Bethesda PR man Pete Hines was interviewed on Major Nelson's podcast. It's pretty long, but covers the same material as we've seen, some choice quotes:<blockquote>Tell us about Fallout [3] from where you're sitting, tell us what it's all about
Fallout 3 is a big post-nuclear role-playing game. It's our attempt at bringing back this beloved franchise that hasn't done anything in 10 years and our chance to do a very different type of role-playing game that we will hope folks will like.
As a gamer, what should I expect? Is it a shooter? We talked about it being a role playing game, how do you explain it?
First and foremost it is a roleplaying game. We make no bones about that. Yes it has guns, yes you shoot things rather than running up to them and hitting them with a sword (...)</blockquote>He talks about working a long time on getting 3rd person view to work properly vs how it worked in Oblivion. He talks about the character system being close to Fallout, and then;<blockquote>Unlike in Oblivion or any ES game (...) where you can really modify your base attributes a lot as the game goes along, Fallout 3 is much more about making some pretty tough choices early in the game that really don't get changed as you go along. So you're not going to be bumping up your strength skill every time you level up. As you go through, you're going to have to make some pretty tough choices about which attributes are important to you and they're going to affect the rest of the game. It's experience points based, it's not skillbased.</blockquote>Pete explains how they learned a lot from Oblivion on a technical level, but also in storyline development. He goes on about improved RAI a bit. He notes memorable characters and tough "shades of grey" choices are important to Fallout. The scope helps in this. Plus he notes Oblivion and Fallout are different types of role-playing games, talking a bit about Oblivion being good and bad on a macro level, while in Fallout it's more about specific instances of being good or bad. Pete explains this means high replayability as you can go back making different choices, good, bad or gray area.<blockquote>Tell me about some of the weapons.
Right. We certainly have a lot of the weapons from the original Fallout games in and we also added in a bunch of new ones. So you have a whole range of stuff from the BB gun in the vault when you're 10 and first learn how to shoot, then there's hunting rifles and Chinese assault rifles and this really cool weapon called the Fatman, which is a portable mini nuclear bomb watcher. It's really insane when you see it go off.
One of the things that we found out with guns (...), which is much more difficult to do than with swords, is that when you don't have bullets or little mini-nukes to shoot then that weapon is essentially useless. So it's much easier to balance how much you're allowed to use a particular weapon or by not only degrading its condition over time but also how much ammo is available over time (...) You can have a great weapon like the Fatman, but if you're only going to have one nuke, you're not going to go running around nuking people.</blockquote>Pete talks about the ability to make weapons, including the Rock-It Launcher. Then he notes he thinks people will feel excited, then he talks about VATS, which he notes "is rooted in the origins of Fallout," equating turn-based combat to the ability to decide to aim. He notes it is designed to avoid rewarding twitch play. He notes you can damage someone's vision by aiming at the head. Pete also explains your cued actions play out in speeded real-time mode as you unpause. He also notes you can't aim if the enemy is too far away while your PC's skills are too low.
Pete explains the setting a bit more, concerning the vaults. Then he explains the tutorial and plot as we've seen it described in previews, though he adds that you're your father's only son. Afterwards he discusses the juxtaposition of the vault's inside to the post-apocalyptic outside.
The reporter notes he's looking forward to seeing it at E3 and that the demos are on the Xbox. The reporter asks about simultaneous development on Xbox360 and PS3. Pete Hines notes PC, Xbox360 and PS3 were identified as the platforms their game could run on, but<blockquote>for our desk, the 360 is just a good base platform for us to work off, in terms of ease of design, the architecture and the hardware. We basically find that's a good one to use as a base platform, but we can technically show it on the PC or PS3 if we wanted. But the 360 is, y'know, you have to pick on the show a demo on. (...) We've got pretty good at modeling our system to run well on that (Xbox) and run well on everything.</blockquote>I have to note one thing: when discussing vaults, the reporter actually states "so this is like your version of the 50s bomb shelter things," as if Bethesda created it. He also refers to Fallout 3 as "Fallout" several times.
