Fallout 3 IS happning

[t0p5ecret]

See this is what gets to me, you make a comment like it will be oblivion with guns...and then state that there are no screenshots of Fallout 3 yet. Everything that has been stated in the past about Fallout 3 being Oblivion with guns has been stated by disgruntled fans that hate Bethesda...Nothing has been stated by Bethesda with regards to this.

Here's the latest interview with Peter Hines

Shack: Speaking of Fallout, is it being handled by essentially the same team as the Elder Scrolls team?
Pete Hines: The answer to that really has to be yes, because we just have one team.
Shack: Right.
Pete Hines: Yeah, we don't say, "You're the Fallout team and you're the Elder Scrolls team." Even in terms of where people sit, we put programmers together and designers together and artists together. They may move from project to project. Some moved from Oblivion to Fallout, some moved from Oblivion to downloadable content to The Shivering Isles. It just depends what they're good at and what we need. But yeah, it's the same core group of people.
Shack: So you're pretty far into development, I'd think?
Pete Hines: We're a fairly good ways away. Projects reach different stages of development based on how many people are working on them. You can have eight people working on a project for a year and a half and still consider yourself in preproduction just because they spend so much time speccing out what they want to do and how it's going to be implemented. But yeah, we've got a full team working on it now. Of course, as we said with all of our stuff, we don't believe in showing it or even talking about it until we can say, "This is what we're going to do." That time is not that far off.
Shack: This year?
Pete Hines: Oh yeah, yeah. It actually shocked us how long ago it was that we announced that we got the rights to Fallout 3. It surprised all of us! We all said, "Really? That long ago?" [laughs] All we had really done back then was announced we acquired it. Nobody was working on that. We just had to put something out because Interplay is publicly traded.
Shack: Right, it'll show up on the financial records anyway.
Pete Hines: Yeah. But if it was up to us, in the corporate world, I still believe we would have kept that silent. As much fun as it is to hear people buzzing about it, I just think it would have been so much greater if we could have just come out and said, "We're doing it, here it is, here's what it looks like, here's what it plays like." I mean, talk about coming out of left field! [laughs] It's definitely had some advantages in that people know that we're doing it, but my preference would have been to just keep it quiet.
Shack: Well, you guys tend to work pretty quietly in general.
Pete Hines: Exactly, like with Oblivion nobody even really knew we were working on that until we said, "Here it is, here are the screens and the story and the setting and the characters."
Shack: You guys have your own trademark series so you're used to dealing with fan expectation, but is it different or intimidating working on a franchise like Fallout that already has such a built in reputation?
Pete Hines: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. For a couple of reasons. Number one is that we're treating it as if we made the first two, with the same care and attention we give to The Elder Scrolls, but the truth of the matter is that we haven't. As a result there's probably a lot more divergent opinion about what it should be, what we should do, are we the right guys to do it, and so on.
Shack: Is there any of that internally?
Pete Hines: Internally, not really. Internally, we're a bunch of Fallout geeks. There is nobody [here] who hasn't played that game and enjoyed it. I have that game on my laptop, I take it with me and play it. But it's definitely different, because it's not really considered ours, the franchise. We didn't start it. There is a little bit of that sentiment out there that we have to prove that we're worthy to be the guys to make Fallout 3. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, because we have very high expectations for ourselves. The standard that we hold ourselves to, the kind of games we expect to make in terms of quality, we have a very high level of expectation. There's really nothing like the people from the outside expecting more than we expect ourselves.
It's a lot like when we were doing Morrowind. Everybody said, "Well, the last game you did was Daggerfall, and it was really buggy, and everything you're telling me about Morrowind sounds good but you need to prove it." It kind of has that same feel, that people are saying, "Yeah, I liked Oblivion, and you guys are good at roleplaying, but you have to prove that you aren't going to screw up this beloved franchise." We think we can do it. We are the right guys to be doing this franchise, we do take it seriously, and we do want to make it a powerful force in roleplaying in terms of what these games can do and be. We hope that when we show people what we're up to, they'll agree. Some folks will, and some folks will say it's not what they wanted. At the end of the day, we respect that, but we have to do what we think is right. Again, you can't make the game that everybody wants because you'll get ten different answers about what that game is.
Shack: Have you spoken at all to the original creators of the franchise--who from what I know already had less complete involvement with Fallout 2 than with the first game--in any capacity?
Pete Hines: We have, on an individual basis. Some of those folks have contacted us on varying levels, whether it's a "Hey, good luck" or a job inquiry or what have you. Not really formally though, no. Again, it's one of those things where I have a lot of respect for those guys. I was a huge Black Isle fan, and all those RPGs coming out of Interplay at the time. I loved Baldur's Gate, Fallout. It was fantastic. Way back when, when I wrote for the Adrenaline Vault, Interplay was one of my companies. I used to cover all their stuff and play everything they put out. I still have my shrinkwrapped copies of Baldur's Gate and Planescape. They did great stuff for which I will always have tremendous respect. But at the same time, if we're going to move forward, we're really going to have to move forward. We can't just say, "Well, let's ask these guys what they think." As Fallout fans and guys who make roleplaying games and have for over a decade, we have pretty good ideas about what we want to do and how to do it.
Shack: Is there somebody at Bethesda who is really driving the vision of Fallout 3, like Todd Howard, or is it more a situation where it's the company vision?
Pete Hines: It's the vision of a group of folks. Much like The Elder Scrolls, it starts with Todd Howard who drives everything, but then there's definitely the lead designer, lead artist, lead programmer. More than anything, those team leads are the guys who champion for things, saying, "This is what it has to play like, this is what it has to look like, this is how the systems have to work." It's definitely a group of folks but at the end of the day it falls on Todd to set the pace and and how he thinks it should look and play.

