Fallout 3 - Previews & Perks

Dhruin

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The Bethblog is pointing out new Fallout 3 articles at Gameplayer and Gamespot AU. The Gameplayer piece is titled (At least) 101 facts about Fallout 3 but turns out to be a pretty standard preview:
Fallout veterans will have plenty to smile about inside The Vault, with a lot of props taking their queues from those in the original. Chatting with Pete Hines after the demo he informed us that Bethesda own Fallout completely: so not just the brand name but everything, which has surely facilitated their ability to get these elements just right.

This includes the design of Pip-boy. Its hazy green colour scheme – reminiscent of those old NEC computers from classrooms of the eighties – is spot on perfect, although you can change its colour scheme if you’re an idiot. The Pip-boy is stacked with information, to the point of almost being overwhelming when you first turn it on, but that is what you get with a deep RPG and we’re sure fans of the genre will greedily feast on its innards.
Gamespot AU's thing is a video blog called Crosshairs that "gets some face time with Bethesda and Fallout 3".
Meanwhile, Kotaku has confirmed three Perks from Fallout 3 - two old and one new (thanks, GameBanshee):
New perk (yes, just the one):
Lead Belly: This perk, which can be taken multiple times, reduces the amount of damage you take from radiation when you drink water from a contaminated source (such as a toilet in an abandoned subway) by 5% per rank.
I wish there had been more, but three is better than none!
...and we may as well slip in the latest Inside the Vault on artist Corey Edwards:
What’s your job at Bethesda?
I’m a world artist working on texturing and modeling for our environments. My primary focus is on making kits for the level designers to use and abuse. I’ve spent the last two years making a large number of the dungeons kits used in Fallout 3 and the kit pieces for Megaton.
More information.
 
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when you drink water from a contaminated source (such as a toilet in an abandoned subway)
Do they really think it's funny?
 
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Do they really think it's funny?

Indeed, I wonder whether that's Kotaku's own description of that new perk or whether it's Bethesda's "in-game" description. If it's the latter, I hope the rest of "Bethesda's falloutish humour" is better.

Seriously, the only thing the article praised is the "spot on" green hair dye of Pip-Boy... maybe Bethesda should hire less photoshop experts and more... writers? Oh wait I forgot that "awesome graphics" is the only thing costumers care about... unless it's a Blizzard games then they can get away with "old school" graphics. This is all ridiculous.

However, more writers doesn't mean necessarily better text, so as usual with this Fallout 3 I can only hope for the best while expecting the least.
 
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The point is not to drink from toilet in the subway. The point is that the game lets you drink water from small and big puddles of water. You don't drink water from the bowl in the toilet but from the water contained within the porcelain casing - less radioactive, it seems. However, you still get contaminated with radiation - both from drinking water from puddles in the streets as well as from toilets.

I just wonder who came up with the (very bad idea,imo) of making a doom 3 clone? in this area of the game ?
 
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Eh?

It looked like he was drinking from the bowl to me.

well - I bow before the expertise...

However, this goes against everything about water drinking in toilets that Bethesda has said during the last year or so...
 
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However, this goes against everything about water drinking in toilets that Bethesda has said during the last year or so...

Well, there was no real animation or anything, but I can't remember even seeing the casing; it was either out of sight (up there) or closed.

You turn to the bowl, press X and drink.

I can't recall Bethesda saying differently anywhere, let alone that it goes against "everything they said". I'm curious, please link to where they specifically talk about which part of the toilet you drink from (heh).
 
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Well, there was no real animation or anything, but I can't remember even seeing the casing; it was either out of sight (up there) or closed.

You turn to the bowl, press X and drink.

I can't recall Bethesda saying differently anywhere, let alone that it goes against "everything they said". I'm curious, please link to where they specifically talk about which part of the toilet you drink from (heh).

I can't really remember it now but it seems to that sometime last fall (or autumn) when we learned that there would be drinking from toilets either Pete or Emil said that it isn't the bowl you're drinking from but the porcelain casing. The reason for this is that apparantly porcelain casing protects better from radiation - or so they thought in the 1950's.

I'll see if I'll can digg up a link, though.
 
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I remember that coming up in discussions on the BGSF, and people mentioning 50's schooling taught people to drink from porcelain containers if possible after any nuclear war.

But that was just speculation. I went through NMA's news archives to see if there was any mention of it, but no mention. 's possible we missed it, obviously.
 
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Interesting. Right now we're discussing how to drink from a toilet ...

Will this help us this survive the next war ?

And next cometh the utterly philosophical discussion : Shall we drink from it or not ???
 
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Interesting. Right now we're discussing how to drink from a toilet ...

Will this help us this survive the next war ?

And next cometh the utterly philosophical discussion : Shall we drink from it or not ???

No, I don't think it will help us survive the next war. Neither do I think drinking from the porcelain casing will help us being less radiated. If it were the only sources of water, we had to drink from it, I think. People have eaten rats, mice, cats, and even real grass, in times of war.

And yes, even on the BGSF forums there are very serious discussions about this question...
 
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And yes, even on the BGSF forums there are very serious discussions about this question...

Only because some people feel a mystical need to defend toilet-drinking as a sensible design decision.

Goes to show the pro-Fallout 3 people can be just as unthinkingly reactive to tidbits as the anti-Fallout 3 crowd.
 
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Shall we erect a religious cult of toilet-drinking, then ?
 
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Shall we erect a religious cult of toilet-drinking, then ?

Mayybeeee...

If we get a modding tool (toolset) for Fallout 3, hey, I'm in (i think) .

My own personal view on this is that drinking out of toilets is a very bad design decision. I can't remember if you could drink water from puddles on the streets in the original Fallout games. I don't think you could?

I think Pete Hines might have lost it temporarily when he stated that 'water was something important in the first fallout games.' Yes, Pete they were. In the first one you had to find a waterchip or die...

I don't know why the Bethesda devs. think that turning Fallout 3 into a cross between Doom 3, Max Payne 2, Gears of War, and Fallout 1+2, would be a (very) good idea?

And is the Enclave the remnants of the US government?? I can't remember this.
 
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And is the Enclave the remnants of the US government?? I can't remember this.

Yeah, they are.

It was always thought the Oil Rig was their main base, though, and it's unclear if they have multiple bases. Apparently Bethesda is changing all that, as well.
 
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