A new interview with Bethesda guy Ashley Cheung is up at Warcry. It's all about ES: Oblivion, but there is some general talk about consoles that I think will apply to Fallout 3.
However, he also made it clear that the development platform isn't a
primary concern, saying, "Quite frankly, there are larger barriers to
what we can do than just what the development platform is - time and
resources being the biggest. We proved with Morrowind that a deep,
complex RPG can work on a console. Nobody else would even think to try
it - but we did it. And it did very well for us. At the end of the day,
we make the game we want to make and then put it out on as many
platforms as possible."
Marching to the beat of their own drummer has brought no small degree
of success and accolades to Bethesda, and according to Cheng, we can
expect much more of that in the future. "You're going to hear a lot
more about what we've got planned here at Bethesda in the next few
years," he told us. "We are working on groundbreaking stuff internally,
and Oblivion is just the beginning. We are grateful to all the people
out there who buy and play our games, and we hope you stay with us. It
will be worth it - I promise."
I think there can be little doubt that Fallout 3 will be made
for consoles as well as the PC. To what extent that affects the game's
quality is yet to be seen, though I do feel that Morrowind was console
friendly (viewpoint, combat) in a way that Fallout 1 and 2
are not. On the other hand, it's clearly not a question of technology,
as in those terms, all the Fallout games could work fine on a console. Then you have examples of the top-down viewpoint in BG: Dark Alliance, and turn-based combat in the Final Fantasy
games, so I think there's a (slim) chance we'll get our viewpoint and
combat (and no dual systems, please!) despite the console release.
