Fallout 3 Interview - exclusive Q & A [and video]

Fallout 3 is an action role-playing game, currently under development by Bethesda Softworks. It will be the third major game in the Fallout series, which has also spawned the spin-offs Fallout Tactics and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. It will take place in the year 2277, 36 years after the setting of Fallout 2.

Pete Hines: It's never easy, as any developer will tellyou, and you'd always prefer to just make it for one, so you're aimingfor one thing, but this is our second time around on all theseplatforms, so we've learnt a lot already from doing one big sandboxgame on 360, PS3 and PC, and we're able to use a lot of those learningsand that tech for the next generation of stuff we want to do. It's gonepretty well, and we're pretty confident we're going to have threeversions that are all on parity in terms of performance, and certainlyfrom a content standpoint and gameplay standpoint it'll be exactly thesame.

Early impressions prove that this is so much more than Oblivion with guns.
IGN: Was anyone from the original game's developer Black Isle Studios consulted?

Pete Hines: We've talked to some of the guys from theoriginal – there's pretty much two different teams – we have talked tosome of those folks from a casual standpoint.

IGN: Fallout's got a massive following and quite a vocal community.Have you at any point consulted the fan-base to see what they want froma Fallout game?

Pete Hines: Back when we first announced we were doing it in2004, there was tons of feedback with people saying here's what we wantand here's what we don't want. We're not really into consulting, inthat we've got 75 people who spend all day every day working on thisgame, so we look for information and feedback for the kinds of thingsthe fans are looking for, and feedback from the last game that we made.Even though it's an Elder Scroll game, we've looked at the things theyliked or didn't like from that, and we have our own opinions about whatwe liked and didn't like, and look at what things may be applicable toFallout. Whether its how fast travel works, or for example how we'vechanged the way leveling works, so it's very different from Oblivion.

IGN: Though Fallout 3's world won't be as large as that of Oblivion, will there be any way to get around quickly?

Pete Hines: Yes there are ways you can traverse it quickly,using fast travel, but you can't explore it quickly – there's novehicles, there's nothing you can ride to speed up that journey. We'vecertainly tried to create the world in a way that you're not travelinghuge distances for no reason – there are lots of things that are putall over the place for you to do.

IGN: We've seen the welcome return of Dogmeat – are there any other non-playable characters returning from the Fallout universe?

Pete Hines: There are other things from the original that wehaven't spoken about yet that folks will come across. As far asinanimate objects, there's lots of things, be it the skills, the perks,the weapons, there's lots of that kind of stuff, and all the referencesto that world, the Nuke Cola and all of that is just part of the worlditself. If you've played the original Fallouts, you get some measure ofpride or enjoyment out of seeing that stuff again. If you haven'tplayed Fallout before, you're not missing out on anything – it standson its own but it still has plenty of stuff from the last game and theseries as a whole.

An early set piece sees you attend your own birthday party.
IGN: Has it been restrictive working with a canon as well defined as Fallout's?

Pete Hines: It's more just a pleasure to be able to work inthat fantastic universe, and the canon is not that restrictive to workwith. We obviously took it to a different coast for a number ofreasons, but the canon itself is a lot of fun and there's still a lotof opportunity to play and we're pretty used to that with the ElderScrolls, with the canon that we ourselves have created.

IGN: We've seen different factions going about their business in thedemo – how persistent is the world of Fallout 3 going to be?

Pete Hines: We don't want it to constantly be wherever you gotwo groups are fighting each other, as that would get to be a littleold after a while, but you see it enough, whether it's creaturesattacking humans or different factions fighting each other.

IGN: How's that going to work? Is it going to be permutations of different elements?

Pete Hines: It'll be like in the original games, where theending that you got was a compilation of different things that youwould have done along the way, main quest related or not main questrelated, you piece it all together so it's custom tailored to what youdid. We want player choice to be meaningful, so anything that you getwill be based upon what you chose to do – did you save this town, didyou blow it up – and taking what you did and retelling it back to youso that it's meaningful to you as opposed to having one generic ending.

Dogmeat returns - though Bethesda won't say which other Fallout favourites are in.
IGN: Moral choices play a large part of the Fallout experience – how does this compare to games such as BioShock?

Pete Hines: I thought BioShock was terrific. It obviouslydraws some amount from Fallout, which is part of the reason why I likeit, in that they borrowed the holo-tapes and stuff like that. I thinkthe thing about Fallout that's unique is that is very much open-endedand up to the player in that there's moral choices and they're not inlinear fashion, so you feel you have a lot more choice in terms ofwhere you're going to go and what you're going to do. BioShock is verymuch a linear experience, you can harvest the little ones or you cansave them, but still at each point you're going point to point andmaking that decision. To that end, that's where the difference inending comes about. If you harvest the first little sister but save therest of them, you still get the bad guy ending, and there's no endingfor the guy who started harvesting little sisters but then had a changeof heart and decided to save them as the story went on – where's thatending? That's where the 500 endings of Fallout come into play, we wantto take into account if you started playing the game really evil andthen turn into a good guy, then the story that you told is verydifferent. Those endings are all different flavours to how you playedthe game, as opposed to whether you were good or you were evil.

IGN: Is this the start of an ongoing relationship with Bethesda and the Fallout franchise?

Pete Hines: I would hope so, and that was the whole point ofpicking up the rights. This is going to be something that we plan tocontinue and develop going forward, like we did with the Elder Scrolls,but obviously you've got to do the first one first!