The third part is the shortest, but also the densest, as lead designer R. Scott Campbell answers the questions most frequently asked of him, explaining why China is the main enemy, where FEV and the Brotherhood of Steel come from, and talking about various bits of cut content, some of which we'd never heard of before.<blockquote><center>Bottle Caps as currency?</center>
I remember my fellow Fallout designer, Brian Freyermuth, asking how much something will cost in a shop. I remember thinking, “cost what?” What was our game currency? We went through a few ideas: <ul>[*]A pure bartering system? Nah, that would be difficult for the player to understand the worth of anything. (Two molerat pelts for a cup of coffee? Is that good?) [*]Bullets as the currency? I gotta admit, bullets are definitely useful in the wasteland. But that idea was shot down (sorry) when we realized that people would be very hesitant to use things like machineguns, since every trigger-pull would directly lower their bank accounts! That level of financial restraint wouldn’t be enjoyable.[*]Credit cards ? – just the hard plastic cards, of course - but most would have probably been melted in the nuclear firestorms. [/list]So, I thought, what shiny token-sized thing would you find strewn around the trash piles? Something common, but not so common as to be everywhere? Bottlecaps, of course! (That, and I liked the idea of a string of caps on a chord that jingled when people pulled them out.)
<center>Two headed cows?</center>
Well, they weren’t initially. Early on, when I was thinking about the Shady Sands farming community, I wondered what kind of livestock they would keep to feed themselves. Just using cows and chickens didn’t seem very post-apocalyptic; we needed a critter that was hearty enough to withstand the wastes, big enough to scare off most predators, and dumb enough to be easily domesticated. Since Shady Sands was to have a Hindi/Tibetan feel to it, I couldn’t get the idea of a yak out of my head. So, the livestock became lumbering mutated gophers with long hair. Gopher meat? Now that’s post-apocalyptic! Since these beasts were what kept the villagers alive, they were considered almost holy – thus the name Brahmin. I was happy for many months – until someone pointed out that my Brahmin looked an awful lot like Banthas. Damn it! I’m not sure who came up with the two-headed cow thing… but at least it wouldn’t get us sued by LucasArts.</blockquote>
I remember my fellow Fallout designer, Brian Freyermuth, asking how much something will cost in a shop. I remember thinking, “cost what?” What was our game currency? We went through a few ideas: <ul>[*]A pure bartering system? Nah, that would be difficult for the player to understand the worth of anything. (Two molerat pelts for a cup of coffee? Is that good?) [*]Bullets as the currency? I gotta admit, bullets are definitely useful in the wasteland. But that idea was shot down (sorry) when we realized that people would be very hesitant to use things like machineguns, since every trigger-pull would directly lower their bank accounts! That level of financial restraint wouldn’t be enjoyable.[*]Credit cards ? – just the hard plastic cards, of course - but most would have probably been melted in the nuclear firestorms. [/list]So, I thought, what shiny token-sized thing would you find strewn around the trash piles? Something common, but not so common as to be everywhere? Bottlecaps, of course! (That, and I liked the idea of a string of caps on a chord that jingled when people pulled them out.)
<center>Two headed cows?</center>
Well, they weren’t initially. Early on, when I was thinking about the Shady Sands farming community, I wondered what kind of livestock they would keep to feed themselves. Just using cows and chickens didn’t seem very post-apocalyptic; we needed a critter that was hearty enough to withstand the wastes, big enough to scare off most predators, and dumb enough to be easily domesticated. Since Shady Sands was to have a Hindi/Tibetan feel to it, I couldn’t get the idea of a yak out of my head. So, the livestock became lumbering mutated gophers with long hair. Gopher meat? Now that’s post-apocalyptic! Since these beasts were what kept the villagers alive, they were considered almost holy – thus the name Brahmin. I was happy for many months – until someone pointed out that my Brahmin looked an awful lot like Banthas. Damn it! I’m not sure who came up with the two-headed cow thing… but at least it wouldn’t get us sued by LucasArts.</blockquote>
Amazing!
