Todd Howard On Fallout 3 And The Fallout Fans- Updated

From the OXM Podcast page:

Bethesda head honcho Todd Howard returns to the show to share the latest on Fallout 3 — not to mention the fallout of our Fallout 3 cover story among the hardcore fanbase.

You can listen or download the thing here. Spotted at the Bethblog.

Update: A few notes from the podcast, not a transcript mind you:

-”Fans sending death threats” says one of the OXM guys. Another one calls Fallout fans”rabid Right Wing kind of fans”.

-Over 200 endings, since last week. The 12 endings was surpassed sometime ago.

-The game is twice bigger than what they thought in the beginning.

-Always just one humanoid-type companion, and another NPC like Dogmeat.

-Dogmeat can die, but they are working on his health and how you maintain him.

- Dogmeat can be given assignments, and will try to follow them with his Radiant AI.

-Brotherhood of Steel doing their own thing; already in finished state on the game; they are on the verge of extinction, you’ll interact with them a lot more after a determined point in the game.

-The game is finished, but needs a lot more polishing and testing, they are doing many playthroughs; they keep adding stuff, sometimes it takes 100 hours to play, just the main quest takes about 20 hours.

-Absolutely tracking at fall 2008.

- Todd notes “Usually I’m concerned with making sure they understand what the game is and what the game isn’t. I always worry that somebody reads about it and they get excited, whether they’re old Fallout fans or a newer fans of ours. My concern is usually I want them to know as much as they can so that when they go to buy the game they know what they’re getting. (…) The people who bought Oblivion and then said “I didn’t like it, this isn’t what I thought I was getting”, that’s usually what concerns me more (…)
We have a lot more respect for them [Fallout fans] than anybody thinks in terms of they’re very very passionate and we wouldn’t have it in any other way.
I think you have to look at those comments and they’re usually not raging to rage, although that happens sometimes.”

-Todd acknowledges that some of the new screenshots at OXM got positive reactions too, some fans are beginning to understand their take on the wasteland, visually.

-Todd not going to change the game, when people say they don’t like the presentation; but on aesthetics and how things were interpreted by them they go “hey is there something we’re missing or didn’t take into consideration” and deal with it.

Edit: I’m still tweaking these notes, with the help of Brother None and people at the Bethesda Fallout 3 forum.