On a side note, Afterfall is still going ahead and they have stated they are currently in talks with a couple of companies (taken as meaning publishers) and after they here back they will be posting up their latest FAQ.

Cheers
t0p

[t0p5ecret]

Here's the image that shipped with that interview:

[Jero]

It better not be an Oblivion style game or I will be pissed. Will still give it a go to see what it is like.....but I will have to like it before I part with cash.

[t0p5ecret]

I honestly love the original isometric view and would love it to be the same for the next one but honestly as long as it carries the same atmosphere and twisted humour across then I will be very happy, even if it is first person.

[Voigtkampf]

Originally Posted by t0p5ecret

See this is what gets to me, you make a comment like it will be oblivion with guns...and then state that there are no screenshots of Fallout 3 yet. Everything that has been stated in the past about Fallout 3 being Oblivion with guns has been stated by disgruntled fans that hate Bethesda...Nothing has been stated by Bethesda with regards to this.
Cheers
t0p

Well, see, this is one of the reasons why I dislike debates on public forums. I seem to "get" to people. My statements always gets someone's blood pressure up. Thank God this is a forum where mature people frequent, otherwise I'd be already flamed to death by some Beths-fanboi-console-freak.

They say seeing is believing, but Sun Tsu said "to see the sun and moon is no sign of sharp sight; to hear the noise of thunder is no sign of a quick ear". He was right. How could I sum up all the information I have gathered over the years, picked up from interviews, online statements, facts, thousand posts made from all sides, both from fanbois and haters... It would require an essay to underline the vast ineptness of the Beth to create a proper Fallout sequel; I've been watching them for a long time now, and to sum it all up here, it would take forever... In Beth's PR announcements, which are as filled with concrete information as much as a politicians election speeches, you get next to nothing. I'll set some work aside and do an autopsy on this interview and filter out concrete informations out of it. Brace yourself.

Shack: Speaking of Fallout, is it being handled by essentially the same team as the Elder Scrolls team?
Pete Hines: The answer to that really has to be yes, because we just have one team.
Shack: Right.
Pete Hines: Yeah, we don't say, "You're the Fallout team and you're the Elder Scrolls team." Even in terms of where people sit, we put programmers together and designers together and artists together. They may move from project to project. Some moved from Oblivion to Fallout, some moved from Oblivion to downloadable content to The Shivering Isles. It just depends what they're good at and what we need. But yeah, it's the same core group of people.

