Update August 7: Bethesda's Pete Hines has responded to some additional questions and clarified several points mentioned in this preview.

At last week's E3, we not only had the chance to interview Fallout 3's product manager Pete Hines (watch out for the interview here on GamersGlobal in a couple of days), but also play the game itself for 30 minutes. The demo was running on an Xbox 360, but Pete assured us that the PC version will be exactly the same, although with keyboard/mouse control and user settings for resolution and so on. But on the high-quality widescreen monitor the game was running on, we didn't miss the PC: The E3 build started right at the entrance of the Vault, and when it opened to the outside world, the viewing distance was astounding. "Nearly everything you see", Pete said, "you can actually go to."

The playable build started in the vault, although we couldn't see this scene (which is from the "tutorial").

When we walked down the hill towards the first ruins, we had to digest the open world: With no-one around for miles (seemingly), a devastated Washington D.C. area just feels very, very big. Where to go to? But soon, we found the entrance to the Elementary School of the little village. Such locations are the "dungeons" of Fallout 3, and mostly you don't need to visit them in order to proceed through the game, but you'll find a little story hidden there, a special opponent or a valuable item -- and more often than not, all of the above. Some areas will remain empty once you killed their last occupant, others will slowly fill up again. In the world map, too, opponents and animals will respawn over time.

This looks like your standard zombie graveyard, but it is an underground location, one of Fallout 3's "dungeons".

After entering the building (the game will load in these instances, as it will when going into a deeper level of the same location), we were involved in a lot of fighting against raiders. It took us some time to get used to our beginner's pistol, and to the fact that pointing directly at an opponent and then firing does not always mean you're hitting him -- the game calculates your hit chance depending on your skill with that weapon, the weapon's state of repair and the opponent. If the baddie is immediately in front of you, though, your shots always seem to hit, as they should do.

We didn't find fancy weapons like this laser, but had we, we probably couldn't have hit much with them (lack of skill).

Having survived the first couple of difficult fights, we learned to use the stim packs. By the way, the inventory is included text-only in the PIP-boy, as are your perks, traits, attributes, the world map, the region map and all other vital information. We also learned to activate V.A.T.S., which is the acronym for "Vault Assisted Targeting System". This is meant to substitute the action point depleting targeting of the old Fallout RPGS -- but it could be the worst nightmare for real fans of the series! Let us explain further -- but keep in mind that this criticism could not (or only partly) apply to the finished game: Pete Hines told us that Bethesda is still tweaking all this stuff.

The V.A.T.S lets you pause the game anytime and queue up shots that may kill your opponent if they hit.

In the RPGs Fallout and Fallout 2 as in the tactic game Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, you had a certain amount of Action Points (AP) which you expended to move or fire a weapon. Spending more APs in a turn for aiming let you chose a body part to shoot at -- which always decreased the to-hit-chance but dealt special damage to the opponent, with successful head-shots dealing massive damage and stunning the enemy, sometimes killing him instantly (exploding head). But in the current version of the Action-RPG Fallout 3 is, V.A.T.S. rather feels like a cheat mode. There are three reasons for this: First, you can queue up several shots, with big body parts costing less APs than, let's say, the head. But we always could queue up at least two shots, and mostly three, thereby doubling or tripling our to-hit chance. Second, regardless of what body part you hit in V.A.T.S. mode, the opponent will die. We killed a Super Mutant by shooting his leg with a pistol. Third, the APs regenerate far too quickly, we never activated the V.A.T.S. mode in our half-hour of play without being able to use it. So instead of using this mode a couple of times each hour like you would a high-level spell in Oblivion, we were basically using it for every single fight, making things too easy for our liking (playing on "normal" mode). Apart from using basic shooter skills like dodging, taking cover and not running into a group of superior opponents, we couldn't find any tactics involved. As long as you don't consider picking the body part with the highest to-hit probability as tactics.

We didn't find Megaton (see picture) in our test play, but we found several locations like a super market, a radioactive lake, a school building or a large bridge.

Still, our half-hour with the game was not a piece of cake: Several raiders will fire at you from a distance, and there are melee monsters we didn't dare get close to. Much time is spent on a huge world map, which is comparable to Oblivion's in that is the "hub" for visiting special locations like towns or the aforementioned "dungeons". In this world map, you'll have encounters with opponents, animals, traders and the like. Not every fighter you meet is hostile, and sometimes it's a good idea to let two baddies fight it out and pick at the survivor. After a couple of found locations, the world map will allow you to instant-travel to formerly visited places, which is a good idea (and was also in Oblivion).

You'll meet NPCs like Jericho who will talk to you and sometimes trade with you or even follow you as a mercenary.

While the minutes melted away like ice cream does on a hot Los Angeles afternoon, we had a look at the PIP-boy which looks and feels exactly as the old Fallout games, including the funny images and the cynical descriptions. Switching weapons or healing or looking at the region map can be done very quickly, even with the Xbox controller. But due to the lack of time, we couldn't use most of our traits, and we had only two conversations in the game. So without visiting a town and without getting more than one real mission, our test-play probably felt much more action focused than the finished game will. Still, we had the impression that even the finished Fallout 3 will have "ACTION" written in capital letters and "RPG" in rather small letters over it. Again, we could be wrong.

Look closely: This animal is not a horse or donkey, but the Fallout version of a cow, a Brahmin.

If you think we didn't enjoy our test session with the game, you'd be wrong: The atmosphere is overwhelming, the graphics are crisp and let you see very, very far. Of course, the presentation in 3D is vastly different from the old isometric pixel graphics -- and although there's a 3rd person perspective, it only means looking over your character's shoulder like in Gears of War (you can see the 3rd person perspective in the first screenshot of this preview). So you'll never have a bird eye's view, and there's no free camera, either. The controls felt intuitive, and of course we wanted to go on and explore this world, kill baddies and improve our weaponry and stats. Bethesda has put a lot of ideas and details into Fallout 3, and we've only seen like 1 percent of the game world. The post-apocalyptic scenario is very well done, we really got the impression of walking among the ruins of what was once a big city. At the end, the Bethesda folks had to drag us away from the monitor, and afterwards we lingered in the booth for some more minutes to watch over the shoulders of the next journalists getting their treat of the game.

The city of Paradise shows the trademark rubble and ruins of Fallout.

So from this experience, from our talking to Pete Hines and from everything else we've learned so far about Fallout 3, we'd say that if you look for a return to the world of Fallout, or if you'd like to play an Action-RPG not closely resembling, but still similar to Oblivion (with another setting, of course), Fallout 3 is one of the games to watch for you this Fall. We think the wit, the cynicism, the fun will be there, again. But Bethesda will have to tweak the V.A.T.S. system to make it less powerful, or its "reload time" longer -- otherwise, experienced gamers will feel like cheating most of the time.

If, on the other hand, you played Interplay's predecessor RPGs mainly because you liked the turn-based, tactical fighting, you'll definitely be disappointed. Because there's a lot of fighting, but much less tactics than in various tactical shooters...

Here's a link to a colleague's preview of the game, he had five hours with it and played a different version, it seems. Go to computerandvideogames.com

Fire away! Once you have a Brotherhood of Steel armor and the minigun, many opponents will no longer be a threat.