Kevin's Watch

Gameplayer's Fallout 3 interview with Bethesda's Peter Hines.

This is looking very interesting. The Fallout series is definitely getting the Bethesda treatment and fans of the original games will likely be disappointed that the setting has moved to the east coast in order to distance it from Fallout 1 and 2. The game world is going to be smaller than Oblivion's by a significant degree, but then it will be a devastated cityscape instead of the rolling hills of Cyrodiil so I'd expect there to be more packed into that space.

I'm a little unsure about the combat system. Firstly the damage markers for the individual body parts look bad, I like the idea of handling damage that way but the icons they've chosen remind me of some old games from the Amiga. Secondly, you have to pause the game, queue your attacks and targets and then unpause to let combat pan out. That's exactly how I handled combat in KOTOR and I thought it was one of the weakest aspects of that game. It made me feel removed from the action and I usually ended up spamming the same few attacks because I didn't really know what they all did. I think Mass Effect handles it a lot better; you pause the game to choose tech or biotic attacks but there's no queuing. Queuing a few actions and movements into a compound attack could be really neat though, if done well.

At the end of the article gameplayer have put together a list of all the different vaults in the Fallout series. The vaults were sold to the public as shelters from nuclear war, but were actually giant test chambers for the company to perform experiments on the inhabitants.

You’re from 101. What’s in the others?

Vault 8 This was a control vault that unlocked after 10 years to repopulate the world’s surface.
Vault 12 Due to a malfunctioning door, the inhabitants in this vault were unfortunately subjected to immense amounts of radiation.
Vault 13 This vault was meant to stay shut for 200 years as a study of prolonged isolation, but then the water filtration system broke.
Vault 15 This vault was intended to stay closed for 50 years and include people of radically diverse ideologies.
Vault 27 Double the designed population was placed in this vault.
Vault 29 This vault contained no one over the age of 15.
Vault 34 This vault had an overstocked and unlocked armoury.
Vault 36 The food dispensers were designed to produce only a thin, watery gruel.
Vault 42 No lightbulbs stronger than 40 watts were supplied, making the whole vault really dark all the time.
Vault 53 Every few months, most of the equipment would break down. The damage was repairable, but was designed to stress the inhabitants unduly.
Vault 55 All entertainment tapes were removed.
Vault 56 Same as vault 55, except one tape was supplied of a very bad comic actor. Sociologists predicted that this vault would fail long before vault 55.
Vault 68 Contained 999 men, and one distressed woman.
Vault 69 Contained 999 women, and one happy, sore man.
Vault 70 All clothing dispensers fail after six months. As this vault was packed with Mormons, hilarity ensued, until they escaped and established a fundamentalist community nearby.
Vault 101 Fallout 3. Meant to remain permanently shut.
Vault 106 Psychoactive drugs were released into the air filtration system ten days after the door was sealed.

I remember a comment from the PA blogs a couple of years ago, where he was talking about his reaction to Bethesda getting the license to make Fallout 3. "That's bullcrap! It will just be Morrowind with guns!... um, actually now that I think about it that sounds pretty awesome."

My only fear is that they won't be able to get away with faithfully preserving the level of violence, gore, and flat out naughtiness of fallout. You can't make a big budget, massively published game with the maturity of the fallout universe without making some waves. Then again, most censorship groups ignore anything that isn't called Grand Theft Auto. Hell, maybe it will be in Bethesda's best interest to get some controversy going, it will definitely sell copies of the game (and be nice revenge for all the silly fallout over the Oblivion rating thing)

I have grave doubts. The game is only 20hrs in length, and the map is smaller than the Oblivion game world. I'm sorry, but that's bad.

How long does it take to beat Fallout 1 and 2? I've heard it's been done in as little as 15 minutes. If that was 20 hrs if you do every sidequest, then I'm a little worried.

Still, 20 hrs really isn't "that" shabby, especially in a game with multiple paths. (Replay value!)

Peter Hines wrote:He also revealed that the main quest will be about 20 hours long, with 20 hours of side-quests and a yet-to-be-determined amount of hours for miscellaneous quests. Unlike Oblivion, you will have to play through at least a couple of times to unlock all the Achievements, too.

That's from another interview with Eurogamer from last August. If it's true then that's none too shabby at all! I'm expecting my first Mass Effect playthrough to be around the 30hr mark, having done most of the side quests, so 40 hours should feel like a very big game.

I'm not inclined to worry about the actual size of the map. Oblivion's might've been huge but there were huge tracts of it with nothing there except fields, trees, rocks and the odd roaming monster. I can't imagine them making less content for Fallout 3 than they made for Oblivion, so I'm expecting it to be packed into a tighter area.

Vault 68 Contained 999 men, and one distressed woman.
Vault 69 Contained 999 women, and one happy, sore man.

Reminds me of strangelove of course