Fall Ahead

The new Fallout looks a lot like the old Oblivion, but how does it play?
8/1/2008 5:11 PM | 3 Comments | Page 4 of 5

Crispy Gamer: Do these choices have any real consequences, though? Like if you play as a dick the whole time, will certain areas be closed off to you, but if you're nice, then you get to sleep with the blue alien lady?

Hines: To some extent that may happen, but it's mostly about what happens in each specific instance.

Crispy Gamer: Speaking of which, will your game have any PG-13 love scenes that Fox News can misconstrue as XXX?

Hines: No, not interested.

Crispy Gamer: One thing you are bringing back from a previous games is your faithful pooch Dogmeat.

Hines: Yeah, we liked the idea of Dogmeat in the original games, and the whole "A Boy and His Dog" thing. You and your mutt, wandering the wasteland, trying to survive.

Crispy Gamer: How much control do you have over Dogmeat? Can he do any tricks?

Hines: He can go find things for you, like weapons and food. He'll help you fight in combat if you let him. He's a faithful companion to you to the end. Provided you don't get him killed, that is.

Crispy Gamer: Does the game have any co-op options?

Hines: It's a single-player game only. It's about you and what you're going to do to survive in this post-nuclear wasteland.

Crispy Gamer: So what do you think Fallout 3 does better than Oblivion?

Hines: Guns. Much better in Fallout 3.

Crispy Gamer: And what, if anything, do you think Oblivion does better than Fallout 3?

Hines: They're really very different games. We'll let folks like you guys debate the merits of those things. We're just trying to make the best game we can every time out.

Crispy Gamer: One of the things people loved about Oblivion were the graphics. How do you think Fallout 3 compares to Oblivion, visually?

Hines: We probably draw twice as many things on the screen on Fallout 3 than we did on Oblivion. The amount of detail we've added is pretty substantial. Obviously they're very different visually: One was a very bright, colorful fantasy world and one is a dark, destroyed post-nuclear world, but I think both are very impactful in their own way.

Crispy Gamer: Do you think Fallout 3 might look better than Oblivion, in part anyway, because it's easier to do realistic ruined buildings and garbage piles than it is to do realistic-looking trees and other living things?

Hines: Well, given that we had the benefit of making Oblivion and all the tricks we learned along the way to do things better in Fallout 3, it's probably not a fair comparison.

Crispy Gamer: There are times when the art direction of Fallout 3 reminds me a lot of the art direction in BioShock, especially in the iconography and mechanical designs. Timing-wise, when did you start to finalize the look of the game in relation to when images from BioShock first appeared?

Hines: We've been working on Fallout 3 since 2004. I'm pretty sure we were fairly far along doing our own thing before we saw anything on BioShock, but I honestly don't know. We had reams of Fallout stuff to look at for reference, so we really didn't need to look at anybody else's game for what Fallout 3 needed to be.