We get it, its one team.

Shack: So you're pretty far into development, I'd think?
Pete Hines: We're a fairly good ways away. Projects reach different stages of development based on how many people are working on them. You can have eight people working on a project for a year and a half and still consider yourself in preproduction just because they spend so much time speccing out what they want to do and how it's going to be implemented (my italic). But yeah, we've got a full team working on it now. Of course, as we said with all of our stuff, we don't believe in showing it or even talking about it until we can say, "This is what we're going to do." That time is not that far off.

After a year and a half, they don't have any substantial information to present?

Shack: This year?
Pete Hines: Oh yeah, yeah. It actually shocked us how long ago it was that we announced that we got the rights to Fallout 3. It surprised all of us! We all said, "Really? That long ago?" [laughs] All we had really done back then was announced we acquired it. Nobody was working on that. We just had to put something out because Interplay is publicly traded.
Shack: Right, it'll show up on the financial records anyway.
Pete Hines: Yeah. But if it was up to us, in the corporate world, I still believe we would have kept that silent. As much fun as it is to hear people buzzing about it, I just think it would have been so much greater if we could have just come out and said, "We're doing it, here it is, here's what it looks like, here's what it plays like." I mean, talk about coming out of left field! [laughs] It's definitely had some advantages in that people know that we're doing it, but my preference would have been to just keep it quiet.

ZOMG! We have the license for that long!?! It has been picking up dust in the corner. Hmm, you may notice a contradiction to my statement few sentences above, but hell, that was a hypothetical statement, we could have had 8 people working on F3 for a year and a half and still figuring out what goes where and how, or not, we are pretty far down the line with project, or not... Yeah, there are def some advantages for people knowing that we have the license and working on it, in aspects of, see above, financial records, but I personally would have loved to have kept it under the carpet until I knew what the hell to do with that damn game at first place!

Shack: Well, you guys tend to work pretty quietly in general.
Pete Hines: Exactly, like with Oblivion nobody even really knew we were working on that until we said, "Here it is, here are the screens and the story and the setting and the characters."

So, to sum up, we are fairly long ways underway, we have a whole team working on it, we've had (or not) eight people working on it for year and a half, but we still don't have a single screenshot to give you, apart of some poster some idle fella made within an hour for fun, and which is the only thing we showed on E3...

Shack: You guys have your own trademark series so you're used to dealing with fan expectation, but is it different or intimidating working on a franchise like Fallout that already has such a built in reputation?
Pete Hines: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. For a couple of reasons. Number one is that we're treating it as if we made the first two, with the same care and attention we give to The Elder Scrolls, but the truth of the matter is that we haven't. As a result there's probably a lot more divergent opinion about what it should be, what we should do, are we the right guys to do it, and so on.
Shack: Is there any of that internally?
Pete Hines: Internally, not really. Internally, we're a bunch of Fallout geeks. There is nobody [here] who hasn't played that game and enjoyed it. I have that game on my laptop, I take it with me and play it. But it's definitely different, because it's not really considered ours, the franchise. We didn't start it. There is a little bit of that sentiment out there that we have to prove that we're worthy to be the guys to make Fallout 3. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, because we have very high expectations for ourselves. The standard that we hold ourselves to, the kind of games we expect to make in terms of quality, we have a very high level of expectation. There's really nothing like the people from the outside expecting more than we expect ourselves.

Lip service. AKA sucking up. Usual PR work. We love Fallout, how could anyone dislike us!?

It's a lot like when we were doing Morrowind. Everybody said, "Well, the last game you did was Daggerfall, and it was really buggy, and everything you're telling me about Morrowind sounds good but you need to prove it." It kind of has that same feel, that people are saying, "Yeah, I liked Oblivion, and you guys are good at roleplaying, but you have to prove that you aren't going to screw up this beloved franchise." We think we can do it. We are the right guys to be doing this franchise, we do take it seriously, and we do want to make it a powerful force in roleplaying in terms of what these games can do and be. We hope that when we show people what we're up to, they'll agree. Some folks will, and some folks will say it's not what they wanted. At the end of the day, we respect that, but we have to do what we think is right. Again, you can't make the game that everybody wants because you'll get ten different answers about what that game is.

