During Bethesda's E3 press conference today, Todd Howard took the stage to present a substantial gameplay demo for Fallout 4

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Let's start at the beginning: Fallout 4's prologue actually takes place prior to the nuclear event that causes the apocalypse. Character generation was, as always, handled within cleverly chosen story interactions. A couple stands in front of their bathroom mirror, playfully bantering. Facial features were customized by simply pointing to them with a cursor, and then sculpting them in real time, as opposed to the vague, old slider system. What's more, it was possible to customize a female avatar as well as a male one.Shortly after this sequence, a Vault-Tec sales rep rings the doorbell, offering you and your family a pre-approved slot in Vault 111. He says before final approval, he just needs to ask some questions about you, at which point the familiar S.P.E.C.I.A.L. interface comes up, allowing you to allocate skill points between strength, perception, endurance, constitution, intelligence, agility, and luck. Nuka Cola can be seen in the refrigerator in the kitchen. Another neat touch, your robotic housekeeper, Codsworth, calls your character by name. bethesda recorded 1,000 common names so you could hear your character's name spoken at certain points in the game.From here, the demo quick cuts through the following events so as not to ruin too much, but the basic gist of it is that the incident happens, and you emerge from Vault 111 200 years later, as the sole survivor, which would mean that your wife and child from the prologue are dead. At this point the player is free to roam, just like in previous entries in the series."Player freedom remains our absolute number one goal," said Studio Director Todd Howard, as footage played showing a vast open world being explored freely in classic Fallout fashion. Fallout 4 is built on a new version of Bethesda's "Creation" engine, which they've been iterating on for some time. All of the game can be played in either third or first person, including dialogue sequences, which eschew the old method of scrolling through options in favor of mapping each option to a face button for a less clunky overall flow. You can even walk away mid conversation if you so choose.At this point, the demo introduces the dog companion shown in the reveal trailer, and he's more than just an adorable tag-along. By pointing at distant objects, levels, and enemies, you can bring up context-sensitive button prompts to interact with them in different ways. It's all "point and shoot" style, making it look very easy to get use out of your animal companion. He was shown retrieving items, distracting enemies, and performing other useful actions.VATS was also shown briefly. Howard talked about it being enhanced for additional control, but he never went into specifics, and it wasn't readily apparent from the footage what this "enhanced control" might be. It did seem quite efficient for eliminating Molerats, and other familiar Fallout enemies like Radscorpions and Super Mutants.The good old Pip-Boy interface makes a return as well, with more a polished visual representation of its buttons and moving parts. Aside from using it to navigate your inventory and check your status, you will be able to find game cartridges for it, which will allow you to play Fallout-themed homages to old-school arcade games such as Donkey King and Missile Defense.That wasn't all for the Pip-Boy though. According to Howard, the collector's edition for Fallout 4 will come with a real-life Pip-Boy that can house your smartphone. In addition, there will be a companion app that uses the same interface and coding as the one used in the game. As second-screen experiences go, this one sounds pretty neat, if only for the novelty factor.But the most important feature revealed was the comprehensive crafting system. Fallout games are always full of little pieces of junk to pick up, though it's common for them to be useless. In Fallout 4, every object you can pick up and collect can be recycled into one of many raw resources which can then be used to craft a crazy number of different things. As usual, this includes weapons and weapon mods, of which there are tons. Fallout 4 will feature 50 base weapon types, and 700 weapon mods to customize them with. But that's just the tip of the crafting iceberg.This time around, you'll be able to craft and heavily customize your own set of Power Armour, the iconic battle gear for which the Fallout series is famous. But the truly big thing, is the ability to build houses, bases, and settlements as you see fit, erecting entire buildings, defenses, and decorations for them. You can even create Brahmin caravans to haul goods between your settlements if you'd like. The diversity of what was being crafted was the most impressive part though: sentry turrets, stationary flamethrowers, security terminals to connect and govern them, and even custom lighted signs were all on display.During a montage at the end of the demo, you could see the player throwing down a flare and calling in a flying transport of some kind, then getting on board and manning a huge side-mounted mini-gun. Whether this was a scripted, one-off event or something that could be done at will is completely up in the air, but either way, it looked damn cool.Even with all of those juicy details though, the biggest surprise was saved for last. Bethesda has been working on Fallout 4 for four years, since they shipped the last one. As a result, Fallout 4 is going to be on store shelves on November 10, 2015; this year!

For more on Fallout 4 and all Bethesda's newest announcements, check out the IGN E3 Hub .

Vincent Ingenito is IGN's foremost fighting game nerd. F ollow him on Twitter and tell him what you want him to test out next time he plays Street Fighter 5.