Fallout 3:Pete Hines At IGN

From IGN:

After an extended stint in the vault, Bethesda’s highly anticipated Fallout 3 has finally begun to emerge into the public eye, and early impressions suggest it’s set to be one of the year’s best titles. We recently caught up with the developer’s Vice President of Public Relations Pete Hines to talk Dogmeat, morality and those 500 endings.

IGN: Has it been a challenge developing across three different formats and working towards a simultaneous release?

Pete Hines: It’s never easy, as any developer will tell you, and you’d always prefer to just make it for one, so you’re aiming for one thing, but this is our second time around on all these platforms, so we’ve learnt a lot already from doing one big sandbox game on 360, PS3 and PC, and we’re able to use a lot of those learnings and that tech for the next generation of stuff we want to do. It’s gone pretty well, and we’re pretty confident we’re going to have three versions that are all on parity in terms of performance, and certainly from a content standpoint and gameplay standpoint it’ll be exactly the same.

IGN: Fallout’s got a massive following and quite a vocal community. Have you at any point consulted the fan-base to see what they want from a Fallout game?

Pete Hines: Back when we first announced we were doing it in 2004, there was tons of feedback with people saying here’s what we want and here’s what we don’t want. We’re not really into consulting, in that we’ve got 75 people who spend all day every day working on this game, so we look for information and feedback for the kinds of things the fans are looking for, and feedback from the last game that we made. Even though it’s an Elder Scroll game, we’ve looked at the things they liked or didn’t like from that, and we have our own opinions about what we liked and didn’t like, and look at what things may be applicable to Fallout. Whether its how fast travel works, or for example how we’ve changed the way leveling works, so it’s very different from Oblivion.

IGN: You’ve said previously that Fallout 3 will have 500 different endings.

Pete Hines: Somewhere around that.

IGN: How’s that going to work? Is it going to be permutations of different elements?

Pete Hines: It’ll be like in the original games, where the ending that you got was a compilation of different things that you would have done along the way, main quest related or not main quest related, you piece it all together so it’s custom tailored to what you did. We want player choice to be meaningful, so anything that you get will be based upon what you chose to do – did you save this town, did you blow it up – and taking what you did and retelling it back to you so that it’s meaningful to you as opposed to having one generic ending.

There’s a lot more to read.

Fallout 3 at Strategy Informer

From Strategy Informer:

It’s been a long time coming, but the sequel to legendary PC RPG series is almost upon us. Strategy Informer was invited to see the latest version of the forthcoming game and have a chat with Bethesda’s Vice President of PR and Marketing, Pete Hines, about post-apocalyptic worlds, overzealous fanboys and keeping distraught developers away from sharp objects.

Er ok… well Pete Hines answers a lot of questions:

SI:[…]To say it is eagerly anticipated is quite an understatement, but do the ultra-high expectations worry Bethesda?

Pete Hines – “Oh no, not at all! I’d be disappointed if it was anything less. I think they should expect as good a Fallout game as is possible, given how long they’ve waited, and people who are fans of Bethesda should certainly expect that we’ve put every ounce of energy and creativity into making something that is worthwhile.”

SI:[…]does Fallout 3 still offer a non-violent choice to the player?

Pete Hines – “That is certainly our goal, to mirror all of those original experiences – well, the positive ones. Things like, giving the player plenty of opportunity to avoid combat as a viable option.”

SI:[…]One of the few problems with Oblivion was the repetition within the various caves and ruins found around the map. Clearly, this was because of the sheer size of the game – there had to be a cutback somewhere – but does Fallout 3 have the same issue?

Pete Hines – “Yeah, sometimes it got pretty monotonous. I think that is one of the reasons why we don’t mind scaling things down a little bit in terms of size and scope. If you’ve got fewer dungeons, you can put much more polish on them and make them more distinct and different. For an extreme example, if you had 1000 compared to one, the one would be immensely detailed, whereas with the 1000 you’d have to get a bit generic. The same is true with almost every part of the game – characters, locations and events – all of them get much better and more memorable when you have fewer of them to manage. I think the variety is a bit better, as you’ve got buildings, underground parts, above ground quasi-dungeons… There is a much better mix, so hopefully folks will find it to be more appealing and more exciting than Oblivion.”

SI:[…]With videogame violence back on the radar once again, I asked Pete if he had any worries about the censors.

Pete Hines – “Ultimately, it’s going to be up to the players to decide whether or not they were torn between two choice or whether it was a simple A or B. Games have changed a lot in the last ten years and stuff that was edgy and out of the norm now seems fairly tame. In GTA, you can curbstomp hookers and kill cops – that wasn’t the norm back then! Now, you don’t even blink at it, look at the God of War sex game, for instance. The environment has changed but I certainly hope that making the morale choices and having to live with the consequences, sometimes even being surprised by the consequences, is something that we’ve captured. As long as there is context, unlike some of the games we recently heard were getting in trouble where all you do is go around and be violent, we’ll be okay. It is certainly something we are aware of but I don’t think [Fallout 3] is anywhere out of the norm than many other games that came out over here without any trouble.”

SI:[…]In closing, I asked Pete what they wanted to get out of the release of Fallout 3.

Pete Hines – “I’d like to see two things. I’d like to see people who played the original Fallout and say “That is exactly what I wanted from a new Fallout game” or maybe be so bold to hope that folks will think it was even better than what they expected. We want fans who loved that series to find a game that is true to what they remembered. We also want bring a bunch of new fans to this series – maybe people who weren’t old enough or weren’t into it ten years ago that now have a chance to experience this really great world that Tim Cain and all those other guys created and hopefully have a great time playing our game.”

There’s a lot more there to read.

DAC Is Back

DAC is back:

Awesome. For those of you who missed it, DAC was hacked on the 19th of April via a known vulnerability in the Coppermine Gallery which we used. The update to fix the vulnerability was released on the 12th of April with a further update on the 16th. Given there’s no way in hell I’ll ever be able to update the gallery that fast, I’ve taken it offline until I find an alternative.

You might also note a bunch of missing stuff as well. For starters, that “level” forum crap is gone and it won’t be coming back. Also gone is Teatime’s website… Which I’ll have to fix.

I’m not sure what else is missing but if it’s not there and it’s meant to be, let me know and I’ll dig it out of the compromised backup, check that it’s okay and upload it again.

I also recommend that if you’re security conscious, you change your password. There is the possibility that hackers gained access to the database which contains all your encrypted passwords. If they decrypt them (which is difficult but not impossible), they’d like, be able to log in as you and post stuff. It’s more of an issue if you use that password somewhere else though, like your gmail account or something or if you’re an administrator.

Thanks For Your Time Folks

Thanks for the visits, keep that feedback coming please.