Fallout 3 Preview

Yahoo! Games has kicked up a brief preview of Bethesda’s iteration of the post-apocalyptic world, Fallout 3.

Nuclear Armageddon probably strikes most people as a grim subject for a video game. But Todd Howard, executive producer of the forthcoming “Fallout 3,” sees the brighter side of the apocalypse. Citing movies like “I Am Legend,” Howard relishes that “moment of discovery when you see what’s happened to the world and wonder: Who would I be and what would I do?”

That moment happens fairly early in “Fallout 3,” another 100-hour-plus epic from “The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion” developer Bethesda Softworks. Your character, born underground decades after a nuclear war, emerges from his shelter into a blasted, decayed landscape that’s oddly beautiful. Your main goal is survival, not just from the radiation but from the mutated creatures that have taken over the surface. But there are also ethical and strategic choices to make.