Interview Gavin Carter sells Fallout 3 to the Codex

[Vault Dweller]

Tags: Bethesda Softworks; Fallout 3; Gavin Carter

<a href=http://www.actiontrip.com>ActionTrip</a> has asked Gavin Carter <a href=http://www.actiontrip.com/previews/fallout3_i.phtml>some questions</a> about everyone's favorite next-generation RPG, <a href=http://fallout.bethsoft.com/>Fallout 3</a>.
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<blockquote><u>Each quest has multiple paths to completion, and how you choose to complete one quest can affect what quests are available later on</u>. In addition, we have a new category of quests that we term "freeform encounters." As you travel, you'll come across these encounters all over. They're not as big as a full quest, but they will present choices, opportunities for reward, interesting sights and sounds, and more. It should be quite some time before you run out of things to do in Fallout 3, and there will always be more to hit when you play through it again.
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Other quests run the gamut of possibilities that a war-ravaged wasteland offers up. For each quest, we try and provide opportunities for as wide a range of playstyles as we're able (<u>Stealth Boy, Combat Boy, Science Boy, etc</u>).
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<u>Providing the player with a range of moral options has been a top priority for us</u> since we started. Players should have a variety of ways to role-play their character as evil, good or some shade of gray in between. We look at every quest in the game this way and try wherever possible to support as many different moral outcomes and playstyles as possible.</blockquote>Sounds great if true
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<blockquote>A man from a competing settlement has a way to detonate the bomb remotely, and offers to reward you handsomely for helping him.</blockquote>Competing settlements? You mean like Upper Uncton and Lower Uncton?
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.nma-fallout.com">NMA</A>

 

[MetalCraze]

In addition, we have a NEW category of quests that we term "freeform encounters." As you travel, you'll come across these encounters all over. They're not as big as a full quest, but they will present choices, opportunities for reward, interesting sights and sounds, and more.

Oh yes, like...
bandits attacking that warehouse, go and kill them. Yeah I know you did the same thing 1000 times, but anyway - it's FUN!
*winks at stalker*

Other quests run the gamut of possibilities that a war-ravaged wasteland offers up. For each quest, we try and provide opportunities for as wide a range of playstyles as we're able (Stealth Boy, Combat Boy, Science Boy, etc).

what about Peaceful Boy? ah but of course - talking f. e. to muties is not an option - they're as stupid as oak.

Players should have a variety of ways to role-play their character as evil, good or some shade of gray in between

YES! Muties attacking yet another damsel in distress!
A good way:
kill muties
a bad way:
kill woman and muties
a gray shade in between:
do not accept the quest.

brilliance at it's perfect state!

A man from a competing settlement has a way to detonate the bomb remotely, and offers to reward you handsomely for helping him.

What the fuck? Yet another settlement that is blight on this perfect view of yet another nuclear bomb?

Copy-paste villages? Gavin, fuck yourself.
Please.
Thanks.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I'm pretty sure he was commenting on the Megaton quest.

 

[MetalCraze]

I'm pretty sure he was commenting on the Megaton quest.

Then it's poor Megaton. But anyway, fools deserve it.
Building their houses in the crater of unexploded but pretty active nuke. Bah! Even daring to exist in fallout 3 - they deserve to die!

 

[Hümmelgümpf]

This sounds too good to be true. It's like he just read the forums and then told what we would like to hear. I won't believe him until Bethesda actually shows us all these role-playing goodies.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Well, Gavin has a history of passing wishful thinking for facts:

"The political landscape of the game world is highly fractured following the emperor's assassination, and you will have to be cautious of the motives of those who would befriend you."

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Call me crazy, but I think that every good feature like the multiple ways to solve quests and choices & consequences they are announcing is actually a result of NMA's (and to a lesser extends the Codex) bitching about the game.

Do you believe Bethesda could have come up with that stuff by themselves? Not after Oblivion. And who else could have "forced" them to include these things? The retarded media press who think that Halo is an RPG and are satisfied with every Bethesda game as long as it has enough bloom?

No, if not for NMA they would never talk about c&c, multiple solutions etc. Because nobody else would have asked them the unpleasent question why their game is lacking such core features from the original game.

The way Carter talks about c&c could be copied and pasted from the codex. And guess what, it propably is.
Maybe I'm just naive, but I think all that bitching from the hardcore fans made a slight difference. It forced Beth at least to promise to include these things, whether they do is a different book.

