We all played Fallout 3 to death. One, because we wanted to, two, because we needed to really understand it. So we really wanted to understand what they were trying to accomplish and what their vision was. And then we followed up with questions. We haven't asked a ton, but things get run by Todd Howard all the time. The amount of conflict that has existed - like "Why can't we do this?" "Well you just can't," - it's been like four things. A lot of it has to do with that they have ideas for the future and so they just don't want us to go playing with where they see their future.

This is similar to what happened with the Star Wars stuff. One of the first things we wanted to do with KOTOR was we wanted to use Alderaan and LucasFilm came back with "No." So it's a collection of that, it's the knowing and the asking of important questions and being upfront with them about everything we're doing. We over-document everything. We're like "Here." And they're like "Stop writing."

TE: Can you give any examples of the four or so things you weren't able to do?

FU: In some cases, it's pretty minor stuff. For one of them, we were thinking of a certain city and they said "We want to reserve that for something we want to do." It didn't really hurt what we were doing at all.

We [also] talked a lot about when it should occur in the timeline. Originally, we thought that it didn't take place after Fallout 3 and that it took place between Fallout 2 and Fallout 3. When Bethesda thinks about their worlds, they always want to be pressing forward. So every game just moves the timeline forward. That's one of the things they said "No," and that's why it takes place years after Fallout 3.​