I seriously hope it doesn't, pausing and just shoving 10 stimpaks up your bum right in front of raiders was the main reason I stopped playing Casual permanently in NV.

This is kind of a good point.

The app is probably the best indication that the Pipboy won't pause, actually. Like you say, the app wouldn't actually be helpful if it paused your game. And they said the app was running the exact same code as the actually Pipboy in game - ergo, the Pipboy in-game is real time.

Jury is still out on the hacking and lockpicking. But in the Quakecon footage, the Sole Survivor sends Dogmeat out to search a supermarket, and then walks into the office and hacks a computer very quickly (less than 10 seconds - it is the mastermind game again), and when he turns away from the computer, Dogmeat is in the door of the office, waiting. And a separate screen doesn't come up for the hacking - the camera just zooms in to the actual computer screen on the desk, then zooms out again when finished.

10 stimpacks, repairing your damaged power armor, the switching to it from your business suit, a hydra, some steady, a little psycho, some buffout, a new weapon real quick, and there you go... The game is now easy as pie, and those 6 raiders shooting at you don't matter anymore.

Im okay with hotkeys, but being able to do so much in the pipboy while taking direct fire, with no consequence was a bit much imo.

So if it doesn't stop time, we will be playing the Pipboy games in real time right?

Haha. Yep. Better make sure game time is in your settlement or another safe place. "Raiders are attacking the defenses! We're all dying!" "Just a minute! I'm about to get a kill screen on Red Menace!"

Exactamundo!

Honestly, I think it does pause.... Throw in some dynamic vision and some arm swaying, so it looks good but in the end it will probably pause. If a causal gamer is trying to do some inventory check, checking out there perks/ skills, changing there music, or playing a pipboy game, I doubt the devs are gonna force the player to stop.

If I had it my way it wouldn't pause, or if not realtime, at least a slowed time, but I honestly think that would annoy some players, so I don't think its very likely.

(and yes i flip-flopped after I thought about it a little more.)

I hope your right Mr clean.

Or I see some Atomic command related deaths in my near future, as the locals work me over when I am not expecting it.

That happened to me in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. with a Blood svcker!

As did I, I even used a controller on PC and used it just fine there too.

If it doesn't I definitely need to build a wrist mount for my phone, so I can have the app ready to go, instead of using it up the on screen, blinding myself to any would be attackers.


I hope we can switch items on the D-pad still, too.
I mostly use the pip boy in non-combat situations. If you have your load out set right, you don't need it for combat.

If they removed pausing while looking at the pipboy/menus then I'll have to save every few seconds to avoid loosing progress from getting mob nuked while in the menus and I'll likely make a 1,000,000,000,000,000 saves out of paranoid fear of surprise attacks.

I hope the game doesn't get paused, but I'm pretty sure it will be. And it's not that big a deal to me if it does get paused.

Of course I know there are hot keys.. That's why you don't need the pipboy to pause the screen.

Two? Heh, someone doesn't hotkey enough. My normal loadout in FO3/NV is:

1: Roach weapon (melee, or light pistol)

2: Pistol

3: Rifle

4: Shotgun

5: SMG/Assault Rifle

6: Sniper

7: Grenade/explosive

Only change I'd need to make for the new game is to put stimpacks on there somewhere.

...and I still think the Pip not pausing would be annoying. Not for combat, but for scrolling through buckets of loot/inventory, looking all over the map for where to go next, reading through a dozen Notes, etc. While in-game time is wasted/NPCs get lost/a group of wandering damage appears..... it makes all the book-keeping more annoying. And that's bad.

The app won't actually be helpful, regardless. Having to look away from your screen, take your hands off your controls, (possibly un-sleep your mobile, if you've been playing long enough), etc.... just using the in-game Pip will be much more useful/efficient. You'd certainly never use the app in combat....

I generally think this is a good idea. Generally only though.

