Telegraphic Preview

SentryBot

Another preview, this time from the Telegraph:

‘Destroyed beauty’ is a term we hear a lot these days, the dark grit and grime a popular choice of art style for a nuclear generation. Fallout 3, however, offers a sense of poignancy to go with the hollowed out buildings, with the leftover remnants of a 1950s civilization preparing for a nuclear disaster in vain. “Part of what makes Fallout great is the juxtaposition of this very happy, optimistic 1950s-esque view of life, pre-war, and then seeing it after things went horribly wrong.” says Bethesda’s Vice President of PR and Marketing, Pete Hines, “It’s seeing those two things against one another that adds a lot to it. That everything is blown up but you still see this happy optimism and idealistic view of the world beforehand”

As I walked among the debris and the civilization that has risen from it in the 200 years since the disaster, it’s easy to see what he means. Signs jovially inform the naïve population what to do in the event of a nuclear disaster and so-called bomb shelters house charred bones, becoming coffins. And while the world may change, humanity, it seems, doesn’t. Among the people I encountered, familiar human traits of greed, violence, discrimination and religious fanaticism loomed large.

So while the political message in Fallout 3 is clear and intelligently defined, it’s still a videogame that allows the player to have fun and play in their own way. “We don’t shy away from being called an RPG.” says Hines, referring to the game’s stat-based core, “But from a certain standpoint it limits what the game is really about, to define it by saying ‘you’re just this genre’ sort of says you can’t ever be more than that. It’s a big sandbox and you get to be whoever you want and do whatever you want.”

However, the initial impression of Fallout 3′s combat did suggest it could even be played as a straight shooter. Allowing casual players to avoid the complex hacking puzzles, long menus with stats, perks and the levelling up that the hardcore will love. That the choice is yours is something Hines is keen to stress: “To be perfectly honest the casual guy will probably try hacking once or twice but if he’s not into it, he’s not ever going to do it again, and he doesn’t have to. You can make a choice in the game, and you can run around and play it like a story-driven shooter if you want. It’s based entirely on the type of character you want to play and what you want to do.”

Videogamer Fallout 3 Day

Megaton doors opening

A pretty detailed and filled with spoilers preview at Videogamer:

We know we’ve played something great, perhaps even something special, when we find ourselves thinking about it when we’re not playing it. When we find ourselves wishing we were playing it while we’re sat on the underground, or browsing the internet, or listening to our editor prattle on about Geometry Wars 2. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does it reminds us of the power video games hold over us, how entrancing the spell they cast really can be. It happened again recently, and the game was Fallout 3.

It seems ridiculous to have to form some kind of informed opinion based on a two hour toe-dip into Bethesda’s stunning post-apocalyptic world, given the gargantuan nature of this sci-fi RPG, but that’s what we’re paid to do, so here goes. Haters be quiet – Fallout 3 is shaping up to one of the best games of 2008, and, fingers crossed, could be one of the best RPGs ever.

Amoral, subversive and pulp. It sounds like we’re describing a particularly bad kind of orange juice, but it’s actually the three words our new previews editor Neon Kelly came up with when we asked him to sum up the Fallout series, a series that a lot of PC gamers still care a great deal about.

You can’t, of course, please everyone, and Bethesda knows this. It also knows that, actually, if it can make a game as good as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, it’ll have done it’s job. From our time with the game, Fallout 3 might even be better than Oblivion.

You may be wondering why we’re comparing Fallout 3 to Oblivion in the first place. It’s because the game could almost be Oblivion 2, or, as some journalists are calling it, Oblivion with guns. What’s certain is that it feels very similar. The trademark vistas, the dialogue system, the camera angle when you talk to NPCs, the instant teleportation to already discovered locations, it’s all there.

Simply saying Fallout 3 is Oblivion with guns doesn’t do Bethesda’s hard work justice. Fallout 3 looks better than Oblivion, even though it’s not finished.[...]

