Fallout 3 Video Interview

Gamereactor TV interviewed Pete Hines at Ubidays and asked him about the character creation, compass-perception and adapting stats into a first-person action game.

Every SPECIAL that you have, all your attributes…your strength determines how much stuff you can carry amongst other things, your agility is how many action points you get to spend in VATS mode, your perception determines when you’re walking around you have a little compass – it’s pretty subtle in the corner – that gives you a general idea in which direction you’re heading, you also get little indicators that let you know if there’re other people nearby or enemies nearby and how far away your compass picks those people up is dependent on your perception. So if you give yourself a really high perception you’re going to be able to detect people and things much further away, whereas if it’s very low or lower you won’t be able to detect them until you’re much closer up. So it does give the player and advantage based on what the character is doing, and that’s the whole idea, we want every thing in the game to be impacted by your character and his/her stats and attributes and not just you as the player, what it is you can do while you’re playing the game.