Slashdot Mirror
Fallout 3 Facts That Could Save Your Life
This past weekend Bethesda released a few new tidbits of information about Fallout 3. Game journalists were invited to an event with the production team, and came away with a much better sense of what the title is like. "Fortunately, you never had to experience the horrors of a nuclear holocaust. Unfortunately, your mother died during childbirth, and you were raised by your father (in a very scientific fashion). Your early, developmental years play an important part of the character creation process and double as a basic game play tutorial. The G.O.A.T. (Generalized Occupational Aptitude TEST) determines what some of your starting skills and skills will be. Physical, artistic attributes can be customized as well. Much like the first level of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, you can manually alter your starting stats and skills before you venture forth." For an epic amount of coverage on the game, Bethesda's new blog has two posts with copious links to previews and hands-on pieces.
The G.O.A.T. (Generalized Occupational Aptitude TEST) determines what some of your starting skills and skills will be
At least it wasn't the Generalized Occupational Aptitude TEST for Specialized Education.
Trolling is a art,
Fallout 3 will not have leveling enemies. Rejoice.
-When Fallout 3 jumps in the water it doesn't get wet. The water gets Fallout 3. ...
-Fallout 3's tears can cure cancer. Too bad Fallout 3 doesn't cry. Ever.
-Guns don't kill people. Fallout 3 kills people.
-Fallout 3 is the reason why Waldo is hiding.
Like the first two were bug free?
Nothing pisses me off more than people who are convinced it sucks before they even play it, except maybe people who think it's awesome some equally bad reason.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Basically Oblivion didn't have the enemies placed by level designers or even their type determined that way but it looked at your level and just spawned enemies of a matching level. So if you go from level 1 to level 2 all monsters will be replaced with stronger ones. As a level up does not necessarily mean an increase in combat power you're screwed if you level more than you get stronger (as suddently all dungeons will be filled with huge dragons just because you trained your cooking skills a bit) and people had to devise specific strategies to gain as few levels as possible while gaining a maximum amount of power.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Sounds great, except that it lead to some real problems. You could complete the game's main questline while at level 2- it was quite easy then since you fought absurdly easy monsters the whole way. Conversely,if you were high level you would constantly meet bandits on the road who would be decked out in epic-quality items such as full Daedric armor. Why a generic highwayman would be wearing armor that even the highest level characters in Morrowind would have trouble getting was a bit of a puzzle.
There have been a lot of user patches to try and address this, mostly by capping the level and equipment of many of the random encounters and upping the difficulty on end game encounters.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Oh, they made it more two-dimensional, except that change is limited to the characters, story and gameplay.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
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: 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. I'd like to point out that the dialogue and storyline stuff is essentially the same thing they promised in Oblivion. Anyways...
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: 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: 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.
And the new Fallout 3 world keeps all the humor and flavor of the original series. You will find broken down nuclear cars (that will still explode if shot up), crazy robots like Mr. Handy, and a host of sometimes quirky wasteland dwellers. At one point we set one of the exploding nuclear cars on fire and then hopped into a portable nuclear shelter (which costs a quarter to use and looks like a phone booth) to avoid the blast. http://www.critical-hits.com/?p=890
http://www.gameindustry.com/review/item.asp?id=85
Perhaps most significantly, it made it nearly impossible to play the game on the "normal" difficulty setting without paying VERY close attention to the leveling system. Since the boost to one's fighting ability varies with the way in which one levels, failing to put at least some effort in to power leveling would make the game damn-near impossible by level 15 (or earlier!)
This might not be so bad, except that the leveling system was obviously designed to work in a "natural" way so that the player can mostly ignore it (indeed, it's almost the same as Morrowind's, which was required no attention whatsoever from the player, though one COULD pay more attention to it and get more out of each level if one wanted to) and consequently one must work to avoid increasing certain skills at all, while carefully leveling other skills (they're leveled by using them, did I mention that? It's not like you just choose to level individual skills) to a certain level and then stopping, to keep from triggering a new level prematurely.
So, unless you're OCD and willing to put up with a system that is not terribly friendly to level-watching fiends, the only options are to throw the game difficulty slider down to nearly the bottom (which makes the early game WAY too easy, so you really have to keep adjusting it as you go, which feels cheap and makes the whole experience less satisfying, and makes leveling seem even less worthwhile than it already does in this game) or to download a huge 3rd-party overhaul of the system.
I chose the latter, after playing most of my first run through the game with an eye always on the difficulty slider, and man, the second time with the mod was much better. Definitely the way to go.
(/rant off)
It's not a journalist's comparison that bothers me, it's the description that was dead-on for the character creation system in Oblivion and, to a lesser extent, Morrowind. Also, there was no Bethesda bashing, just a sincere desire that Oblivion (a game I really like) and Fallout (a game I also happen to like) be different games. Is that too much to ask?
Two-dimensional characters you say? Well that's one improvement on Oblivion.
I think that the character creation system is one of the areas they did well. Also, I think that they did a really good job on the first dungeon. For the most part, the problems don't start until you get out there and run into issues with the leveling system and the bland storyline.