News from Todd Howard Interview

• Always Online
• Even if you play solo, other players will still show up
• Modding will be in the game, just not at launch
• Private "worlds" will be a thing
• Map is 4x larger than fallout 4
• No NPC's (except robots)
• VATS is still there, just works in real time

Source:

No NPCs?

I . . . guess that's what I needed to know.

huh. I need to see more of this game in motion. It's cool that they're extending themselves with this one. I'm just not sure how this is gonna work.

Good on them for trying new things, but this definitely isn't for me.

Seems really cool. Happy to see them go in an unexpected direction after how unambitious Fallout 4 was.

I'm struggling with seeing how a 4x bigger world with no NPCs is gonna work without a massive improvement in mechanics. I would assume it's gonna be more of a hunting game, but there would have to be some sort of structure to it. Like, why would I go out and explore if there's nothing to find out in this even sparser world ?

@ares42 said:

yeah, it doesn't even have the consequences of day z or rust. So there won't be that much tension in a fight.

Sorry guys my game crashed... i'm trying to log back in

I still don't quite understand how this will work so looking forward to seeing more later down the road I guess.....

It seems like they are trying to find a compromise between Fallout and Rust, but I don't think that's a compromise that can exist. No NPCs at all is just a bad idea. No one plays Fallout for the combat, especially without VATS. It's about experiencing the world, and the NPCs are a huge part of that. Their emphasis on never losing progress also sounds like it kneecaps the tension that games like Rust thrive on. If you can never lose stuff, who cares if your base gets nuked.

If they pull it off great, but right now they are saying all the wrong things for me.

@ares42: He said there would still be quite a few quests, and that you would be interacting with the story mostly through terminal entries and notes. He said this would be mostly how you would get your quests and objectives too, and i'm assuming you would get quest from the vault robots as well. It does kind of makes sense within the story, as vault 76 residents would be the only people left alive from the area, save from maybe a few non-feral ghouls. I'm fine with this honestly, think it's the right way to go for a multiplayer focused game.

I mean, if I can do a private world with a bunch of friends, that might be cool.

I’m too old for all the open-world griefing possibilities.

All quest and story is through terminals. No NPC's. No consequences.

Why Todd why.

Don't really see any problems with that considering the type of game they're making.

I was super excited for this until I found out no nps. And besides, seeing how it's all online only it's probably just going to be people killing each other. It's not really going to make for a unique experience when it's just going to be how every online game thus far... "Oh look, another player, SHOOT EM." Unfortunately I don't think this one's for me sadly.

War.....war sometimes changes.

I'm glad they're trying something new, but without NPCs and a proper world, it feels like they've taken too much out for the sake of the multiplayer. This sounds a lot less like Fallout with multiplayer, and more like a multiplayer game with the Fallout license, akin to how Brotherhood of Steel and Tactics diverged from the formula- Which I suppose would fit with them not naming this Fallout V.

I guess if it flops they can pull a BLOPS/New Coke and 4 years from now have a Fallout E3 announcement that proudly heralds the return of NPCs and proper quests. I just hope if it's successful it doesn't trap the Fallout series in this multiplayer survival niche forevermore.

Yeah, when he said everyone else in the world is another player, I was instantly disappointed.

It seems like it could be fun to play with friends. (All my friends hate crafting though, not the biggest fan myself either) Much like Metal Gear Survive i'll check this out when it's in the £20 range, although unlike that game I doubt it will be that at launch. (I dont think Bethesda have the nerve to charge for character slots though)

So the private server thing is what is usually the offline option in survival games, he kind of spoke like it wasn't going to be in at launch? But that was part of the mods conversation, so who knows. I've enjoyed time with survival games in the past, but usually fell away after around 60 hours of exploring the map and building a castle. A main quest and smaller quests to pick up sounds a lot more directed than any other survival game I've heard of. My biggest problem with 4 was the small map, so this sounds like a great game to wander and explore by yourself, especially since it seems to have all the mechanics of 4. But I've never played a survival game online, so if the private server isn't in day 1, I'll probably wait until it gets patched in.

Not sure if no NPCs means no enemies too or just no neutrals and friends. They flirted with an Evolve type thing in F4 didn’t they? Where you controlled a monster?

This sounds fucking terrible.

@stephen_von_cloud said:

@slusader said:

• No NPC's (except robots)

I want this game to be good so bad. Please be good game. Please!?

Does anyone have a mirror for the interview, it seems it was taken down.

@avatre0: This is the original, so it shouldn't get taken down.

I think the trick to making one of these games fun for a wider audience is to figure out how to create incentive to not just immediately shoot whoever you come across. One of the basic tenants of these games is that you can loot whoever you kill. I think if you removed this completely and made it so that the only way you can gain access to another player's wares was through direct trading this might make it so that you think twice about attacking whoever you come across when a cooperative trade might be more mutually beneficial than a skirmish.

