Developer Bethesda showed off a new demo of Fallout 4 today at its Quakecon conference, and it explained a bunch of the new features coming to the game.
Dog Meat, your canine companion, is physically based on the game's lead designer's dog. The studio has filmed the real-world dog doing many different things to make Dog Meat the best possible representation of a dog. You'll find Dog Meat when you leave the Vault early in the game, and he can be sent into buildings to explore for loot as you do something else.
One of the characters you'll meet in game is named Preston Garvey, who leads the Commonwealth Minutemen faction. You can join this faction, which is based in Concord, Massachusetts. Another companion, Piper, is found near Diamond City, a settlement in the ruins of Fenway Park. She's charismatic and can lie really well to get her way.
There are a dozen possible companions, including Mr. Handy (the robot assistant), Piper, Dog Meat and Garvey. You can romance your human companions regardless of gender. You can also play without a companion if you so choose, and you can learn perks for playing this way.
There are 70 perks, and each perk has a set of ranks. These total 275 different iterations of ranks.
A lot of animations are created via motion capture, but faces are procedurally animated -- meaning that there are predefined mouth movements that correspond to letters and syllables.
You'll also be able to go to the towns of Lexington and Quincy.
Fallout 4 launches on November 10 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. At the presentation, Bethesda also announced that Fallout Shelter is making its way to Android devices next month. Keep an eye on GameSpot for more news coming out of Quakecon, and check out our Quakecon impressions of Doom's multiplayer.