All in all, half of that talk is propably lies and misinformation (like that quote concerning Oblivion VD provided) and the game will turn out shit either way, so no reason to get your hopes up.

 

[MetalCraze]

"The political landscape of the game world is highly fractured following the emperor's assassination, and you will have to be cautious of the motives of those who would befriend you."

There were politics in Oblivion?!
Gavin, fuck yourself again.
thanks.

edit> anyway, nothing will stop me from killing every single living creature in fallblivion (well, except unkillable npcs and Almighty Unkillable Children <- btw VD add this shit to your chronicles too). I just hope my Damage Per Second won't let me down.

 

[Seboss]

I believe Bethesda already served blatant lies about C&C during Oblivion development when it was convenient PR-wise.
Until I can read an unbiased review of the full game, this is just empty promises. At least, they *know* what could make Fallout 3 a good game. Now, do they have the talent or even the intention to do this?..

 

[Vault Dweller]

There were politics in Oblivion?!

And other totally awesome things, according to Gavin:

"We also spent a good deal of time considering what happens when you hit the top of each faction, so it feels like a more rewarding experience once you're done with them. "
http://www.rpgcodex.net/images/news/ArchMage%205a.JPG

"NPCs and guards will stop to examine dead bodies that they come across. They'll kneel down and express their sorrow or wonder at the sight."
http://www.rpgcodex.net/images/news/Sneak%202.JPG

"I think the strength of our dialogue and characters in Oblivion are actually going to surprise a lot of people."

"Certainly resolving the main quest is a major world-changing event that produces obvious differences as you walk around the world. There are several quests where you're offered a moral choice. For instance, whether to trust a guard's version of a story vs. a citizen calling the guard corrupt. Past actions may also come back to haunt you. "

I hope by past actions he meant buying Oblivion.

 

[pkt-zer0]

A big advantage is that during VATS mode, time is paused and you're given a wealth of information about your situation. Every targetable enemy and object is highlighted and you can pan around and get a sense for where things are coming from. For each individual target, you can see their overall health, and the condition and the likelihood of landing a shot for each body part. This is the part that I feel separates VATS from standard "real-time with pause" systems in that it gives you information to base a tactical choice on. You may find that you have a high chance to hit a mutant's torso, but then you notice that landing one more risky shot to the arm will cripple him, severely reducing his ability to aim. Recently I've been replaying Oblivion and find myself hammering the VATS button unconsciously whenever I get jumped by an enemy.

Whoa, displaying hit rates equal awesome tactical depth. What's so damned innovative about a simplified ripoff of Vagrant Story's battle system, anyway?

The other advantage to VATS is, of course, that it's just pure unadulterated fun. Landing a shot to a mutant's head, watching it fly apart in slow-motion, having an eyeball go spinning past the camera - there's just some kind of visceral satisfaction that the experience brings.

Because heads blowing up are always the greatest aspect of the game mechanics.

And, as usual, what they say is good, but they better start backing it up sometime soon.

 

[Monica21]

"Certainly resolving the main quest is a major world-changing event that produces obvious differences as you walk around the world. There are several quests where you're offered a moral choice. For instance, whether to trust a guard's version of a story vs. a citizen calling the guard corrupt. Past actions may also come back to haunt you. "

I hope by past actions he meant buying Oblivion.

Well, I guess he's talking about the quest in Bruma, but there certainly weren't any consequences for deciding who to believe. It's not like the guards in Bruma didn't trust you after that. They built a freaking statue in your honor.

 

[obediah]

I believe Bethesda already served blatant lies about C&C during Oblivion development when it was convenient PR-wise.
Until I can read an unbiased review of the full game, this is just empty promises. At least, they *know* what could make Fallout 3 a good game. Now, do they have the talent or even the intention to do this?..

At this point, I don't think all the dialog trees, quest trees, fraction counters, and C&C in the world could save Fallout 3. Every scrap of detail that has come out about the world and occupants of Fallout 3 is juvenile, illogical, and retarded far beyond FO:T even.

I mean fuck, when your objective is to detonate an unexploded nuclear bomb that created a crater large enough for a city to form in so that some guy can build a post-nuclear shipping mall there, who cares how many possible paths or endings there are for it?

