People have criticized Fallout 3 for kind of failing as an FPS and Todd Howard said, "Oh, I can agree with that." Do you think the Obsidian guys have addressed some of those failings?

To an extent, although I don't think that they set out as an objective to, "We're going to fix this game and make it a better FPS." I think they just set out to say, based on conversations they had with a lot of the guys on the team here at Bethesda Game Studios. They can read reactions from fans and the press just as easily as anybody else. So I think they looked for places where they could improve the game – adding new options to melee weapons and VATS doesn't make it a better FPS, but it does make it a better and more fun game. So, you know, which features make it a better FPS and which ones make it a better game? I'm not sure, but I think all of them end up making it a better game and ultimately, I think at the end of the day, that's what most folks care about. There are certainly some things, if you played the game in real-time, first-person only that'll make your game more fun and more dramatic and so forth, but I think at the end of the day all of it just makes it a better game and that's the ultimate goal.​

How did the idea of Obsidian doing a Fallout spin-off come about?

Avellone: Bethesda basically approached us and said, “Hey, do you wanna do another game in the Fallout universe? We have the western United States to deal with. Choose a location there, give us a pitch, tell us what you think would be exciting and then we’ll just see if we like it.”

And we were like, “OK. Well, here’s our pitch and here’s what we’re excited about it. “what do you guys think?”. And they were like, “OK,” and then we just started. [laughs] It was pretty cool, I was like, OK, that’s awesome.​