Fallout 3 Broken Steel DLC Interview

Planet Fallout has conjured up a lengthy interview with Bethesda designer Alan Nanes about the team’s newly released Broken Steel DLC for Fallout 3.

Broken Steel seems to allow you to send your radiation-proof allies into the Project Purity chamber. Is there any reason why this was left out of the original game?

Sometimes when you’re designing characters or game play experiences, you don’t realize just how near and dear some of them become to the player at home. Fawkes is a great example of this. When he was first added to the game, it was to add some depth and character to Vault 87; he was never really intended to become integral to the Main Quest. But when we took a step back and looked at him after the game’s release, we realized we had inadvertently, but gladly, evolved him into a very important character. Additionally, one of Fallout 3’s main themes is about sacrifice. I think when we were doing the original design, we wanted to keep that theme at the forefront and force the player to make a potentially sacrificial decision at Project Purity.

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Any fun stories that took place during the development of Broken Steel?

In one of the opening stories of Broken Steel, Liberty Prime makes an appearance as you assault an Enclave outpost. To make his entrance dramatic, we wanted him to appear in an impressive manner. We spent so long with the animation team trying different things, like having him leap several times down a rocky hill or do a huge jump into the air and bring his fist smashing down into a Vertibird, we didn’t even realize we were making him too human until someone blurted out (Guys! He’s a ROBOT, not a professional wrestler)! His entrance is still quite impressive, but much more appropriate for the hulking robot that he is. It’s amusing how the little things can take so long to get right. Oh, and apologies to the animators for that one. I think they were ready to kill us after each meeting until we settled on the current animations!