Eurogamer interviewed Pete Hines and the result is, well, stuff like this:<blockquote>Eurogamer: How much of the design for Fallout 3 is a reaction to your work on Oblivion as much as your ambitions for the Fallout series?
Pete Hines: The reaction to Oblivion is very much a case of, "How do we do this better when we do it in Fallout?" opposed to, "Oh we always wanted to do this in the Elder Scrolls, but now we're doing Fallout we'll just put it in Fallout." There's none of that. Fallout's already such a rich series, such a great playground to work in, with the vibe and the tone and the moral choices.
What we really brought from Oblivion is just stuff like feedback on levelling. People didn't like the way the world levelled with the player, so we're going to do this differently. It's things like working out how to sculpt the experience for the player in terms of quests and giving you choices. We want to give you more choices in how to finish a quest rather than fewer choices and a lot more quests.</blockquote>What they "really" brought from Oblivion is not to do stuff that had nothing to do with Fallout in the first place?<blockquote>Eurogamer: You've gone for a very traditional dialogue system. Did you consider trying something new?
Pete Hines: It's old school. After a certain point, when you're taking on a project of this magnitude, you've got to pick your battles, and you can't pick them all because you just end up trying to be everything and not being anything. Dialogue wasn't a battle we wanted to pick. It is a bit old-school, but it works well for what we're trying to do, and there were other things that were more important for us to spend time and energy on, like trying to incorporate VATS into a real world combat system and still incorporate the stats and not unbalance the game. That's a big undertaking, and spending time from a development standpoint on the actual dialogue and the camera angle it's being presented on - we just don't have unlimited monkeys and typewriters.</blockquote>Departing from Fallout-style dialogue wasn't a battle they wanted to pick?<blockquote>Eurogamer: Talking of balance, with a game as wide as this, how do you balance the main narrative and the side-quests?
Pete Hines: It's just always been our approach to make big, open, go-where-you-want games. This is just another version of that. We like to try to do big epic scope, big world stuff. But I think with Fallout it's adjusted differently to how it was with Oblivion, because Oblivion had so much extra content.
Fallout doesn't have quite the same amount - it's not eight cities filled with guilds and all that stuff. It's more sparse, there's fewer locations, fewer people. You have a smaller scope of stuff, with more ways to do it, and as part of the overall, the main quest is much more or a presence than it was in Oblivion, because you don't have two hundred hours of stuff - you have seventy or eighty hours, which is still a stupid amount, but it's not in the same proportion.
I think the main story's going to be a lot stronger, and a lot more people are going to want to play it this time around.</blockquote>Thanks to Ausir.
Pete Hines: The reaction to Oblivion is very much a case of, "How do we do this better when we do it in Fallout?" opposed to, "Oh we always wanted to do this in the Elder Scrolls, but now we're doing Fallout we'll just put it in Fallout." There's none of that. Fallout's already such a rich series, such a great playground to work in, with the vibe and the tone and the moral choices.
What we really brought from Oblivion is just stuff like feedback on levelling. People didn't like the way the world levelled with the player, so we're going to do this differently. It's things like working out how to sculpt the experience for the player in terms of quests and giving you choices. We want to give you more choices in how to finish a quest rather than fewer choices and a lot more quests.</blockquote>What they "really" brought from Oblivion is not to do stuff that had nothing to do with Fallout in the first place?<blockquote>Eurogamer: You've gone for a very traditional dialogue system. Did you consider trying something new?
Pete Hines: It's old school. After a certain point, when you're taking on a project of this magnitude, you've got to pick your battles, and you can't pick them all because you just end up trying to be everything and not being anything. Dialogue wasn't a battle we wanted to pick. It is a bit old-school, but it works well for what we're trying to do, and there were other things that were more important for us to spend time and energy on, like trying to incorporate VATS into a real world combat system and still incorporate the stats and not unbalance the game. That's a big undertaking, and spending time from a development standpoint on the actual dialogue and the camera angle it's being presented on - we just don't have unlimited monkeys and typewriters.</blockquote>Departing from Fallout-style dialogue wasn't a battle they wanted to pick?<blockquote>Eurogamer: Talking of balance, with a game as wide as this, how do you balance the main narrative and the side-quests?
Pete Hines: It's just always been our approach to make big, open, go-where-you-want games. This is just another version of that. We like to try to do big epic scope, big world stuff. But I think with Fallout it's adjusted differently to how it was with Oblivion, because Oblivion had so much extra content.
Fallout doesn't have quite the same amount - it's not eight cities filled with guilds and all that stuff. It's more sparse, there's fewer locations, fewer people. You have a smaller scope of stuff, with more ways to do it, and as part of the overall, the main quest is much more or a presence than it was in Oblivion, because you don't have two hundred hours of stuff - you have seventy or eighty hours, which is still a stupid amount, but it's not in the same proportion.
I think the main story's going to be a lot stronger, and a lot more people are going to want to play it this time around.</blockquote>Thanks to Ausir.
