As if the big reveal at E3 2015 in June packaged with the measly five month wait for its launch didn’t populate the hype train sufficiently, Bethesda has continued to rekindle the flame of anticipation among its fans with video after video of sneak-peak-esque explanations of Fallout 4‘s features and mechanics. Most recent is a video explaining the perks system of the game and touching lightly on the 7 SPECIAL stats.
This video is one of several on the Bethesda Softworks YouTube channel outlining some of the various systems in place within the game, and while this one focuses on perks and only lightly on the SPECIAL system, there exists a currently-incomplete video series outlining each one individually. Found on the mentioned YouTube channel are three of seven videos for the Strength, Perception, and Endurance stats, with Charisma being the next to come, followed by Intelligence, Agility, and Luck: SPECIAL.
As the video demonstrates, the new perk system makes it much more clear to players which SPECIAL stats lead to which perks, which was completely invisible to players in previous iterations. While veterans will be able to tell you that, of course Endurance unlocks Marathon Runner, but the new system makes navigation and planning much clearer for players new to the franchise. For more information on all of this, take a look at the page on Bethesda’s website.
For each of the seven SPECIAL stats, there are ten perks, and each perk has a number of ranks, from two to five, meaning that all together there are over 270 different ways to spend your perk points upon leveling up. If anyone is still questioning what Bethesda has been doing since 2011, be certain that they’ve been pumping quality content and features into Fallout 4 en masse, as can be seen in this case. If you’re now wondering how you’ll ever be able to choose only 50 of these perks, you clearly haven’t heard the news:
To our fans who’ve asked: Fallout 4 doesn’t end when the main story is over and there is no level cap. You can keep playing and leveling.
— BethesdaGameStudios (@BethesdaStudios) August 6, 2015
That’s right, there’s no limit to the levels. While Skyrim also allowed players to continue leveling past the cap of 81 with a patch added later, Fallout 4 remains limitless from the get-go.
The wait is grueling with anticipation amped up so much, but be certain that it will be available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC starting November 10th.