So today is turning out to be a really good day for Great Video Games That Aren't Out Yet. Following up this morning's , aka 'that game that loves letting us think we know how good it is so that it can suddenly look even better and laugh in our sweet, naive faces'.

What have I seen and learned today? Quite a lot. I've learned about a new companion character. I've learned about a new location. I've learned about the new levelling system, and seen the brilliant-looking new combat. I've also learned of the kind of names Bethesda expects you to give your characters, and good Lord, does Bethesda not expect a high standard of decorum from you at all.

No point beating around the bush here. That's legitimately a thing you can do in Fallout 4. Bethesda has recorded Mr. Handy - the game's plummy-voiced robot companion - saying 1000 of the most popular names players might want to bestow upon their character, in order to give the game that extra-immersive personal touch.

We were presented with a demo video of a few names to show off Handy's versatility. The final two of those names were "Mr. McFly" and "Mr. Fuckface". And lo, a million players who had never considered calling their character Fuckface will now be calling their character Fuckface. Because that is how humans work.

There are going to be around a dozen companions in Fallout 4. We already knew about Handy, Dogmeat, and Preston, but now we can add Piper <(i>not pictured above) to the list. Which is good, because she's pretty damned cool.

Initially encountered trying to get into a locked down Diamond City (built in the ruins of Fenway Park baseball stadium), she opportunistically uses the Sole Survivor's presence to get in, pretending he's a trader with valuable supplies to sell, in order to bluff past the guards. Once inside, it transpires that she's the editor of the post-apocalyptic newspaper, Public Occurrences (is it just us, or is Fallout feeling distinctly more civilised these days?). The mayor hates her, referring to her as a "devious, rabble-rousing slanderer". Clearly, she is not on message with the local political PR. We like her.

Yup, the leveling system has been given an overhaul. Customised via a brilliant, animated Vault-Tec poster in-game, perks (which can be unlocked at level-up, as usual) are tied to the various ability stats in your character's S.P.E.C.I.A.L. ratings.

There are 70 base perks, but each has a series of XP rankings of its own, meaning that it can be leveled up alongside its respective S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stat in order to unlock greater abilities. With all graded perks taken into account, the total comes to 275. Happy grinding.

Later on in the Quakecon presentation we got an extended gameplay demo of a new town area, Lexington. With a lengthy new stretch of the game on show, it rapidly became clear just how radically upgraded Fallout 4's world is from that of its predecessors. In short, it makes Fallout 3 look like a game made out of cardboard.

It's not the result of any one change, but rather a raft of little tweaks that seem specifically designed to address the issues that cropped up in F3's world after prolonged exposure. There's the vast swath of vibrant colour. The sheer, open airiness, the sense of light and space. There's the amount of movement and fully structured environmental detail in each frame when exploring. There's the way that multiple camera angles during conversations make them feel like properly directed cutscenes, and the way your fully-voiced character reacts to even the most innocuous discoveries and events. As compulsive at it is to explore, navigating Fallout 3's world can at times feel like silently observing a diorama. Fallout 4 feels like having a real presence in a real place.

Speaking of real presence, holy crap, does Fallout's combat look to have improved. As in, it looks like a genuinely respectable open-world FPS now, rather than an RPG with a rather crap, rather static shooting model tacked on. The VATS slow-mo targeting system looks a whole lot faster and slicker for a start, but that's not the really exciting bit. The really exciting bit is that it doesn't look like you'll be wanting (or needing) to rely on it half as much.

While hardly as fast and flowing as its Quakecon sibling, , Fallout's gunplay looks much smoother and more dynamic than before. While enemies (Ghouls in particular) still have a habit of charging straight into your face, dealing with them is no longer a case of frantically back-pedaling while waiting for VATS to recharge. Sidestepping, strafing, and weaving all look entirely viable while shooting smoothly and accurately, and level design looks set up to properly accommodate that stuff this time around, with well-placed cover, choke-points, lines of sight, and exploding hazards aplenty. And throughout it all, the Sole Survivor looks delightfully capable and versatile.

Leading on from that last point, sweet crap, does Fallout 4 look effective as an action game. While the core combat mechanics look immensely improved, it's the stuff around them - the presentation and feedback of combat, and the bigger situational picture - that really pushes things to the next level.

We've seen hand-cranked laser muskets (effectively a clunky retro sci-fi shotgun) hit with delightful impact, and leave the burnt meat of Ghoul flesh billowing with smoke. We've seen crucial hits with bats shatter knees and set up skull-cracking executions, and that's just the start. The end of our demo sees the Sole Survivor dashing between cover points in an open street to avoid and retaliate against rooftop snipers, just as a Brotherhood of Steel gunship arrives. The aircraft starts peppering the road around him with cluster bombs, forcing a frantic, improvisational fight on two fronts, until the Ghouls above send it spiraling down into a nearby building. It’s still Fallout, but now it has set-pieces, and genuine, visual spectacle. Seriously.