Fallout 4: Dogmeat can loot enemies, perks tied to SPECIAL stats instead of levels

By Stephany Nunneley

A Fallout 4 panel took place today at QuakeCon 2015, providing a few more tidbits on the upcoming RPG.

According to PC Gamer, which live blogged the panel through Twitter, here’s a few interesting factoids:

• Dogmeat can be given commands such as retrieving objects for the player. He can also loot enemies. He also makes a great guard dog.
• The leveling system has been reorganized so that perks are tied to SPECIAL stats instead of levels. Having a high SPECIAL stat will provide players access to advanced perks from the start.
• Terminal hacking and Lockpicking mini-games will make a return.
• There will also be 12 companions available in the game and each is a romantic prospect no matter the player’s gender. Only one companion can be used at a time. Dogmeat, Codsworth, Preston Garvey, and Piper are some of the companions.
• You can go it alone if you like and earn a perk for not using a companion.
• Other towns which will be visited are Lexington and Quincy.
• Codsworth, the Mr. Handy robot, is voiced by Stephen Russel. He provided the voice of Garret in the original Thief game.
• Thousands of names have been pre-recorded, which means you can name your character Angela, McFly, or FuckFace.

I know what my character’s name will be, then.

Per Polygon, the SPECIAL (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck) system allows the player to unlock or upgrade a perk in one of these seven stats. Each stat has 10 perks which can be chosen using the 10 points allotted for each.

“The more points you have in a given stat, the “deeper” you’re able to go,” said Polygon. “If you have eight strength points, you’ll be able to choose between eight of Strength’s assigned perks when you level up.”

This gives the player 70 base perks to choose from and some are new and others from previous games in the series have returned. Many perks can be upgraded, and when all are included, the progression system provides the player with 275 choices.

Here’s a few other points taken from the demo today:

• Various weapons will be made available such as the Fat-Man mini-nuke, sniper rifles, makeshift weapons and wind-up laser shotguns.
• Stealth can be used to avoid conflict or detection and players can also use hacks. The demo showed the player hacking a security bot which helped deal out damage to enemies.
• Playing enemy factions off against another will be one of the major points in the game.
• Radiation will drop the player’s maximum health/ This will continue until the radiation is no longer in the player’s system.

Fallout 4 launches November 10 on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.