Fallout 3 Interview

IncGamers offers a new Fallout 3 interview with Pete Hines that contains a couple of new questions.

Story telling in games has become a priority these days. How influential is the story line to the game itself?

It’s very important. It’s a very compelling and interesting story that takes you to a lot of different Fallout 3locations and introduces you to a lot of different creatures and there are some great plot moments. It plays a lot larger role in the game than the previous games where the main quest is only a small fraction of the story, whereas with Fallout 3 it plays a much more central role, it’s a much bigger part of there is to do in the world and a lot of people will feel compelled to follow the story through. But again, it’s up to the player. You could walk out of the vault and spend 50 hours playing the game never touching the main quest, so really, it’s a player driven experience.

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Is there any real-time time ratio. So what’s the timescale, what’s 24 hours?

I don’t know exactly how long it is, but the 24 hour cycle is around the 40 minutes mark, if I had to guess, because I am! There is a dynamic day-night cycle and there is a dynamic weather conditions. And people do move around in this schedule. So if you go to a town at 3am, there won’t be anyone at the shops, you’ll have to wait till morning.

Gamersglobal gets Pete Hines to clarify some details on VATS.

Will V.A.T.S. hits (or normal hits) into legs make opponents fall down or hop on the other leg, while they still fight on?

Pete Hines: They only suffer the effects to that part when you cripple the part. So in the case of a leg, they won’t limp unless you cripple one leg completely. Just hitting it doesn’t make that happen. You have to get the status bar for that limb all the way to zero before they suffer the effect. The same goes for you and your body parts.