Fallout: New Vegas Preview and Interview

The avalanche of Fallout: New Vegas information isn’t quite finished, as today we have one more preview and a short article-style interview to report about.

TotalPlayStation starts things off with the preview:

One of the most obvious changes will be the ability to equip mods for your weapons, adding things like alternate firepower, better stats and the like. Scopes, ammo clips and so on will be available to swap out at any time, making firefights a bit more dynamic. Married to this expansion of your options for pew-pew is a greater focus on melee combat. Even while using VATS to set up a swing with the new golf club, for instance, specific animations have been added to create a little more oomph when taking off a mutant’s head. Changes to combat outside of VATS have given the real-time conflict a slightly more run-and-gun feel. This is still a game about careful planning and attacks, action points and scarcity of ammo, mind you, but you won’t necessarily empty an entire clip into an enemy before they go down. Additional bits of armor and specialized ammo types that can penetrate enemy defenses also mean targeting more than the head in VATS has become an option.

And then MTV Multiplayer summarizes what they learned about the game from Josh Sawyer:

The original two “Fallout” games — especially the second — were surprisingly grim and gritty. Prostitution, drugs, a general disdain for the human spirit. those were all fairly prevalent issues that developer, Black Isle, delivered rather well. And while “Fallout 3” certainly had its dark moments, I can’t remember feeling quite the same wash of grime across the entire game.

New Vegas is looking to bring some of that dirt back into the picture. “There is a very heavy influence on drugs, and sex, and gambling and the impact that it has on people,” Sawyer reveals.

“You, as a character, can participate in a lot of this stuff. You can also help bust it up if you want. The focus for that sort of stuff is in the city of New Vegas itself, rather than the larger conflict between Caesar’s Legion and the New California Republic.

In New Vegas you will see a lot of things that you remember from New Reno [from ‘Fallout 2’], in terms of the under-handedness and how people are used and thrown away a lot.”

Personally, New Reno was my favorite city in “Fallout 2” so this news is more than welcome. And whether or not the city of New Vegas is integral to the overall story (it’s in the title of the game after all) remains to be seen. From the sounds of it, it looks like it’s its own hub of culture like Rivet City in “Fallout 3.”