A new video released by Bethesda shows how Fallout 4’s character leveling system has changed since Fallout 3.
Borrowing the visual style of Fallout Shelter, the new perks system adds some perks and simplifies the process. As Bethesda’s blog says:
“The first choice you make, early in the game, is the starting value from 1 to 10 of your 7 SPECIALs: Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck.
When selecting your starting SPECIALs, you can assign 28 points. This makes it difficult to initially max out certain SPECIALs, but you can still start with a 10 if you choose to neglect others. Even though you pick your SPECIALS early before the bombs fall, we do let you change them when exiting the Vault into the Wasteland, after you’ve played for a little.
Levelling is experience point (XP) based like Fallout 3, not skill-based like Skyrim. But levelling speed is closer to Skyrim, and not as slow as Fallout 3. This means you’ll be getting more opportunities, especially early on, to level up and select a Perk. Additionally, whereas Fallout 3 had an initial level cap of 20, Fallout 4 has no level cap, and we’ve balanced the game to keep the content and challenge going for higher levels. When you level up, you select a Perk, from a Perk chart within the game.”
Apparently, the chart (shown below) will be included with physical copies of the game.
Leveling up of individual perks will be done by finding and collecting a number of ‘Grognak the Barbarian’ comic books found in the game. Here are the newly-released images from Bethesda:
Fallout 4 comes out November 10, 2015 on Xbox One and PS4.
SOURCE: Bethesda Press Release