Link: Major Nelson live podcast #232 (Pete Hines interview at 39:07 to 59:20).
Spotted on Gamebanshee.
Fallout 3 is a big post-nuclear role-playing game. It's our attempt at bringing back this beloved franchise that hasn't done anything in 10 years and our chance to do a very different type of role-playing game that we will hope folks will like.
As a gamer, what should I expect? Is it a shooter? We talked about it being a role playing game, how do you explain it?
First and foremost it is a roleplaying game. We make no bones about that. Yes it has guns, yes you shoot things rather than running up to them and hitting them with a sword (...)</blockquote>He talks about working a long time on getting 3rd person view to work properly vs how it worked in Oblivion. He talks about the character system being close to Fallout, and then;<blockquote>Unlike in Oblivion or any ES game (...) where you can really modify your base attributes a lot as the game goes along, Fallout 3 is much more about making some pretty tough choices early in the game that really don't get changed as you go along. So you're not going to be bumping up your strength skill every time you level up. As you go through, you're going to have to make some pretty tough choices about which attributes are important to you and they're going to affect the rest of the game. It's experience points based, it's not skillbased.</blockquote>Pete explains how they learned a lot from Oblivion on a technical level, but also in storyline development. He goes on about improved RAI a bit. He notes memorable characters and tough "shades of grey" choices are important to Fallout. The scope helps in this. Plus he notes Oblivion and Fallout are different types of role-playing games, talking a bit about Oblivion being good and bad on a macro level, while in Fallout it's more about specific instances of being good or bad. Pete explains this means high replayability as you can go back making different choices, good, bad or gray area.<blockquote>Tell me about some of the weapons.
Right. We certainly have a lot of the weapons from the original Fallout games in and we also added in a bunch of new ones. So you have a whole range of stuff from the BB gun in the vault when you're 10 and first learn how to shoot, then there's hunting rifles and Chinese assault rifles and this really cool weapon called the Fatman, which is a portable mini nuclear bomb watcher. It's really insane when you see it go off.
One of the things that we found out with guns (...), which is much more difficult to do than with swords, is that when you don't have bullets or little mini-nukes to shoot then that weapon is essentially useless. So it's much easier to balance how much you're allowed to use a particular weapon or by not only degrading its condition over time but also how much ammo is available over time (...) You can have a great weapon like the Fatman, but if you're only going to have one nuke, you're not going to go running around nuking people.</blockquote>Pete talks about the ability to make weapons, including the Rock-It Launcher. Then he notes he thinks people will feel excited, then he talks about VATS, which he notes "is rooted in the origins of Fallout," equating turn-based combat to the ability to decide to aim. He notes it is designed to avoid rewarding twitch play. He notes you can damage someone's vision by aiming at the head. Pete also explains your cued actions play out in speeded real-time mode as you unpause. He also notes you can't aim if the enemy is too far away while your PC's skills are too low.
Pete explains the setting a bit more, concerning the vaults. Then he explains the tutorial and plot as we've seen it described in previews, though he adds that you're your father's only son. Afterwards he discusses the juxtaposition of the vault's inside to the post-apocalyptic outside.
The reporter notes he's looking forward to seeing it at E3 and that the demos are on the Xbox. The reporter asks about simultaneous development on Xbox360 and PS3. Pete Hines notes PC, Xbox360 and PS3 were identified as the platforms their game could run on, but<blockquote>for our desk, the 360 is just a good base platform for us to work off, in terms of ease of design, the architecture and the hardware. We basically find that's a good one to use as a base platform, but we can technically show it on the PC or PS3 if we wanted. But the 360 is, y'know, you have to pick on the show a demo on. (...) We've got pretty good at modeling our system to run well on that (Xbox) and run well on everything.</blockquote>I have to note one thing: when discussing vaults, the reporter actually states "so this is like your version of the 50s bomb shelter things," as if Bethesda created it. He also refers to Fallout 3 as "Fallout" several times.
Link: Major Nelson live podcast #232 (Pete Hines interview at 39:07 to 59:20).
Spotted on Gamebanshee.
