Fallout 3 might not have been the proper return to the series that long-time Fallout fans were hoping for after Van Buren’s cancellation, but I thought the end product turned out to be pretty solid despite its striking similarities to The Elder Scrolls. Not only had Bethesda resolved many of my biggest gripes with Oblivion, but they also managed to successfully bring the post-apocalyptic wasteland to a major American city and integrate the iconic Vault Boy-branded art style that any addition to the franchise couldn’t be without. Considering that the game has sold several million copies to date, it really isn’t surprising that a follow-up is already due out later this year.
What is surprising is that Bethesda has tapped Obsidian Entertainment to handle the next installment. With the likes of Feargus Urquhart, Chris Avellone, Josh Sawyer, Chris Parker, Scott Everts, and Brian Menze helming its development, Fallout: New Vegas is without question the game I’m looking forward to most this year. As such, it was the very first game that I checked out at last week’s E3, and it ended up being the game I spent the most hands-on time with at the show. And thanks to the interview I had set up with him prior to the event, the one-and-only Chris Avellone took the time to guide me through the wasteland.
You probably know all about the two slugs in the protagonist’s head, the package that was stolen from you, and how being patched up by Goodsprings’ own Doc Mitchell turns into a clever character creation routine, so I’ll try to keep things a little more specific. Obsidian has made some significant strides in improving New Vegas’ gameplay over its predecessor, with the most important addition (in my Alpha Protocol-loving opinion) being the reputation system. There are a handful of different factions in the game, including the notorious New California Republic, the slavers of Caesar’s Legion, the New Vegas families/gangs, and, I’d venture to guess, the Brotherhood of Steel and Enclave (though neither have been confirmed). Every deed you commit for or against a faction alters your reputation with them (or others), meaning that reprecussions aren’t far behind. Where would any RPG worth its salt be without choice and consequence?
Despite its slightly irradiated condition, the Las Vegas Strip is still rife with gambling. The Tops Casino was the establishment available for exploration in the E3 build, and stepping foot inside required me to check my guns at the door. This isn’t as unreasonable as it sounds, especially since you can sneak in a number of concealable weapons (brass knuckles, switchblades, straight razors, or even a silenced .22 pistol) in case things get less-than-friendly while you’re inside (in fact, there’s a guy by the name of “Mister Holdout” that sells such weapons on The Strip). Refusing to comply doesn’t get you anywhere, as the entire casino will immediately turn hostile. Your weapons are safely stored during your visit and are immediately returned to your inventory when you exit the casino.
Gambling consists of four mini-games (slots, roullette, blackjack, and a Caravan card game that Avellone describes as being created by caravan wastelanders), all of which were headed up by Obsidian programmer Jonathan Burke whose prior development experience includes gambling-style video games. As a result, they play just as you’d expect them to, and are seamlessly integrated into the game (there are no immersion-breaking loading screens, as we saw with Fable II’s Pub Games). I spent a good 10 minutes trying out the first three gambling minigames, during which time I was comped some vodka, food items, and even a “High Roller’s Suite Key” by one of the casino’s staffers. Winning consecutive bets prompts you with a “You are lucky…” message, and Chris explained that your character’s luck attribute slightly affects the outcome of your gambling. I can’t say that I noticed any favoritism despite having a higher-than-average luck score, though I definitely won more money than I lost. You won’t be able to earn an infinite amount of caps gambling, however, as Chris tells me that you can actually “break the bank” at each of the casinos if you’re able to win enough. The team is also implementing some sort of “inconvenience” to curb players from simply saving their game before gambling and loading upon a loss, though Chris wouldn’t provide specifics on what exactly this entailed.
Other points of interest along “The Strip” include the Lucky 38 (a towering casino and home to the mysterious Securitron robot-controlling “Mr. House”), the Vault 21 hotel and casino (a typical Vault-Tec shelter turned into what Chris calls “a tourist attraction”), Gomorrah (another casino that was off in the distance), and the Ultra-Luxe (a fancy-looking restaurant with strippers dancing provocatively in its front fountain), though I didn’t have a chance to enter any of these locations during my time with the E3 build. From The Tops, I was teleported to an area in the Mojave Desert just outside of a Caesar’s Legion camp. Here, I recruited a New California Republic sniper named Boone (there are a total of nine such companions, by the way), who asked for my help in infiltrating the camp and killing the slaving faction’s leader. I could go about the task in a multitude of different ways, but given the amount of time I had during the demo, direct combat seemed most appropriate.
