An evening with Todd Howard about Fallout 3

Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2005 12:32 pm

[ Game -> Interview ] - More info on Person: Todd Howard | More info on Company: Bethesda Softworks | More info on Game: Fallout 3

Our interview with Todd Howard of Bethesda Softworks.

Fallout fans have wanted a sequel to their favourite game ever since Fallout 2 (FO2) was released in 1998. While Fallout 2 wasn't considered a great sequel to Fallout, it was pretty darned good. Monty Python, Silence of the Lambs and blatant Terminator references aside, it offered all the goodness of the original Fallout, except that is, for a well put together ending. While fans clamored for another sequel along the lines of the original, Interplay had other ideas.

If you want to read the actual interview, you'll just have to follow the link.

Read: An evening with Todd Howard about Fallout 3

Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2005 11:37 pm

Yeah, and this is exactly why I didn't like Fallout 2 as much as Fallout.

If you killed the villagers at the start of Fallout 2, your game ended. Basically, you *had* to get them a GECK, whether you wanted that to be your goal in life or not. I hated the villagers and the whole idea that I was living with them made me sick. I just wanted to go out and explore the world, and see where fate would take me until my death. But Fallout 2 simply ended by killing the villagers, even if I didn't die.

Fortunately, the game shaped up after that, but it was a terrible first-impression. It would have helped if they hadn't pushed so hard for a laugh in Fallout 2. It felt very pre-fabricated and trite. It simply lacked the class of Fallout 1, so I'm glad to hear Bethesda is basing their choices primarily on the first game. :)

Posted: Sat Feb 05, 2005 12:20 am

Friggi'n Great Interview!! You asked all the right questions! . ::thumbs-up::
It seems that the people at Bethesda know what they have. (license to greatest RPG)

I hope they can do it justice. I really do...

Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2005 8:49 pm

good interview, congrats Mr. T.

I hope Bethesda can make up for all those years of IPLY shit icon_censored

Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2005 9:12 pm

Well, Gamelore, the game also ended in Fallout 1 if you didn't get the water chip, wheter it was your "life goal" or not.

Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2005 11:09 pm

Good point. But the only difference I see is it ending instantly vs ending after a time limit. As a compromise, I would like to have been able to kill all of the villagers *and* get the GECK (presumably for my own personal benefit in that case), even though it would have made no sense at that point. At least it would have let the game continue. They probably eliminated that option because it would require more CG sequences w/o the disgusting hag.

In Fallout 1, I rather enjoyed the goal and timelimit. In Fallout 2, it felt like a burden because I didn't like the villagers in the first place. No single NPC death should prevent the game from reaching a success goal. Allow for the case where the NPC dies also, trying to minimize the difference between the consequences (to save on coding). In the worst case, you will have the game the way you intended, without the NPC dying, and also give the handful of people who just plain didn't like the NPC the ability to continue without ending it for them. In the best case, you can simply end the game SUCCESSFULLY after that NPC dies, credits and all, and a page of text describing what happened to you after the incident, rather than presenting them with a "failure ending".

And if you really don't want them to die, make game-related reasons that that person can't die, like putting them in a bubble, behind a wall, communicate by radio. But allow for their death at every point where you come in contact with them.

Posted: Mon Feb 07, 2005 5:35 pm

Wow. This is the first good news I've heard in a long time. There's nothing I like better in a game than the retro-future technology from Fallout and Fallout 2. In fact, I just used my thyroid cancer as an excuse to buy an old-school geiger counter.

That said, I sure wish Troika got it. I thought their approach to Arcanum was the kind of nifty world-work a new Fallout would need. And it was really non-linear (at least by my standards) which was nice. I'll take retro-future over Steampunk, but they're both fun and I don't see enough of either.

The good news is we have something to look forward to in 2006.

Posted: Mon Feb 07, 2005 7:20 pm

Possibly, but perhaps not for all of us, and perhaps not regarding Fallout 3. My words are not your words. icon_drunk

Posted: Mon Feb 07, 2005 8:47 pm

Actually, Gamelore, I think that if you start butchering people at Vault13 the game will end, very Fallout2-esquÃƒÂ© (or something). At least I think that happened when I tried to kill the Overseer, in which I failed, so I started running, went to the elevators and when I tried to run to the exit grid on the cave, the game kinda just ended, in a way - you know.

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 4:40 am

I have faith in Bethesda. They have the resources to make the game something great, and the will to make it Fallout.

They know our position and what we've gone through, and they are also fans of the series. I don't think you can really get much better off than that.

[rant]
Thank god that Fallout didn't end up like Tribes did: in the hands of a publisher, and not a developing house. Yeah, Tribes: Vengeance is a great game, and Irrational Games did their damndest to make it Tribes, but because the developer isn't the owner of the license, they are insanely limited in everything that they can or cannot do, especially when it comes to supporting the community.
[/rant]

I'm looking forward to what Bethesda has in store for us.

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 10:38 am

Isn't that a bit of a lie? You can still play if you kill a main character. And morrowind was pretty non-linear. omg fallout 2 was so linear you had to do the temple of trials and then talk to the village elder wtf

I think the interviewer was way too aggressive and it seemed a bit unproffesional.

