do some tweaking to the system before releasing it in a new game.

Q: Are there vehicles in the game?

A: There’s plenty of vehicles visible in the game world, but it doesn’t look like you’ll be driving any of them.

Q: Will the game be M-rated?

A: The ESRB doesn’t set a rating on a game until just prior to release, and that’s over a year away. With that said, I think I can say with a great deal of conviction that there’s no way that a game with this level of violence and other adult content is going to get anything but a Mature rating. Just my opinion.

Q: Will Fallout 3 be as open-ended as Oblivion?

A: In many ways, Fallout 3 is being designed to be more open-ended than Oblivion, offering choices to players that alter the course of the game world in dramatic ways. In Oblivion, for instance, you either do the Dark Brotherhood missions or not. But imagine if you had the choice to either become the leader of the Dark Brotherhood, or infiltrate it and bring it down from the inside. Alternately, pretend you had an unstable nuclear bomb, and you put it outside the Dark Brotherhood hideaway and blew it up. That’s the level of open-endedness they’re shooting for with Fallout 3.

Q: What’s the humor like in Fallout 3?

A: Dark humor was a big part of Fallout 1 and 2, and that same dark humor is present here, on display through everything from quirky dialogue spoken by a malfunctioning robot to darkly comedic moments of death and violence. A few of you asked if the humorous situations had more in common with the first or second game, and I’m afraid I really haven’t seen enough of the game yet to compare it to the times I’ve played through Fallout 1 or 2.

Q: How will Fallout 3 be connected story-wise to the other Fallout games?

A: I’m sure there are elements of the connections that Bethesda hasn’t revealed yet, but they very definitely said that it was its own game and story, largely unconnected to the individual events of the earlier games in the series. They implied that they were approaching this aspect of things much like they always have with the Elder Scrolls–every aspect of the continuity and the universe of the game remains consistent between the different titles, but Fallout 3 will start a fresh story in a new location–in this case, Washington D.C. and its environs.

Q: Will porting the game to consoles hurt the PC version?

A: Hmm... Well, the game’s not really being ported anywhere. It’s being built from the ground up for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. Without a doubt, there are a lot of folks out there who are probably ticked off this game is coming to consoles at all. Everybody is entitled to their opinion, but I might throw my two cents in. With the larger market and potential sales that are possible with a console release, a developer is often able to make a bigger, better game than they would if only making for the PC. Admittedly, this sometimes means the game isn’t optimized just for the PC, but just keep in mind there are pluses and minuses on both sides to keeping something exclusive to a particular platform.

Q: How is the art style? Does it maintain the feel of the original games?

A: I’ll answer this with an example. In the opening minutes of the demo, I saw, the character is in a lab inside Vault 101. On a table beside him I spied a stimpak. This tiny object in the world was the first of many times in the game that I felt tiny twinges of nostalgia for how they’ve carried over individual objects and ideas from the original in the artistic presentation of the game. The post-WWII, Cold War feel of the franchise is very much intact, but Bethesda definitely has its own unique take on the art style. One big part of this art style is a focus on making everything in the game world have a purpose–when designing a new gun, the art team spends a lot of time making sure that if there is some weird knob on the weapon that there is a reason for it to be there. They’re hoping to bring a certain level of authenticity to the game world in this way.

Q: Is the game first or third person? Isometric?

A: It’s both first and third–a point I mention in the article. It does not use the isometric view of the original games. It is possible to pan the third person camera pretty far back, but it definitely isn’t meant to be played in a view that is anything like the original. However, almost half of the questions we received were about the camera view, so I thought I should address it here. To clarify, unlike in Oblivion, with its wonky third-person camera, a big focus has been placed on making Fallout 3 fun and playable in both first and third person. The third person camera, when panned close, is very much like the over-the-shoulder view of a game like Gears of War or Resident Evil 4. The first person camera is very much like any other first person camera, but the game definitely does not play like a first-person shooter, at least in the demo I saw.

Q: Can you play the game without doing any combat?

A: I never got a hard and fast answer on this point, though I did ask the development team about it. On a general level, they did say that they’re trying to build multiple solutions into almost any quest or situation you encounter, and that using stealth and diplomacy were very useable routes to overcome different obstacles. Whether you’ll be able to play through the whole game without committing any violence is a point they’re still hammering out, to my memory.

Q: How is the story going to work, how many quests are there, how much branching is there, etc?

A: I received a bunch of questions from you all on this point, and it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that I don’t really have the answers. With over a year of development ahead, I’m sure even Bethesda doesn’t know all the details about exactly how many quests will be in the final version. However, you can certainly look at the story elements that were included in the magazine article and draw a few conclusions. In the demo that was narrated throughout the article, the character chose to arm and detonate a nuclear bomb in the town of Megaton. This choice effectively closed off a whole slew of events and quests that could only be found in Megaton. Go back to that town afterwards for the rest of the game and all the people, homes, and shops will be gone, replaced by a big irradiated hole in the ground. However, having blown up Megaton, a previously unfriendly settlement that your employer is affiliated with might open up, and new quests, (probably some pretty evil ones) might become available. Had the character not blown up Megaton, there are all sorts of quests there that would open up in Megaton, but that other town and its quests might never become an option. You might be asking yourself: “Well, wouldn’t that mean I could have a dramatically different playthrough the second time through?” That’s sort of the idea, I think, at least if Bethesda manages to successfully implement this idea.

Q: Given the first-person treatment, is Bethesda going to maintain the level of violence from the original games?

A: Yes. If anything, I would say that some more squeamish players may not like how extremely gory and violent Fallout 3 turns out to be.

Q: What is the map system for the game like?

A: Sorry, they didn’t show the map system, but they did say that the game was of a comparable land size with Oblivion (maybe a little smaller) and that the area included D.C. and the area around it.

Q: Does the game take place after Fallout 1 and 2?

A: Yes. If I recall, the game is set in 2277, 200 years after the civilization ending war.

Q: Can you pick different races for your character?

A: No. You’ll always play as a human, but there are lots of customization options, from gender, to ethnicity, to physique, to facial shape–not to mention the dozens of options in terms of setting up your abilities, skills, perks, and traits.

Q: Are drugs included in the game?

A: Yes. Many of the same drugs you dealt with in the earlier games are present here.

Q: Are there more voice actors than in Oblivion?

A: According to Bethesda, yes. There should be a lot more.

Q: Will there be martial arts in the game?

A: I’m not sure, but there is definitely melee combat, so I suspect there will be some form of unarmed combat as well.

Q: Is there enemy scaling like in Oblivion?

A: No. If you go someplace you aren’t ready for, the difficult creatures there will tear you up.

Q: Will there be cooperative play or any other multiplayer?

A: Not that they told me about. Bethesda told me that Fallout 3 would be a one-player game.

Q: How much can you really explore in a game world based on the real world?

A: Interesting question. Here’s the thing. According to Bethesda, the history of the Fallout world starts to be

Q: I’ve never played a Fallout game. Will I be able to enjoy Fallout 3?

A: I don’t know, but I do know that Bethesda sure hopes you will. While there are certainly a lot of big Fallout fans out there in the world, there are plenty of gamers who have never had the chance to play the old PC classic. While staying true to the game universe, Bethesda seemed to indicate to me that they are trying very hard to create a game that new and old fans alike will be able to enjoy.

Q: I’ve never played Fallout. What can you tell me about the history of the franchise?

A: Well, there are plenty of places online that can help you learn more about both the story of the game world and the making of those games. For a quick overview, you might be interested in the two-page article we did on this subject just a few months ago in our Classic GI section of the magazine, (May issue, #169, Grand Theft Auto IV on the cover).

Q: Will there be a Collector’s Edition or any special goodies that ship with the game?

A: Wow. You got me on this one. I have no idea. That ship date of fall 2008 is a long way off–I’m pretty sure they’re still working on the exact details of the release.

Q: Will the game occur only in Washington D.C., or can you visit other locales, perhaps locations from the first game?

A: There are definitely parts of the game inside Washington D.C., and there are parts outside of it, both underground and above ground. I’m not making the game, but it sure didn’t sound like there were any plans to take players to the far distant West coast locations of the original game.

Q: I love Oblivion, and am hoping that Fallout 3 is just like that. Is it just like Oblivion?

A: No. There are definitely things it has in common with the game you like, but Fallout 3 is its own game, independent of previous releases by Bethesda or any other studio.


Q: I love Fallout 1 and 2, and am hoping that Fallout 3 is just like those. Is it just like Fallout 1 and 2?

A: Please see above answer. I kid you not. I received multiple e-mails of both questions.

Q: What is your overall impression of the game?

A: To be clear, I was and continue to be a big fan of the original Fallout games. Believe it or not, so are the guys over at Bethesda. From my perspective as someone who loved the originals, I have to say that my feeling of the direction that Bethesda is taking the franchise is very strongly positive. If you are a fan who is adamantly against some significant changes to the way gameplay occurs in the Fallout series, I’m going to tell you right now and save you the disappointment: I don’t think you’ll like Fallout 3. However, if you’re a fan of the Fallout universe, of the unique look of the world, of the moral ambiguity, of the dark and often violent humor, and the invigorating branching story paths, then everything about what I’ve seen of Fallout 3 should please you.


TRADUCCIÖN

- ¿ cual es tu impresión general del juego ?

a- para ser francos, yo fuí y aun soy un gran fan de los juegos originales de fallout. Y creelo o no, pero tambíen lo son los tios de bethesda. Desde mi prespectiva como amante de los originales, Yo opino qué el trabajo qué está haciendo bethesda con la franquicia es muy positivo. Si eres un Fan cerrado qué está en contra de cambios importantes en la jugabilidad, yo te ahorro el disgusto; No creo qué te guste fallout 3. Pero si lo qué te gustaba era el universo fallout, de su aspecto único, de su ambiguedad moral, de su humor, frecuentemente negro y violento, de su no-linealidad, entonces todo lo qué he visto debería de complacerte.

q- ¿ Es esto otro oblivion ambientado en fallout ?

a- respuesta breve- no. Seguro. Se juega principalmente en primera persona, como oblivion, Y el sistema de dialogo presenta un arbol de dialogo similar, pero el combate, la exploracion, la creacción del personaje, y lo más importante, la tonalidad general del juego tienen más qué ver con los primeros fallout qué con oblivion.

q- ¿ Es un juego a tiempo real o por turnos ? ¿ Como funciona el sistema V.A.T.S ?

a- hablaré de ello en el artículo, pero, para abreviar, Fallout 3 se juega a la vez en tiempo real con un sistema táctico y pausado, pero no por turnos. Tú puedes parar el tiempo real para realizar ataques apuntados sobre tu oponente, destrozando sus piernas para derribarlos, o disparando en su brazo del arma para emperorar su precision. Como en los faloout originales, esos disparos apuntados te cobraran puntos de acción, pero al no haber turnos, esos AP se recargaran con el paso del tiempo. Puedes disparar entonces, pero entonces recuperaras más lentos tus AP. En la practica, significa qué los jugadores pueden jugar mucho más como en un RPG, pero con más acción qué un RPG tradicional. ¿ Te da más opciones qué esto el sistema ?. Si, Podemos darte todas las respuestas de como funciona antes de probarlo en una demo ?. No, así qué aun eperamos.

Q- ¿ Hay cambios en el sistema SPECIAL ?

a- Bethesda no tiene detalles acerca de qué dotes( perks ), habilidades y atributos podrán escogerse en el juego, y si los tiene, no nos los ha enseñado. Con todo lo dicho, me sorprendería mucho si cada habilidad, dote o atributo fuese exactamente igual que antes. En mi humilde opinion ( qué muchos no compartiran ) el sistema de habilidades original estaba un poco desequilibrado. Así qué espero qué Bethesda realize unos cambios en el sistema antes de ponerlo en un juego nuevo.

q- ¿ Habrá vehículos en el juego ?

a- Hay montones de vehículos visibles en el juego, pero no parece qué vayas a poder conducir ninguno.

q ¿ el juego estará M-rated ? ( se refiere a la edad de juego )

a- ESRB no gradua un juego hasta justo antes de qué salga al mercado, y aun falta un año, pero con lo dicho, puedo decir qué no apostaría porque un juefo con este nivel de violencia y contenido adulto vaya a salir sin un M-rated ( mature rating, mayores de 18 ). Pero es solo mi opinion.

q- ¿ Fallouy 3 será tan abierto como oblivion.

a- De muchas maneras, Fallout 3 será más abierto qué oblivion, ofreciendo a los jugadores eleciones qué alteran el desarrollo del mundo del juego de manera dramática. I oblivion, por ejemplo, tu podias tomar las misiones del gremio de asesinos o no. Pero imagina que pudieses elegir entre convertirte en lider de la hermandad oscura, o infiltrarte y derribarla desde dentro. Alternativamente, imagina que tienes una una herrumbrosa bomba nuclear, y la pones a la puerta del edificio de la hermandad oscura, y la vuelas. Ese es el nivel de libertad qué se espera de fallout 3.

q. ¿ como es el humor de fallout 3 ?

a- El humor negro es una parte importante de los primeros fallout, y el mismo humor negro esta presente aqui, tanto en dialogos ridiculos o en el malfucionamiento de un robot que da pie a graciosos momentos de violencia y muerte.Unos pocos habeis preguntado si el humor tendrá más en comun con el primer o segundo juego. Y siento deciros qué aun no he visto suficiente del juego para compararlo a ese nivel.

q- ¿ Estará conectada la historia con otros juegos de fallout ?

a- estoy seguro de que hay elementos qué bethesda aun no ha desvelado, pero está claro qué este va a ser su propio juego con su propia historia, muy desconectado de los eventos sucedidos enlos juegos anteriores. Eso implicaría alejarse de esa clase de mundo de la saga elder, con su continuidad en su universo entre diferentes títulos, pero fallout 3 empieza con una historia nueva en una nueva localización, Whasintong DC, y su entorno.

q- se porteara el juego de PC a consola

a- humm.. bueno, enrealidad el juego no se porteara a ningun lado. Se esta construyendo para 360, PS3 y PC. Sin duda, habrá un monton de fans qué se sentiran estafados porque el juego vaya tambíen a consolas. Todo el mundo tiene derecho a dar su opinion, asi qué yo doy la mia. El enorme mercado de consola y las ventas potenciales hacen posible hacer un juego mucho mejor que si solo se hiciese para PC. Admito qué esto significa a veces que no se optimiza para el PC, pero tened en cuenta que hay pros y contras en ambas partes como para seguir manteniendolo exclusico en una plataforma particular.

a- ¿ Cual es el estilo artísitico ? ¿ se mantiene fiel a los originales ?

a- Responderé a esta con un ejemplo. En los minutos de opening de la demo, el prote esta en un laboratorio dentro del vault 101. En una mesa hay lo que me parecio un stimpack. Este delgado objeto fue la primera de de muchas veces en el juego que sentí ostalgia por como han cogido objetos e ideas de los originales en al apartado artístico.
El ambiente de guerra fria de la franquicia esta intacto, pero bethesda tiene su propio estilo artístico. Una gran parte de ese estilo es hacer qué todo en el juego tenga un propósito. Cuando diseñan un arma, el artísta pasa un monton de tiempo asegurandose de que todas las chorradas que tenga ese arma tengan una razón de ser. Esperan qué eso le de al juego un alto nivel de credibilidad.

q- el juego es primera persona, en tercero, o isométrico ?

a- en primera y tercera, lo comento en el artículo. No usará la prespectiva isométrica de los juegos originales. Es posible poner la tercera persona muy lejos, pero no conseguiras que se vea como en el original. De todos modos, la mitad de las preguntas que recibo son acerca de la cámara, así qué suelo responderlas. Aclaro qué, al contrario qué en oblivion, que en tercera persona es un juego torpe, se estan esforzando en que ambas sean jugables. La vista en tercera persona, en corto, se ve mas como la vista desde el hombro de gears of y the RE 4. La primera persona es como la de un FPS. Pero no se juegan igual, al menos en la demo que ví.

q- ¿ podrás pasarte el juego sin pelear una sola vez '

a- No tengo una respuesta muy clara para esto, aunque pregunte al equipo de desarrollo acerca de esto. En general, ellos dicen que estan intentando ofrecer soluciones multiples a todos los problemas que encuentres. Y que el sigilo o la diplmacia seran rutas con la que superar diferentes obstáculos. Pero si podrás superar el juago sin cometer ningun tipo de violencia es algo que sigue sin saberse.

q- como va a funcionar la historia, cuantas busquedas habrá, cuanto es de largo, etc... ?

a - He recibido muchas preguntas en este aspecto. Y no debería sorprenderos qué no tenga respuestas.Aun falta un año de desarrollo del juego, y estoy seguro de que bethesda aun no tiene ni idea de cuantas busquedas incluirá la version final. De todos modos, echale un vistazo a los elementos de la historia que estan incluidos en el artículo y saca conclusiones. En la demo de la que hablo el personaje podia elegir armar y explosionar una bomba nuclear en la ciudad de megaton. Volver a esa ciudad despues , durante el juego, supondrá que las gente, las casas, y las tiendas se habrán ido, sustituidos por un enorme crater radioactivo en el suelo. Sin embargo, volando megaton, un emplazamiento enemigo al que tu pertencese podría abrirse, y nuevas busquedas ( probablemente malvadas ) estarán disponibles. Si no vuelas la ciudad, habrña montones de busquedas que se abriran en megaton, pero esa otra ciudad nunca se convertirá en una opción. Debes preguntarte a tí mismo;¿ Significa eso qué la siguiente vez tendré una aventura totalmente diferente ? Esa es la idea, y sobre esa idea está trabajando bethesda.

q- dandole la visión en primera persona... ¿ van a mantener el nivel de violencia de los anteriores ?

a- si, aunque ya os aviso qué a muchos jugadores no les gustará el nivel de gore y violencia de fallout 3.

q - ¿ cual es el sistema de mapa del juego ?

a- lo siento, no enseñaron el sistema de mapa, pero dicen que el juego va a tener una extensión comparable a oblivion ( puede que mas pequeño ) e incluye D.C y alrededores.

q - tendrá lugar despues de fallout 1 y 2 ?

a- si, en 2277, 200 años despues de la guerra.

q- ¿ podrás coger diferentes razas ?

a- no, siempre seras un humano, pero hay montones de opciones de creacción, sexo, etnia, físico, y docenas de opciones para el rostro. ( sin mencionar las opciones de modificar tus habilidades, dotes, y atributos.

q- habrá drogas en el juego ?

a- si, muchas de las drogas de los juegos anteriores estarán presentes.

q- habrá más voces diferentes qué en oblivion ?

a- segun bethesda, muchas mas.

q- habrá artes marciales en el juego ?

a- no estoy seguro, pero habrá combates cuerpo a cuerpo, asi que sospecho que habrá tambíen alguna forma de combate desarmado.

q - ¿ es el autolevel como el oblivion ?

a- no, si vas a un sitio que no debes, la dificultad de las criaturas te hará llorar.

q- habrá cooperativo o algun tipo de multiplayer ?

a- No hablaron sobre ello. Bethesda me dijo que sería un juego para un jugador.

q - ¿ Cuanto puedes explorar relamente en un mundo basado en el mundo real ?

a- Interesante pregunta. Esa es la cosa, que de acuerdo con bethesda, la historia del mundo de fallout empieza ahí.
( creo que esta respuesta noe stá completa )

q- Nunca he jugado a un juego de fallout. Me divertirá fallout 3 ?

a- No lo se, pero bethesda espera qué si. Hay montones de fans de fallout en el mundo, pero hay aun mas que nunca le ha dado una oportunidad a los clásicos del PC. Bethesda me comento que ellos estan esforzandose en crear un juego que satisfaga a todos.

q- nunca he jugado a fallout. puedes decirme algo de la historia de la franquicia ?

a- bueno existen muchos sitios en la red que pueden ayudarte mas que yo, pero para una vista rápida, puede interesarte un artículo de doa páginas que sacamos en la gameinformer de mayo ( con GTA 4 en la caratula )

q- ¿ habrña edicion de coleccionista o otras chorradas con el juego ?

a- Vaya. Me has pillado. Ni idea. Aun queda mucho para que salga y aun estaran trabajando en esas cosas hasta su salida.

q- el juego sucedera solo en wasingthon DC o podras visitar localicaciones del primer juego ?

a- definitivamente, sucedera en wasington DC y alrededores, incluyendo subsuelo y exteriores. Yo no esoy haciendo el juego, pero no tiene pinta de que vayas a poder viajar hasta las localizaciones de la costa oeste de losjuegos originales.

q-me encanta oblivion, y espero que este juego sea igual que el. Es igual ?

a- por favor, mira arriba. No es asi, recibe muchos emails con esta pregunta.

q- ¿ cual es tu impresion general sobre el juego ?
( se repite la primera pregunta... ERRATA )


ENTREVISTA con Todd Howard and Istvan Pely

1ª parte
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8tMPOeTcYw

2º parte
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRpun7dnQ9E

3ª parte
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE3xEea_3ok

Nuevos scans del juego, aunque son de momentos que ya hemos visto pero bueno...

Preview Gamerevolution

In all that time, there was one vault in particular, vault number 101, which after bolting its door, kept it shut. No one from the outside ever entered. And no one within the vault ever left. Including you, a child born to Vault 101's head scientist, voiced by Liam Neeson.
(...)
At about 20 years old, you discover that your father has either been taken from or escaped Vault 101.
(...)
The frequency of combat is tuned down far below a typical First Person Shooter's fragfest to let the game's pacing introduce a unique sense of desolation set right into the pit of your psyche as you roam through the rubble
(...)
During any encounter you can toggle to this Vault-tec Assisted Targeting System with the push of a button, which will freeze time and let you switch between multiple enemies and their body parts, helping you plan out your attack. Any piece of anatomy, such as a mutant's arms, legs, torso, head, or weapon can be targeted, each displaying a hit percentage dependent upon the enemy's distance, position, and stats. If you target his leg and get a critical hit, it'll blow off in gory Fallout glory, and the mutant will fall to the ground, painfully crawling in pursuit if it's still alive. If you didn't blow his weapon out of his hand, you can pick it up and use it yourself. Or if you already have a weapon of the same type, you can bust out some engineering skills, break it down into parts, and use them to beef up the strength, precision, and firing rate of your own weapon. As weapons get worn with use, this is smart option if you're skilled at it.

The same combat engine (minus the stopping time) is available to enemies too, for they can also target your body parts to hinder your aim or movement. It is both eye and brain-catching, for while being treated to the graphically impressive Robocop-ian target scan, you'll have to decide which is the way to eliminate the biggest threats fast, because the V.A.T.S. runs out of action points. Once they're gone, you'll be fighting in real time and without assistance while your action points regenerate.

You'll also be struggling with moral dilemmas through voiced NPC dialogue choices. The number of NPCs in Fallout 3 is about 300 (as opposed to Oblivion's 1000), so Bethesda has put alot more alcohol and devtime into making their individual A.I. more realistic and natural. Instead of NPCs walking around doing very simple tasks talking basic gibberish, they will roam with more personalized agendas and socialize with other people about topics that interest them.
(...)
As your choices change and quests are knocked out, news of your fame (or infamy) will spread to. NPC reactions to you will also change as your title shifts from "Noob Vault Dweller" to "HaXXor - Nuker of Cities".

With these lasting consequences, Fallout 3 is still designed to have a definite ending -- anywhere from nine to a dozen different ones are planned to net all your possible decision paths and personal insecurities. Although it is running off a shiny Oblivion engine with a few more notches on its armor, Fallout 3 is definitely its own game, so don't be confused by some of the screenshots. The camera defaults as first person view so you can be swallowed by all the little details of the blasted world, but it can be toggled with a flick of a switch to a Resident Evil 4 over-the-shoulder cam. Then you can zoom out even further to get to the franchise-beloved 3rd person perspective.

After the hour long gameplay presentation, we were all equally surprised how far in development Fallout 3 was, even with more than a year left to finish it. It has all the makings of being the first solid bridge between the rapidly growing RPG genre and the immensely pop FPS category, with play options, paths, and ironic wit galore.

Listin de previews sobre el juego
http://www.duckandcover.cx/#9263

Previews

F.A.Q. del evento de presentación del juego ante la prensa

Q: What happens when your character levels?
A: You gain points in your skills (not specified if they’re automatic or assigned?) and on even levels you gain perks. The maximum level in the game is 20, mainly because the game has a definitive ending which is triggered by the main plot. They mentioned anywhere between 9 and 12 possible endings to the game, possibly depending on side quests and choices made during the main quest lines.

Q: Will the PC Version require Direct X 10? (what kind of computer nerd asked this?)
A: There was no direct answer that I heard, but Todd Howard expressed his distaste in games (Shadowrun) doing “bullshit” like requiring Vista. They noted that there will be the option for changeable font sizes on the PC to resolve some of the issues with menus that were encountered in Oblivion.

Q: Does all Radiation in the game dissipate over time?
A: There are a few events which cause extreme levels that will never go away, but most radiation from things like blown up cars (nuclear engines) and the mini-nuke weapon will dissipate given a little time.

Q: Explain more about the style of Dialogue / Storylines?
A: Again they stressed the fixed ending, with multiple possibilities, and that your actions throughout the game would determine how the main plot resolved. Also that your choices of dialogue can open up more quests, more options for places to go and things to do in the game. Emil really seemed to stress a high level of detail written into the game as far as Dialogue and Quest interaction.

Q: Are all versions (PC/360/PS3) at the same stage of development?
A: Yes. We were shown the demo run on a 360 because Todd claimed it, “shows better in the theater”.

Now, during the demo, there were many loading screens which displayed random stats from your time in the game, one of which popped up said, “Corpses Eaten: 0” Someone asked about this and Todd Howard seemed kind of surprised that it had gotten in to the demo, simply saying it is a “perk thing”.

Q: What is the main quest? (this person may have been sleeping through the demo…)
A: The main quest centers around your dad mysteriously disappearing from the Vault one day, and your quest to find him and find out why he left and where he is/has gone.

Q: How do the developers feel about a lot of “Fan Anger”?
A: Todd expressed that it is a “natural” natural thing, they attempt to treat it with respect and take it all seriously. He emphasized that because most of the development team are fans themselves they can easily understand a lot of what they hear/read from other fans.

Q: Explain more about the focus on Fallout 1, and not Fallout 2? Specifics?
A: Adult Content is definitely all over this game, but they wanted to get rid of some of the stuff from Fallout 2 that seemed to break the barrier (Monty Python references, etc). They feel that the second game is not serious enough, and that they are going for “feeling like an adult game, but not being cheesy about it”. Profanity has to be used correctly, it has to be used right and feel like it fits where it is.

Q: Are there mercenaries that add a Party aspect to the gameplay?
A: There are mercenaries, but they will not be controlled by the player.

Q: Explain the introduction sequences, playing at different ages?
A: The game starts in the Vault when you are born, and jumps forward a few years at a time in short sequences. You see a “gene-projector” at birth which shows what you will look like when you are older, and this is the segueway into character creation. They joked that the first hour of Fallout 3 is in the Vault, and the first hour of Oblivion is making your nose look right. Other sequences will take you through tutorials, and introduce you to the world in which these characters are living up until the age of 19 when the main plot kicks in. Liam Neeson plays the part of your father, but the character is wearing a mask until you create your character and his appearance is then determined procedurally from an aged version of how your character looks.

Q: Do enemies scale to the player, and what is the leveling system based on?
A: The leveling system for the player is based on Fallout 1. Not all enemies scale to the player, there are definitely areas of the game where if you venture alone or without protection of some kind you will easily die. The example used was that all Super Mutants are basically the same difficulty throughout the game, but that equipment like armor and weapons in different areas will make some tougher or some easier. You will not be encountering a mutant early on that takes one shot to kill and some later on that take 30 unless one is wearing 50 tons of armor.

Q: How big is the game world compared to Oblivion’s?
A: The game world is 25% inside of the city of Washington, DC and the other 75% is made up of the surrounding wastelands (suburbs of Maryland and Virginia). In the demo we saw the character enter the area of Chevy Chase, MD. The entire game world is on a different scale then Oblivion’s, there are a lot shorter sight lines and traveling will feel quite different apparently.

Q: Will there be a demo or beta? Are there any plans for downloadable content yet? Will there be fast travel?
A: No demo or beta, and no plans for Downloadable content yet. The game will be single-player only. Yes there will be fast travel, but they aren’t talking about it yet.

Q: Is there a Karma / Reputation system?
A: Yes, there is a sliding scale and a lot of focus was placed on the ability to be neutral on that scale rather then just good or bad. They have worked hard to create a genuine, valid gray area that you can complete a quest for someone one second and shoot a person’s face off if you don’t like them later on. Also it was discussed that doing certain actions / quests will limit your choices for opposing quests / NPC’s, unlike in Oblivion where you could simply complete all of the quests for all of the factions. This comes from the idea that the game has a definitive ending and should be replayed multiple times.

Q: Are there interactive vehicles? Can we kill children?!
A: No interactive vehicles. Todd replied to the child question, “do you want to be able to?” A long, and very funny/uncomfortable discussion spurned from this question but it really doesn’t seem like children will be killable in this game simply because of legal issues. (Seriously though…do you need to be able to do it?)

Q: Will there be character titles that you gain from certain actions / quests? (Like “Destroyer of Worlds”)
A: Yes, there will be titles related to your level and your alignment on the sliding scale of Karma/Reputation.

Q: How is the AI different from Oblivion?
A: They have updated the AI a lot to make all of the characters inhabit the world more realistically, in OblivionFallout 3 will just have a few hundred. They focused on getting more interaction with NPC’s, and if someone was doing something they wanted to get it on screen so that it was clear to the player what the NPC was doing. The dialogue has also been created to be more believable on an NPC to NPC basis, which was very evident in the demo. they quoted about 1,000-1,500 NPC’s while

Q: What about the radio on your Pip-boy?
A: You can tune in to various of the world’s stations (such as Galactic News Radio) and either listen to it passively as you play the game and hear about events that are taking place, or even possibly pick up random signals in the wastelands that could lead to quests or give you a heads up on some raiders heading your way. Though the radio is mostly flavor stuff, they’ve licensed about 20 songs from the 40’s and there are DJ’s in game that talk about what’s going on in the game.

Q: What is there as far as Melee combat?
A: They’re not talking about this yet, but they did say they are making ammo scarce in game and so melee will be playing a large part if you don’t manage your resources carefully.

Q: Will the storyline feature any current political commentary?
A: Very little, if any, as it is all centered around the fictional world of Fallout. There is a lot of in-game propaganda about China, having invaded during WW3, and some super mutants were carrying Chinese built rifles.

Q: Will there be a lot of old stuff from the Fallout games, and/or will there be a lot of new stuff?
A: There will be a lot more old stuff than people are expecting, but new stuff as well.

Q: Will there be Mutant Powers?
A: They’re not talking about this yet.

Q: Will there be unkillable NPC’s?
A: There will be some, but they expressed sadness at this, and said they are putting as few unkillables as they possibly can.

Q: Will there be any returning characters from previous games?
A: Not talking about this yet either.

Q: What is left to be done for the game between now and fall 2008?
A: They’ve just finished pre-production, though what they showed us looked like a very complete demo of the game, and that now they will have a year of solid production then playtesting. They repeatedly stressed their abundant confidence in the fall 2008 release date.

Q: What does Bethsoft bring to the game?
A: The idea of free-form game design, experience in developing that type of game. Todd expressed the idea in a game of, “never give the player a reason to stop”. They really wanted to use the best technology they could to create the game, and create it to a level of quality so that there is nothing which puts players off from it.

Q: How long is the main quest? How much gameplay time before the game ends?
A: The main quest they estimated at about 20 hours of gameplay, with about 20 hours more of possible miscellaneous quests and side stories. They wanted to add as much replay value as possible, and provide a lot of different choices in misc. quests each time you go through the game. Based on your decisions, various doors will close and open to the player.

Q: Are they doing a lot of things to make Fallout mainstream?
A: They’re “just doing what is cool”, they admitted that games today have a huge emphasis on graphics, but that they wanted to bring back some retro gaming features (ie - speech trees)

Q: Is this just the Oblivion engine?
A: It is a very supped up version of the same engine, with shorter load times

Q: Will there be Random Encounters?
A: “Maybe.” The way it was said meant ‘yes’.



------------------------



IGN

Fallout 3
Bethesda finally shows us what we've been wanting to see. And it's well worth the wait.
by Steve Butts
July 1, 2007 - For a few years now we've been anxious to see what Bethesda has been doing with our beloved Fallout franchise. After the unfortunate heartbreak of Brotherhood of Steel and Fallout Tactics, gamers have been clamoring for a sequel that's true to the spirit of the original game. Given the success of the recent Elder Scrolls games, we've been hopeful that Bethesda could really deliver an original but authentic Fallout experience but after years of silence and only the slightest whispers of the game at E3, we were beginning to get discouraged.

That all changed recently when Bethesda invited us to the first showing of Fallout 3. The title, in development since Bethesda acquired the rights in 2004, is being developed simultaneously for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 by the teams that worked on the last two titles in Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series, Morrowind and Oblivion. Bethesda's executive producer Todd Howard and designer Emil Pagliarulo were on hand to talk about their plans for the game and to show off a surprisingly complete build for the Xbox 360. Be sure to check out our interview with Todd Howard on our media page.


The things that initially attracted Bethesda to the Fallout franchise are the same things that make the Elder Scrolls games so appealing. Both allow players to create virtually any type of character they want and then explore a large and detailed world with a nearly limitless degree of freedom. Though you have a tremendous range of choices, your actions also matter a great deal in both series and the worlds will respond to your choices in very realistic ways. The work that Bethesda put into Oblivion is already paying off in the design of Fallout 3
Bethesda is also committed to maintaining the tone of Fallout. The original Fallout was pretty violent when it was first released with death and destruction around almost every corner. You'll find that's also true in Fallout 3. The original game also featured some of the most convincing and lifelike characters ever seen thanks to super VGA graphics, first-rate voiceovers and full lip-synching. Bethesda also wants to maintain the humor that was present in the first few games but wants to shy away from the self-referential gags that broke the illusion that the world of Fallout is real.

The one radical departure Bethesda is making to the Fallout format is that they're putting the game in a first person format. There are also options for a Resident Evil-style shoulder camera, or a more traditional isometric view. Even though those other two cameras are included, Bethesda intends that the players should benefit from the immersion provided by the first-person perspective.

To create the world of Fallout 3, Bethesda simply took the future as people in 1950s America imagined it and then dropped a nuclear bomb on it. In 2077 mushroom clouds suddenly appeared over the cities and suburbs of America courtesy of a Chinese attack. Thousands of Americans took refuge in massive underground vaults that protected them from the attacks, only to emerge years later to find their former cities inhabited by unfeeling mutants and vicious monsters.


The game begins 200 years after the attacks. Under the remains of Washington DC, Vault 101 hasn't been opened since the war began leaving the inhabitants largely unaware of the state of the outside world. The Vault is a place of relative safety, but it's also a bit drab and claustrophobic. Everything's sort of gray and dimly lit and slightly dirty. The retro tech, like computers that use tape reels or old 1940s style radios, contribute to the Vault's overall awkward atmosphere.
It's here that you start your life. Literally. The game begins with your father, an influential doctor and scientist played by Liam Neeson, attending your birth. As the good doctor shepherds you into the world, you'll be confronted with your first meaningful decision -- what are you going to look like? There's a gene projector on hand so you can determine just what you'll look like as adult and, as an amazingly cool touch, the game also ensures that your dad's appearance is based on the choices that you make.

From there your life plays out in a series of key moments in your childhood. On your tenth birthday, for instance, your parents present you with your very own Pip Boy, a device you wear on your forearm that acts, among other things, as a radio, a radiation counter and an in-game character sheet. As you make your way through the game, you'll learn to rely heavily on the information your Pip Boy provides, so it's nice to see it introduced as part of the story. Your birthday guest list also includes a number of bullies who signal that life in the Vault might not be as good as people are saying.

