Fallout 3 - AU Interview

Bethesda's marriage of the immense playground that was Oblivion with the acclaimed Fallout series is a union we've all been anxiously awaiting. From what we've seen so far Fallout 3 appears to meld Oblivion's open-world freedom with Fallout's atmospheric post-apocalyptic wasteland to create one of the most absorbing and compelling experiences yet. We'll get to see a whole lot more of this intriguing FPS/RPG combo in a couple of weeks at E3 but before that we were lucky enough to sit down with Bethesda's Pete Hines and pick his brains on how the development is progressing.

IGN AU: What did you learn from making Oblivion? What didn't work?

Pete Hines: There's no giant 'we can't ever do that again' stuff. It's more how do we design quests, what kind of choices do we let the player make, how do we account for things we think the player might try and do and anticipate those? So that they're like 'Oh, I wonder what happens when I do this?' And then there's actually something in the game that acknowledges it and takes it into account. And they go 'that's really cool that I got to finish this quest in a really unique way and the game recognised that and gave me a satisfying response.'

In Oblivion the most extreme example is the bandits, who's armour keeps going up and up as you're playing through the game. Suddenly they've got glass armour and amazing weapons. It was an obvious thing that didn't feel right. So we've spent a lot of time on making sure that the player has the ability to go where they want and do what they want, but to also provide them with situations where they're getting in over their head – so they've got to leave and come back. Or they're getting into situations where they're further through the game and their character is really tough and they get in there and they kick ass and feel like a bad ass for a while because they've spent a lot of time buffing up their character.

We've certainly tried to put more stuff on the screen in front of the player to make the world more believable. The dialogue is much more specific to those characters, as opposed to generic lists of things they can talk about. A lot of it is just tweaking and refining stuff that the player won't even notice. Stuff that we're doing behind the scenes to improve the way the game performs. A lot of it is taking those lessons and learning how to apply them better.

You know, Fallout is a very different game [to Oblivion]. You've gone from swords and melee weapons and one ranged weapon to now where you've got lots and lots of ranged weapons. It almost flips the gameplay balance stuff.

IGN AU: Surely a post apocalyptic wasteland is a tough thing to make look sexy. Were the visuals a challenge?

Pete Hines: Absolutely. That level of detail when you're talking about destruction… and you get down to those DC areas where you've got bars sticking out of concrete and you're rendering out everything… or you've got Megaton with all those wires… Those little details are hard to render and pull off well. But you know for us the benefit is that this is our second go around on this hardware.

The last time (except for the last couple of months) we were doing it on hardware that was changing all the time because it was still in development. So to develop on something that's now stable and we know how it works and we know what we can and can't do… And we've learnt a lot of new tricks about how to make things look better, run faster and have more detail on the screen than before and have all of that run at an acceptable frame rate. I think we've just benefited from several more years of working on stable hardware.

And to your point, it definitely was a challenge to do blown-up destruction as opposed to a forest. I mean they're both challenging but I think Fallout 3 has been more challenging for sure, in terms of being able to put all that on the screen.

IGN AU: How do the choices you make about whether you play as a good guy or a bad guy affect the game?

Pete Hines: I don't think there are enormous differences. It's more the choices you make on a quest by quest basis. Whether or not you want to play them as a good guy or a bad guy and what the end result of that choice is. So it's not so much about people not talking to you because you're a bad guy with bad karma, as much as it is about using the karma to keep track and keep score on the kind of character you're playing. We want that reward and that payoff to be more in the choices you make and have it be more immediate. 'I'm playing this quest. I chose this path to try and finish the quest this way and how fun or interesting or rewarding was that experience based on the choices I made.' Or if you're playing as an evil bastard we want you to feel like the quest played out in a really satisfying way for me trying to be an evil bastard…

IGN AU: Tell us a little about how health system being tied to water levels has evolved in Fallout 3.

Pete Hines: It certainly plays off the original games where water was a big focal point - a theme. We've continued on that legacy. Water is a big, important resource in this world. Where you get it and what kind of radiation you take from it and what kind of health you draw from it.

We're playing up this idea that you're in this post apocalyptic world with all this radiation around and how it is affecting you as a player and what sort of impact is it having on you and what you're able to do. It gives you something else to manage and keep an eye on as you move through the world.

IGN AU: On the radiation point, if you're choosing to carry the Fatman gun (a mini nuclear bomb slingshot) and use it heavily, will that add to your radiation level?

Pete Hines: The Fatman itself doesn't but if you go into any of the locations where one of its nukes has gone off then that will give you radiation. So if you shoot an enemy over there and an explosion goes off and you wander into it, then there will be radiation in that area for a period of time that you will take damage from.