Fallout: New Vegas - lots of info revealed

[Werthead]

FALLOUT: NEW VEGAS is a new stand-alone game set in the FALLOUT universe, using FALLOUT 3's game engine. It is set at an undisclosed period in time in Nevada, in and around New Las Vegas, and will feature the return of the New California Republic from FALLOUT 2. The game is being published by Bethesda, but as they are now hard at work on their 'secret project' (which is blatantly ELDER SCROLLS V) they have outsourced development of the game to Obsidian Entertainment.

 

This was an excellent choice. Obsidian are the successors to Black Isle, who made FALLOUT 1 & 2. Chris Avellone, the chief designer of FALLOUT 2 and one of the finest game designers in the industry (he also worked on PLANESCAPE: TORMENT, the greatest CRPG ever made), is also now working on NEW VEGAS full-time, which is also great news. FALLOUT 3 was a fun game but crippled by very bad writing and so-so characterisation. Obsidian/Black Isle have an excellent reputation for great writing and solid NPCs, so coupled with FALLOUT 3's solid engine, this should be a superior game to FO3 itself.

 

More info coming in the next month or two as various magazines publish their exclusive features. But the good news is that the game is expected with confidence to arrive on PC, PS3 and X-Box 360 in Fall 2010.

 

EDIT: Via www.nma-fallout.com

 

Some info from the latest print issue of PC Gamer (via No Mutants Allowed):

 

# There is an optional hardcore mode, the character needs to drink water, ammo has weight, healing isn't instant etc.

 

# Normal mode is more similar to Fallout 3 gameplay.

 

# The storyline is focused on the New California Republic vs. Caesar's Legion (slavers from the east) vs. New Vegas residents.

 

# You are not a vault dweller but are given a Pip-Boy by someone who is one.

 

# There is a screenshot of a vault suit as well.

 

# There is an assault rifle looking like the M4, as well as a new big gun with a backpack, held like a minigun.

 

# There are special moves for melee weapons in VATS - specifically a move for a golf club called "Fore" which seems to be a groin shot.

 

# The Hoover Dam is in the game and is supplying electricity to the city.

 

# There is a quest to rescue a ghoul from some super mutants. The ghoul can then become your companion

 

# The Geckos are back.

 

# There are both dumb and intelligent super mutants, including the elite Nightkin. On at least one occasion you can convince them to fight amongst themselves.

 

# Some super mutants look similar to the ones in Fallout 3, while others are new. There is e.g. a female super mutant with a 1950s hairstyle who apparently is one of their leaders.

 

# Screenshots include a guy with a beard and straw hat, a ghoul and an NCR Ranger.

 

# The only picture of New Vegas itself is concept art and not a screenshot.

 

# Some location screenshots include a huge model dinosaur advertising a hotel, some satellite dishes, an array of solar panels

 

# A character generation shot showing a "vigour machine" instead of the skill book

 

# NCR base is the McCarran Airport, Caesar's Legion is based in the Vegas Strip, while super mutants are based in a place called Black Mountain.

 

# There is also a town called Fremont and another called Primm. A topless reuve is mentioned as being in the latter. Area 51 also appears.

 

# NCR Ranger armor is similar to a brown combat armor with sleeves, there are concept arts of a Ranger.

 

# Skils have a bigger effect on conversation choices. E.g. someone with a high Explosives skill may be able to have a coversation about explosives where appropriate.

 

# There is a Reputation system in addition to Karma.

 

# First-person action RPG with the same engine as Fallout 3.

 

# Set in the Mojave wastelands. Vegas didn't get many nukes. More intact buildings, as well as desert vegetation. Vegas itself is mostly intact.

 

# Vegas itself is mostly intact

 

# Both karma and reputation are tracked. If I'm reading it right there's separate reputations for each of the settlements, as in 1 and 2.

 

# All dialogue options are shown to all players, regardless of whether you have the stats to succeed or not, though there's no punishment for failure.

