Now we've been a little hesitant to absolutely gush over the game, though it does look good, from the little physics-influenced bobble head Vault Boys that are scattered throughout the game as easter eggs to the burned out cars strewn across the wasteland to the massive bombed-out building that litter the city (and all of which you can go inside if you so choose). When the switch was flicked, setting off the warhead in Megaton miles away on the horizon, an absolutely... well, beautiful is the only word for it. The explosion (which permanently wipes Megaton off the map, destroying any potential side quests or storyline bits that could have existed) was an absolutely massive mushroom cloud that bloomed with oranges and yellows and slowly decayed into an inky black cloud that continued to expand.

This, of course, was only one possible path you can take in the game; any number of conversations and your general alignment, be it good, evil, neutral or, most naturally, some combination thereof will mean a different experience through the game every time, and that was the idea. Between the ability to customize and repair weapons (using them obviously degrades the weapon's performance over time, and there is plenty of room to bolt on new parts if your stats are good enough), and the ability to hack into most computer terminals, the game should provide plenty of opportunity to go your own way multiple times.

The hacking bits in particular were rather neat, not just because of the great clicky sound effects as the player sped through the login system, but because it represents something of a mini-game. A massive dump of text on the screen offers a few key words that you can use to try to break in. You'll only have a limited number of tries, but upon each guess the computer will tell you how many letters are in the right place, so it'll take a bit of thinking to really crack some systems.

The sheer amount of possibilities in the small little slice of the game we saw was, in a word, staggering. The implied depth of the world means that while it's technically smaller in terms of land mass, the multiple paths and ways to drill down into the tools that Bethesda is making certainly implies that this could be a game that was open to replaying a good dozen times or more for those hardcore enough. What's even crazier is that the game is a year and a half away still, and Bethesda's willingness to show it off to the press for a length of time and at a point in the development process that most games are still in an unplayable pre-alpha state (though to be fair, Fallout 3 was apparently still pre-alpha too) was telling.

There's still plenty of time to dig into more of the game, but hopefully we've given you a decent peek at what Bethesda is up to. If the rest of the game can end up as compelling as this, open world freaks are going to have their dream game come Fall of next year.