It's no secret that we're big fans of Fallout here at Pixel Loadout. Bethesda managed to drop a mountain of info on us with everything they showed at there press conference. Slow down some videos and you can find a lot of interesting info. With a release date set for November 10th of this year, it's pretty safe to say a lot of the systems being shown in trailers are probably pretty close to final. With that being said, lets take a closer look at the SPECIAL system this time around, and what kind of attributes are being governed. Keep in mind a lot of this is a best guess and general conjecture based on individual screens, as well as past Fallout games. Anything mentioned here is subject to change when the game releases.
Here's the video we're going to be dissecting. Todd is nice of us to flick down through all of the SPECIAL stats for us, with a really nice animated vault boy to boot.
Here's our initial status screen, we can note a few details right off the bat. Hit points, experience, and Action points are all here and present at the bottom of the screen. Our Vault Boy readout is most likely showing individual limb health, head, arms, legs and body all to account form. It also looks like we have some general item statistics being shown at a glance. Best guess here is that your equipped pistol does 10 damage a shot. Your total armor is adding up to to 5, and you have a light amount of radiation blocking attribute of 10. You can also glance up in the stats and you can see that skills seem to be missing. More on that later.
Also nifty to note is a quick menu present at the bottom. No telling how customizable this is yet, but it will dynamically change based on what menu your in. This one for example shows up at your character stat screen...
...and you'll see it to change to something a bit more useful in the gear screen.
S.P.E.C.I.A.L.
This looks to be a pretty radical departure in a lot of ways from Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Going straight down the line...
Probably the most stable stat from the last game. Note that strength is now governing ALL melee damage. So unarmed builds are going to want to dip into here instead of just loading up on endurance.
The "sixth sense" mention is probably referring to in-game radar and being able to detect threats at a greater distance. FO3 and NV both made mentions of Perception affecting accuracy in V.A.T.S., but turned out to not really be true. Maybe it'll make an actual impact this time around.
This one is pretty spicy confirmation of sprinting being in game. If there's one thing clear from everything we saw yesterday, it's that Bethesda isn't shy about borrowing liberally from successful mods on their games, in this case, Project Nevada. Live longer and run faster, seems like a good deal to me!
Charisma once again has a tough time standing out, relegated again to bartering and persuading in dialog. If you're looking for a pacifist run, then look no further.
If you wanted to make an argument for Fallout 4 perhaps oversimplifying the role-playing experience, this is probably your first piece of evidence. No mention of skill points, which intelligence has always governed to some degree. Instead, I'd expect this stat to determine if you can make brainy or stupid remarks for certain dialog choices. If you do have high int, you'll be able to level up faster, and probably get more perks as a result, so that is something. We need info on a level cap though to put this in perspective.
Agility seems simple at first, but expanded usage on action points opens up some interesting options. The classic sneaky-sniper build will probably want a decent amount of points here to go around undetected. The link of agility with endurance is also notable. There's probably going to be a sweet-spot in terms of how many total action points you have, and how many are drained while sprinting.
Clearly the most important stat of all. Want to find something good while prospecting, you'll need some points here. We also get a description of a new system that will let you govern when critical hits occur. You can see some of this in action in the enemy trailer, as well as some screenshots:
Items
I'm expecting with skills more or less out of the picture, weapon and armor statistics are going to play a much larger part of the Fallout experience. Here we can see a pretty clear numerical breakdown of stats you'll find on a firearm, as well as the ammunition used and it's valued. It looks weapon condition and upkeep has possibly been scraped.
My hope for custom weapons is that we'll be able to rename them. Somehow the "Compensated Pipe Revolver Rifle" just doesn't really role off the tongue. Check out the indicators on the right to see the statistical difference from the pistol the the rifle.
Not much here to say other than non-relevant stat categories get omitted, as Grenades don't have an ammo type or magazine. Well, except for Fire Rate for whatever reason.
And we've got some standbys as far as the pharmaceuticals go.
Conclusion:
So I'm not one to advocate jumping to any sort of final conclusion based just on an E3 presentation, but it's hard not to see this as a sort of "Skyrim-ification" of the Fallout series. There's no telling if this was a required sort of sacrifice in order to get combat up to snuff and a little less stiff from it's predecessor. I of course want some more info on things like the mod customization system as well as this hinted at Perk Chart, and how it can influence character set-ups. Keep an eye out for more details as we learn more.
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