At this point, I had a quick look at Obsidian’s new “Companion Commands” control wheel. From this interface, you can now order a companion to take an aggressive or passive stance, use ranged or melee weapons, show you their inventory, keep their distance from your position, back up (if you need them to reposition themselves), indulge you in dialogue, wait where they’re at until you give them further orders, or heal up with a stimpak. After making sure Boone was well-equipped, I had a look at my own inventory (the interface of which is nearly identical to Fallout 3). Some of the new weapons at my disposal were an Anti-Material Rifle, a Lever-Action Shotgun, some C-4 Plastic Explosives with Detonator, a 9 Iron golf club, a Bladed Gauntlet, a Multiplas Rifle, a Plasma Caster, a Trail Carbine, a Light Machine Gun, and the infamous Grenade Launcher. Chris also tells me that “named” weapons will be making a return in New Vegas, though they won’t accept modifications like standard weapons will. Additionally, when you highlight each weapon, you’re not only shown their damage and quality scores, but you’re also provided with a rating for the weapon’s damage per second (DPS). This made it an easy decision for me to equip the Plasma Caster for maximum carnage.
Combat hasn’t changed a whole lot from Fallout 3, though jumping in and out of VATS seems quicker and smoother than I remember it. There are also new “special attacks” that you can perform with melee weapons, some opponents are resistant to attacks aimed at certain parts of their bodies (to keep us from continuously performing head shots), and we now get a little shield indicator if a certain weapon is less effective against a specific enemy. If you’re not a fan of VATS, you’ll be happy to hear that you can now aim down the sights of a ranged weapon for more “streamlined” FPS action. Slow motion kills are still a part of the experience, but thankfully you can turn them off once you’ve had your fill of violence.
Killing the Caesar’s Legion soldiers brought me some definite satisfaction, but it quickly knocked my reputation with the faction down to “shunned” and, soon after, “hated”. When there was nothing left but severed heads and dismembered eyeballs, I had the opportunity to search the bodies and various tents that made up the camp. What I found most interesting was not the ammunition and other loot that could be had, but the notes that I found and added to my Pip-Boy. Some notes were letters written to loved ones, while others were journal entries that NCR members had been writing just before being surrounded and subsequently killed by the Caesar’s Legion. Avellone explained that the notes in Fallout: New Vegas are intended mostly for flavor, though there will obviously be some that yield useful information (such as codes to locked doors). As a fan of little lore-inducing elements like this, it was a welcome sight.
Once I was finished at the camp, Chris had me check out another save game that they used at a previous press event in order to get a better look at the subtle dialogue changes. The first set of dialogue I was shown had a response with a “[Speech 35]” in front of it, and since the protagonist I was playing had 86 points in every skill, that particular response was a viable option. That same response would have shown up even if my Speech skill had been pathetically low, though choosing it with a score lower than 35 would have resulted in my character spitting out the line incoherently. Ultimately, the recipient wouldn’t have been convinced, but the development team felt it was important to take the guessing out of skill allocation and just let players know exactly how many points are required to make a successful attempt. The game’s new books that grant a temporary +10 bonus to a specific skill should prove to be pretty valuable, thanks to this mechanic.
On the subject of skills and skill books, Mr. Avellone also revealed to me that there won’t be nearly as many manuals that grant permanent +1 bonuses. There will still be some scattered around the desert, but the team wanted to ensure that a site like GameBanshee couldn’t simply provide you with a list of book locations that will have all your skills above average without a whole lot of work. The skills themselves have seen a slight consolidation, with “Small Guns” and “Big Guns” being grouped into one skill that’s just called “Guns”. To make up for the lost skill, Obsidian has added a new “Survival” skill that’s described as a more fleshed-out version of the “Outdoorsman” skill we had back in the Fallout 1 and 2 days. It will affect how much health you regain from consuming food and other health-inducing items, and even allow you to craft your own. Whether or not it will come into play when stumbling upon special encounters is unclear.
After the demonstration had finished up, I took the liberty to ask a few questions before my “official” interview with Chris took place. Unfortunately, questions about perks, reputation titles, and DLC were off-limits, but Avellone did explain that the team felt it was important that a player could see three points of interest off in the distance (Helios One, Dinky the Dinosaur, Lucky 38, and other notable structures) when spinning around 360 degrees at any time out in the desert. They also made a point of creating a use for every skill within the first couple of hours of the game so that players didn’t feel like they had sunk all of their points into a skill that wouldn’t be used until much later. And if you were hoping to score some Gamerpoints with Fallout: New Vegas like you did with Fallout 3, you’re out of luck. Since New Vegas utilizes Steamworks instead of Games For Windows Live for its DRM scheme, we won’t be logging into our Live accounts.
When my time with New Vegas was over, I can honestly say that I was quite impressed. It certainly isn’t a revolutionary shift from what we saw in Fallout 3, so if the mechanics in Bethesda’s iteration turned you off, Obsidian’s entry isn’t suddenly going to turn you into a believer. What it should do is address the primary issues many of us had with F3 – the monotonous kill scenes in VATS, the less-than-stellar writing, and the lack of any real difficulty once a decent weapon was obtained (hardcore mode, here I come). The game is already content complete and looking pretty polished, so I don’t foresee any reason why we won’t be experiencing over 150 hours of post-nuclear entertainment when the game ships on October 19th.
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