Our demo of the game began with the player talking with dear old dad about the upcoming Generalized Occupational Aptitude Tests that are required of all Vault residents when they turn sixteen. The G.O.A.T. is essentially an oral exam that lets the player express their preferences and expectations for the game and then translates those wishes into an appropriate set of skills -- sneaking, science, medicine, guns, speech, etc. This approach to skill selection nicely fits with the game's emphasis on maintaining your immersion in the game world rather than relying on a more artificial class selection system.

In case it sounds like Vault 101 is built solely around tutorials and character creation, there are plenty of quests and meaningful interactions to be found during the hour or so that you spend here. Those very bullies who showed up at your tenth birthday eventually develop into a gang of obnoxious greasers who delight in terrorizing young girls and you'll be confronted with a decision about whether or not to intervene.

During your nineteenth year, dear old dad suddenly turns up missing. In your quest to find out just where he's gone you being to suspect that he's left the Vault altogether. Your conclusions attract the unwanted attention of the Vault's insular and narrow minded leader, the Overseer. The Overseer suspects that you had something to do with your dad's disappearance and feels threatened by the possibility that you might follow dad up into the outside world. Before things get too bad, you'll decide to escape the Vault and see if you can't track down dad in the dangerous wasteland that lies just beyond the massive Vault door.


After making your escape and traveling up the tunnel to the surface, you'll be confronted with a striking panorama of a world in ruins. A nice visual effect is added so that your vision blurs just a bit as your eyes adjust to the light. Once your vision clears you'll be able to look out on a scene of desolation and decay.
Where you go at that point is pretty much up to you.

The first priority is to find a weapon. You might consider checking inside the mailboxes that line the streets of this world to see if you friendly neighborhood postman happensto have left an assault rifle or two laying around for you. The world outside the Vault is particularly dangerous and you won't last long unless you arm yourself and learn how to fight effectively. Loads of mutants, giant ants, slavers, death claws and rat scorpions are scouring the wastes looking for others to prey upon and you definitely don't want to become their latest victim.

Despite the first-person perspective and real-time combat, Fallout 3 is still an RPG at heart so combat will be decided more by character skills and weapon quality than by your skills with the mouse. Players who feel a bit challenged by the more intense real-time battles or players who simply want to take a bit more control over combat can make use of the impressive Vault-Tech Assisted Targeting System (VATS). The feature is essentially a more detailed version of the combat system in Knights of the Old Republic.

On the Xbox 360, you'll enter VATS by pressing the right bumper. The game will pause and the camera will zoom in on the enemy you're currently targeting. Each area of the enemy that isn't behind cover will be outlined in green, showing both your chance to hit that particular area as well as how damaged the area already is. Naturally, trying to hit a smaller target, like a head or a pistol, is going to be more difficult than aiming for a torso or a leg.


Using a pool of action points determined by your Agility, you'll queue up fire actions to the targets you want to hit on your enemy. You can even switch enemies to queue up a series of shots against different members of a large group. Critical hits can result in cripplings, knocking the gun out of someone's hands or even causing a head to explode and send eyeballs rolling down the street. Some enemies even have particularly vulnerable areas. Take out a giant ant's antenna, for instance, and they'll go berserk and attack whoever happens to be closest to them.
While your overall skill levels determine how well you can use each weapon in the game, the weapon's quality also plays an important role. While you might be tempted to shoot a rifle out of an enemy's hands, you also have to consider that doing so might damage the rifle's usefulness to you once the battle is over. Fortunately, you can scrap a weapon and use the parts to repair a weapon of the same type. A fully repaired weapon has a number of benefits, offering advantages like a tighter spread or a higher rate of fire.

There are even some cool opportunities to make your own weapons or ammunition from items you scavenge in the world. All those pointless rocks and Barbie heads you find on the ground can be loaded into a makeshift Rock-It Launcher and put to good use. You can also pack a lunchbox with bottle caps and explosives to make a homemade shrapnel bomb.

Of course, as dangerous as you are, you'll face enemies who are even more dangerous. If you do get hurt (and you sowill), you'll have to heal yourself by drinking the water you find in pools, fountains, flasks and various other receptacles throughout the world. The only trouble is that the water you find in the wasteland is radiated. Drink too much of it and your stats will start to degrade. Fortunately, you can see your currently radiation level on a small dial in the upper left of your Pip Boy.

After fighting through the wasteland for a while you'll encounter your first town, Megaton. Screened off from the rest of the wasteland by the wreckage of a crashed airliner, it's a sprawling, ramshackle affair with one particularly interesting claim to fame: a large bomb fell here during the war but it never exploded. Some of the citizens see the unexploded bomb as a sign of God's mercy and worship the bomb as a religious artifact.

Your arrival reveals the bomb to be a source of controversy among certain parties in Megaton. The first person you meet is Sheriff Lucas Simms, who, assuming you're not a total ass to him, will ask you to disarm the bomb. At Moriarty's Saloon however, you'll encounter a certain Mr. Burke who represents interests that would like to see Megaton wiped off the map and are willing to pay you to sabotage the bomb.

The conversations with Simms and Burke show off both the new AI system and the new focus on NPC interaction. An improved radiant AI system allows for even more behavior and dialogue options on the screen and your speech skill allows you to influence an NPC to do things that might not necessarily be in their best interests. For each dialogue option that makes use of the speech skill, you'll see a percentage chance of success. You'll want to take note of these numbers because if you fail, it's likely that you'll really irritate the person you're talking with.


Since Fallout 3 has only a few hundred NPCs (compared with Oblivions 1500+), the designers and writers have been able to add enough details and characteristics to make each NPC seem like an individual. The game also uses over 30 different voice actors so you won't hear nearly as many sound-alikes as were present in Oblivion.
Whether you decided to help Simms or Burke or simply ignore them both, you'll need to consider how your actions will affect your overall Karma, the game's sliding scale of ethical judgment. While the arguments for destroying or saving the town seem pretty clear from a moral standpoint (at least on the surface), we were especially excited to see that Bethesda is really putting some thought into offering significant rewards for taking a more neutral stance. RPGs that reward players for being only good or only evil miss out on the whole concept of "role-playing" so it's nice that Fallout 3 will rewards players who aren't so absolute in their morality.

Here, being neutral is actually a very attractive prospect. To begin with, there are certain NPCs that you won't be able to hire as henchmen unless you're neutral. Stray too far towards the good or the bad and they just won't be interested in helping you. Additionally, there are some powerful factions in the game that are working for "good" or "evil" and they'll be too busy hunting each other down to worry about neutral players. There are still some compelling reasons to take a highly visible stand for good or evil, but you'll definitely start to attract the attention of more powerful enemies.

Leaving Megaton, you may want to venture down into the DC Metro tunnels. Just like the Metro of the present day, it's a fast way to get around the city but the presence of super mutants makes it a dicey proposition. Basically you can think of the Metro as a large dungeon that allows you to get from one area of the city to another relatively quickly. (There will also be a fast travel system like we saw in Oblivion but the details haven't been fleshed out yet.)

You can choose to fight your way through each and every encounter you have in the Metro but it's often more convenient to sneak by enemies or use your other skills to take them down. The Metro Protectron pods, for instance, are a great example of how you can use other skills to avoid direct combat. The Protectrons were basically robots that served as guides and ticket masters in the old Metro system. They also happen to be well armed and mercilessly faithful to their programming. Though the Metro has been shut down long ago, the Protectrons are still in their pods waiting for the workday to start.


To get the Protectrons up and running, you'll need to hack into one of their control terminals. Once you find one, you'll have to play a short mini-game to gain access to it. The game displays a list of possible passwords and you're given a certain number of tries to guess the correct password before you're locked out of the system. Each time you guess you'll be told how many letters of the password you selected match the letters in the correct password. If you're smart and lucky, you can narrow the field down with each guess until you arrive at the right password. Once the Protectrons are functioning properly, they head out to patrol the subway tunnels. Any mutants who don't happen to have a transfer handy will...well, let's just say it's more than just a $250 fine.
On the subject of this incredibly dangerous Metro area, it's worth mentioning that Fallout 3 does away with a lot of the auto-leveling problems of Oblivion. Many areas have a distinct difficulty level that doesn't change through the course of the game. Moreover, monsters of the same type will be somewhat consistent in their abilities so we won't see a return of the ridiculously powerful minor creatures that eventually began to appear in Oblivion.

Now, there are some areas of the game that will be scaled to present a challenge appropriate to your character's overall level but, unlike Oblivion, once a difficultly level has been established for an area, it will remain the same throughout the game. So if you enter one of these scaled areas and find it too difficult, you can come back after you've gained a few levels and have a better chance of taking on the challenge.

After exploring the wastelands, Megaton and the Metro, you'll eventually find yourself in scenic downtown DC. Downtown DC makes up nearly a fourth of the game world and you're going to find a lot of action here. In our case, the demo focused on a fight between the Brotherhood of Steel and a virtual plague of super mutants. The player is, of course, expected to jump in and help out the Brotherhood by joining the fight against the mutants. In fact, if you want to survive here, you pretty much have to stick with the Brotherhood of Steel folks, at least for a while.

The main Brotherhood group here is the Lyons' Pride Platoon, led by Sentinel Lyons. They'll be patrolling the bombed out buildings, plazas and alleys of downtown DC, taking out mutants wherever they find them. The platoon members are equipped with powerful laser rifles and if you stick with them long enough you're bound to be able to loot one of these impressive weapons. In addition to taking direct shots at the mutants, you might also consider making use of the derelict cars that line the streets. Some of the still have a bit of juice in their nuclear-powered engines. Hit them just right and BOOM! Instant mushroom cloud.

To take out the abnormally large Super Mutant Behemoth, you'll probably want to shoot at him with more than just your laser rifle. If you're lucky enough you might be able to get hold of a Fat Man, the game's personal mini-nuke launcher. This is essentially a bazooka that fires nuclear bombs. Even with the small mushroom clouds sprouting up right on target, the Super Mutant Behemoth doesn't go down that easy.


Naturally, as you're killing things, completing quests and exploring new areas, you'll be gaining experience points. Each new level brings an opportunity to improve your skills and gain a new title based on where you sit on the game's Karma scale. Every other level you'll be able to pick a new Perk to help refine your character and focus on the activities that you enjoy. Your basic stats aren't going to change much during the game (except as a result of radiation poisoning), but you can collect bobble heads found throughout the game to bump them up a bit. All these skills, perks, stats and such can be accessed at any time by simply looking at your Pip Boy.
You can also use the Pip Boy to listen to the radio. Bethesda has licensed 20 songs from the 1940s that play throughout the course of the game on one of the Pip Boy stations. Even better, there's a DJ on that station who can fill you in on local events. Once you start having a big impact on the world, you might even hear him referencing your own actions.

While it's pleasant enough to listen to the radio and hear someone talk about how important you are, there are more important uses for the radio. The Galaxy News Station helps to keep you up to date on the goings on in the world. More significantly, you might even be able to use the Pip Boy's radio to pick up isolated transmissions in the wasteland. Some might lead you a new quest, others might alert you to the presence of a nearby Slaver patrol. We're not sure yet if you'll have to actively seek out these transmissions or if the game will alert you when there's something interesting to listen to. Either way, it's an intriguing way to introduce new content into the story.


That's a good overview of the early part of the game but there are plenty of other surprises and choices to discover as you struggle to unravel the mysteries in the game's twenty-hour campaign. Make no mistake about it, though; unlike the Elder Scrolls games, Fallout 3 has a definite ending whose finality cannot be amended. Players who want to complete additional twenty-or-so hours of side quests should have a very clear idea that the main quest is nearing a definitive conclusion, so you'll only have yourself to blame if you end the game with some unfinished business.
The already impressive technology from Oblivion has been pushed even further in Fallout 3. Though you won't be seeing acres and acres of lush forests or massive medieval castles, there will be equally stunning locations -- dense cities filled with crumbling buildings and piles of rubble, vast tracts of arid and rocky wastes, strip malls converted into Road Warrior-style fortresses, and more. It's all rendered with tremendous attention to detail and first-rate textures. A new system of damage masks allow you to really shoot up just about any environment you find. There's not a lot of actual geometry destruction, but the new damage textures really show off the effects of battle.

Other new features include awesome depth of field effects that are put to great use with the game's long view distances. True reflections and refractions bring the water in the game to life as well. We're particularly pleased to hear that the PC version of the game won't require DirectX 10. Though there are plenty of new effects in DX10, Fallout 3 looks perfectly great without them. You can see all of this yourself in the teaser trailer which is all running in real time using the game engine.

The new physics system not only allows the bobble heads to shimmy and shake with undeniable style but is also tied to the animation system so that characters traverse stairs and slopes with a solid sense of connection. We assume that, as with Oblivion, the physics system can be exploited in a variety of ways that affect combat and stealing, but we haven't seen any of that working in practice yet.

Given Bethesda's past practices, it's unlikely that we'll see a beta or demo of Fallout 3 on any of the systems. There are also no current plans for downloadable content or expansions. Still, based on what we've seen with Oblivion, it's fair to assume that Bethesda will offer additional content after the game is released. Bethesda would love to be able to add a construction kit similar to what we've seen in the Elder Scrolls games on the PC, but they're not sure yet if that's going to make it into the final retail release of the game.

While that's already a tremendous amount of information to digest all at once, Bethesda will have plenty more to say about Fallout 3 in the coming months. We're still very curious to find out more about how the melee system works, how the Enclave fits into the overall story, and what this mysterious "Corpses eaten" stat is all about. We'll be watching development of this one very closely and will be back with more details between now and the game's release in the fall of next year.


-------------------------


GAMESPOT

Fallout 3 First Look - A Classic Series is Resurrected and Reimagined
After years of secrecy, we finally get a first look at the next big role-playing game from the makers of Morrowind and Oblivion.
By Jason Ocampo, GameSpot
Posted Jul 1, 2007 5:06 am PT
Fallout. That name may not mean much to console gamers, but fans of PC role-playing games revere it. Published a decade ago by Interplay, Fallout became an instant classic by blending excellent role playing with a memorable setting and an ironic sense of humor. Fallout was followed by the equally popular and critically adored Fallout 2, but the series almost died along with Interplay's fortunes. That's when Bethesda Softworks, maker of the highly successful The Elder Scrolls series, swooped in to purchase the Fallout name and property. The result of that is Fallout 3, an incredibly promising and beautiful RPG that's set to arrive on the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 next year. Bethesda has actually been working quietly on Fallout 3 for years, but the company finally opened its doors to show off the game, and we were there for a very first look.

The combination of Bethesda and Fallout may seem a bit strange. After all, Bethesda is known for first-person fantasy RPGs, such as the blockbuster hit Oblivion, which let you roam around pastoral lands armed with swords and sorcery. The Fallout games were top-down RPGs where you go around a nuclear wasteland armed with shotguns and assault rifles. However, Bethesda does have a history with postnuclear war games featuring guns (1995's Terminator: Future Shock was one of the very first first-person shooters with mouse-look), and executive producer Todd Howard explained that the folks at Bethesda have always been huge fans of Fallout. "It's the kind of game that we really love, in terms of [how] you make the kind of character that you want and then you do whatever the hell you want," he said. In fact, Howard said that the company had toyed with the idea of offering to make a new Fallout game when the sequels stalled at Interplay. When the opportunity to purchase the rights for Fallout came, Bethesda leapt at it.

First, here are some key basics about Fallout 3. Yes, it's a first-person game, but it also has a third-person camera if you like to play that way, and the camera can be moved so that it almost mimics the perspective of the original Fallout games. No, it's not a pure action shooter, though it can be played like a shooter in some ways, if you want. However, the game does rely on role-playing statistics to determine whether you hit or miss. More intriguingly, you can pause the combat at any time and target specific parts of an enemy's body, just like you could in the original Fallout games. And, yes, it's very much a role-playing game with hundreds of quests. While it only has a few hundred characters as opposed to the 1,500 in Oblivion, each of the characters in Fallout 3 will have his or her or its own distinct identity and dialogue. But we'll cover all of this in a bit.

Fallout 3 is set approximately 30 years after the events in Fallout 2, though knowledge of the first two games is not required. The world of Fallout isn't based on our own. Instead, it's the world of 2050 as envisioned by those in the 1950s and then blown up in a nuclear war with China. Your character's ancestors sought shelter in Vault 101, one of the many high-tech bomb shelters built by the Vault-Tec Corporation, which has the grinning Vault Boy mascot that doubles as the mascot for the game. Over the course of the next 200 years, the huge blast door to Vault 101 never opened. And it is into this underground city that your character is literally born. That's because character creation is cleverly tied into various childhood scenes, such as your birth, your 10th birthday party when you are given your Pip Boy (a computer that you wear on your wrist), and your 16th year, when you have to take the vault aptitude test to find out where your talents lie. When you determine the look for your character (you can play as either gender), you determine the look for your in-game father, voiced by Liam Neeson himself. He's the main scientist of Vault 101, and his mysterious disappearance will lead you to escape to the outside world in search of him.

When you reach the outside world, you'll find yourself in the blasted wasteland in and around Washington D.C., a departure from the American West seen in the first two games. This is an area teeming with wild creatures and rival factions, such as the Brotherhood of Steel, which defends the remnants the capital; the Slavers who occupy Paradise Falls, a converted strip mall; and the super mutants, tough-as-nails humanoids looking to take over. This world will be slightly smaller than the one in Oblivion, but that's still big. Where you go and who you ally with will be up to you because the game will have multiple endings. And yes, there will be a definitive end to the game, at which point you can start over to explore the many other choices. And Bethesda really wants to make choices count in this game, much more than it did in Oblivion. After all, in Oblivion you could pursue every quest in the game and be all things to all people. In Fallout 3, the choices will be much more binary, and they will have far-reaching consequences.

The example that Bethesda gave of this involves Megaton, a shantytown built around the worship of an unexploded nuclear bomb. When you arrive at Megaton, you'll eventually have two choices. A stranger will reward you if you rearm the bomb, as he represents a developer that would like to wipe Megaton from the map to make room for a nice postnuclear suburb. Or you can inform the town sheriff of the plot and save the town. If you choose to go along with the stranger, Megaton will be wiped out of existence in a glorious nuclear blast; thus, all the quests and adventures associated with it are gone. However, by blowing up Megaton, you'll open up a new area in the game that you would not otherwise have access to, Tenpenny Towers. But if you decide to save Megaton, you won't experience the quests and adventures associated with Tenpenny Towers. Talk about a tough call.

Regardless of what choices you make in the game, you'll need to fight for your life against foes, both human and mutated. As we previously noted, combat can be done in real time, just like in an action game. If that's the case, the game is still doing dice rolls, taking into account your character's skills and abilities, but that's all transparent to you. Or you can pause the action at any time and engage in traditional Fallout-style combat, using the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System. VATS allows you to use any action points that your character has to target enemies. Combat will then unfold in real time before pausing again. You can go even further and target specific portions of an enemy, such as crippling a leg or slowing an enemy down (useful if you don't want the foe anywhere near you). One example that we saw involved shooting the antenna off of a giant ant, thus blinding and confusing it to the point that it attacked nearby ants

Fallout has always been known for its ridiculously over-the-top violence. For instance, if you fire a shotgun at point-blank range in the original game, bodies explode in showers of gore. As Howard noted, that tongue-in-cheek splatter is part of what made Fallout so much fun. And that's something that Bethesda is working to capture in Fallout 3. Heads will explode, limbs will get sawed off by gunfire, and we even saw eyeballs fly out of their sockets then roll down an incline. This will be the case especially if you have the infamous bloody mess character perk, which boosts the odds that each death you cause becomes a spectacular one. Bloody mess is just one of the many returning character perks from earlier games, though Bethesda is adding plenty of its own as well. Fallout fans will also be happy to know that the game retains the series' S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system, which builds your character around attributes (strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence, agility, and luck); skills, which are things that you learn, such as repair skill; and perks, which are innate abilities. As you level up in the game, you'll have the opportunity to improve your attributes, learn new skills or improve existing ones, and add up to 10 additional perks to your character. In Fallout 3, your character can advance to a maximum level of 20, though by then you'll be close to finishing the game anyway.

The weapon, armor, and equipment system is similar to Fallout, as well as other RPGs, because you'll recover plenty of items from defeated foes or the environment. These range from conventional gear to some ludicrously overpowered stuff, like the Fat Boy, a portable nuclear bomb catapult. Weapons and armor will deteriorate with use, but you'll be able to restore them by using your character's repair skill along with duplicate versions of whatever you're repairing. In other words, you can cannibalize parts from one item to fix another, as long as they're identical. You can't strip parts from a pistol to repair an assault rifle; you have to have the same version of assault rifle. As weapons break down, their capabilities worsen. For example, the weapon's rate of fire will slow, its accuracy will decrease, and so on. Having a fully restored weapon versus one that's falling apart is like the difference between night and day. Or, you can create your own weapons from various parts.

All this will come alive with a level of detail that's much higher than in Oblivion. Fallout 3 uses an enhanced version of the Oblivion graphics engine, but many lessons have been learned from that game. One thing that Bethesda has had to work on is making the nuclear wasteland actually look good. Many of the locations in the game need to look completely dilapidated, so a lot of work was done to make surfaces look pockmarked and gouged. The interior of Vault 101 borrows a lot of contextual themes from the original games, and it exudes a cool, retro-tech feel to it. The creatures in this game also look impressive, like the super mutant behemoth, a gargantuan foe that could have been ripped out of the postapocalyptic sci-fi shooter Gears of War for the Xbox 360. Even the human characters look far more lifelike than their counterparts in Oblivion because they now have realistic-looking skin and facial features. Even better, the human characters will stand out more as Bethesda has enlisted between 30 and 40 voice actors. So not only will the humans all not sound the same (a problem in Oblivion), but they'll also have unique dialogue. That should rectify one of the major issues with Oblivion, which was that most characters had no personality and their only purpose was to serve as an information kiosk of sorts. However, that wouldn't be Fallout because the series is known for its memorable characters.

What Bethesda showed us looked extremely polished considering that the game is more than a year away from shipping, but there's still a lot of work to do. Because its games tend to be so huge in scale, Bethesda makes them by creating a small portion of the world and getting absolutely everything in it to work perfectly. Once all the issues are hammered out and the concept is proven, the developers can then rapidly create the rest of the world knowing that the foundation is solid. That's the stage that Bethesda is at, but based on what we saw and the company's track record, there's every reason to believe that Fallout 3 is going to big. The designers clearly have a reverence for the original games--and it shows. Fallout 3 won't be Fallout as you may know it, but it promises to be a Fallout game nevertheless.






PREVIEW

We do have a full preview as well, written by Dan Stapleton, supplemented by a related piece I contributed to, so there’s lots of info coming. I haven’t read the GameSpot piece (or Dan’s), so I don’t know how much they overlap — I’m also doing my column in the following issue on Fallout 3, as a sequel to my “memo to Bethesda” column a year or so ago, commenting on how I think things are looking on what I highlighted in the earlier column as the five most important “Fallout” features I was looking for in a sequel.

But if you have any additional questions on anything you’ve read anywhere - shoot - I’ll try to answer them now that I’m no longer prohibited from doing so. I’ve waited a year and a half to be able to talk about Fallout 3, so I’m more than happy to do so, heh.


I actually think people will be very happily surprised with the writing, and the characters, in Fallout 3, compared to Oblivion’s NPCs. The dialogue options are meaningful and different, not just a list of items that NPC can speak about, organized in a list where the only real choice is the order in which you hear the items. There’s only a few hundred NPCs (down from 1500 or so in Oblivion, and 2500 in Morrowind), so they’re much more fleshed out and unique — it also helps that there’s 30-40 different voice actors instead of just a handful in Oblivion. At least from what we’ve been shown, that stuff feels much more like Fallout 1/2 than Oblivion.


You also won’t be a jack of all trades, as in Oblivion - you have to make real choices that matter, and which dynamically change the fortunes of other characters. Aside from enhancing replayability, since you obviously won’t be able to do competing objectives, those choices deepen the roleplaying. To elaborate more on the “Megaton bomb quest” — when you arrive at that town, you can greet and be friendly with the sheriff. When you get the quest to potentially blow up the bomb, you can instead inform the sheriff that these dudes are trying to blow up the town. Or you can decide to blow up the town, but actually be unable to because you lack the mechanical skills to activate the bomb. Or you could just decide to blow the sheriff away when you meet him, in which case you’ll likely be attacked by his buddies when walking through the town. Or you could, after blowing him away, decide to put on his sheriff’s uniform, in which case some NPCs may attack you for killing the sheriff, but others may actually defer to you as the new sheriff. In short - meaningful options and real choices, and interesting characters to interact with - in that respect, I think Bethesda is appropriately emulating some of Fallout’s best and most distinctive features.


I also wouldn’t read anything negative into not being able to kill kids - it’s still definitely an M-rated game - there’s graphic violence, swearing, and “adult” topics like slavery, etc. — some other stuff that Bethesda isn’t revealing yet, involving mutation, and one tracked stat was “corpses eaten”, which makes me suspect there’ll be something similar to the Vampire-path in Oblivion/Morrowind, where you can get into doing some nasty stuff. It doesn’t feel sanitized. I also like the changes to the level-scaling, the use of SPECIAL and level-based character development as opposed to the use-based skill system of the Elder Scrolls games.


And more from today:


Other general impressions — while calling it “Oblivion with guns” is an oversimplication given some of the differences I’ve described above (and without also getting into the combat differences, etc.), I also think it’s a superficially apt description because it definitely looks like Oblivion, not like Fallout, because of the perspective. Sure, they’ve doled out the carrot of being able to view the game from an isometric perspective, but I’m skeptical that it’ll be in any way practical to do so. But the graphics look great - far better than I think they come across in still screenshots.

Areas of uncertainty - the VATS system looks really cool, and is visually spectacular, but I think we need to see more of the combat to judge how it feels in practice. I really like the VATS system, but I’m not sold on combat in general - there’s also a few pieces we haven’t seen at all, like melee combat (which is definitely an important part of the game). Also, everything in the demo occurred in relatively congested areas as well, with lots of rubble around blocking views, etc. - I’d like to get a better sense for how large the world feels, and looks, by seeing more expansive vistas, etc. (obviously one of the real strengths of Oblivion).

Other stuff I really like - the implementation of the PIP boy, and the ability to pick off radio broadcasts as you’re wandering the wasteland. The use of robots like Mr. Handy from the Fallout 1 cinematic - the nuke effects — and the overall atmosphere: the perspective gives you a better sense that you’re exploring a place that’s been blown apart and is messed up (suitably “postapocalyptic”) as opposed to a flat, top-down view. It’s actually kind of creepy — it’s one thing to see a giant castle in the background while playing Oblivion, and think that’s a cool, realistic view — it’s another to be walking around and then to look up at Washington D.C. buildings that have been fucked up, since we have a vested attachment to that setting.

Which is another question– ARE THERE companions of any sort?

There won’t be a party, or controllable companions (even the original Fallout games had AI-controlled companions), but there will be characters that fight alongside you. Expect Dogmeat or his doppelganger.

I think the plan is definitely to support modding. I did ask if Fallout 3 would ship with a construction kit like the past 2 Elder Scrolls games, and that hadn’t been decided yet. To be honest, that stuff doesn’t interest me personally, so I didn’t delve deeper into it.

Do you talk at all about the food/water/radiation poisoning thing that the game previews keep mentioning offhandedly, as if any game ever had made Tamagotchi mechanics fun? (and I’m excluding you people that play the Sims…if that’s what you call fun, I want no part of it. I understand those games from the perspective of a simulator or something, but that’s about it.)

I’m not certain what you mean about Tamagotchi mechanics. Water is basically a precious resource in the game, which you need to restore health (or stimpacks) — surface water is often irradiated, so if you’re going to drink it you’ll need radaway to avoid radiation effects. But it’s not an “Iolo-in-Ultima7″-style caretaking system.

Saxman - I think the inventory graphics, etc. we saw were placeholder, but it seemed pretty standard “press I to pull up inventory” style system, not Oblivion’s goofy journal tab system.

I’m hoping to god that they are more intelligent than Oblivion’s combat AI for companions, and not nearly as buggy (or as buggy/stupid as STALKER’s friendly AI). I really can’t take another battle where they rip me in half with the minigun because they’re too stupid to realize that I’m between them and their target.

We didn’t see any friendly fire incidents in the combat that was demonstrated, which was basically you and some Brotherhood of Steel guys against supermutants. They seemed intelligent enough to be fanned out - I don’t know if friendly fire is possible or was disabled, but it didn’t seem to be a factor.

Like I said, even though you won’t have a controllable party in the traditional sense, you can have allies and/or followers, to a greater degree than in Oblivion (and there were actually quite a few occasions in that game where you worked with other characters).

Do you know if they will be like Fallout 1/2 and have their own backstories, quests, and ways to change them over time? How about secret followers? Skynet in Fallout 2 was awesome.

Well, even in Oblivion there were characters who would tag along with you who had backstories and associated quests, but I think it’s overly optimistic to think much beyond that. Followers/allies on occasion may be more frequent or easier to obtain, but it’s a single character game, not a party-based game.

Can you complete the game using VATS exclusively, never aiming in real time? Is that a play style they’re balancing the game for?
Can you pause even if you have no AP, just to stop and think?

1. VATS action points are a limited resource, sort of like fatigue in Oblivion - I think they are still tweaking how fast it regenerates, etc.

2. Yes, definitely, and doing so will offer tactical advantages, since it allows your character to make a “perception” roll, which will give you additional information.

They already made the design choice to design the game around A) mostly real-time combat, B) in first-person, and C) without a controllable party or even companions. You’re already dealing with something that’s at least part-way to being a FPS/RPG hybrid rather than a pure RPG.
Because frankly, my reaction to VATS is that while it sounds -interesting- I’m somewhat skeptical about how it will work in practice. It seems too abstract to provide the enjoyment of good FPS combat, and too limited in its options to provide the depth of turn-based combat. Maybe that will change when they get around to producing some gameplay trailers and I can see it in action and in context. But right now I’m still somewhat skeptical.

Wow, that’s one awesome set of assumptions, extrapolations, faulty recollections, inaccurate comparisons and gross misinterpretations of everything that’s been said to date, haphazardly stitched together with the skepticism it sounds like you were predetermined to rationalize.

I think you’re right to hone in on the fact that there are a lot of questions surrounding how the combat will work in practice, and to note that the game is primarily designed around a first person perspective, but suggesting it’s “not a pure RPG” is ludicrous and completely counterintuitive given the statements of everyone who has actually seen the game.


SCANS PC GAMER

F.A.Q. E3

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=170921

Separate PC / Console UI?

Yes, they learned their lesson from Oblivion and are making sure that the PC GUI will be suitable for keyboard+mouse users

PC/360/PS3 simultaneous release?

Yes.

Mod support on PC or Console?

Hasn't been decided yet.

More celebrity voice overs?

Besides Ron Perlman, they aren't ready to make any further announcements at this stage. No Jean-Luc

Any returning characters?

Not saying at this moment.

How dialogue works?

Branching dialogue tree, different choices/chances of success based on charisma and speaking skill.
Poor INT will NOT affect your dialogue choices.

Weather system?

Yes.

Fanbois?

They understand they're passionate about the brand and want to live up to their expectations but they are definitely making a game that they themselves want to play

How far can camera zoom out?

Pretty much full control over camera and can get into an iso/top-down view.

VATS?

Pauses game and lets you queue up actions, according to how many Action Points you have.
Action Points regenerate in real time based on Agility.
AP cost is dependant on weapon, skill.
Can queue up actions on multiple enemies.
My impression.. the combat looks like alot of fun!

Game areas?

Game areas are not scaled such as in Oblivion although there will be some minor scaling of creatures withing a predefined range of levels to maintain a fair bit of challenge.
Because XP and Levels are used, they are able to determine PC level/power better and be able to tailor quests/direct players to zones appropriate for their levels.

Random encounters/easter eggs such as Alien ship?

Maybe.
FYI, on the Energy Weapons skill info pane, it affects these types of weapons:
Alien, Cyro, Laser, Plasma and one other I think I missed.

Children?

In the game, killable (directly)? Not yet decided.

Groin/Eye shots?

They figure that a crit on the eye will gib the head anwyays so probably leaving that out. Groin shot is a maybe.

NPCs? Dogmeat?

Animal companions.. maybe. NPC followers are recruitable based on karma (good/evil/neutral) and controlled through dialogue.

Bloody mess perk?

Yes

Does the game end? Is there a level cap?

Yes to both questions.

How much it ties into the previous games?

You'll find out!



OTHER TIDBITS:

Weapons have decay. They are repaired using the repair skill which requires weapons of the same type to get parts from. Weapons decay has many effects such as Rate of Fire, Cone, Damage

Water is an important theme in Fallout, it's one way you can heal.

The Super Mutant Behemoth... looked like something out of GeOW, but in GeOW you don't actually get to fight the big monsters.

The Fat Man nuke effect is really cool.

Hacking minigame... hack into the BIOS for passwords to terminals. There will be alot of terminals.

XP mostly comes from quests.

Towns and Buildings are zoned like in Oblivion (load times between each, etc).

Other factions: one of the radio stations mentioned by in game dialogue is apparently run by The Enclave.

The faces are much better, especially the female ones.

Your in-game father (Liam Neeson) will physically reflect the choices you make on your own character's appearance.

Overall... I want to play this game! -


PC GAMER

Explicación del sistema de autonivelado


Gaining power to kick some serious butt is a hallmark of RPGs. Typically, you're initially relegated to exterminating rats and similarly mundane vermin, but after questing for a few dozen hours, you're capable of dragon slaying. One of the great perks of becoming more powerful is the ability to strut through previously ominous territory and beat the crap out of enemies that used to terrify you. But Oblivion scales in difficulty and denies you that sense of accomplishment. If you return to a crypt after gaining some experience levels, hoping to stomp the zombies that previously manhandled you, you discover that those blasted undead have upgraded to deadly Wraiths. Oblivion's enemies reorganize into groups, and as you advance in level, enemies are supplanted by more powerful creatures within those groups. So, the Goblins you once encountered are replaced by Goblin Skirmishers and finally by Goblin Warlords. There isn't even a reprieve once you've encountered a group's most powerful creatures, as those enemies constantly scale up in attributes and equipment to match your level. Oblivion's scaling makes level advancement less rewarding, makes its world unrealistic-eventually, bandits demanding pennies end up decked out in glass armor and magical equipment worth more than lavish estates. You're actually regarded for not advancing in level-quests such as the Kvatch Siege are easier you undertake them as a pleb, since you'll only encounter Stunted Daedra instead of their more formidable counterparts. A demonic invasion isn't so terrifying when its bridgehead forces could have been routed by a lone wild bear.
Fortunately, Fallout 3 will not use Oblivion's level-scaling, but contrary to what you may have read elsewhere, scaling isn't completely discarded. The first important change is that creatures never scale up in abilities to match your level, so each Deathclaw in F3 will always have the same attributes, regardless of your character's level when you have the misfortune of encountering it. Second, each territory in the game is now assigned an encounter level that determines the level and equipment of critters when you discover that area, so a first-level character that wanders into an area designated as "encounter level 5" will be badly outmatched by the inhabitants. Loot is also generally scaled to the area's encounter level, but some item items will be hand-placed, which is similar to how Morrowind handled loot.
An area's level doesn't remain static, but it gets locked as soon as you enter it. If you enter a city block designated as a level 5 area, it will remain a level 5 area and never scale up in difficulty. Areas you haven't yet encountered do "tether up" in difficulty level, but the tethering level doesn't linearly scale with your level, so there's still an advantage to gaining experience levels. The city block that's initially designated as a level 5 area will tether up and be designated as a level8 area if you don't wander into it until you're a level 15 character. But since an area's level is locked once you enter it, you'll still get the satisfaction of returning to a previously difficult area and annihilating its residents once you have a more powerful character.
Bethesda's still tweaking these systems, but they should make exploration more interesting and not diminish the regard for advancement by making you feel like you can never really get ahead. I'd still prefer a static world like Gothic's, where encounters are always consistent regardless of your character level, but this toned-down scaling system sounds like a huge improvement over Oblivions.




ACTION TRIP

http://www.actiontrip.com/features/e32007fallout3.phtml

Still trying to get adjusted to the hallway light after being treated to a rather lengthy, 40 minute demo of Bethesda's Fallout 3.

