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.
Either way (drum roll please) here comes the rest of the story...
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 slightly different from our own after World War II. From that point until the war in 2077, the world went down a slightly different path, and thus, the game world will be slightly different than the Washington D.C. of our world. With that said, many of the familiar landmarks are present and accounted for.
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).