I'm not saying your interpretation is wrong, but there's definitely a consensus that New Vegas looked different and not suggestive of a post-apocalypse (like Fallout 3).

I'm fine with no change as I like the feeling of knowing the world, but having a change of scenery. Why would computer terminals and locks have changed simply because we moved to Boston?

I also hope that they'll look less alike (and there's evidence for variegation already, with the borderline lurid colour scheme).But there's also evidence that a lot of players will be playing through what seems like an extension of Fallout 3, rather than something that aspires for any substantive change (as evidenced by super duper mart in Fallout 4).

It seems intentional as you've said, but for me personally one of the worst criticisms of a game is to think you've already played it before and for a fugacious moment in super duper mart I felt like I'd already raided the shop, hacked the computer and cracked open the door.

I find it slightly absurd that there isn't a change of locks and computers within any specific wasteland, never mind over large tracts of America including Vegas, Boston and Washington.

It's not an issue for me personally (there's at least 50 more important grievances I have), but it's discombobulating to think that there's such a supremacy from one manufacturer of locks across the breadth of America (seemingly).

i'll have to watch the demo when they release it in hd, i really don't want to watch it off of someone's phone. So for now i can't really judge it. Maybe it does just resemble fallout 3 with prettier textures. I'll have to find out later if its an exact replica of fallout 3's super duper mart.

I'm okay with Fallout 3's hacking returning but I'd prefer for lockpicking to be more skill-based. The minigame for lockpicking in Fallout 3 was far too easy, from what I remember.

I'd much prefer they spend time making a more meaningful and less in-game-skill-based minigame.

I'm also okay with them reusing Fallout 3 textures/meshes, since it could mean that it would give them more time to create a larger variety of textures/meshes in general.

I like the minigames just fine, but I do wish they'd taken the opportunity to branch them out a bit more, maybe add some variety. Keypad locks, combination locks, locks that are booby trapped. Stuff like that. With hacking, any number of minigames could have been incoporated. While I don't mind that they're sticking to the lockpicking & hacking of the previous two games, it's somewhat baffling to me, given that they set aside resources toward making minigames for your Pip-Boy. Frankly, I'd have preferred a greater variety of locks & computer terminals to having Pip-Boy game tapes. But that's just me. So, I'm a little disappointed, but not so much that I'm up in arms about it.

Well, true... but that's the case across the entire game (FO3). Same refrigerators, same TVs, same telephones, just one chain of gas stations (...what were the gas stations selling, what with the atomic cars? Exchanging coolant?), etc, etc, etc. It may just be a hazard of the whole "decorate an entire world down to the appliances & junk" thing - making multiple brands of everything would multiply the work & art assets in huge ways.

FO:NV was able to add a few new things (my god, you mean there are TWO brands of soda in the US?!?!? Gasp! ), but that's because they didn't have to make all the things they re-used from FO3.

edit: that said, I do like the idea someone else above had about having the different "difficuly" locks be different kinds of locks/minigames. That way, you could get rid of the whole "can't do Hard lock until 75 skill" thing, and just have an Easy minigame, a Normal minigame, and a Hard minigame, with increasing skill making each of them easier. (Of course, it could be challenging coming up with good Easy/Normal/Hard minigames in the first place...)

A tumbler lock is a tumbler lock. IRL they've looked like that for hundreds of years with little to no change in design. If the door has a tumbler lock, this is what it will look like. Granted, they could add electronic locks of various kinds, which would make sense.

As for the computer terminals I'm assuming there was more or less a monopoly by Robco, which isn't really that strange. I have no problem with that.

The lock and terminal supremacy is definitely an issue predicated on development time/resources, but my point is more so in refutation to the claim that it's absurd for such a variation of locks and terminals to take place between differing and vast states like Boston.The implication being that it's more logical for them all to stay the same, even in different states

Not every door has or would require a tumbler lock.While conversely in Fallout 3, their ubiquity is evidenced in every bathroom door, every metal box and even (to my incredulity) the relatively hi-tech of Vault doors and forts, all wavering to the might of the bobby pin.

Give a man a bobby pin and he'll rule the wasteland... at least until it breaks.