One thing that needs to be noted right away about Fallout 3 is that Bethesda is obviously taking a very similar approach to what they did in Elder Scrolls IV, in terms of how the game is being played. While the third person view is functional and often useful (over the shoulder look mostly), the main way to play the game would definitely be in the first person. Beth's executive producer, Todd Howard, calls this the most immersive way to experience an RPG title.

Now, personally, I may object somewhat to this statement, but the fact of the matter is this is how the game's gameplay is executed and this is what Fallout fans should expect. Is this a good thing? A matter of personal preference really.

The game starts off inside Vault 101, the safe haven or the bane of the survivors of the nuclear holocaust. The demo kicks off with our main character being a young 19 year old guy (who looks at least 30 by the way) getting ready to undergo his test of mental abilities – a rather neat way to determine your characters traits, similar to what Beth did in Elder Scrolls games. The trailer that was released on the net is the actual start to the game, so the story picks up as the "young" man gets familiar with his surroundings. Also, the whole game conveys a retro sci-fi look, which should be familiar to all Fallout aficionados. As the plot unravels, you learn that your father has somehow escaped Vault 101. The trick here is that, under the government of the Overseer, the vault was thought to be impossible to either exit or enter.

After a sequence of events that was speeded up in the demo, Todd took us out of the vault and into the barren wastelands of the Fallout world.

While the engine still looks very much Oblivion-ish, if you catch my drift, with nice detail in the game world and on the models, but with animation that's a bit stiff, a marked improvement was immediately noticeable in the sheer number of objects in each scene as well as their intricacy. Bethesda is definitely going for the portrayal of an aftermath of total death and destruction, and they are pulling it off quite decently in the game.

As you exit the Vault, you are faced with a world of moral ambiguity and a rather uncompromising style of humor; again trademarks of the Fallout series. In that sense, the designers are staying true to the core concept of characterization and storytelling, something that a lot of fans will regard as music to their ears. Expect a lot of "fucks" as well as crass humor, but wrapped in an intelligent and ironic take on life.

The RPG elements in Fallout 3, naturally, play a big role. Through your little retro PDA, you will be able to choose your character's stat alignment, something that will be very hard to change later on in the game. In addition, our hero will be presented with a number of moral choices. For instance, he will enter a city which has survived and sort of grown around a nuclear bomb, which has miraculously never detonated. As chance would have it, a shady and overly-eloquent character in the town's sleazy bar will give you the option to actually rearm the bomb and blow the town to bits. Lo and behold, that is exactly what our game demonstrators did. Bearing in mind the AI routines of the NPCs, which did seem more life-like and engaged in more meaningful actions than in Elder Scrolls IV, the choice to blow the town to hell was an interesting one. As most of the guys in the room would agree, a more entertaining one at that.

Another important thing to note about the game is the combat system. While looking rather like your classic shooter combat, with a crosshair and all, Fallout 3 is actually very different in that sense. As you know, the old Fallout series was turn-based, and Fallout 3 sort of continues that spirit. Though you can execute combat in real-time, there is an option to stop time and use action points to perform powerful shots in the head, torso, or extremities. This will, in turn, allow you to deal with multiple enemies more effectively. The gore of the game seemed quite excessive, but this all fits into the unapologetic nature of this surely M-rated title. At any rate, this is what people expect from Fallout.

Near the end of the presentation, Beth treated us to a level of post-apocalyptic Washington DC, which was very impressive in the amount of damage done to the city.

Final scenes included combat with multiple soldiers and mutants with you right smack in the middle of it all. Granted, this is something that has been the big wow factor of Oblivion, but the gameplay was sort of diluted as you progressed through the campaign.

I am very much hoping Fallout 3 won't have that detached feeling to it. It didn't in the presentation, but then neither did Oblivion under similar circumstances.

Fallout 3 is scheduled to appear in stores in the fall of 2008. As always, expect this date to change once we get closer to something resembling a beta build. What I've seen of the game at the show here, it looked pretty complete and functional – certainly a sign that Bethesda knows what they're doing.


GAMING NEXUX

http://www.gamingnexus.com/Default.aspx?Section=FullNews&I=5107


Bethesda Software had a tremendous showing of Fallout 3 and we were privileged to check out the 45 min demo of the game. While the game's still a year away, Fallout 3 looked really polished and exhibited the style from the first two. A lot of the art and music will be familiar to Fallout fans so don't fear as the property is in good hands. S.P.E.C.I.A.L. are the seven stats that determine your characters traits while there's the usual abilities available as well. When you create your character your father, voiced by the great Liam Neeson, will look different depending on the look of your character.

The game has you starting out being born and lets you experience key events in your life until adulthood. We were shown the main character leaving Vault 101 for the first time and entered the city of Megaton. The city is built around an undetonated nuclear bomb and it's here where you can have a few options for missions. You could help the mayor and defuse the bomb but the path we saw was an NPC asking you to detonate Megaton and wipe out the town from the face of the Earth. Even when you get the item to set the bomb to explode you have the choice of turning the guy in that hired you. Fallout 3 is about choices and Bethesda offers plenty to choose from.

Action takes place in real time but you can pause the game and queue up action by using points. This feature retains some of the aspect of the original two games and lets you plan out where you want to attack an enemy without having to frantically select the spots to hit. From the demonstration, I like how the system works and think it'll be a nice feature that will appease old fans. You won't need to be a great action gamer to succeed in Fallout 3 combat.

You can play from the first person view or float the camera around to a position of your liking. The demonstration even went old school as the camera was moved far away and at an isometric view. So you don't always have to play in first person mode if you don't want to.

All weapons have a state about them so some can be in better shape than others. If you pick up the same weapon you can break one down to some smaller parts which fit easier into your inventory and also take those parts to fix other guns in your arsenal. The demo had a gun that was firing a pretty spread out pattern but fixing it with parts from another gun generated a tighter concentration of bullets.

Graphically, the game's a feast for the eyes as the modified Oblivion engine never looked so good. When you first walk out the world is in such a harsh shape from all nuclear fallout. The designers did a really great job at modeling a desolate world with highly detailed textures and top notch architecture. So much little detail in what I saw made the world come alive. One impressive effect was the passing of some sand and dirt in the wind as you looked around. The mutants exhibit great detail as well with some very nice motion capture. Havok is working overtime here generating dynamic movement. All objects were thoughtfuly designed and Bethesda tried to think of why a button would be in a certain place or a gauge was in a certain place. They really gave a lot of attention to detail in designing not only the landscape but the objects in the world. The game just oozes style and the artists at Bethesda should be commended for creating such a highly detailed world.

In reality there are so many things we saw about the game that I could go on and on about Fallout 3. Suffice to say the game's going to be huge and it's going to be a long year wait for the game to come out. Fallout 3's a long time coming and it looks like fans of the first two will be happy at what Bethesda is doing for the third game.
TEAM XBOX

http://previews.teamxbox.com/xbox-360/1680/Fallout-3/p1/

When last we saw Bethesda Softworks’ Fallout 3, we were sitting in their studios’ impressive theater, viewing the game for the very first time. After the company obtained the rights to create a new game in the post-apocalyptic role-playing series, hardcore fans wondered if the development team could recreate the near-perfect combination of writing, RPG mechanics, and combat that made the original game such a hit. Although the critical response to the new game was overwhelmingly positive after the first showing, old school fans on the Fallout forums and message boards weren’t convinced. Well fans, I was given a second chance to see the game in action again earlier today, and I’m happy to say that I was even more impressed than I was the first time I saw it.

The game kicked off with an extended version of the trailer that hit the web a while ago, during which Ron Perlman declared, “War. War never changes.” He then proceeds to narrate the backstory, which details the nuclear war that ravages the world. He explains that humanity had taken shelter in massive underground vaults, and that Vault 101 was the only one that remained locked. It’s where your character was born, and it’s where he’s supposed to die. You’ll spend the early part of your life in the Vault, and it’s where you’ll learn that skills that will (hopefully) keep you alive when you finally venture into the wasteland.




When in the vault, you’ll obtain the wrist-mounted PipBoy computer that you’ll use throughout the game to do everything from checking your attributes to changing your gear. Your core attributes are set when you’re a year old, when you’ll find out that you’re S.P.E.C.I.A.L. This acronym stands for Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck, each of which is given a numerical rating depending on the choices you make. You’ll also have to answer plenty of questions on the General Occupation Aptitude Test (or G.O.A.T.), which will determine your ratings in 21 core skills, including Big Guns, Repair, Speak, Science, Medicine, and Throwing,

Once you finally leave the vault’s protective confines, you’ll be thrust right into the action. The combat in the game is best described as first-person shooting, but it’s much, much deeper than your standard shooter. Since bullets are at a premium in most post-apocalyptic wastelands, trying to run and gun your way through the game is a pretty bad idea. Instead, you can use V.A.T.S. (VaulTec Assissted Targeting System) to pause the action and queue up your targets. You can target individual body parts, and you’ll be told how likely you are to hit them. It’s a great system, offering a much deeper experience than your standard shooter.

One of the things that most impressed us about Fallout 3 is the writing and overall tone of the game, which puts the player in what someone from the 1950’s might imagine is the future. The design is excellent, featuring a retro-futuristic aesthetic that could best be described as the bastard child of The Jetsons and Mad Max. I mean, the fact that shooting the fusion reactor in a car that looks like a Studebaker will cause a miniature nuclear explosion speaks volumes about the artists.

There’s a lot to like in Fallout 3, as it offers one of the most unique experiences we’ve seen in a video game. Although some people wonder if it’s just going to be Oblivion with guns, we’re happy to report that the game also features plenty of over-the-top gore, profanity, and laugh-out-loud funny dialogue. We can’t wait to get our hands on the game in the coming year (yes, it’s that far off and still looks amazing), as well as delve into some more of the game’s features. Check back often for updates!



THE ESCAPIST

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/1279-E3-2007-Fallout-3

War never changes, but Fallout has.

This will undoubtedly upset a great many people. (Perhaps the same folks running our new layout through the ringer.) But it was inevitable.

It's been a decade since the original Fallout was released, and so much has changed about gaming, and games, that a new Fallout made like the originals would be largely unplayable, and deeply disappointing. And before you start saying "Van Buren" remember that that game, too, was made almost ten years ago. It would not be the same game today.

We asked Bethesda's Pete Hines what he thought about the departures his company has made from the original formula, and if they'd sought the input of any of the original developers.

"At this point, I've worked on this game as long as anyone who's made any Fallout game," he replied. Admitting that, while it might be desirable to receive a "blessing" of sorts from the creators of the series (as opposed to simply buying the license and running with it), at the end of the day, as creators, they felt they needed to own their own creation, even if it is based entirely in someone else's world. And make no mistake, Fallout 3 is quite firmly rooted in the world created in the first two games.

Set two hundred years after a nuclear war devastated the Earth, Fallout 3 puts you in the shoes of one of the descendants of a brave, careful few who hid themselves away from the nuclear terror in a communal fallout shelter called a vault. But unlike the vaults portrayed in Fallout 1 & 2, this one is on the East Coast of the United States, and has remained completely sealed for two centuries. No one has come in, no one has gone out. ("You're born in the vault, you die in the vault.") Until your father, a prominent vault citizen, mysteriously vanishes, and you have to leave the vault to find him.

Part of the intro movie for Bethesda's Fallout 3 made it out onto the net several weeks ago. Their presentation at E3 today revealed the rest. And yes, the entire thing was narrated by Ron Perlman, and yes, he said "War never changes" (the tagline from the original) at least twice.

After we watched the movie, Bethesda Executive Producer, Todd Howard, played through about 45 minutes of the game, revealing a number of weapons, demonstrating the various control schemes and making a lot of things go BOOM.

For starters, fans of the original games need to know this: much of what you loved about Fallout is in there. The Pip-Boy has been faithfully updated, as has much of the character stat system, and the turn-based aiming mechanic. While the combat in Fallout 3 is not turn-based, you can enter the VATS system to target individual body parts of your opponent, and allocate action points, then watch as your character cinematically executes the attacks, often triggering explosions of gore.

The look (the vault is surprisingly familiar), feel (guns, ammunition and violence all have the same "grit" as before) and humor (Mr. Handy calls you a stupid git behind your back) of the Fallout world has survived, been updated and made new. Although the new game is in 3D, and features a first-person perspective, it's still Fallout. It's the same world. It is new, but the same. I can't say this enough. Change, in this case is good.

Still, to the chagrin of some, it is, in fact, much like Oblivion meets Fallout. It is first person, NPCs do feel more like Bethesda NPCs than Black Isle NPCs (although the dialogue options are still hilarious and wonderful) and the world feels much more malleable. In Fallout, one always felt as if the world was what it was, and you would live or die without making much of a difference. War, after all, never changes. You could stomp out the bad guys if you wanted, but that would leave only a gaping hole, not rejuvenate the world.

I get the feeling from this demo that Bethesda's Fallout will feature much more quest feedback, and perhaps offer the chance to change, if not war, then perhaps a few lives. And although this lessens the sense of alienation and isolation, that isolation may not have been entirely planned to begin with. After all, a lot of PC games from that era felt "isolated" merely because they were. The technology didn't yet exist to create living, breathing worlds. Bethesda's improved radiant A.I. and unparalleled world-building expertise have combined to create a much more immersive experience, and while not exactly the Fallout you remember, is still Fallout.

While it's impossible to say whether or not the finished game will please all fans of the series (or even newcomers) based on a staged 45 minute demonstration, I went into the presentation expecting to be at least a little disappointed, but I was not. The degree to which the Bethesda team remained faithful to the word of Fallout is staggering, as is the level of detail and ... there's no other word for it ... "love" put into the game.

This is another one I'll definitely be picking up (in Fall 2008), and it will go right up on the shelf beside my original copies of the first two games. Right to the left of the space where Van Buren would have gone

RPGFAN

http://www.rpgfan.com/news/2007/1219.html

Fallout is a series that remains dear to many, many PC RPG fans worldwide. Despite the fact that the last two titles, Fallout Tactics and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel were not quite as well received, Fallout and Fallout 2 remain perennial favorites. Many were wary when Bethesda Softworks took the reins on the newest Fallout title. After all, how could some guys who had worked mainly on a fantasy-oriented series capture not only Fallout’s wonderful gameplay, but its post-apocalyptic flair? With Bethesda’s early demo at E3 2007, one thing is clear: while it is far from a carbon copy of the first two titles, the franchise is in safe hands. Todd Howard, one of the brains behind Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series and executive producer of Fallout 3, took us through an hour of their Fall 2008 release, and we couldn’t have been more impressed.
Fallout 3 begins in Vault 101, one of the iconic vaults of the series, located in the Washington DC area, not far from Bethesda’s own headquarters. Unlike Vault 13, out of which the main character in Fallout 1 was sent to find a replacement water chip, the main character leaves Vault 101 against orders. After all, the Overseer says that when one is born in the Vault, they’ll die in the Vault. As the main character ventures out to find his father, however, he becomes only the second to venture out. Interestingly enough, the player’s father will resemble the character, whose features are set in the first hour of the game.

Character creation can be done either via character sheeting – the easiest way to twink for veteran RPG fans – or by following quests in the first hour of the Vault, as the main character advances from birth to age nineteen. Characters will gain statistics through the SPECIAL system that Fallout fans are familiar with, setting perks and flaws, and gaining key abilities. One thing players will notice is that Bethesda has painstakingly re-created the 2D Vaults from earlier titles in full 3D. There’s detail in everything, from the knobs on devices to the PipBoy 3000, which looks absolutely amazing.

Not only is the Vault created with care, but all of the graphics found within Fallout 3 are as well. Once emerging from Vault 101, players are introduced to a world ripped to shreds, with the futuristic world portrayed in the 1950s given a grisly makeover. All of it is rendered in real time and looks absolutely amazing. Bethesda has created environments that can be changed on the fly, so not only does the devastation look amazing, but all of the damaged caused on the fly looks absolutely real. Now, environments looking fantastic in a Bethesda game aren’t exactly new: both Morrowind and Oblivion had fantastical environments, though the characters themselves looked a bit off; not so in Fallout 3. Characters look just as good as they do in any other top-tier game, if not better. Fans of Bloody Mess shouldn’t worry, either, as enemies in Fallout 3 fall apart just fine.

Graphics aren’t everything, but Fallout 3 seems to have nailed a new style of gameplay that varies greatly from the original titles, yet remains faithful at the same time. Players who want to play in real time, like the battle system seen in Oblivion, are welcome to do so. However, those who want to spend their AP can do so using the VATS system – the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System. Players will hit the right bumper button, or equivalent button on PS3 or PC, and be introduced to a menu similar to the aimed shots from earlier titles. While there didn’t seem to be an option to shoot enemies in the groin, Bethesda did add a feature where weapons can be attacked and damaged (though the Vault Dweller should beware, as his own weapons can be damaged in the exact same way).

Enemies are incredibly intelligent in Fallout 3. Very early on, we saw a super mutant attempt to flank Todd Howard’s character, though the super-statistics of his demo character allowed him to easily take down the underground foe. Players will be able to use a wide variety of weapons, from a .22 hunting rifle seen at the beginning of the game to a hand-held nuclear catapult called the Fat Man. Combat is very tactical and players must balance risk versus reward. Is it worth it to blow up that nuclear-powered car to take down a group of super mutants if you’re going to be bombarded with radiation because of it?

Combat’s not the only place where choices matter; Fallout 3 will use branching quest and speech trees, allowing players to make just about any choice they want. Early on, the Vault Dweller will encounter a town called Megaton, built around an un-detonated nuclear weapon. He can be hired on to detonate the weapon, or he can save the town. If he chooses to destroy it, the explosion can be seen, in real time, from miles away, where the detonation device is.

Risk versus Reward seems to be the theme in Fallout 3, not only inside the game, but Bethesda Softworks’ view of the game. While they remain true to Black Isle’s vision of a post-apocalyptic world, they are making their own, brand new game. It may not be the hex-based combat that the ultra-hardcore are looking for, but Fallout 3 is on track to be one of the most fantastic games of 2008. Good Work, Bethesda. Good Work.



GAMERSINFO

http://www.gamersinfo.net/e3/2007/07/12/fallout_3

I’ve got to warn you - Fallout 3 isn’t coming until fall 2008.

So, you’ve got a lot of time to get excited about it.

Here at E3, Bethesda took us through an approximately 45-minute demonstration of some of the beginning parts of Fallout 3. Some things that they pointed out, I’d like to note up front:

No, it’s not isometric. The default viewpoint for the game is first person, because they believe that’s the way to make it the most immersive. However, you can play in third person, effectively, and you can pull the camera out quite a ways.
Bethesda wanted to capture the feel of the original Fallout game. They did a lot of work to recreate Vault 101, while expanding on it and making it live and breathe. While the first Fallout says “you’ve lived here all your life and now you’ve been kicked out,” in Fallout 3, you’ll actually go through some of the major points of your life - and then have to escape the Vault!
This is definitely a “rated M” game. It is extremely gory in parts, and there is lots of foul language.
For the demo, the character wasn’t created from scratch - instead, we joined in when he’s 16 and supposed to go take his G.O.A.T. test. This test will basically help set up your skills.

When you’re 1-year old, we were told, you have to read the book “You’re S.P.E.C.I.A.L.!” which will set up your stats. Such stats as luck, agility and strength will have a great bearing on the game and are hard to change once it starts. You have to make some hard decisions for a 1-year old!

But even before that, you’ll set what your character looks like. After customizing his (or her) look, the game uses that decision to make your father, a respected scientist in the Vault, look like you. Your father, by the way, is voiced by Liam Neeson, who reminds you that “you were born in the Vault, you die in the Vault.” Then he disappears (but that happens at 19, not 16 …)

So, we walked around. For the demo, we tried to lie to our father, but with only a 29 percent chance of succeeding, it was a failure, and he ordered us to go take the G.O.A.T. As we walked to the classroom, people would say hello or go about their business - we got to see some Vault greasers (stereotypical 1950s gang members) harassing a young woman, and we could’ve gotten involved with that if we wanted, interacting with the Radiant artificial intelligence. Instead, acting like we were 19 - when you leave the Vault - we headed out of the Vault.

Before leaving the Vault, we ran into a handyman-type robot who complimented the look of the overalls we wore - then insulted us after we left. It was quite funny.

Once outside, you see a wide open view of the world. There’s nothing out of bounds - you can go anywhere you want. The quest that you’re on will suggest that you go to a town called “Megaton” to look for your father.

Remember those greasers I mentioned? If you’re not familiar with Fallout, let me get you up to speed. Fallout 3 takes place approximately 200 years after a worldwide thermonuclear war wiped out civilization in 2077. The United States of 2077 bears more of a resemblance to a futuristic version of 1950s society than today’s. World War 2-esque recruiting posters and 1950s-esque advertising still dominate the landscape. The cars are all large and nuclear-powered.

Even looking at your Pip-Boy - the computer on your wrist that tells you your attributes, health, radiation count, equipment, basically all of the “game” information - has a ’50s feel to it. And speaking of the Pip-Boy - the developers like to point out that there are more pixel shaders on the Pip-Boy than they used in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. They wanted it to look perfect.

So, you wander the landscape. At a Red Rocket - a refueling station for those nuclear-powered cars - a few shots set an old car (a Chryslus Highwayman, if I remember the name correctly - each car will be identified to you when you look at it) on fire and blew it up in a mushroom cloud. Developers showed us how the system used to show all the destruction also allows the change in the scenery if you, for instance, shoot the scenery.

Then there were a few skirmishes with giant spiders.

Combat is something that a lot of people had questions about. In the original Fallout, it was turn-based using a system called “VATS.” Now, you have a choice.

For instance, you have a targeting reticule. With your trusty .22 rifle in hand, you can take potshots at the spiders, with a chance of hitting a body part (such as a leg, to slow it down, or an antenna to try to make it go berserk and attack his friends). But if you’re not good at shooting like that, you can still use VATS.

Using VATS will cause time to pause, and you select what actions you want to take based on how many AP you have - action points, which regenerate at a rate determined by your agility - as well as the chance to hit certain parts of the creature. You can even set up multiple targets in VATS to switch back and forth.

A later battle against a super mutant showed us that. First, a couple of shots went into the leg of a mutant who was charging us with a super sledge. The next shots then went toward the head of a mutant with a Chinese assault rifle, blasting at us from a platform, and the last APs were used to reload.

Why use VATS if you’re good at shooting?

Well, for one, Bethesda doesn’t want this to be a shooter - they want it to be a role-playing game. They’re still ironing out the combat system, but your chances of doing something good - a critical hit, a hit to a body part - will be better using VATS. Also, even in “twitch” mode, your skill still affects your accuracy and damage with a weapon.

Plus, when using VATS, you get cinematic! Instead of being completely focused in the first person’s must shoot it out with mutant, you get a brief dramatic movie of your actions as you fight it out!

A great example of that came near the end of the demo - but I’ll save that for later.

After shooting it out with spiders, it was time for a visit to Megaton. Megaton is named that because it grew up around an atomic bomb that dropped but didn’t explode. There’s even a cult that worships said bomb.

As you walk into town, you’re first scanned by Deputy Weld, a robot sentry, who allows you entry. The town’s sheriff and mayor will talk to you, and you can play it cool or just act obnoxious. From there, you can explore the town, or do as we did - walk to the bar, meet a mysterious stranger who wants you to blow up the atomic bomb in Megaton, and agree to work with him.

We headed to the bomb, installed a device in it and then went to meet up with the stranger farther away. After all, you don’t want to be close when that goes off!

The best way to get there is Metro. Climbing into the tunnels led to a couple of battles with super mutants and later showed off the hacking system. Instead of fighting with two super mutants, we found a dormant security robot and hacked it.

Basically, hacking entails getting the right password. You’ll look at a scrambled file with a number of words in it. Each time you try a word, it’ll tell you how many letters were right in the word. STREP might go to TRACK which might go to AWAIT, for instance. Get it right, and the ‘bot is yours - get it wrong, and you’ll get locked out.

In this case, the robot came out, didn’t know there’d been a war and so asked the super mutants for their tickets; when they didn’t show any, the robot killed them.

(I’m glad that Metro doesn’t actually have that!)

From there, we exited out into Chevy Chase.

Yes, the game is set around Washington, D.C. - after all, Bethesda is from those parts. (And so am I, so I dug that! I also noticed that the Metro logo was similar to the logo in real life, though the Metro’s design isn’t based off the real Metro.)

When we came out of the Metro, we were attacked again. Unlike Oblivion, enemies will be of set level when you encounter them and will stay at that level. Shooting up the hulk of a car, we dove into a personal fallout shelter to keep the radiation down when it blew up to take out some of the mutants.

You see, you don’t have to worry just about health in this game - you also have to worry about radiation. It’s all around, and you can get it from doing such things as blowing up nuclear-powered cars or even drinking contaminated water or food, such as the water we drank from a toilet bowl. (Pay attention to the water, too. For those of you that complained about the water in Oblivion, it’s much better here, with true reflection and refraction.)

Fortunately for us, the Brotherhood of Steel - armored and laser-armed guardians - happened to be around, and we met with them to make it safely to our objective. We fought through more mutants and arrived at the Galaxy News tower …

… just to be jumped by an enormous super mutant behemoth, wielding a mace made of concrete and a fire hydrant.

Our lasers didn’t do much to him, so we ran over, grabbed a Fat Boy - basically a nuclear rocket launcher - and took a pot shot at him. It missed.

Dodging his wild swings, it was back into VATS, and the cool scene I mentioned earlier.

The good thing about shooting, well, NUKES at a bad guy is that even if you miss, you can still hit. So, instead of shooting for his torso or head, it was his right leg that was the target. As one of our erstwhile comrades dodged out of the way of the rocket, blasting him with laser fire, the fat little nuke shot right … past … his … leg …

… and hit the ground behind him, going up in a huge mushroom cloud. Scratch one super mutant behemoth.

But while still in slow-motion, watching the carnage, bodies of our friends came flying past us, whipped and kicked up into the air by the huge blast. Uh, sorry guys.

It was a good way to show off the Havok physics engine, though.

From there, it was a quick walk to the top of the building, meet our mysterious friend and push the big red button. Scratch Megaton.

Those are the kind of situations you’re put into in Fallout 3. It’s a character-driven game with lots of hard choices of what to do - do you go “goodie goodie” or evil? Or just stay neutral? Every choice you make has consequences. But you’ve got a definite goal that you’re working toward - finding out what happened to your father - so always keep that in mind.

RPG GAMER

Once the lights dimmed in Bethesda's makeshift theater in their downstairs suite, an image of a light burning into life appeared as the creaking sounds of a 1940s song warbled into the air. The camera began to pull back showing a broken up, beaten down jukebox that, it soon was revealed, was nestled in the midst of a ruined trailer. The camera continued to roll back until an entire blasted landscape was revealed -- the nuked ruins of a once proud city. The craggy voice of Hollywood veteran Ron Perlman slowly intoned about the unchanging nature of war and the fate humanity had condemned itself to. And this was our introduction to the heavily stylized, incredibly detailed world of Fallout 3.

Once the introduction concluded, Todd Howard, our guide through Fallout 3, began his playable demo. We were located in Vault 101, a sealed-off city deep underground where humans escaped to avoid the fallout of a nuclear war. While most of the vaults were opened long ago, 101 remained isolated. Todd explains that Bethesda put a lot of work into its character creation system, though we can't see the 19 year old hero just yet -- we appear in a lab/clinic with a first person perspective. This is because, our guide said, Bethesda feels that when you're trying to become fully immersed into a realistic roleplaying game, where the idea is to feel like you've become another person, first person is the best way to achieve this. It's not mandatory, though, as there is a third person over-the-shoulder camera view as well. He switched to this mode to show it off, and it seemed just as functional. Todd then moved a bit around the lab, showing off the immense detail of the room. He said that one of their goals was to study up on the stuff they were making, because there should be a point to all the dials, levers, and whatsits that appear on the mechanical devices. It's all about achieving a greater feeling of realism.

Once this acclimation is done, we move through a door into the protagonist's father's office. Now an even more recognizable voice pipes up: Liam Neeson's. He's talking to another individual, but once this is done, pops turns his attention to his son. He wants you to go take a test called G.O.A.T., which will assess your skills and abilities to determine best how you can contribute to the Vault's community once you're older. Naturally, as the father talks, his son has the option of responding with various different dialogue branches. At this point Todd describes a pretty interesting feature that ties into the character creation system. The protagonist's father's appearance is based off of whatever you design the protagonist to look like, only older.

We walked around the Vault a bit and took in the sights. As we moved through the underground community, we again came across a few points where the hero had different choices for how he'd act in a situation. It emphasized the extent to which the player will have the ability to shape the sort of man (or woman!) the character becomes. There was also a nice bit of humor at certain points. When we encountered a robot named Mr. Handy, a muttered comment had most of the audience laughing out loud.

Skipping ahead a bit, our guided tour of Fallout 3 was eventually led outside of the Vault into the Wasteland above. Particularly interesting was the first moment stepping outside. The glare was intense and blinding as slowly things came into focus, the hero's sight gradually adjusting to the blazing sun. Once the vision cleared, the wasted grandeur of the outside world was quite a sight. The vista laid out before us, Todd stressed, was all real, all explorable. And as our hero descended from the hill he found himself on, he stepped around a puddle that displayed just how far Bethesda's come in making lifelike water.

As we explored the Wasteland, it wasn't too long before we came across some enemies: giant ants. This was the first opportunity we got to see how combat played out. There were two modes available. The first seemed pretty reminiscent of first-person shooters. The game's cursor was moved overtop the enemies and the hero fired his gun. In the second mode, Todd brought up a targeting HUD that displayed different sections of the enemy's body (like arms, legs, torso, head). Each section had a health gauge and an attack success percentage. Attacking through this method seemed much more like a typical RPG setup and should be more comfortable with those leery of FPS games. However, it definitely seemed like a lot of work was put into both styles of attack, and later battles in the demo showed that there was a lot more to both of them. For instance, our hero got into a pretty intense shooting firefight later on in the midst of DC's ruins, and this involved lots of rapid running and gunning. Meanwhile, a battle in some old abandoned metro tunnels showed us how the targetting system could be used to strategically queue up successive attacks against multiple enemies, and another battle against some giant ants demonstrated how hitting their antennae could cause them to become frenzied and attack their own allies.

We also got a few in-depth looks at Fallout's status screen, which was very coolly integrated into the game itself in the form of a personalized armband computer system (the Pit-Boy 3000) the hero wears. Here the RPG nature of the game was even more on display -- we could see the hero's stats (which, we found out from Todd, are set by the player at the time of the hero's birth), his large list of skills (which increase as he levels up), items, and personal status. The hero was, like enemies, divided up into different body zones, each with their own hit gauge. Weapons had damage counters, too; a damaged weapon would perform more poorly in terms of damage per second. Later on, we saw how a weapon could be repaired by scalping parts from like-named weapons. The hero also had a rad counter which would increase as he became more exposed to radiation from the nuclear fallout. For example, one way to restore health is to drink water, but a lot of the water is still tainted by radiation poisoning. Drink too much, and it can have negative long-term consequences. The Pit-Boy could also be used to generate the game's background music by tuning into some of the remaining broadcasting radio stations, which will be filled with classic 1940s songs Bethesda has licensed, like a piece by Bing Crosby's less successful brother Bob.

Part of creating a realistic world is being able to interact with it, and a lot of that was demonstrated. Back in your father's lab, you could pick up a bobble head from his desk and drop it. The precise movements of the object are guided by the Havok physics engine. Out in the Wasteland, Todd showed us how he could shoot the road and create bullet holes. He also took aim at one of the nuclear-powered cars. A few hits were all it took to cause it to explode, leaving a ring of radiation in its wake. Moving in too close caused the rad counter to start creeping up. Though the first examples were just for show, and the latter seems like something downright dangerous, the ability to heavily interact with the environment can also be used to the player's advantage. Luring enemies into the radiation zone, or igniting such an explosion near them, would certainly make for strategic maneuvers.

The meat of the demo came once the hero arrived in the town of Megaton, so named because it was built in a crater created by a nuclear bomb that never detonated. The people of the town, we learned, had come to revere the bomb -- it was a sign that God was protecting them. We met the sheriff of Megaton, and again got a nice look at the player's ability to choose different courses of action. Want to be nice to the guy, become his friend? That's doable. You can also be rude, turn violent... it's all a matter of choice. It was interesting how the townspeople engaged in conversations with each other as we walked by them. There was just a natural sense of interaction and vocalization within the town. The highlight here, however, was definitely a mysterious individual named Mr. Burke who was sitting by himself at the bar. He had quite a proposition for our hero. Megaton, he said, was a blight, and he wanted to offer the hero a whole lot of money to place a device inside the bomb that would allow Burke to detonate it. In talking to Burke, we saw how the hero's talking skill count have an impact on the game. The hero could try to persuade Burke to offer up more money, or persuade him to drop his ambitions to destroy Megaton. Again, choice was paramount.

For the sake of seeing an interesting conclusion to the demo, Todd accepted Burke's offer. Down to the bomb we went, where a device was inserted into Megaton's nuke. Then Todd took us down into the metro tunnels beneath the wasteland. There were fights with armed mutants -- these guys were definitely several leagues above the ants we faced before, as they seemed smarter, utilized cover and range more effectively, and carried weapons of their own (melee as well as other types of guns). But the neatest part was when the hero wanted to activate a computer console to operate a robotic security guard. This was done by hacking into the computer, which involved bringing up a hex editor. The player could pick out select words intermingled amidst random characters. Selecting the right passcode would allow entry to the system. If the wrong word was picked, the hack told us how many characters in which positions were correct, so we could better deduce what the right password was. Todd told us that this system is randomized, so it's never going to be the same thing twice. Sorry, guys -- no cheating by heading over to GameFAQs.

After leaving the tunnels, we arrived in the heart of DC where we faced some more battles with the mutants. Here we were assisted by the the knightly Brotherhood of Steel, a militaristic order whose goals are to drive back the mutants and reclaim this territory for the humans. They were initially scornful of our hero's presence, telling him to keep back and out of the way so they could escort him to safety, but after a few serious battles, they were instead complimenting how handy he was with a portable nuke launcher. Yes, a portable nuke launcher -- that was certainly a nice thing to have around when it came time to take down a gigantic mutant behemoth that quite easily eviscerated a few of the Brothers.

Once this major fight was done, we worked our way up to the tower where Mr. Burke was waiting. All that was left was to turn a lever, and boom -- Megaton became a new explosive mushroom cloud on the horizon. It was awesome to see, and certainly ended the demo with a bang. Fallout 3, which is being developed simultaneously for the 360, the PS3, and the PC, is still a long way off. Bethesda's aiming for a fall 2008 release. But what was demoed for us today showed incredible promise and this is unquestionably a title that everyone should keep their eyes on.

GAF

http://www.gamesarefun.com/gamesdb/preview.php?previewid=34



Bethesda Softworks has a way of upping the ante with every new release. They take what they know and refine it from game to game to create unparalleled experiences. Oblivion was arguably unmatched in terms of size and scope, and while it did have its problems, it served as a valuable research tool for Bethesda to begin work on Fallout 3.

The team has been working on this new Fallout since 2004, but they finally had enough of a base to show off a live demo at E3 this year. What they've created is jaw-dropping.

Fallout 3 is running on the Oblivion engine, but don't think for a minute that means you'll be getting The Elder Scrolls V: Fallout. For one thing, character faces now resemble attractive humans! That's a good start, but Bethesda didn't stop there. The game is defaulted to first-person mode, but can be played in third-person as well. The development team redesigned the third-person camera system from Oblivion to make it functional, and now the player can play the entire game outside the main character's body without a problem. Additionally, the camera can be fully controlled to allow for different viewing angles; if you want the traditional 3/4 view from the old Fallout games, you can have that. Otherwise, the default third-person cam is situated behind the main character and slightly off to the right, allowing you to still see everything directly in front of you as well as your character.

While we're on the subject of the main character, Bethesda said they wanted to make the game first-person by default in order to immerse the gamer and suspend their disbelief. They want the gamer to see the world and events in Fallout 3 as if they were actually a survivor of a nuclear holocaust. Like Oblivion, the game begins with the player creating their character from scratch. You can choose the looks and stats, just like Oblivion. One interesting element is that of the main character's father. Voiced by actor Liam Neeson, the model of Father will actually change depending on what you design your own character to look like. So it's conceivable that Father will look slightly different in each particular player's game of Fallout 3.