Bethesda games have always been horrible and absolutely counterintuitive in terms of inventory, consumables, weapon switching etc. That is due to the Console development, and the conversion to an action-rpg. I do not mind both things, but console gamepads are of course way more limited than mouse and keyboard and therefore require different and intuitive ways to deal with some sorts.

Somehow they turned Fallout (and TES) into an action game and totally forgot to include a working interface for such games. Instead of hotkeys they had stupid menus for the thousand items you had to scroll through. Even the favorites menu was confusing. I hope they make it better with Fallout 4 otherwise it will just be a mess to use certain items.

The crappy UI the Pip-Boy had in the last few games coupled with the small screen for reading notes, its inability to sort, etc. makes me hope that it remains paused.

The original Fallouts were turn-based, so I understand issues with that shift. But Bethesda games have always been action RPGs, as early as Arena - combat has always been the major focus, it's always been real-time, and even when there were dice-rolls like Morrowind attacks had to connect in the first place.

And I've never understood what the big problem was with Bethesda's UI and menus. It's never been hard for me to find what I was looking for, in a reasonable amount of time and without a ton of keyboard&mouse gymnastics, in addition to hotkeys - hell, with Skyrim I can usually get in and out of menus without moving my hand from WASD or moving my mouse at all.

...they've had a set of 8 hotkeys in every game since Oblivion. Morrowind had 10. Alongside lots of menus. This isn't some new/console thing.

The only truly "console interface" thing I've seen in any of the games was the way Skyrim's UI was organized around thumbstick scrolling actions, rather than mouse actions.

I agree. (Fallout 3/NV was one of the easier ones, being able to go straight to different sections with F1/F2/F3. Of course, that's on a keyboard, not a controller.)

edit: I've got to say, one of the harder things trying to go back to Morrowind (after not playing it since the middle 00's) isn't the "swing-and-a-miss" combat, but trying to get used to the menus & interface. They've come a long way in making the UI more user-friendly.

I have no problems with that shift to an action-oriented post-apocalyptic Morrowind. I thought it was a decent transition. I have no problem with the UI and menu of morrowind either, which was far from perfect, but it fulfilled the needs and was, with the visuals closer to a standard RPG inventory and UI. You have to admit though that Skyrim and Oblivion and Fallout as well, are playing like shooter or action games, but suffer in the way that standard controls for shooters were not implemented. I would not mind pressing G to throw a grenade or circle through a set of weapons with 1, 2 and so forth. And I do "blame" Consoles for the need to pause the game when in menus or the pip-boy, you just do not have the same options with a gamepad than with keyboards and mouse. Now there are ways to handle this as well fast interactive menus like the wheels in assassin's creed, but Bethesda really did fail to develop a decent system, that is intuitive, practical and does not pause the game and break immersion (which is the case with the Skyrim menus).

That being said, I have no problems with console games or players. When developing cross-platform stuff you just have to think about more and maybe create different stuff for different platforms. That is where they need to deliver more, otherwise not pausing the game when needing to enter the pip-boy or else might prove not beneficial at all on some platforms.

I am all for a game not pausing though if it is already being played in real time.

In Fallout 3, 1-8 are hotkeys that you can assign weapons to, and for consoles, those hotkeys are mapped to the 8-directional D-pad.

That's the crafting menu on that terminal....not the Pip-Boy screen.

I haven't seen anything definitive about the Pip-Boy pause issue beyond some bloggers and comments on blog posts of those that saw the Quakecon demo (and they don't all claim the same thing). I've seen enough misinformation in blogs (and professional Media sites) to not trust them for absolute proof of anything. I certainly could have missed some definitive proof (like some video) and if someone has some, please post it here.

See i think this is why the physical pip boy or a makeshift wrist mount will come in handy. If you have it on your wrist you don't need to put down the controller. You can strafe and go forwards or backwards to evade while using the pip boy app and since we have peripheral vision, you will still be able to tell whats happening on screen while you look at your phone.
I also can't see them allowing sleep mode to activate.
Video players don't let your phone sleep, so why would this app?

One name: The Player Scrolls: Skyrim.