Thanks to the QuakeCon presentation of Fallout 4, we learned a lot more solid information on Bethesda’s upcoming entry in what is arguably the most famous and well-received post-apocalyptic role-playing franchise. For example, we now know that the game will have “around a dozen” companions, some of whom the player character will be able to enter into romantic relationships with, that the skill system has been rolled into the perk system, and that a number of crutches players could rely on to stop time in combat and re-assess the situation have been eliminated, making the pace of the game’s action far more hectic.
First of all, though, I’d like to point you to this interview with Bethesda’s VP of PR and Marketing Pete Hines over at GameTrailers. The presentation is discussed at length during the interview, but the most interesting tidbit comes at around 13:30, when Pete Hines states that the game is “essentially done” and that now Bethesda will be focusing only on polishing and bug fixing, rather than introducing new content and features:
Fans of the franchise over at Reddit have also pooled together their resources and jotted down a transcription of the presentation, based on a leaked audio recording. It’s worth mentioning because it helps clarify exactly what was mentioned. Here’s how game director Todd Howard explained the new skill-less character progression system:
[W]hat we’re doing with the leveling system in this game is… we have a whole bunch of perks and those are tied… really to your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats. So we’re gonna take some time today to show you how [inaudible] So here’s a list of perks. Every time you level up, you get to pick one of these. Here’s what that looks like.
So you have this Vault-tec [inaudible] (newsposter note: Howard seems to say “poster” here) with all of your perks, and there is a separate perk for each S.P.E.C.I.A.L. and each value of that S.P.E.C.I.A.L. from one to ten. So if you have a S.P.E.C.I.A.L. in that you can pick one of those perks right away. So like this intimidation perk, if you have a high charisma, allows you to control other people. And each perk for the most part, except for a few exceptions, has multiple ranks. So we have combined the previous skill system into this as well. So if there are seventy base perks and then you add all the ranks, you’re getting around 275 of these.
So, when you’re coming out of the vault, if you decided to go right to a 10 on a stat and lower your other ones you can be some very cool perks. We’ve found that playing the game over time, this gets us some really cool different play styles. So very, very cool, fun leveling system in the game.
We follow with some reports from QuakeCon that should give those of us who couldn’t attend an idea of what was going on gameplay-wise. Polygon:
There are some familiar ways of getting around and interacting with the world that don’t involve bashing someone’s head in. During the demo, the player activated a helpful security bot by hacking into a computer terminal, who dealt with his foes for him. Stealth is also a viable option, letting you sneak around foes or get the drop on them.
The lockpick system looked identical to how it functioned in Fallout 3.
Pitting different enemy factions against one another seems like it’s going to play a big role in your survival in Fallout 4. At one point the demo, the player watched as the Brotherhood of Steel, a band of Raiders and a few unlucky Ghouls fought among themselves.
Your dog companion arches his back and growls when enemies are near, making him a particularly handy alarm for Ghouls, who will try to get the drop on you from ceilings and through windows.
20:54 Gameplay. THe character is entering Lexington. There’s a broken diner, a chemical plant. He has Dogmeat with him.
20:55 Ghouls start pouring out of the windows, the cracks in buildings. It’s kinda creepy. Character uses VATS to blast the ghouls in the torsa. More pour out and go after him.
20:55 After the battle, the player discovers Super Duper Mart. He tells the dog “see if he had anything worth taking” and the dog goes off while the main character hacks a computer.
20:56 After hacking the computer, he turns around and sees a robot patrolling the mart. It says “protect and serve” as it waddles around. Seems harmless.
20:57 The player discovers a laser musket. Ghouls come through the window and start attacking the player and the patrolling robot. The musket is crazy powerful. After every shot he has to reload by cranking a lever on the side. Very satisfying.
The Raiders where just would you would expect from a Fallout game, just more polished, more realistic. The way they interacted with each other, you, and the Ghouls (whom were not friendly with the Raiders) felt much more natural and real. This is a running theme with Fallout 4 in my opinion. Think about what Fallout 3 looked and felt like for a moment, and now imagine everything is more fleshed out. You can drink from a water fountain and see the water flow out. Use a stimpack and see yourself quickly jab it into your body. Wanna throw a grenade? Press which ever key /button throws grenades, no longer do you have to switch weapons to a grenade to throw it. If you’ve seen any footage of Fallout 4 already you may have noticed how V.A.T.S. no longer stops time, but slows it way down, and improves the pace of combat greatly. Also you may already be aware of the way dialog functions and how you no longer have to “lock on” so to speak, to an NPC to talk to them. This logic extends even further with the looting of items from bodies, containers, etc…. no longer does your game essentially pause and bring up and inventory type interface, you just target the items and take them or pick them out from a list. This all seems like small improvements but when you combine everything it just make the entire game look more natural and less compartmentalized.
Finally, we round up some snippets and details coming from post-presentation interviews. Bethesda was tight-lipped about gameplay outside of the presentation, so don’t expect any earth-shattering revelation.
The Guardian has a full interview with Todd Howard and Pete Hines. During the interview, they explain why they decided to set the prologue of the game before the apocalypse proper, how the new settlement building works, and how much focus the non-violent gameplay will receive:
Elsewhere, Howard says that Fallout 4 is set to learn from the emergent questing system used in Skyrim, which provided emergent tasks for the player. (I can’t spoil it, but we’re doing a better job than we’ve ever done,) he says. We do know there will be romantic possibilities with the game’s human helper characters, of which there are 12, including a journalist named Piper and Preston Garvey, leader of a group named the Commonwealth Minutemen.
Howard won’t elaborate on how that will work, but for players who want to make more love than war, the game will meet them at least halfway. (You can avoid [killing] a lot,) he says. (I can’t tell you that you can play the whole game without violence that’s not necessarily a goal of ours but we want to support different play styles as much as we can.)
In an interview with GameSpot at Quakecon, Bethesda’s Marketing VP Pete Hines told us that the studio started thinking about Fallout 4 as soon as Fallout 3 was released in 2008. Hines said that the decision for Fallout 4 to take place in Boston was made before Skyrim was released. “Long ago,” he explained when asked about the timeline of that choice. “Pre-Skyrim… The ideas for Fallout 4 started right after Fallout 3 and have gotten worked on and been percolated since 2008… We’re talking about its infancy, we’re talking about jotting some stuff down, we’re talking about, ‘I want to do it in Massachusetts, and have it be about this, this, and this.'”
