- 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.
I don't see any real problems with this as long as they don't take the lazy option of not extended some of the more minimalist systems in Oblivion.
- 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 you'll 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.
Cute, but is it really necessary? More importantly, can we skip it when we replay the game?
- 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.
Sounds like a bullet-time style system. Let's the real-time combat runs too fast for the player (a la Max Payne), and so measured use of APs is required, and not born of the foolishly misled notion that TB advocates are incapable of playing an FPS and need a leg 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.
As long as it's unobtrusive, this sounds good. Dark Messiah handled slo-mo deaths pretty well. Games like the recent NFS games did it badly by shifting to "cinematic" camera during crucial moments.
- 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.
Definitely a positive, but this is also a touted feature of Oblivion, and it was underwhelming. Also, here's hoping that all content isn't artificially engineered to fit all three paths.
- Enemies can target you just like you can target them, so you can get injured in very specific points on you body. This is 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.
This I like a lot. Giving the player functional injuries instead of simply damaging a pool of hitpoints is a step up. Of course, the original Fallout had a similar feature, so it's not sounding like leaps and bounds or anything.
Meh. The karma system in Fallout was a bit too "catch all" for my liking. I'd rather have social groups that each track the player's reputation based on their own moral code. Still, it's not a step down, so I won't lament the lost opportunity too much.
- XP based system, most XP comes from quests
Sounds pretty reasonable to me, although they run the risk of overincentivising and encouraging completism for the sake of XP.
Fair enough, although it would have been nice to go to 21, just to get one final perk as you plateau.
- 9 - 12 possible endings based on your actions in the game
Sounds impressive, but you could claim Fallout has many more by defining each unique combination of binary endings for each settlement as a "possible ending". You could also say "Deus Ex has 4 possible endings based on your actions in the game", while it may as well have been one. Promising, but I'll remain reserved.
- No level scaling like oblivion, you walk into a high level area, you die horribly.
Good. Happy with this.
- There are NPC's you can hire, but this is not a party based game.
Another good point, glad to see the "lone wanderer" idea preserved. I just hope the father character doesn't fuck with that.
So are we accepting this as truth, and therefore making it newsworthy, or are we waiting for confirmation?