But it’s also a world with a few technical problems. We noticed a degree of texture pop up as we explored the world. The camera sometimes has a fit when in VATS slow motion mode. The third-person perspective we imagine will go largely unused. And at one point we were forced to reboot the game after we got stuck under part of a collapsed bridge – fast travel wouldn’t work because the game thought we were falling. Our hope, and our belief, is that Fallout 3 won’t be let down by any technical issues that might make it into the released code.

And Videogamer continues the coverage with some words from Pete Hines:

“I have no doubts in my mind that, at its core and for everything that it provides that Fallout is a better game than Oblivion was. For sure.”

Bethesda Softworks vice president Pete Hines was unable to confirm if its upcoming post apocalyptic RPG Fallout 3 would feature PS3 Trophy support.

“I don’t know. I can’t tell you for sure whether or not we’ll have them or not,” said Hines.

It’s a different story regarding Xbox 360 Achievements though, with Hines confirming that they are “mostly complete”.

“… we still like to mess with that stuff sometimes in late stages, just in terms of ‘yeah it’s taking a little too long to get this one’, which is why we didn’t want anybody to look at them, because I wouldn’t want you guys putting something out that we then changed and is completely different,” said Hines. “Yeah, they’re largely in there and there’s some really good ones in there… some that I rather enjoy.”

Asked about the PS3 version of the game which wasn’t available to play at the recent preview event, Hines said: “It’s coming along. We’re getting down to the final strokes on all three versions. The goal is to have all three of them be the same game, the same kind of performance on all three platforms.

“That’s the goal, that you can’t tell the difference.”

Spotted at NMA.

Pete Hines Talks To Strategy Informer

Nuclear car is going to explode for sure

He talks a lot this time:

Strategy Informer: Were you not tempted to do a game maybe more mainstream, less RPG, less Oblivion to make it more accessible?

Pete Hines: No, not necessarily, we certainly spent a lot of time on things like combat and how does it feel to be playing the game with the gun in your hand in first person and third person because… You know, let’s be honest, you do spend a lot of time, or at least most people spend a lot of time running around shooting stuff or getting in to combat of some kind, whether its Elder Scrolls or Fallout. So we did want that part of the experience to be very good. I think it’s probably fair to say that we don’t feel compelled to beat people over the head with the letters RPG and to insist that they acknowledge they are playing a role playing game. With Oblivion and with Fallout we like to have it be such that if you are hardcore and you want to get in to power gaming and the numbers and how you’re levelling up, what you’re putting skills in, what perks your picking and really sort of power game that… you totally can and if you want to spend most your time doing dialogue or whatever the hell it is, you can.

At the same time it’s a game that is designed to allow you to do whatever you want, which is, you know, from my standpoint is fairly hardcore because most games don’t. Most games, if they want to treat you like an infant, they’ll just simply tell you what you have to do next and once you do that thing, then they’ll give you the next thing you have to do. I think that’s a much more simple way of playing the game. There are a lot of games that take that and take it to the tenth degree and make it an incredible experience. For us, we’re doing something different, a sandbox game, go wherever you want, do whatever you want and so I think it can be both. I think it can be accessible but still be very open and sort of hardcore in terms of how you’re going to play the game and all the different options you have… How you can finish this quest, how you can talk to this guy. I think you can do both, make it accessible and still be true to what it’s about.

Strategy Informer: Would it be fair to label Fallout 3, “Oblivion with guns”? It seems as if the dialogue seems to be the same, the wide open spaces and there are a lot of similarities.

Pete Hines: Well, from the standpoint of both Fallout and Oblivion are kind of “go wherever you want” kind of games, so certainly from an engine point of standpoint, we designed it to be something where we wanted to give you big vistas and really sort of impress upon you the level of destruction as well all the possibilities. All of these places you can see, you can walk to in real time and go explore.