Morrowind, Daggerfall, Oblivion... Sweet. reminds me of mighty gorilla, bashing at his chest. The sentence, however, should sound "Yeah, I liked Fallout, and you guys are good at roleplaying, but you have to prove that you aren't going to screw up this beloved franchise." These people tend to forget which lore they bought, and mix it up with their own products.

Shack: Have you spoken at all to the original creators of the franchise--who from what I know already had less complete involvement with Fallout 2 than with the first game--in any capacity?
Pete Hines: We have, on an individual basis. Some of those folks have contacted us on varying levels, whether it's a "Hey, good luck" or a job inquiry or what have you. Not really formally though, no. Again, it's one of those things where I have a lot of respect for those guys. I was a huge Black Isle fan, and all those RPGs coming out of Interplay at the time. I loved Baldur's Gate, Fallout. It was fantastic. Way back when, when I wrote for the Adrenaline Vault, Interplay was one of my companies. I used to cover all their stuff and play everything they put out. I still have my shrinkwrapped copies of Baldur's Gate and Planescape. They did great stuff for which I will always have tremendous respect. But at the same time, if we're going to move forward, we're really going to have to move forward. We can't just say, "Well, let's ask these guys what they think." As Fallout fans and guys who make roleplaying games and have for over a decade, we have pretty good ideas about what we want to do and how to do it.

Yeah, we said "Hi", but we are not going to listen to their advice. Fair enough, I say, they don't have the license anymore. Beth calls the shots, for better or worse.

Shack: Is there somebody at Bethesda who is really driving the vision of Fallout 3, like Todd Howard, or is it more a situation where it's the company vision?
Pete Hines: It's the vision of a group of folks. Much like The Elder Scrolls, it starts with Todd Howard who drives everything, but then there's definitely the lead designer, lead artist, lead programmer. More than anything, those team leads are the guys who champion for things, saying, "This is what it has to play like, this is what it has to look like, this is how the systems have to work." It's definitely a group of folks but at the end of the day it falls on Todd to set the pace and and how he thinks it should look and play.

Speaking of which, here is the comment from an artist working on Fallout 3, taken from the official forums. Some interesting stuff here, check out:

Originally Posted by The Gragster

There are a lot of people here who are very passionate about Fallout and want to stay true to what made the first games great. Personally, I have only played a few hours of the first Fallout and very recently at that, so it would be wrong for me to claim any great fandom. (Before your head explodes please refer to the disclaimer about me not being in charge of story or gameplay design!) However, I have enjoyed what I have played for the most part. I like the setting and dialogue and I like how your skills affect you ability to communicate with people a lot. I don’t, however, agree with you on the combat system. To me, it feels like an excruciatingly slow Diablo. I don’t see it as being particularly more involving, just much, much slower. To each there own I suppose.

Sweet, lets milk it, shell we. Let me go back to over beloved Pete, who said:

There is nobody [here] who hasn't played that game and enjoyed it.

Well, verba volant, scripta manent. But of course, we are not at court (even though I studied law), so I will not hack on it all too much. Just enough to show you how Pete's lip service is exactly that. Sweet talk. Don't trust it for a second. Especially since there are no hard information on this. The guy however, as many in Beth, dislikes the Fallout combat system. Of course he does, its not his game style. But that is, among other things, what made Fallout unique. I myself (allow me to shortly digress) played and play a variety of games, from fast shooters like CoD, over BF series, up to strategy games like Total War, MMOs like EVE and WoW, simulations like Silent Hunter, which I adore. Each game has its own paste and setting, and I like each for itself, and would not dare thinking of applying one game's mechanic to the other. If i don't feel like playing the tense, yet slow paced SH4, I'll go for some BF rounds. Meaning? Not all games must be FPS RPGs. I'll miss the Black Isle style of those games indeed.

