Category Archives: Fallout

Spooktacular Work!

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We’re two days away from Halloween, and I’ve noticed on a few blogs people that gaming enthusiasts are carving their favorite videogame characters onto their pumpkins (check out some of the examples from Kotaku). I’ve seen plenty of good ones across the internets, with the Weighed Companion Cube one over on Joystiq being my favorite…until now.

Over the weekend, Cameron Swartzell e-mailed me the Vault Boy pumpkin you see above. Definitely gets the “thumbs up!”Here’s another shot of it in the light. Continue reading full article ›

Inside the Vault, Fallout 10th Anniversary edition

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This week is a special Q&A for Inside the Vault in honor of the 10th anniversary of Fallout. One question. Lots of answers. We asked the team: What did you like best about the original Fallout games? This was a fun one to put together, a terrific read. Even a couple of developers from our sister studio, Zenimax Online Studios, chimed in.

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Happy Birthday Fallout! Who Wants Cake? Fallout Perk Contest Announced

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10 years ago Fallout was finished and began making its journey into the hands and hearts of RPG fans everywhere. Seems more like a birthday than an anniversary. Perhaps it’s both. I do actually remember the release of Fallout in part because at the time I was working (part-time) at The Adrenaline Vault and Interplay was one of “my companies.”

In other words, I was our main point of contact for them, reviewed and previewed most of their games, etc. (along with 3DO, Interactive Magic, MGM Interactive, 7th Level…I sense a trend here). I don’t think I reviewed it because we had someone at AVault who was focusing on RPGs at the time and I let them review it, since they had primarily played every other RPG that was out at the time. But I did play it and I kept my copy, which sits proudly…somewhere in my office, I think. Sorry, off on a tangent here…where were we?

Fallout. 10 years. We bounced around a lot of ideas on how we could best honor Fallout and its 10th Anniversary/Birthday. We decided that we should do something we’ve never done before for any of our games (that I’m aware of anyway): give fans a chance to create something we’ll use in the game. We talked about it and we thought perhaps the best option was to do something where folks could be creative in a way that is very much Fallout, and not have it be overly complex. We also didn’t want it to be trivial (e.g., “name this person, creature, thing”).

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Fallout Community Q&A Arrives

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As many of you know, we announced a community Q&A for Fallout 3 a couple of weeks ago. Since Blinzler was so eager to see a community Q&A, I put him in charge of compiling questions that YOU wanted to know about. Not an easy task, considering he (with the help of some folks he selected) had to filter through pages of suggestions in the forums, as well as look at stuff I forwarded from our inbox, and of course, this blog. Did I mention he did all of this while living through a hurricane? Big props to Blinzler!

So head on over to our Fallout forums and take a look at the answers that Todd came up with. Here’s a sample:

14. You have talked a lot about choices and consequences in the quest design. Are you aiming for immediate feedback, or long term (and possibly unforeseeable) consequences? In addition to moral choices, will different characters be able to tackle tasks using their different skill sets? [GhanBuriG]

It’s a bit of both, overall I think the player needs something immediate, or they don’t know if they actually accomplished anything, or felt what they just did had any meaning whatsoever. The longer term stuff is great to surprise the player with, whether it’s positive or negative, but if it’s a surprise, you need to be careful, because that can be frustrating, so you give the player another route, or simply treat the consequence as a flavor thing, and not a game-changing thing.

In regards to using different skills, most definitely, yes. We’re really pushing on that, and I think that’s the crux of the game – what skills you use, so each quest or goal of the player’s can be accomplished in different ways using different skills. Even in dialogue we’re using a lot of different skills, depending on who you’re talking to So if you’re talking to a scientist, your Science skill may give you an extra dialogue option.

LEGO Fallout Confirmed!

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Following the blockbuster success of Lego Star Wars, we’ve decided to combine the timeless fun of Legos with the Fallout universe.

Okay, not really. But while reading our forums, I found an interesting thread started by DewiMorgan that links to some really cool post-apocalyptic LEGO buiding on the site Brickshelf. Created by the user Legohaulic, you can plenty of effort went into building this disaster area.

To view more examples of Legohaulic’s stuff, check here and also here.

“The Feel-Good Hit of the Summer”

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In post-apocalyptic news, Emil dropped me a note that over on Dark Horizons there’s a post referencing an Entertainment Weekly story that Viggo Mortensen is in talks about playing the role of the father in a movie adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” a book that has been very popular around the office. I borrowed a copy from Josh Jones and finally got around to reading it during my trip to Leipzig.

Anyway, Viggo would be fracking awesome. He’s perfect. Hope they get him, and can’t wait to see who they get for his kid. Not familiar with the work of the guys they have doing the adaptation (Joe Penhall) or directing (John Hillcoat), but I’d love to see this movie happen. As bleak a picture as has ever been painted of a post-nuclear world.

If you haven’t read it already, you need to. It’s that good.

Fallout Geek Previews Fallout 3

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Knowing Will Porter as I do, I don’t think he’ll take offense to being labelled as a Fallout Geek. More like praise, or some sort of a badge of honor. I mean, the picture says plenty.

He’s made it well known how much he loves the Fallout series, so I was curious to read his take on what we showed in the demo. I got to chat with him briefly at E3 after the demo and he seemed to like it, but he’s now posted his lengthy preview over at CVG to give his more complete thoughts. It’s worth a read for what he thought, what he liked, as well as his cavaets.

Plus, the first two paragraphs are hilarious. And yes, Chevy Chase is a real place Will, we promise. He posts fairly regularly over at PC Zone’s blog as well if you enjoy reading his stuff.

Next week I’ll be returning to Leipzig for the games convention, this time to show off Fallout 3 over on that side of the pond. So I’m sure more previews are going to be coming out of that. Should be an interesting show.

Gamespot Interview with Todd Howard

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Gamespot has posted their interview with Todd Howard, following up on the demo presentation with some lingering questions they had, such as:

It’s been said that the first Fallout, rather than Fallout 2, was the model that Fallout 3 was built on. What’s the reasoning for that?“I think the 1st one has the right tone, and the ones after it tend to drift. I liked being a Vault Dweller, searching for water; that was a theme I wanted to pick up on again. Someone who’s lived his whole life in this out-of-touch underground world, who’s thrust suddenly into a wasteland.”

For the rest, head over to Gamespot and read the whole thing.

Update: Play has put up a Q&A with Emil…take a look.