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Fallout 3 Interview
PC Interview by John Walker
Page 1 of 3.
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When invited to Bethesda for an exclusive little demonstration of Fallout 3 (you know, only about 100 different magazines and websites), we thought we'd make it a bit more personal. Tricking all the others into getting onto a bus ("There's free booze on the bus!") and then having them driven off into some ditch somewhere, we got to spend some alone-time with lead designer, Emil Pagliarulo, and lead producer, Gavin Carter.
Eurogamer: How do you approach developing a game, especially one with the infamy of Fallout, when none of your team was involved in the original development?
Gavin Carter: We treated a lot like we treat our own. We went back and played the old games, so played a lot of Fallout 1 and Fallout 2, to see what we wanted to bring over from those games, and to get our minds away from this medieval space [that of the Elder Scrolls games]. And we watched movies like Mad Max, read books like The Road, and started from square one.
Eurogamer: And that wasn't a bit difficult bearing in mind the legacy you were entering?
Gavin Carter: I don't know if I'd say difficult. We spent a whole lot of time on it - we like to give ourselves that space. We've been thinking about it for over three years, so what you've seen came about gradually. It's not easy, but I wouldn't say it's tremendously difficult for us.
Eurogamer: Emil, you previously worked for Looking Glass, right?
Emil Pagliarulo: Yes. I worked on Thief II, and designed the Life Of The Party level.
Eurogamer: That's the best level in the game! Running across the rooftops!
Emil Pagliarulo: Thank you!
Eurogamer: So how do you bring a Looking Glass background to a game like this?
Emil Pagliarulo: Looking Glass for me was very much my first time being thrown into the trenches. They have a tradition of really immersive first-person games. I watched the guys making System Shock - those are the kinds of games I identify with. I certainly honed [my] skills there. It's great for me to bring that here.
Eurogamer: What about the moral dimension of Looking Glass games? Does that permeate into the Fallout development?
Emil Pagliarulo: It does. One of the mantras of the Thief games is a big grey area. Garrett is the ultimate anti-hero. That's really important you know. If you want to play like that, we want to support that. As Todd [Howard, executive producer] mentioned, we originally started supporting good, and supporting evil, and we realised how important neutral was, and how viable of a gameplay path it is, and how many great games like the original Thief supported that. That's really important to me.
Eurogamer: With a background developing the Elder Scrolls games, but taking on an Interplay title, which legacy do you think Fallout 3 follows?
Emil Pagliarulo: Me personally, I really feel like we're making a game in the legacy of the Fallout games. It's so different than working with the Elder Scrolls stuff. It's first-person, and that's it. Actually it's interesting for me - it harkens back for me to some of the most enjoyable first-person games I've ever played, the Terminator games Bethesda made. Fallout 3 is Bethesda's triumphant return to gunplay games, after swords and sorcery for so long. For me it's about bringing back /that/ legacy.
Gavin Carter: I feel like when people see it's first-person they're going to say, "Oh, there's Oblivion. It's Oblivion with guns." But honestly there's not a single thing we didn't look at and think, how are we going to do this for Fallout? We stripped out our entire character system. It's all Fallout now, with specials and experience, it's not skill based. The whole questing system is Fallout. There are different paths to all the quests, you can lock yourself out of quests. It's not like Oblivion where you can say, "I've just started in the Fighter's Guild, but I'm the Grey Fox." There's nothing in the game that we haven't looked at as its own thing.
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Comments: 1-49 of 49 in total
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If stories where better told through that viewpoint, all movies, comics etc. would be very different indeed.
Big difference - in films, you watch other characters. In games, you are the character. Besides, you'll find that many books are told from the Ego-perspective. :) Moot point anyway, as the game is also 3rd person. |
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So long as you reached page 3, that's how it ends. I find wrapping up interviews when typed out to be very false. You don't really want me to transcribe the bit where I say, "Well, thanks very much for your time. Um, so, I hope the rest of the development goes well. Cheers."
I'd rather just include the last interesting thing that was said and stop.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 04/07/07 @ 14:53
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PearOfAnguish
04/07/07 @ 13:55
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Not that the perspective matters one iota. Fallout wasn't a good game because of its viewpoint.
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afghan_jones
04/07/07 @ 13:56
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Hope the 3rd person view is fully developed and not just a tacked on afterthought.
Much prefer to see my character on-screen rather than see through their eyes.. far more immersive that way IMO. |
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dirigiblebill
04/07/07 @ 14:49
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'He mentions Bethesda's Terminator games. That makes me nervous. Future Shock was awful.'
Indeed. Let's hope that was just a bit of pro-Bethesda spin. |
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afghan_jones
04/07/07 @ 14:49
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I find third person much more immersive because i am seeing the character.
If its in first person, then its 'me' walking around the post apocalyptic world shooting mutants. This is immediately less immersive to me, because i know that I have never done that and in likelihood, never will. I dont belong in that world and so it doesnt fit. I also know that I am sitting in my pants playing a videogame. If its in third person, its more immersive because I can see my character wandering around a world he actually belongs in. The story and characterisation then make more sense to me. Plus as was rightly pointed out, in an RPG, a big appeal for many people is seeing visually the changes to your character as he levels up, gains new armour, weapons etc. |
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groovychainsaw
04/07/07 @ 14:51
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I remember liking future shock a lot - bizarre rose-tinted glasses for me?
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MrChuckles
04/07/07 @ 15:16
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Neutrality is basically choosing the good or evil option based on how much they pay.
Basically, it's someone with no conscience, not actually evil, just selfish. |
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TheUnionFrag
04/07/07 @ 15:32
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"Why oh why is it first person?