You know, the dialogue is exactly like the dialogue from Fallout so it may feel similar to Oblivion and I guess in terms of how it’s structured, but it’s sort of exactly the way Fallout presented its dialogue; You know what it is you want to say, how people respond back, trying to do a lot more with the dialogue in terms of choices of how you talk to people, the ability to unlock certain options in dialogue based on having a higher speech skill or having certain attributes that allow you to unlock a certain dialogue option that you usually wouldn’t be able to get, different perks, you know when you levelled up you may have noticed “The Ladykiller” or if you’re playing as a girl, it’s called “Black Widow” where you pick that perk, then talking to certain people you get a dialogue option that you wouldn’t normally have gotten. All of that is very different ad unique to Fallout in terms of giving the player options they wouldn’t normally have gotten because of the type of character they are playing with; you get to say this because of who you are.

To answer your question, I don’t discount that folks are going to call it that, it’s based off the same engine, it’s still doing big epic vistas, but I think Oblivion was a really good game, my only hesitance with that phrase is that it doesn’t take in to account how much effort we put in to making this a very true Fallout experience with characters, dialogue and setting and all that stuff to make it very different and true to what the series is about. I think we’ll certainly get that and I don’t think that’s ever going to go away but I think it probably sells the game a bit short.

Spotted at the BGFO3 forum.

Hines on Picking a Lead Dev Machine and Fallout 4

Some brief comments from Pete Hines to Tech Radar, on several subjects:

“If you have the PC as your lead machine you have the problem of not knowing what configurations people have, how many gigs of RAM or what graphics card they have,” explained Hines.

“Obviously we are more familiar with the Xbox because we are familiar and the other thing is that the Xbox is much easier to take to tech shows”.

“We can just pop the hard-drive off the Xbox and put it on any machine which is an advantage. Taking the PC or PS3 to these things just isn’t convenient.”[...]

If you want to play the Fallout 3 downloadable content you will need to have an Xbox 360 or a PC.”[...]

“We didn’t buy the Fallout franchise to just do Fallout 3 and then stop”.

You can read the rest here.

Gennext Games Interviews Pete Hines

more about “Gennext Games | Games, video’s, scree…“, posted with vodpod

The author of this interview talks a bit more about the experience here, there’s an alternate translation of the original article that came with the video at NMA.

Pete Hines On Making Babies

Jonathan Zungre from Ripten.

A large interview with Pete Hines showed up at Ripten:

Zungre: Well, one thing I noticed when we saw the trailer, which was amazing by the way, hilarious…

Pete Hines: Thanks.

Zungre: …was what the announcer said when he was talking to little Sally. “Hey little Sally, you can find that special someone in the vault” and repopulate the earth and it shows the babies popping out. And she’s all unsettled. But does that play a part in the game? What’s the sexual tone of the game?

Pete Hines: It’s pretty mild, we don’t go overboard. We focused more on the violence and the struggle to survive in this world, as opposed to people trying to make a living as porn stars or whatever. It’s 200 years after the war and the world is not doing well. Humanity is not making a comeback, they’re barely hanging on. So it’s more about survival, as opposed to whackity-schmackity jokey stuff.

Zungre: Okay, so you’re not going overboard with the satirical.

Pete Hines: No that was really more designed to be like, you’re watching it as if it was made pre-war. They make a commercial where they don’t even know, they don’t even realize that that’s not appropriate and the dad and the daughter, you know, exchanging that really uncomfortable glance, as Dad’s thinking about his little girl and her repopulating the planet.

Zungre: Did you have a hand in creating that trailer?

Peter Hines: I did actually. I had this idea and I was talking with Todd and Emil Pagliarulo, who is our lead designer, in his office and I was like, “I want to do our trailer and I want to do a live action thing.” And I talked to the ad firm and they were like, “we love that idea, can you write it up?”

Zungre: Yeah, that’s awesome.

Peter Hines: So I wrote up the whole thing for it and they went and said, “uh, what you proposed would be awesome and it’d cost a bazillion dollars.”

Zungre: (laughs).

Ok then. Curiously there’s a picture of Pete with Brother None from GameBanshee and NMA in there.

Bethsoft Likes E3, Asks for Changes

From TechRadar comes this chat with Pete Hines:

Was E3 a success?