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:50 am

I for one believe that Bethesda CAN do interesting dialogue. It's just that they do not CHOOSE to in the Elder Scrolls RPG's because of the scale they want to maintain. And I hated it, every NPC in Morrowind is about as generic as they come and I got really bored. I would truly have loved it if they'd switch their focus from scale to depth in Oblivion, but that seems sadly not to be the case. Every RPG since Elder Scrolls 1 had its focus on scale. In some interview with Bethesda they stated that players were getting bored in Morrowind and that wasn't a good thing so they created an "arrow" to point to the next quest or point of interest. But I think the developers weer missing the point. I don't think players were bored because they lacked an arrow pointing to the next boring generic NPC, but because the actual NPC him/herself was BORING! AND GENERIC! So now you have an arrow pointing to the next guy that randomly wants you to fed ex something. Big deal! Despite some quests being different and even inventive, the questgiver was still only capable of "I am generic NPC. Do this for me. I give money." WHY are we doing this? Is there some REASON for me to go bash the monsters other than to get xp and money in order to raise stats and get more badass weapons to bash more monsters and get more xp to continue the cycle? No, at least not anything more substantial than "because I am greedy" or "because I want it" or "for the good of the guild".

I absolutely love the Elder Scrolls universe. Bethesda has gone through so much pain detailing the universe, its sociology, politics, language, and EVERYTHING. I mean there were just so many books and books in Morrowind (although I think the time would have been better spent if the books were about something that's actually in the gameworld and part of the plot than only about background politics and random stories intended only to raise stats). But because of the utter shallowness of the universe, done just to make space for the scope, it will forever only ever be a DEAD universe. Oblivion will be nothing more than Morrowind with uber pixel shaders.

I truly hope the same fate does not fall on Fallout3. But juding from the interview, I don't think so. I did say I believed Bethesda CAN do interesting dialogue. Does anyone remember Redguard?

Also set in the Tamril, Redguard was NOT an RPG. The marketing term was "action adventure". Now for those who have played it, ignore the unbelievably sh*t sh*t sh*t sh*t sh*t controls (spawned from the infernal popularity of Tomb Raider I believe - bleh!); crap and annoying as hell combat; hair-tearing pixel-perfect jumps on giant mushrooms; and pretty much the entire "action" part of the "action adventure", and you've got a really good adventure game. The dialogues, despite being topic-based, were nothing like the "wikipedia" blurbs of text in Morrowind. They were detailed and the characters, their situations and their subplots were really interesting. The half of the game I played (before I burnt the damn thing out of pure annoyance of the accursed controls and combat) was truly good (minus the "action" bits). If Bethesda were to really WANT TO create a live, breathing, believable world instead of just a huge one for Fallout 3, I do believe they can do it. It is just a matter of them choosing to, and I think they have.

As for the viewpoint, I think doing it first-person would be great. I personally didn't enjoy the turn-based combat of Fallout series (the ONLY thing I didn't enjoy). If you look at Vampire (though I think the interface was too simplistic in that case, it was more like one for a rather meaty FPS like Deus Ex than one for an RPG. I guess it's Source - sigh), or Morrowind, I really do think a first person perspective is great for an RPG. It allows MUCH greater detail to the gameworld (just look at the amount of random stuff - bottles and plants etc - that lay around in Morrowind) than ANY other perspective. And it is one normally wasted on FPS's where you really don't give two sh*ts about the great facial animation engine when a grunt is trying to shove a rocket up your ass. But for an RPG or adventure you can really stop to gawk down from a canopy, listening to the birds sing (RealMyst), or watch the sun set over a beautifully pixel-shaded ocean then search the skies for your star sign (Morrowind). OK, I won't get overly romantic here, though I think I have icon_wink

The only problem with the viewpoint is when developers bog the game down to nothing but Serious Sam style mow-'em-downs. It seems that people can't use the words First Person without adding Shooter to the end of it, and I really think that's a widely believed misconception. Just look at the largely underrated RealMyst: a beautiful world created only in realtime 3D first person, and not a gun in sight.

It just seems that adventure gamers are used to point-and-click, RPGers are used to isometric, and pimple faced joystick jockeys are used to first/third person views and Lara-styled boobies. There are certain situations in each genre where one viewpoint would be more viable, but not exclusively so, which many people seem to believe. When adventure games switched from parser to mouse based, everyone complained. But in the end it turned out that it was only because they were USED TO typing commands, not because of the inferiority of the mouse. I believe a first person perspective is as viable if not more than an isometric one in an RPG where there is only one PC. It's just a matter of people getting used to it.

eXpiation

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 12:04 pm

sum your post up in three words please

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 2:35 pm

He basically wants to marry Morrowind, and wants Fallout 3 to either be a first person shooter, or a Tomb Raider clone.

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 3:26 pm

That's twenty-two words!

Morrowind: Lara Croft

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 3:35 pm

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 9:51 pm

Err... No! That was pretty much the exact opposite of anything my post could have meant

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 9:54 pm

Yeah..i'll be honest.

I didn't read your whole post. I just caught a few key words and drew my own conclusions. icon_drunk

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 10:21 pm

His real point in three words:

No "html"... dialogue!

Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 10:23 pm

Who gives a fucking shit? We all know bethesda's gonna royally rape the fallout franchise to the grave.

P.S. exPitation, learn to fucking edit down your posts. There too fucking hard to read, especially when stoned.