‘Fallout 4’ Gunplay Influenced By ‘Destiny,’ Boosted By Bungie Developer Hire
Bethesda Softworks’ effort to translate the Fallout gameplay to the first-person perspective with Fallout 3 largely succeeded, but the gunplay was not quite up to snuff. The developer took a different approach with Fallout 4 for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC by taking inspiration from Bungie’s Destiny and also one of the game’s senior designers.
The latest issue of Game Informer magazine released Wednesday revealed Destiny’s influence on Fallout 4. The developers at Bethesda wanted to ensure that players feel that the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System (V.A.T.S.) and traditional gunplay was equally viable and enjoyable options for players, which was not the case with the previous game.
Bethesda chose Destiny as its gunplay goal for two reasons. First, the gunplay in the game is exceptional. The story and RPG mechanics of Destiny have been heavily criticized since its September 2014 release, but the mechanics and feel of shooting the game’s weapons have been universally praised. Second, Destiny runs at 30 frames per second (fps), which is the same frame rate as Fallout 4.
Work on the Fallout 4 gunplay was done right up until the game went gold. This effort was boosted by bringing Bungie Senior Gameplay Designer Josh Hamrick onboard in April of this year. He’s spent his brief time at Bethesda tweaking and tuning the game’s firearms right up until launch.
“The main difference in the way we develop [and other studios] is that we will develop with as many knobs as possible,” Fallout 4 director Todd Howard said. “We’re always thinking of scale. We’re not a team that is just going to make eight guns and spend forever on one gun. We knew we were going to have thousands, so we needed to develop a gun system that had all of the dials.”
These knobs and dials serve another important function in Fallout 4 and that is to transform weapons as part of the new crafting system added to the game. As previously covered by the Inquisitr, players will be able to take different objects populated throughout the game world and use them to modify weapons and armors into something completely new. The crafting system starts with 50 weapons and 700 mods to experiment with.
For those unfamiliar, Destiny has a similar system of knobs and dials as every weapon has a number of attributes that can be changed that affect rate of fire, stability, impact, magazine capacity, and more. Bungie creates different archetypes of the various weapons for Sniper Rifles, Auto Rifles, Scout Rifles, etc. For example, Sniper Rifles are typically divided between low-impact/high rate of fire and high-impact/low rate of fire. Each weapon also comes with a perk tree that can be used to further modify weapon behavior or character abilities. There’s also a behind-the-scenes set of dials that allows Bungie to tune how each stat and perk affects play.
The Fallout 4 crafting system creates a bit of a different beast, however. Players will be able to add various parts that change how far a weapon may zoom or how much damage it does, for example. The ability to add so many mods introduces more variability to the game’s systems, which will be interesting to see how Bethesda has balanced the power and fun of the gunplay.
PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC owners will have the opportunity to emerge from Vault 111 into a post-apocalyptic Boston, Massachusetts when Fallout 4 releases on Tuesday, November 10. Xbox One owners will also receive a free backward compatible copy of Fallout 3 that will be available to play when the New Xbox One Experience launches on November 12.
The Fallout 4 Android and iOS companion app is now available to download from the Google Play Store and iTunes. It will give players access to their character stats and inventory when the game fully launches, but it comes with a demo mode to try out for now. There’s even a Missile Command-like mini-game available to play.
