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 1 of 5

It is easily one of the most anticipated games of the year. But there's no denying that the anticipation for Bethesda's post-apocalyptic action-adventure game Fallout 3 has as much to do with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the 2006 action/adventure fantasy game Bethesda made before Fallout 3, as it does to do with the original Fallout and Fallout 2 (which Bethesda didn't make, Black Isle Studios did). Especially since Bethesda's changed the aerial perspective of the original Fallout games to a ground-level choice between first- and third-person that's similar to The Elder Scrolls games. But is Fallout 3 just Oblivion with nuked mutants? We spoke to Pete Hines, the game's project manager and Bethesda's VP of PR and marketing, to get the low-down on what we can anticipate when the game is released on Oct. 7.

Crispy Gamer: For those unfamiliar with the series, what are the Fallout games and how does Fallout 3 fit into with the series?

Pete Hines: Fallout is a role-playing series set after a nuclear war between the United States and China in 2077. But the world of Fallout is different from ours in that the time splits off after World War II and the future they realized was the "tomorrowland" they pictured back then: everyone happy, smiling, driving nuclear-powered cars, robots for maids, etc. Then it all gets blown up in a nuclear war, and that's the world you enter and experience in Fallout. The first two games in the series were set on the West Coast.Fallout 3 is set on the East Coast.

Crispy Gamer: Now you guys didn't make the first two. But before you started working on this game, did you go back and play the first two again?

Hines: Many of us had played the games originally, but we did go back and play them again. We also went through all the source and reference materials we had from those games. Lore and canon are very important to us, and we wanted to be sure we fully understood the things that were in place before we started working on what we were going to do. The first two games, particularly the first one, were notable because they did things, for that day and age, that nobody else was doing and they had so many things going for them. We drew from and wanted to preserve a lot of aspects of the original games in Fallout 3.

Crispy Gamer: How does the story in Fallout 3 connect to the one in Fallout 2?

Hines: It doesn't directly connect to the story in Fallout 2. It's part of the some overall storyline, but we wanted to take a look at what was going on in the nation's capital. Who's in charge? Is anybody trying to get the country going again? That kind of thing.

Crispy Gamer: What are some of the post-apocalyptic novels, movies and other things that influenced the story?

Hines: All of them. Literally, every post-apoc thing out there affected the game in some way. Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" is certainly one to which I'd refer folks if they haven't read it. An amazing book from a great author.