http://kotaku.com/378147/growing-up-with-fallout-3

Ugh, how disappointing. Great move, Kotaku. Send someone who admits to not really being into Fallout to preview the game.

Fallout fans, read at your own risk. There is virtually nothing of substance there and the guy raves about the steampunk design of the game. Well, no shit sherlock, we already knew that. He does mention that it's in first-person, which brought my blood near its boiling point. Third person better not be broken a la Oblivion.

Anyway, Kotaku probably should have found someone who had been playing PC games for more than 6 weeks to write that article. Meh. A person who knew what questions to ask and what things to point out about the game could send a lot of reassurance to those of us that don't want Bethesda to completely screw up this franchise.

here's something from IGN they put up about it today, might be more informative.

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/865/865615p1.html

IGN has one preview as well: http://pc.ign.com/articles/865/865601p1.html

nothing really new too...

I hope the "drifts quite a bit" actually means a LOT... :P your character should also panic and the drop the weapon, something like that :P

it's disappointing what Fallout 3 is turning into: Oblivion with guns. They even are removing all the adult themes from the series, like child-killing, prostitution, drug addiction, etc... Bethesda is ruining another series, again.

It keeps getting worse...

Thanks for the IGN article. It was more informative. Apparently Dogmeat can permanently die. That's a good sign that they're putting in more of the traditional Fallout "screw around and we'll punish you" gameplay. Hopefully there will also be real consequences to illegal actions.

The combat bit was interesting. One thing that worries me is that it's pretty much completely real-time action and it involves actually aiming your weapons. Which means that if Bethesda doesn't work hard to fix problems with that engine, you'll be forced to play it as an FPS, which IMO is definitely inferior in an RPG to BioWare's excellent Mass Effect third-person style.

It looks as if they're sticking closely to the SPECIAL system. That's a good thing.

One line that kinda pissed me off in the piece:

"This is going to be a heck of a role-playing game, and the combination of Fallout's ironic sense of humor and cool setting with Bethesda's experience and expertise looks like a match made in heaven."

He mentions ironic humor in the last line but in the rest of the article, there isn't one mention of anything even remotely funny. This is probably the aspect of the game that worries me most. If Bethesda chickenshits out and softballs the Fallout world, most of what made the first two games so bloody brilliant will be lost.

I've given up on any good fallout ever being released shortly after Bethesda announced Fallout 3.

@rocketpig, you mean they are going to stick to the SPECIAL system as well as the stat system is operated in Oblivion.

Welcome to FPS Oblivion: And yeah, its in the Future too.

I can understand the removal of child killing and that doesn't bother me much. That's a giant public scandal just waiting to happen and would get the game banned across much of Europe. But if they remove prostitution, drug addiction, and all the other crazy shit the Fallout world allowed you to do, the game is going to suck. It's that simple.

If they remove all of that, it may suck or it may not, but it won't be Fallout.

It will suck as long as the box cover says "Fallout" on it somewhere.