We asked Bethesda’s VP of marketing, Pete Hines (pictured) what he thought of E3 as a whole?

“I’m a firm believer that we need an E3,” Hines told TechRadar, “and I say that having just suffered through it, so I assure you the pain and wounds are still fresh!”

Concept needs tweaking

Does he feel that the show still has plays a valid role in the industry?

“We just can’t have it like this year,” Hines told us.

“It either needs to go back to an improved version of last year, or something closer to what it was but perhaps with some controls and boundaries put on it so the bigger companies aren’t strapped with trying to outdo each other with booths the size of a small city.”

Questions About No Fallout 3 DLC For PS3

Image Pspsps

From Edge-Online:

Analyst Colin Sebastian with Lazard Capital Markets told us on Monday that Microsoft and Bethesda likely came to some sort of financial agreement to leave PS3 DLC out of the equation.

“…I think it’s a very good possibility that Microsoft and Bethesda were partners in this decision. Obviously Microsoft paid up to secure exclusive online content for GTA IV, and online is a cornerstone for Microsoft’s digital media strategy.”

But Bethesda won’t share details of its decision to bring Fallout 3 DLC only to Microsoft platforms.

“…We aren’t going to get into the details of the hows and whys,” said Bethesda marketing boss Pete Hines in an e-mail. “[DLC] will be exclusive for PC and 360. [We're] not going to give any other qualifiers or clarifications as it relates to other platforms.”

Learning From The Past At IGN

A quite extensive interview with Pete Hines at IGN-XBox360:

IGN AU: What did you learn from making Oblivion? What didn’t work?

Pete Hines: There’s no giant ‘we can’t ever do that again’ stuff. It’s more how do we design quests, what kind of choices do we let the player make, how do we account for things we think the player might try and do and anticipate those? So that they’re like ‘Oh, I wonder what happens when I do this?’ And then there’s actually something in the game that acknowledges it and takes it into account. And they go ‘that’s really cool that I got to finish this quest in a really unique way and the game recognised that and gave me a satisfying response.’

In Oblivion the most extreme example is the bandits, who’s armour keeps going up and up as you’re playing through the game. Suddenly they’ve got glass armour and amazing weapons. It was an obvious thing that didn’t feel right. So we’ve spent a lot of time on making sure that the player has the ability to go where they want and do what they want, but to also provide them with situations where they’re getting in over their head – so they’ve got to leave and come back. Or they’re getting into situations where they’re further through the game and their character is really tough and they get in there and they kick ass and feel like a bad ass for a while because they’ve spent a lot of time buffing up their character.

We’ve certainly tried to put more stuff on the screen in front of the player to make the world more believable. The dialogue is much more specific to those characters, as opposed to generic lists of things they can talk about. A lot of it is just tweaking and refining stuff that the player won’t even notice. Stuff that we’re doing behind the scenes to improve the way the game performs. A lot of it is taking those lessons and learning how to apply them better.

You know, Fallout is a very different game [to Oblivion]. You’ve gone from swords and melee weapons and one ranged weapon to now where you’ve got lots and lots of ranged weapons. It almost flips the gameplay balance stuff.[...]

IGN AU: Was it tough balancing the RPG and FPS elements so that both felt right?

Pete Hines: We certainly spent a lot of time on that because we felt that the shooter element, what you’re doing minute-to-minute, has to look good and feel fun. If that’s all you do for ten minutes it has to feel good. There is all this other stuff you can do behind the scenes. It’s not just a shooter. It’s not that limited. But the shooting has to be good. Because 99 per cent of people at some point are going to pick up a gun and start shooting stuff and if it doesn’t feel right and doesn’t look right then we have a big problem. We did spend a lot of time on that because we felt it was important to get it right.

I think from our internal play-testing, and from some folks who’ve been able to play it recently, the feedback is that it feels pretty good. It’s clearly not just a shooter but it holds up well when you’re just running around shooting stuff.[...]

