Fallout 3 @ E3 07

Written by Matt Swider  on July 18, 2007

Hands-Off E3 07 Preview: Part of our E3 2007 Sweet Suite Tour.

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Fallout 3 is the game is furthest away from release, yet had the most to show at E3 07. How is that possible? Like the Bethesda Softworks' critically-acclaimed The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the company's new post-apocalyptic game is also epic in every sense of the word. So while there won't be any Fallout until fall 2008, it'll be well worth the wait judging from what Executive Producer Todd Howard showed the press.

PC gamers who remember the decade-old Fallout and Fallout 2 from Interplay Productions can take solace in knowing that the rights to their influential franchise are in the hands of developers who intend to preserve what made it hit. Not only is Fallout 3 based in the future yet full of iconic 1950s themes like the originals, the Bethesda team is also made up of legitimate fans of the series, according to Howard.

While the futuristic timeframe and the 50s references remain intact, some necessary adjustments make this game experience even better. The first switch is from the outdated isometric overhead view to a first-person perspective. You can still play Fallout 3 from the old top-down, third-person angle, but seeing the life of your character play out through his or her eyes feels much more intimate. This is also where you can see the most visual detail like, as Howard pointed out, the translucent tissue on player's noses and ears. The other big move is that the game won't be available on just the PC. It'll also appear on the PS3 and Xbox 360 at the same time, which opens up this open-ended gameplay experience to a much wider audience.


The story to this new game begins in Vault 101, which is underneath a nuked Washington D.C. and far from the California-based Vault 13 of the first game. Safe from the radiation that resulted from nuclear war, the inhabitants of 101 have lived in an underground society with no one going in or out for 200 years. You're born in this vault to a lead scientist (voiced by Liam Neeson), who takes on a look that resembles your own chosen identity. But, as the life saying goes, just because you were born in [Vault 101] doesn't mean you have to die there. Upon your father's mysterious disappearance at age 19, you venture out of 101 and onto the surface wasteland. This is where this already interesting game becomes intense.

Almost immediately upon reaching the dried-out desert environment, the demo saw its first enemies. The first came in the form of an ogre-like mutant who clearly wasn't lucky enough to escape the radiation. This is when you realize that life in the vault and the dreaded G.O.A.T. test to determine your usefulness there doesn't seem so bad. As your virtual mom would say at this point (if she were alive), Уpeople outside of the vault have it a whole lot harder than you do.Ф

Well, this mutant's miserable life became even worse as Howard took a gun and some drugs from a mailbox and blew its leg off. He targeted specific body parts with the series' famed Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System, which pauses the combat and comes up with hit-potential percentages. He again used VATS to send a fatal bullet to the head of this stumbling creature in order to finish it off.


The second enemy type Howard came across was bug-like mutants. Besides crippling their advance by using VATS to target their legs, he showed us that it was possible to mess up their sensory system by shooting at their antennas. This made them turn on each other in fear and confusion and made his job a whole lot easier as a player.

Not every aboveground NPC in Fallout 3 is a mutant, as we soon discovered when the demo reached Megaton. This makeshift desert town revolved around a giant unexploded bomb, which people there seemed to worship. Megaton's sheriff was the first character to greet us, and we were given the option to respond kindly or make a crack at his cowboy-style sheriff hat. Your dialogue responses to the various NPC can either help you make a lot of friends or trigger a lot of fights.

How you interact with these NPC has even more impact down the road than immediate friend or fight consequences. Howard took the demo to a local bar where a shady character proposed that we blow up the almighty Megaton bomb. It turns out that by making fun of the sheriff in the beginning instead of befriending him opened this bomb quest.

Being the crowd of journalists that wanted to make fun of the sheriff at the outset, we naturally elected to also set the town ablaze. After all, part of our job is to report back to you about all the explosive effects, which, by the way, look fantastic. Howard accepted the mission to our delight and increased his bomb skill level before setting the charges. As soon as our smaller bomb was in place on the town's bigger bomb, he traveled to a safe spot via the underground metro in order to meet the sinister NPC.

The Fallout 3 metro is full of interesting characters who look slightly more mutant-like than today's off-peak hour travelers in Philadelphia. Here, Howard demoed how to stealthy move past mutant guards and arm an old security robot. When the pre-war robot discovered that the two ticketless mutants couldn't produce metro passes, they weren't a problem anymore.

It didn't take long for the demo to reach the Galaxy News radio tower, where we were supposed to meet with our NPC УfriendФ and where the in-game music was being broadcast from. If you saw the trailer, you'll probably remember hearing УI Don't Want to Set the World on FireФ by The Ink Spots. The game's soundtrack has about twenty of these easy-listening tunes from the 40s, all broadcast via this radio station and picked up by the series' patented handheld PIPboy.


Before entering the Galaxy News building, Howard briefly joined a group of NPCs who were fighting mutant enemies in front of the tower. This is where we saw the largest mutant in the demo taken out with a gun called УThe Fatman.Ф Essentially, it's a nuclear catapult that can deliver a nuke headshot. However, he decided to aim low at the leg as the VATS gave a better hit-potential percentage for that body part. If he happened to miss, it would explode in front of the mutant and still hurt him instead of sailing behind and killing even more NPCs. Just the fact that the game allows a nuke to the head is mind blowing, and something we can't wait to see.


Todd Howard didn't tease us by cutting off the demo before finishing the Megaton bomb quest. He climbed to the Galaxy News roof, which overlooked the town from a safe distance. As a spectacular mushroom cloud rose, our preview of the game did end, but we left with the satisfying feeling that we saw a Game of the Year in the works. Only, it won't be this year's prospective GOTY award winner. That means you should stay tuned for plenty more updates on this groundbreaking game.