I'll mention this too - if you pick up something that doesn't belong to you, or even look at it - if it's not mine and the person who owns it is around, you'll hear them say things like "don't even think about it". If you pick it up, they will usually just run up to you and take it back. They don't instantly fight, they'll just take it out of your inventory. It's only if you keep at it they will engage in a fight. Their disposition towards you is such that you may need to leave town for a couple of days and come back to allow them to trust you again.
Press: What do you say to all the fans out there that are concerned about the direction the franchise has taken?
Hines: Well two things really, firstly this is the next game we're doing after Oblivion, which obviously did very well for us, so we have our own expectations around stepping up our game, so to speak, and doing another game of hopefully better calibre than Oblivion. And secondly, we're huge fans of Fallout, we really took to that game, what it meant for gaming in general, and for people who played it. So we're very aware that this is a beloved franchise and a really important thing, and we have a lot of expectations in ourselves. We don't want to screw it up. This is what we think would make the best Fallout game.
Press: You didn't really look at a map in the game - how do you know where to go?
Hines: (Hines brings up Pip Boy 3000) There we go - this is what the world map looks like. This is every location in the game you can discover, it's enormous. What will happen is when you explore around the world you'll get map markers, given to you by NPCs. If you're familiar with Oblivion it works in very much the same way.
Press: Any vehicles in this game?
Hines: There are vehicles, but there are no drivable vehicles, so everywhere you travel is on foot.
Press: Is there a return of 'Bloody Mess'?
Hines: We actually do have Bloody Mess. Bloody Mess is the worst possible mess you can make when killing, and it actually does a bit more damage as well. But yeah, there are lots and lots of perks - quite a long list from the original titles as well as some new ones. Every time you level up you get to choose a new perk.
Press: Can you let us in on a new one?
Hines: No. Sorry. We're holding off on the perks because some of them are kind of spoilers.
Press: Do you have a level cap?
Hines: Twenty is the level cap, so you can level up nineteen times. You level up once right away when you leave the vault.
GP: Do you expand on the causes of the nuclear war at any stage?
Hines: We stay pretty true to the Fallout canon in terms of what's going on in the world, and we do a bit of exploring of the storyline, for example the vaults being social experiments. Obviously one of the reasons we wanted to set this in D.C. other than that's where we're from, is that it is the seat of power in the United States, so all this is taking place in the country but what's going on with the government? Who's in charge and what's going on? So we do go into that a bit. But as for the cause of the war, it's pretty straightforward, China and the U.S. didn't see eye to eye and launched nukes at each other.
The idea is that for anyone who played the original Fallout is that there is a lot more depth to the game, and you'll see things that you recognise from them, but someone just walking into this fresh who wasn't playing PC games ten years ago can still come in and play this, and they get what's going on in Fallout 3, but they just might not get the meaning behind some of the references.
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Our thanks to Pete Hines, Bethesda Softworks and Gamewizz NZ for allowing us the opportunity to see this fantastic game ahead of the October launch! We'll do a full review just as soon as a copy becomes available. Check out the screenshots below - the first three were provided to attendees of this event exclusively!