IGN AU: I was intrigued by the custom weapons. The example you gave of the Rock-it Launcher (combination vacuum and a rocket launcher that can suck up and use any object as ammo). Is it possible to use a rock as ammo in the slow-motion VATS shooting mode and watch it cause different animated damage compared to say a bullet?

Pete Hines: I don’t want to spoil everything. But we take lots of things into account. We spent a ton of time on VATS and making sure that it’s fun and unique. There are still a few things for VATS that we’ve not talked about yet that add more layers of fun and coolness to that mode.

IGN AU: You mentioned that your canine side-kick Dogmeat can be killed off. Are there main characters in Fallout 3 you’ve chosen to make invulnerable, as you did in Oblivion, for scripting purposes?

Pete Hines: In very few cases we may have folks who either permanently or momentarily can’t be killed. In Oblivion there were a lot of guys who got flagged because we didn’t want you breaking quests but in Fallout we try and account a lot more for quests being able to continue on without characters being alive. So here’s this quest going on. ‘Now what happens if the players kills this person?’ ‘Oh well, then this happens.’ ‘Well, then, what happens if they kill this person and that person?’ ‘Well, then this happens.’

We do want to make sure you can continue along the main quest and not fundamentally break your game, but we’re able to do that without flagging most folks as essential. This time there’s a much larger number of people who can be killed while you still keep playing your game.

This one is worth a read, it goes into some detail. Spotted at VoodooExtreme.

Fallout 3 Preview PALGN360 Style

It’s time for the PalGN360 Fallout 3 preview:

Interacting with your environment is very important as well. Often you’ll search for water, though it will be contaminated by radiation. So you need to make a choice whether or not to heal yourself and take radiation damage, or go at it until you find another source of healing. At one stage, a radio signal was picked up about a man sheltering his family and asking for assistance. Upon discovery of their location, it was actually found that they’ve been dead for a long time, but left a lot of items for you to collect. It’s this part of Fallout 3, the numerous choices behind what you’ll be able to do that drive the game.

A point of contention in Fallout 3 is change in perspective. The game is now played from either first or third person. From the above mentioned gameplay features, the perspective fits in very well, though the one issue that remains relates to combat. Relying on playing like a first person shooter isn’t bad, though just like Bioshock, the combat doesn’t excel as much as the other aspects in the game. However, there are some great additions. In particular, the fact that you’ll have to be on the ball as weapons wear-and-tear, you’ll get to build custom weapons and pick-up and play with whatever you find.[...]

With the development team behind Fallout 3, it’s hard to envisage the game being anything other then great. The question then becomes, just how great? Fans of the original may still have their knickers in a knot over some aspects, but from what we’ve seen, the developers are doing their utmost to make the game faithful. A few minor issues concern us, but in the midst of all the exploration and depth that will likely be on offer, we’re quite happy to let some of them slide. And though a massive amount of content is promised, we’re informed that you’ll only need to dedicate around 25 hours to the actual story, so you’ve got the best of both options.

Thanks anonymous at Meebo.

Fallout 3 Greek Style

No Mutants Allowed is reporting that there’s a Fallout 3 preview at Greek magazine PCMaster, and Flamescreen provided us with a translation:

Q: Can you estimate total playing time including sub-quests?
Hines: At this point to fully complete the game you’d need to spend over 100 hours.

Q: Do you intend to create a Fallout 3 that will be…mod-friendly? In other words provide people with the toolset to experiment on?
Hines: We have not yet decided on this. Right now, we have not announced any plans for the tools issue. It takes time to perfect a toolset in order for it to be usable by players and so far we didn’t have time, working on the game itself.

Q: There is a sensitive issue attracting the attention of many; the presence(or absence)of children as NPC’s. The impact on game’s rating is a given(especially if the player will be able to chop kiddies in half through critical hits). How are you handling that?
Hines: There are, in fact, children in the game. How we’ll handle them on game is a matter we haven’t concluded on yet.

Q: Can you name the various guilds and factions of the game? Will they work like the ones in Oblivion?
Hines: There are many groups and factions that you shall meet in your way…Super Mutants, Slavers, Brotherhood of Steel, enclave and others. These are groups you shall meet and will have to make choices on how you will interact with – but htey’re not factions that you can join and increase your rank.

