(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)
Two weeks ago, a countdown website was enough to put the internet into a small state of nuclear readiness. Then the first trailer arrived, following a dog through an abandoned house and past glimpses of Vault 111 and the kind of retro-futuristic misery only one game series can make instantly recognisable.
That was the confirmation players had been waiting years to receive. Fallout 4 was no longer a persistent rumour, a suspicious vacancy or a theory built around a mysterious casting call. The game existed.
Last night, Bethesda used its first E3 showcase to demonstrate just how much of it already exists. Game director Todd Howard walked onto the stage, made the inevitable joke about leaks and then showed so much material that it almost felt as though somebody had accidentally broadcast a private press demonstration to the entire internet.
The most remarkable part came at the end. Not 2016. Not “when it is done”. Not a screen containing only a year. Fallout 4 will launch on November 10, 2015 for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
The demonstration did not begin in a grey bunker or among rusting car wrecks, but in front of a mirror inside an impressively tidy home. For the first time, Fallout will apparently let us see part of the world before the bombs fall.
The player creates either a man or a woman by directly pulling and shaping the face. There is no long row of sliders that only reveals twenty minutes later why the character's chin is suddenly upside down. You select a cheek, nose or jaw and alter it immediately. The character's partner reacts while you work, making the process feel less like a detached configuration menu and more like the beginning of a story.
Then a Vault-Tec representative appears at the door. Not long afterwards, the sirens begin and the neighbourhood runs towards Vault 111. Bethesda did not show exactly what happens inside the Vault, but it did reveal that the player emerges two hundred years later. The tidy houses are broken, the people have disappeared and the world where you were sitting at breakfast only minutes earlier survives as a skeleton.
That makes the ruins more personal than those of Fallout 3. There, we entered an unknown world as a resident of an isolated community. Here, the character has seen the old world. The abandoned street used to be their street. The damaged robot may have been hovering above the kitchen counter yesterday.
Fallout 4 takes place in Boston and the surrounding region, known in the game as the Commonwealth. The first trailer was already filled with recognisable buildings, but the presentation mainly showed how colourful this Wasteland may be compared with Washington.
There is still plenty of concrete, rust, dust and radioactive waste. Yet everything no longer appears to be covered by the same green-brown filter. We saw bright blue skies, red brick, forests, coastlines, crowded markets and a settlement apparently built inside the remains of a baseball stadium. The world does not look clean, but it does look alive.
Bethesda calls this the largest and most detailed world the studio has made. That sentence almost belongs on the box of every new Bethesda RPG by law, but the footage makes us curious. Not only about the size of the map, but about the smaller things: terminals, toys, old advertisements, half-collapsed rooms and objects that will probably tell complete stories without a quest marker floating above them.
The familiar freedom remains the foundation. You can follow missions, choose sides, enter a random building or spend hours collecting rubbish because one piece of metal might become useful later. Bethesda has simply turned that last strange player habit into a complete system.
In earlier Fallout games, we carried typewriters, desk fans, glue, toy cars and empty cans because they were worth caps, because a particular quest might require them or because leaving a shiny object behind is surprisingly difficult. In Fallout 4, almost everything can be broken down into building materials.
Weapons can be extensively modified. Bethesda transformed a simple laser pistol into several different rifles with new barrels, stocks, sights and properties. The same applies to conventional firearms and even melee weapons. A baseball bat can apparently grow into a construction that looks as though someone wanted to combine sport with industrial injury.
Power armour is no longer merely an unusual suit that is equipped in one piece. The demonstration showed a frame fitted with separate parts and modifications. The player then physically stepped inside it as though entering a small machine. The final scene, in which the armour pulls a minigun from a crashed vertibird and fights a Deathclaw, was obviously designed to make an auditorium cheer. It succeeded.
The system looks enormously broad. Possibly too broad, because every new layer in a Bethesda game is another place where something unusual can happen. Still, the idea that apparently useless objects become parts for weapons, equipment and buildings fits Fallout remarkably well. A civilisation has disappeared; of course its survivors build something new from the remains.
The largest surprise was a construction mode that almost resembles a separate game. In certain locations, the player can remove debris and place walls, floors, roofs, furniture and complete buildings. Generators, lights, water pumps, crops and defences can then be added.