The game's story should be familiar to Fallout fans: after a golden age of nuclear-powered everything, the world is destroyed by warfare. U.S. citizens are moved to underground radiation shelters, called vaults. Once the fallout settles, humanity opens the vaults and returns to its scarred planet's surface to move on with life as best it can. Well, except for one vault. Vault 101 never opened, and the people inside Vault 101 live permanently contained inside. Until, that is, the main character's father leaves, prompting the player to go after him and solve the mystery as to why. Thus opens the surface world of Fallout 3 to the player. Like in Oblivion, if you can see it, you can go there (for the most part), although Bethesda says the first hour or so of the game takes place inside Vault 101.

The remainder of the demo was spent showing us how the gameplay and battle system works and taking us through some of the different environments, including a small town called Megaton that grew up around an undetonated nuclear bomb, as well as downtown Washington D.C. An improvement over Oblivion in terms of the game world is the destruction of objects and surfaces. Bethesda showed this off by shooting into the ground; bullets carved out holes in the pavement and sent small puffs of debris into the air.

Guns will be one of the major weapons in Fallout 3, and for the most part, the game will play much like a first-person shooter. There will also be laser rifles, melee weapons, and my favorite, a portable nuclear bomb launcher. A neat feature of the weapons is their condition: you'll find different guns, and sometime they won't be in the best shape. You can repair them, however, by finding a duplicate of that weapon and cannibalizing it for parts. This will increase your original gun's accuracy and firing rate, and provides incentive for exploring to find new equipment.

In battle, the game will play like an FPS, as I mentioned, but it can also play like a semi-turn-based shooter, using what Bethesda is calling V.A.T.S. (an acronym for the targeting system in the game). When you scan an enemy, time freezes and you can see the status of its different body parts. Each body part has its own HP bar, as well as a percentage indicating you how likely you are to hit it. You can then choose to target a specific body part and how many times to attack (each attack uses up AP, or Action Points). When you finish with the scan, the game returns to real-time, and your main character loads up his shots. You don't have to control him here, only watch; each bullet is fired according to the instructions you gave (which body part, how many times, etc.) and the camera follows the bullet from muzzle to impact across the battlefield. A successful hit, and you're treated to a Gears of War-like explosion of gore. Targeting specific appendages has other advantages, too. If you take out the antennae of giant mutated ants, they won't be able to distinguish between friend and foe and will attack each other. It's a wonderful system that will allow you to play the game either tactically or run-and-gun style, depending on your preference (though Bethesda says the game will be awfully hard without V.A.T.S.).

Another element in battle is radiation. By blowing up objects in the environment (resulting in some really awesome-looking mushroom clouds), you'll release radiation into the surrounding area and damage all living things, enemies and friends alike. Take too much radiation, and it will alter your stats, or even kill you. This same caution must be exercised when healing, too. You can restore HP by drinking water, but not all water is clean, and most of it is irradiated, so the key to restoring health is to find the cleanest water you can (sometimes that may be out of a used toilet bowl, as Bethesda eagerly displayed).

What struck me most about the game, though, was the emotional nature conveyed through the screen. Seeing such destruction on a wide scale, even though it was virtual, was depressing. The feeling only deepened when the musical score became audible on the overworld; it was a sad, melancholy tune that reflected the lonely devastation of the world. In addition to the score, Fallout 3 also contains 20 licensed songs from the 1940s to further propogate that mood, and those songs can be listened to on the in-game radio. Radios are located in certain areas, like the town bar, but you can also tune in to them via your Pipboy, the main character's personal computer that acts as the menu interface for equipping weapons, managing items, and viewing stats. If you want to hear a little "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" by The Ink Spots while blasting mutants through the cranium, you can do that.

Bethesda has a hit on their hands, plain and simple. They're promising a detailed main quest with multiple endings, robust character-building, and semi-fixed leveling (as opposed to Oblivion's scaled leveling). Fallout 3 comes out in the fall of 2008 for the PS3, 360, and PC, if you can survive going that long without playing it. It's going to be a long-but-worthwhile wait.




GAMEHELPER

http://production.gamehelper.com/magazine/features/the-original-fallout-boy

“So why the f--- are we doing Fallout?”, posits Todd Howard to an audience of game journalists gathered at Bethesda’s HQ to hear the answer to just that question. Most gamers familiar with the Fallout series won’t care so much for the ‘why’s’ but rather the ‘how’s’. One glance at the community forums hints at the fervor and froth foaming on the turbulent sea made up of the series’ ardent fans. With almost no information forthcoming on Bethesda’s part the only remaining tools at these fans disposal has been assumption and speculation…until now.

“So why the f--- are we doing Fallout?”“We had just made Daggerfall (1996) – so we were very into our elves and swords and such”, explains Todd Howard, “and then along comes Fallout. We all start playing and we’re like – have you seen this thing? They’ve got dip switches for violence – all this crazy sh—t. And then Fallout 2 came out the next year. It kinda became this ‘when are they gonna make another Fallout? We loved the series! And then the crack began – ah, we should do it! I was like – yeah, that’d be cool…

But over time – this crack would become much more serious.

It’s mid-2004 and Todd returns to his desk after lunch to find a stickey note posted to his keyboard that reads… ‘Fallout is yours!’ After years of kicking around the concept of redoing Fallout – sorely lacking any meaningful follow-up since Fallout 2 – the guys had finally contacted Interplay and the negotiations to gain rights to the IP began. With the IP now in-house, and Oblivion not even announced yet – the team would begin setting aside weekly pre-production meetings to flesh out their vision of what would ultimately become - Fallout 3.

Here’s a Poke In Your Eye!
Todd Howard – When we begin working on a new game we like to do a lot of research – We went back and played both games and we read a lot of reviews that were written at that time. Going back and reading reviews written ‘in the moment’ kinda takes the aging away – which helped us understand what kind of impact the game had at the time.

People forget but Fallout was one of those first games where [people said], ‘Hey, look at the violence’…let's all just own up to it! Violence done well is f---ing hilarious!
-Todd HowardOK – so it’s true – there were a couple titles in the series post Fallout 2…

“‘Brotherhood of Steel was kinda of like…so you want an RPG? Here’s your RPG!” exclaims Pete Hines, VP of Sales and Marketing at Bethesda, as he mimics a Three Stooges style poke in the eye over a Crown and Coke. “And then there was Tactics! – take that!” – Nyuck, Nyuck, Nyuck... for the guys at Bethesda however, the existence of the aforementioned Brotherhood of Steel and Fallout:Tactics would be ignored when approaching Fallout 3’s design spec, “Much like I ignore the existence of Aliens 3 and 4”, adds Todd.

Fallout I in particular would become the model – or the ‘tone setting’ – for the team’s approach to Fallout 3, paying particular attention to the key iconic elements of the original game; The interface bar along the bottom, the PIPBoy 2000, (your personal ‘Dick Tracy style’ PDA) the violence – would all be key elements the team wanted to retain.

“Violence – people forget but Fallout was one of those first games where [people said], ‘Hey, look at the violence’….(the journalists chuckle) Hey, Violence is funny – lets all just own up to it! Violence done well is f---ing hilarious. It’s like Itchy and Scratchy or Jackass –now that’s funny! “

Indeed Fallout was known for its violence – and all hints from the demo we saw show that this element is definitely intact; limbs sawn off with laser rifles, headshots that put Quake to shame and more mutant guts than you can shake a stick at. With its 640x480 Super VGA graphics, full character lip-syncing and cutting-edge animations - Fallout proved to be one of the most technically advanced games of its time.

So how do we approach that?

The Oblivious Connection
When we looked at what we did with Oblivion – and we started Fallout 3 while we were making Oblivion – we kinda felt we could make some very, very big jumps on the second round - on these systems.

Before you go leaping to the conclusion that Fallout 3 is going to be a Post-Apocalyptic Oblivion let me assure you that while it’s evident the game’s systems are based on Oblivion tech – the team has gone to great lengths to ratchet up the engine’s capabilities and address the handful of flaws that tarnished Oblivion’s, otherwise platinum, shine.

“Destruction is the new trees”, jokes Todd referring to the obvious difference in approach to visual style from Oblivion to Fallout 3. Where many hours were spent ensuring that the flora and fauna of Cyrodiil were as lifelike as possible – Fallout 3’s nuclear aftermath setting called for a more bleak approach to the environment – one devoid of much vegetation – one in which the elements of degradation and decay would play as important a role in bringing Fallout 3 to life as the living, breathing characters roaming its wasteland. The accompanying screenshot entitled ‘Springvale’ serves as an excellent example of the destruction that awaits you once outside the vault. For a more detailed look at the 'destruction' check out our sidebar: Visualising DC as a Wasteland.

The shot also displays the over-the-shoulder camera setting that is optional in the game. The team felt a first-person approach was more conducive to creating a sense of immersion within Fallout’s world and it’s themes of ‘sacrifice and survival’ - though the ‘Resident Evil’ style over the shoulder cam (shown above) and a nostalgic isometric view are available by panning the camera outward. [Window breaking hellhounds not included. ]

The Radiant AI system that powered the NPCs roaming Oblivion’s sprawling terrain has been tuned up for Fallout 3 as well. Fallout 3 is a ‘very character driven story’ and with a relatively small group of NPCs, 140 as opposed to Oblivion’s thousands, it will be up to this small group of survivors to carry the storyline. Their improved ability to simulate daily routine in their interactions with other NPCs will serve to create the illusion that this sparsely populated wasteland is…um…populated? Yeah.

Out is the conversation wheel that made up that hellish little dialogue mini-game in Oblivion and in is an upgraded dialogue system more akin to your Mass Effect. Instead of random luck, your play-style will affect the game’s outcome. Todd sums it up, “With each character I can be a d--k, I can be a good guy – the whole game is how do you want to role-play – what kind of character do you want to be?”

“Be a d—k”, and you might just miss out on some quests – turn a town against you – or end up in hell – hey, all the cool people are there! Leave a town and they will remember you when you return – there’s no karma reset here – and yep – Karma is back too. Oh, did I mention – there are some 12-13 different endings? So you may want to try playing as Mr. Nice Guy too just to ensure you get the whole story. Note: Karma is a representation of your current play-style and affects how NPCs will see you in-game. Kill everything, and everyone in sight, and you’ll be dubbed the Scourge of the Wasteland. Play the nice Sherriff and you’ll be hailed as the Hero.The models for Fallout 3’s cast of characters far surpass those in found in Oblivion. Gone are the patchy flesh textures and overly similar facial features which made everyone look related. Attention to detail is evident right down to the veins visible just below the skin giving these characters a much more lifelike appearance. The improved variation in appearance and style has been carried through into the voice-over sessions with many more distinct voices empowering the performances, including Liam Neeson as the central character. No, Lynda Carter will not be voicing all the female characters – ahem.

Oh, that whole level scaling thing from Oblivion which often resulted in Uber-Warriors being taken down by average mountain lions after leveling up “too far” – yeah, gone that too – well, Todd says technically it’s still there – but Fallout 3 will revert to a zone based approach to creature difficulty. I translate for you…essentially – if you’re too weak to enter a zone in Fallout 3 – you’ll get your ash kicked. Get it? Got it? Good.

Now let’s move on.

VATS What We Like

VATS Nice!What would a Fallout game be without weapons? As Todd puts it, ‘Fallout is a game where we’ve found you can just go crazy [designing] weapons.’ You can even make your own weapons! As an example Todd shows off the ‘Rock-It’ launcher – one of the weapons you can build yourself which shoots rocks and other items found throughout the game. Not sure what to do with it? Try firing off some records or scissors at an incoming mutant!

The range of homemade weapons one can fashion runs the gamut from traditional ranged affairs like the aforementioned ‘Rock-It’ launcher to the likes of the Vault Boy lunchbox that can be filled up with explosives and bottlecaps (yes, they’re still the game’s currency of choice) and then set off blowing up nearby NPCs or friends.

Now that’s some funny violence!

Weapons can also be repaired and upgraded if your skill is high enough. Collect a couple duplicate weapons and apply your repair skill to combine the best parts of both weapons to fashion a new and improved Chinese AK. Don’t worry – you’ll be able to tell when it’s time to repair your weapons – visually. They won’t shoot so well and your targeting will be crap so – not a bad skill to have Tex.

NOTE: The abundance of left over Chinese assault rifles hints at some of the back-story. First pet food and now this? One of the biggest concerns the team repeatedly heard from the community revolved around the use of weapons in an RPG – more succinctly – will elements like Action Points and Targeted Shots be making a return from the original? The answer to this comes in the form of the Vault-Tec™ Assisted Targeting System or VATS.

So how does it work? The simple version – the VATS system allows you to pause the action during combat, target specific body parts on an opponent, and then sit back and relax as the system executes your commands. Depending on the number of Action Points (APs) your character has on tap – you can even queue up multiple attacks which is a great tool to have at your disposal when outnumbered.

As the screenshot shows above – once in VATS mode - each target is flagged with a respective ‘percentage to hit’, calculated on the fly based on the characters skills and primary statistics. A successful hit on an enemy’s leg may slow him down. A hit on his firing arm may get him to drop or lose control of his weapon. A successful hit on the head of an incoming mutant ant can send it into a frenzy – attacking other nearby mutants – or, if the hit is deemed critical – split that puppy open like a watermelon on the sidewalk. Every weapon will have its own set of critical hit outcomes.

The VATS mechanic take on the original Fallout combat system, while early in development, offers a slick strategic element to combat though, from what we saw, those who prefer to run and gun may do so as well – just don’t expect to be rewarded for ‘twitch play’. Those who want to survive in Fallout 3 will take the time to master the VATS system.

Growing Up Bradiated – or - Father Knows Best
“As the Overseer says – we are born in the vault – we die in the vault.” - Liam Neeson as your father.

You’ll spend the first nineteen years of your life - and the first few hours of the game – within the vault’s confines – long before seeing any of the previously mentioned DC decay. The player will experience – and play – through several stages of his growth – the choices and decisions made during these quests will help shape the character you will become prior to stepping foot into the wasteland – right down to the appearance of your father, played by Liam Neeson. “[One of] the first things you’ll do when you’re born is choose your appearance and your Dad’s look will then be based upon you”, explains Todd.

As an example of an early activity – at the age of one your father will gift you a book called ‘Your S.P.E.C.I.A.L.’ in which you’ll learn about, and choose from, the various bonuses that may affect your base skills such as strength, luck and agility. “These ‘S.P.E.C.I.A.L.S.s’ will be very difficult to change throughout the game so even at age one you have to make tough decisions!”

At age ten you’ll finally get your coveted PIPBoy (see above) as a birthday gift along with a BB-gun to help you learn the basics of combat. “We spent way too long on [the PIPBoy] – our joke is this has more pixels on it than all of Oblivion. We felt like this is an iconic thing for since us you spend a lot of time looking at [it] on your wrist so the thought was let’s just trick the sh—t out of it! The screen flickers – all the buttons work. It’s cool!”

NOTE: The PIPBoy also picks up in-game radio broadcasts – no, no 80s tunes here – but you may find some useful side-quests if you tune in at eleven! At age 16 you’ll take The Generalized Occupational Aptitude Test – or GOAT. The GOAT is a test meant to help determine the appropriate job path – read – character class you may choose. Liam Neeson’s character quite ironically promises that most come away from the GOAT without a scratch – as if it were some sort of Jedi Academy gauntlet or something.

The story finally kicks off at the age of 19 when you awake to find your father has left the vault. No one has ever left the vault and so – not to be left out of the fun – and maybe simply to prove it can be done twice in 24 hours - you’ll follow in his footsteps – out the door of Vault 101 and into the Wasteland – Where your true adventure awaits…

Faithfully Recreated

Whatta Waste...“War never changes” – but Fallout sure has. We tend to look back through nostalgic rose-colored glasses at the games of ‘yesteryear’ until those rare occasions arise in which we load them up again and discover just how terrible they look alongside the Gears of Wars and Oblivion’s lining our shelves today. And in time even these games will show their age. But time is something Bethesda has on their side - at the moment.

At this stage of development – nearly 18 months before the planned release in 2008 - Fallout 3 already appears to be in a highly playable state and the level of detail the team has managed to wedge into the code makes me long to explore the DC wastes ‘mano a mano.’ It would appear that time is something the team has plenty of at the moment.

For now I’ll just have to be content with my lone bottle of vanilla tinted Nuka Cola and my Vault Boy Bobblehead whose glazed over eyes elicit fond memories of the hours lost in Bethesda’s last RPG. If development of Fallout 3 continues sailing on this course –

2008 could prove to be an Epic year for RPG fans.

GAYGAMER

http://gaygamer.net/2007/07/e3_07_fallout_3.html

Destruction, destruction, destruction. That's the mantra at Bethesda for creating Fallout 3's world - where it's been hundreds of years since the fall of civilization. That means that not only is the environment a beautifully ruined one, but its ruination has layers and depth: while the world died years ago, time and war have continued to erode the wrecked world.

The developers told us they looked at Oblivion as a learning experience for Bethesda's next-gen ideas, and the fruits of that process were immediately evident. While the presentation wasn't much more than a narrated demo, essentially an extended trailer of live gameplay, it proved (to me, at least) that not only is Fallout 3 worth the years of waiting, but that Bethesda's focus on enormous worlds with exacting details makes an amazingly well-realized fit with the Fallout legacy. And most importantly of all, the token traits of Fallout are still intact: retro-future design, radiation, stims, super mutants and the lot.

In a world where Oblivion is merely a preparatory stage for anything, you can expect to be impressed by its successor. The essential play style doesn't vary too much from Oblivion, although the over-the-shoulder 3rd person view looked awesome and surprisingly unique, as the camera hovers not behind you, but behind and beside you.

We saw a brief view of the destroyed capital, accompanied by the Brotherhood of Steel, but most of the demo focused on working your way in and out of Megaton, a town whose population worships an unexploded nuclear bomb (thank you, Planet of the Apes), and is guarded by sliding gates made from the engine and wings of a downed aircraft carrier. The mission? To either destroy the town, a blight on the burgeoning urban metropolis or, you know, not destroy the poor villagers. Naturally I thrilled at the shockwave of finally-detonated atomic fun - Pip-Boy would be devastated if I felt otherwise.

In other atomic news, the miniature nuclear bomb launcher looked just awesome in action, and Oblivion's rather massive inventory system has been repaired with some help from traditional Fallout skills: rather than accumulating 15 identical items, you can salvage parts from a weapon to upgrade any weapon of the same type. If your repair skill is high enough, of course.

Fallout fans, our time has come.






TOD HOWARD en acción



Lista de previews

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IGN
http://pc.ign.com/articles/800/800570p1.html
http://pc.ign.com/articles/803/803937p1.html

GAMESPOT
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/fallout3/news.html?sid=6173397#

VOODOO
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/800/800884p1.html

WORTHPLAYING
http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=44075

NEXTGEN
http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6215&Itemid=2

JOYSTICK
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/07/01/joystiq-first-look-fallout-3/
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/07/01/more-fallout-3-details-than-you-can-shake-a-nuclear-bomb-at/
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/07/11/joystiq-impressions-fallout-3/

EUROGAMER
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=78752&page=1

DESTRUCTOID
http://www.destructoid.com/pew-pew-preview-fallout-3-34063.phtml

CRITICAL HITS
http://www.critical-hits.com/?p=898
http://www.critical-hits.com/?p=890
http://www.critical-hits.com/?p=891
http://www.duckandcover.cx/forums/viewtopic.php?t=18012

1UP
http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3160714

GAMEDAILY
http://www.gamedaily.com/canvases/gd/_a/fallout-3-preview/20070701112409990001

KOTAKU
http://kotaku.com/gaming/the-more-you-know/facts-from-the-fallout-3-demo-274035.php

SHACKNEWS
http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=411&page=1

GAMESPY
http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/fallout-3/800771p1.html

PC GAMER
http://www.duckandcover.cx/forums/viewtopic.php?t=18007#Fallout%203

MAYOR NELSON
http://www.duckandcover.cx/forums/viewtopic.php?t=18011

INSIDEGAMER
http://www.insidegamer.nl/pc/fallout3/impressies/16146

CD ACTION
http://www.duckandcover.cx/forums/viewtopic.php?t=18108

ACTION TRIP

http://www.actiontrip.com/features/e32007fallout3.phtml

GAMING NEXUX

http://www.gamingnexus.com/Default.aspx?Section=FullNews&I=5 107

TEAM XBOX

http://previews.teamxbox.com/xbox-360/1680/Fallout-3/p1/

RPGFAN

http://www.rpgfan.com/news/2007/1219.html

GAMERSINFO

http://www.gamersinfo.net/e3/2007/07/12/fallout_3

RPG GAMER

http://www.rpgamer.com/news/Q3-2007/071307a.html

Este juego me llama mucho la atencion pero nunca he jugao... Pensar un mundo destruido , tu por ahi buscandote la vida para sobrevivir con el trasto ese de la radiacion y con la escopeta en la espalda
pero este juego es por turnos?? o como va esto??

pspero-88 escribió:Este juego me llama mucho la atencion pero nunca he jugao... Pensar un mundo destruido , tu por ahi buscandote la vida para sobrevivir con el trasto ese de la radiacion y con la escopeta en la espalda
pero este juego es por turnos?? o como va esto??

Juégate el 1 y el 2, son de PC, y son, para mí, los mejores juegos de ROL videojueguiles que he probado.

Son por turnos, sí.

me los bajare haber que tal estan...

gracias por tu consejo

MERISTATION

http://www.meristation.com/v3/des_avances.php?pic=PS3&idj=cw4665d78e135d2&pes=1&id=cw4696c2bae27d1

Bethesda ha mostrado su nuevo y ambicioso proyecto en el E3 y las novedades entorno al juego han crecido enormemente. La demo, de una considerable duración, dejaba bien claro que estamos ante un proyecto tremendamente ambicioso. De vuelta al refugio.



No esperábamos una demo como la mostrada por Bethesda durante la feria, tanto por su avanzado estado de desarrollo como por su duración. El proyecto, que lleva ya dos años en desarrollo, tiene todavía por delante uno más, aunque ya se ha ofrecido suficiente información como para revolucionar a los fans. Fallout 3 es a día de hoy una realidad, y la compañía se está esforzando para hacer uno de los mejores juegos de rol de lo últimos años. Basándose en el trabajo de Interplay en los dos anteriores juegos de la saga, los creadores de Oblivion están preparando su particular interpretación del futuro apocalíptico. Fallout 3 tendrá lugar en el año 2277 tras unos incidentes nucleares que sumieron al país en el caos y la desolación. Los refugios permanecieron cerrados mucho tiempo, resultando seguros para los afortunados habitantes de estas localizaciones.





En Washington, el refugio 101 será el punto de partida para el jugador, que asistirá a su propio nacimiento y a los momentos más destacados de su infancia. Esta serie de eventos pseudo-interactivos nos permitirán definir el carácter de nuestro personaje de una forma mucho más entretenida y trabajada que los clásicos editores del género. También nos ayudarán a conocer detalles de la vida en el refugio, y los problemas asociados con la convivencia en el claustrofóbico recinto. La tecnología, directamente importada del siglo XX, recuerda inmediatamente a la utilizada en los refugios de Fallout 1 y 2. Con este recurso se consigue dar la impresión de que la humanidad está escasa de recursos tecnológicos en este punto de su historia. Como superviviente que somos desde el día de nuestro nacimiento, la historia de nuestro personaje no será fácil y pronto nos veremos envueltos en una rocambolesca trama que nos llevará a abandonar el refugio de forma casi forzada.




Después de definir todos los atributos de nuestro personaje, que se heredan directamente del sistema S.P.E.C.I.A.L utilizado habitualmente en la saga, nuestro personaje estará listo para entablar la travesía por el mundo exterior. Por supuesto, dos siglos de devastación nuclear han hecho estragos en la humanidad y las ciudades se encuentran infestadas de criaturas horrendas y enormes mutantes. Desarmados y confusos, nuestro personaje emprenderá un viaje que le llevará a través de la ciudad hasta la primera zona habitada, Megaton City. Pero antes de llegar allí viajaremos por la red de metro de la ciudad, también destruida, pero que resulta un pasaje rápido para movernos distancias medias. La seguridad de los túneles se verá interrumpida por fornidos super-mutantes que patrullarán los estrechos conductos. Por suerte, podremos hackear algunos robots de seguridad para acelerar y facilitar nuestro viaje. Tanto para pasar desapercibido como para utilizar los robots echaremos mano de nuestra puntuación en las habilidades requeridas.




Como el RPG que és, Fallout 3 pondrá un énfasis especial en nuestros atributos, pericias y habilidades, de la misma forma que sus antecesores. La lista de pericias está siendo ampliada por Bethesda, aunque se ha confirmado que muchas de las ya conocidas volverán a hacer acto de presencia. Destaca sobre todo la vuelta de Bloody Mess, elección que incrementaba nuestras posibilidades de contemplar las muertes más sangrientas posibles. Ahora, con el nuevo motor visual, esta pericia nos otorgará espectaculares explosiones de cuerpos y demás detalles gore que probablemente aumenten la calificación por edades del juego hasta el umbral de los 18. Ni en este aspecto quiere Bethesda desmerecer a la saga original, por lo que está preparando un argumento cargado de humor negro y situaciones donde nuestra moralidad se pondrá a prueba.

Las elecciones del jugador marcarán una gruesa línea que muy a menudo evitará totalmente el acceder a determinadas zonas y misiones. Como muestra de esto, la demostración de Bethesda situaba al jugador en la mencionada Megaton City. Esta ciudad alberga en su interior un proyectil nuclear sin explosionar, que los ciudadanos del lugar han llegado a venerar religiosamente. A los oídos de nuestro personaje llegará que cierta organización desea explosionar el proyetctil por miedo a que pueda usar utilizado como arma, mientras que los habitantes de la ciudad se oponen a dicha decisión. En un punto de la trama seremos parte directa de los acontecimientos, hasta llegar a tener que decidir que hacer con la bomba. Obviamente, explosionarla devastará la ciudad, pero nos ofrecerá ciertas ventajas con la organización que nos ha contratado. Por el lado contrario, podremos optar por cumplir con las leyes y ayudar a las autoridades a preservar dicha bomba, arrestando a los que planean destruirla.

Cualquiera que sea nuestra respuesta, Fallout 3 tendrá algo preparado para nosotros, y del mismo modo variará nuestro karma. Este medidor de moralidad nos situará en una posición determinada respecto al orden, e influirá directamente en ciertos factores. El principal será la interacción con los NPC´s, que podrán incluso ignorarnos si detectan nuestro alineamiento mediante la conversación. Afortunadamente, las capacidades de disimulo y engaño se han implementado como opción en los diálogos, contando con un porcentaje de acierto asociado a cada respuesta que haga uso activo de dichas habilidades. El engañar a la gente será primordial para llegar a buen puerto en un mundo donde la desconfianza es el sentimiento más común en la gente.

Como no podía ser de otra forma, el PipBoy volverá a ser nuestro asistente personal durante el juego, mostrando tanto las estadísticas del personaje como sirviendo de radio. Podremos estar al tanto de los sucesos de la ciudad, así como conocer cualquier noticia de última hora, incluso las relacionadas con nuestras acciones. Como se puede ver, gran parte de los elementos de los Fallout clásicos se están recuperando y remodelando para esta tercera entrega, lo que sin duda satisfará a los fans de la serie. Lo que quizá no les guste tanto es la evolución visual, que pasa de la perspectiva isométrica en 2D a una posición en primera persona. También podremos acceder a una cámara en tercera persona por detrás del hombro o una perspectiva panorámica e isométrica de la que no se han dado muchos detalles. En cualquier caso, los combates serán en tiempo real hasta que utilicemos el sistema VATS de apuntado automático.


Mediante este sistema podremos pausar el juego y apuntar a zonas del cuerpo de los elemigos, de una forma casi idéntica a como se hacía en los juegos de la serie. En cualquier caso, ya nos enfrentemos en tiempo real o no, las probabilidades de golpeo vendrán determinadas únicamente por nuestras estadísticas de personaje. La demo llegaba más allá de Megaton, envolviendo al jugador en aún más decisiones y una interacción profunda con los personajes. La calidad de los personajes secundarios se ha cuidado especialmente, dotándolos de una vida y un repertorio de frases muy variado e interesante. La utilización de más de treinta actores de doblaje también ayudará a la sensación de realismo que transmite el juego en las conversaciones con los distintos caracteres no jugables.

A modo de última nota, las armas tendrán un papel importante en el juego, ya que se podrán romper y reparar, incluso con piezas de otras armas o para crear otro tipo de objetos, como por ejemplo explosivos. Respecto al apartado técnico, pese a ser una versión prematura Fallout 3 promete un nivel visual y de personajes de gran factura, avalado por la evolución del motor de Oblivion. El gore y la destrucción de entornos estarán disponibles junto al motor físico para mayor realismo de las escenas de combate. La puesta en escena de los escenarios se aprecia soberbia, representando más que convincentemente un futuro devastado. Con esta primera impresione os dejamos hasta el momento de disponer de material más sólido para poder emitir un segundo avance más cercano a la salida del juego.

Me encanta lo de poder elegir diferentes estrategias para resolver las situaciones (sigilo, atacar a pelo, o hackear los robots...). En este sentido otro de los juegos que me atraen es Bioshock.

Por otra parte parece ser que las decisiones radicales se siguen manteniendo en esta entrega. Juas, no veo el día de que llegue!

1 saludo!

PREMIOS E3 para FALLOUT 3

IGN

FALLOUT 3 MEJOR RPG DEL E3

Finalista
Mass Effect



GAMESPOT

FALLOUT 3 MEJOR RPG DEL E3

Finalistas

Fable 2 (X360)
Lost Odyssey (X360)
Mass Effect (X360)
The Witcher (PC)

FALLOUT 3 MEJOR JUEGO DE PC

Finalistas
BioShock
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Crysis
World in Conflict

FALLOUT 3 FINALISTA MEJOR JUEGO DEL E3




GAME CRITICS AWARDS

FALLOUT 3 Nominado MEJOR JUEGO DEL E3
MEJOR JUEGO DE PC
MEJOR RPG DEL E3



GAMESPY

FALLOUT 3

2ª MEJOR JUEGO XBOX 360 DEL E3
2ª MEJOR JUEGO DE PC
2ª MEJOR JUEGO DEL E3


RPGFAN

FALLOUT 3 MEJOR RPG DEL E3



KOTAKU

FALLOUT 3 MEJOR JUEGO DEL E3



GAME LYFE

FALLOUT 3 MEJOR RPG DEL E3



UGO

FALLOUT 3 MEJOR JUEGO DEL E3


3DJUEGOS

http://www.3djuegos.com/juegos/avances/2509/341/0/fallout-3/

Con la faz de la tierra devastada hace siglos por la radiación de una guerra nuclear, la humanidad lucha por sobrevivir bajo tierra en una sociedad restringida e hipocondríaca. No hay más horizonte en tu vida que la enorme bóveda metálica que se levanta sobre tu cabeza marcando los límites: Hasta aquí puedes llegar, a esto puedes aspirar, aquí vives y aquí mueres. Tu norma. Tu vida. Hasta hoy…

El momento tan ansiado por millones de aficionados a los videojuegos se acerca y tiene fecha, otoño de 2008. Será cuando Fallout 3 suponga el nuevo episodio de la legendaria saga de rol. Más de diez años nos separan de la primera entrega de las series, y tras una peculiar sucesión de compras de derechos y cancelaciones, por fin hace unas semanas se confirmó que sería Bethesda, los creadores del inefable Oblivion, los encargados de resucitar a Fallout del injusto olvido en el que se encontraba sumido.


Bethesda ha sido pues tremendamente audaz, y lejos de acomodarse tras el éxito comercial de Oblivion ha decidido arriesgarse, apostando por revivir una saga de gran valor tanto en términos de calidad como de cariño y empatía. Lo que Fallout representa para mucha gente debe ser tratado con sumo cuidado; y de hecho muchas personas, nada más conocerse las primeras noticias como el cambio de perspectiva, han saltado a degüello sobre Bethesda, acusándolos de peseteros y de destrozar Fallout con mero interés comercial.

Con un mejorado engine de Elder Scrolls como telón de fondo, Fallout 3 nos presentará un entorno ligeramente inferior en tamaño, pero con un nivel de detalle, riqueza de texturas y animaciones, que prometen marcar un nuevo referente visual.

War, War Never Changes...
Las alarmas han saltado en Internet, Bethesda + Fallout = The Elder Scrolls futurista. Concepto totalmente erróneo. Poco o nada tienen en común Fallout 3 con The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, aparte de estar a cargo de la misma desarrolladora, de ser juegos de rol, y de emplear el mismo motor gráfico y similar perspectiva: en primera persona con opción de tercera.


¿Las diferencias? Notables. Ambientación, apartado tecnológico evolucionado, historia, sistema de combates, desarrollo del personaje y diferente concepto de la libertad en el mundo. Fallout es una cosa, y Elder Scrolls es otra totalmente distinta; desde Bethesda son plenamente conscientes de esto, y por lo que sabemos de Fallout 3, el escrupuloso respeto por la esencia del juego está siendo primordial, aunque eso no quita que se estén realizando sustanciosas modificaciones con la intención de adaptar su visionado a los tiempos que corren.


Para empezar, como ya hemos señalado, se ha optado por una vista en primera persona alejado de la clásica isométrica de la saga, que con un botón nos permitirá alternarlo con otra en tercera, muy del estilo Gears of War, que se situará casi al hombro del personaje.


El sistema de combate también ha sido debidamente actualizado a los tiempos que corren, y supone un híbrido entre tiempo real y lucha por turnos, que parece una de las propuestas más originales e interesantes que hemos visto en este sentido en los últimos años. La idea es lograr algo a medio camino entre Los Caballeros de la Antigua República y los dos primeros Fallout.


Por lo tanto Bethesda apuesta sobre seguro modificando los aspectos que se prestan a evolucionar de la saga, como son la vista o el combate; siendo plenamente conscientes de que es la historia, la libertad y la inmersión lo que siempre ha caracterizado a Fallout, y lo que supone los elementos verdaderamente imprescindibles de ésta.


I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire
Al abrir los ojos lo primero que vio fue a su madre moribunda sobre la mesa de partos, y a su padre cogiéndole de las piernas y llevándole al panel de análisis de ADN con curiosidad por descubrir que aspecto tendría cuando creciera.


Siendo sólo un bebe aprendió a caminar, y con sólo 10 años ya se le proporcionó su primer arma una BB, y también se le facilitó el Pip-Boy 3000, un pequeño ordenador que llevó siempre consigo para registrar sus datos y facilitarle sus diversas opciones.


El tiempo pasó despacio en la ciudad acorazada. Los minutos parecían horas y las horas días enteros. A los 16 años llegaron los duros tests de aptitud, se preparó durante meses, ya que con este examen se le ayudaría a escoger que hacer con su vida. Por fin a los 19 ya estaba preparado, era adulto y plenamente consciente de sí mismo y de sus capacidades; pero su mundo dio un vuelco cuando su padre huyó de la gigantesca cámara acorazada dejándole sólo. Desamparado y sin encontrar explicación a su comportamiento decidió cruzar el umbral, y adentrarse en el peligroso mundo del Washington D.C. post apocalíptico.


Otra de las grandes actualizaciones respecto a la serie recaerá en el sistema de combate, contando en Fallout 3 con una especie de híbrido entre tiempo real y lucha por turnos gestionado por el denominado sistema VATS (Vault-tec Assisted Targeting System), una herramienta que comparte ciertos elementos de los shooters en primera persona pero con la profundidad de un juego de rol.

La primera visión de la superficie de la tierra devastada fue desoladora. Los edificios en ruinas y los coches destartalados se amontaban en las calles. Sólo sabía lo que le habían contado, que en 2077 una guerra a gran escala arrasó la civilización; y que ahora, doscientos años después, la humanidad todavía no había logrado recuperarse de la hecatombe nuclear.