And I am probably projecting a bit here, but the thing about being able to nuke other players's settlements made me imagine a scenario where you are getting a text from a buddy late at night saying that another team has acquired all of the launch codes and that you need to get online ASAP to stop them from getting to the base and launching the missiles. That seems like the kind of thing I would dream about being able to do in a video game when I was younger.

@brunothethird said:

Yeah, Fallout for me has always been about the crazy stories and characters you encounter along the way as you roam the wasteland. Replacing that with real people sounds a lot less interesting.

Hearing more about this game makes it feel less like a new fallout and more like an off shoot completely revolving around multiplayer.

video is dead now :(

Which is okay, because we already got a main line Fallout with 4.

If this was the only Fallout game we were getting, then I'd take issue with it.

@wheresderrick: I am a bit sad as the setting seemed cool, being only 20 years after the bombs. There could of been pre-war settlements still trying to stay alive. Granted this very clearly isn't a main line Fallout, but still what could of been you know.

But at least they are getting out in front of this saying mostly what this game is.

I'm not a big fan of what Bethesda has done with Fallout so far, but I'm even less interested in this.

I see everyone here comaring the new Fallout to Rust, but everything I have seen is reminding me of Monster Hunter with a base building mechanic attached to it.

@tearhead: Exactly. There have been many fantastic robot characters -- that Old World Blues DLC was genius, and didn't have people in it -- and awesome quests that you discovered that didn't involve NPCs in the past, but without quirky ghouls, bitter old rangers, non-aggressive mutants, tree-men, black-hearted slavers, idiotic scientists, cults and vampires, where does the heart come from? The character (you need CHARACTERS for that)?

If they've found a way, great, but they showed nothing to quell those concerns. Fallout has always been at least 50% about character interactions. We'll know soon enough!

Idk why people are surprised there are no NPCs. The core enjoyment you will get out of this game will be exploring and interacting with other players. I am guessing the various terminal quests will be used to basically direct you to different points of interest in the world.

As a big fan of Rust this sounds interesting, but potentially kind of pointless if it doesn't have similar consequences. I am cautiously interested.

So...there aren't even going to be NPCs in the vault you leave? I get, storywise, why there MIGHT not be NPCs in that area but still. I guess I might just get the power armor edition and resell it then...

I'm not a huge story guy, but Fallout has always been great due to its characters... Real world people aren't cool characters.. They're just nerds running around leveling and looting their way to endorphine heaven. That world is going to feel incredibly dead. 4x the size and no inhabitants that matter...

I hope they manage to do something cool here, but I have strong doubts this time around. FO4 was sad.

Honestly, they sold me a bit on this with the 'private servers are a thing'. Like, if I can lock myself to a single invite-only world, then I can force single-player onto things.

More likely though is I might actually be able to find a group (Like hey there are surely a few dozen GB people who might want to play this game with other GBeasters but not at all with random people just like me out there) and have a much better time with this game.

For me the "No multiplayer thank you very much" is very much in the stint of "I don't want to PvP I don't want to be killed by other people, I don't want to do that to others. Co-op only please and thanks". And if there is at least some way to guarantee myself such an experience, then I'm open.

Checking out Dannys documentary it seems like they're going hard in on crafting, and that the game is gonna be driven by resource collection. Seems odd that they chose to completely omit that part from the presentation. It also made it seem more MMO-ish than presented (with emphasis on trading and interdependencies), making me think that while it's viable to play solo it's not really something you're gonna want to keep playing alone through the end-game.

I'm a little confused on what's going to drive this game forward, since so far it just sounds like a big arena shooter. If the only "progression" is collecting resources while in a giant arena shooter, then that feels boring.

@ares42: Yeah Danny's behind the scenes film made it look a bit more like Destiny minus the dependence on loot than it was portrayed as in the conference

I....still am absolutely not sold. I've enjoyed Fallout but this change I don't think is something I am looking for in a Fallout game. We'll see, I'll leave my mind open, but every piece of news is further from what I want (I think).

If there are private servers, I'm in. If I have to deal with someone nuking my crap, that's not something I want to play.

The more I sit on my thoughts of F76, the more it turns from curiosity to intrigue, and the more I think I may become interested in it

Every time we're given another bit of info, I get taken back for a moment and shake my head, then think about how it may work out.

I love that it's something so different but retains that Fallout atmosphere. Todd seems very passionate about a lot of the decisions made so I really want to see how this all works out.

So no NPCs. That seems boring. All the people you fight will be other players and, by extension, people you would've spent the previous years in Vault 76 with. People who now want to murder you. So it's a vault full of psychopaths.

I mean, yeah, most multi-player games have story elements that make no sense. This isn't even trying.

I might pass on this simply because I play games to get away from other people, and Fallout 4 is one of those games I play when I want to get away from other people.

The video trailer shown looks like their weird workaround to that is "hey there was a reclamation day party last night and you got totally drunk and slept in - absolutely everyone has already left and gone in aimless directions!". I suppose the other player characters you meet in the game or your crew are meant to all be Vault 76 Dwellers.

@captain_insano: "Video Games!" is all I can think of with them having that as a reason, lol.

looks like im the only one, but i cant wait for this