Vault dwellers are not born. They are made — by you. And judging from what Bethesda has shared so far, it looks like Fallout’s character creation is getting a major facelift.
As always, you will pick SPECIAL stats that end up determining your skills and proficiency out in the field. Each of these stats will have its own skill tree, which you can see in full below:
It’s a beauty, huh? Reminds me of Fallout Shelter a bit, which is probably intentional.
In any case, the higher a particular SPECIAL stat is, the more the tree associated with it will unlock. So a strength of 10 will give you a lot of strength-related Perks to pick from. You get 28 SPECIAL points to start out with, if you want to start plotting out your character now. Bethesda claims that not only will levelling in Fallout 4 be faster than before, the game will also feature no level cap. Great!
Bethesda continues:
It was our goal that all the Perks be balanced amongst each other, regardless of if they required a 1 or a 10. The higher the SPECIAL requirement, the more focused or exotic the Perk was for that playstyle. Take for example the Agility 1 Perk Gunslinger (20% more damage with pistols), and the Agility 10 Perk Gun Fu (your 2nd target in V.A.T.S. takes 25% more damage regardless of weapon).
What’s important is that each of these Perks is actually a mini Perk tree*, with multiple ranks that also do new things. Gun Fu above allows even more damage the more targets you select, increasing to instant Critical Shots. Gunslinger has ranks that up the range of pistols, add a chance to disarm enemies, and even instant limb crippling shots.
These additional ranks do require your character to be a higher level. This allows us to make some powerful Perk ranks that reward your investment in a certain SPECIAL as well as that individual Perk. It also allows us to fold Perks we liked from previous games into Perk ranks in this new system. For example, the Fallout 3 perk Paralyzing Palm (paralyse enemies through hand-to-hand), now becomes the Rank 5 Perk for Iron Fist. But you need to have chosen the previous 4 ranks of Iron Fist and be level 46. We also pushed old Perks to do new things at higher ranks. Strong Back doesn’t just up the amount you can carry; higher ranks of it allow you to fast-travel while encumbered or even run while encumbered at the cost of Action Points.
With each SPECIAL having 10 Perks, there are 70 base Perks. With Perk ranks, it increases that number to over 270. That number also includes a top-level Training perk for each SPECIAL, so that you can essentially skip a regular Perk and raise a SPECIAL by 1. This gives you the benefit of the new SPECIAL value, and allows access to higher Perks in future levels.
Not only that, but comics out in the wild will also grant you Perks — and there are 100 in all, waiting to be found:
Funnily enough, out of the ones Bethesda has discussed so far, the Perk I’m most excited about…isn’t new. I have spent so many hours in Bethesda games dragging my character slowly across the map because I refused to put down useful gear. Good to know that, thanks to a returning Perk, I might not have to deal with that stuff — at least, if I make my character in a specific way.
A lot of you have noticed this already, but the new system also gets rid of Skills. Many of the things that Skills allowed you to do are still present, they have just been absorbed by Perks instead. It’s a system that Bethesda hopes will simplify things.
Bethesda writes:
The previous Skill system had some confusing parts and ended up spreading your choices too thin. Some of you had questions like: “What’s better, the Charisma SPECIAL, or the Speech Skill? Why are assault rifles in Small Guns?” Additionally many Perks simply raised associated Skills. The Gun Nut Perk in Fallout 3 increased two separate Skills. In Fallout 4, the ranks of Gun Nut act as gates for modifying and crafting weapons. Sneak was a skill in Fallout 3, and you simply increased its value. In Fallout 4 Sneak becomes a Perk that not only makes you harder to detect, but wraps in previous perks like Silent Running and Light Step into its ranks. By wrapping these systems together, it keeps the emphasis on your SPECIALs and the level-up choices more rewarding.
Most of this stuff sounds good to me, but obviously it remains to be seen how it will actually feel in my hands. For now, you can head over to the official Bethesda website and read more about how Fallout 4’s character creation is changing here.
Or, you can hear Todd Howard himself explain it in the video below. I’d say it’s worth watching just to see all the cool little flourishes that your Pip Boy will have…there are so many animations in there now! Cute.
Comments
15 responses to “Perks Are Changing Big Time In Fallout 4”
Release date couldn’t come sooner
Somehow this month has gone by really fast. I think it has something to do with a ‘big boss’ of some sort’. So November 10 will come before you know it.
Im not sure i like the idea of simplifying things and removing skills. Also leveling faster? Im open to new ideas and still willing to give it a shot but im starting to have some doubts with character progression mechanics beging a bit boring.
This looks like it will ultimately make your character feel less hemmed in by the system and more customisable. Having so many perk levels for each perk sounds like it will also stop that feeling of pointlessness in combat once you hit lvl50.
As soon as I hit the cap and I no longer have any improvements to work towards, I always lose interest in combat pretty quickly. Really looking forward to this!
Now if only those complaining about these changes being the next “Dumbing down apocalypse!” would get that.
looks pretty good. Also looks like the SPECIAL stats you choose at the start will have a much bigger effect on game-play while still allowing you to increase them later on.
This will be interesting. I remember they did something similar with Skyrim (compared to Oblivion), removing granular character attributes (strength, intelligence, endurance, etc.) and simplifying them down to just health, mana and stamina; everything else was just covered by skills and the newly-introduced perks system. On paper it might’ve looked like a mistake, but it worked well and made the game a better experience, in my opinion.
In much the same way, I’m confident they can make Fallout 4 a better game by removing skills and relying on just SPECIAL attributes and perks.
I liked Skyrim I sank 160 hrs into it, but I liked Oblivion more and I like Morrowind more than that.
Those two previous games had a lot more customization on the way you wanted to play the game. Skyrim on the other hand at first glance did look basic but it also made the game accesible, the actual gameplay was sooooo much better but it took away some of the charm of playing differently.
At first I was skeptical because y’know… I hate change.
But this system actually sounds pretty exciting to explore.
Going to put all my stats into luck
I had the exact same idea. Pour all my starting points into one attribute maxing it to 10 and see what happens. 😀
So Charisma is no longer a pointless dump stat? Now where am I going to get 4 extra points!?
Seriously though these changes look interesting. Not too sure how I feel about the Skill system being removed though seeing as it was pretty staple in the previous game.
I’d care about the skill system being removed if it didn’t pretty much always end in “Max out skill X, Y and Z…” every single time.
Yet this seems more like “Max out the three you play the best”, it gives more customisation for each player’s preferences.
You get 70 base perks, so not so bad. I think thats allot more then previous games so I wouldn’t call that simplifying it, just making it more obvious what each perk belongs to and how it will help the character.