I can't even imagine how a cargo cult could form around a nuclear bomb. It doesn't provide any food, materials, or protection, or symobolize anything that does provide those things. Now if the game took place in Afghanistan, it would make sense. Run to the unexploded bomb to be ready for the food packets that are sure to follow.

 

[MetalCraze]

"I think the strength of our dialogue and characters in Oblivion are actually going to surprise a lot of people."

At this point he did not lied.

 

[Texas Red]

I mean fuck, when your objective is to detonate an unexploded nuclear bomb that created a crater large enough for a city to form in so that some guy can build a post-nuclear shipping mall there, who cares how many possible paths or endings there are for it?

I think that was just a joke from that dialog thread.

 

[Andyman Messiah]

Am I the only one to notice Bethesda always ALWAYS go ''well, we, uh, look at different things and try to come up with the best options and stuff'' when they try to answer questions regarding how they tackle choices and consequences and roleplaying and shizzle? ALWAYS, I tell you! CAPS LOCK!

Oh well.

And that fucking quest sounds so goddamn childish. I mean, come the fuck on! What is this? Blow city away and make way for a new Starbucks? (Oh God, if they do a Starbucks joke or anything similar I swear to God I will... cry!)

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

What I love about the megaton quests is that appearently every fucking retard you meet and their dog has got a remote detonator, but they need YOU to do it.

I recall from the GI article that at the end of the quest, before you detonate the bomb, you meet the guy again who gave you the task. Thats fucking retarded...

 

[Vault Dweller]

THATS AWSAM CHARACTAR DESAIN RITE THARE!

 

[Mr Happy]

Yeah, if Megaton is any sort of standard, they haven't won me over. Talk about banal. Choices/consequences/multiple paths don't necessarily make a quest a quality quest, they are more like the pre-requisite for it not to suck. Hopefully, Megaton was chosen for the preview for it's simplicity, not because it was a prime example of Fallout 3 questing. Implausible, rather uninteresting, essentially an alignment punchcard (good do this, evil do that, neutral shut the hell up we actually don't support your path), sporting only obvious and shortterm consequences (as far as we know), jeez louise. I guess it is an improvement from the average TES quest, but if those are the standard range of moral options (moral ambiguity seems to be providing a neutral path [doing nothing?] rather than a quest where the "right" choice isn't obvious), I can't say I am all that impressed.

 

[xedoc gpr]

Each quest has multiple paths to completion, and how you choose to complete one quest can affect what quests are available later on.

We all know not to trust Bethesda's talk, and be skeptical of everything. But the fact that Gavin even speaks like this shows that they did pay attention to some criticism towards Oblivion. Whether they actually responded or are just pretending to have responded to it is left until the release day....

 

[Oarfish]

Hopefully, Megaton was chosen for the preview for it's simplicity

Knowing Bethesda's previous behaviour when demonstrating to journalists - Fargoth's gold for Morrowind and the Oblivion radiant demos that were scripted to the wazoo I'm guessing the opposite.

 

[gc051360]

Well, Gavin has a history of passing wishful thinking for facts:

"The political landscape of the game world is highly fractured following the emperor's assassination, and you will have to be cautious of the motives of those who would befriend you."

That's the quote I was looking for a while ago...

 

[Vault Dweller]

All good quotes are in my Oblivion review.
http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=129

 

[Seboss]

At this point, I don't think all the dialog trees, quest trees, fraction counters, and C&C in the world could save Fallout 3. Every scrap of detail that has come out about the world and occupants of Fallout 3 is juvenile, illogical, and retarded far beyond FO:T even.

I mean fuck, when your objective is to detonate an unexploded nuclear bomb that created a crater large enough for a city to form in so that some guy can build a post-nuclear shipping mall there, who cares how many possible paths or endings there are for it.

Hey mister, I tried very hard to keep that little glimmer of hope ablaze!

*goes back to circle strafing Big Daddies, now that's some deep tactical combat!!*

 

[aries202]

-ehn-

people need to realize that Fallout 3 isn't Oblivion. And with that in mind, please try not to compare Oblivion and Fallout. From what I've seen, both from NMA previews and the previews from other gaming sites, Fallout 3 appears or seems to at least have more c&c in it than Oblvion does.

I'm also pretty sure that the Codex, and NMA did hel further Beth's taljing about this along a bit...