There's no possible justification for a role-playing game to be in that perspective. If stories where better told through that viewpoint, all movies, comics etc. would be very different indeed." Hold on - good stories and good games have been proven to be able to be told in first person. Half-life 2 - fantastic gripping story that motivated 99.9% of the people I know to play it - not the game dynamics or the graphics [though they did help]. I know it was an FPS but the story is, as yet, unparalleled in the world of modern gaming - better than most RPGs. Deus Ex - in case you haven't noticed - is one of the greatest RPGs of all-time. Do not dismiss it as a pseudo-RPG - you have a role and you play it and it is a game, hence RPG. It is largely in first person unless you have forgotten or shunned it. If you can't hack First-person in an RPG then I suggest you crawl back under your MMORPG rock and play them until your heart's content. Fallout 3 looks absolutely superb. I mean, like they said, they have fricking Liam Neeson!!!.
Edited 2 times,
most recently on 04/07/07 @ 16:33
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Then again, Neeson was in The Phantom Menace too. ;-)
I'm not exactly thrilled with Bethesda boasting about getting a high profile actor to do voice-over work. Case in point: Patrick Stewart's appearance in Oblivion; nice addition but not really fruitful since his character was killed in the opening after delivering approximately a total of 20 lines. |
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The style was rather retro 50s. But a HUD isn't necessarily out of place considering FO1&2 had operations and implants boosting various stats. And the setting isn't strictly low tech either: plasma rifles and gauss guns? The VATS in the 3rd screenshot is a descendant of the original targeted shot view.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 04/07/07 @ 16:59
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ExplodingClown
04/07/07 @ 16:15
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The lead designer worked for Looking Glass?
On Thief II? And was privy to the making of System Shock? I think I just came in my pants. And Future Shock was great - not only did it do the 'nuked city' feeling brilliantly, but it did it pre-3d acceleration. |
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MrChuckles
04/07/07 @ 16:48
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Technically the Swiss were Neutral, the Belgian's weren't after they got invaded, they just didn't have an army. In fact they never have an army, probably why they always get invaded first.
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@ glaeken and @ Katsumoto
Your Neutralness, it's a beige alert! Futurama is just pure genius. As for Fallout 3, cant wait. The way I figure; its finally a new Fallout game!! yay! One thing though: above anything else I really hope they get some great dialogue options and npc interaction. To me that's what made Fallout so memorable. |
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Baldur's gate almost always had a neutral option ... i think the hardest part of this game is to get the same integration between all parts the originals had, the music, the dialog, taking itself just serious enough, the wild design of monsters, taking our world and changing it in an ironic caricature, interesting quests that match the tone of the game, boy, that's a hard act to follow ... and i am forgetting about the brilliant retro interface ... the wide range of ways to beat the game ...
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 04/07/07 @ 19:47
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Noctilucent
04/07/07 @ 18:48
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Psychotext wrote
Make sure you can kill kids... it's not fallout without it! Right, remember when they took the kids out of fallout 2 rendering you unable to complete some quests? I guess that wasn't fallout that you played.
Edited 3 times,
most recently on 04/07/07 @ 19:50
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the_dudefather
04/07/07 @ 21:08
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sounds awesome so far, just started playing the original for the first time :)
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deepmenace
04/07/07 @ 23:08
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now i'm as interested in this game as the next man, but please...
it's projected release date is over a year away! every other day there seems to be some bit of "news", an interview or teaser. madness. |
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YourMessageHere
04/07/07 @ 23:41
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First person could work out equally as well if not better (for some) as your traditional Fallout perspective. It all depends on how well they make the story work. On paper, I have real sinking feelings about the whole "your dad's left and you need to find him, he's your moral compass, like Paul Denton" thing; I desperately wanted to kill Paul Denton within about 30 seconds of meeting him, the sanctimonious twat. But I'll reserve judgement until I play it. All I can say is, System Shock 2, Deus Ex, Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines were all first person RPGs and were all very good. The Half-life games are a little different in that they have been unmatched in storytelling ability but they were strictly linear and thus nothing like the constant choice-filled experience of the average RPG.
Personally I prefer first to third person. It feels much more like actually being there as myself, rather than controlling someone else. Sure, you can admire how shiny your armour and weapons are better in third person, but you get a better feel for how they actually function in first person, I find. And those Terminator games were shit. You can argue all you like about how they were technically impressive in a pre-acceleration era, but they were far from being fun to play. EDIT: oh, and "the key tenants of Fallout" - tenets, perhaps? Please employ more/better proofreaders.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 05/07/07 @ 00:42
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"First person could work out equally as well if not better (for some) as your traditional Fallout perspective....
Personally I prefer first to third person. It feels much more like actually being there as myself, rather than controlling someone else" I agree that 1st person can work better in some ways. Each perspective has it's own advantage. In the end which one we prefer just depends on what we want from the game. 3rd person's more overall view allows for a more strategic approach which is something a lot of people love about isometric RPG combat. Not everyone who plays games wants to 'feel like they are there' or at least not in every game. I can understand the appeal but I can very easily be 'immersed' in losing a game of chess without 'feeling' I am a carved piece of wood. Personally I would of loved Beth to stick with 3rd person and try to evolve the combat, to make it even more tactical and strategic, to follow on from Tactics. However that's just me. I accept that hasn't happened and I'm optimistic that F3 will still be a great game in it's own right. I think it's looking quite tasty. |
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To all those talking about RPGs not working in first person, I present to you the following exhibits:
Ultima Underworld 1 and 2 System Shock 1 and 2 Deus Ex Sure there's plenty of others, but these ones spring to mind (though no doubt some will argue how they're not RPGs... the definiton of what an RPG is is pretty open to debate too). They're also Looking Glass (or ex-LG, in the case of Deus Ex) games, and Emil Pagliarulo is ex-Looking Glass |
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