Ugh. Fallout 4. Where do I even begin? So might excitement, speculation, trepidation. Let’s get our thoughts in order with a list.
Longtime Fallout players that we all are, team Kotaku brainstormed about the top ten things we’re looking forward to doing in Bethesda’s new game — or, at least, what we think we’ll be doing, based on the information the developer provided in its E3 press conference on Sunday. It’s not like Fallout games have had the most stable of video game launches in the past.
Chris Person put together a video, which you can watch above. Here are my favourite highlights:
You can…
Walk away from people mid-conversation
People, or robots. Or super-mutants. Or ghouls. Or anything that’s gained the ability to speak thanks to years of debilitating radiation, really. There’s equal-opportunity rudeness in the post apocalypse!
Play video games on your in-game Pip-Boy
Because why spend your time looking at some beautifully rendered wasteland when you can be climbing up ladders in a 2D adventure?
Turn your real-world phone into a real-world Pip-Boy
For all those pesky times that you aren’t near your PC or console and can’t be playing Fallout 4.
See the world end for yourself
It’s the first Fallout game that begins before the apocalypse! Does it still count as a post-apocalyptic adventure, then?
Drive yourself crazy with the character creator
I don’t even want to think about how much time I’m going to spend adjusting and readjusting my nose, facial hair, and god knows what else before I get down to starting the actual game. This is some serious Sims-level shit.
Build your very own wasteland colony and trading network
Speaking of Sims-level shit, the level of customisation and world-building options in this game sound insane. You can break down pretty much any weapon, piece of armour, or whatever other random junk you scavenge into crafting ingredients to make new stuff. And the “new stuff” isn’t just other types of weapons, armour, and random junk — though there’s certainly a lot of that, too. You can also build your own settlement from the ground up, and link it to other parts of the game’s open world with trade lines.
Man. I know that’s not the most thrilling screenshot of Fallout 4. But just think for a second of how far this series has come. The original Fallout began with you wandering into a dingy settlement known as Shady Sands and explaining to a farmer there how crop irrigation works. Now it sounds like you’ll be looking up tutorials to figure out how to irrigate your own crops — if you’re into that sort of thing.
And the best part about Fallout 4? As Chris says in his final point in the video, we should be able to play it in a matter of months. That puts it ahead of like 99 per cent of what we’ve seen at E3 so far this year.
Please, Bethesda, don’t delay it.
Comments
16 responses to “The 10 Best New Things In Fallout 4 (So Far)”
Only 146 days to go…
Taking all bets this gets delayed into Q2 2016, bumping Doom down to October.
Highly unlikely – the trademark registration that Bethesda has for Fallout 4 expires in November 2015, some time before the 17th. It’s more likely that it’d be released on time, but as a buggy mess requiring substantial Day One and post-launch patching.
But I’m sure that Bethesda wouldn’t release a game that’s buggy to near-unplayability at launch. They haven’t done that since, what? Skyrim? And before that it was Fallout 3? And before that it was Oblivion?
I’m sure that in the meantime they’ve probably developed tons of games that were completely playable at launch and we’ve just never heard about them because they played so smoothly, or something. Right?
When a trademark expiries you renew it. You don’t have to release a game before hand.
On topic this isn’t getting delayed!
whats the agreement exactly? do they get to renew the trademark or does the rights fly back to interplay?
Bethesda has the trade mark on Fallout, but if they let the trademark on Fallout 4 expire, it’s automatically released and can be picked up by anyone. If you grabbed it and then wanted to make a game called Fallout 4, Bethesda would no doubt see you in court and claim that you’re “passing off” as (infringing on) their Fallout trademark – and they’d probably win – but it’d be a long and expensive process which you could short-circuit by holding them up for money.
Alternatively, you might register a trademark for a game called “Fall Out 4 You” about a person who throws themselves out of a car after a bad relationship, then when Bethesda re-registers the Fallout 4 trademark you sue them for passing off as your game.
In essence, they open themselves up to a whole lot of lengthy, expensive legal bullshit by chancers who can take advantage of the fact that they registered the trade mark too long before they were ready to exploit it.
When an _active_ trademark expires, you renew it. If you haven’t exploited it yet (in the two years since it was registered), it’s automatically released. You can’t register a trademark and just sit on it indefinitely without exploiting it.
March 2016
New greatest feature, “Press X to Crit” /s
If the pip boy app links up to the game in some way I will be very disappointed.
It means it will have some sort of login or always online bollocks because it will have to go via the internet.
Everything else looks stellar.
It does, and I’m pretty sure Todd Howard said it was just done through your WiFi connection/LAN.
If thats true then thats great! As long as its not internet based it will still be working when we go back for another playthrough in 2020.
Second screen stuff is awesome when done right, just like the Wii U gamepad in most games.
I’m curious to know how you do witness the apocalypse. am not up to speed with Fallout lore, but isn’t Fallout 3 and New Vegas set some 200 years after it. Maybe cryogenics is involved someway I’m guessing. But I do really like the idea of some of the game set before the Apocalypse.
The guy doing the presentation said that you survive the blast, but re-emerge 200 years later. So, yeah, I’m assuming cryo sleep will be involved somehow.
Phew, looks like i pre-ordered the Pipboy edition just in time, they are all sold out on every platform.
Best new thing: Fallout 4. Period.
I like how the VATS slows down time instead of stopping it, should make the combat a bit more fluid.