Hope they make them hard-hitting enough, even if that means that it would make unarmed and melee playthrough harder.

Though, while I am not sure if they are using the final enemy statistics, in the E3 demo, the deathclaw was taking away only approx. 20% of the main player's health each hit while he was in power armor. If that is the case, they probably won't be that frightening.

Consider the deathclaws own health kinda jumps all over the place, we can assume the fight is a cut together of several takes, so we cant really gauge the lethality, plus for all we know that might be the PA own health, remember its a human shaped vehicle now, not a armour.

Alien: Deathclawation style.

Deathclaws will tear you up at lower levels.. problem in past games was simply leveling too quickly. Hopefully we'll level a lot slower, making the wasteland a more terrifying and hostile place.

I'm worried about Deathclaws, and not because I think they got harder; I think they got easier.

Check the footage we have. The Deathclaw was merely tickled by the very same minigun that was dropping raiders like flies. It looked as though the player would have to shoot that Deathclaw for 10-15+ seconds consistently with a minigun to kill it. Meanwhile, the Deathclaw itself hit the player for about 10% HP per swing. You can see this in the HP display.

Bethesda has this terrible habit of theirs: they believe higher defense and higher HP enemies make the game more "challenging." No, in actuality it just makes the game tedious. I can kill any dragon in Skyrim with a 100% win ratio, it's just going to take a good 3+ mins per battle because they upped the dragon's HP so much. Comparatively, I can still die to Quarry Junction or Deathclaw Purgatory with bad planning or by being taken by surprise by a deathclaw. The reason is that New Vegas did little to up their HP, instead only upping their damage.

What further reinforces this fear of mine is that deathclaws popped out of the sewers in the gameplay footage. In past titles your best bet was keeping your distance from the damned things and killing them before they reached you. This created a scenario where a deathclaw as an enemy was a test to your aim; miss and you die, land your shots and you'll live. But when they pop out of the sewers, that distance advantage is entirely negated. This forces you into a close-combat slugfest which will undoubtedly have the numbers stacked in your favor (cause the game would svck if winning were impossible or chance-based), providing only an overly-dramatic illusion of challenge in order to try and fool some players into thinking they just accomplished something big by achieving victory.

Well, I was pretty terrified of them in New Vegas. I was always getting killed by them, got so bad, I had to sneak past them or avoid that basin by New Vegas altogether lol. My guy was also a sharpshooter, lvl 18, with high enough stats to one shoot everything else. Of course, if I sneak attacked them, I was golden, but just strolling around the waste, well it wasn't easy that's for sure.

Yeah, looks bad. Another tickling match, seeing who can last longer
In New Vegas using a Minigun with AP ammo, a fight with a Deathclaw is over very quickly, regardless of who wins


Sharpshooter > Anti-Materiel Rifle + AP ammo > dead Deathclaws

I would not consider unfairly sniping a melee monster from a far range a "challenge", so if anything forcing you to actually fight the deathclaw is a much bigger challenge.

Challenge was to keep out of their sight so you could take advantage of their one weakness (no ranged attack), because you would get brutally murdered in melee range.

Yeah making a mob that deadly is not a challenge, that's cheap, especially since that means only a limited playstile can really fight it, instead of any playstyle.

Once I got bottlecap mines it's basically over for them. (if you see them in time)

Just throw one down and lure it into it. If it didn't kill it outright, it severley clipped its wings so to speak.

sometimes you just have to adapt and use a ranged weapon when your playing as melee, just as like how sometimes its better to use a melee weapon than a ranged weapon. It should also be noted that in all the previous games except for fallout 3, Deathclaws were never a pushover, they were always the biggest threat you would face outside of power armoured troopers which was something that fallout 3 failed at. New Vegas actually made Deathclaws threatening like the were in FO1 and 2, not only that but it also made giant rad scorpions a threat in the early stages compared to Fallout 3 in which they were a joke

I am incapable of dealing with your avatar.

Well, don't worry. He got fired :trollface:

I don't know if it was just me but was the F4 Deathclaw actually bigger (hell it picks you up one handed ready to gut you and that is with you in the huge armour suit). Also in the gameplay clip we see a Super Mutant Behemouth that seems SMALLER than the one in F3.

Behemouth Mini-Me? Deathclaw Maxi-me heh.

That Deathclaw cam of him pulling out his claws ready to gut you would be ULTRA scary in RL. It's like something out of a horror film. Imagine going down a hole and it being really dark and you see two candles in the distance and as you get closer you aren't sure they actually are candles so you light a torch and right in front of you is a Deathclaw.... ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Technically the pick up and gut you scene was somewhere else in the game then the PA fight, the player was clearly out of the suit for that one.

The behemoth is smaller yes, but that's because they didn't stretch it to be huge from the size of the actual model.

And I think the death claw is a bit bigger but won't know for sure till the game drops. Either way I love the redesign of them. Looks fierce.

Hopefully we get good stats and good ai to match.

boo

Deathclaw would be the scariest if they can actually sneak on your character from behind.

... Damn, what have I suggested? ._.

Deathclaw wearing invisi-camo toting a grenade launcher in one hand, please.

This, combined with the idea someone suggested of them being able to rip you out of narrow areas and other hiding places as well as being able to scale buildings to get to you.

Wasn't that with the player character using power armor though? Assuming they have made power armor more powerful to fit with its new appearance I would expect deathclaws to do less damage to you when you are using it.

Also recently I was playing in a mod added interior with loads of deathclaws where there were many places in which you simply don't have enough room between you and them for sniping, and I found that I personally find it much more exciting dealing with deathclaws at close range relying on a high stealth skill, a weapon with high single shot damage and a high critical hit bonus, and perks boosting my critical hits, then hiding till the others give up trying to find me relying again on that high stealth skill, then repeat until they are all dead to carry the day rather than picking them off at long range, usually from on top of a rocky outcrop from which they couldn't even get at me even if they did manage to see me before they died.

So I would imagine there are two ways of dealing with them, brawling with them counting on power armor to keep you alive, or sneaking up to them and relying on a weapon with massive single hit damage and critical hit bonus to take it out before it has a chance to attack you. I find either way more exciting than sniping at them from a mile away. Sniping might be more sensible when possible, but it is much less thrilling.

Remember those Nightstalkers who could turn invisible because they ingested Stealth Boys? Imagine a Deathclaw that could do that...

The idea that there would still be just two viable strategies to take them on still sounds like bad design.

Nobody knows; the game hasn't been released yet.

I think the new Deathclaws are about as tall as the ones in 3/New Vegas, and have the same limb length, but they aren't nearly as skinny. The new ones seem to be much more muscular, and have bigger spines. As for the Behemoth, the ones in three, like Laura Croft's chest, were just a numerical error that they decided to leave in. That's why their fire hydrant weapon is out of scale. The new Behemoths are probably the originally intended size.