 

# Bartering is not just lower prices but negotiating for better rewards.

 

# Weapons also now have knock-back upon death, with shotguns sending people flying.

 

# Followers can be managed through a context-sensitive menu, with orders like "follow", "stay" or "attack".

 

# You're a courier, wounded and left for dead in a shallow grave. A friendly robot, Victor, digs you out, and his doctor owner Mitchell patches you up. You take a "vigour test", which is some sort of electric parlour game. This decides who you are and sets up SPECIAL. You can also take some Rorschach tests, but the mag says this is for fun. The Doc then gives you a Pipboy as he was once a Vault dweller.

 

# "Hoover Dam", and "Helios" (a solar plant, confirmed by the mag to have been built by Poseidon) are fought into and then you can direct the power to wherever you choose. In the case of Helios you can also keep the plant for your self, use the energy to call down a powerful laser, or even try to distribute to all equally, however there is a risk of overloading the reactors.

 

# There is a "reputation system", in which all three factions (NCR, Ceasar's Legion and the locals) will either see you as good or bad toward them individually.

 

# There is a screenshot of three Capital Wasteland mutants running toward the player, who is wielding what *looks* to be a heavy incinerator, but has a TV screen and no flamer fuel tanks. He's also wearing NCR combat armour, which is in gold/mustard colours.

 

# There are two separate screens of supermutants that look to be more local, grey skin, and the two are wearing very different clothes. One is Tabitha, who is hearing a blonde wig and love heart glasses. The mag implies she's "not all there".

 

# On that quest, you rescue Raul, a ghoul who Tabitha kept alive to fix her favourite robot. He appears to be a follower, as the mag says you can give him items, and also commands, such as "stay, follow or attack", and also tell him to switch to melee, in which case he'll mutter "sure, I'll put away my rather effective gun, and switch to this piece of um, metal tubing here".

 

# From what I read, the "all dialog" thing seems to imply there will be failures for skill checks as well as speech checks, though, as the mag states, there is no penalty for failing a skill check. In fact, the mag gives an example: A woman who the player tried a Sneak skill attempt on in conversation failed when convincing her an ambush would help the town be rid of a gang of raiders. She simply says "Good luck with your, uh, ambush"

 

Josh Sawyer, lead developer of Fallout: New Vegas, has clarified how skill-based dialogue options work:

 

This is how it works. Each skill-based dialogue option has two different texts: one for high skill (which will result in success) and one for low skill (which will result in failure). If you do not meet the required threshold, you see the latter.

[Imperium]

I am so looking forward to this game. Loved Fallout 3 and have spent many hours just sneaking around with a shotgun on it. The golf club is so blatantly going to have an achievement/trophy for it.

[Krakalakachkn]

Has anyone played this? I'm really interested to know how good it is.

[Elend]

My apathy towards Fallout 3 is making me not go out and buy New Vegas.

[Canis Rufus]

Playing it now. The game at its core is great but there are soe really buggy issues with the FP view, arms not in the right place and I jumped one time and I was literally looking between my own legs when I landed and had to stop and restart the game to make it go away. But all in all a great game.

[Krakalakachkn]

What system are you playing it on?

[Ashaman Kovan]

I got to like level 6 in about 6 hours. Seems pretty cool so far. Already got a companion who can carry as much crap as me so that helps a lot. So far my biggest complaint is that you get bad karma from stealing stuff from the bad guys. Like if you are against the "Ceasers Legion" faction even after you kill like 30 of them and get no bad karma for that as soon as you try and open one of their footlockers they had in tent bam it's bad karma. But not for killing. Stupid IMO. Other than that seems sweet though. Haven't had a chance to get any cool weapon mods, haven't even figured out how to use the special ammo. Incendiary rounds etc but I already found a dude not too far away from your point of origin who repairs all my stuff for free. Which you probably know was one of the biggest pains in the ass in F3. Only thing is you have to pick the "Confirmed Bachelor" perk to open up special dialogue options with male characters. So yeah, thought that was pretty cool too.

 

ETI: Playing on PC.

[Canis Rufus]

I am on the Xbox 360 "slim".

 

I have mods but so far I cannot use them on any of my guns. I also got a "thematic lance" which is apparently beastly as it is worth some 2000 caps but I have no ammo for it or any idea how to get any.