Aún sin recuperar el aliento un ruido a su espalda le hizo volverse casi instintivamente. Una criatura imposible de aspecto monstruosamente humano buscaba algo que comer entre unos montones de basura en medio de una avenida hasta que le olisqueó. Con rabia animal el monstruo corrió hacia él, y sólo detuvo su avance cuando un certero disparo de la pistola BB de éste hizo estallar con furia su cabeza.


Manos temblorosas, sudor frío, mirada perdida…llevaba apenas cinco minutos en el exterior del búnker nuclear y ya había tenido su primera “sorpresa”. Todavía no sabía la cantidad de bares mugrientos que tendría que frecuentar, clubs de streaptease que tendría que visitar, enemigos que tendría que abatir y todavía desconocidos amigos junto a los que tendría que luchar. Nadie dijo que fuera a ser sencillo.


You are S.P.E.C.I.A.L.
Como en la mayoría de juegos de rol podemos personalizar a nuestro gusto al personaje. En Fallout 3 será al inicio cuando, como recién nacidos colgando de brazos de nuestro padre, podremos elegir el sexo, la raza y el aspecto, en un editor de personajes que según Bethesda es mucho más complejo que lo visto en Oblivioon, y que por fin nos permitirá decidir con un control total la apariencia del héroe.


Pero el rol por supuesto no va sólo de aspecto físico, y también escogeremos las siete habilidades del juego. El padre del protagonista nos dará a los pocos minutos de juego la tarjeta llamada “You are Special”, donde escogeremos como distribuir los primeros puntos entre los caracteres del personaje. Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, y Luck; son las diferentes disciplinas del protagonista, que conformaban la palabra Special; en español fuerza, percepción, resistencia, carisma, inteligencia, agilidad y suerte.


Desde sus orígenes, la saga Fallout se ha caracterizado por su gran personalidad en todos sus elementos. Su historia, carisma, el notable doblaje, su decadente y característica decoración de loa años 50, el interfaz… Bethesda, sus nuevos desarrolladores, han mostrado desde el inicio un profundo respeto por los cimientos de esta notable saga, pero también han comentado que su labor es adaptarlos a las posibilidades de hoy en día.

Estos parámetros se complementan con las 18 destrezas clásicas de la serie que incluyen robo, empleo de armas, sigilo, capacidad de reparaciones, etc. En Fallout 3 dispondremos de un máximo de 20 niveles para evolucionar nuestro personaje; a algunos quizá les parezcan pocos pero debemos recordar que esta cifra le empareja con otros títulos de rol recientes como Guild Wars.


Por otro lado vuelve el sistema de Karma, que ya estaba presente en las dos primeras entregas, y que reflejará nuestra ética y la moralidad de nuestras decisiones además de nuestra relación con otros personajes. No todo será tan fácil como elegir lo bueno o lo malo, desde Bethesda se trata de conseguir una gran escala de grises que no hagan tan sencilla la experiencia como limitarse a ser el más bueno del lugar o, por el contrario, ser un tipo sin corazón como un malo de tebeo.


Comparándolo con Oblivion y volviendo a establecer diferencias con éste, si que veremos que podremos pertenecer a organizaciones, pero la cosa no será tan sencilla como en el cuarto episodio de la saga Elder Scrolls, donde podíamos ser el campeón en todos y cada uno de los gremios aunque estuvieran enfrentados. En Fallout 3 cada decisión tiene consecuencias, el hacer de una manera u otra una determinada misión abre y cierra a su antojo decenas de ramificaciones de misiones y personajes, lo que nos impedirá disfrutar en una sola partida de todo lo que la tercera entrega de Fallout nos ofrece.


A Quemarropa
A pesar de la orientación con visualización en primera y tercera persona Fallout 3 no es un vulgar juego de acción, así que los fans del rol pueden estar tranquilos. Bethesda se ha ocupado personalmente de que los combates no caigan en la trivialización y el simplismo. El sistema VATS ha sido la herramienta escogida para dotar de profundidad a la lucha, sin hacerla caer en el tedio del “doy un golpe-recibo un golpe” de muchos juegos de rol recientes.


VATS es un sistema táctico que significa Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System, y que comparte algunos elementos en tiempo real de los first person shooters, pero que permite detener el tiempo a nuestro antojo para plantearnos las situaciones con calma y escoger con cuidado donde efectuar los disparos.


Esto se realiza de forma sencilla. En medio de un combate pulsaremos un botón para acceder al modo de pausa, que hará un zoom sobre el personaje apuntado y que nos permitirá gastar una serie de puntos de turno en disparos. Gracias a este zoom veremos a nuestro enemigo dividido en diferentes extremidades y puntos corporales, todo ello acompañado de unos porcentajes de acierto, que teniendo en cuenta parámetros como la distancia o nuestra habilidad con las armas, nos permitirán valorar las posibilidades de éxito de dispararle en uno u otro lugar.


Una de las principales variaciones respecto a sus episodios precedentes es la adopción de una vista en primera persona que podremos alternar con otra en tercera al estilo, por ejemplo, de Gears of War, alejándose de la clásica en perspectiva isométrica que reinó en los dos primeros Fallout.

Cada punto tiene una consecuencia. Si impactamos en una de sus extremidades posiblemente la inutilizaremos, si es una de las inferiores entorpeceremos su avance y si es una de las superiores su capacidad de ataque; si directamente hacemos blanco sobre su cabeza muy posiblemente el enemigo morirá.


Una vez acabado el turno de pausa, es decir nuestros puntos del turno, volveremos al modo de tiempo real o, si decidimos seguir en el modo de pausa, esperaremos a que el turno de nuestro rival se agote para volver a disponer de puntos. Estamos sin duda ante un sistema flexible, un sistema respetuoso con el desarrollo de los tiroteos en el clásico, pero que aporta novedades para no estancarse en un estilo de juego de hace diez años que ahora podría resultar un tanto anacrónico.


Sólo para Adultos
Según Bethesda el inabarcable número de personajes que encontrábamos en nuestro camino por los dos primeros episodios de Fallout se ha reducido drásticamente en el tercero. Pasaremos pues de los miles de NPC de Fallout y Fallout 2, a “sólo” cientos de ellos en su tercera entrega. Una reducción importante de cantidad en aras de aumentar la calidad.


Como es costumbre podemos interactuar de casi cualquier manera imaginable con los personajes no jugables de Fallout. Amistad, amor, muerte… todos los elementos de la vida están presentes en el juego con todo lo que ello conlleva.


Según Bethesda se está tratando de lograr una sensación de libertad total en la que el uso de la violencia sea totalmente opcional, y donde la totalidad de la aventura pueda ser superada charlando con personajes o infiltrándose sin causar bajas. Puede resultar muy interesante enfrentarse a Fallout 3 con la intención de no matar a nadie, pero suponemos que será complicado no emplear la violencia para lograr nuestros objetivos; y aprovechamos desde ya para advertir del altísimo nivel de crudeza del juego en casi todos los sentidos.


La polémica estará servida, eso desde luego. El sexo y la violencia ya estaban de sobras presentes en los dos primeros Fallout, pero en esta tercera entrega el rango de libertad aumenta considerablemente, y los contenidos adultos alcanzan nuevas cotas de intensidad. Por si los clubs de streaptease, el uso de drogas, las relaciones sexuales, los brutales asesinatos y los prostíbulos fueran poco para coronar a Fallout 3 como nuevo icono de la controversia, desde Bethesda se ha confirmado ya que habrá niños en el juego. La violencia hacia éstos será a buen seguro el nuevo caballo de batalla de los sectores más críticos con la industria del videojuego.


Y es que las mutilaciones y los asesinatos más sanguinarios siempre han estado presentes en las series; pero en esta ocasión, y con el realismo gráfico que puede aportar la revolución tecnológica de Fallout 3, la inmersión en este mundo violento y convulso restringirá de forma considerable el espectro de usuarios de un juego que, posiblemente, se ganará a pulso una calificación +18.


Irreconocible
El uso de una evolución del motor de Oblivion ha revelado al engine gráfico de la ya clásica cuarta entrega de The Elder Scrolls como una herramienta tecnológica muy versátil y muy capaz, confirmando todos los extremos de su brillante aparición del año pasado.


El juego moverá, con mayor fluidez que Oblivion, un entorno ligeramente más pequeño que éste, pero con un nivel de detalle mucho mayor y con una riqueza de texturas y modelados de personajes realmente espectacular. Mención especial merece el trabajo de iluminación y el de las animaciones corporales de los personajes, que ha sido reconstruido desde cero para evitar la cierta ortopedia de los movimientos de Oblivion y para lograr una iluminación verdaderamente sensacional.


Se trata de hacernos sentir miembros de un mundo extraño, al que pertenecemos pero del que no conocemos nada. Por ello los guiños siempre han sido una constante en la serie, y en esta ocasión no parece que vaya a ser una excepción. El primer trailer ya mostraba una calidad gráfica notable a todavía más de un año de la salida del producto, y los regustos de la decoración de los años 50 que caracterizaban a las dos primeras entregas siguen muy presentes.


Pero la nueva generación no aporta tan sólo mejoras gráficas a nivel puramente estético, también la tecnología se orienta a mejorar considerablemente la experiencia jugable y el comportamiento de los enemigos.


Las consolas y PC’s de nueva generación, capaces de gestionar muchísimos más cálculos que sus predecesores, posibilitan espectaculares reacciones en los habitantes de este mundo que ante todo pretende dar sensación de vida. Buscan cobertura, se esconden, flanquean y sacan partido de los entornos estén donde estén. La aventura se presenta difícil, pero como siempre en esta clase de juegos contaremos con mucha ayuda. Las clásicas comidas, bebidas o inyecciones serán una constante en nuestro periplo, pero en una fórmula de la que sacó partido el reciente STALKER deberemos estar al tanto de nuestro nivel de radiación al, por ejemplo, beber agua de un río o incluso de un inodoro, si estamos tan desesperados.

Una ambientación basada en un post-apocalíptico y rudo futuro, con abundantes y tenebrosas zonas industriales, parajes devastados, e inmundas metrópolis, encandilaron a muchos aficionados en sus dos primeras entregas. Unos años después, Fallout 3 seguirá esa misma línea, sólo que en 3D y con una tecnología y nivel artístico que prometen dejar huella entre viejos y nuevos seguidores de la saga.

En caso de sufrir una lesión seria, un hueso roto, una bala incrustada en nuestro cuerpo… de poco servirá comer y beber o medicarse. Nuestra cadencia de paso se verá considerablemente reducida si se nos rompe una pierna, y no será esto lo peor, si no que para curarla deberemos o bien tener fuertes conocimientos médicos, o viajar hasta la ciudad más cercana para visitar al doctor. Todo en aras del realismo.


En conjunto podríamos resumir que Fallout 3 apunta a clásico; desde el, no nos cansaremos de repetir, escrupuloso cariño y respeto por el legado de la saga, hasta el remozado aspecto gráfico y el empleo de un espectacular reparto de doblaje que incluye al brillante Liam Neeson como el padre del protagonista, y la recuperación para las series de Ron Perlman como el narrador.


Si los fans extremistas de sus orígenes, que consideran erróneamente que “cualquier tiempo pasado fue mejor”, consiguen vencer sus miedos y enfrentarse al juego libres de prejuicios, a buen seguro descubrirán una experiencia que cuanto menos será merecedora de echarle un vistazo por el mimo que está poniendo Bethesda. Para los que nunca se han acercado al universo Fallout y a los que les echa para atrás sus gráficos desfasados, en primer lugar recomendarles repasar las dos entregas iniciales, y en segundo lugar recomendarles a todos paciencia, pues hasta finales de 2008 no verá la luz este título, uno de los destinados a coronarse como mejor juego de rol del año que viene.

GAMERNODE

http://www.gamernode.com/Previews/3315-E3-07-Extensive-Fallout-3-demo-write-up/index.html

I don't know if you guys saw the teaser trailer we released about a month ago," began Bethesda producer Todd Howard. "That was actually shot in the game in real time, it's the beginning of the game's intro, as you'll see here."


There we were, sitting in a well-furnished miniature theater watching a giant screen display the opening visuals of Fallout 3, one of the hottest games at this year's E3. As Todd elaborated on how the teaser was pulled from the game, the footage everyone has already seen played in the background (complete with the music-"I don't want to set the worrldddd onnnnn fireeee"; classic).


"War..." began Ron Perlman. "War never changes. Since the dawn of humankind, when our ancestors first discovered the killing power of rock and bone, blood has been spilled in the name of everything..." The intro speech goes on for quite a bit longer, but I don't want to ruin it for anyone, because it kicks ass. Suffice to say, Ron Perlman does a great job at making the beginning of the game draw you in.


As many know, Fallout takes place in the future, after the world has been decimated by nuclear war. Humanity has lived on, however, both on the surface and underground. Ron describes Vault 101, and reminds us that no one ever enters, and no one ever leaves...


"The game does start in the underground vault," Todd tells us. He also made it known that what we're seeing isn't the official beginning portion of the game; just the right area. When the screen loads up in first person, Todd continues. "People always ask us: ‘Why are you doing this, why are you ruining Fallout by making it first person!'" He went on to explain that for them, first-person is the only way to truly make the game come alive.








"This chair is in Fallout 1, for example, 4 pixels high," he tells us. "But here it is. Same with this vent you can click on to make it go rattle-rattle-rattle-rattle." The crowd chuckled slightly when he mentioned that first-person also helps them as developers, because they get very anal about making their world right.



Unlike Oblivion, Todd demonstrates and explains how the third-person mode in Fallout 3 is fully playable, and easily done so, and more than a way to look at your blue jumpsuit. At the start of the demo, the main character is 19 years old, but he begins at a very early age (one!) before this point, and ages through a few events (I'm guessing).



The main character's father is the main vault scientist, and is also voiced by Liam Neeson. He's trying to get the main character to take the G.O.A.T. to find out what he has to do for the betterment of the Vault. "I had to take it, you'll have to take it, and so will everyone else," his father tells him.



According to Todd, the G.O.A.T. is basically an oral exam, and will determine your future character in Fallout 3.



The father does more than just sound cool and get lost (setting up the story), too. As your main character ages from baby to adult, your father ages as well; his looks are also based upon how your character is designed.



It was about that time that we got our first mention of Oblivion. "Think of Oblivion as our freshman effort on next-gen," he tells us, "and Fallout is our revision and upgrade."



We were then treated to a demonstration of how the Pipboy works in Fallout 3. According to Todd, one of their main goals in upgrading it for Fallout 3 was to make it entertaining for gamers, since they'll spend a lot of time in its menus. Part of how they did that is the humorous animations; skills and stats have their own picture and description, and most of them are pretty damn funny. One of them, science, features a bespeckled toon sitting in front of a giant retro computer. "This is our actually our lead developer, this is what he looks like," Todd jokes. "And this is a very early PS3 devkit."



The Pipboy also allows you to view your special stats, which will determine a lot of what you can do. According to Todd, these are assigned at a very young age. When you're one, your father will give you a book titled "You're Special!" and you learn to walk, for example. It's also "very hard" to change the stats later in the game, so you'll likely be stuck with what you pick.



The vault portion of the game will take about an hour to complete, and will allow you to learn how the game plays, and complete some quests. One instance of a quest-like encounter occurs when Todd runs into a group known as the Tunnel Snakes (a greaser gang, as he described them) tormenting your female friend. "You can help her," Todd says, "or you can join in, call her fat, make her all sad..."



Rather than take the G.O.A.T. (by the way, before you leave the vault you can change your skills and stuff, which is familiar to Oblivion), they skip that portion and go straight on through the story. We learn that the main character's father has escaped the hatch, and to avoid suspicion we'll need to attempt to find him in the outside world.



It was at that point we ran into Mr. Handy. "Good day new sir!" the cheerful robot chimes. "If I may be so bold the blue in the bolt suit contrasts BEAUTIFULLY with your eyes!" As Mr. Handy moves away, he mutters, "you stupid git." Oh, Mr. Handy!



The exit of the vault is a fairly epic area, and as Todd explains, given its seriousness it really has to be. You need to hack into a computer (or use a password) to open the vault, which involves a lot of whirling gears and shifting metal. After a few moments, Todd is out into the beautiful post apocalyptic sunlight!



"Here's some people we wouldn't let in," he jokes while walking over skeletons.



After exiting the vault, the game shifts to a wide shot of the Wasteland. Sand blows through the ruins of a city, while cars remain deserted. "This is the wasteland, everything you see is open to explore," Todd tells us. Unlike many developers, Bethesda loves to make everything you can see the actual game, which is great.



Demonstrating how drinking worked (and how radiation poisoning effected the main character), Todd treated us to a small nuclear detonation by blowing up a car with an active charge in it still. The explosion had some awesome lighting effects, and the sand and objects near it kicked up and flew around. Standing in an area where a car blows up also causes continuous radiation damage; sort of like a DoT spell. It's a good tactic to use against trapped or tightly packed enemies, but blow up too much, and you'll eventually kill yourself.



After taking a rifle and some drugs from an abandoned mailbox, Todd was attacked by a giant ant. In Fallout 3, all of the enemies (at least what we've seen) have location based damage modifiers. While fighting the ant, Todd could shoot its leg to hopefully cripple it, and he could shoot its antenna which would cause it to enter a frenzy due to the lack of senses.



Some point here, we were given an explanation of how Fallout 3's parallax inclusion mapping worked. Suffice it to say that I'm horrible at technical details like that, so I'll explain it in words I understand: it lets you break and damage things better by changing the environment on a pixel level.



Not only is this present in the gameplay, but Bethesda also used it in their world building to help spread damage and decay (which is everywhere - as Todd joked, "Our motto is ‘Decay: it's the new tree!'")



More giant ants quickly appeared, and after dispersing of them we arrived at the city of Megaton, which is built around an atomic bomb which didn't go off. Before entering, a robot deputy scans the main character's threat level, and deems him okay to enter. Entering the city brings up a loading screen, which is still being worked on in order to lessen load times. Even now, though, it's much faster than Oblivion.








Once inside, the sheriff greets us, and we're shown how you can choose two radically different paths. In this instance, Todd can either be peaceful and friendly with the sheriff, or enter the town mocking his hat ("Nice hat, Calamity Jane"); guess which he picked?



After mocking the hat, the sheriff is peeved, and Todd has the choice to try and make things okay again, or keep pushing the sheriff which will end in a fight. Todd ended up switching his mind, so we entered the city proper.



Not only are the load times improved from Oblivion, but almost everything else limiting the game has been, too. For starters, the visual density in Megaton is much greater than anything seen in Oblivion. Each building is built of many separate scavenged parts, and it looks more like a movie than real-time gameplay footage.



The Radiant AI has also been vastly improved. This time, each NPC is given a full 24-hour schedule, and they'll interact with each other much more than the NPCs in Oblivion, making the world truly seem alive (at least as alive as it can be...).



As we're shown the city, a few bits of the typical Fallout humor rise up. Near the bomb the town was built around, a man is preaching a gospel about the bomb to the bomb; just past him is a sign leading to "local cult." Nothing drop-dead funny (yet), but the tongue-in-cheek and dark humor is obviously present.



The animation is also improved, as is the motion. Rather than have scripted moves for things such as going up steps, the game registers how the feet need to move to go up the stairs, and the character's body corresponds. Bethesda used a lot of mocap in this game, and it showed.



At the top of the stairs, Todd entered Moriarty's bar in order to search for his missing father. Here he displays the ability of the Pipboy to play songs from the radio. According to Todd, if you meet the DJ of the radio station in the game, he'll also mention you at points. You can listen to the stations while you normally play the game, offering a slew of authentic period songs (including one by Bob Crosby, Bing Crosby's less successful brother).



In the bar, we run into a character named Mr. Burke. Mr. Burke has an interesting proposal for us; it turns out the bomb isn't a dud after all, and he wants us to go and place a charge to explode it. Naturally, Todd accepts the task. He mentions here that had he befriended the sheriff upon entering town, this quest would have never happened.



In the center of the town, Todd faced the bomb and was still given the choice to change his mind, but nah, he went for it. Whoops, his skills aren't high enough. "Luckily I have these drugs I found in the mailbox, and as we all know, drugs make you smarter," Todd joked. They did the trick, and allowed him to place the charge. With the bomb armed, Todd took off through the metro to arrive at the meet-up spot Mr. Burke decided upon, which happened to be on top of the Galaxy News radio station building (ironically, he was listening to a song at this moment which was talking about a "Happy, happy life!").



In the underground, Todd was quickly attacked by a super mutant. These guys were big, greenish looking, and very mean. Here he once again displayed VAT attack mode, shooting it in the head, causing it to explode, showering brain bits, jaw bone, and eyes everywhere. "E FOR EVERYBODY!" he jokingly shouted as he shot the corpse to display the effects.








After showing how you can use similar weapons to repair damaged ones, Todd displayed some of the sneaking action in the game, sneaking past two mutants into a security room, where he found a password and used it to turn on a Protectron. Once activated, it attempted to contact security headquarters, and after getting no response, entered a mode with permission to terminate. It spied two mutants outside the door, and when they couldn't produce tickets...well, let's just say mutants have a lot of internal organs.



The robots are scattered throughout, and most of them will be a benefit to you (notice that Todd said MOST will be good).



Exiting the metro, Todd was met by a group of human soldiers who helped him fight off a squad of mutants, and escorted him to his meet-up. There he was attacked by a giant mutant, but before it could kill him, he stole a nuclear catapult and laid waste to it (and a few friendly troops, most likely). He then went to the roof of the building (how Mr. Burke made it no one will ever know, and even Todd couldn't offer an explanation), and blew up Megaton. The city erupted in light as a giant mushroom cloud rose, and several seconds after the initial blast the shockwave hit, knocking Mr. Burke backwards and sending debris flying past the main character as the demo ended.



All and all, I was very impressed with what we saw of Fallout 3. The game is very similar to Oblivion in ways, but also vastly different. The Fallout theme is very strong throughout, and the ability to play in a top-down zoomed out mode should please fans of the franchise (whether or not it will work in fights we didn't see). Will fans of the game like it? I can't say, because everyone will like and hate some of the things Bethesda has done. What is obvious, though, is that Bethesda is treating this game very seriously, and is trying their hardest to please old fans, as well as bring in the new.

Trascripción de la intro de FALLOUT 3 con Ron Perlman como doblador

War. War never changes. Since the dawn of human kind, when our ancestors first discovered the killing power of rock and bone, blood has been spilled in the name of everything, from God to justice to simple, psychotic rage.

In the year 2077, after millennia of armed conflict, the destructive nature of man could sustain itself no longer. The world was plunged into an abyss of nuclear fire and radiation. But it was not, as some had predicted, the end of the world. Instead, the apocalypse was simply the prologue to another bloody chapter of human history. For man had succeeded in destroying the world - but war, war never changes.

In the early days, thousands were spared the horrors of the holocaust by taking refuge in enormous underground shelters, known as vaults. But when they emerged, they had only the hell of the wasted to greet them - all except those in Vault 101. For on the fateful day, when fire rained from the sky, the giant steel door of Vault 101 slid closed... and never reopened. It was here you were born. It is here you will die because, in Vault 101, no one ever enters and no one ever leaves


Entrevista con Emil Pagliarulo,diseñador jefe de FALLOUT 3

http://www.strategycore.co.uk/e3/pg/07fallout3

By now, all Fallout fans have heard what a great presentation Bethesda put on at this year's E3. It was standing room only in the demo I attended (which was the last one given at E3), and quite a few people were turned back at the door. The 45-50 minute walkthrough started at the beginning of the game and moved the character through the Vault and into the devastated ruins of Washington DC. Within the Vault, the player gets to choose the character's SPECIAL primary statistics and traits before leaving "home". Using both the characters reactions to situations within the Vault and the GOAT aptitude test, the player's tag skills will be determined. Bethesda hopes that this will add to the realism of the game. The player can, however, change the tag skills before leaving the Vault.

In any event, the character made his way out of the Vault, following his father after Dad found a way out/escaped. The philosophy of the Vault's Overseer seems to be that if you were born in the Vault then you should damn well die in the Vault and be a happy, productive citizen while you're at it. After leaving Vault 101, the character arrived at Megaton, a town built around an unexploded A-Bomb. There he met a few NPCs and received a quest that led him into DC proper. The character made his way through a Metro subway tunnel occupied by Super Mutants and a Protectron robot (very nicely done and in keeping with the 1950's image of the future). The character arrived in DC only to find the Brotherhood of Steel battling it out with invading Super Mutants. The Brotherhood did well until a 20 foot (6 meter) tall Super Mutant showed up. The character conveniently found a catapult-launched nuclear grenade which incinerated the giant Super Mutant. Throughout the demo, the audience was shown how the VATS pause-in-real-time combat system worked. The gamer can choose not to use the VATS system, but Fallout 3 will be harder to play that way. Bethesda is still modifying the combat system so time will tell.

The demo certainly captured the imagination of the audience, and was received with a round of applause at its conclusion. All-in-all it was a riveting, action packed and graphically beautiful-to-behold performance which I would gladly watch again and again. The change to first person is definitely much more visceral than the isometric graphics of Fallout 1 and 2. Bethesda has also tried their hardest to make the NPCs come to life, using pixel shaders, animation and lip syncing, and they have succeeded.

Some fans who loved Fallout 1 and 2 will find a number of features which will piss them off. The 20 foot tall Super Mutant was something out of Lord of the Rings and fit poorly with the earlier Fallout universe. It would have been more in keeping to have created an all-new Super Monster rather than including a giant Super Mutant. After all, the Super Mutants could have used the mutagenic virus on a Deathclaw or some other wasteland creature. Maybe the reason for the giant was explained in the storyline, but it was out of place from what I saw. Regarding the VATS combat system, I couldn't tell how well it will work. After killing a hundred giant ants, Super Mutants or whatever, the slo mo cinematic playback may become tiresome. VATS does stop the game from becoming a twitch fest, but turn-based combat could have achieved the same result.

Fallout 3 will be a worthy addition to the Fallout universe. It won't please those fans that want an isometric, turn-based game, but will please those who love the Fallout atmosphere and are willing to play the game from a new perspective. With its branching storylines and the ability to create a character in all shades of gray, it should be fun for the same sick and twisted individuals who enjoyed the original games.

For those gamers that like turn-based, isometric combat, please read StrategyCore's Jagged Alliance 3 preview due within the week (sorry, but I'm a slow writer).

Mike Nino, StrategyCore


Post-presentation Question & Answer Session

StrategyCore (and a few other journalists) had a chance to sit down with Emil Pagliarulo, Fallout 3's Lead Designer, and ask him a few questions after the presentation.

"What it comes down to is that we're all Fallout fans. We love the original games. (But) not every Fallout fan wants a turn-based isometric game." Emil Pagliarulo, Lead Designer, Fallout 3

SC: How is the GOAT system going to work? Is it like a quiz?
EP: The GOAT is sort of like an oral exam that helps you determine your tag skills. Your tag skills are your three main skills. It sort of harkens back to the type of character generation quiz we had in Morrowind. But if you don't like the tag skills GOAT determined, when you leave the Vault you have a chance to re-spec your character anyway.

SC: So what happens when your character levels? You choose the skills you want to boost?
EP: Yeah, when you level you get skill points, and the number of skill points you get are based on your intelligence. So you can put those toward your skills and the primary tag skills get more points added when you level up.

SC: The same as the original game?
EP: Really similar to the original game.

SC: So you get to choose where you put your points?
EP: Yes you do. It’s not like Oblivion, skills don't increase with usage. It’s definitely an experience point based game.

SC: So the experience points aren't allocated in a GOAT-like manner?
EP: It kind of does. It's not a hard and fast system, it doesn't lock you into a character type. It gives you a guide that you can change if you like.

Other interviewer: The presentation mentioned that unlike Oblivion the enemies are not going to scale to the character. Is that going to make a more linear game play, since that will limit free roaming, do-what-you-want-to gameplay.
EP: A couple of responses to that. Because it’s an experience point based game and you get the majority of the experience points from questing, it’s a lot easier for us to guess where the player is going to be and what level he will be at. We know that if you’re doing a main quest path you will be at least this level so we can tailor those areas. Now if you’re outside the main quest path, it’s really a matter of giving the player the right kind of feedback. If you're a level 2 and you go far out into the wasteland and you find a group of five super mutants decked out in full body armor with rocket launchers and laser rifles, I think the player is smart enough to turn around and come back later.

Other interviewer: Do you run into instances where NPCs are fighting?
SC: Or random encounters?
EP: We love to do that and we have good tools to do it. We didn't do this in Oblivion, but for the first time we actually have a designer completely dedicated to free-form encounters out in the wasteland. You'll definitely encounter people fighting rad scorpions and other creatures out in the wasteland. It's definitely a single character game, but there are companions that you take. Your companions are based on your karma, so there's a sunset of companions that are good guys, evil guys or neutral. But you need to find those guys, take them with you, and watch the interaction between those characters.

Other interviewer: How many voice actors will there be?
EP: There are many different voice types, we're talking 30-40 different voices. Because the world is smaller and we have fewer NPCs, it’s allowing us to customize and detail the voice acting.

SC: Are there going to be a lot of new weapons? The FatMan (essentially a nuclear hand grenade launcher) in the presentation is new, but what other new weapons will there be?
EP: There are a lot of weapons. I was surprised looking at our weapon list and seeing how many we had. There are the Fallout weapon skills: big guns, small guns, energy weapons, melee, unarmed which are all fully exploited, so we have weapons for them all. We also have a series of custom made weapons that you can construct if you find a schematic and the right junk in the wasteland. So yes, there are quite a few weapons.

SC: Can you add scopes or silencers to weapons?
EP: No, you can't. We don't allow you to modify existing guns to customize them. For example, you can't take a pistol you've been using and add a scope to it. It's more like finding an old motorcycle gas can and an old sword blade and creating an entirely new weapon.

Other interviewer: What about traveling in the game? Is everything done on a walking basis?
EP: You are walking everywhere. There are no vehicles. Maybe there will be some kind of fast travel system based on the map but we are still working that out.

SC: Regarding the Metro Subway, it doesn't look like it is functioning. Are they just tunnels?
EP: They are not functioning. The trains are ruined.

Other interviewer: What is the square mileage of the game?
EP: We haven't calculated the square mileage. A lot of games do that now but it’s always sort of a fudged number. In Oblivion, it’s a really big area, but the borders kind of stretch and curve. The game play map in Fallout 3 is much more of a solid square, so a lot more of the map is actually accessible game play space. It’s smaller than Oblivion but still huge. The approach is smaller, more manageable and more detailed. It’s DC and its environs. That is where the game is set.

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.

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.

SC: It doesn't look like you could finish the game without killing a lot of people.
EP: Not entirely true. It depends on the quest. You saw all the speech options and dialog in the demo. As far as dialog options go, that's just the tip of the iceberg. The amount of interaction through dialog is three times what we had in Oblivion. There's a really strong stealth component. There are a lot of paths through the quests and some are non-violent. That said, you can't wander off into the wasteland and expect to live.

SC: Can a character dodge?
EP: That is part of the real time engine. You can definitely move to take cover behind stuff and duck down.

Other interviewer: Will the PipBoy evolve with your character? As your character gains skills, will it add abilities?
SC: Can you add anything to it?
EP: No, it’s a pretty consistent piece of equipment throughout the game. The PipBoy itself really doesn't change.

Other interviewer: How many radio stations are there?
EP: I'm not saying. (laughter and moans) Several, though. The cool thing about the radio stations, obviously there's the music and the DJ, but you can use it tactically by picking up the frequency of the enemy out in the wasteland and listen in on their transmissions. You can get quests that way. We use it a lot.

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)

SC: Will there be aliens in the game?
EP (makes a face) No. (laughter)
SC: Alien weaponry?
EP: (pause, another face) These are things I'm not supposed to talk about.

SC: Do you get a dog?
EP: Mmaayybbee Yes.

SC: Are there any new mutant animals?
EP: New mutant animals. Let's see. We're still going through our creature list. I don't want to say what they are, but yes.

Other interviewer: What kind of creatures are in the game?
EP: All of the Fallout classics are back. There's a full line of robots: you saw the Protectron in the presentation (a Robby-the-Robot-type robot that was in the Metro Subway), Mr. Handy, Robobrain and Sentrybot. Right before E3 the rad scorpion just went in fully animated. There's also the classic deathclaw. There are lots of creatures are in the game.

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. (Note: it appears that the Brotherhood of Steel in Fallout 3 is not the West Coast one but an offshoot that was mentioned in Fallout: Tactics. In that game, a blimp expedition from the West Coast was sent over the Rockies to follow the retreating Super Mutants. The lead blimp crashes near Chicago and the survivors set up their own version of the Brotherhood of Steel. It may be that BOS that is battling the Super Mutants in DC, or maybe another one created by the blimps that did not crash in Chicago but continued eastward. Just an educated guess...)

SC: Why Vault 101? Seems like it would be Vault 1 if it was in Washington DC?
EP: We looked at the Fallout fiction and how many Vaults there were. We decided that we should go with higher number Vaults since the lower number ones were on the West Coast.

SC: Will we see any NPCs from the previous games?
EP: Maybe. We're not talking about that.

SC: From the demo, it looks like the currency is bottle caps?
EP: That is correct.

SC: Do you have a favorite technological marvel?
EP: I do, but I can't tell you what it is.

Other interviewer: Can you give us a generalized development timeline over the next year?
EP: Sure. You look at our 45-50 minute long demo and it looks like there's a lot there. But on the design side we want to have these important character interactions. We want players to feel like they are real people. In order to do that it simply takes a lot of time. In Oblivion there is what we call essential characters, characters that you cannot kill. A lot of games have them. For Fallout 3, our goal was not to do that. If a NPC gives the player a quest and the player blows his head off, how does that affect the quest? We have to deal with that, and it takes a lot of time to do that. Multiple pathways to fulfill a quest take a lot of time to develop. In Oblivion, the player makes his decisions on a higher level: if I want to be evil I join the Dark Brotherhood, whereas Fallout quests have multiple pathways to complete the quest.

Other interviewer: Is there a centralized storyline or is it completely free branching?
EP: There is definitely a storyline. We use the character's dad as a device: Dad leaves the Vault, you follow him. But why did he leave? What was he up to? And all that ties into the players’ relationship with the Capitol wasteland and are those people worth saving.

Other interviewer: Are there going to be DX10 capabilities? Would we see any difference?
EP: I can't imagine that we wouldn't but we haven't yet. We're sort of taking a wait and see attitude and see what on-line games do.

Other interviewer: Are you planning to develop expansion packs?
EP: We've talked about it and we just don't know yet. We're so focused on making the game. Ironically, if I say "yes", and the game comes out without the new features, we'll be accused of ripping the players off by not releasing the full game. The truth is, we really don't think about expansion until after the game is out.

Other interviewer: So are you looking for a simultaneous release for all three platforms?
EP: Yup, all platforms the same day.

Other interviewer: How much are your actions and how you address each quest going to affect both the game play and the story? How does being good or evil affect the game?
EP: When we first started we had that very convention, the good or evil thing. But we realized that a lot of Fallout is about these shades of gray. So we're fully supporting a neutral path as well, which has been interesting for us. I can be the good guy or this evil guy, but what if I don't want to do that? What if I want [/spoiler]to be this sort of mercenary guy in the middle? And that plays into the quests, too.

PREVIEW VANDAL

El retorno de esta clásica saga no podía ser más sorprendente.


A puerta cerrada y en una presentación de una hora de duración Bethesda Softworks nos ha mostrado el esperadísimo Fallout 3 para PC, Xbox 360 y PlayStation 3 en su versión para la consola de Microsoft, la tercera entrega de esta clásica serie que ha sido resucitada por los creadores de la saga The Elder Scrolls, y que sin duda promete convertirse en uno de los mejores títulos del momento.

