Fallout had a soundtrack?  Aside from the opening licensed song I can't remember any music being played in game at all which was my chief complaint.  I can very vaguely remember a song that played in town or in dungeons but it was quiet and barely noticeable not like Baldur's Gate which had this epic fucking soundtrack that blows me away.  It's the only game series where I actually sit at the title screen and hum the theme song out loud before playing the game.

As far as Fallout staff goes, they were either integrated into BioWare or they drifted to Troika.  Chris Taylor and several other guys found their board game company or something and Cain is still a developer/programmer (he's working on some MMORPG for one of those hundreds of korean companies).

Well they could have put some of this great music in the actual game.  I remember Fallout Tactics and even the terrible Brotherhood of Steel having music but for the life of me I can't remember a single tune in the originals.

Well they could have put some of this great music in the actual game.  I remember Fallout Tactics and even the terrible Brotherhood of Steel having music but for the life of me I can't remember a single tune in the originals.

They are definitely there.  Most are ambient tracks and stuff but they are super good.

Beth is having a special showing of the game or something at PAX this weekend.  Hopefully it's a playable/something other than the stupid E3 presentation as I'm attending the show specifically for it.

it wasn't that great. it set a mood, but it was kind of abrasive even for the mood it was trying to set.

yeah it was good for setting a mood, but that really was all about it that is really worth mentioning.  I hope that its nothing too fancy or anything, as the mood setting that the whole fallout series brings is pretty important to the game imo.  regardless though, chances are I'll just mute the music and play my other stuff in the background anyway though

typically, only when a game does something bad does it actually stick out. because the music was such a good fit for the setting you don't really take notice of it and it lends itself to the game atmosphere. this is part of why fallout 2 has such a strong post-apocalyptic setting and why other games fail to replicate this feeling. admittedly there are not a whole lot of games that use this setting, but i think it's the music that sets fallout apart from the rest.

it's much like how a suspense or horror movie (good ones) will use bizarre tracks to set a feeling for a scene and so on. you will never remember what it sounded like but it definitely sets the mood when you are watching.

i wouldn't. this isn't going to be good anyway so it might as well be fun.

There're some freaky random things that happen to keep you on your toes - I had a woman run up to me in the middle of nowhere begging for help because she was strapped with explosives. She ran off, not really giving me any opportunity to help her (bug?) and then exploded. Weird.

From a dutch article.  If random events are that awesome then sign me up.

Apparently Bethesda's booth will have the first playable version of Fallout 3 so yours truly will get a taste of the game (yay 60 seconds in whatever barren monster filled more-than-likely-miles-away-from-npcs area).  The show they're having at 2:30pm is basically a one hour walk through of the game and there will be a compressed download of it available that weekend.

Five videos were uploaded at gametrailers.  It's a compressed version of the hour long video they're showing at PAX.  The game looks pretty fun and they showed an example of "multiple dialog strings" or whatever with skills being applied to dialog and quests.

The character models aren't as ugly as they were in Oblivion but the animation is still goofy as fuck.  The soundtrack is also fucking awesome and having a built in radio is all kinds of cool.  It looks like it has more "staying power" than Oblivion since it's actually a story based game.

EDIT: Oh, and exploding cars are stupid.  Cars in Fallout run on nuclear fusion cells and shouldn't BLOW UP by getting 10 shots to the frame with a pistol. 

The option to beat the game as a pacifist is always interesting.  This definitely was not possible in Oblivion (to my knowledge).

well in the jail/tutorial you could let the guards handle it.

then you could go off and do side stuff (leveling up with stuff like alteration and stuff so you wouldn't do damage) then i guess you could use stuff like invisibility or reflect damage (if you count that as pacifism) to make it through? idk i'm just thinking of a way it could've been possible.

Bethesda has marketed this game like no other.  Their setup at PAX was pretty spectacular in terms of DESIGN and it's clear they put a great deal of money into making it look like Fallout in terms of art.  The game on the other hand is a different story...

I waited in line watching over people's shoulders as they played the game.  It's important to note that it was a hacked version (same with EVERY SINGLE VIDEO they're put on the internet).  In the full game, there are guards at the Vault exit you have to sneak past/persuade/bribe/kill, you don't have ridiculous amounts of health, you can't find nuclear catapult grenade launchers laying around, basically everything you've seen in every video was faked.

Anyways, everyone ahead of me went on mad killing sprees while I waited patiently noting things I wanted to try out (one guy was in the back reciting Fallout's entire ingame history but I didn't dare ask him if he was an NMA member for fear of being booted off the exhibit).  When I got to play the game, Hines meandered over to narrate for me.  He tried to "guide" me along the demo... to which I completely ignored him.  When I leveled up after leaving the vault, I increased my speech to the max and choose Ladykiller which made his eyebrows raise.

I entered a random house and spoke to Silver, this Jethead who owed Moriarty some caps.  With Ladykiller, a couple of new choices popped up and she opened up to me about her addiction.  I used my heightened speech to extort her of some caps and decided to check out Moriarty but not before sneaking in her kitchen and stealing random objects like toasters and cutting boards.

Fo3 apparently has a robust invention system as pretty much everything could be picked up.  In the 10 minutes I was allotted, I basically wandered around the outskirts of Megaton and entered the town to talk to people; something that NO ONE ELSE DID IN THE ENTIRE BOOTH. 

The game's writing is better than what was shown.  Some of the characters are downright awful, but other characters are actually pretty funny and well written.  I talked to this one old guy who basically went on and on and on about how awesome AMERICA was and we had a long conversation regarding consumerism or something that ended with him fumbling in his speech reminding me of a scene in the original where you talked to a rat and "killed" him by bringing up a paradox in his knowledge.

Outside of the improved dialog, I also noticed that Fallout's world was pretty interesting.  The videos don't do it justice, but unlike Oblivion there's actual LEVEL DESIGN.  Every building that has an entrance can be entered and the blown out buildings actually have some variety (despite repeat albeit not-really-noticeable damage models).  The items and events in the game are randomized and in two playthroughs I noticed varying item placements, mumbling crazies, and merchants.

Other than that... it plays out pretty much like Oblivion.  You walk around and do quests.  There seems to be more attention to detail, something Oblivion was lacking, and the characters actually having personalities is great but yeah... it's like a total conversion mod for Oblivion.

I'm not going to beat a dead horse by going "NOT FALLOUT URGHFHGHFGH" but I will say that it is a fine game on its own merit.  The animations are goofy and the AI varies between decent and downright retarded, but overall it's a decent game and that's all I can ask for these days (well, that's all I expect to receive as I ask for an english release of Mother 3 daily).

I can confirm that this game is a lot less deadlier than Oblivion.  You still have enemies that will chase you but they won't follow you to the ends of the earth and other enemies actually fight each other in this game (I saw radscorpion versus raiders and mole rats versus mad brahmin).  I don't doubt Hines word that one of his playtesters beat it without killing anyone.

EDIT: I completely forgot you can disarm enemies.  Disarming an enemy completely usually makes them run away in fear so a pacifist can simply shoot the gun out of everyone's hands and never kill a single thing.

EDIT 2: I don't think I mentioned that characters actually TRAVEL in this game.  Outside Megaton I shot the deputy and the Sheriff ran out the town gates (it uses the same walled in town style as Oblivion) and several snipers manned the makeshift parapets.