There's more than a few rumours and details doing the rounds about Fallout: New Vegas. This is the result of several magazines hitting stands and mailboxes around the world over the last week filled with factoids and details on the upcoming Fallout game from Bethesda, but developed by Obsidian. So far the agreed upon details seem to be that the game will be a third person action RPG, very much in the vein of Fallout 3 and even using the same engine, VATS will be making a return and, most important of all, your character will not be a vault dweller but some kind of courier or messenger who gets ambushed in the Nevada desert and left for dead. You're found by a robot and nursed back to health, being an old Vault robot he dresses you in a Vault tech jumpsuit and attaches a Pipboy to your arm.

First off the setting, seems Vegas got out of the nuclear holocaust relatively unscathed, buildings and infrastructure are largely intact and power is even provided to the city by the Hoover dam. So Vegas is a lot closer to what you know of it today than Washington DC, except with super mutants and killer robots running around the place. Apparently there's a lot of vegetation around, cactus in the desert and that type of thing.

The focus of the game seems to be the war over New Vegas and the Hoover Dam between the New California Republic, the major government on the west coast and a major group in previous Fallout games prior to Fallout 3, and Caesar's Legion another faction from earlier games that runs itself similar to ancient Roman society with extra emphasis on the slavery side of things. Both groups have been at war with the Brotherhood of Steel as well as each other for most the Fallout universe's timeline and it's unclear if the Brotherhood of Steel will make an appearance in New Vegas.

There will be the familiar dumb Super Mutants in New Vegas along with some more intelligent breeds. There are also, oddly, mentions of screenshots of a female super mutant, which flies in the canon setup by Fallout 3 which mentioned that Super Mutants had no gender at all (feel free to slap me if I'm wrong on that one). The Nightkin will make an appearance in New Vegas as well, they're the Navy Seals of Super Mutant kind, intelligent and well equipped, they even use Stealthboys to ambush enemies.

Weapons in the game will have realistic knock back effects and you'll be able to tinker with and upgrade your weapons, every weapon also has a special attack.

Reputation will now be town specific, hinting that there'll be more populated areas to visit than just Vegas. But you can be reviled in one town and beloved in another, so the karma tracking isn't as general as it was. There's a possibility for branching story lines based on your karma reputations. There will also be faction reputations you can build up over time. Reputation will affect your bartering skill and bartering can be used to negotiate better quest rewards as well as cheaper shop prices.

Followers will appear in the game and you'll be able to control them with a context sensitive menu. Orders will be down to the basic follow me and attack commands.

There's a hardcore difficulty option that forces your character to drink water, adds weight to ammo and apples healing gradually instead of instantly.

So overall it sounds like a sequel to Fallout 3, I know that's what we keep getting told it's not, but honestly that's what it sounds like. Especially if it has the same game engine, it's going to be hard not to draw comparisons between the two.