The Vault and Fallout 4 at Gamescom

Tagaziel

Tagaziel

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The Vault has visited Gamescom and seen what there is to see there - that is, not particularly much. Bethesda's presence was limited and the offerings slim, but there are things to be learned from the pre-recorded video shown to press and mere attendees alike. The bulk of it is combat. Here's a snippet:

Following some more ghoul slaughter, the video seamlessly transitioned to some urban warfare against raiders (with a bolt-action sniper rifle) and the Corvega assembly plant. The plant is a large, self-contained combat area. Unfortunately, while many areas are open and part of the world-map, Creation is still cell-based, like its five older siblings, and map transitions are necessary. The Survivor battles his way through a high volume of raiders, to the other end of the factory. The first thing showcased in combat is the reworked VATS, used to good effect on an attacking raider in the lobby. VATS no longer guarantees critical hits, instead they're made after the critical hit bar fills up (the speed depends on your attributes and perks). Without the bar, it's effectively auto-aim, with chances to hit determined by the game.

It's worth noting that the AI seems to be a tad smarter than in previous installments and chooses their attacks more effectively. Apart from standard raiders, he also runs into fixed turret emplacements that provide very effective suppressive fire and have to be dispatched with grenades – which appear to have their own hotkey. On the way, the Survivor also patches up their wounds with a stimpak. Unlike previous games, Fallout 4 shows you applying the stimpak (in first person during the presentation) and according to previous reports, there is a cooldown included to avoid the “god mode” known from Fallout 3 – hotkeyed stimpaks with instant effects.
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Here are also some musings from Tagaziel, the cat on the ground, especially for NMA:

As a long time Fallout fan – who quite literally grew up with Fallout in his life – I wait for Fallout 4 with mixed feelings. On one hand, it is another game in the series, introducing a lot of new mechanics that I always wanted in games. On the other, it follows in the footsteps of Fallout 3, which was a good game as far as mechanics went (no wonder, Bethesda has been iterating on the same fundamental gameplay for some twenty years, ever since Arena), but as a Fallout game, not so much. Fallout is more than just shooting stuff, looting gear, and running around a wacky 50s wasteland. It also needs good writing and a real story, both of which were sorely lacking in Fallout 3.

Will Fallout 4 improve on this? It's impossible to tell. Once more, Bethesda focuses overwhelmingly on combat in marketing, which is understandable – guts sell – however, there's precious little available on the meat of an RPG – choices, consequences, dialogue, characters, quests. All we are left with is combat and exploration.

And I must say, it's pretty damn good. The ability to craft your own, unique weapon and armor was one of the things I always wanted from a game in this era. The demo did a good job of showcasing the variety of armaments, up to and including the Fat Man. My personal favorite came at the Corvega plant, when the person recording the demo used iron sights on a minigun.

In general, combat feels better. It's no longer the clunky, awkward fighting of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, it's definitely more fluid and, well, varied. It's difficult to precisely describe just what makes it better, but it simply is. One of the things that became apparent during the demonstration video was that it was recorded while playing with a gamepad, which visibly hamstrung the player.

The mouse and keyboard combination will definitely rule supreme, but will the game appropriately compensate? It's understandable to keep the enemies from bum-rushing the player while he fumbles with a, frankly, subpar controller, but when the mouse and keyboard come into play, they shouldn't. Unfortunately, I expect that in an effort to give the same experience for all players, the game will not compensate for controller choices – though for us PC owners, this will be easily solved with mods.

My personal favorite part of the game, from what we know thus far, is power armor. From the moment the first teaser images of it were shown, I fell in love. Big, bulky, lumbering – just how I imagined them.

I'll close this little bit of rambling (my personal thoughts are as non-linear as the main quest in Fallout 1) with something that occurred to me: It's 2015. Fallout entered development in 1995. It's been twenty years.

Bethesda first licensed the rights in 2004, meaning that as of 2015, they have worked with Fallout longer than Interplay and its studios ever did – and considerably longer than all of the franchise's parents.

Who, exactly, defines Fallout now?

Food for thought.
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Who does, indeed?
 
