Amongst the dozens of nearly identical previews, Eurogamer has decided to fill the niche of even more previews.
This preview goes into a bit more detail about dialogue options, though:
<blockquote>It's at your birthday party, and you've just received your Pip Boy wrist terminal and promised your first work detail, but between the amusement of robots ruining birthday cakes, you get your initial conversations. The first one is standard enough (though it introduces the concept of lying), but the next one we're shown is with a bullying peer by the name of Butch, where you appear to have at least six cake-related options available; everything from a diplomatic, sharing-it-fifty-fifty option, to the openly perverse provocation of spitting in it and then giving it him. Bethesda's Pete Hines, demoing, stresses that these options will all play out differently down the line. The point is to show that we're a long way from the "Yes, I'll help you"/"Yes, I'll help you for three pounds fifty and a cheeseburger"/"I WILL KILL YOU AND TAKE YOUR STUFF" conversation options with which most modern RPGs satisfy themselves. Hines and co. have talked about the game being a much more dense conversational game than Oblivion, and this is them showing how they're walking the walk as well as talking the post-apocalyptic talk. About talk.</blockquote>Of course, they're also a bit confused about the meaning of 'turn-based':
<blockquote>It looks actually stylish - in fact, this turn-based-game with 360-era graphics makes me even think that a fully turn-based game would have worked. Why can't we have a turn-based game which goes for a crazy graphic effect? It'll have the attraction of being distinctive, anyway.</blockquote>And.<blockquote>This is especially pointed as the non-turn-based side fails to convince as much as you'd hope. While "Oblivion with guns" has been the rather sarcastic description from cynics, my personal take was... well, I'd kill for Oblivion with guns. Probably using a gun. It'd be everything we traditionally have to opt for an RPG to get at, but with a setting that's a little less derivative. Sold. The problem only struck me after watching a battle with mutants. You see, at the time of release, Oblivion was probably as good as a first-person sword combat game as we'd had. It wasn't mind-blowing, but no-one had done it better. Even now, only the PC version of Dark Messiah is a peer. Conversely, everyone in the world has done gun combat - and the second you take this angle, you're immediately competing on some level with Valve, Bungie, et al.
Which is unfair, but that's how it is. On a personal level, I found Mass Effect had a similar problem - the hope has to be that Fallout has a similar grace to Bioware's game. That is, the combat is just about good enough to serve the purpose the game demands of it, and leaves the rest of the game's charms to get its hooks into you. When there's elements like the nuclear rocket launcher - with very rare ammunition, obviously - which irradiates the area of the strike, you begin to see how placing this sort of combat in a larger setting could lead to something with a character and appeal of its own.</blockquote>Fallout 3 preview at Eurogamer.
EDIT: Kieron Gillen was kind enough to clarify his remarks on turn-based at his (excellent) blog, Rock Paper Shotgun.<blockquote>In passing, if any of the NMA guys are reading, the bit where I talk about how I’d like to see this turn-based thing go further, was me badly phrasing that the “Give orders/see results cinematically” is a bit like how turn-based games work. Clearly the pause-time attacks of VAS aren’t a true turn-based game, but it shows that a turn-based like interaction lead to cute results, at least on first impression. Since that’s relatively strong and the normal-combat is relatively weak, I’d have been interested in seeing them pursue it a bit more.
I should have been a lot more explicit with what I said.</blockquote>
This preview goes into a bit more detail about dialogue options, though:
<blockquote>It's at your birthday party, and you've just received your Pip Boy wrist terminal and promised your first work detail, but between the amusement of robots ruining birthday cakes, you get your initial conversations. The first one is standard enough (though it introduces the concept of lying), but the next one we're shown is with a bullying peer by the name of Butch, where you appear to have at least six cake-related options available; everything from a diplomatic, sharing-it-fifty-fifty option, to the openly perverse provocation of spitting in it and then giving it him. Bethesda's Pete Hines, demoing, stresses that these options will all play out differently down the line. The point is to show that we're a long way from the "Yes, I'll help you"/"Yes, I'll help you for three pounds fifty and a cheeseburger"/"I WILL KILL YOU AND TAKE YOUR STUFF" conversation options with which most modern RPGs satisfy themselves. Hines and co. have talked about the game being a much more dense conversational game than Oblivion, and this is them showing how they're walking the walk as well as talking the post-apocalyptic talk. About talk.</blockquote>Of course, they're also a bit confused about the meaning of 'turn-based':
<blockquote>It looks actually stylish - in fact, this turn-based-game with 360-era graphics makes me even think that a fully turn-based game would have worked. Why can't we have a turn-based game which goes for a crazy graphic effect? It'll have the attraction of being distinctive, anyway.</blockquote>And.<blockquote>This is especially pointed as the non-turn-based side fails to convince as much as you'd hope. While "Oblivion with guns" has been the rather sarcastic description from cynics, my personal take was... well, I'd kill for Oblivion with guns. Probably using a gun. It'd be everything we traditionally have to opt for an RPG to get at, but with a setting that's a little less derivative. Sold. The problem only struck me after watching a battle with mutants. You see, at the time of release, Oblivion was probably as good as a first-person sword combat game as we'd had. It wasn't mind-blowing, but no-one had done it better. Even now, only the PC version of Dark Messiah is a peer. Conversely, everyone in the world has done gun combat - and the second you take this angle, you're immediately competing on some level with Valve, Bungie, et al.
Which is unfair, but that's how it is. On a personal level, I found Mass Effect had a similar problem - the hope has to be that Fallout has a similar grace to Bioware's game. That is, the combat is just about good enough to serve the purpose the game demands of it, and leaves the rest of the game's charms to get its hooks into you. When there's elements like the nuclear rocket launcher - with very rare ammunition, obviously - which irradiates the area of the strike, you begin to see how placing this sort of combat in a larger setting could lead to something with a character and appeal of its own.</blockquote>Fallout 3 preview at Eurogamer.
EDIT: Kieron Gillen was kind enough to clarify his remarks on turn-based at his (excellent) blog, Rock Paper Shotgun.<blockquote>In passing, if any of the NMA guys are reading, the bit where I talk about how I’d like to see this turn-based thing go further, was me badly phrasing that the “Give orders/see results cinematically” is a bit like how turn-based games work. Clearly the pause-time attacks of VAS aren’t a true turn-based game, but it shows that a turn-based like interaction lead to cute results, at least on first impression. Since that’s relatively strong and the normal-combat is relatively weak, I’d have been interested in seeing them pursue it a bit more.
I should have been a lot more explicit with what I said.</blockquote>
