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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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."

There's more evidence as Hines takes us to the last, and most spectacular, area in the demo - the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It's here, among the crumbling remains of America's most famous buildings and museums, that we get a glimpse of the sheer scale of the project. Hines starts near the Lincoln Memorial, pointing out the battered Washington Monument on the side and the Capitol building in the distance. Covering the ground in between are trenches that snake between buildings, infested with two factions of enemies that are fighting each other. Many of the bigger buildings will be explorable, adding to the already impressive size of the game world.

Hines explains that while judged by a simple overhead map the world may look smaller than that of Oblivion, the reality is much different. For one, because there are no vehicles or horses, every area has to be explored on foot.

"You emerge from the vault and you don't know shit," he says with a smile. "We compress the scale size-wise, so it's not quite as big a landmass, but it feels just as big because you're not getting anywhere in a hurry. You can jump back and forth once you discover places, but getting out to where you don't know definitely takes you a while."

This scene demonstrates two other features of Fallout 3. First, is the enemy AI, which allows enemies to respond intelligently to changes in their immediate vicinity. Kill an enemy who was carrying a powerful weapon and another will run in, throw his down and pick up the überweapon. Enemies in rival factions will also carry on fighting each other if you sneak around them. And you can play them against each other. If there's, say, an object that the factions are fighting over and you destroy the object, they'll respond differently than if you played favourites and handed it over to one of the bands.

That's because, and this is a point that Hines comes back to again and again, Fallout 3 is about choice. It's about creating a real world for RPG and shooter fans alike to have fun in. Sure, it doesn't look anything like the world outside, but it's been designed to react realistically to your presence in it - no matter what you're doing.

"The idea is that we create a big sandbox game where you can create whatever kind of character you want and spend all your time doing whatever it is you want to do," he says. "We're not going to tell you what you have to do. We don't put time limits on it. We don't say you have to do this quest next. Just go have fun doing whatever it is you want to do."

"It's not like we're asking to see your RPG genre card at the door or you can't buy a copy. We're making the best game that we can, that we think is a lot of fun, that is true to what we think a Fallout game should be and should include and is true to the type of games we make."

Fallout 3 is on track for release on PC and Xbox 360 this autumn.

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