Who, exactly, defines Fallout now?
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Huh? I would say the original developers did that already pretty well. There are enough quotes from them explaining in detail what they wanted to achieve with their game and why they made certain choices during development. And there are tons of other informations available, like here on NMA as far as the development of F1 and F2 goes.

Seriously, a Fallout sequel to be one should have been top down and turn based and the story in the wasteland - Nev Vegas did at least the story part darm well. That it doesn't sell eventually with the masses of gamers is true. But who ever said a Fallout game has to sell 30 milion units to be a great Fallout game? I am not making a racing game into a shooter either just because it sells the most.
 
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Fallout was originally just meant to be a sequel to Wasteland. Hell, if it does better as an FPS, it can go right ahead. We have the real Wasteland 2 now with a better story, in my honest opinion, than Fallout. To each their own. Like Dead Money and the Sierra Madre, I suppose it's time to let go.

But we'll still be here, reminding people how it all -really- started. You can't change the wind, but you can change your sails, and this ship has come to shore.

I just hope they don't fuck up.
 
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*shrugs* sure. Fallout is just a game after all. But we are talking about the definition of Fallout. And that is not even opinion anymore, the definition of Fallout was never a Mass Effect First person shooter. And in my opinion Bethesda already fucked up from a Fallout perspective with Fallout 3 which was so far away from Fallout like Commandos Strike Force from Commandos Behind Enemy Lines, where the first Commandos was a top down strategy game and the last Commandos a first person shooter.

It has nothing to do with moving forward.
 
fallout works well in fps mode but only if the story is good. i mean, they at least changed the vats so that it only slows time instead of freezing the game, and if they learned from NV hopefully there will be more dynamic story choices. it will probably never be as rpg-perfect as the classic games, and that is to be understood when playing it, but i'll still probably pick it up and try it out because, hell, i might as well (on sale of course)
 
Which is really too bad.

Often I see elsewhere, when one person points out flaws of FO3/NV, one common response is "Go play Wasteland 2" then (that game WL2 is its own setting and follow-up to WL1, not a FO setting; good nonetheless) or "Go play FO1/2 then," which is kind of funny because I can perfectly tolerate a "first person" perspective Fallout if the game itself has an engaging storyline that is not lazily re-hashed, has branching path-lines, and has meaningful consequences. Those are the bare minimum things it needs for me to tolerate it and not quit out of boredom.

Making sure it actually doesn't look janky would be a nice bonus (ie, the notorious animations) or a world that does feel 'lived in' or a modicum of strategic control (as controlling companions is not very fun in recent Elder Scrolls) would be nice bonuses on top.

Maybe they just don't want to give away the storyline and it'll blow everyone's minds, I don't know - but judging by their last games in that respect definitely makes me wary. The previews seemed to be heavily focused on all the 'distraction' elements...
 
Well I don't know why there is even really much of a need to talk about it when you have the developer quotes and interviews right here on NMA even.
 
Tagaziel said:
Who, exactly, defines Fallout now?

Food for thought.
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Who does, indeed?
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I never liked that question, of who defines a work. It makes it sound as if nothing about a work is concrete or definitive, where if you strip that part away, the whole idea crumbles and what you get is a sloppy mess. (For me, it's always the original creative team, or creator in terms of a novel or short story.)

Frank Darabont defined The Walking Dead's TV adaptation, and he had the film experience to back up and enhance the story of the comics. What did we get after him for Season 2? Glen Mazarra and a bunch of other directors who were working around the budget cuts brought on by AMC.

The Thief series was defined by a lot of things -- great main character, rich world design, the tension brought about by being a thief sneaking around much stronger enemies while also pinching their valuables -- which got a slight shake-up in the move from Looking Glass to Ion Storm Austin. It wasn't until it went into Eidos Montreal's hands that things went to shit, after the story was over and Garrett's character was well-defined.

The -shock series was famous for being an Action-RPG set in space against an omnipotent AI, or underwater in a world gone mad, and yet by the time we get to Infinite, it has devolved into a dude-bro shooter with a high-brow story that's full of holes.

Fallout? Black Isle defined it. Bethesda do not, and if they keep overhauling their games with each new release, they'll never define any IP they own outside of the most shallow definitions.
 
