If there was a complaint you could level at Fallout 3, aside from whatever physics malarky allowed dead bears to do backflips across the horizon, it’s that it felt somewhat static. The view from the top of Tenpenny Tower was beautiful – but looked much the same from one day to the next.
That’ll change with the move to Boston. In developing Fallout 4, it’s been “really important” to Bethesda that the weather shifts, and the mood with it. Sometimes quite dramatically.
In an interview following Bethesda’s blinder of an E3 show, at which the Fallout 4 release date was revealed among other things, Todd Howard talked about the bright colours seen in that first Fallout 4 footage – an artistic priority, apparently – and touched on the blue skies.
“There is different weather,” he said. “We have a new weather system for this one.”
One segment of Fallout 4’s world is named the Glowing Sea – the spot where the bomb fell. It looks “like your classic Fallout 3 wasteland, but even more so” – and influences the weather of the areas around it.
“The radiation storms from the Glowing Sea can flare up and then blow through the world,” said Howard. “That creates a very post-apocalyptic look. Having that change while you’re playing the game is really important to us.”
Howard also talked about volumetric lighting, and the shafts of sunlight that illuminated the dust in dilapidated buildings.
“When the weather rolls in, that sense of haze isn’t just a series of effects on the screen,” he said. “It just creates an atmosphere we haven’t been able to do before.”
Needless to say, you’ll want to avoid the storms where possible: when lightning strikes, you’ll get irradiated. Looking forward to that, come November 10th?