The folks at Fallen Earth have granted fans a glimpse of some of the vehicles that will be available in their upcoming post apocalyptic MMORPG.

In Fallen Earth, a vehicle can mean the difference between being run down by a pack of mutant dogs and actually surviving your cargo run to Trader’s Flat. In the wastelands, a vehicle isn’t just a convenience; it can be a fortress on wheels, a place to store your gear, and the fastest way out of danger. But in the wastes there is one thing a vehicle never is: cheap.

Each vehicle model has its own abilities, including fuel efficiency, type of fuel used, armor plating, cargo capacity, hit points, and weaponry. Some vehicles run on cheap and plentiful biodiesel, while other high performance vehicles require highly refined gasoline. No one vehicle does everything well, so players will have to decide what vehicles are best for them. Do you want a Tornado for its high hit points and cargo capacity, ignoring its poor fuel efficiency? Or a Wasteland Rider motorcycle, trading off cargo capacity for speed and fuel efficiency?

Players can own up to five vehicles, but may only have one in use at a time. While not in use, vehicles are stored in garages found outside many of the towns in the Grand Canyon Province. Vehicles have persistent locations, so if you leave your dune buggy in the middle of nowhere and log off it will still be out there when you log back on (likewise if you run out of fuel you’ll have to walk back to town to get more). Players can pay money to have their vehicles towed to a garage, but doing so is not cheap.

Players acquire vehicles in Fallen Earth through research and crafting. Players can buy new vehicles from other players, but there are no NPC vendors who sell them. All vehicles are made by players. Players have to spend significant time and resources to learn how to make anything more advanced than the most basic vehicles, such as ATVs and motorcycles, and the construction of each vehicle is a sizeable investment of time and resources as well. Acquiring a vehicle is nothing to sneeze at.

Vehicles in Fallen Earth are not only for transportation, but also serve as weapons. Whether it be firing pistols while on a motorcycle or the mounted machineguns of the Interceptor Security Edition, players can use the mobility and protection of their vehicles to their tactical advantage. Such choices can get expensive very quickly as the bullet holes and fuel consumption stack up, but it can help you make quick work of a raider camp.

Except for the motorcycle, these images were produced using the in-game vehicle models on a rendered background and are how the vehicles actually look in game. The motorcycle model will appear in a future update, as will videos of the vehicles in action.

The E3 party is over. There are a handful of key titles that we thought we could expect for this year's holiday season but didn't show up in the exhibit. KOTAKU rounded up for you a complete list of this year's no-shows and the hype that preceded them, and then tried to get to the bottom of their conspicuous absence.


The Game: Alan Wake





The Hype: Max Payne developer Remedy announced the "action thriller" way back in 2005, promising to unveil it at E3, but the game's skipped every event since then, while the developers denied cancellation rumors.

The Facts: A recent story referring to a Windows-branded contest that suggested the game would be shown at this year's Tokyo Game Show turned out to be old news from last year. Remedy posted on its Alan Wake forums that the team's just gotten back from a bit of holidaying, and that they "haven't had time to chat with Microsoft on upcoming shows/showings yet." We contacted Microsoft, and got a "no comment."

The Game: Tekken 6



The Hype: Back in 2006, some less-than-impressive E3 screens surfaced for the sixth Tekken title, and in early 2007, unconfirmed rumors suggested the title would launch on Xbox 360 after a period of PS3 exclusivity. When? All we heard is "after Soulcalibur IV", that's this month, and with no show at E3, that seems pretty unlikely.

The Facts: It's been out on Namco's Japanese arcades, the ones modeled on PS3 hardware, since November 2007, and that's the only place it's been seen since then. We've got no comment from Namco as of press time.

The Game: APB (All Points Bulletin)



The Hype: Dave Jones of Realtime Worlds, the team behind Crackdown, first unveiled APB at GDC 08 in February, wowing audiences with the Counter-Strike-inspired MMO that featured character customization with so many choices that Jones demoed a battle featuring modded FFVII characters. It must have inspired investors, because only a month later Realtime Worlds scored an eye-popping 50 million dollars in venture capital to support the game's development.

The Facts: After the developer bought full rights to the game back from Korean company Webzen, rumors abounded that the developer was angling to sell the game to Rockstar, to create a GTA IV-branded MMO. No such deal surfaced, and early in June the developer said they were in alpha, heading for a full public beta.

Realtime Worlds president Tony Harman told Kotaku that the investment, plus the changing of hands, is the reason behind the no-show at E3: "This year we would have had an exciting presence with APB at E3 if we had continued with Webzen as our publisher," Harman said. "But, given that we re-acquired the rights to APB just this spring and closed a very large fundraising round (50,000,000 USD) to secure APB's future, the timing just wasn't right to attend E3."

"RTW is very excited with APB's progress and we have used our fundraising as a means to invest even more heavily in the APB development team. RTW hopes to release more information later this year with regards to gameplay details and beta plans."