Tras introducirnos en el mundo Fallout mediante una interesante introducción, uno de los responsables del estudio inició la aventura y nos mostró la primera hora de juego que sorprenderá por el tipo de situaciones en las que nos veremos envueltos. Y es que tras un inicio algo pausado en el interior del refugio 101, lugar en el que habitan una serie de científicos y supervivientes del holocausto nuclear, saldremos al exterior en busca de un objeto que nuestro padre nos pedirá al inicio de la partida, lo que al final nos llevará a recorrer una gran variedad de entornos hasta terminar detonando una bomba atómica en plena ciudad. A nivel de ambientación, estamos ante un título realmente sorprendente puesto que se muestra un mundo ambientado en la década de los 50 principios de los 60 totalmente devastado por la guerra. Sin embargo, los escasos recursos que quedan intactos mantienen ese toque tan “infantil” que hacen que recorrer el mundo de Fallout sea una experiencia aterradora pero a la vez también muy divertida.


Compartir


El búnker, por ejemplo, se muestra como la típica base de operaciones con ordenadores gigantes, muñequitos graciosos en las mesas, o vetustas terminales dedicadas a abrirnos las compuertas al mundo exterior. Con respecto a este último punto, no podemos sino destacar el magnífico trabajo llevado a cabo a nivel del diseño de la interfaz, puesto que la computadora personal que llevaremos en el brazo, y que nos mostrará nuestro inventario, las estadísticas del avatar de la aventura, o el armamento disponible, mantendrá esta estética tan naif que ha provocado más de una risa entre los asistentes a la presentación. Sobre todo porque a la hora de representar cada una de las especialidades del protagonista aparecerá a su lado el ya clásico niño rubio a modo de leyenda de lo que se consigue con cada una de estas habilidades. De este modo, por ejemplo, cuando el cursor se posaba sobre la especialidad de fuerza el niño aparecía ultra musculoso, así como también lo podíamos ver con un turbante simulando a un mercader al referirnos a las habilidades de comercio, o en plan programador informático cuando hablamos de las habilidades de científico. Del mismo modo, todo lo que rodea a estos menús muestra la apariencia de nuestro arcaico ordenador, con unas letras en tono verdoso que contribuyen todavía más a dar la sensación de estar viendo una computadora de hace más de 50 años.





Lo más importante en este sentido es que además todo reaccionaba de forma bastante buena, resultando de lo más sencillo equiparnos con las distintas armas que podremos llevar, usar ítems como los kits para sanar nuestra salud, o acceder a nuestras estadísticas personales donde ver en qué especialidades estamos más capacitados y en cuáles no. Y esto será importante porque a la hora de combatir a los enemigos, o el simple hecho de conversar con el resto de supervivientes que encontraremos, será distinto dependiendo de estos parámetros.

De este modo, pese a que a primera vista pueda parecer un juego de acción más, un simple vistazo a su sistema de juego bastará para darse cuenta que es todo lo contario. Aunque nosotros tengamos en el punto de mira a un enemigo, siempre dependeremos de nuestras estadísticas y las de las armas a la hora de dañar a los rivales, por lo que podemos ser realmente buenos en este campo, o fallar constantemente por no haber entrenado lo suficiente. Del mismo modo, si somos buenos conversando, podremos acceder a otro tipo de diálogos más beneficiosos para nosotros, o con mejores resultados a nivel de objetivos.

Otro aspecto interesante en las batallas será la opción de pausar la acción y atacar a los enemigos en puntos vitales. Para realizar estas acciones usaremos unos puntos de energía que se irán reponiendo con el tiempo, y que nos permitirán atacar varias ocasiones seguidas como decimos en puntos vitales de los enemigos. Por ejemplo, a las hormigas gigantes que nos atacaban al inicio de la partida podíamos dispararles a las piernas, a la cabeza, o incluso a sus antenas, mientras que después a los mutantes les podíamos dar en extremidades, tronco o cabeza. Cada uno de estos puntos vitales tendrá un porcentaje de acierto que variará mucho dependiendo de nuestra posición, de la del enemigo, y de los elementos del entorno. Esto quiere decir, como pudimos ver de primera mano, que si un enemigo se encuentra medio escondido en un pilar, toda la parte de su cuerpo tras el mismo será inaccesible a nuestras balas. Y lo mismo ocurrirá con los rivales que lleven corazas; las zonas cubiertas por esta protección serán más difíciles de dañar que el resto.





Con estos fundamentos como base vimos como el responsable de Bethesda se enfrentaba a una gran cantidad de enemigos teniendo que hacer uso de toda su pericia para salir con vida de sus brutales ataques. Lo más impresionante es que también contábamos con la ayuda de unidades aliadas en forma de ejército, lo que al final provocó una gran escaramuza que nos dejó bastante impresionados. También resulta muy destacable la libertad de acción no ya solo a la hora de aceptar o no las misiones, o de resolverlas como queramos, sino que también a la hora de combatir podemos usar varias alternativas. En el metro, por ejemplo, había dos mutantes en un estrecho pasillo por el que teníamos que avanzar.





En vez de atacar a lo loco y perder casi seguramente la vida en el intento, el protagonista se dirigió a otra zona del metro en cuclillas para no ser visto ni escuchado hasta alcanzar una terminal con contraseña. En este punto, lo normal es que intentemos buscar la contraseña por los alrededores, pero en Bethesda querían enseñarnos otra forma de piratear el sistema, que era resolviendo un interesante y desafiante puzle que de nuevo mantenía toda la apariencia de computadora de hace varias décadas. Si fallamos varias veces, el equipo se bloqueará y no podremos utilizarlo, por lo que de nuevo aquí entra en juego la importancia de nuestras decisiones y habilidades.

Una vez activada la terminal se nos ofrecían varias opciones entre las que destacaba la de activar un robot de seguridad. Lógicamente fue esta la opción seleccionada puesto que esperábamos que él se encargara de los enemigos. Y así lo hizo. Pese a tener una apariencia de cafetera robótica similar a la vista en el cine de bajo presupuesto de la década de los 60 y 70, esta chatarra metálica fue capaz de trocear a los enemigos con su mortal rayo láser después de que estos se burlaran al escuchar al androide pedirle sus tickets. Y de nuevo en este punto volvimos a encontrarnos con esa dualidad entre lo cómico y lo aterrador.

Los combates serán realmente sanguinarios: vimos como el protagonista les reventaba la cabeza a los enemigos a balazos, o como sus piernas salían volando mientras morían desangrados. Por si esto no fuera suficiente, también habrá todo tipo de armas más mortíferas como los lanzacohetes, que también causarán estragos entre los enemigos. Pero aún hay más. Si no tenemos armamento pesado, podemos usar el entorno para matar a más enemigos de una jugada. En estos casos, solamente necesitaremos dañar un vehículo lo suficiente como para que estalle lanzando además una ola radioactiva que de tocarnos nos restará salud.





En definitiva, como vemos, el sistema de combates promete ser de lo más variado y libre, permitiéndosenos actuar de la forma que queramos en todo momento, lo que sin duda es algo de agradecer. Pero es que esto mismo ocurrirá con las misiones. Tras visitar un refugio de supervivientes llamado Megaton, uno de sus habitantes nos pidió que activáramos una bomba atómica situada en el centro de la zona. Para hacerlo, necesitamos antes ser especialistas en explosivos, por lo que si no hemos perfeccionado esta habilidad poco podremos hacer, o mejor dicho, menos alternativas tendremos. El final de esta impresionante demostración fue el ver como activábamos la bomba atómica desde lo alto de un edificio a muchos kilómetros de distancia (todo el camino recorrido por el metro) quedándonos sin la posibilidad de volver a visitar dicho pueblo, lo que aparte de confirmar que “las guerras nunca cambian”, viene a mostrar que todas nuestras decisiones tendrán sus consecuencias, por lo que tendremos que sopesar los pros y contras de cada uno de nuestros acto.





Por tanto, como vemos, esta tercera entrega de Fallout, pese a no ser estrictamente igual a los capítulos anteriores, mantiene toda esa ambientación (a nivel sonoro es una auténtica pasada, con la posibilidad de captar emisoras de radio de la época y escucharlas a través de nuestro PC portátil) y trasfondo apocalíptico que tanto gustó a los aficionados al original. Los detalles gráficos como el disparar al suelo y ver como los destrozamos de forma realista (y además de forma permanente también), la amplitud de los entornos, la cantidad de enemigos y aliados que encontraremos, o los diversos efectos de explosiones, fuego y demás, hacen además que nos metamos de lleno en toda la acción y sintamos de verdad estar recorriendo un mundo post apocalíptico. En este sentido, la cámara en tercera persona está mejor implementada que en Oblivion, por ejemplo, situándose en el lateral de nuestro personaje, pudiendo además realizar un zoom para acercarla o alejarla.

Con todo esto, esta versión de Fallout 3 apunta muy buenas maneras por todo lo comentado con anterioridad, y porque en tan solo una hora hemos disfrutado de todo tipo de espectaculares y sorprendentes situaciones, lo que augura que estamos ante un fantástico retorno de una de las sagas de rol más queridas por los aficionados al género

FAQ del foro oficial de FALLOUT 3

So it took a little longer than we expected, but Todd's gone ahead and answered the 20 submitted questions for the Community Q&A. Big thanks to Blinzler, the guys that helped him out, and of course everyone who submitted questions.

Also, when Blinzler submitted the questions, he also sent over 5 "bonus questions," which you'll see that Todd answered at the bottom.

So here's the questions...I'm going to close this thread, but feel free to talk amongst yourselves.

Community FAQ - 20 questions

COMBAT

1. Is unarmed combat in? If so, is it lethal or does it knockout your opponent? [Waterchip]

Yes, it’s in, and yes, it’s lethal. It’s a big part of the game, and as far as game balance, it’s our goal to make melee as viable as using guns in killing off enemies. It’s something we’re obviously still balancing, but I expect melee to be more “lethal”, as getting near an opponent can be more difficult, especially if they have a gun, but at the same time, you don’t have to worry about your ammo counts, so that’s an immediate benefit to melee.

2. Is combat playable in the zoomed out third person ("almost iso") perspective and how will VATS work from it, meaning - will it zoom into FP or something else? [kaos]

I’d have to say “no”. Combat’s not really playable when you zoom the camera all the way back and point it down. You can try, but it’s not meant to be played that way, because you still have to aim at the center of the screen, and at that point, the center is the ground. It’s playable from 1st and 3rd person, but closer-in over-the-shoulder 3rd person. Regarding VATS., it does zoom in on your target, from your eyes, so I guess you’d say it is a “1st person” view. So if you’re playing in 3rd person and enter VATS, you zoom in on the target, and when you’re done, it flips back to your 3rd person view. It happens pretty fast and it’s smooth. I kind of see VATS as its own view.

3. For what else can we use AP`s while in VATS and what is the "cost" of such things in real time? Some time consuming animation perhaps? Example: if taking stimpacks or using inventory in VATS will cost AP`s - then what will it cost in RT? Besides that what else besides shooting can you pull off in VATS, and how do you balance those things with their real time counterparts? [MrHappy1991]

The only thing you can do in VATS. is shoot, and it’s designed as just that. It’s kind of an “aimed shot” mode, so no taking stimpacks, etc. When dealing with the AP regeneration, that’s one of the big questions, even for us, as to what we set it to, and that’s going to get serious tweaking the more we play the game. It’s definitely tied to your agility, but we haven’t pinned down the range, so I don’t know if an agility of 10 gives you twice the regen rate over an agility of 1, or if it will be in the 5-10x multiple range. I’d wager closer to 2x on that one. When you’re not in VATS., attacks use up AP as well. At this stage, we’re playing the game so that the AP usage in real-time is less then the regen rate, so the end effect is that attacking in real-time slows down the regen. I imagine it will end up being close to that feel.

4. Because so many of us still don't understand, could you describe VATS in painstaking detail? No really, please! [Waterchip]

I’ll try, but I worry it will raise more questions then it answers. I assume you know the basics: press a button and it stops time, you queue up shots on body parts using AP, and then press the “go” button and it executes the moves. The playback is done cinematically, sometimes it’s fast, sometimes it’s slower – depending on if something cool happens.

Probably better if I give you a closer look at how we approach it and view VATS. First, I don’t see it as an either-or thing. VATS is meant to be used with real-time, it’s not one or the other – they should feel like they go together. I don’t want the fans confused that this is turn-based, because it’s not. It’s a glorified aimed-shot mode, and a pretty glorious one at that. You’ll be able to use it a lot, but not constantly, because it is the most effective way to kill things. And that’s how we define it usually, it’s the most effective and entertaining way of killing something, and we break up those two parts while developing it, “effect” versus “entertainment”, or the “gameplay” versus the “playback”.

Let’s start with the gameplay. One, you can enter VATS, whenever you want, you just may not have enough AP do take any shots yet, or enough AP to do as many shots as you’d like. The AP needed to do a shot is based on the weapon’s rate of fire; pistols can get more shots off in VATS than a hunting rifle. The camera zooms in on the target from your eyes, as VATS does a scan of the target, and you get a percentage chance to hit each body part. This accomplishes two things: 1) it just looks really cool, we even use the “combat-turn” sound from Fallout 1 here, and 2) the scan actually is detecting how much of the body part you can see to get us a good hit percentage. That hit-chance is based on how much of the body part you can see, the distance, your skill, the weapon itself, and a base body part chance we set per body part. That last thing, the base chance, is needed for us to jack up or down the hit-chance for game balance, so even if the head is X size compared to the chest, we can adjust it.

A good example would be the antennae on the ants, they are way too small to realistically ever want to use your AP on, but we up the hit-chance on them and it just plays better. So in real-time, you almost never hit their antennae, but you can do it more in VATS. And that’s the key “behind the scenes” difference between VATS and real-time, in real-time the bullets just go-where-they-go, based on your skill, the gun, and some randomness. We don’t calculate a hit-chance and roll dice against it. In VATS, we calculate a hit-chance and roll dice. If you succeed, we send the bullet right for what you were aiming at, and if you fail, we send it off slightly, meaning it should miss, but we still let it hit whatever it hits, so you can still miss a guy’s head and end up shooting his chest.

Ok, now the “playback,” or the entertainment part of it. Based on what is going to happen with what you chose, we select a number of camera angles and various playback shots to show you, the playback is only a few seconds. They are always pretty quick, the longer playbacks are rare, and we’re the first ones to get annoyed if something repeats itself too much as we’re playing the game. We have a VATS camera section of the editor where we make cameras and can setup almost anything we want, such as a special camera that tracks a bullet in slow motion that shoots a gun out of someone’s hand, but only if they are using a specific pistol and only on a certain enemy. Pretty much anything we want to do; we can setup quick, so expect lots of various camera shots. One of things to know about the playback is it’s not a “replay”, it’s the actual game time moving forward, so what you see is really what is happening right now. The selected cameras control how fast various things move, so most of the time, you, the player, are animating in real-time, the enemy you are shooting at is moving at one-tenth speed, and the rest of the world is paused, or updating slowly. We found just playing everything at the same speed doesn’t feel or look good at all, we had to separate the three out; you, the enemy, and the rest of the world. Another thing we stumbled into, because time is moving forward, is that while you are watching an enemy react to getting shot in this great camera angle, your character can be getting mauled by another enemy. Really frustrating early on as we played it, so we do two things now: 1) depending on the camera chosen we essentially pause the rest of the world, and 2) we have a setting that dramatically reduces the damage the player takes during such an occurrence. You probably wouldn’t notice any of these things, the playbacks just look “right”, but you’d be surprised how much tweaking goes into making a two second snippet work well.

Hope that addresses the question, hard to answer that one. At some point in the future we’ll probably release even more info on body part damage and how that affects the gameplay, as that’s the key decision you are making in VATS - what body parts to shoot.


NPCS

5. Will party members be deep and interesting characters, with their own unique personalities and desires? Maybe even secret agendas? Or will they just be henchmen who do your bidding? [Calgone]

There are a very limited number of followers you can get, I would never call them “party members” because I think that leads to a different expectation. Yes, they have pretty strong and defined personalities. I’m always leery of the follower thing, because if I’m not in direct control of someone who’s supposed to be helping me, they often seem to do something stupid. That being said, I’m pretty happy with how far we’ve come with them, and the amount of things you can tell them to do.

SPECIAL

6. What skills will be in the game? And why the lower than usual stats in the Pip Boy screenshots? [Ausir]

Sorry, we’re not talking about what all the skills are yet, that will be later. In regards to the SPECIAL stats, that just happened to be the player’s data we set for the demo, and until you asked, I didn’t even notice they didn’t add up to 35, which they should. When you create your character, you get a total of 35 points, we go with the assumption you can make every stat a 5 if you want, so 5 is the “average”.

7. Are all the old traits and perks returning? Are certain perks adapted for the new combat system and how so? [anonymous]

Sorry, another area we aren’t talking about yet, but I can say yes, many old ones are returning and some new ones that work with new game systems; combat and VATS being obvious ones. I’m happy with how many old favorites have been translated, and the new ones fit in seamlessly, that is, it’s hard for me to tell the old ones from the new ones in flavor.

8. The stealing (and getting caught) system? Does it differ from Oblivions system? [kaos]

It differs a lot, in that there is no “jail”, or specific crime system with money on your head. It’s actually a lot easier for us to handle in Fallout, where it’s ok to have violence break out when you do something people don’t like and then calm down later. Also, instead of a “global” thing like Oblivion, it’s on a faction level in Fallout, which also makes it work much better. And we use factions for any type of group, so the town of Megaton has its own faction.

INTERFACE

9. Will you have the written descriptions of items or just the visual? Granted, the visuals work just fine for me, but I loved the descriptions from the earlier Fallouts about how nasty the bed looks or whatever. Will there be something like our beloved text box anywhere in the main HUD? [anonymous]

We just show the object name, like “nasty bed”, but in general, I think if we’re relying on text to describe how something looks, sounds, etc, then we screwed up not having that come across naturally with what the player is seeing. It annoys me whenever we have to resort to describing something like that, even in Oblivion, with, say a journal describing how I feel or what I am seeing…it should just happen naturally.

FACTION

10. What sort of factions & faction action/interaction/conflict/reputation can we expect? [MrHappy1991]

Going off the crime question above, we use “faction” pretty heavily, and it’s at the heart of many of our systems now, from crime to combat. So each faction knows how they feel about you and the other factions. It guides them in how they handle group combat, how they react to crimes, and how they handle the player in general.

A.I. (Artificial Intelligence)

11. What is being done to improve the AI as seen in Oblivion - wall staring, oblivious to people being killed around them, guards knowing when a character does something unlawful half a map away etc.? [anonymous]

First we’ve rewritten all the pathfinding systems, which eliminates the majority of the “NPC acts stupid” problems. We’ve also centralized the “crime” stuff into the factions, so in general, they behave better, or at least in ways that make more sense – either joining in or running away. We’ve spent a lot of time on combat AI, which is almost all-new as well, in that we are going into a game with guns and groups of enemies trying to find cover, angles of fire, and such.

MATURE CONTENT

12. Will we see anything similar to the sexual encounters possible in both of the earlier Fallout games? The first 2 games had all of that but they kept their ratings by fading out (as did Fable). There was one quest in F2 where you could lose a bet and end up as a supermutant's toy for the night (you got to keep the ball gag as a gift). Can we expect that kind of adult content? [anonymous]

Actual player goes off and has sex? Not right now, but if a situation called for it, I wouldn’t flinch at adding it with the fade-out. We did that in Daggerfall using the fade out. We actually did paintings for the scene and it never made it in Daggerfall, but I still have the paintings. In regards to adding a supermutant rendezvous with a ball gag, the marketing department has been asking for this to put on the box, but we just haven’t found the time.

13. Will Fallout 3 maintain the same amount of drug content as the earlier games or will we see more or less? [thenightgaunt]

It’s about the same as the previous games, there are various drugs, and each as its own positive effects and side-effects if you get addicted to them.

CHOICES & CONSEQUENCES

14. You have talked a lot about choices and consequences in the quest design. Are you aiming for immediate feedback, or long term (and possibly unforeseeable) consequences? In addition to moral choices, will different characters be able to tackle tasks using their different skill sets? [GhanBuriG]

It’s a bit of both, overall I think the player needs something immediate, or they don’t know if they actually accomplished anything, or felt what they just did had any meaning whatsoever. The longer term stuff is great to surprise the player with, whether it’s positive or negative, but if it’s a surprise, you need to be careful, because that can be frustrating, so you give the player another route, or simply treat the consequence as a flavor thing, and not a game-changing thing.

In regards to using different skills, most definitely, yes. We’re really pushing on that, and I think that’s the crux of the game - what skills you use, so each quest or goal of the player’s can be accomplished in different ways using different skills. Even in dialogue we’re using a lot of different skills, depending on who you’re talking to So if you’re talking to a scientist, your Science skill may give you an extra dialogue option.

15. In Fallout 1 and 2, it was entirely possible to say the wrong thing or make a mistake and have no way of fixing it. Unless you used a walkthrough, every player experienced the game differently. Will Fallout 3 be like this? Or will it be more like Oblivion where you could do almost everything in the game with one character and one play through? [El_Smacko]

It’s pretty much like Fallout 1 and 2 there, and not like Oblivion; each person’s game should be different, and you can’t do it all. In terms of dialogue, we are careful to make sure you know the route you’re taking if it’s a big game thing, like blowing up the town of Megaton, and avoid the “make a mistake” part you mentioned.

QUESTS & STORY

16. Will the structure of the Main Quest be more like Oblivion, where you had to perform a series of tasks in the right order to progress, or more like the originals where most of the progress you'd do consisted in gathering information, which was not a pre-requisite in order to end the game? [Thomas Stehle]

Closer to Fallout, in that you can actually skip entire parts of the main quest in Fallout 3 if you stumble across important information on your own. We debated that, but in the end, I think that’s a positive, and has a better feel then an artificial barrier that feels too “gamey”, and it’s something I liked about Fallout 1.

17. It's been said that the game world in Fallout 3 is smaller than that of Oblivion's. How does it compare with the number of quests you can pursue, or the amount of things you can do? [anonymous]

On the quest side it’s a lot smaller than Oblivion, but keep in mind these quests have more in them. In regards to “things you can do”, all the freeform stuff, exploring, etc, it’s about the same. Since we have a lot of little freeform activities, like “help this NPC survive” that you run into that we don’t even define as a quest anymore, it’s just an event that takes place.

18. A developer (possibly Howard, Pagliarulo or Carter) has stated that they are trying to ensure that each quest has at least two ways to complete it. Does this mean that there are two different outcomes to each quest, or simply that there are two different ways to complete the quest with the same outcome either way? [Lingwei]

These means there are multiple ways, whether that is to the same outcome, like “get X information” or multiple outcomes. Often we just do what feels natural, so if it makes sense that the outcome would be dramatically different, we do it, if not, we don’t force it.

DIALOGUE

19. Please outline in detail and give an example of an actual or hypothetical FO3 conversation: Dialogue options, what influences them, length of PC lines and NPC replies, what is the effect on the game. [GhanBuriGhan]

I’m not going to write out an entire dialogue here, but I’ll tell you what I can, and I realize for many, this is one of the key things that made Fallout, and I assure you it is for us too. If you look at Fallout 1, our dialogue trees are larger and more in-depth. I’m incredibly proud of the job our designers are doing with them, and they know they have a lot to live up to.
First, it’s all dialogue trees, like the previous Fallouts. You always see your own voice and it’s all tree based. It’s is not topic based like Oblivion.
Second, there are “speech challenges” – these are for using your Speech skill when talking to NPCs, and they are specific things you can say with a percentage chance they will succeed. This chance is based on your Speech skill, how much the NPC likes you, and the difficulty of what you’re asking for. Asking for something small is easier then asking for something big. If you fail, the person is going to like you less.
Third, your skills determine the “extra” dialogue options you get, so depending on the character you are talking to, and your own skills, you may get an extra choice based on any number of skills, karma, or perks. These choices are always successful, unlike the speech challenges.

The length of the lines is as long as we need them to be, again pretty much like Fallout 1.

CREATURES

20. How much do you plan to stick with the Universe of the original series from the point of view of living creatures? Will you have mutated ghouls and FEV-treated supermutants portrayed as living "persons" with needs, or will there simply be "ghoul-villain" and "Supermutant-enemy" who will only engage in combat? [anonymous]

We stick to it pretty close, so the Supermutants in this game definitely have an agenda. It really depends on the creature, and many come in different flavors. I guess I can say that, yes, we do have ghouls in the game, and most are used as NPCs you talk and interact with. We use them heavily. But there are also other ghouls, the Feral Ghouls, these are more “creature” like, and are aggressive.

-Bonus Questions-

NPCS

1. Will there be NPCs that you can hire/recruit to join you in your quest? If so, how many NPCs will you be limited to at once and approx. how many joinable NPCs will be available in the game? Also, will there be more detailed behavioral settings as in Fallout 2? [Nukem354]

Yes, and like I mentioned above, they have personalities, and you can give them a host of directions for how they should help you. I’m really encouraged by how cool they are. Right now we limit you to two with you at a time, because there are also other quests where you get more people with you, and we obviously need to limit it. Total number in the whole game to hire? As of today there are only six, but we’re just focused on getting them working great and being deep characters. Wouldn’t surprise me to see that number go up.

QUESTS & STORY

2. Is there going to be any character type specific quests that other types of characters will not have at all, or will all the quests be open to any type of character? [kaos]

Depends on what you define as a quest, we mostly design situations that can be approached from a number of angles, so we have “quests” with very different paths in them depending on your character.

3. Who wrote the main story, or is it a group effort? Are you not afraid that introducing a father figure limits the freedom to imagine your avatar and imposes motivation on the player that may not be in keeping with the avatar he imagines? [GhanBuriGhan]

Emil Pagliarulo, the lead designer, does the bulk of the writing. I can’t say enough good things about his stuff, it’s fantastic. We both wanted to do a father/child thing very early on, with you growing up in the Vault. We also have three other designers working on large chunks of the main quest; Kurt Kuhlmann, Alan Nanes, and Brian Chapin. In regards to pushing a persona on the player, yes, that is a concern, and we’re pretty careful not to do that. You don’t have to be nice to your father. I think you run that risk with any character driven story, the risk that the player doesn’t actually care about the characters, or isn’t motivated to follow them. You’d be surprised how much that enters our conversations about any quest, “What’s my motivation? Why do I want to do this?” The answer sometimes is “because the game told you to”, but that’s never a good answer, so we keep pushing until it feels right.

[semi-Bioshock-spoiler]

I did love how Bioshock handled the “because the game told you to” dilemma. They twist that brilliantly halfway through the game. If you haven’t played it, do so.

MAP TRAVEL & SPECIAL ENCOUNTERS

4. What exactly will the map travel look like - will we see 'Indiana Jones' style dotted line travel across a stylized map or something like Oblivion fast travel and will there be a quest compass that we can turn off and how will the random/special encounters work? [Blinzler]

Sorry, but not ready to discuss that stuff yet. I will say the feedback from the Oblivion map system was really good, and I think it struck a good balance of finding locations while wandering and quickly get back to ones you’ve been to already. Regarding the quest compass, you always need an easy way to tell the player where you want them to go, so we’ll use something similar. I don’t think it’s a question of the system, it’s a question of how often/specific you want the player pointed. Sometimes we want the location to be a mystery, sometimes we don’t.

ENDING

5. How will the endings work out? Will the 9-12 different endings be like Fallout's ending slides, or will it be a Daggerfall-esque, whoever gets the MacGuffin at the very end triggers what ending? (Frank Horrigan)

The ending is based not only on specific choices you made, some of those near the very end, but also how you acted as a whole throughout the game. So it’s permutations of a number of things, and that’s why the number of endings is still fuzzy, some of them are only slightly different than the others.

Tiene pintaza el juego, espero que arreglen los problemas de ralentizaciones que tenia Oblivion en su dia.

Saludos.

yo lo que quiero es una demo xD .
en pc me lo pillo fijo, en consola ya veremos que tal en ps3 y 360.



5 estrellitas

Diseño y desarrollo del Pip-Boy Modelo 3000
Istvan Pely
Lead Artist

En Fallout 3 hemos tratado de crear una interfaz funcional, única y divertida. El núcleo de la misma es el Pip-Boy, un elemento clásico en la serie y objeto importante del juego, además de ser el método principal de interacción del jugador con su personaje. Esta sección del diario te permite conocer el proceso desarrollado por el equipo de artistas, diseñadores y programadores para crear e implementar el Pip-Boy 3000.



Diseño conceptual
Los parámetros básicos del diseño industrial de este equipo son sencillos. Se decidió en un principio que el dispositivo estaría acoplado al brazo del personaje del jugador y que contendría algún tipo de visualizador. Junto al diseño del Vault Suit, el Pip-Boy fue una de las primeras cosas que nuestro artista conceptual y genio creativo, Adam Adamowicz, empezó a esbozar. Páginas y páginas de dibujos describiendo cada pequeño detalle, para poder llegar a algo interesante y convincente en lo que a realismo se refiere.

La inspiración vino tanto del diseño comercial del producto, como del diseño industrial militar de los años 50 hasta los primeros 60. Elementos de objetos tales como televisores portátiles antiguos y radios del ejército se fueron de algún modo estudiando e incorporando. Como con todos los diseños industriales de Fallout 3 en el producto final se buscó el equilibrio entre el realismo, estilo retro futurista y lo práctico. El realismo no es un factor determinante, pero es esencial algo de veracidad dentro de los parámetros del universo de Fallout.

La tecnología en el mundo de Fallout 3 es de algún modo paradójica; ya que es tremendamente avanzada y a la vez descaradamente primitiva. Algunos avances técnicos que damos por descontado en nuestra historia, o bien no fueron ciertos, o se desarrollaron por un camino muy diferente. La miniaturización es un ejemplo de ello. El hecho de que se pudiera fabricar un artilugio con la capacidad del Pip-Boy es sorprendente, pero no deja de ser un armatoste. Contiene un tubo de rayos catódicos monocromo, no hay pantallas planas LCD/Plasma/OLED. Su carcasa es de una aleación metálica, no de plástico. Y es una pesadilla ergonómicamente hablando. Pero todas estas cualidades le dan carácter, y fueron aspectos importantes en el diseño, ya que el Pip-Boy es casi un personaje.

Después de muchas repeticiones el diseño quedó reducido a un aspecto básico. Cuando los dibujos de Adam empiezan a ser demasiado parecidos sabemos que hemos llegado al diseño más probable. El dispositivo se acopla en el brazo del usuario, se ajusta con tornillos (con lo cual no se sale con frecuencia). Contiene el antes mencionado visualizador CRT, protegido para evitar deslumbramientos del abrasador sol de Wasteland. Hay varios botones y tiradores de tamaño ligeramente más grande para facilitar el manejo con guantes. La parrilla indica que el circuito del interior puede estar bastante caliente y que requiere una ventilación adecuada. Observa también la mano con guante con una caja de control en la parte de atrás, tiene un tirador grande y alambre en espiral que conecta con la unidad principal. El tirador es el mando principal para que el usuario manipule el cursor en pantalla. El diseño general no es demasiado exagerado, ya que se trata de maquinaria de campaña resistente.

En esta fase pasamos a construir las estructuras. A menudo preparamos borradores de dibujos tipo plano detallado antes de pasar el diseño a un artista de producción, pero en ocasiones se deja el borrador para que haya flexibilidad a la hora de experimentar en 3D.



Creación del modelo
Una vez que ya sabíamos qué aspecto iba a tener el Pip-Boy, era hora de construir el modelo que aparecería en el juego. Como con la mayoría de los elementos del juego basados en hardware, el artista comienza con la versión de alta poligonización de la estructura. Esto es normalmente lo más divertido, ya que no tiene que preocuparse de los límites de polígonos. El objetivo es perfeccionar el diseño en 3D, dando cuerpo a cada detalle. Esta es nuestra maqueta virtual, algo que el equipo creativo puede estudiar y comentar para que el artista la ajuste hasta dar en el clavo. El resultado es en esencia cercano al concepto de los dibujos, pero se ha retocado para tener mejor aspecto en 3D, teniendo en cuenta factores como el campo de visión de la cámara, problemas de tamaño real de pantalla, etc.

Entonces se construyen las estructuras de baja poligonización. Sin entrar en demasiados detalles del desarrollo gráfico, usamos el modelo inicial de alta poligonización para generar una serie de mapas normales que proporcionen todos los detalles del original con la construcción eficiente de estructuras del modelo del juego final.

La textura del dispositivo era fundamental. Sin duda no es nuevo cuando el jugador lo consigue y no se construyen modelos nuevos desde hace años ya. Sin embargo, se han parcheado y mantenido un número limitado de ejemplares anteriores a la guerra. Así que el acabado está bastante desgastado, descascarillado y arañado. Fueron necesarios varios intentos para desarrollar un esquema de colores que quedara bien, pero al final acabamos con algo muy similar a las interfaces de Pip-Boy extraídas de juegos anteriores de la serie, con impresiones y todo.

El toque final fue añadir una capa de mugre y manchas de huellas dactilares a la pantalla.


http://fallout.bethsoft.com/images/vault/diaries/pipboy-screen_s.jpg

Interfaz de usuario textual
Diseñar el contenido de la visualización en pantalla del Pip-Boy 3000 fue todo un reto. La interfaz de usuario tenía un montón de restricciones debido a la naturaleza del hardware diseñado. Nos fijamos en ordenadores viejos de los años 70 y principios de los 80, cuando los sistemas operativos estaban basados en texto, las interfaces no eran tan gráficas, las pantallas eran de baja resolución y el color era un lujo del que muchos sistemas carecían. El Apple // fue la influencia principal, con su monitor con tubo de rayos catódicos de fósforo verde y escaneo raster, y un procesador de 1 Mhz al que le era difícil seguir el ritmo de su propio framebuffer. La interfaz de usuario tenía que ser sencilla. Sin ventanas que se sobrepusieran, con pocos iconos y una animación básica.

Con estos parámetros, se diseñó una IU basada en texto fundamentalmente. El único elemento iconográfico sería la representación de 1 bit de los distintos Vault Boys. Estos iconos aparecen en los menús proporcionando imágenes cómicas y descriptivas que acompañan al resto de datos además de a cada elemento del juego. Natalia Smirnova ilustra cada icono, una tarea ingente dada la gran cantidad de variaciones existentes. Parte de la diversión es simplemente desplazarse por los menús para encontrar cada ejemplo de Vault Boy.

Aparte de los Vault Boys, la interfaz es principalmente texto y números, con paréntesis para segmentar visualmente las secciones del diseño. A pesar de la gran cantidad de información que se necesita mostrar dentro de los límites del tamaño real de pantalla, la IU mínima y fuente de tamaño reducido dan nitidez y funcionalidad, sin adornos estorbando los datos que el jugador necesita.

La mayor batalla creativa fue mantener la pantalla del Pip-Boy monocroma, ya que añadir una pizca de color es a menudo una solución fácil para problemas de utilidad. Pero en el diseño de una IU el color es algo de lo que no se debe depender, y además hubiera acabado con la pureza del concepto. Así que encontramos soluciones mejores, que con frecuencia nos obligaban a mejorar los diseños.

Implementación
Un diseño no se convierte en interfaz hasta que un equipo de programadores no entra en escena. El equipo está formado por Eric Deitrick, Ricky González y Dan Teitel, un grupo cuyo fuerte es trasladar un montón de conceptos de IU a menús funcionales. Es una tarea compleja si se tiene en cuenta que ninguna interfaz pasa de concepto a realidad sin que haya gran cantidad de ajustes y perfeccionamiento. Una buena interfaz debe desarrollarse a medida que se usa y prueba, y la mejor idea sobre el papel puede no funcionar hasta que no ha pasado por ese proceso. Afortunadamente, la dinámica interdisciplinaria entre arte, diseño y tecnología es estrecha y funciona bien. Esto es de incalculable valor cuando el artista pide al programador mover un botón "3 píxeles hacia arriba, 2 a la izquierda" hasta que todo queda perfectamente alienado. O cuando se desecha por completo una pantalla si surge una idea mejor.