True, the might of the bobby pin (and the apparent uselessness of everything else) is stunning. I wasn't arguing that they couldn't have picked a wider range of locks instead of using tumbler locks for everything, just saying that a tumbler lock is a tumbler lock. They're simple and easy to pick, if you know how and have the right tools.

Can't really abide the hacking system and lockpicking could use some work as well. Bethesda has had at least 6 years to put some thought into making it better and it is a reasonable expectation.

That being said it is a minor backwater disappointment and while I am sure they could come up with a better system it is not worth it at the cost that could be put into other resources and features.

Dgaf
It wasn't really all that broken, IMO, so I wasn't expecting any change.

This is a minor gripe I have with Bethesda's lockpicking mechanics. In real life lock picking tools rarely break. People keep them for years. They can be treasured possessions, carried in leather pouches that were designed specifically for those tools.

But I guess this is where we have to remind ourselves that this is not a life sim, it's a video game. And fun comes before realism every time.

In fairness, we don't know the rough mechanics of how the minigames work. It's easy to change things like how easy the lockpicks break, how small the sweet spot is, and how everything scales in relation to difficulty or perk selection. For hacking, they could have changed how the terminals reset and how many attempts we get for each one; imagine hacking a Very Hard terminal with only two attempts available (and each rank of the Hacker perk adds one more attempt), and each time you run out of attempts the passwords all get scrambled as if you exited/re-entered the terminal or save scummed.

It's even possible that they did add new minigames, like safe-cracking, although I wouldn't hold my breath on that.

Did it ever even occur to anyone that lockpicking is just a representation of your characters ability to break and enter? And not to be taken quite so literally...

Don't like it, but am used to it by now.

I'd rather have Fallout 3/Skyrim lockpicking then that abomination we had in Oblivion. Skeleton Key was always an auto pickup at level 10 for that reason, the lockpick minigame in Oblivion was horrible. It was basically mash the x button and you opened the door or not, at least with Fallout 3/skyrim's system you had some skill. It wasn't the greatest system but it's infinitely better then what we had in Oblivion.

I doubt they redid the textures. From the game play footage, some textures are exactly the same. It's more likely they used the uncompressed textures made during Fallout 3. I don't have a problem with this.

I have seen nothing in the footage so far that looks like a straight grab from Fallout 3. The most similar thing I see are the storage containers behind our character as he exits the vault; but even they have more dirt and detail in the texture. The terminals and desks/cabinets in Preston Garvey's room look similar to Fallout 3, too, but a side-by-side comparison would prove that they're definitely not the same mesh and texture.

As for the textures themselves, they could have used uncompressed textures from 3 (and I still see no examples of that happening in the footage), but they'd still have to define the material properties for PBR. It's much more advanced than the old system of having diffuse and specular maps and whatnot to define how textures interact with light.

When we are talking about the number of attempts and the range of sweet spots being the only new additions (hypothetically) to hacking and lockpick we ostensibly have the same systems as before.

There may be new mini-games (I doubt it though), hypothetically we could have talking deathclaws, or the slightly less probable an alien settlement, who knows maybe good writing could crawl it's way into Fallout 4.But based on the paucity of evidence we have, it suggest that the mini-games are either the exact same or ostensibly the same.

I want something new.. I believe we should have many different types of hacking systems and lockpicks. Not everybody has the same lock system and not everybody has the same software protection system.

Well... sort of. The pin tumbler lock is less than 150 years old. However, you are correct in say that they have changed very little since their invention. The tumbler locks to day would be entirely recognizable to their inventor.

Wasn't this already confirmed weeks ago? Besides which, they rehashed the lockpicking system from Fallout 3 for Skyrim already, and Skyrim's vampirism system was a rehash of the one from Oblivion. The ultimate case is the pickpocketing system in Skyrim, which was rehashed from Fallout 3 which was rehashed from Oblivion which was rehashed from Morrowind. When they create gameplay systems they like or feel as if it's the best way of doing something, they're not going to sacrifice other features to change them. Rehashing gameplay systems is literally nothing new for Bethesda Game Studios. The main difference may lie in the thresholds or lack of hard thresholds, but everything else will likely stay as-is if BGS is happy with it.