Todd Howard and Emil Pagliarulo are interviewed by NowGamer for a "Fallout 3 Retrospective", because it seems like it's the right time to retrospect, y'know.<blockquote>Fallout’s devoted fans knew as much, and the moment Bethesda purchased the IP from Black Isle Studios they felt the same thing was happening to them. Fallout 3 would be just another bastard offspring of a once proud institution, sired by an industry with a pathological aversion to originality and a powerful lust for profit. However, impartial observers had reached a different conclusion: Fallout 3 was in the care of Bethesda Softworks, a master of the art of role-play, and failure was not an option.
“We felt obligated by the series, not by the fans in particular, as we’re big fans ourselves,” explains Todd Howard, the game’s producer. “We knew, going into it, that we had huge shoes to fill.” Bethesda is an immensely capable studio, but the Fallout series’ unique personality and rare maturity attracted a jealously protective audience. Very few games took you to the places that Black Isle dared, and it’s natural to be wary of even the most skilful and well-meaning alien influence. Howard could have screamed his sincerity from the highest mountain, but suspicion came with the territory.
(...)
Not that designing the Capital Wasteland was a gruelling ordeal in the name of fun. Washington held lifelong familiarity for many members of the team, and the rest could draw inspiration from the opportunity to unmake their shared national history. Standing before the Washington Monument – its form pocked and exploded by years of perpetual warfare – is a potent reality check, but the idea manifests itself in more subtle and ingenious ways. In a single day of playing Fallout 3, we sold the Declaration of Independence for less than the price of a decrepit missile launcher, then used it to destroy a robot programmed to act like George Washington. Bethesda’s brainstorming sessions must have been a riot.
“It was, actually,” says Howard. “We had to spend a good deal of time figuring out what the government in the world of Fallout would have been like, and how Washington DC would look if the events after WWII were different.” The area around the Mall, which contains almost every famous structure in downtown Washington, was an immediate concern. But strangely enough, when it came to deciding the fate of such symbolic buildings, the conclusion was invariably the same. “We went in with a pretty good plan,” Pagliarulo explains sheepishly, “and, you know, as we kept building the world, we kept destroying other recognisable landmarks.”</blockquote>And, as bonus content, NowGamer and Pagliarulo team up to show us everything that's wrong with gaming's public face.<blockquote>The pride in a job well done still shines through, however, and Pagliarulo enthusiastically dispels the misconception that an artist can’t be objective about their own labour. “I realise the humble answer is ‘No, we had no idea it would be that well received’, but that wouldn’t be completely honest,” he admits. “It was pretty late in production, when all the combat was balanced and VATS was working well, and my thoughts began to move from ‘This is pretty cool' to ‘Wow, this is, um, awesome’. I’m a huge gamer, and there came a point where, for the span of a few months, I was having more fun at work than I was playing other games at home. That’s never happened to me before. For nearly four years I watched my colleagues pour their souls into this game, but I really started to feel we had created something special, something that hadn’t quite been done before. It’s been a really, really great ride.”
Like all happy customers, though, gamers simply want to know when they can expect to buy their next ticket. Fallout 3 was an incomparable experience, not just the high-octane roller coaster we’re used to, but the concept is only as infinite as Bethesda’s desire to pursue it further. Our minds often drift into a reverie of new, far-flung wastelands – London, New York, Tokyo, you name it – but we’re too familiar with the game industry’s poker face to even bother with questions about a sequel. We content ourselves with the knowledge that, as long as the potential for improvement remains, a studio of Bethesda’s calibre would always be interested.</blockquote>Spotted on GameBanshee.
“We felt obligated by the series, not by the fans in particular, as we’re big fans ourselves,” explains Todd Howard, the game’s producer. “We knew, going into it, that we had huge shoes to fill.” Bethesda is an immensely capable studio, but the Fallout series’ unique personality and rare maturity attracted a jealously protective audience. Very few games took you to the places that Black Isle dared, and it’s natural to be wary of even the most skilful and well-meaning alien influence. Howard could have screamed his sincerity from the highest mountain, but suspicion came with the territory.
(...)
Not that designing the Capital Wasteland was a gruelling ordeal in the name of fun. Washington held lifelong familiarity for many members of the team, and the rest could draw inspiration from the opportunity to unmake their shared national history. Standing before the Washington Monument – its form pocked and exploded by years of perpetual warfare – is a potent reality check, but the idea manifests itself in more subtle and ingenious ways. In a single day of playing Fallout 3, we sold the Declaration of Independence for less than the price of a decrepit missile launcher, then used it to destroy a robot programmed to act like George Washington. Bethesda’s brainstorming sessions must have been a riot.
“It was, actually,” says Howard. “We had to spend a good deal of time figuring out what the government in the world of Fallout would have been like, and how Washington DC would look if the events after WWII were different.” The area around the Mall, which contains almost every famous structure in downtown Washington, was an immediate concern. But strangely enough, when it came to deciding the fate of such symbolic buildings, the conclusion was invariably the same. “We went in with a pretty good plan,” Pagliarulo explains sheepishly, “and, you know, as we kept building the world, we kept destroying other recognisable landmarks.”</blockquote>And, as bonus content, NowGamer and Pagliarulo team up to show us everything that's wrong with gaming's public face.<blockquote>The pride in a job well done still shines through, however, and Pagliarulo enthusiastically dispels the misconception that an artist can’t be objective about their own labour. “I realise the humble answer is ‘No, we had no idea it would be that well received’, but that wouldn’t be completely honest,” he admits. “It was pretty late in production, when all the combat was balanced and VATS was working well, and my thoughts began to move from ‘This is pretty cool' to ‘Wow, this is, um, awesome’. I’m a huge gamer, and there came a point where, for the span of a few months, I was having more fun at work than I was playing other games at home. That’s never happened to me before. For nearly four years I watched my colleagues pour their souls into this game, but I really started to feel we had created something special, something that hadn’t quite been done before. It’s been a really, really great ride.”
Like all happy customers, though, gamers simply want to know when they can expect to buy their next ticket. Fallout 3 was an incomparable experience, not just the high-octane roller coaster we’re used to, but the concept is only as infinite as Bethesda’s desire to pursue it further. Our minds often drift into a reverie of new, far-flung wastelands – London, New York, Tokyo, you name it – but we’re too familiar with the game industry’s poker face to even bother with questions about a sequel. We content ourselves with the knowledge that, as long as the potential for improvement remains, a studio of Bethesda’s calibre would always be interested.</blockquote>Spotted on GameBanshee.