The system visibly operates inside the game world. You select a piece, rotate it and place it. Electricity travels through wires. Turrets guard the outside. Traders can settle nearby and brahmin wander among the new residents as though a post-apocalyptic version of The Sims has quietly hidden itself inside Fallout.
Bethesda stressed that building is optional. That will reassure players who would rather investigate a strange basement than spend twenty minutes trying to make a wall stand straight. For everybody else, this may be the system into which hundreds of hours disappear. Not because the main quest is so long, but because that house needs one more floor and the lights outside really should be arranged differently.
Settlements can also be attacked, suggesting the construction mode is more than decoration. You are not merely creating a pretty camp, but a place that produces resources, attracts inhabitants and requires protection. We do not yet know how deep that system ultimately goes. The presentation did at least make clear that Bethesda is going far beyond buying a house and selecting a few pieces of furniture from a menu.
The dog from the first trailer is indeed Dogmeat. During the demonstration, the player could point towards a location, tell him to wait, ask him to investigate an object and order him to retrieve items. It sounds like a small addition beside complete settlements, but this kind of interaction can make a companion feel less like an armed suitcase that occasionally becomes trapped in a doorway.
Dogmeat does not appear to be a nameless addition created for the trailer. He travels through the world, responds to the environment and assists in combat. Bethesda showed him grabbing a raider while the player attacked. He then continued walking as though this were the most ordinary event imaginable.
The Pip-Boy naturally returns as well. The menu once again appears entirely inside the device on the character's arm, including statistics, inventory, radio and small games stored on discovered holotapes. One of them looked suspiciously like a Vault-Tec version of Donkey Kong.
The Collector's Edition includes an even stranger version: a physical Pip-Boy that holds a smartphone. Bethesda is releasing an application that communicates with the game, allowing the device to function as an actual second screen. It is unnecessary, inconvenient and entirely predictable that the special edition will probably become impossible to order within hours.
Combat appears far more immediate than it did in Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Guns react more quickly, aiming looks less awkward and enemies move more convincingly through the environment. Bethesda clearly wants shooting outside V.A.T.S. to feel good enough that it is not merely an emergency solution.
V.A.T.S. remains, including targeted body parts and percentages to hit. Time no longer stops completely, however. Everything slows down considerably, but enemies continue moving while the player thinks. That preserves some tension even while the system is open.
Whether everybody considers that an improvement remains to be seen. Completely freezing the world gave Fallout 3 a tactical quality and allowed players to calmly study a hopeless situation. The new version appears to seek a middle ground between that system and an ordinary shooter. It worked well in the demonstration, particularly when a grenade was shot in mid-air and exploded beside the wrong person.
As though one new Fallout were not enough, Bethesda also announced Fallout Shelter. It is a free iPhone and iPad game in which the player manages a Vault, assigns residents to jobs, builds rooms and tries to prevent the entire underground society from catching fire.
The game was compared with Little Computer People, X-COM and other management games, but presented through the familiar Vault Boy style. Bethesda promised no timers that require payment before you can continue and no permanent internet connection. Its only paid content consists of lunchboxes containing additional items and residents.
The best part of the announcement was its release date: immediately. While Todd Howard was still on stage, Fallout Shelter appeared in the App Store. Android players unfortunately have to wait, but the idea of a publisher revealing a game and making it available that same evening was a welcome interruption to all the E3 trailers for games still years away.
There are still plenty of questions. How large is Boston in practice? How many dialogue choices disappear or change now that the protagonist has a voice? Is construction deep or mainly an elaborate distraction? And how many bugs fit inside a world where weapons contain dozens of parts and players are allowed to construct complete electrical networks?
That last question is not merely cynicism. Bethesda creates worlds in which systems constantly collide. That produces floating objects, strange conversations and occasionally broken quests, but also stories no developer wrote in advance. A Deathclaw entering a village while Dogmeat returns with a stolen coffee cup is probably exactly why people continue playing these games.
The first trailer already showed that Bethesda understands the atmosphere of Fallout. After last night, we know the game has more than a setting and a dog. It also contains an enormous collection of systems with which players can create their own chaos.
And we do not have to wait until next year to discover whether it works.
Vault 111 opens on November 10.
Sources: Bethesda Softworks Announces Fallout 4, Xbox Wire: Fallout 4 announced, GameSpot: Fallout 4 at E3 2015.
