Four Emilic Pages At Gamasutra

Howard and Pagliarulo/Image Game Golem

Gamasutra brings us four pages of chit chat with Emil Pagliarulo:

In development for four years and subject to the vocal scrutiny of longtime series fans all along the way, Fallout 3 must both live up to Black Isle’s classic 1997 PC RPG Fallout as well as differentiate it from Bethesda’s own classic PC RPG setting, The Elder Scrolls.

The closest area of scrutiny for those expectations is likely the game’s prose, and so for the first time in the studio’s history, it assigned the title of lead writer — a duty Pagliarulo considers parallel to his role as lead designer.

During the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, Pagliarulo sat down with Gamasutra to discuss Fallout 3‘s lengthy development process, which will culminate in an October 28 release for PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3; his challenges in finding the right tone for the game; his thoughts on video game writing; and how his early days at now-defunct Looking Glass Studios were “like a crash course in good game design.”

Spotted at NMA. It’s a bit long but got me interested until the end.

Joystiq Fallout 3 Special

Fallout 3 booth at PAX/Picture Joystiq

Joystiq also played Fallout 3 at PAX, and has an interesting piece to prove it. Here’s a snippet from some quick notes at the end:

On the topic of sex. “We haven’t pushed the limits with sex,” said Pagliarulo. “We found that the whole adult content thing, we knew we’d have crazy over-the-top violence and have kids in the game, and dealing with attacking them.” Pagliarulo cited Mass Effect as a game where it was important to the story. In Fallout 3, he said, he didn’t want to make sex “a joke and cheesy,” much like excessive profanity (a lot was cut out, apparently). “The closest you come to any of that is renting a room and [a woman] sleeps next to you. It’s implication.” That happens for either gender.

There are characters you can infer are gay. “We don’t make a big deal out of it,” he said. “To us, they’re people.”

Here’s an SAT analogy. Computers : Fallout 3 :: Books : Oblivion.

For more, check out our interview with Executive Producer Todd Howard.

Again thanks to Incognito.

No Trophies, No Love For the PS3

Sad PS3 box

Thanks to Incognito I saw at Kotaku that there won’t be PS3 Trophies at launch for Fallout 3:

In an interview with PlayStation Universe, the company’s dashing Vice President of Marketing Pete Hines revealed that trophies won’t be making an appearance in the game…at least not initially.

“Not at launch…It remains to be seen what we do down the road. It wasn’t something we were able to incorporate into the game for launch.”Not all that surprising, considering the company’s documented preference for the Xbox 360.

Morning Pete

Pete Hines

Sidney Morning Herald talks to Pete Hines:

ALTHOUGH the studio might not be a household name, many spouses and partners around the world must curse Bethesda Softworks for robbing them of their loved ones.

As one of the world’s leading specialists in role playing games, Bethesda has been churning out engrossing adventures for more than a decade, including the magnificent Elder Scrolls chapters Morrowind and Oblivion.

But even with such a strong pedigree in producing captivating adventures, many fans of the decade-old Fallout games have been apprehensive about Bethesda’s upcoming third chapter in the series. Bethesda spokesman Pete Hines assures critics that the development team wants the new game to be as special as Fallout fans do.

“The majority of the expectation that we have to live up to is our own,” MrHines says. “This is the next game that we are doing after Oblivion, which clearly did well for us. So there’s a lot of expectations from ourselves, stepping up our game and doing a game of hopefully even better calibre.

Inside Bernstein

Sam Bernstein

From the Bethblog:

Today’s Inside the Vault is about Sam Bernstein, QA tester.

What’s your job at Bethesda?
I’m a tester in the Quality Assurance department, currently working on Fallout 3. I try to break stuff.  Basically, I have the dream job of a 12-year-old, and it makes my inner 12-year-old very, very happy.[...]

What is the best part about working as a tester? The worst part?
Hmm, tough question. I guess the worst part about being a tester is having to replay the same things over and over and over again. It’s not that it stops being fun, it’s that there aren’t any more big surprises. Just a quick word to those who think VATS will get boring after a while, it’s been a little over six months and I still love it.