Sabíamos desde el principio que queríamos que el Pip-Boy fuera un objeto del juego, en el brazo del personaje del jugador y no fingir las transiciones a los menús. Al pulsar el botón de menú el brazo del personaje se levanta y la pantalla completa es un primer plano del dispositivo. Nunca cambia a un modo o modelo alternativo, el efecto es perfecto y sorprendente. Sin embargo, para reproducir realmente la ilusión, la pantalla del Pip-Boy debía tener un tubo de imagen antiguo convincente. Orin Tresnjak jugó un papel decisivo diseñando un método para proyectar los menús en la geometría curvada de la pantalla, en lugar de simplemente recubrir geometría 3D con gráficos de la IU. Además, creó una serie de filtros de imagen y efectos que transformaron la IU en una reproducción totalmente auténtica de un monitor de Apple //, en el que nos inspiramos. Líneas raster, ligero parpadeo, pérdida del control de la imagen vertical al cambiar de modo, son ejemplos de que no se ha escatimado en el nivel de detalle del Pip-Boy 3000 para convertirlo de simple objeto a elemento virtual que parece y se siente tan real y tangible como un objeto físico.

El Pip-Boy 3000 aún no se ha finalizado. Se sigue trabajando en él y desarrollándolo para mejorarlo, añadiendo nuevas funciones y perfeccionando las que ya tiene. El resultado final esperado es que cuando el jugador active el Pip-Boy, la inmersión no se vea interrumpida. Que no se deje de jugar para mirar algo en un menú, sino que su personaje simplemente se ha parado y ha mirado para abajo para enredar un rato con su asistente analógico personal, continuando en Wasteland.

Varios
Si el jugador está en una sala oscura, solamente el brillo verde de la pantalla ilumina el Pip-Boy. El modelo se ilumina de modo realista según el entorno en que se encuentre. De hecho, el Pip-Boy puede servir como fuente de luz cuando no hay otra disponible. Su pantalla se puede cambiar a un modo superbrillante especial, iluminando a su alrededor con un resplandor verde. Esto puede ser muy útil en algunas ocasiones.
En una fase más avanzada del diseño añadimos un indicador de radiación en la parte superior izquierda de la cubierta del Pip-Boy. La aguja vibra hacia arriba cuando el jugador absorbe radiación. Teniendo en cuenta que la radiación es un factor fundamental para la supervivencia en Wasteland, queríamos asegurarnos de que el nivel de radiación era siempre fácilmente visible, independientemente de la pantalla en la que se encuentre el jugador.
Cuando el Pip-Boy ya estaba en funcionamiento en el juego, faltaba algo. La animación era dinámica, los efectos de pantalla fantásticos, pero en general era demasiado estático, como si el tiempo se detuviera. De hecho, el tiempo se detenía, pero por cuestiones de jugabilidad, aunque no era visualmente deseable. La solución era añadirle un ligero movimiento constante al Pip-Boy, la sensación de que el personaje del jugador continuaba respirando, de que el brazo no estaba totalmente firme. Josh Jones, nuestro jefe de animación, invirtió mucho tiempo ajustando el movimiento para que fuera sutil y aparente, pero en absoluto molesto. No queríamos que el jugador tuviera que perseguir los botones con el cursor.
¿Cansado de tanto verde? Se puede cambiar el color de la pantalla del Pip-Boy 3000. Quizá a ámbar, como el antiguo PC Dynalogic Hyperion. Pero entonces ya no sería Fallout, ¿verdad?

Pete Hines, desarrollador de Bethesda encargado de Fallout 3 ha anunciado en una reciente entrevista que el esperado RPG de nueva generación presentará hasta 12 finales distintos. "La larga aventura concluirá dependiendo de las acciones determinadas y conductas que el jugador haya llevado a cabo durante todo el desarrollo del juego. Estanos preparando hasta doce finales distintos y muy bien diferenciados entre sí", señalaba Hines.

El desarrollador ha hablado también de las grandes diferencias del título con el exitoso Oblivion, señalando que en Fallout 3 cada nueva acción que desempeñemos abrirá un abanico de posibilidades con opciones radicalmente distintas, "cosa que no pasaba tan firmemente en Oblivion".

Recordemos que Fallout 3 es la tercera entrega del aclamado RPG futurista y pos-apocalíptico, que aíun no tiene fecha oficial pero llegará el año que viene a PC, Xbox 360 y PlayStation 3 de la mano de Bethesda, abandonando así su antigua desarrolladora, Black Isle.

FUENTE:MERISTATION


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ENTREVISTA A PETE HINES EN IGN
UK, November 8, 2007 - Considering it's still a year from release, Fallout 3 has already enjoyed a lot of critical acclaim. Indeed, many branded it game of the show at this year's E3 and, since then, the demo has been universally lauded by anyone fortunate enough to see.

As Bethesda prepares to ramp up its development schedule to ensure Fallout 3 meets expectations when its released towards the end of next year, Pete Hines - vice president of public relations - took one last opportunity to talk to IGN about what we can expect from the epic RPG.

IGN: What was Bethesda's goal when it first acquired the Fallout licence?

Pete Hines: For a while we had talked internally about what else besides the Elder Scrolls we'd like to do. We could keep doing the Elder Scrolls but doing a game more than once every four years might be a good idea, so we sat down and thought, 'Well if we could do any game we'd do Fallout'. At the time, no one was doing anything with the licence so we got our guys to find out if it was available and it was. So we got the licence and felt it was a good fit for us and the kind of game we like to make - big, open-ended RPGs with lots of player choice. But at the same time it was different than The Elder Scrolls stuff.




Doing something similar - something classic fantasy - wasn't an option so we had to go in a different direction, and post-apoc is a nice 180-turn from everything else we've done. It's a different setting and it's a completely different character system, but at the same time it has a lot of similarities such as big, open-ended worlds and so forth. So it felt like a good fit and folks on the team all agreed it was something we'd love to do. Ultimately, you have to make games you're excited about and have good ideas about what you'd like to do and move things forward. Fallout was a good fit for what we were looking for.

IGN: The Fallout franchise has a huge die-hard following. How daunting has the task of living up to expectation been?

Pete Hines: Picking up where somebody else left off is always daunting, fan-base or not. Taking somebody else's work that you respect and then doing what you feel is right by them - Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky, all those guys - is not easy. More than anything, we want those guys to know that we're taking care of what they started. So it's definitely a daunting task but we knew going in what we were getting into, that it wasn't going to be easy and there were going to be lots of questions. We knew people would ask 'Are these the right guys to do this?' but we felt strong enough about Fallout as a franchise and now that we own it our approach to Fallout 3 is as if we'd made Fallout 1 and 2, because that's the only thing we can do. We can't continue to walk around on eggshells and worry if it's going to be okay for us to do this or that - it has to be and we're great believers of reinvention in everything we do.

We're not just going to reiterate off of the last thing we've done, we're going to stop and look at what we've done to work out what we're going to change and what's going to stay the same. We're taking the same approach with Fallout that we did with Oblivion and Morrowind and everything else. Which is to say there are a few sacred cows that can't be changed, such as the character system and the canon and the lore, but everything else we need to look at and say, 'How should this work, where should it be set?'. All of those things were up for grabs and some things have changed while others have stayed the same.

IGN: Has the original Fallout team been involved at all?

Pete Hines: There's nobody from the original team on the project. We have spoken to a few of the guys who worked on the original but it would be improper of me to talk any more about that. Those guys are all off doing something else.


IGN: It's well known that a lot of people at Bethesda are big Fallout fans, which is great because they know the franchise inside out. But is there concern that you're making a game aimed squarely at Fallout purists?

Pete Hines: Our basic philosophy, as silly as it may sound, is that we want to make games that we like to play. That was our big thing on Morrowind and on Oblivion - what kind of Elder Scrolls game would we want to play next, what would be the features of that game, what would it looks like, what would it play like and so on, and that's the game we went out and made. That's the same process we went through with Fallout 3; it goes back to the point that you have to make what you're passionate about. If you're trying to make a game that's just a feature set or a group of things that somebody else believes in but it's not what you believe in and it's just designed to make a target audience happy, then it's not something you're going to be passionate about. We've got to do what we feel most strongly about, about what we're really excited about doing and trying, and that will ultimately allow us to make the best game that we can make. Hopefully it will appeal to a lot of people - Oblivion seems to have done pretty well, people seem to enjoy and like it, but you can't think about which group of people you're going to please - that hundred, those thousands. We're just trying to make the best role-playing game we can

IGN: What are the main inspirations behind the game?

Pete Hines: There are a lot of inspirations behind the game but obviously the biggest is Fallout 1. We really used that as the hallmark for what it is we're trying to create in terms of an experience, because you don't need to go beyond Fallout 1 to figure out what the characters need to be like, what the dialogue needs to be like, what humour works and what doesn't… The tone and that Americana vibe are all in the first Fallout, so when you're building a sequel to something as beloved and as good as the original you don't need lots of other sources.

At the same time there are a lot of books and movies that have post-nuclear, post-apocalyptic settings. I think one of the things that is probably true is that this game is a bit darker. It definitely has more of vibe of 'this world is really f**ked up' and things aren't going well. Humanity still exists but it is scraping out an existence, so it's a bit of a harsher take than we've seen in previous Fallout games. That's not to say that's all it is about but I think we honed in on that as being important to us, to really capture the harshness of the world and the struggle to survive. There are lots of influences for that kind of thing, whether it's Mad Max or Cormick McCarthy, lots of stuff.




IGN: What are biggest differences between the original Fallouts and Fallout 3?

Pete Hines: It's really hard to say because those games are done and this one isn't. From a design philosophy standpoint we're still trying to stay true to a lot of thing that those did, in terms of the kind of moral choices you have to make, the kind of characters you interact with, the memorable locations… All the things that you experienced in the game, whether it was the people or the places or the things that you did and the decisions you made. Those are all things we're trying to capture again in Fallout 3.

There's probably nit-picky, little stuff that may be different but at the end of the day there are an awful lot of similarities. When you play the game, the intent is that you feel like you did when you played Fallout 1. Y'know, it's going to be a bit different because we're using the next iteration of our Radiant AI, so we've got people moving around more and doing stuff, plus there's Havoc, so the gameplay experience changes because you're introducing all these different things, but from a design standpoint it's all about that gameplay experience - what is the player doing, what is the player feeling, how are you developing your character and what are the consequences of all that.

Atmosphere plays a big part in the game. Has getting it right been a big focus for the team?

Pete Hines: From an atmosphere standpoint we've been working on Fallout 3 since 2004, so it's already a game we've been working on for over three years, which is a long time. I think Todd Howard [executive producer], Emil Pagliarulo [lead designer] and Istvan Pely [lead artist] have worked very hard in terms of the visuals of the game and what's acceptable and what's not. So part of the atmosphere is established by the technology we're able to use when we go into a place like Megaton, the denseness of that environment and the level of detail is very immersive. You're very much immersed in this 1950s, future-retrotech world and that sets this tone of 'What was the world like before it went to hell? What was their idea of futuristic tech?'. Istvan is a stickler for detail and everything has to be perfect - every button, every knob and every switch has to have a purpose. So when something is designed he's always asking 'what does it do, why is that there and does it need to be there?' There has to be a rhyme and a reason for everything in the game so when the player interacts with something it feels natural.

That includes the Pip-Boy device. We spent a lot of time getting that right and it's not just a screen, it's a device you wear on your wrist and when you pull it up you see your arm on the screen. You see them on everyone else's wrists in the Vault too, so we wanted them to look and feel realistic. It's that kind of detail and effort we put into making those things look and feel realistic that helps with the atmosphere.


As for the humour, it comes across in the 1950's Americana vibe, that sense of optimism that when the nuclear bombs come falling to Earth your family will be okay in the Vaults, and that there's a brighter future underground. Vault Boy himself is the epitome of this optimism and adds just the right kind of humour at the right moments. We don't really use jokes, it's more about the juxtaposition of optimism versus the environment and the world that you see. It's like, 'There's a happy poster but this all is all f**ked up. Those two things shouldn't go together!'.

IGN: Can you talk a bit more about the melee system in the game?

Pete Hones: We're still working on and sorting out the melee system. The gist of it is that it works just like ranged combat using a gun. You can use VATs [targeting system] using a melee weapon and the idea is that when you get up close with someone with a melee weapon you do pretty significant amounts of damage, because it's more than likely you'll be shot at when you're running towards the enemy. So the idea is that when you get up close you can do serious damage, providing you're any good with that weapon. The reverse of that is true as well, that if someone with a melee weapon gets close to you then you can take a lot of damage. In fact, it's viable to play the whole game using only a melee weapon - you can do it and be really good at it. It's another class of weapon that has its own custom weapon that you can make and it fits into the mould of all the other weapons in terms of being a viable choice to play through the whole game with.

IGN: How big is Fallout 3 in terms of scale?

Pete Hines: It's definitely smaller than Oblivion, but then Oblivion was so huge you can go smaller and still have a big game. I don't actually know how long it would take to walk across the world, nobody has bothered to do that yet. Part of it is we're still building up the world - it's one thing to walk across a flat piece of land but then when you add in terrain and obstacles it's a different matter entirely.

Also, we're rendering even further out into the distance than before so, while you may be crossing the same distance as in Oblivion, it feels much shorter, because you can see where you're going to from where you start. So it's smaller but there will be tons of places to explore.




IGN: Will there be fast travel options to make the task of moving around quicker and easier?

Pete Hines: There'll be some kind of map system that will allow you to get from one place to another. We're always going to keep this idea that you've got to get to a place first, you can't just jump around the world without having explored it first. But yes, they'll be some kind of system allowing you to move from one space to another.

IGN: Can you give any clue as to what the Enclave are up to?

Pete Hines: No.

IGN: And are we likely to see the return of familiar characters such as Dogmeat?

Pete Hines: We're not talking about that yet. It's certainly a possibility but who and how is to be decided.

IGN: With just under a year left before the game comes out, how close do you think you are to reaching what you initially wanted to achieve with the game?

Pete Hines: For us, the first big step is getting everything into the game and in a game this size that's no small undertaking. You spend a good bit of the development cycle just building out all of these giant world spaces and getting them all populated with stuff. We love clutter - that feeling of walking into a place and there's stuff everywhere that makes it feel like a real space. So we still have a little way to go before we reach that point.

Then it comes to the most important part for us, which is playing the game in some kind of completed state where everything is in and we're able to go through and play it. We're very big believers in that part of the process being the most critical. It doesn't matter what the design document says in terms of how systems are going to work, it's all the people on the team who play the game and provide feedback that ultimately decide whether stuff is fun or not. We've been known to make some pretty big changes during this process - add things or remove things because they're not fun or they're a distraction. So we try not to be slaves to the design document - we play it to see what works and what doesn't.

IGN: Are there plans for downloadable content to keep the Fallout 3 ticking over, much like Oblivion's expansion packs?

Pete Hines: The big thing for us is that we've got to finish the main game before we spend any time working on additional content. Right now our content folks have more than enough work to do just to get stuff added to the game and then tweaking it, adding new quests… All that stuff. Until we get past that part of the process where we're no longer adding content we don't even think about what else we'd like to do. It's a possibility - it's certainly something we've talked and thought about, but there's nobody working on any downloadable content right now. Maybe when we have content people who aren't working stuff we'll think about new stuff but that won't be until right at the end of the development process.


Fallout is a game with a much smaller scope than Oblivion. It doesn't have nearly as many quests or characters, but it's designed to be replayed more. You can't actually get to and see everything in the game on one play through because of the way bits of the game open up or close off as you play through, depending on the factions you align with and the quests you do. So you've got to replay through the game and make different choices to see all there is to see. Take the town of Megaton as an example - if you choose to blow it up it's gone forever, as is everything that's in it, so you'll have to play through the game again and not blow it up to see what other choices are available.

IGN: When can we expect to see new stuff on Fallout 3?

Pete Hines: We're planning to show some new stuff off early next year. I'm not really sure what we'll show but it'll be something new but I'm not sure what. Right now we're in the process of putting stuff into the game, building out the world and adding all the content in there. So until we get all that in there and start to go back through and polish it all off to a final level I have no idea what we'll be able to talk about come February or March.


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DOTE GANADORA DEL CONCURSO 10ª ANIVERSASIO DE FALLOUT

Grim Reaper’s Sprint,’ which restores all your action points whenever you kill an opponent

NUEVAS IMAGENES FALLOUT 3

SCANS

Madre mía, qué pasada!

Acabo de enterarme de su salida, y ya estoy ansioso por probarlo!

Esta guapa la caratula. Espero que este a la altura de los otros fallout (aunque el tactics no me gusto mucho). Para mi la saga fallout son los mejores videojuegos que he jugado en PC la de veces que me los habre pasado. Esperemos que el nuevo sistema que implementen respeten el espiritu de los antiguos fallout y espero que por ser politicamente correctos no censuren nada del juego

Perfil de la facción: Brotherhood of Steel

Cómo se puede adorar la tecnología?

¿Simplemente rezándole a un becerro de oro cibernético? ¿O quizá haya que entender a “dios” como una suerte de inteligencia artificial sensible que exige obediencia ciega a cambio de tratos y favores?

O a lo mejor, sólo a lo mejor, la raza humana ya haya respondido a esta cuestión: la tecnología se adora, simple y llanamente, a través de la obsesión y la consecución. Estamos dominados por la tecnología: desde la electricidad imprescindible en nuestras ciudades, hasta la ciencia necesaria para fabricar las medicinas antidepresivas que nos recetan. Y la religiosidad con la que nos sentamos cada domingo frente al televisor de alta definición para ver el fútbol es otra prueba más de que hoy día, más que nunca, la tecnología es nuestra deidad preferida.

Imagina todos esos impulsos, todas esas adicciones que todos los seres humanos compartimos y asóciala a un grupo determinado de personas. Imagina la obsesión y el fervor, la infinita necesidad por la superación tecnológica, y la inutilidad de alcanzar dichas metas.

Imagina, si quieres, Brotherhood of Steel.



En Fallout 3, Brotherhood of Steel es una de las facciones más importantes e influyentes que encontrarás. Y si bien es cierto que se trata de una organización militar, los valores de Brotherhood, y su estructura jerárquica, son en realidad similares una orden de caballeros medievales. Como los Templarios de la antigüedad, desde su punto de vista, los miembros de Brotherhood of Steel son puros, son simplemente la verdadera esencia humana en un mundo lleno de corrupción, tanto física como moral.

Pero lo que realmente les define y motiva es su adoración por la tecnología. Para un paladín de Brotherhood of Steel, el Power Armor es su escudo, y el Super Sledge su martillo de guerra. Un escriba no combatiente, es más un científico que un erudito, y usa los ordenadores de igual modo que un monje de la Edad Media la pluma y la tinta.

Si bien a los miembros de Brotherhood of Steel no les basta con usar cualquier tipo de aparato tecnológico. La existencia de la organización está basada en la adquisición de tecnología. Lo que tengan no les basta. ¿Sus mejores equipos? Podrían ser aún mejores. Aunque esta búsqueda insaciable suponga quitarles tecnología de las manos a otros que podrían aprovecharla, eso a los miembros de Brotherhood of Steel les es indiferente.

Así que a nadie sorprendió en Brotherhood of Steel que el consejo dirigente, con base en el sur de California, decidiera enviar un contingente de soldados hasta la Costa Este, con dos objetivos principales:

Rebuscar en las ruinas de Washington D.C., antigua capital de la nación, y recuperar cualquier tecnología avanzada. Después de todo, D.C. albergaba al Pentágono, la central del Departamento de Defensa de los Estados Unidos. ¿Quién sabe qué secretos o equipamiento quedaron allí olvidados?
Investigar los informes de actividad super-mutante en la zona. ¿Podrían estar relacionadas de algún modo estas criaturas con las que huyeron hacia el este tras la destrucción del “Master”? (como se ve al final de Fallout 1). ¿O esos super-mutantes eran algo completamente distinto?
Así que un pequeño contingente de soldados de Brotherhood of Steel, dirigidos por un paladín idealista llamado Owyn Lyons (acompañado por su amigo y asesor tecnológico el escriba Rothchild, además de su hija de siete años, Sarah) salió del búnker de Lost Hills en California, e inició el largo camino hacia el este, hacia la antigua Washington D.C.




Cuando el grupo llegó a Capital Wasteland, no tardó mucho descubrir cosas interesantes.

El Pentágono, como se temían, había sido destruido, pero sus sótanos permanecían intactos y contenían tecnología y armamento anterior a la guerra suficiente para que las fuerzas de Lyons lucharan indefinidamente (una vez destruidos los robots de defensa). Pero había algo más… una maravilla tecnológica que, si se recuperaba, podría ayudar a Brotherhood a recuperar una fuerza y reputación en retroceso durante años.

El descubrimiento fue significativo para que el paladín Lyons se ganara el ascenso a elder, y recibiera nueva directriz de sus superiores: establecer una nueva base de Brotherhood en Capital Wasteland y continuar la búsqueda de tecnología avanzada oculta en las ruinas de la capital.

Lyons aceptó encantado su nuevo reto y fundó Citadel, construida bajo las ruinas del Pentágono. Era una fortaleza que Brotherhood of Steel necesitaba desesperadamente y que se apresuraron a fortificar gracias a su otro gran descubrimiento: super-mutantes.

Lyons y Brotherhood of Steel no tardaron en encontrar super-mutantes, principalmente porque no tuvieron que hacerlo: los super-mutantes les descubrieron a ellos. En Capital Wasteland, en particular en las ruinas urbanas del centro de D.C., era imposible evitar a los super-mutantes.

Por ello, para las gentes de Capital Wasteland, Brotherhood of Steel era la respuesta a sus plegarias. Dispersos, hambrientos y muy desorganizados, habían vivido desde ha mucho tiempo con la amenaza constante de la muerte o captura por parte de los super-mutantes. Elder Lyons y sus valientes caballeros y paladines cambiaron todo eso. Por primera vez, se puso freno a la oleada super-mutante. Las ruinas del D.C. seguían estando controladas por ellos y eran inhabitables, pero el número de incursiones contra asentamientos de las afueras había descendido significativamente. La vida seguía siendo dura e injusta, pero al menos ahora las gentes de Capital Wasteland tenían la oportunidad de luchar, y eso tenían que agradecérselo al elder Lyons y Brotherhood.




Luchar contra los super-mutantes, simplemente mantenerles a raya, podría haber bastado a los lugareños, pero para Brotherhood, había muchas preguntas sin respuesta. ¿Cómo se habían creado estos super-mutantes?¿Por qué estaban capturando a los habitantes de Capital Wasteland?¿Adónde se los llevaban? Conocer estas respuestas se convirtió en la obsesión de Owyn Lyons.

Los años pasaban, pero de un modo que nadie podría haber previsto. La importancia de Brotherhood of Steel para las gentes de Capital Wasteland fue algo inesperado para Lyons. Y tampoco era algo que preocupara a sus superiores en California. Su nuevo elder tenía una misión clara: conseguir tecnologías avanzadas en las ruinas de Washington D.C. y sus alrededores. Encontrar el origen de la amenaza super-mutante y destruirla también era fundamental, por supuesto. Pero eso no debería llevar mucho tiempo… ¿verdad? Sin duda, Brotherhood of Steel podría ocuparse de un puñado de super-mutantes.¿Qué dificultad podía tener localizar y eliminar su origen? El objetivo principal de Lyons era, fundamentalmente, la adquisición de tecnología. Los super mutantes estaban en segundo plano. Ese era el tema de todos los mensajes de los líderes de Brotherhood of Steel en California.

Pero el elder Owyn Lyons tenía otra prioridad, una que consideraba más importante que su misión original o cualquier otra orden recibida desde entonces: la protección de los inocentes en Capital Wasteland. Por ello, Lyons comunicó a sus superiores que continuaría su búsqueda de tecnología cuando lo considerara oportuno, y que no sacrificaría a las personas que dependían de la valentía y fortaleza de Brotherhood of Steel.




Los pasillos de Lost Hills en California eran un hervidero de rumores y especulaciones. ¿Acaso Owyn Lyons se había convertido en un "nativo" al poner a los habitantes del D.C. por encima de los intereses de Brotherhood? ¿O por fin un elder de Brotherhood mostraba un comportamiento desinteresado que serviría de modelo para toda la orden? Entre la espada y la pared, los elders dirigentes tomaron la única decisión posible: seguirían reconociendo a elder Lyons como líder de Brotherhood of Steel, y Citadel como su base en D.C. Pero suspendían cualquier tipo de apoyo de la Costa Oeste. Si Lyons quería llevar a cabo su propio plan en la Costa Este, tendría que hacerlo solo.

Y eso es lo que el inquebrantable elder hizo. La división de Brotherhood of Steel de Capital Wasteland, con base en Citadel, se había convertido en su creación: todavía afiliada a Brotherhood of Steel en la Costa Oeste, y regida por sus leyes y tradiciones; pero totalmente independiente.

La mayoría de los soldados del elder Lyons apoyaban su dedicación a los habitantes de Capital Wasteland, y estaban orgullosos del compromiso de sus líderes con el honor y el heroísmo. Pero algunos mostraron su desacuerdo a voz en grito y agresivamente. Creían que abandonando la misión principal de Brotherhood of Steel de adquirir nuevas tecnologías, elder Lyons había abandonado los valores que definían a la orden.

Una noche, los disidentes abandonaron Citadel, fugándose con armas, Power Armor y otras tecnologías y equipamientos. Esto fue, sin duda, el momento más difícil de Owyn Lyons. Se había convertido en un hombre compasivo y comprensivo, y no podía evitar entender a los que se habían marchado: él había abandonado la misión principal de Brotherhood. Lo reconoció y se responsabilizó de ello. Algunos de los caballeros y paladines que se habían marchado habían sido compañeros de armas durante años. Juntos habían compartido victorias y derrotas, dolor y alegría. Pero para los leales al elder Lyons, ese abandono del deber y robo de tecnología fue un acto de cobardía y traición. A Lyons no le quedaba otra opción: tildó de "proscritos" a los disidentes, traidores de Brotherhood of Steel, sería un nombre que llevarían por siempre como símbolo de orgullo, de la diferencia que marcaba entre ellos y los "soldados aduladores" de Lyons.





Ese es el estado de Brotherhood of Steel cuando tú, el jugador, entras en acción, en el año 2277. La orden sigue estando dedicada a la protección de las personas. Sus miembros son duros, leales y están movidos por el honor… y además se las apañan como pueden.

La hija de elder Lyons, Sarah, ya es una mujer, y una de las luchadoras más aguerridas de Brotherhood. De hecho, es el único miembro que ha alcanzado el ilustre rango de centinela, y ahora lidera un pelotón de élite, Lyons Pride.

La guerra con los super mutantes, un conflicto que ha continuado incesantemente durante más de 20 años, se recrudece, y Brotherhood se resiente por la longitud del conflicto. Lyons se ha visto obligado a reclutar lugareños, al no recibir refuerzos de la Costa Oeste, y los resultados no han sido brillantes: la mayoría de los reclutas son impacientes, no están cualificados, o ambas cosas, y por lo tanto sus posibilidades de supervivencia son atroces. Tan bajas que, no en vano, en Capital Wasteland se dice: únete a Brotherhood of Steel y en una semana dejarás de existir.

Los proscritos han aumentado su poder desde que abandonaron Citadel y han vuelto a dedicar sus vidas a lo que consideran la única misión de Brotherhood of Steel: la adquisición de nuevas tecnologías.

Esto no es lo que el elder Owyn Lyons esperaba de su vida, no es como había imaginado que se hablaría de su liderazgo en los anales de la historia. Así es la carrera de un elder de Brotherhood of Steel.

Hay otra pregunta sin respuesta. Cuando los escribas de Brotherhood of Steel registren los acontecimientos futuros, ¿qué dirán de ti?

Imágenes de scans de OXM












--Basic Points-- (They played a January 31st model of the game on Feb. 1) 6 pages - 12 in-game pictures (Not including the front-page picture shown twice in magazine)

-Beginning of game-
*You start out as a baby where the "Gene Projector" tells your basics in appearance as your father is "inspecting" you. (Choose whether you're Male/Female). So the Projector projects what you will look like in later years (I think 19), and the doctor is revealed as your dad (And as already stated, he will look somewhat like an older you).
-The dad will wear a surgical mask initially so you can't tell his looks till after your decide your appearance with the Gene Projector.
-As already stated, this is in Vault 101
-In this scene, it says you can press A to cry (360 version obviously)

*You start out the game a year later where you can press A to... say "Dada" (with the A button). You get a book called "You're SPECIAL!", where you chose your characters main stats (Choose from Stength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. I think this has already been gone over). It says choose wisely on stats as, "upgrade oppurtunities will be rare."
-You can also walk, open the playpen gates, jump on the bed. (Obviously a tutorial. I mean like who jumps on a bed /tripledot)

*The game then goes towards your tenth birthday party (Jumping on beds and parties?!? Vault 101 is a post-modern Frat House). Here it states, "you'll learn social interaction with the party guests." You'll also receive the Pip-Boy 3000 wrist computer (health and inventory interface in game), a BB gun with "combat training at the shooting range".

*At age 16 you'll take GOAT (Generalized Occupational Aptitude Test); here you'll determine your future as it's a personality test with situations. (I guess like the intro of Morrowind? interesting)
-An example is given stating, "if you're hypothetically called on to eliminate rad roaches from the cellar, would you smash them with a pipe or shoot them with a gun?".
-Later states that 3 skills will get a boost. "the three you're going to focus on that get a big boost at the start. Every time you level up, you get points to spend on improving any of your skills, so that's what is increasing as the game goes along." (Pete Hines)

*At age 19, the game start's official on your quest in Washington, D.C. circa 2277. As stated before, your person feels pressure by the Vault Overseer deciding to go find Pa.


-Other stuff-

*Mentions several guns: Chinese Assault Rifle, 10mm sub-machinegun, flamethrower, and the Fat Man ("shoulder-mounted launcher of miniature nuclear bombs, which detonate with a small but horrific mushroom cloud").

*A picture using the VATS system is shown on a Super Mutant Behemoth. Percentage signs and bars shown on head, arms, upper legs (lower legs cut out), abdomens/chest, and upper chest/throat). The magazine states that it's all of the above regions with the two chest ones just being one, so one is likely the general health. Not sure.

*Picture of a mutants leg getting blown off. The inspiration for their death sequences is stated as Burnout with their crash mode. They say, "Just replace the greasy car parts with greasy body parts."
-Pagliarulo comments, "It would be a lot less fun without that level of gore... It's part of the visceral experience. You laugh your ass off when you see a mutant's leg get blown off. It never gets old -- It hasn't yet."


*Says each VATS shot uses action points, which replenish when you're not shooting.

*Says that weapons last so long before they break (No more repair hammers). Worn pieces can be combined though to build new weapons. The rate of fire slows and accuracy is lost while the gun wears. Also says two guns can be combined to make a better that also will be vulerable to wear and tear.

*Mention of a greater use of party members is displayed (then Oblivion). "companionship will be infrequent", one says.
-They mention an example of a dog called Dogmeat at the Scrapyard who'll attack enemies and forage for food.
-They mentioned that they're not sure how animals can heal themselves, but stated you can give them stimpacks if hurt.

*There's also a Pip-Boy's radio - "One-man radio plays on Galaxy Free Radio as well as popular hits from the 1940s offer a cheeky, cheery backdrop to the devastation."

"When we started this, we would go to great lengths to explains the differences from Oblivion," explains Fallout 3's executive producer, Todd Howard. "If you're talking to an enthusiast, there are so many differences, and we feel it's under-selling the game to say it's Oblivion with guns. But when we started talking to more consumer-oriented magazines, we'd have, like, two seconds...and we'd say, 'it's like post-apocalyptic Oblivion with guns.' And they're like, 'Awesome!' To Joe Public, it's mainly first-peron, wide-open game and you get to do what you want. The game it's closest to is Oblivion. So now when someone asks, 'Is it Oblivion with guns?' my main answer is, 'in all the best ways.'"
The truth is, the list of comparable titles is pretty short. As Lead Designer Emil Pagliarulo puts it, "How many massively single-player role-playing games are there?"
(...)
"I think it's more in the Tarantino fashion, which is to have some fun with it," says Howard. "It keeps it almost surreal. All these posters and the music are winking, but when the guys die, it's over-the-top. It's rendered really nicely, so on some level, it's believable - but it's ridiculous. That's the point."
"It would be a lot less fun without that level of gore," adds Pagliarulo. "It's part of the visceral experience. You laugh your ass off when you see a mutant's leg get blown off. It never gets old - it hasn't yet."
(...)
And that's the final piece of gear you'll need to pack before your vacation at the end of the world: a wicked sense of humor. "It's so depressing that you have to see the humor in it," says Pagliarulo. "If not, you'll lose your mind or slit your wrists. Part of your brain refuses to admit it will ever happen, so you have to look at it and laugh. The dark humor of talking to an old lady who's really nice to you, and then blow her head off, put her head on a counter, and pretend to talk to her...there's a certain charm to that."
(...)
"We're still messing with how your companions heal, but you can give him stimpacks if he's hurt," says Howard. "We're not sure how much of that [companion maintenance] is interesting. But we think Dogmeat is going to be pretty popular - 'I'm going to do the Mad Max thing and wander the wasteland with my dog.'"

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Emil Pagliarulo matiza sobre como funcionará la cámara en tercerna persona

Hey all!

Sorry for the confusion. Let me clarify that a bit.

I meant, in general, the game is fully playable in third person. You can run around, adventure, get into combat ("run and gun") etc. all in third person, and the camera was designed to accommodate that kind of gameplay, unlike the third-person camera in Oblivion, which was more of a "vanity mode."

You can zoom the camera back pretty far in third-person, but there comes a point where it becomes less and less effective the farther back you pull the camera, just because you're so damn small and it's hard to gauge where the crosshair is at that point. So yeah, you can use third-person for combat, but the game wasn't really designed to be played with the camera pulled ALL the way back, isometric style. That's more for fun, and to survey the scene. It's really no different than any game that lets you zoom a third-person camera back.

A couple other points of clarification:

-- When you enter dialogue, the camera zooms into first-person.
-- When you enter V.A.T.S. the camera zooms into first-person.

If you were in third-person when you went into one of those mode, you're back in third-person when you come out.

LINK


OFF TOPIC

MAD MAX:THE GAME

Cory Barlog, ex-director de God of War II, ha confirmado de manera oficial que su nuevo proyecto estará centrado en la franquicia de Mad Max.

Barlog salió de SCEA en medio del desarrollo de God of War III allá por el mes de noviembre pasado, y aunque se había rumoreado que se encontraba embarcado en nuevos proyectos, no se sabía nada a ciencia cierta hasta ahora.

Para la adaptación al videojuego de Mad Max contará con la colaboración del director de la saga en el cine: el veterano George Miller. Éste se encuentra preparando la siguiente entrega para la gran pantalla, que lleva por título Mad Max: Fury Road, y que ya estuvo en producción en 2003, aunque su rodaje tuvo que ser suspendido por la Guerra de Irak.

De momento, no han aparecido más detalles ni sobre el juego ni sobre la película, a excepción de que Mel Gibson no será el encargado de dar vida a Mad Max, y que ambos proyectos verán la luz de forma conjunta en un futuro.



LINK

Espero que el juego no sea un shooter sacacuartos reventando 300 Riders por fase,y sí,algo más profundo en jugabilidad como una aventura de acción tipo True Crime o Saint Row.

Solo sabiendo el estudio que lo desarrolla, creo que nadie se debe preocupar porque el juego no cumpla las expectativas.

Por mi parte, este es el juego que mas espero. A ver si saco tiempo para pasarme el oblivion

Juegazo a la vista sin duda, del estudio del mejor juego 2007

Yo no lo espero para muy pronto, para entrado 2009 mínimo me parece lógico, paciencia, que sera un juego cojonudo.

Podcat de Todd Howard,productor ejecutivo

Over 200 endings, since last week. The 12 endings was surpassed long ago.

The game is twice bigger than what they thought in the beginning. Still "not as big as Oblivion", but bigger than they started with.

Always just one human companion, and another NPC like Dogmeat. Dogmeat can be given assignments done with his radiant AI.

Dogmeat can die, but they are working on his health and how you maintain him. If you're reckless, he'll die, otherwise he'll normally survive.

[They make the comparison between this dog and Fable 2's dog.]

Brotherhood of Steel doing their own thing, finished on the game, on the verge of extinction, you'll interact with them a lot more after a determined point in the game.

The game is finished, but needs a lot of polishing, they are doing many playthroughs, they keep adding stuff, sometimes it takes 100 hours to play, just the main quest is 20 hours.

