Fallout 3 - Details Emerge

Well, with July's Game Informer reaching a few people, Fallout 3 details are starting to emerge.  Briosafreak's excellent Fallout 3 blog has picked up a post from a member of the NeoGAF forums that seems a good summary and most of the details are corroborated by short articles at CVG and Joystiq so let's run with that:

The article is based on an hour long demo GI was given. I’ll list the high points

- Game runs on an evolved version of the Oblivion engine. Third person view has been reworked since the verdict was that the Oblivion version sucked balls.

- Game starts with your birth and your mother’s death in a vault hospital. This is essentially the character customization part of the game. Your father hands you up to have your DNA analyzed and you get to pick out all your character traits. Your dad takes off his mask to reveal similar traits to the ones you picked.

- You grow up in the vault and as you grow you get your first book titled “You’re Special” which allows you to choose you baseline stats for each of your 7 primary aptitudes. You’ll also get your first weapons and wrist computer (menu) as you get older and take tests to determine the initial layout of your skills and traits.

- Every aspect of character creation is based on S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system. Of your 14 skills you can tag 3 to grow at a faster rate than the rest as you level up.

- Battle system is called the Vault-tec Assisted Targeting System (V.A.T.S.). The article states. “While you’ll certainly be able to tackle enemies in real time using first person shooting, V.A.T.S. lets players pause time and select a target at their leisure”. Battle system still uses action points, but once you’ve used them up you’ll still be able to fight targets in real time while they charge back up.

- Game is still violent and gory. One of the featured screens is of a guy’s head exploding in super gory detail. Apparently all gory deaths in the game will be in slow motion.

- More than one way to play the game. Go balls out and kill people, or sneak past situations, or perhaps talk your way out of situations.

- Enemies can target you just like you can target them, so you can get injured in very specific points on you body. This in addition to an all new health/radiation system. This new system has you measuring how radiated certain things (like water) are and how they affect you when you consume them.

- Karma system returns[…]

-Yeah once you’re in the V.A.T.S. system every combat move you make uses AP. The amount of AP is based on your agility rating. So things like targeting specific areas etc use AP. Also things like distance etc factor into your hit % while you’re in the V.A.T.S. system.

At least that’s how it reads.[…]

-Yeah the article is chock full of screens, but I can’t post them =(

They have some really great environment shots, Some screens of the inside of Vault 101, and a really awesome shot of a first person encounter with a super mutant and another where the main character has a weapon called “The Fatman” which is a handheld nuclear catapult.

Think post apocalyptic oblivion and you’re right about there in terms of graphics.[…]

-It seems that outside of the VATS system everything is real time. The only time the game pauses is when you enter the VATS system and start using AP and issuing commands. The article doesn’t really say much more than that, but they do say that the game is geared more towards a role-playing turn based style as opposed to a twitch gaming style of play.

-It doesn’t say anything specifically about party members, but there’s a section that talks about how integral NPC’s are to the game, and that a lot of the progress in the game will be made via quests.

EDIT. A little caption under a screen shot says you’ll be able to hire henchmen to help you out but this is definitely not a party based game. Also Bethesda confirms that there’ll be a dog in the game.

-As a matter of fact they do. The game does not scale like oblivion, so if you enter a high level area expect to be promptly murdered.

Also, I just read a little caption.

Level cap is 20.

Definite ending to the game, but there are 9 - 12 possible endings.

-It is XP based. Most of your XP comes from quests.[…]