Q: We’re curious regarding how stats work during a first person battle. For instance if the player is, say, half a meter away of the target and shoots, will it be possible to miss for some mysterious reason, just for having low stats?
Hines: Your stats and weapon you use, will definitely affect your efficiency during battles.
How often you hit your target, damage done, all that stuff has to be affected up to a point by the character you made.The factor of that influence is something we’re very concerned about at this phase. We’re playing the game ourselves and watch what seems to have the best, most “normal” feeling.

In a possible scenario you’re referring to, well, you’d hit the target most times, but you wouldn’t damage them so much. The goal is the numbers to have a meaning in a way that seems logical to the player.

This is only from the interview with pete Hines, there’s more at NMA.

GameSpot Video: GameSpot AU presents Crosshairs 26 June 2008

more about “GameSpot Video: GameSpot AU presents …“, posted with vodpod

Fallout 3 section begins at minute 11. They call the game a first person shooter and “Oblivion with Guns”, and there’s an interview with Pete Hines.
Thanks Newman on the Bethsoft Fallout 3 forum.

NZ GamePlanet Fallout 3 Feature

From New Zealand comes the Gameplanet Fallout 3 preview, with nothing really new, but a with an effort into detailing more thoroughly what they saw, so it’s worth a look:

Initially, this preview event had been organised to bring a large number of Australian and New Zealand media representatives in on the game, and to show some footage that had previously been provided to games distributors a few months back. Imagine our surprise when we discovered there would be an additional half an hour or so of previously unseen gameplay included! As there was no filming or picture taking permitted behind closed doors, I’ll do my best to describe what we were shown.[...]

Just an aside – your father at one point shows you a bible passage set in a picture frame that your mother claimed as her favourite. It’s from revelations, and it’s worth repeating here: “And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is a thirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.” Prophetic indeed, and a glimpse at Bethesda’s attempt to link casual first-time gamers with the lore of the Fallout series.

Once you’ve completed “Baby Steps”, you are again pushed forward in time to your tenth birthday party – an event significant not only for the first shown interaction with other NPC’s within the vault, but also the acquisition of your “Pip Boy 3000″, which is provided to you by the vault overseer. You also meet the vault bully, who is discussing with other children the possibility of forming a gang called the Tunnel Snakes, and you need to make a decision as to whether you should allow him to take some confectionery provided to you by Old Lady Palmer as a birthday present.[...]

A point about the statistics here – although you may be able to choose a certain dialogue option or end result, thus shaping your character, the outcome is also driven by your attributes and skill level. For example, conversing with someone may prompt three possible dialogue options. Next to these may appear a percentage chance to succeed, so perhaps you’d like to convince someone to give you an object – your level of persuasion might only grant you a 25% chance of success, so you may find it better to choose a different option with a higher percentage. This allows your progression to be shaped on the fly through chance as well as choice.[...]

We’ve seen terminal hacking as a mini game in BioShock, and just like that title, hacking in Fallout 3 seemed a little basic. Essentially if you’ve played the old classic Mastermind you’ll understand – you are presented with a table of words interspersed with random characters, and you need to type in whichever word on the list you think the password is. You have five attempts, and each failed attempt will tell you how many of the letters are in the right place. After the fifth failed attempt, you are locked out of the console and can only bypass it with a key, which must be found somewhere within the vault. This forms the basis of another mission, but it is necessary as without the ability to leave Vault 101 it’d be a short game.[...]

The next saved game consists of a battle waged in the central Washington D.C. area between the Mutants and the Brotherhood of Steel. It’s here we were introduced to the perception ability – on your HUD compass you will see a flashing red icon whenever enemies are around you. The higher your perception, the sooner this will occur. During an action scene we managed to kill several mutants, and due to this we were permitted to tag along with the Brotherhood faction to clean out some more. We picked up a weapon to replace our ageing Chinese Military Rifle from a fallen comrade – the Laser Gun – and spent some time blowing limbs from hapless zombies that strayed too close to our position.

