Fallout 3 Q&A

The editors at GameTap have posted a fairly detailed interview with Bethesda’s Emil Pagliarulo, asking the Fallout 3 lead designer about his various duties as they apply to the upcoming post-apocalyptic sequel.

Q: Have you encountered any issues where you’ve come up with an idea, but later think that you shouldn’t implement it because it’s not what Fallout is about? Basically, how restrictive has it been to work within the Fallout universe?

A: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! One of my big responsibilities as lead designer is playing (content cop)–making sure I know what’s going in the game at all times. With the nature of Fallout, it’s easy to say (Anything goes!)–but if you do that, things become diluted. The jokes you do have become less funny, the profanity you have becomes less noticeable and meaningful. So really, any idea that comes up has to fall under the microscope.

That said, the Fallout world is the Fallout world; it’s non-restrictive by nature. There’s not a whole we couldn’t include, if that’s what we wanted. So really, for us, it’s always a matter of asking ourselves, (Do we really want this? Does it fit with the world, does it fit with our story. At the end of the day, does it make Fallout 3 better?) If the answer to any of those questions is (no,) it doesn’t go in the game.