Ken: Brian Fargo visited me in Phoenix and described a post World War III game that Interplay wanted to do using some new coding techniques that Alan Pavlish had developed. He asked me if I could come up with such a game, maybe modeled along the lines of the movie "Red Dawn"? I told him I thought I could.​

GB: What were Black Isle Studios' main goals for Fallout 3? How was the third installment going to build on what the first two titles had to offer?

Chris: Before I resigned, the goals were epic, post-apocalyptic world where you fight against a rival party of survivors (I thought this would be a more interesting series of adversaries - instead of a Foozle villain, you have a group that's a lot like your band - they're not evil, just have a different approach), have a few more Science-based options for braniac characters to solve problems (Science Boy), and try to push the theme of the "Prisoner's Dilemma" (bad, quick explanation - it's a theorem that cooperating with an opponent yields a greater reward than trying to beat them) to explore even new ways of solving situations in role-playing games. I also wanted more gender-based epic options (male players could fight for control of Caesar's Legion and use them as an army, Postman-style, and female characters could take charge of the insidious medical infrastructure and "midwife" structure" of the Daughters of Hecate as informants to gain power). I did want to include more elements I'd liked from Wasteland in Fallout 3. I didn't want the game mechanics or view to change much at all, since I didn't find much wrong with the initial two except for the skill imbalance problems and armor and weapon balance problems.​