One of the things I am most looking forward to, if Fallout 4 is in production, is the chance to see The Wasteland given a proper graphical overhall. The last two games have been created with the functional, if ugly Gamebryo engine which has evidently been valued for its ability to handle the complexities of Bethesda's huge open worlds. F3 and NV were pretty ugly games for the most part - however Skyrim, which apparently used an updated version of this engine was a distinct upgrade.

My hopes are that with the new consoles' power, Bethesda are looking to create a game which can really do the filth of the Wasteland some justice, however I was wondering if people knew what engine they were using?

I am in the middle of playing Wolfenstein and I completed Rage when it came out. I have been really impressed with the graphics, especially the detail which the Id Tech 5(is it?) engine can produce. Both games, especially Rage, have amazing texture work, with art similar in style to the devastated urban areas and man-made desert we might expect from a Fallout game. The graphics produced by IdTech5 have this wonderful quality where they seem to look just like concept art, with extraordinary shading and complex individual details. This got me quite excited about the potential Id Tech had for creating a Fallout which has great art and graphics, the only area where the games have not been outstanding in my opinion. While it will obviously be much harder to create the volume of art needed for a huge RPG, and some repetition,a la Skyrim will occur (although I really didn't find the recycled art as egregious as some people) the potential to create jaw dropping vistas is really exciting.

The moment after leaving the vault in F3 is one of my favourite in all of gaming. Being presented with that huge landscape, the wide horizons to explore in all directions, thrilled me with the sky high potential gaming offers to just get lost. It was too bad that ugly textures, weird faces and animations reminiscent of zombies taking their first steps to often threatened to shatter the games hold. Surprisingly FNV was a step backwards,especially once we got into the supposedly bustling metropolis of Las Vegas. I managed to play F3 with out really getting that bothered about the visuals, but I found the crappyness of NV jarring. For some reason I when I think of NV the whole game is coloured a kind of crappy washed out greeny-grey, I can cope with games which look bad technically but NV also seemed to have no real style either. Yet the beauty of the Fallout formula was that I still managed to have a great time.

Its strange, the awful graphical presentation of Fallout seems so part of its essence that imagining a game with decent graphics seems like some kind of unrealistic fantasy. A good Fallout game with the eye-catching textures and animations of Rage seems almost unfair to expect. Like it would almost be too good. However, realistically they must be aiming for something like this. The jump between Oblivion and Skyrim was significant and that was on the same console, I can hardly bear to imagine what should be possible on new consoles, but deep down something inside me just feels that they are working away on some slightly upgraded version of the classic Bethesda bug farm. Perhaps you can help:

Does anyone know what engine they are using?

Is Id Tech suitable for making the kind of open, deep and complex game we expect Fallout to be?

In general does anyone know how Bethesda view the Id Tech engine? Is it like EA and Frostbite where they see it as a company wide tool, or is it just for Id games?

Whatever else you might say about the quality of Rage, I thought it was one of the best looking games I had ever seen, especially on a machine as inferior as the 360. I was truly blown away by some of the visuals, especially the texture work - did anyone else's mind jump to the potential it had to make Fallout bloom?

My fervent hope is that the reason they are taking so long to even announce anything about F4 is that it is being developed only for next-gen (please God!) and that they are scrapping the Gamebryo and either taking on IdTech or using it to develop a new engine - what do you think? Can you even conceive how amazing a Fallout game could be with modern graphical technology?

The new Wolfenstein developed by MachineGames used idTech 5 and it seems very likely that the next Fallout game will use it as well.. The graphics in Fallout 3/New Vegas didn't bother me much, it was the animation that was most jarring for me.

Both RAGE and Wolfenstein The New Order look pretty good for the most part, but neither one looks all that great when you get up close. I also don't remember either game being all that "dynamic" either. Lighting and shadows don't really seem to change all that much in idtech 5 games, which is really weird considering that Doom, Quake, and Doom 3 all had some pretty advanced lighting.

Besides, can idtech 5 really handle some of the AI interactions and stuff that a Bethesda game requires? Neither Rage nor Wolfenstein seemed to have much going on in that department.

You absolutely nailed my feelings on Rage/Wolfenstein and F3/FNV. Both Fallout games suffered extensively from the trend grey/brown trend going on back then. Something we're thankfully seeing less of now.

Does anyone know what engine they are using?

Is Id Tech suitable for making the kind of open, deep and complex game we expect Fallout to be?

I don't think they've said anything about which engine they're making? Considering they've got a core engine-team on site, which let's them build upon their style of making games. My guess is that their sticking to their own tech.