 

Oh to add to the glitch thing, ties to how I got the crazy beast weapon. Apparently the game has a built in time line for events to occur so if you are fairly good at strategy it is highly possible to do some things early on (Didn't realize I was not supposed to) and get vilified by a certain fraction that will then start to hunt you. This would not be a great problem only they appear to be level maxed out with matching gear and weapons. Seriously when they popped up the first time I unloaded all of my ammo into the leader and only brought his health bar down half. (But again if you’re wise enough to use the environment there is a place where I was able to have a large group of death claws basically eat them while I stayed perched on a rock and watched. A few stealth boys later I was rich and stacked with great gear. Only short on the mythical ammo needed for this lance thingy as I ran all the merchants out of caps and bought everyone out of ammo, stempacks and other aid.)

 

I didn’t want to ruin any plot lines just in case it would hurt the story for someone but if you hit me up I’ll give you the whole low down of the who’s and where’s.

[Ashaman Kovan]

Much cooler on PS3 than PC IMO. Been playing for about two nights and I'm about to hit lvl 20. Finally getting some cooler weapons that I can actually get repaired.

[SinisterDeath]

Much cooler on PS3 than PC IMO. Been playing for about two nights and I'm about to hit lvl 20. Finally getting some cooler weapons that I can actually get repaired.

 

Much Cooler?

High?

Drunk?

Shitty PC?

Seriously? You can download, MODS for the PC. The only thing you get, are DLC, and those are few and far between.

Sure, finding 'GOOD' Mods are tough and all but really...

 

http://blog.fileplanet.com/2010/12/08/wasteland-defense-mod-defends-fallout/

http://blog.fileplanet.com/2010/12/14/new-vegas-mods-yes-man-approved/

http://blog.fileplanet.com/2010/11/12/new-vegas-mods-battlecattle-inside/

http://blog.fileplanet.com/2010/11/23/new-vegas-guns-now-more-shiny/

 

That kind of stuff, will add houndreds of hours of new 'stuff' that the limited DLC won't, And if they do what they did for FO3, PC will get it anyways.

[Ashaman Kovan]

Much cooler on PS3 than PC IMO. Been playing for about two nights and I'm about to hit lvl 20. Finally getting some cooler weapons that I can actually get repaired.

 

Much Cooler?

High?

Drunk?

Shitty PC?

Seriously? You can download, MODS for the PC. The only thing you get, are DLC, and those are few and far between.

Sure, finding 'GOOD' Mods are tough and all but really...

 

http://blog.fileplanet.com/2010/12/08/wasteland-defense-mod-defends-fallout/

http://blog.fileplanet.com/2010/12/14/new-vegas-mods-yes-man-approved/

http://blog.fileplanet.com/2010/11/12/new-vegas-mods-battlecattle-inside/

http://blog.fileplanet.com/2010/11/23/new-vegas-guns-now-more-shiny/

 

That kind of stuff, will add houndreds of hours of new 'stuff' that the limited DLC won't, And if they do what they did for FO3, PC will get it anyways.

 

Meh, you got about one out of three. Lol.

 

But no, it's just that I've never played any FPS on PC before and when I played FONV I had a limited amount of time (About six hours) and it wasn't my computer. My computer is way too shitty to run it. So I never had a chance to even think about any mods. Which I only just recently found out existed. I have FO3 game of the year edition for PS3 as well. And New Vegas I'm only renting now as I don't have 60 bucks for it. So my PC gaming experience has been limited to things like Baldurs Gate, Icewind Dale, Warcraft, and most recently WoW. So I guess when I said it was much cooler on PS3 it was because I'd had a chance to relax and actually get into it and it's more familiar to me on console because I'm more comfortable with the controls and such. I would love to play some mods and things if I had access to them.

[Krakalakachkn]

New DLC coming soon

 

Bethesda has done a great job in supporting its games after they've been released--if you're playing on the Xbox 360. While a multitude of post-release DLC has been available in the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Fallout 3, PlayStation 3 users have had to wait months for the content to hit their system. PC support has been more solid, but playing those games on the Xbox 360 was the only way to ensure that you'd be able to access new content first. It looked as though that would be continuing through Fallout: New Vegas' lifespan, but that's changing after the release of the Dead Money add-on.

 

Dead Money is coming to the PS3 and PC on February 22, and additional DLC is scheduled to drop over the following months. Best of all, publisher Bethesda says that subsequent DLC will be released simultaneously across the three platforms