Based on Game Informer has reported, it's not just a load screen. You are actually riding in the vertibird over Boston. As far as having to use the flare to wait on the vertibird, you'll just have to get used to that...

I agree. I think it's reasonable and something that could be done.

Vehicles make sense in an open world. We are getting the vertibird, we just can't control it. Honestly, you aren't even adding to the discussion anymore. You are refuting my points without any substance other than your own questionable opinion.

True. However, that lack of control is something that makes it fit well into the game. When you ride the vertibird, Bethesda can do things like turning off discovery of points of interest, so as you fly over an area you're not filling your map up with places you can fast-travel to or know to be important. And you can't go just anywhere on it, if (as speculated/hinted/stated) it takes you to specific destinations - which I presume you could fast travel to if you wanted, or which it makes sense would be unlocked and made available by travelling in the vertibird.

It'll be fascinating to see if you really can land or jump out of the vertibird just anywhere along it's route, which the land and jump-out buttons suggest, or if both those do something like divert it to the nearest discovered location for you to disembark.

Wait..... you're talking about this "Players can call in a Vertibird (an aircraft) to carry them between locations." reporting? Are you wearing power armor? Cuz I think you used a jump jet to get to that conclusion

And the section in the E3 demo which shows the player travelling in real-time over a cityscape, manning a gun on a vertibird - while the highlighted active controls are 'Jump' and 'Land'. And I recall some mentions from interviews - though I admit I'd have to do some hunting to find them again and confirm my recollection

Anyway, I also think that there will, at some point in the game, be the possibility of using a vertibird to travel in real-time across the landscape to specified destinations. Remember, they did try to do this in Skyrim with the fast-travel carriages (even recording pvssyr for the carriage drivers to say en route), but found too many problems with the physics of the carts travelling over rough ground, and ran out of time to fix those. As flying is, in many ways, much easier than travelling over the ground (in Bethesda's games, anyway) it makes sense that they'd have another go at implementing in FO4 what they wanted but didn't manage in Skyrim.

I'm not disputing that at all and I'm surprised you thought that. That scene could very well be from a specific part of the story and not an attribute of fast travel. Just seems unlikely that they would introduce something as out of character as jumping from Vertibirds as standard throughout the game and not mention or show anything else. Are we to think we're adding parachuting to the game now? Just seems like people are reading too much into this without us having any real tangible info other than a scene with the PC manning a gun in a Vertibird. But maybe it'll happen. Just silly to present things as facts when they're merely assumptions based on very minute observations

We don't know what that even meant though, I'm thinking that may have been a quest on rails maybe.

I think if anything fast travel could be via vertibird. As the mysterious poof fast travel is pretty lol

Why can I not then just travel to unvisited locations via the vertibird? Surely it's safer to do that than to visit the area first on foot and THEN be able to visit it with the vertibird haha just seems like a silly mechinic that I've disliked in other games. Luckily FT doesn't have to be used haha

lol!!! You won't be exploring then

Right but how much sense does it make to be able to explore unknown areas on foot but not via Vertibird? Oh but I can take a Vertibird to a place I've already been? Just seems like a weird disconnect. Maybe it'll be a perk for siding with the BoS. In that case I'll just shoot them in the face and stuff

Don't mess with the king lol

Im sure you're an ESO-turned fallout lover? No offence intended there.
They did armoured transport, cars and such in fallout tactics. Granted its old and more like fallout 2 mixed with xcom - but theyre still there.
Theyre a great idea. But somehow i think having complete access to cars, especially with how open the revitalised fallout is?

"Right, yeah. Deathclaws are badass. But we've given you a car so you can spend 100% of your time running over everything and facing none of the hells of the waste"

I also think that, since theyve given you a dog theres more emphasis on travelling. Especially by foot. Yeah, theres vertibirds but im pretty sure they'll have limited access to stop you simply killing everything with a mounted minigun safely in the sky

You assume you get the vertibird early. More than likely it's something that will have to be unlocked later on, perhaps even through the story. By the time you have it, your character will probably already be a force to be reckoned with.

I think it'd be abit too much. Whats the point in having a dog if, at some point, youll have almost no use for him?
There'll be some hinderance; be it when the proppelers are shot it goes down and you either take evasive action or you end up crashing down with it
Or there'll be "yeah, you can call it every 30 minutes to pick you up, take you somewhere, drop something off or pick you up for a strafe run" which would be pretty better in my opinion. With the weapon custimisation, power armour with jetpacks, companions that can be lovers and a dog.. I dont really care about a pre-mounted minigun, even if it is the only vehicle in game i can use.

Ah, ok, slight mis-reading of the thread on my part.

I think it's a very reasonable assumption that there's real-time travel via vertibird that becomes available at some point during the game. But I agree, "very reasonable assumption" is not the same as "established fact beyond dispute or varying interpretation of the evidence".

There are, of course, many possible explanations of what was shown in the E3 demo combined with various not-entirely-explicit comments from Bethesda in some interviews. But I personally think that real-time travel via vertibird is the most likely of those many explanations.

Have I now hedged my bets sufficiently?

If I nuked the Citadel in Broken Steel, will they still give me a ride places?

Without any further ado (and after reading 4 pages):

Fallout doesn't need any cars/vehicles in it's current state.

The Fallout BGS presents us is an urban one. Means we don't even have enough travel-distance to have a useful vehicle system as of now.

Making it "useful" (and in this case I mean useful in the game, not for the players taste) we would need quite long distances with nearly nothing to do/show.

Also vehicle-combat would need to be done and so on.

As a story-driven sandbox game it wouldn't make much sense to have large empty areas. An example for large empty areas would be New Vegas.

And yes! I do use the http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/49042/? in New Vegas, as well as the Verti-Bird version.

Like I said: New Vegas has long empty areas, wich makes this mod useful.

FO3 and FO4 (unconfirmed) don't really have a need for this, because the locations are nearly next to each other.

Therefore creating vehicles/ a drive system/ a gunner system/ fuel system/ additional npc behaviour/ ... would consume much time as well as a s**tload of money. And we are not talking about bottlecaps .

I am happy with what we get so far. For everything else we have the ability to mod the game.

And if you are not happy with what we get: Talk to BGS, they should hire Ermeso (creator of xre) as freelance dev (if this hasn't happened already).

This could make your vehicle dreams come true .

What I really want to see is the ability to ride the Vertibird in power armor. Given the "Jump" option, it implies either that or a fastrope functionality. That said, my gut says you'll be able to make a power armor drop. Would be wicked cool to jump out at 1,000 feet, throw the jumpjets to full burn, and land in the midst of a Raider camp spewing death.

That sir/madam sounds absolutely delicious! That would certainly be an incredible feature barring that it didn't become OP. Balance and some limitation is paramount. With your example, using the jump-jets, I'll assume they use some kind of fuel e.g. flamer cells. That would suffice as a limitation from consistently "helljumping". Sounds like a really neat feature, we can hope it or something similar is included in the base game. ::Insert mandatory there will be a mod for that::