Using IdTech5 however, doesn't limit them to making as linear of a game as Rage and Wolfenstein really were. That's a design and team size issue, which I don't think we need to worry about in Bethesda's case.

Fallout 3 always kinda felt like an Oblivion mod to me... alright game though...

I really disliked the engine in Oblivion/Fallout3. Too floaty movement and extremely ugly animations when playing in 3rd p. Everything felt like it was made of plastic, no sense of weight to anything. I could've really liked those games if they had used some other engine. The whole thing feels like an "open-world videogames 101" type of thing.

Fallout 3 and New Vegas looked, felt and played like community mods and were a disgrace to the 1997/1998 classics.

There, someone had to say it. They were not bad games in of themselves, as clearly people loved them, but they had very little to do with what made the originals so amazing. Fallout 3 was basically the Dragon Age 2 of the Fallout franchise.

Rage looked like what I'd imagine a modern Fallout game would be like. They really nailed the entire Mad Max aesthetic. Their high tech Authority look was equally great - it had that same "woah" factor of seeing the Brotherhood of Steel for the first time in Fallout 1 after braving the desolate deserts and shanty towns.

I hate the Rage engine though, as games tend to look beautiful if you're standing perfectly still and looking at things from far away. It is also poorly optimized.

We haven't heard anything official yet, but the best guess would be an updated/modified version of the Creation Engine that was used in Skyrim. It's possible that they cooked up something completely new by now since it has been so long, but I think it would kind of be a waste to have spent all of that time and money making that engine only to have shipped on game with it 3 years ago.

@humanity: What would a modern Fallout game look like for you then? What was wrong with them compared to the originals? I never played the original games at the time but I went back and had a mess around with Fallout 1 (it was stupidly hard).

I have seen a few people post things like this and it just always seems like a kind of snobby thing people say when their cool band has become popular, but you don't seem like the person who would have this attitude, so I am interested.

I understand that Fallout 3 didn't really match the tone of the original games but New Vegas seemed much more in tune with their humour and style. What was your problem - tone, depth, style? I'd be interested, because they are two of my favourite games of all time, so I would like to know how someone can have such a contrary opinion.

@leebmx: It's hard to explain because they were brilliant games at the time but as you have experienced yourself, it's hard to go back to them now. I could go back but to newcomers, especially now a lot of things are very unintuitive.

For me the magic lay in the fact that the original games were amazing RPG's that completely broke away from the D&D conventions that we had seen up to that point. I never really liked high fantasy, elves, dwarves, the whole lot. Here was this amazing Mad Max themed adventure which was incredibly graphic in both dialog and presentation. There were multiple solutions to quests and different character builds were completely viable for finishing the game. This was all very groundbreaking in 1997 compared to the other popular "RPG" of the time that was Diablo.

Fallout 3 changed a few very fundamental aspects of the game. Bethesda put too much Elder Scrolls into the Fallout stew. As I said, they weren't bad games in of themselves, they just failed to encapsulate the spirit of the original franchise. Everything from the presentation to the writing was off. I would actually go as far as to say the map and pip boy were horribly designed interfaces. The combat which was nuanced and very tactical in the originals, was now this weird hybrid that felt both awkward in VATS and in real time. The shift to first person combined with the rather ugly looking gamebryo engine was pretty jarring and unnecessary.

Honestly it's like if you took Dragon Age: Origins, which is a very slow paced dialog heavy game with extremely tactical and nuanced combat - and then plugged all the lore and names somewhat awkwardly into Skyrim and said here you go enjoy! For people that never played Origins it would be completely fine because they might enjoy that sort of gamestyle, but to those fans of the original game it just wouldn't be the same experience - and in the process of going from one style to another a lot of small details would be lost.

I mean I know that this basically sounds like old fogies complaining that their old isometric 2D game has been put into first person and they're being grumpy about it. While that does play a big role, it's honestly not the only reason. As I wrote in the Origins example, small details get lost along the way, details that are hard to put into words but you can feel them missing. Unfortunately this long and bumbling explanation is the best that I could do to somehow clarify my opinion.

I've never done it myself, but apparently in the original Fallout, getting the actual best ending can only be done by sequence breaking (you are on a timer in that one and the best ending requires completing the main story super quick). It is in fact not canon as it was never intended to be achieved. So yeah, Fallout was hard.

And in regards to New Vegas, that is why I liked that more. The Fallout apocalypse is one by way of 50's nostalgia. Not just by stirring in the trapping of the 50's but in the glossing over of the likely very horrible realities in favor of the rose tinted good "new" days. Because if you are going to look under that rock, Paradise Falls would be a quaint resort town in comparison to what would actually be going on.

