For many fans of the original Fallout, this third installment is right up there with the second coming of Christ and “leaked Hollyoaks cast nude pics” showing up in their inbox. To say it is eagerly anticipated is quite an understatement, but do the ultra-high expectations worry Bethesda?
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Pete Hines - “Oh no, not at all! I'd be disappointed if it was anything less. I think they should expect as good a Fallout game as is possible, given how long they've waited, and people who are fans of Bethesda should certainly expect that we've put every ounce of energy and creativity into making something that is worthwhile.”
Now, of course I didn't expect Pete to suddenly break down in front of me, declaring that the pressures of bringing the Fallout franchise back to the front of the RPG genre is slowly eating away at the very souls of Bethesda's employees, but it was a question I had to ask. You see, Fallout has some very, very obsessive fans – fans who took one look at this new game and baulked at almost every aspect of it. It was 3D, it wasn't turn-based, it wasn't “their” Fallout, for all intents and purposes. As far as I can tell, they have nothing to worry about.
Our demo started with the introductory sequence, “I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire” by The Inkspots playing on a battered bus radio, before giving way to Ron Perlman delivering the classic Fallout opening dialogue - “War. War never changes.” If you've any interest at all in the series, you'd be moist at the gusset less than ten seconds into this game. You're then born into the world, quite literally. The game begins with your birth, where you choose your sex and name, then customize your characters look, with the game informing your new parents that “this is what your child will look like in their twenties”. It's a neat little touch, keeping everything nice and immersive – I mean, if you've gone this far to ensure the “Fallout atmosphere” is retained, there's no point breaking it with rubbish menu prompts every couple of seconds.
It continues this throughout the “tutorial”. Playing as a one year old, being taught “how to walk” by your father, who's face is generated to have similar features to your own character. Playing as a ten year old, learning to interact with the various social groups at your birthday party. Being bought an air pistol by your father and learning how the combat system works. It is all so much more enjoyable than being told that it is, in fact, the R trigger to fire your gun. Y'know, like ALL THE OTHER GAMES IN THE WORLD.
It is the combat that has been one of the main points of contention within the Fallout community – the original games were very much turn-based strategy when it came to battles – whereas this is clearly a more action-oriented affair, played from a first or third person perspective and without a grid or movement turns in sight. There is much, much more to it than that – The V.A.T.S system.
You can run around the world with your chosen weapon, blasting away at enemies like your average FPS, but at any moment you can freeze the action, ala Mass Effect, and pick your shots, choosing to aim at the various body parts of your enemy which will cause different status effects. A called shot to the face will blind an opponent, while a shot to the arm will cause significantly less accuracy or even disarm them. Obviously, a head shot is far more destructive than a bullet to a limb, so a percentage dictates your chances of landing the hit, governed by your characters individual skill levels. You can target as many enemies and body parts as long as you have enough action points – which accumulate over time – and then, once you've allocated them as you see fit, the actions are carried out in a short animation sequence, before throwing you straight back into the heat of the action, if in fact, any of your opponents are left standing.
It is essentially adding a touch of the 'classic' Fallout combat into this new game, updating it and actually creating a far more interesting way of dealing with enemies. You can approach every encounter with V.A.T.S, run and gun your way to victory or, as recommended by Hines, utilize a healthy combination of both to get through the game.
Its not all guns and blasting. One of the most memorable parts of the Fallout series was how many different ways you could approach the game. You could be a hard-arsed gun toting psychopath that bludgeoned their way through everything in sight, but then you could also be a quick-witted smart-ass blessed with the gift of gab, able to talk themselves out of a series of increasingly hostile situations. It begged the question, with this much emphasis on the new (and genuinely improved) combat, does Fallout 3 still offer a non-violent choice to the player?
Pete Hines - “That is certainly our goal, to mirror all of those original experiences – well, the positive ones. Things like, giving the player plenty of opportunity to avoid combat as a viable option.”
It is worth noting, at this point, that the lead designer on Fallout 3 is Emil Pagliarulo. Doesn't ring any bells? Well, he worked on the Thief series, and was responsible for the absolute genius that was the 'Dark Brotherhood' questline in Oblivion – by far the most interesting part of an already awesome game. If you are familiar with his work, then it goes without saying he is quite skilled in giving the player “alternative” means of getting through a situation.
Pete Hines - “Me and Emil go way back – He just gets how to offer the player really interesting gameplay options. I hope that what folks see is that we do offer a lot of ways to play the game, that its not just a straight shoot-'em-up but you can use dialogue and your skills to go about resolving problems in a number of different ways.”
Shortly after the game was announced, many questions were asked and one which stood out was the question of size. Bethesda have a bit of a reputation for creating genuinely massive landscapes, from Oblivion's rolling green hills of Cyrodiil to the ridiculous 63,125 square miles of Daggerfall. Bethesda didn't mince its words – Fallout 3's world, set in a post-apocalypse Washington D.C, is smaller than Oblivion, but what does that actually mean for the game?
Pete Hines - “It's still very, very, VERY big! Folks hear smaller and instantly think “really small”. Oblivion was absurdly large, so even if it is a little bit smaller than that, it's still really big. The really big thing for us was having to compress the scale of locations, because this is D.C and you've got all these suburbs, if you're going to put that in – to scale – its going to take you two hours of in-game time to get walk anywhere. So, we sort of crunched it all down to make locations closer to you. It is very important that when your in the world and you look at your map and go “Shit, I haven't uncovered all of THAT yet?! Holy shit, this is HUGE!” It is going to take you a long time to uncover everything in this game.”
