An exclusive gaming industry community targeted
to, and designed for Professionals, Businesses
and Students in the sectors and industries
of Gaming, New Media and the Web, all closely
related with it's Business and Industry.
A Rich content driven service including articles,
contributed discussion, news, reviews, networking, downloads,
and debate.
We strive to cater for cultural influencers,
technology decision makers, early adopters and business leaders in the gaming industry.
A medium to share your or contribute your ideas,
experiences, questions and point of view or network
with other colleagues here at iVirtua Community.
Fallout 3 is an action role-playing game, currently under development by Bethesda Softworks. It will be the third major game in the Fallout series, which has also spawned the spin-offs Fallout Tactics and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. It will take place in the year 2277, 36 years after the setting of Fallout 2.
The number of Falloutendingshas been a talking point. "We're up to over 500 now," Hines noted. Iasked further about what that means. "That's the big thing. 'What doesit mean?' It's not 500 completely different things that happen at theend of the game." Fallout 3 follows the spirit of the prior two games by mixing together a slurry of possible cut-scenes and story elements.
"For folks who played the original games, this isn't news. It's what the original Fallouts did, where you know, did you do this or did you do this? And which one of those you did plays that part of the cut scene."
As Hines moved around dark corners, he showed off the system that letsgamers choose to play as a real-time or turn-based shooter. Basically,you hit a button to activate turn-based mode, pausing the scene, andqueuing up specific attacks to enemies. After running out of yourattack slots -- these are based on the firing rate and clip size of aweapon -- the action plays out in a brief movie-like sequence. Othertimes, he lobbed grenades around corners in real time, giggling oncewhen a random zombie arm flung back across our field of view.
Above ground, he showed off some of the Washington D.C. landmarks, saying that the city makes up about a fourth of the game. Fallout 3's entire area is smaller than Oblivion, but Hines says it's denser, with more to do and less traveling.
I asked if downloadable content would follow in that game's path. Hinesanswered, "[Downloadable expansions are] certainly something -- giventhe popularity of the ones we did for Oblivion -- that we'll be looking into. Until we get through the content creation part on the [full] game, it's all theoretical."
Official teaser trailer:
http://fallout.bethsoft.com/teaser/teaser.html
He showed off a few voiced characters, including your father played byLiam Neeson, but most of the dialogue was still placeholder. Bethesdais working on finishing the rest of the game before the company can goback and add final lines, but Hines expects more than Oblivion, with roughly 50 to 60 different character voices.
As far as the total time of recorded lines, he worked me through themath, saying, "I don't know how many hours it is, but I bet it's a lot.'Cause we're talking about having like three sound studios running 24hours-a-day for the better part of a month just to get througheverything we've got to record, then process and output. There's a lot... more voice actors than we used [in Oblivion.]"
At the end of the hour-long demo, I especially learned that Fallout 3will take days and weeks to ease into. From wry touches at thebeginning -- the A button calls out "Da-da" -- to a helpful dog thatunderstands your commands to bring back food and useful items, Fallout is full of depth. I'm looking forward to seeing the game's other layers with its worldwide, simultaneous release for 360, PC, and PS3 in Fall, 2008.
Digg Topic
Tag topic on On del.icio.us
Technorati Search
Post to Slashdot