Absolutely tracking at fall (2008).

"Fans sending death threats" says one of the OXM guys. "How do you handle Rabid Right Wing kind of fans".

Todd says that what bothers him is to give as much information as possible to the hardcore Fallout fans and newer Bethesda fans so they know what the game is and isn't. They still haven't released much information, he's used to lots of criticism from fans of the Elder Scrolls or from Fallout fans, tries to understand what's behind the colorful language, what the fans mean with their criticism, and to see if they (Bethesda) agree or disagree with those viewpoints.

He acknowledged that some of the new screenshots got positive reactions too, some fans are beginning to understand their take on the wasteland, visually.

Todd notes "Usually I'm concerned with making sure they understand what the game is and what the game isn't. I always worry that somebody reads about it and they get excited, whether they're old Fallout fans or a newer fans of ours. My concern is usually I want them to know as much as they can so that when they go to buy the game they know what they're getting. (...) The people who bought Oblivion and then said "I didn't like it, this isn't what I thought I was getting", that's usually what concerns me more (...)
We have a lot more respect for them [Fallout fans] than anybody thinks in terms of they're very very passionate and we wouldn't have it in any other way.
I think you have to look at those comments and they're usually not raging to rage, although that happens sometimes."

Todd not going to change the game, when people say they don't like the presentation, but on aesthetics and how things were interpreted by them, they go "hey is there something we're missing or didn't take into consideration" and deal with it.

LINK

Una cosa eso de 'miria mi mujer' quiere decir que podras tener esposa?¿
Y una duda si tu matas a una persona no la volveras a ver eso quiere decir que si tu matas a todo el mundo no veras a nadie o se iran reproduciendo?¿

Puedes tener hijos i venderlos como esclavos¿?



Otra ultima cosa si te pones una mascara en la cara y no se te ve la gente te reconoce es que en oblivion si...

Asi que el juego ya casi esta eh???

De puta madre pues, yo sinceramente no lo esperaba hasta 2009, pero en gametrailers lo ponen como el tercero mas esperado de 2008, eso si sera bien para finales.

Despues de terminar con este amigos de Bathesda, un mesesito de vacaciones y a empezar con "The Elder Scrolls V".

Puta carrera

MaGoGa escribió:Una cosa eso de 'miria mi mujer' quiere decir que podras tener esposa?¿
Y una duda si tu matas a una persona no la volveras a ver eso quiere decir que si tu matas a todo el mundo no veras a nadie o se iran reproduciendo?¿

Puedes tener hijos i venderlos como esclavos¿?



Otra ultima cosa si te pones una mascara en la cara y no se te ve la gente te reconoce es que en oblivion si...

En FALLOUT 2 podías casarte con una mujer previa amenaza de su padre mediante escopeta.Y luego si te apetecía divorciarte o venderla como esclava.

Si matas a un NPC(personaje no controlable)desaparece del juego para siempre.

Y lo de tener hijos pues no sé en FALLOUT 3,en FALLOUT 2 había un final donde acostándote con la hija de un mafioso conseguías que tu hijo quedase al mando de la ciudad.




Fallout 3's "200 endings"

Fallout 3: A Post Nuclear Blog brings us a longer transcript of the recent OXM podcast.

OXM: Have the number of endings been finalized…..how’s that coming along?

Todd Howard: Being that we are Bethesda…everything gets a bit big. So as of last week we’re over 200 endings. That is not an exaggeration, but it deserves some description. 200 endings…that’s a lot. So originally when we started, we had various iterations of the ending. The ending is kind of cinematic, that’s dynamic based on the things you’ve done.

When we started, it was kind of fuzzy, it was like “well there’s like 9 maybe 12″ and we started adding things to it. So if you had done this or not this, you’d get this other tweak to the ending. And we kept doing that. And you know even just two weeks ago someone had this idea, “Oh we should add this idea to the ending” (sorry I’m not going to spoil what that is). And I said, “oh that’s a genius idea, we have to do that.” But then it became, “oh, but there’s four versions of that.” So i was like, “okay there’s like four different versions of that part,” and that multiplies by, at the time we were at about 60 endings…so now there’s four versions of that, so now there are around 240 versions.”

The games on paper when we get started…they’re alot smaller, and then as we go they get bigger…we can’t stop ourselves. We’re have tons of people with good ideas here, and if they’re good and fit the tone, we’re going to try to jam as much into the game as possible. Fallout is probably twice the size of what we originally had on paper…it’s pretty big, so that’s what’s happened with the endings.

So some of that stuff is the big things of what you do very late in the game, some of those are things like your karma — how you’ve lived your life from the beginning of the game — you get certain scenes based on your karma. But we kind of like the ending as much as like the game itself at the beginning is you tailoring your character and then you play throughout this game, and unlike Elder Scrolls, where it’s a game where you can keep playing, Fallout 3 has a definite ending. So we wanted to go to efforts to make sure that the actual ending you get when you finish and get the ending, and make that ending reflect and make it individual to the user’s experience. We’ve definitely gone a little overboard.


FALLOUT 2 ,un juego de 1998 tiene sobre 40 finales distintos.

El juego se componía de 12 ciudades,donde por ejemplo Arroyo tenía sólo un final(pues se trataba de la misión principal),hasta New Reno que contaba con unos 10 finales distintos en función de tus acciones en ellas.

La gracia del juego era que cada ciudad en sí,era una historia bien hilada,no era menos importante que la mision principal.La gente las llama secundarias por llamarlo de alguna manera,pero a mi forma de ver cada ciudad era una misión principal en sí.


Pondré varios ejemplo para que se vea hasta que punto puede cambiar un final.

New Reno vive en un estado de "caos" controlado ,donde 4 familias "mafiosas" manejan el cotarro,cada uno a su manera:trata de blancas,venta de drogas,casino,venta de alcohol.

-Si "arrasas" las 4 familias,en la ciudad se crea tal vacío de poder que se llega a la anarquía total,los habitantes acaban siendo esclavizados y la ciudad acaba en la ruina.

-Si arrasas a 3 familias dejando sóla a la más "legal"(venta de alcohol),ésta tomará el control de la ciudad,consiguiendo que ésta poco a poco salga adelante,no será un sitio para visitar,pero sí para poder vivir.


Otro ejemplo sería Broken Hills,pueblo minero,,donde la ciudad se respira un ambiente de odio racial hacia los "mutantes" por parte de los humanos.

-Si se ayuda al grupo racista en contra de los mutantes,muy bien raza erradicada,pero con ello ya no se contará con la mano de obra barata y necesaria para trabajar en las minas de oro.La gente que apoyaba el genocicio al principio muy contenta hasta que se entendieron la burrada que acababan de hacer.La ciudad acabó en el olvido.

-Si se detiene al grupo racista poniéndose en contacto con el sherif del pueblo,el pueblo tranquilamente podrá ir explotando las minas.Acabadas los recursos de estas las familias cogieron toda la riqueza que habían amasado y abandonaron el pueblo pues ya no había razón para estar allí.


-Si no se hace nada,el odio racial será tan grande,que acabará explotando,humanos contra mutantes peleando a muerte.Los pocos supervientes de esa guerra civil,destruyeron la mina para asegurarse que nadie la usara,y se largaron de la ciudad.



Otro ejemplo es Gecko,ciudad con un reactor nuclear,donde viven los Ghouls(gente pacífica)que tiene sus mas y sus menos con Vault City, .

Aquí sus 3 finales.

-Si destruías el reactor,directamente eliminas la vida en 10 kilómetros a la redonda,estando la zona contaminada durante años.Y en Vault City bastante contentos,ya no hay amenaza de esa "raza".


-Si reparabas el reactor,pero no eras capaz de optimizarlo,consigues que no haya fugas de radioactividad al sistema de aguas de Vault City.Con ello se eliminan algo las tensiones entre ambos pueblos,pero siguen sin poder verse.

-Si reparabas el reactor y consigues optimizarlo,se consigue en Gecko una fuente de energía enorme.Vault City en cambio que no podía expandirse como ciudad debido a las limitaciones que tenían de energía,decidió su consejo de sabios apropiarse del reactor,y a los pacíficos Ghouls fueron obligados a marchar de su ciudad para trabajar como esclavos en Vault City.

Bueno como comprobáis.todo finales felices

Bethestda Blog escribió:Today I received the April 2008 issue of PlayStation: The Official Magazine and noticed that Todd wrote up this month’s POV (that’s Point of View) about developing games for the PS3. If you’re a PS3 owner, you might find what he has to say encouraging. Within the column, he discusses some of the advantages of the PS3 hardware, as well as how new tools have improved the development process for Fallout 3. Here’s a snippet:

“you can use the Blu-ray’s massive storage capacity to place multiple instances of your game’s assets on the disk. Having multiple copies on the disc greatly reduces seek times off the drive, and your load times shrink even more. Small things like this can make a huge difference over the course of a game. That kind of learning has helped us move from Oblivion to Fallout 3.”

To find out more on Todd’s thoughts about developing games on PS3, be on the lookout for the April issue.

Básicamente hablan de las ventajas q tiene el hardware de la PS3 y de como han ayudado las nuevas herramientas de desarrollo.

En la cita se dice q la masiva capacidad del blu-ray permite colocar multiples copias de algunos archivos del juego en el disco de manera que se reduce el tiempo de acceso a esa información porq la puede buscar en distintos sitios del disco... Curioso

Podemos apostar q la versión PS3 de Fallout 3 será mejor q la de XBOX360 (sobre todo en cuanto a tiempos de carga, como ya lo es Oblivion).

Saludos,

Bruno

PD: Fuente (con carátula... ¿definitiva?)

Yo me pegue el gran vicio con los dos Fallouts, me encantan la estetica del juego, es algo que aun no he visto igualar en ningun RPG.
Lo estoy esperando como si fuera el segundo advenimiento de Jesusin.

Dicen que sera mas pequeño que Oblivion, a mi no me parece mal porque en los otros juegos de Fallout no podias utilizar caballos ni ningun otro medio de transporte. El personaje siempre se movia a pata (si alguien encontro vehiculos, por favor no me lo digais que me deprimo!)
¿os imaginais algo mas tocho que Oblivion a pie??

La transcripción literal de la entrevista en la radio.

OXM: Have the number of endings been finalized…..how’s that coming along?

Todd Howard: Being that we are Bethesda…everything gets a bit big. So as of last week we’re over 200 endings. That is not an exaggeration, but it deserves some description. 200 endings…that’s a lot. So originally when we started, we had various iterations of the ending. The ending is kind of cinematic, that’s dynamic based on the things you’ve done.

When we started, it was kind of fuzzy, it was like “well there’s like 9 maybe 12″ and we started adding things to it. So if you had done this or not this, you’d get this other tweak to the ending. And we kept doing that. And you know even just two weeks ago someone had this idea, “Oh we should add this idea to the ending” (sorry I’m not going to spoil what that is). And I said, “oh that’s a genius idea, we have to do that.” But then it became, “oh, but there’s four versions of that.” So i was like, “okay there’s like four different versions of that part,” and that multiplies by, at the time we were at about 60 endings…so now there’s four versions of that, so now there are around 240 versions.”

The games on paper when we get started…they’re alot smaller, and then as we go they get bigger…we can’t stop ourselves. We’re have tons of people with good ideas here, and if they’re good and fit the tone, we’re going to try to jam as much into the game as possible. Fallout is probably twice the size of what we originally had on paper…it’s pretty big, so that’s what’s happened with the endings.

So some of that stuff is the big things of what you do very late in the game, some of those are things like your karma — how you’ve lived your life from the beginning of the game — you get certain scenes based on your karma. But we kind of like the ending as much as like the game itself at the beginning is you tailoring your character and then you play throughout this game, and unlike Elder Scrolls, where it’s a game where you can keep playing, Fallout 3 has a definite ending. So we wanted to go to efforts to make sure that the actual ending you get when you finish and get the ending, and make that ending reflect and make it individual to the user’s experience. We’ve definitely gone a little overboard.


La traducción al "cristiano".

tenemos el número de finales terminados...¿ como se os hace de largo ?.

Todd Howard; como se le hace a bethesda...queremos hacerlo todo un poco mas grande. Asi que la semana pasada llevabamos 200 finales. no es ninguna exageración, aunque necesita ser matizado. 200 finales...es muchísimo. Al comenzar, habiamos diseñado algunos intinerarios hasta el final. el final es algun tipo de cinemática que refleja lo que has echo.

Cuando empezamos, fue un poco confuso, del tipo "donde puede haber 9, puede haber 12", y empezamos a añadirle cosas. Asi que si haces esto, pero no esto, cambias la cinemática. Y seguimos haciendolo. Y hace solamente un par de semanas alguien tuvo una idea, " hey, podemos añadir esto al final" ( y no voy a spoilear la idea ) Y yo dije " He, eso es genial, hagamoslo ", " Pues adelante", " Hey, pero hay 4 versiones de esto " y lo multiplicabamos, y como ya llevabamos 60 finales, al haber otras 4 variantes, se nos quedaba en 240.

Cuando empezamos a hacer un juego, en papel, siempre son mas pequeños...pero entonces empezamos a hacerlos mas grandes, y no podemos parar. Tenemos montones de gente con buenas ideas hay dentro, y si las ideas son buenas, entonces intentamos meter tantas como podamos. Fallout es dos veces mas grande de lo que originalmente diseñamos en papel... Fallout es grande, y los finales han crecido con ello. Eso les ha sucedido.

Algunas de esas cosas son decisiones que tomas en partes avanzadas del juego, otras dependen de tu karma, - como te has comportado desde el principio del juego - Algunas escenas se deberan solo al karma. Pero el tipo de final dependera mucho mas de como has definitdo tu caracter y que has echo para avanzar a traves del juego, y, a diferencia de los elder, que siempre puedes seguir jugando, el final en fallout 3 es definitivo. estamos dedicando esfuerzos a que cuando termines el juego, el final del mismo represente lo que has conseguido y sea un reflejo de la experiencia personal del jugador. eso si, estamos un poco cargados de trabajo...

En definitiva y en conclusión.fallout 3 tendrá una cinemática final con más de 240 posibles variaciones que reflejarán las decisiones tomadas por tu personaje durante el mismo

Luego hay esta revista del més de abril, 360 magazine que tiene FALLOUT 3 en portada,con el siguiente título

"DE LOS CREADORES DE OBLIVION...LLEGA EL RPG MÁS GRANDE JAMÁS HECHO"




TRADUCIÓN DE LA FAQ


Combate

1 ¿ Se podrá luchar sin armas ? y si es asi, ¿ será un combate letal o solo podras tumbar a tu oponente ?

Si, lo hay, y si, será letal. Es una parte importante del juego, y en aras del equilibrio del juego, es nuestro objetivo hacer tan viable el cuerpo a cuerpo como el uso de armas. Es odbio que aun estamos trabajando en ello, pero yo imagino que el cuerpo a cuerpo sea mas “letal”, porque acercarte a tu oponente puede llegar a ser complicado, en espacial si el posee un arma, pero al mismo tiempo, es verdad que una ventaja clara del cuerpo a cuerpo es que no debes preocuparte por la munición.


2 ¿ el combate es jugable desde la prespectiva mas alejada ( la casi isométrica ) y como funcionara el sistema VATS, quiero decir, entrarás en Zoom en primera persona ¿

Siento decirte que no. No es jugable, porque lo que haces es levantar la cámara y colocarla sobre ti. Puedes intentarlo, pero no creo que consigas nada porque sigues teniendo que apuntar al centro de la pantalla y en esa cámara el centro queda en el suelo. Es jugable desde la primera y la tercera persona, pero en la tercera desde el hombro.
Respecto a VATS, este hace zoom en el blanco, desde tus ojos, asi que supongo que podemos llamarla “primera persona” Si estas jugando en tercera y entras en VATS, entonces haces zoom en el objetivo, y cuando acabas, vuelves a la tercera persona, Eso sucede de una forma muy rápida y nítida. VATS tiene su propia vista.

3 ¿ Para que mas utilizaremos los AP mientras estemos en VATS y cual será el precio de esas acciones en tiempo real ¿ perder tiempo en animaciones, quizás ¿ Por ejemplo, tomar stimpacks o usar el inventario en VATS costara AP o a cambio perderas tiempo en usarlos ¿ Que mas cosas pueden hacerse en VATS, y como las equilibrais con el tiempo real.?

Lo único que se puede hacer en VATS es disparar, solo se ha iseñado para eso. Es una especie de “modo de tirador”, asi que no se toman stimpacks, ni nada. Como funciona la regeneración de AP es una de las grandes preguntas, incluso para nosotros, sobre todo como cuadrarlo, y es mas difícil tanto mas jugamos al juego. Definitivamente, dependerá de la agilidad, pero tenemos que ajustar el rango, asi que no se si una agilidad de 10 te dara el doble de regeneración que un 1, o si será un 5-10 veces más rápido. Creo que se acercará mas al doble. Cuando no estas en VATS, tus disparos siguen consumiendo AP. De este modo, estamos jugando al juego de manera que los AP usados en tiempo real reducen la tasa de regeneración, asi que el resultado final es que atacar en tiempo real reduce la regeneración, e imagino que acabaremos acercándonos a esta idea.


4 Dado que muchos de nosotros seguimos sin comprenderlo…¿ como definirías VATS en profundidad ¿ De veras, por favor ¡


Lo intentare, pero me preocupa generar mas preguntas que respuestas. Supongo que sabes lo básico; Le das al botón, paras el tiempo, las partes del cuerpo aparecen para elegir, seleccionas el blanco, le das al botón, se ejecuta el movimiento, si el disparo es normal vuelves rápidamente a la normalidad, si sucede algo chulo salta la cámara lenta.

Supongo que lo mejor es darte una vista mas cercana de cómo encaramos y vemos VATS. Lo primero, es dejar claro lo que no es. VATS esta pensado para utilizarse con el tiempo real, no el uno sin el otro. Van juntos. No quiero que haya fans creyendo que es por turnos, porque no lo es. Es un sistema magnificado de puntería. Pero es un sistema muy magnificado. No puedes usarlos siempre, pero tienes que usarlo mucho, porque es el modo más efectivo de matar. Y asi es como solemos definirlo; el modo mas efectivo y divertido de matar lo que sea. Y nos dividimos en esas dos ideas al desarrollarlo. “Efectividad “ contra “entretenimiento”, o “jugabilidad” contra “cinemática”
Asi que empecemos con la jugabilidad. Primero, Entras en VATS cuando quieras,pero simplemente no tendras puntos suficientes para lanzar un disparo aun, o suficiente AP para disparar tanto como creías. El AP del que dispones depende del ratio del arma; Las pistolas disparan mas veces que los rifles de caza, por ejemplo. La cámara hace zoom en el blanco desde tus ojos, VATS hace un scanner completo de el, y aparecen los porcentajes de acierto. Esto cumple dos onjetivos 1) queda chulo, hasta utilizamos el sonidito de los anteriores fallout y 2) El scan muestra las posibilidades de acierto.estas se basan en el tamaño en pantalla que ocupa el objetivo, tu habilididad, el arma, y una base que aplicamos a cada parte del cuerpo. Esto ultimo es necesario para que nosotros ajustemos el equilibrio del juego. Incluso si el tamaño de la cabeza es X en relación al pecho, lo ajustamos en función a la recompensa.

Un buen ejemplo son las antenas de las hormigas. Son Demasiado pequeñas para que quieras perder AP disparándolas, asi que mejoramos la posibilidad de acertarlas, y asi era mejor. En tiempo real casi nunca vas a darle a las antenas, pero puedes darles en VATS. Y esa es la clave “detrás de las cámaras”. La diferencia entre VATS y el tiempo real. En tiempo real, las balas van donde van, dependiendo de la habilidad, el arma y una pequeña dispersión aleatoria. No tiramos un dado y vemos que pasa. En VATS, sale el porcentaje, tiramos el dado, y si te sale, das justo donde has dicho, y si no sale, el disparo se desvia. Aunque normalmente falla, a veces puedes tener suerte y aunque le apuntaras al tio a la jeta le puedes acabar dando en el pecho.

Vale, ahora, la cinemática, la parte de “entretenimiento”. Basandose en lo que va a pasar y en lo que tu has escogido, hemos seleccionado un número de angulos de cámara y algunas cinemáticas que mostras. La cinemática dura unos pocos segunos, siempre es muy rápida, las largas son escasas, y seriamos los primeros que nos sentiríamos extrañados si alguna se repitiera demasiado mientas jugamos al juego. Tenemos una sección especial para la cámara de VATS en el editor de cámaras, y podemos modificar cualquier cosa que queramos, como una cámara especial que muestra una bala en cámara lenta disparada a la mano de alguien, pero solamente si se usa un arma específica y solo sobre un enemigo determinado. Lo que queremos es; Poder modificarlo rápido, de forma que haya montones de disparos cinemáticos. Uno de los detalles sobre las cinemáticas es que no son”repeticiones”. El juego sigue avanzando, lo que ves es lo que esta sucediendo. Las cámaras elegidas eligen la velocidad, asi que la mayor parte del tiempo, tu, el jugador, estas animado en tiempo real, el enemigo al que estas disparando esta moviéndose, aunque a cámara lenta, y el resto del mundo simplemente se detiene, o se suma a la cámara lenta. Nos dimos cuenta de que si todo se movia igual de rápido no quedaba bíen, así que lo dividimos en tres puntos; Tu, el enemigo, y el mundo. Otra cosa de la que ocuparnos, ya que el tiempo sigue adelante, es que mientras estas viendo la animación puedes ser atacado por otro enemigo, lo cual es muy fustrante, asi que hicimos dos cosas; 1 ) dependiendo de la cámara escogida, llegamos a “pausar” el resto del mundo, y 2) mientras estas en este modo se reduce drásticamente el daño que recibes, asi que la mayor parte de las veces ni siquiera lo sabrás. Las cinemáticas lucen, pero te sorprenderías de cuanto a sucedido en los dos segundos durante los que transcurre.
Espero que esto responda a la cuestión, esta pregunta era difícil. Dentro de poco es posicle que revelemos mas información del daño a las partes del cuerpo y como afectarna a la jugabilidad, porque esa es la decisión que haces en VATS – a que partes del cuerpo disparar.

PNJS

5.Los miembros del grupo serán personajes interesantes, con sus propias personalidades ¿ quizás con objetivos secretos? O serán solamente “tu tropilla” ¿


Hay un numero muy limitado de seguidores a conseguir, y no voy a llamarlos “miembros del grupo” porque no quiero generar esa expectación. Si, tendrán personalidades fuertes y definidas. Yo siempre he huido de los “seguidores” porque si no tengo control directo de alguien que se supone que me esta ayudado, normalmente tiende a hacer algo estúpido. Dicho esto, esto muy contento por como nos están quedando, y con la cantidad de cosas que puedes decirles que hagan

SPECIAL

6.¿ que habilidades habrá en el juego? Y por qué hay menos de las estadísticas habituales en las pantallas del pip boy ¿

Los siento, aun no hablaremos de las habilidades, lo haremos después. En referencia a las estadísticas del special, simplemente se debe a que las características del jugador fueron preparadas para la demo, y, como habeis preguntado antes, que o sepa no es que puedan subirse hasta 35, como han dicho por ahí, sino que al crear el personaje tienes un total de 35 puntos. O sea, que puedes empezar con todas a 5, asi que 5 es “average” ( rango normal de los fallout anteriores )

7 volveran las viejas traits ( características de creación ) y perks ( dotes )? Se adaptaran ciertas dotes al nuevo sistema de combate y como ¿

Lo siento, tampoco hablamos de eso aun, pero puedo decir que si, muchas de las viejas van a volver y muchas de las nuevas se compaginan con los nuevos sistemas, y el combate y VATS son las odbias. Estoy contento porque muchas de mis viejas favoritas han vuelto, y las nuevas van en consonancia. De hecho, me es difícil decantarme por unas u otras



Difierme bastante, en tanto que no hay “cárcel” o un sistema de crimane especifico con dinero en mente. De momento es mas fácil para nosotros manejarse en fallout, donde es normal resolver las cosas con violencia cuando le haces algo a alguien y luego calmarla despues. Ademas, lo que en oblivion es global, aquí es a nivel de facciones, lo que lo hace mejor. Y como facción, me refiero a cualquier tipo de grupo, por ejemplo, la ciudad de megaton es su propia facción.
interface

9. teneis descripciones escritas de los objetos o solo visuales? O sea, las visuales son suficiente, pero las descripciones de los antiguos fallout, acerca de “lo ruidosa que parece la cama” y cosas asi, me encantaban. ¿ Habra algo asi como una caja de texto en la HUD principal ¿


Solo se ve el nombre de la cosa, como “cama ruidosa”, pero en realidad, creo que si estuviéramos añadiendo en texto como las cosas parecen, suenan, etc… romperíamos con la forma natural en que el personaje lo ve todo. No creo que tengamos que describir algo como eso., incluso en oblivion, con un diario diciendo como me siento o que veo. Eso solamente sucede

Facciones.

10 Que tipo de facciones o daccion & facción/acción/interaccion/conflicto reputación podemos esperar ¿

Aparte de la cuestión del crimen encima, nosotros usamos “facción” muy a la ligera, y ahora mismo es el corazón de todos nuestros sistemas, desde el crimen hasta el combate, asi que cada facción sabe lo que opinan sobre ti y las demás facciones. Eso lleva a la forma de combatir en grupos, a como reaccionan a los crimines, y como se llevan con el jugador en general.

A.I.( inteligencia artificial )

11¿ que se ha hecho para mejorar la AI de oblivion – carreras contra muros, gente que empieza a matarse porque si, guardias que saben que has hecho algo malo a kilómetros de distancia, etc… ¿

Primero, hemos rescrito todos sistemas de guiado, lo que elimina la mayoría de actos estúpidos de los PNJ. Aparte, nos hemos centrado en sistema de •crimen” entre las facciones, asi que, en general, se comportan mejor, o al menos en ciertas cosas se muestran mas sensatos – sobre todo en unirse o en salir corriendo. Hemos gastado un monton de tiempo en la IA de combate, en donde casi todo es nuevo y mejorado, ya que vamos a un juego con pistolas y grupos de enmigos que intentan buscar cobertura, líneas de tiro, y todo eso.

Contenido aldulto

12. Veremos algo parecido a los encuentros sexuales posibles en ambos juegos anteriores de fallout ¿ en los dos primeros juegos habia de eso, pero se mantenía oculto ( como hace fable ) habia una quest en F2 donde podias perder una apuesta y terminar siendo el juguete sexual de un supermutante por una noche ( podias guardarte las bolas chinas como un regalo ) podemos esperar esa clase de contenido adulto ¿

Los jugadores actuales solo quieren sexo ¿ de momento no, pero si hay alguna situación que lo requiera, lo añadiremos oculto, como los anteriores. Ya lo hicimos en daggerfall .Hasta hicimos dibujitos para la escena, pero nunca los pusimos en daggerfall, pero aun tenemos los dibujitos. Respecto a añadir un encuentro con un supermutante y sus bolas chinas, el departamente de marketing ha preguntado para ponerlo en la caja, pero de momento no hemos encontrado el tiempo necesario.

13. Fallout 3 mantendran la misma cantidad de consumo de drogas de los juegos anteriores o una cantidad menor o mayor ¿

Es el mismo que en juegos anteriores, habrá varias drogas, y cada una tendrá efectos positivos o efectos negativos si te vuelves adicto a ellas.

Elecciones y consecuencias

14. Habeis hablado mucho de los errores y cosnecuencias en el diseño de las quest. Apuntais aunas reacciones inmediatas, o consequencias a largo plazo ( posiblemente ya irreversibles ) Ademas de las elecciones morales, Los jugadores podrán tener acceso a misiones diferentes usando diferentes habilidades ¿

Hay un poco de ambas, en general creo que el jugador necesita algo inmediato, o no sabra que ya ha terminado su misión, y seguirá vagando por hay como si ni hubiese echo nada. Las conscuencias a largo plazo son una sorpresa para el jugador, quien sabe si positiva o negativa, pero una sorpresa en todo caso. tienes que tener cuidado, porque puede ser fustrante, asi que dale a tu personaje otra dirección, o tomate la consecuencia como una tontería, y no como que acaban de destrozarte todo el juego.

Refiriendome al uso de diferentes habilidades, y ya definitivamente, si. Estamos centrándonos en eso, y creo que es centro del juego – que habilidades usas, porque cada quest y cada objetivo del juego puede cumplirse de diferentes maneras y usando diferentes habilidades, incluso en el dialogo usas montones de habilidades, dependiendo de con quien hables de modo que si hablas con un científico, tu habilidad de ciencia te da opciones extra de dialogo

15. en fallout 1 y 2, era posible decir la palabra equivocada y cometer un error y no habia manera de arreglarlo. Si no usabas una guía, la experiencia de cada jugador era diferente. Será así fallout 3? O será como oblivion donde puedes hacer casi todo en el juego con un solo personaje y en una partida.

Sera mucho mas parecido a fallout 1 y 2 que a oblivio; Cada persona en el juego es diferente, y no puedes hacerlo todo. En términos de dialogo, estamos cuidado que las decisiones que tomes sean parte importante del juego, como volar la ciudad de megaton, que representaría el “error” del que antes has hablado.

Quests y historia

16. La estructura de la historia será como en oblivion, que tienes que superar varias búsquedas en el orden correcto, o mas como los originales, donde la mayor parte del progreso consistía en recabar información, sin que el orden fuera un requisito para completar el juego ¿

Se acerca mas a fallout, desde el punto y hora en que puedes saltarte trozos enteros de la quest principal de fallout 3 si recebas información importante por ti mismo. Lo debatimos mucho, pero al final, creo que espositivo, y te hace sentir mejor que esas barreras artificiales que te hace sentir que es todo tan “juego”, y era una de las cosas que mas me gustaban de fallout 1.

17. se ha dicho que el mundo de fallout 3 es mas pequeño que el oblivion. Tiene eso que ver con el numero de quests, o con el numero de cosas que puedes hacer ¿

En numero, tiene menos quests que oblivion, pero no olvides que esas quests son mas complehas. En términos de “ cosas para hacer”, y la libertad, exploración, etc… es mas o menos lo mismo. Hemos añadido un monton de misiones secundarias del tipo “ayuda a sobrevivir a este PNJ” que no vamos a definir como quest, sino solamente como un evento que sucede.

18. Un desarrollador ( puede que Howard, Pagliarulo o Carter ) ha asegurado que están intentando asegurar que cada quest tenga al menos dos formas de completarse. Eso va a significar que va a haber dos resultados diferentes para cada quest, o simplemente que habrá dos caminos para completar la quest con el mismo resultado ¿

Significa que habrá muchas maneras, para conseguir el mismo resultado, como “consigue x información” o para conseguir resultados diferentes. Normalmente resulta bastante claro, asi que si es evidente que el resultado va a ser muy diferente, lo hacemos, y si no, no lo forzamos.


Dialogo

19. Por favor, describa en detalle y de un ejemplo de una conversación de FO3, ya escrita o hipotética; Opciones de dialogo, en que influye, longitud de las líneas, respuesta de los PNJ, efecto en el juego.


No voy a escribir un dialogo entero aquí, pero te dire lo que pueda, y ya hago bastante. Esta es una de las llaves de Fallout, y te aseguro que también lo es para nosotros. Nuestros arboles de dialogo son largos y profundos. Estoy muy satisfecho con el trabajo que nuestros diseñadores han hecho con ello, Y se que ellos están contentos también.


Primero, los arboles de dialodos, como en fallout anteriores. Siempre veras tu propia voz y en eso se basa el árbol. No se basa en tópicos como Oblivion.

Segundo, habrá “duelos dialecticos”- se harán utilizando tu habilidad de Speech cuando hables con los PNJs. Algunas de tus líneas tendrán una posibilidad de salir bíen que se representará con un porcentaje a su lado. Este porcentaje se basa en tu habilidad de Speech, en como le caes al PNJ, y la dificultad de tu petición. Pedir algo pequeño no es como pedir algo grande. Si fallas, le caeras peor.

Tercero, tus habilidades determinan los diálogos “extra” a conseguir, dependiendo de con quien hables y de tus propias habilidades, puedes tener algunas otras elecciones basadas en habilidades, karma, o dotes. Esas elecciones son automaticas, no como las competiciones de speech.

La longitud de las líneas es la necesaria, en la línea de fallout 1. i

Criaturas.

20 Cuanto os acercais al universo de las series originales desde el punto de vista de sus habitantes ¿ Habeis tratado a los gouls y a los supermutantes como “personas”, o simplemente como carroña a destripar ¿

Nos acercamos bastante. Los supermutantes de este juego tendrán unos objetivos. Depende de la criatura, lo que da muchas posibilidades. Se lo que quieres decir, y si, hay gouls en el juego, y muchos son PNJ con los que puedes tratar e interactuar con ellos. Los usamos bastante. Pero hay una raza de ghouls, los “Feral Ghouls” que son mas como una “criatura”, y son agresivos.

- Pregunta de regalo –

1. ¿ Habra PNJ que puedas reclutar para unirse en tu búsqueda? Si los hay, ¿Cuántos PNJ podras llevar contigo a la vez ¿ Cuantos PNJ estarán disponibles en el juego ¿ Estaran tan detallodos como los de fallout 2 ¿


Si, y como dije arriba, tienen sus propias personalidades, y puedes darles algunas instrucciones para que te ayuden. Estoy bastante contonte porque han quedado muy bien. De momento puedes llevar solo dos porque hay algunas misiones donde llevaras mas gente contigo, y odbiamente necesitamos poner un limite. ¿ Numero total de ellos ¿


Hasta la fecha solo tenemos seis, pero nos estamos centrado en que sean eficaces y en que tengan profundidad. ¿ cuantos ¿ es una sorpresa saber a cuantos podemos subir.

2. va a haber algún tipo de personaje con una quest que otros personajes no tienen, o las quest estarn abiertas a todos.


Depende de lo que entiendas por quest, estamos diseñando situaciones que puedan enfocarse desde varios angulos, asi que tenernos “quests” con caminos diferentes que depende de tu personaje

3 quien ha escrito la historia principal, es el esfuerzo de un grupo ¿ No tenis miedo a que introducir la figura del padre limite la libertad de imaginar tu avatar y le imponga al jugador una motivación que no era la que el esperaba ¿

Emil Pagliarulo, jefe de diseño, ha hecho la mayor parte del guion. Solo puedo decir cosas buenas de su trabajo, es fantástico. Ambos queríamos hacer una relación padre/hijo , que fueras creciendo en el vault. Tenemos otros tres diseñadotes trabajando en la quest principañ. Kurt kuhlman, alan Nanes, Brian Chapin. En referencia a encasillar al jugador, somos conscientes, y hemos tenido cuidado de no hacerlo. No tienes por que ser amable con tu padre. Creo que puedes tomar casi cualquier dirección en el juego. El asunto es si te preocupas por los personajes, o no te sientes motivado a seguirlos. Te sorprendería cuanto aparece en nuestras conversaciones acerca de cualquier quest” cual es mi motivación ¿ porque lo hago?” La respuesta a veces es “porque he pagado 60 lulos por el juego”, pero esa no es una buena respuesta, asi que seguimos intentándolo hasta dar una razón.
Spoliler de bioshock, o algo!

Me encanta como Bioshock afronta el asunto de “ porque el juego te lo dice”Se retuerce de forma brillante hacia la mitad del juego. Si no has jugado, hazlo.

Viaje del mapa y encuentros especiales

4.A que se parecerá el mapa – será em plan “indiana jones”, viajando a través del mapa, o como en oblivion, con viaje rápido y una brújula que podemos apagar y como serán los encuentros aleatorios- especiales ¿

Lo siento, pero no podemos discutir eso aun. Dire que el funcionamiento del mapa de Oblivion era muy bueno, y creo que equilibraba el ir descubriendo nuevas localizaciones con volver rápido por las conocidas. Respecto a tema de la brújula, necesitas una forma fácil de decir al jugador donde quiere ir, asi que usaremos algo parecido. No creo que sea una cuestión del sistema, sino con que frecuecia quieres encarrilar al jugador. En ocasiones quieres que el destino sea un misterio, en otros no.