Fallout 3 E3 Previews

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Written by BuckGB on July 16th, 2008

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Exiting the vault reminded me why, despite whatever complaints one might have with the way Bethesda handles Fallout, the epic first-person 3D RPG will always be better than 2D, isometric third person perspective. In the original Fallout, as you're leaving the vault, some text tells you something like, (You see a bright light ahead of you. This is the first time in your life you have seen sunlight.) That's well and good, but it's nothing like actually stepping out of the Vault into pure whiteness, so bright and overwhelming that I momentarily thought the game had crashed. The whiteness slowly faded away, however, and I realized that my character, the vault dweller, was adjusting his eyes to a sunlight he'd never before been exposed to in his life.

It was awesome.

Action elements aside, this is, after all, a role-playing game and as such you can be sure it will require players to keep an eye on the character's stats, perks and such. These aren't just for show. From what we've seen, perks definitely play an important role, gameplay wise, and can be selected once you level up. One of the most popular perks during Bethesda's Fallout 3 E3 demo, was the 'Bloody Mess' perk. Once activated, it gives you a chance to carry out extremely violent moves, either with a sniper rifle or a different custom-built weapon (rocket launcher, anyone?). We were also shown how the main character faces a group of raiders -- basically, bandits who are very hostile. They seemed capable of damaging the character from a distance, which is why we found the sniper rifle as rather friendly piece of equipment. The AI can handle itself pretty good. When injured, your character brings up the PipBoy 3000 to access and use stimpacks, radiation medicine and similar items to restore health.

Don't worry, like I said, more RPG elements are in there too. There's a huge number of items scattered throughout the world. At first glance, most of the stuff lying around appeared like useless junk, but Bethesda explained most of it can be used to craft weapons. Bear in mind that a lot of cool and useful things -- not to mention weapons -- may be picked up from fallen enemies as well, including ammo, assault rifles, pistols, grenades and so on.

We spent most of our time in an abandoned elementary school as we explored, picked up items like food, water (needed for healing wounds) and mostly shooting (with your default pistol) mutant raiders who want you to take detention . . . permanently. Fallout 3 gives you two options for combat. You can play it as a simple shooter or you can switch to the VATS system which stops the game completely and allows you to select specific points on your enemies body to shoot along with the percentage of success.

It's the third mode, called V.A.T.S. (Vault-Tech Assisted Targeting System), that's the real kicker. Just like in the original Fallout, you can target different parts of an enemy with different percentage chances to score a hit. Hit a knee and a bad guy might go down, score a head shot and the fight could easily be over. The mode instantly turns a real-time fight into a turn-based one with flashy camera moves and kills. You just click the right bumper and the scene pauses and zooms in on your enemy, select where you want to place your shots and how many you want to take with the amount of (energy) you have, and then fire. The camera pulls out and shows you taking down the enemy (or totally missing). It's a really interesting way to implement an old mechanic in a new way.

If you were here we would have talked about how the game is definitely running on the Oblivion engine as we left the Bethesda booth. It's not a bad thing mind you but the purists will probably complain a bit because that's what they do best. Saying that is akin to saying you're dating a prettier clone of Scarlett Johansson. The gameplay isn't perfect as the environments aren't fully interactive (I was spoiled by Bad Company) and there are still loading screens everytime you go in and out of an area. There are still some pop-in graphics as you explore the world and some of the models are a bit further up the uncanny valley wall than I'd like. That's all covered up by the wonderful sense of humr that Bethesda has worked into the game and the rest of the strong gameplay mechanics. I guess we'll find out soon enough when you get the game later this year.

If the Fallout universe were only an aesthetic, Bethesda would have completely nailed it with the upcoming Fallout 3.

Unfortunately, as my half an hour with the game a few moments ago demonstrated, all the external pieces are there, but the charm that made the series such a classic is almost entirely lacking.

That's not to say it won't be good; Shooter fans and those who loved Bethesda's Oblivion will probably adore the freedom offered by the game's open-world post-apocalyptic setting.

Dyed in the wool Fallout fans, however, may not be so pleased.

Aesthetically and aurally, Fallout 3 is amazing.

Kneeling while firing also helped in the accuracy department when attempting to manually take down the odd foes that we faced. Manual combat is essentially like Mass Effect or the other action/RPG's that you have played aim with the reticle and pull the trigger to shoot. Skilful action gamers can benefit from being handy with the steel, but those less into manual combat can opt for assistance from V.A.T.S. or the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System. You've surely heard a lot about this and have probably seen it in action, but let us be one of the first to tell you that this is a massive asset to Fallout 3's combat.

Fallout 3 might not be blowing anyone away yet, but based on what I played today at a special E3 hands-on session, fans of BioShock will be thrilled with Bethesda Softworks' latest action-RPG.

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