Team XBox Interviews Howard

Not Todd Howard

Team XBox interviews Todd Howard:

What are you doing right now, just tweaks and bug fixes?

Todd Howard: Yeah, bug fixes. And making sure because we have the three platforms – 360, PS3 and PC – that, you know, it’s going to be consistent quality across the board. Because we might tweak one thing on one of the platforms, and it has to trickle through the other ones. So that’s kind of the stage we’re in; late play bugs, things like that. Because the game is so big, and there are so many ways to play it – at the end of the day, no matter how much time we put into it, you get it out there to millions of people and if somebody is gonna find something they will, and we’ve just got to keep it to something that is not that embarrassing.

At this point you’re sort of content complete, but you guys are pretty creative. Do you find yourself still having ideas and saying, “oh man, we should do this, but it’s sort of too late.”

Todd Howard: Yeah, we put those right now in our downloadable content stack, because you have to stop at some point to be able to handle the bugs that come up from long term play. So now they go in the stack of “what do we want to do with downloadable content?” Because we’re definitely going to be doing a bunch. And we’d like to put them in meatier packages than just doing a one-off. Like, “here’s a weapon and here’s a new enemy”. We want to put them in themed packages that gives the player four or five hours of something that feels tight.

That Videogame Hands On Fallout 3

Bye bye Megaton

That Videogame Blog also went to PAX and played Fallout 3:

I ran down to the bomb, planted the charge, and turned around to see the town sheriff, Lucas Simms, asking me what I was doing. At first I was afraid that I had been caught red-handed, but surprisingly I was easily able to convince him that I was just wandering around and was just about to leave. I left the settlement, and started hoofing it towards the meeting place, a tower out in the distance. It took a while to make it out there, but looking around and seeing the post-apocalyptic ruins around me was enough to stay occupied. When I finally reached the tower, I met Mr. Burke at the top on a balcony, where I was then instructed to throw a switch to detonate the nuke, and along with it the town of Megaton. I did, and the explosion was like nothing I have ever seen in-game before. After watching the innocents die, and being told my demo was over, I decided to end it in style. I pulled out a bat I had in my inventory and beat Burke to death, then jumped off the balcony with a good five seconds of free fall ending with an instant death, which was no surprise after such a high fall.

After my time with Fallout 3, I can safely say that I am excited to see what Bethesda will deliver this Fall. The open-ended nature of the quests, the post-apocalyptic setting, and the well-implemented battle system all blend well to me, and I hope that will carry on to the retail version. Fallout 3 will be released on October 28 in North America, October 31 in Europe, and December 4 in Japan.

Fallout 3: The Whole Package

From the PAX booth - Picture GayGamer

GayGamer takes a second look at Fallout 3 at PAX:

Entering the expo floor, it wasn’t hard to find the Fallout 3 booth with its neon sign and arrow pointing the way. Once I arrived I was thrilled to see that the Bethesda folks went all out in decorating their booth. A giant 50′s Airstream camper on a lawn of Astro-turf surrounded by a picket fence. One side was clean and shiny, featuring a nuclear family of 50′s mannequins sporting nifty vault suits while the other side had nuclear blasted mannequins covered with dirt and ash. It was quite effective and upon further inquiry, I discovered that the booth was put together by the special effects team that worked on The Hills Have Eyes remake. In my personal opinion, Bethesda won the prize for the best decorated both in all of PAX. Accompanying the booth were also some extremely well crafted promotional materials. Fallout 3, as they say, has the whole package.[...]

My second look at Fallout 3 was invigorating and definitely strengthened my resolve to clear out my gaming calendar before the game comes out. Much like my experience with Oblivion, I can tell I will be completely sucked into the world of Fallout 3 and hopefully you will too.