There’s also an interview with Pete Hines in there. Thanks anonymous through Meebo.

GameArena Fallout 3 Preview

Just saw this at NMA, there’s a new Fallout 3 preview at GameArena:

Set in Washington – the other side of the country to Fallout and Fallout 2 – there are many familiar landmarks, even to people who haven’t been in the country. The build Pete brought with him showed off a destroyed version of the Washington Monument while what’s left of the Capitol building loomed on the horizon.

Details like those are really going to sell the game to players. Even places that aren’t necessarily landmarks are carefully thought out to reinforce you are living in a post apocalyptic nuclear wasteland. Drinking water gives you health back, but also irradiates you. The monsters in the game – mutants and ghouls – are deformed messes with one focus. Your demise.

The V.A.T.S. system tying the first person shooter style to the original Fallout feel looks like it might break the game, but Hines insisted thorough playtesting wouldn’t let that happen. The camera system which accompanies V.A.T.S. is fantastic regardless – each shot cues a cinematic camera angle change which really reinforces the impact of that bullet/rocket/nuke you just shot.

While the isometric view, groin shots and car are all gone (plus probably quite a few other things we didn’t get to see) what’s important in Fallout 3 is the feeling. Even in the build we saw – with it’s messed up lighting, hilarious voice-acting and occasionally buggy AI – Fallout 3 felt right. The worst thing about watching Fallout 3 in action? Having to wait for the game to hit later this year. Looks like I’m reinstalling Fallout 2 again.

Listen to Hines

Interview with Pete Hines at Game Reactor.

Spotted at NMA.

Impromptu

After the announcement of the Survival Edition a few doubts were in many peoples minds, so Pete Hines answered to a few questions on the BethBlog:

Marc: Hey! We Europeans want this survival edition too! Why cant we pre-order it through Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk even.

Pete: I don’t know that you can’t order it from there. I’m not sure how Amazon works from another country, whether you can trick/force it to let you see the .com version, how that works. You definitely would want the PC version if you can make it work so you don’t have PAL/NTSC issues.

Rivithed: is the clock battery powered or outlet powered?

Killzig: Does the clock have any alarm/radio function built in?

Pete: It’s battery powered. I need to get some pics up of the production piece because I think folks think it’s a clock.

It’s not a clock. It’s a Pip-Boy. It looks like it would go on a wrist/arm. It has a hinge and opens up. It’s built to mirror the one in the game, exactly.

However, the box will say on it “Do not wear this.” And you should never do that. It would be terrible to walk around with one on your arm.

Killzig: Also doesn’t help that amazon calls it a “Pip-boy 3000 digital clock”.

Pete: It’s a Pip-Boy first and foremost. We just wanted it to do something, so we built it some functionality so while it’s sitting in your desk, or your room, it does something.

Killzig: And that something is ‘it tells time’ ?

Pete: Yes killzig. We didn’t want it to just be an cool replica of something from the game, we wanted it to serve a function as well, so that’s what we came up with.

Working on a pic for it now.

For scale purposes, if it were to put it on your arm — which we strongly advise against — it’d take up a good bit of your forearm.

Killzig: So no radio/alarm like the pipboy?

Pete: We aren’t done with the functionality yet, so I can’t tell you one way or the other.

Just added two photos Mike took of the production sample we have here in the office.

We know what it is, and isn’t, and legally are confined on how we can describe it and how it can be used. That’s all I can tell you.

This is an edited version, you can read everything here. Killzig is the next gen Tim Russert.

Update on the 13th of June: Tim Russert passed away today. A great interviewer, a real shame.

New Video Interview with Pete Hines

And another video interview with Pete Hines, this time from Gry-Online/TVGry.pl.

Besides the announcement of gameplay footage shown to the public around E3 and Leipzig there’s a lot more there, highly recommended, and it’s all in English with Polish subtitles.

Thanks Ulyssaeir.