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Bethesda most definitely define it now. They own the series now and they do what they want with it and shape it how they want. They get to choose how they want their games to be since they own it. I'm not trying to make you guys angry but its true.
 
I don't think it's possible for Bethesda to define Fallout, since Fallout was defined in 1997 (arguably 1988) and you only ever define something once. They have the right to shape it going forwards, but to date they've actually added very little to what Interplay and BIS came up with, save for different context. Almost everything in Fallout 3 was just a different spin on something from Fallout 1 or 2.

I mean, if Fallout didn't have one of the most memorable settings in the history of the medium, Bethesda wouldn't have even bothered to acquire the franchise.
 
Crni Vuk said:
Well I don't know why there is even really much of a need to talk about it when you have the developer quotes and interviews right here on NMA even.
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Would you mind linking me to those? I've tried looking for them but i'm not sure which specific interviews you're talking about, and i'm really interested in reading them.
 
You can find some of it here

http://www.nma-fallout.com/article.php?id=35764

Would you have made Fallout 3 isometric and with Turn Based combat or would you have followed the same principle that you're using on this PA title?

Leonard Boyarsky: I don't know how I would have felt about making FO3 anything but isometric and turn based. We did have an extremely high budget idea for another approach, but even in that scenario combat was isometric and turn based. Of course, it's easy for me to say I wouldn't have done a paused real time FO3 now, but I don't know what I would have said if the offer was made.
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I personaly believe you really can't get closer to a definition of Fallout than what the developers said about their goals. Like isometric and turn based. It was chosen with a reason. And the moment Bethesda desided to make their Sequels Real-Time based First Person Shooters was the moment it moved away from this definition. Even if the games would be awesome RPGs with very enjoyable writting, it would still not be a true Fallout game.
 
There is another one too... Feargus quote, but it's gone from/along with DAC.


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megafallout3fan said:
Bethesda most definitely define it now. They own the series now and they do what they want with it and shape it how they want. They get to choose how they want their games to be since they own it. I'm not trying to make you guys angry but its true.
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Defining what Fallout 4 is is not the same as defining what the Fallout IP stands for. They are different things, and it is possible for even the originator of something to miss the mark when making a new installment of a series. For example, there is a reason why so many people hated the Star Wars prequels, even aside from their general crappiness...

As another example, if Bethesda releases Fallout 4, and it turns out to be a space combat sim about dogfighting evil weasels from Venus, even fans who don't remember the original games will wonder what the heck is going on. Just because they have the legal right to do whatever they want doesn't give them infinite power to redefine Fallout.
 
Well, unless Bethesda has a time machine there is no way that they can define what Fallout is, because the previous games did that already. Fallout 1, 2 and the developer quotes of that time pretty clearly explain what Fallout is.
 
Yeah, but I think the original post was saying that Bethesda might be able to at least partially redefine it, having worked with "it" for longer. Which might carry a lot of weight in the eyes of fans who didn't start with Interplay or Black Isle. I don't think the amount of time says much, though. They're only releasing their second game for the franchise, so they have a ways to go to overwhelm the existing content.

But it's kind of irrelevant, because "it" is just a name at the end of the day. Bethesda is clearly not working on the same series of games as the first Fallouts. They can use the name and pick and choose some bits of lore to butcher and reconstitute, and all of it has no effect on the original titles. This is just another rebooted franchise in the age of rebooted franchises.
 
And even if Bethesda worked for 10 000 years on Fallout. It would not matter one inch. The first game(s) set the tone and the mechanic. And there is not even a reason to argue about it, the evidence is there. For everyone to read. The developers said it. The games exist. They chose the mechanics for a reason. For Fallout 3 to be a proper Fallout game should have been top down and turn based. Anything else could have been updated of course! Like new flashy 3D visuals and who knows what else. Fallout 3 and 4 can work as spin offs. But they will never be true sequels.

See. It is kinda like if you took a car, removed 2 wheels and now define it as motorcycle. Everyone who's a fan of cars would emidately call you bat shit crazy for doing it. And no matter for how long you're working on it, it will never be a motorcycle. It might be even decent to drive it, but it is still just a car with 2 missing wheels.
 
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