E3 2010: Fallout: New Vegas Preview
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Other points of interest along "The Strip" include the Lucky 38 (a towering casino and home to the mysterious Securitron robot-controlling "Mr. House"), the Vault 21 hotel and casino (a typical Vault-Tec shelter turned into what Chris calls "a tourist attraction"), Gomorrah (another casino that was off in the distance), and the Ultra-Luxe (a fancy-looking restaurant with strippers dancing provocatively in its front fountain), though I didn't have a chance to enter any of these locations during my time with the E3 build. From The Tops, I was teleported to an area in the Mojave Desert just outside of a Caesar's Legion camp. Here, I recruited a New California Republic sniper named Boone (there are a total of nine such companions, by the way), who asked for my help in infiltrating the camp and killing the slaving faction's leader. I could go about the task in a multitude of different ways, but given the amount of time I had during the demo, direct combat seemed most appropriate. At this point, I had a quick look at Obsidian's new "Companion Commands" control wheel. From this interface, you can now order a companion to take an aggressive or passive stance, use ranged or melee weapons, show you their inventory, keep their distance from your position, back up (if you need them to reposition themselves), indulge you in dialogue, wait where they're at until you give them further orders, or heal up with a stimpak. After making sure Boone was well-equipped, I had a look at my own inventory (the interface of which is nearly identical to Fallout 3). Some of the new weapons at my disposal were an Anti-Material Rifle, a Lever-Action Shotgun, some C-4 Plastic Explosives with Detonator, a 9 Iron golf club, a Bladed Gauntlet, a Multiplas Rifle, a Plasma Caster, a Trail Carbine, a Light Machine Gun, and the infamous Grenade Launcher. Chris also tells me that "named" weapons will be making a return in New Vegas, though they won't accept modifications like standard weapons will. Additionally, when you highlight each weapon, you're not only shown their damage and quality scores, but you're also provided with a rating for the weapon's damage per second (DPS). This made it an easy decision for me to equip the Plasma Caster for maximum carnage.
Combat hasn't changed a whole lot from Fallout 3, though jumping in and out of VATS seems quicker and smoother than I remember it. There are also new "special attacks" that you can perform with melee weapons, some opponents are resistant to attacks aimed at certain parts of their bodies (to keep us from continuously performing head shots), and we now get a little shield indicator if a certain weapon is less effective against a specific enemy. If you're not a fan of VATS, you'll be happy to hear that you can now aim down the sights of a ranged weapon for more "streamlined" FPS action. Slow motion kills are still a part of the experience, but thankfully you can turn them off once you've had your fill of violence.
Killing the Caesar's Legion soldiers brought me some definite satisfaction, but it quickly knocked my reputation with the faction down to "shunned" and, soon after, "hated". When there was nothing left but severed heads and dismembered eyeballs, I had the opportunity to search the bodies and various tents that made up the camp. What I found most interesting was not the ammunition and other loot that could be had, but the notes that I found and added to my Pip-Boy. Some notes were letters written to loved ones, while others were journal entries that NCR members had been writing just before being surrounded and subsequently killed by the Caesar's Legion. Avellone explained that the notes in Fallout: New Vegas are intended mostly for flavor, though there will obviously be some that yield useful information (such as codes to locked doors). As a fan of little lore-inducing elements like this, it was a welcome sight.
