Very large Fallout 3 article at Kikizo, a few tidbits:
“The thought of doing anything with Van Buren was never even considered. We’re not going to pick up something someone else started and try to make something out of it. We got it because we wanted to make Fallout 3 and so we’re going to start from what we know and what we do,” says Hines.
“We were going to make the game we wanted to make,” he says. Our first few minutes with the game leave us in no doubt of that.[…]
“When you have these situations, you can decide how you’re going to work your way through in dialogue,” Hines says. “It’s almost like a little minigame. How do you want to respond, what are people going to do as a result of what you say?”[…]
You can play the entire game in first- or third-person, and Bethesda has put extra effort into making both play well. “Much more finely tuned and playable than what we did for Oblivion,” says Hines. It’s also here where we get a first real look at what playing this RPG as a shooter would be like. So far, we’re not convinced.
Let us preface these comments by saying that we didn’t actually play the game ourselves. But watching Hines play, we got the impression that the shooter system is still very loose. It doesn’t seem to flow as well as you would expect a dedicated shooter to and enemies don’t seem to show any outward signs of being damaged by repeated gunfire before they finally fall into a pile on the ground. In one scene Hines fires a chain gun at an enemy who fires back but is otherwise unperturbed until he drop dead.[…]
A larger question is which is the best way to play Fallout 3, and it’s here that the definite answers end. The short response is that this is a game that has been built with many kinds of players in mind. Hines elaborates: “Nobody said you had to do quests or nobody said you have to do the main quest. Just do what you feel like doing. And the idea is, because it’s a game that involves shooting, it really needs to play like a shooter. The combat needs to be on par with a good shooter.”
Fallout 3: A Post Nuclear Blog 
Fuck it, more and more he talks, more and more I feel this isn’t Fallout anymore. I would be more than glad to help with a fandriven project that would aim to accomplish something in the vein of Fallout 2 – which I prefer to Fallout 1.
droveri
its not fallout, if you recall he hype around Bioshock and then near the end the change of hype from a FPS RPG to a non rpg thingy…lets face it everything thats FO has been removed,it has the setting and some CP/IP names but its not FO, FO is FO and they changed FO thus this is not FO this is FO 3..like DOOM 3 only better I hope becuse DOOM 3 sucked….nothing like having a game choking on its own mediocrity then being bum raped by “cinemagic” ……
For me and most FO fans this not FO it could be a reasonable facsimile but I doubt it simply because modern gaming has to many masters to serve other than the gamers and the game itself.
Let me throw out a game mechanic thought while I am ranting look at call of juarez and its quick draw system look at KOTOR and the pause command system, now Look at FO, I always thought you could have a FP/3rd person new FO game that has the pause command thing using FO stuff have the stat based hit rolls for the pause or TB mod, in action ode you get full aiming you can do location damage 2 ways key up the COJ like slow mo aim at the location and you get a hitroll thats based more on action/aiming than pure hit/miss rolls,you can also aim in real time as well giving you the ability to up the rate for higher critical damage, this ofcorse would have a lower critical hit roll than the slow mo aim but you can off set with smaller aeras to hit on the target model,stats and use preks to enhance it and what not, in my mind this can be done, using preks and stats to increase the size of critical areas on targets this would give a bonus to hit rolls in pause and TB but makeit easier to hit in RT modes.
bah what do I know I like FPS/RPG games to much ><