Bethesda Fallout 3 Interview Feature

Fallout returns this year with a new team behind the radioactive wheel. We sit down with Bethesda's Pete Hines to find out more.

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Dogmeat is your canine companion in Fallout 3. He's a loyal attendant who will do chores for you, fight alongside you, and generally make your life easier. "It's basically an extra pair of helping hands, so to speak," says Hines. Dogmeat can keep you alive by scrounging for food or help you in battle by attacking enemies directly or bringing you ammunition and weapons. And it's all real stuff that you could find yourself, says Hines. "We're not magically creating things for him to bring back to you."

Probably the most interesting aspect of Dogmeat, the one that speaks most to Bethesda's vision, is his mortality. To keep Dogmeat by your side, you'll need to treat him well and think about his welfare. Sure, you could send him in to a Super Mutant camp and order him to attack, but he probably wouldn't last long. And once he's gone, he's gone. "Forever," Hines says. "There's only one Dogmeat, so you're not going to meet another one just like that one." And there won't be some other sort of replacement either. If Dogmeat dies, that functionality is lost forever.

Long-lasting effects like that naturally bring up questions about the save system. Will you be able to go back and try scenarios again if you're not happy with the outcome? Players of Oblivion likely won't be too surprised with the path Bethesda has taken. You can save anywhere you want in the game world, and the game will auto-save for you as well, at specified points and every time you go from an interior to an exterior location.

With our junkyard adventure taken care of, it's off to a dungeon, or the closest thing we've seen of one until now. It's actually an abandoned building infested with Ghouls, and it gives Hines a chance to show us how combat works in the game and the camera options players are given. 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.

V.A.T.S. (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System), too, isn't perfect yet, Hines admits. Those familiar with the original games will feel comfortable immediately with V.A.T.S., which exactly replicates the body-part-specific targeting system. Percentages show your probability of success, taking some of the action out of the mix but allowing you more time to think things through - very helpful if you find yourself in a tough spot. If that's not your thing, don't worry. "You don't ever have to use V.A.T.S.," says Hines.

Taking your time is probably a good thing, because one aspect of our demo that won't carry over into the main game is the omnipresence of ammo. Hines hot-linked ammo and Stempaks to the Xbox 360 D-pad and during our demo he's being generous. When the full game arrives, that sort of reckless abandon won't fly, and you'll have to scrimp to survive. Staying alive is made harder still by the impermanence of weapons, which will degrade over time with use. This is also why Hines recommends that players keep an array of weapon types on hand. "Once you run out of the stuff that you are good at, you gotta have something," he says.

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