Guardian Fallout 3 interview

[Brother None]

Greg Howson of the Guardian has interviewed Pete Hines. He asked for questions to be submitted earlier and did not have the chance to ask them all at this roundtable interview, but notes he is "chasing some answers for those now". Currently it contains not a single new question nor any informative answers.<blockquote>How do you attract new players while keeping fans of the original games happy?

We think you can do both. One of the reasons we went out and got the licence was that we were huge fans of the original games. Fans of the originals will see a lot in Fallout 3 that will remind them of the original games. But we have never set out a goal to be better or as good as the original games - they are what they are. We're just trying to make something that is worthy of the series but also open it up to people who maybe would have liked the original games if they had been playing games 10 or 11 years ago. New players can come into a franchise at any point if it is good and fun. We found that with Oblivion.</blockquote>Thanks The Idiot.

 

[Per]

How do you make being "neutral" fun?

It's all down to player choice. You can help or hinder who you want. It's finding that space in between which gives you some interesting options and seeing how that plays out. And then seeing what the reward is for your decision.

That is the right answer!

We're definitely an RPG

I'm so confused.

There are obviously stats

... which is the defining quality of an RPG?

Does anyone try and fit GTA into a genre?

Granted, MobyGames had to use two for that, just like for Oblivion.

Obviously the PC will have different controls than the console versions.

Has this been confirmed before?

 

[Brother None]

Obviously the PC will have different controls than the console versions.

Has this been confirmed before?

I'm not sure how the PC is supposed to be able to not have different controls.

 

[Per]

Well, obviously it won't have bumpers, I mean an interface tailored to those other controls. Which... I guess he wasn't talking about here?

 

[Brother None]

That's not really what he said, but they've talked about building the PC "from the ground up" before. I doubt they'll be that dissimilar, but hopefully Fallout 3 won't run, steer and handle like a cow on the PC.

 

[Slymanx]

That's not really what he said, but they've talked about building the PC "from the ground up" before. I doubt they'll be that dissimilar, but hopefully Fallout 3 won't run, steer and handle like a cow on the PC.

Wishful thinking, but I doubt it.

 

[Ranne]

I think it was mentioned in one of the previews that the interface looked exactly the same on both platforms. I bet you a lump of gold (just don't ask where I got it), same goes for every other aspect of the game, including character control and such. Well, maybe, just maybe, they'll remove the auto-aim, but I wouldn't bet my gold on it.

 

[Beelzebud]

But we have never set out a goal to be better or as good as the original games

LOL Well then mission accomplished!

 

[The Idiot]

Thanks The Idiot.

Just doing my job.

But we have never set out a goal to be better or as good as the original games

LOL Well then mission accomplished!

A brief moment of unintended honesty from Pete? Warming us up for disappointment? Isn't that answer a bit asinine from a PR standpoint, seriously?

 

[Brother None]

Just doing my job.

I wonder if you guys ever think about your nicks when submitting news.

Up to 10,000 people read NMA daily. And now they will all see us thanking some dude called "the idiot"

Well done, NMA.

 

[Wooz]

... Says the guy who used to have a "Bestiality Tom" NMA-nickname for a short while.

 

[Ranne]

There are a lot of nice touches such as the raiders with baseball caps who attack you on a baseball pitches.

We're definitely an RPG [...] Can you just run around around and shoot people like a first person shooter? Sure. [...] Casual players will probably play Fallout 3 as a story-driven shooter. And you can do that. You don't need to pick locks or level up your science.

[The dog is] as important as you want it to be - you can use the dog or not.

I can't come up with a sensible reply to this garbage. It speaks volumes (mostly about Hines' intelligence quotient) by itself. Hines seems to confuse role-playing (video) games with actual real-life role-playing found in such delusional undertakings as historical re-enactments and improvisational theater. Hey, Pete, if an in-game dog is as important as I want it to be... well, let me tell you, it's not that f*cking important of a dog at all. Same goes for the game mechanics - there are probably lunatics out there who spend hours improvising and role-playing over Doom II and, I don't know.. Pac-Man, but if a game behaves like a mindless shooter, there's just no way you get to call it an rpg. It's a shooter that may for some unexplained reason attract role-players, but it's not a role-playing game on its own.

And what of the reviewer? "How important is the dog?" Unless he happens to double as a PETA volunteer, what kind of a dumb question is it, really?

 

[EnglishMuffin]

Why are they trying to make a jack of all trades game? Last time I checked combining things together makes them SUCK! Name something that took two separate functions, put them together and did it equal or even better than the same functions being on two separate machines. The Iphone is a fantastic example of this. Another example is combining fps and rpg's together. You alienate the fps people and the rpg people. Of course the rpg suffers more than the fps aspect but both are weaker nonetheless.

I can't wrap my head around why they would not try to make a game that would appeal more to rpg players and why they wouldn't want to give back to the fallout community that kept the game alive enough to warrant the purchase of the rights.

It makes no fucking sense!!! Why would you not try to make the best game you could? If you knew your game was not going to be better than or even come close to being as good as the original fallout games why would you even make it? How can you have artists and writers, people who thrive on creativity, know that all their best work would be thrown on the floor in order to make more money. I couldn't live with myself.

On a second note, who thinks that the writer(s) for the game portal would have been a good choice to write for fallout 3 or any fallout game.

 

[rcorporon]

New players can come into a franchise at any point if it is good and fun. We found that with Oblivion.

Ugh... the reason for this is because each Elder Scroll's story is self-contained.

Fallout, IMO, is more about a continuous, persistent world. You can play FO2 before 1, but the experience wouldn't be the same.

 

[Lexx]

I'm not sure how the PC is supposed to be able to not have different controls.

Didn't they say, that they just add mouse wheel support for the interface? As far as I can remember, they said first that the PC version will have a better interface than Oblivion. Well, later they said that x-cube 360 and PC will have 1:1 the same interface and then they added, that the PC version will have mouse wheel support and stuff like that. But nothing more.

 

[terebikun]

Name something that took two separate functions, put them together and did it equal or even better than the same functions being on two separate machines.

Video game-wise? Deus Ex comes to mind.

 

[Cimmerian Nights]

Deus Ex is a great hybrid, but based on it's merits as an RPG it's piss poor.

 

[ookami]

And now they will all see us thanking some dude called "the idiot"

Yeah, I guess you can't expect them all to catch a Dostoevsky reference.

 

[The Idiot]

Greg Howson managed to get some more questions answered. He asked some of mine, which is always nice:

In Fallout 1, there were only three key locations that you needed to visit to complete the game - The Cathedral, Military Base and Necropolis (the last one being optional, actually) . These places could be done in any order, creating Fallout's exceptional nonlinearity. Is Fallout 3's main quest structured in similar fashion?

Hmm, parts of it are, parts of it aren't. There are several large sections of the main quest that you can actually skip if you do things right.

Sounds a bit alarming.