On the other hand, this fella admits that he liked the dialogs and the way they changed with skills/course of action one takes. No idea how immersive his experience has been, especially after he played only few hours of the game, but I will agree that the dialogs and the story was one of the most crucial parts of the fallout setting. As was the humor. You would agree that the Fallout had lovely, subtle, dark humor filled with irony and sarcasm? I loved it. It was one of the things that made the immersion into the game possible, creating a unique atmosphere that RPG thrive on. well, if you liked that humor, I have some bad news for you.

Pete Hines: Well, Todd Howard (Executive Producer at Bethesda) has talked a little about this. We're not big fans of jokes… developers that try to tell jokes, it tends not to work very well. You know, the humour in Fallout 3 is that you can get a weapon and blow a guy to a bloody mess, then when you pull up your interface, you see a little smiling cartoon character holding his thumb up. Like that's funny… funny not in terms of jokes or winks at the camera and such…

So, I kill a mutant, smiley pops out saying "keeeewl!". ZOMG!

This comment alone gives me serious pause when thinking of the quality of the F3 and its targeted audience.

t0p5ecret, with all due respect, I am not trying to rain on anyone's parade. There is one fact that makes me different from all the fanbois and haters in the world; I don't care enough. If F3 turns to be crap, I'll sigh and say "oh, well, too bad", and turn to dozens and dozens of other good games. I will not go on a crusade against Bethesda, although I know many will, and currently are. If it rocks their boat, fine. I am playing computer games for almost 20 years now, and last five years I am doing reviews for professional PC and console gaming magazines. I know what I'm talking about, I have developed seventh sense about the game that will come out and of what quality will it be. I am on Fallout 3 for years now, not hanging every day on forums, but checking them regularly for more info. I loved Fallout 1 and 2, and I get back to those games every year or so, and play them anew. However, I abandoned hope of seeing F3, and for a while now abandoned hope of seeing F3 that will live up to its predecessors. I will not bother for a second to throw rotten tomatoes on Beth, played a lot of their games and liked them more or less; I'll merely be disappointed if that happens. Which, in all my certainty, will.

Please, do not kill the messenger. I would love to be able to come back here in 2-3 years and say "damn, I love Fallout 3 even more than the first two parts!", but I sincerely doubt it. Through various interviews the Beth folks have hinted (they never give any concrete information, but they let slip some stuff through the cracks) that F3 will not be isometric but rather an FPS style RPG, that it will not have turn based combat but a real time one instead, and that it will not have anything of the original Fallout humor but instead will parade the 12-year old humor of the type as quoted above. In all fairness, it probably will be Oblivion with guns, but whatever it turns out to be it will most certainly will not be anything like the old Fallout we know. Which could be good... But my experience so far says otherwise.

[Adeptus]

Some news...
Tech demo of Van Buren has been put up on NMA, and countdown to trailer of F3 has been put up on Beth...
Fallout 3 trailer countdown begins - PALGN News - Australia's PAL Gaming Network

[Adeptus]

A lot of well presented arguments. However, let me nitpick for a minute...

Originally Posted by Nadessico

...an artist working on Fallout 3...

...dislikes the Fallout combat system.

What does it matter if an artist dislikes the combat system?
It has as much relevance as a musician disliking the graphics...

[t0p5ecret]

As Adeptus said the demo of Van Buren is available here

[Voigtkampf]

Originally Posted by Adeptus

A lot of well presented arguments. However, let me nitpick for a minute...

What does it matter if an artist dislikes the combat system?
It has as much relevance as a musician disliking the graphics...

Well, I made a post longer than the airport field, you don't expect that every single detail is of excruciating importance.

However, for the love of splitting hairs/atoms, if he is on a team that is making Fallout, it might well have some relevance, since the teams work best with getting the input from all their members. In that aspect, the opinion from both the artist and musician on combat system can very well be as much relevant as any other member's. Gotcha!