At an E3 press conference on Sunday, Bethesda Game Studios finally presented a full showcase of Fallout 4, the long-awaited new entry into a post-apocalyptic series that has been running since 1997. The game was first officially revealed less than two weeks ago, and now Bethesda has already announced a release date for November 10 of this year, only a few short months away.

A lot of what we have seen from Fallout 4 so far shows strong similarities to the previous game, but there are several new features that stand out.

The story starts out before the nuclear armageddon, with the main character taking shelter in a vault with his or her family. After an unspecified story event, the player character emerges 200 years later as the sole survivor of that vault. This places the events of the game at roughly the same time period as Fallout 3, opening up the possibility for some story crossover.

The game’s combat appears to be almost identical to Fallout 3, with first and third person shooter mechanics mixed with a little RPG flavor thanks to the time-freezings VATS system. Game Director Todd Howard emphasized that the team worked hard to make Fallout 4 play great no matter what play style people prefer, and first-person view, third-person view, ranged gunplay, and up close melee all work equally well.

Crafting, housing, and PipBoys

The crafting system has been revitalized with thousands of new customization options. Players will be able to salvage materials from basically everything in the game world and turn those items into weapons, armor, and more.

Both weapons and the series’ iconic power armor can be altered using materials scavenged from the world, and players will now be able to custom-build an entire settlement complete with traders and defense systems. The city-building feature appears to borrow a bit from Skyrim’s Hearthfire DLC, which allowed players to craft construction materials and build their own homes.

Hearthfire had some customizable options, such as letting players choose which wings they wanted to build and what decorations they wanted to add, but Fallout 4 will take it a few steps further, allowing players to edit nearly every facet of their town down to the foundations.

Fallout 4 appears to be taking the game’s Boston setting to heart, with colonial America themed clothing and weapons, such as a laser musket.

For the collectors out there, Fallout 4 will have a special collector’s edition that comes with a real functioning PipBoy, which has a smartphone slot and companion app. The demo showed the PipBoy sporting an iPhone, but it is not clear yet what phones will fit in the device.

Image credit: Bethesda Softworks