I'm sorry, but if you think the original Fallout is at all difficult you're investing in lockpicking or something. I am genuinely confused. I don't even mean this in a "wow, u r so stupid lol" sort of terrible internet egoism, but Fallout is a very easy game no matter which way you play it. It's incredibly broken in lots of ways that you'd naturally stumble upon.

Yeah, I tried going back to New Vegas when all the DLC went on sale for like $2.50 and I couldn't get past opening the first door and seeing how ugly everything is. In a way that's always bothered me about Fallout 3, though. You get your own place, but it's not warm and homey like in Skyrim, it's just another shithole full of half-ruined furniture

Ahh... I'm digging the Fallout 3/NV "negativity" lol... I reviewed the game back when it came out, gave it a 7.5 I think... booted it up a few weeks ago and geez that game is not holding up well today.

Looking past the graphics and animation the system is really silly imo... You can like max level a skill at level 4 r sum by just dumping points into it... and don't get me started on the lockpicking system they introduced that the brought over to TES... you can basically open any door at level 1 with your eyes closed.

Despite all that I'm still exited for a new Fallout... here's to hoping Beth won't continue dumbing down their franchises.

@humanity: No that makes a lot of sense, although I think disgrace is a little strong to be honest.

The little I played of the original Fallout gave me some idea of the differences in the combat, although personally I really liked VATS, I really hope they include it in the new game, although I expect I am in a minority. How would you change the battle system for the new game?

You also mention the writing. Did you play New Vegas? This seemed to me to be much closer to the original Fallout style. At first I found it too jokey, and preferred the more serious tone of F3, but I definitely came round by the end. Did you really think the writing in FNV was that bad, or rather that far from the original Fallout style? I can see how you would have problems with the tone of 3 but NV seemed like the classic Fallout style to me.

I think part of the problem is that it is not going to be possible to capture the feeling you, or anyone else had with the first two games. F3 was released 10 years later. This is a whole ice-age in gaming terms which makes the game a re-boot more than a sequel. The fact that you say it is hard to put into words what has changed just indicates the impossibility of ever re-capturing the spirit of the originals, Personally, I think New Vegas is a really honourable stab at creating a modern-ish(!) Fallout game for the previous-generation, bugs, graphics and presentation aside (reasonable quibbles, but not relevant to the old games) - I think creating a modern Fallout which progresses the game and stays true to the originals in the way you seem to want is an impossible task, all the more so as you are not the same person you were when the first game made such an impact.

Fair enough. I just remember getting killed over and over again by the first radscorpions I came across. I eventually managed to stumble to one of the major hubs, but starting the game was pretty brutal. Everything seemed to kill me in one or two strikes but nothing I did had any impact. I was really not under the impression that Fallout 1 was an easy game, I seem to remember reading a lot of posts about how unforgiving it could be. Maybe I just didn't know how to play it properly.

@leebmx: Well pulling it out into a third person perspective would do a lot as it would lend itself a slower and more methodical combat system. I would love it if they made a new Fallout in the style of Dragon Age Inquisition - beautiful graphics, a certain degree of free roam and tactical combat.

Also don't listen to Optimus. Even back in the day Fallout 1 and 2 especially were challenging games. They're the sort of games that are a struggle at first but you start to really cruise through them once you've put a few levels under your belt. Also when you've beaten them once and know where to allocate points, where to go first, how to obtain weapons etc. But no one has that knowledge beforehand and being lost in those worlds can be quite a challenge. For instance Fallout 2 is much larger and starts you off much weaker than the first one - but after you've beaten it once you know that from the very first town you can travel south to the hidden Enclave base and without any combat get yourself a suit of Enclave Power Armor which is the most powerful armor in the game. That makes the beginning real easy.

@leebmx: I can't recommend playing it again because you didn't seem to enjoy yourself, but I really want to. Maybe its because I played the first one when I was really young, but I have such fond memories of those first two games that I think every fan of the modern games should at least finish them (and maybe only the first one) once to get a grasp of where the roots really are. There is some insane stuff you can do in those games, especially for the time. The only way you'll die in the beginning, or the ways that I can fathom, are by getting a pack of 4-6 radscorpions spawning on you immediately and taking their turn first. Even that has a good chance of being an escapable encounter and after that the game is pretty much smooth sailing if you know to talk to the people in Shady Sands (I assume this was the first town you found) and any town after that.

My first instinct in Fallout for some reason was to pickpocket everything and, let me tell you what, that is still a damn fine strategy. I think my terrible 6-year old brain said "eh, this place sucks so I'm gonna steal this cool shotgun."

I hope it is on id engine 6(66).