Fallout 4 Coming Out on November 10, Gameplay Demo Report, Mobile Game Releasing Today

Bethesda clearly made sure its first presentation of Fallout 4 would include a lot of information, so I’ll just start from the end of it: Fallout 4 is coming this year, on November 10th. The Collector’s Edition for the game will apparently include a Pip-Boy replica, and I’m sure Bethesda will share the rundown on the collector’s trinkets and the various editions very soon.

As many already suspected after seeing the game’s announcement trailer, the game will be set in Boston and feature a pre-War prologue. As customary of Bethesda’s games, it will be possible to create your own characters, who will be the only survivor of Vault 111, 200 years after the War. How and why the character survived that long after the War isn’t clear, as Bethesda decided to keep tight-lipped about the story, but Kotaku’s 2013 casting call leaks claimed cryogenic preservation was involved, and I’m inclined to believe they were on the money, considering every other detail mentioned matched so far.

The presentation didn’t focus on stats and RPG systems at all and was pretty fast-paced, but there were a couple of interesting facts to glean for the stats junkies: the same SPECIAL attributes that have been used since Fallout 1 (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck) are still present, and the game will use a layered armor system with separate armor pieces that’s more similar to The Elder Scrolls’ system than Fallout’s, which only separated between armor and helmet (the original isometric game didn’t even make that distinction).

The game runs on the latest iteration of the Creation Engine of Skyrim fame, and will feature physically based rendering and dynamic volumetric lighting. It’s certainly a jump in visual fidelity compared to the fifth Elder Scrolls title, and an enormous leap when compared to Fallout 3, though animations still looked occasionally clunky. In a radical departure from Bethesda’s previous games, Fallout 4 will feature cinematic conversation shot from a third-person perspective, with an interface comparable to Mass Effect’s dialogue wheel, or even Alpha Protocol’s dialogue (the four options available were mapped to the four face buttons of the controller in the demo). As expected, the protagonist will be voiced (the male voice seemed to be Troy Baker’s).

Some of the new systems shown included the ability to give your dog contextual commands based on the environment, the ability to create your own settlement using scrapped materials (and defend it from raiders), and customization of the character’s weapons (the system looked deeper than Fallout: New Vegas’, which only used featured about three mods per weapons) and even Power Armor, mixing and matching pieces from various types of armors (I spotted the classic T-51b from Fallout 1, a new T-60 armor that looked very similar to Fallout 3’s T-45, and the classic Enclave Power Armor, which already made a return in Fallout: New Vegas).

Todd Howard stressed that Bethesda worked a lot to make the combat in the game more fun than in the past, regardless of the way a player decides to play, though no particular mechanical detail was shared. What Bethesda decided to do, instead, was show copious amounts of footage concerning combat. Indeed, at first glance, the combat looks improved in terms of “gunplay”, closer to the way movement and shooting is handled in most first-person shooters, with a heavy dose of recoil and new melee moves (the character attacked an enemy with his pistol), some enemies seemed to have melee finishers, and VATS seemingly makes a return (this time the action didn’t seem to stop completely when the mode was activated, and a prompt for something that I believe was called “Critical Attack” was shown).

Overall, the presentation seemed to focus more on spectacle than mechanics or story, but that’s par for the course for a stage like E3. The game seemingly looks a lot less clunky than Fallout 3, and has a surprisingly vibrant art style, so hopefully the story and RPG systems will be just as improved over Fallout 3. Also, a bit of trivia: Fallout: New Vegas wasn’t mentioned even once during the presentation. Granted, PR-wise Bethesda would probably rather mention its internal titles, and Fallout: New Vegas’ critical reception wasn’t as good, but those hoping that Bethesda would take cues from Obsidian in tone, style and design for their next title have gotten their first disappointing sign.

I left this news for last, as I believe Fallout 4 is what people are most interested in, but Bethesda also announced a free Fallout mobile game, titled Fallout Shelter, which will be released tonight on the App Store. The game will see the player manage a Vault as an Overseer and won’t feature paywalls, though it will still be possible to spend real money to buy loot crates that would otherwise have to be found in-game.

Update: I’ve embedded the Fallout 4 part of Bethesda’s E3 conference below, now that Bethesda has made it available as a standalone: