Fallout: New Vegas Article Round-up

There are quite a few New Vegas-related articles to report about tonight, so for convenience’s sake, I thought I’d round them all up into a single newsbit.

We start things off at PC Gamer, where they’ve posted profiles of three more perks:

Spray ‘n Pray

This perk significantly reduces the damage of friendly fire, so you’ll be able to nuke an area without having to worry too much about the safety of your companions. This perk is even more useful in Fallout: New Vegas because the companions you recruit will themselves grant you extra perks. Hang out with world-weary veteran Cass, for example, and you’ll be able to gain toughness by drinking whisky.

Then we stop by the official PlayStation Blog for a Q&A with senior producer Jason Bergman:

What can you tell us about the new Hardcore Mode?

Hardcore Mode can be turned on or off at any time, although if you want the Hardcore trophy, you have to turn it on when initially prompted and leave it that way all the way to the end of the game. When it’s on, players will have to eat, sleep, and drink water every day. In addition, ammo has weight, companions can die, Stimpaks heal over time, and damaged limbs can only be healed with a Doctor’s Bag.

While you can fast travel in Hardcore Mode, you can’t if the time it would take to get you there would result in the player dying from dehydration/exhaustion/starvation.

Before heading to Gamasutra for a “The Music of The Mojave Wasteland” piece penned by audio director Scott Lawlor:

Fallout has a unique set of challenges when it comes to music implementation. The experience the player has is largely unscripted and is subject to a number of unpredictable choices that they will make. At any point, the player can choose to walk away, or turn the other direction. This means that tightly scripted musical changes are essentially worthless. In this case, the player has the control.

Not only is the format largely unpredictable, it is also an extremely long form. Since the player is likely to spend countless hours in this world, we didn’t want the music to be overbearing or annoying. This meant trying to create variations and diversity wherever we could. In order to do this, there needed to be various approaches for each situation.

Next, we hit up Just Push Start for a hands-on preview:

Right after the climatic opening scene, the doctor of Good Springs will let you customize the personalized character that a player can use. The player can change the facial features, and name their character. After naming the character, the player will be then asked to go to the Vital-O Machine in which the SPECIAL attributes can be set. A series of personality questions will be asked and based on the answers the players will give, the game will pick the player’s abilities and skills. Some of these abilities and skills have already appeared in Fallout 3.

The opening introduction of New Vegas is CG. One of the things I noticed on it was screen tearing. However, after the opening sequence, the screen tearing stopped and for those gamers who are getting the Xbox 360 version, I highly suggest to install the game’s data to prevent lagging and make the game stream smoothly. Voice overs are pretty decent so far but since I only met a few locales of Good Springs, I can’t pass judgment into that.

Before finishing off at The Adrenaline Vault for a podcast interview with senior designer Chris Avellone.