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This, of course, doesn't include the interior sections, or the huge subway that exists under Washington. One of the few problems with Oblivion was the repetition within the various caves and ruins found around the map. Clearly, this was because of the sheer size of the game – there had to be a cutback somewhere – but does Fallout 3 have the same issue?
Pete Hines - “Yeah, sometimes it got pretty monotonous. I think that is one of the reasons why we don't mind scaling things down a little bit in terms of size and scope. If you've got fewer dungeons, you can put much more polish on them and make them more distinct and different. For an extreme example, if you had 1000 compared to one, the one would be immensely detailed, whereas with the 1000 you'd have to get a bit generic. The same is true with almost every part of the game – characters, locations and events – all of them get much better and more memorable when you have fewer of them to manage. I think the variety is a bit better, as you've got buildings, underground parts, above ground quasi-dungeons... There is a much better mix, so hopefully folks will find it to be more appealing and more exciting than Oblivion.”
It is a beautiful looking game, too. Not in the same way Oblivion was beautiful, mind. Standing on the top of a mountain, looking across Cyrodiil as the sun rises in the distance, beams of light breaking through the trees ensured that Oblivion would be remembered as a lovely looking game, but Fallout 3 is full of scorched landscapes, derelict buildings and ugly, ugly mutants – all of which look GORGEOUS. There is much more detail in the surroundings than Oblivion's rocks and trees, with burnt out husks and rubble everywhere. It looks frighteningly real in places, a terrifying image of a world years after a nuclear war. The scenery now takes damage, too. Hines demonstrated this by hurling a grenade into a series of wrecked cars, setting off a chain reaction – explosions blasting pieces of metal off at various angles. The entire game looks like a beautiful mess, influenced by decades of various media.
Pete Hines - “I think anything that treats, or talks about Post-Apocalyptic life has been absorbed by somebody on our team. Emil himself, we had a period where we had to keep sharp objects away from him because he was watching one incredibly depressing post-nuclear movie after another. Not at all happy Mad-Max style fun, just really bad, awful “the world is dead” stuff. The big one that came out not too long after we started was Cormac McCarthy's “The Road”, which is such a brilliant book. It's one of those things where you're reading it and you're thinking “Oh my god, this is just horrible”, but it is a really good treatment of what [post-apocalyptic] life could be like.”
Hearing that “The Road” is a huge influence on the game was a highlight – it is a brilliant, and incredibly bleak yet touching story about a father and a son wandering across America destroyed by nuclear war. It is, at times, a disturbing read, which raises the issue of the violence in Fallout 3. The original games had many extreme morale decisions to be made, involving everything from murder, prostitution and a plethora of other issues that tend to worry Daily Mail readers. With videogame violence back on the radar once again, I asked Pete if he had any worries about the censors.
Pete Hines - “Ultimately, it's going to be up to the players to decide whether or not they were torn between two choice or whether it was a simple A or B. Games have changed a lot in the last ten years and stuff that was edgy and out of the norm now seems fairly tame. In GTA, you can curbstomp hookers and kill cops – that wasn't the norm back then! Now, you don't even blink at it, look at the God of War sex game, for instance. The environment has changed but I certainly hope that making the morale choices and having to live with the consequences, sometimes even being surprised by the consequences, is something that we've captured. As long as there is context, unlike some of the games we recently heard were getting in trouble where all you do is go around and be violent, we'll be okay. It is certainly something we are aware of but I don't think [Fallout 3] is anywhere out of the norm than many other games that came out over here without any trouble.”
Still scheduled for an Autumn release – simultaneously in the US and Europe on all three platforms, Fallout 3 is looking like it could be one of the bigger games of 2008, but are there any more plans for Fallout? Bethesda now own the license fully, so as far as downloadable content, expansion packs and even sequels are concerned, surely anything is possible?
Pete Hines - “Right now, it is a little early to talk about that sort of stuff. Oblivion was really successful with DLC; we had millions and millions of downloads so we'd be silly not to look into it. Our content folks are still focusing on stuff for Fallout 3, so until we're done with that part of the process and we're on to nothing but testing and fixing, we don't even think about what they could be working on as far as extra content is concerned. It is safe to say our intention is to keep developing [Fallout], otherwise why else you bother getting the rights to it? Let's just do this one first and not fuck it up, otherwise there won't be another one! Right now, our focus is on this Fall and making Fallout 3 a terrific game. Then maybe we'll take a nap, rest up after several years of this and get on to the next thing we are going to do.”
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After seeing the demonstration, it is clear that Fallout 3 is going to be a great RPG and an even better return for the much-loved series. After Oblivion, it would be hard to think of a developer better suited to bringing Fallout back and from what they have so far, even the most hardcore Fallout fan will find a lot to love here. In closing, I asked Pete what they wanted to get out of the release of Fallout 3.
Pete Hines - “I'd like to see two things. I'd like to see people who played the original Fallout and say “That is exactly what I wanted from a new Fallout game” or maybe be so bold to hope that folks will think it was even better than what they expected. We want fans who loved that series to find a game that is true to what they remembered. We also want bring a bunch of new fans to this series – maybe people who weren't old enough or weren't into it ten years ago that now have a chance to experience this really great world that Tim Cain and all those other guys created and hopefully have a great time playing our game.”
From what we've seen, chances are he'll get both those things.
