Fallout 3: SPECIAL System & Skills Are Intact

CVG has a preview of Fallout 3 covered, and here are the interesting bits:

To intensify the claustrophobic feeling within Vault 101, where your people have lived in confinement since the bombs began, the game begins at your birth, then fades in and out of your childhood. What's more, every time you'll be subtly nudged into making vital decisions usually played out on a character-creation screen, and learning the way the game works.
At birth, your father (played by Liam Neeson) will analyse your DNA and you'll choose stuff like gender and ethnicity; on your 16th birthday, you'll take your G.O.A.T. tests to determine personal skills and traits. It all leads up to the age of 19, when dad mysteriously disappears, the fabled rolling door is opened and you emerge clad in a familiar blue boiler suit under the glare of an unfamiliar sun.

The game is causing the expected grumbling in the Fallout community, but for my part, I certainly didn't expect so many of the hallmarks of Fallout's gameplay to be returning. The SPECIAL system remains with its perks and traits.

Let me focus on the gameplay since the background story doesn't leave a lot of room for discussion anyway. The SPECIAL system is the Fallout equivalent of D&D's Strength, Dexterity, Wisdom, etc. scores: Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck. Without modifiers, they range from 1-10, and you can probably guess what each score covers. Strength, for example, determines your melee damage output and how much you can carry. Note that combat in previous Fallout games carried differences between melee (weapon-based) and unarmed damage, although both are still governed by Strength.

Skills are percentage scores that determine your chances of success, and there's a lot of them. If your melee weapons skill was 90% and your speech skill is only 45%, then it's obvious that trying to talk your way out of a tough situation is probably not a good idea. Aside from the decisions you make in-game, skills are the primary reason why each playthrough is unique.

As a Fallout fan, knowing that the SPECIAL system, skills and traits are all intact is definitely great news. Hopefully, we'll get an in-game video preview soon.

Source: CVG

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Fallout 3: SPECIAL System & Skills Are Intact

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