So it took a little longer than we expected, but Todd's gone ahead and answered the 20 submitted questions for the Community Q&A. Big thanks to Blinzler, the guys that helped him out, and of course everyone who submitted questions.

Also, when Blinzler submitted the questions, he also sent over 5 "bonus questions," which you'll see that Todd answered at the bottom.

So here's the questions...I'm going to close this thread, but feel free to talk amongst yourselves.

Community FAQ - 20 questions

COMBAT

1. Is unarmed combat in? If so, is it lethal or does it knockout your opponent? [Waterchip]

Yes, it's in, and yes, it's lethal. It's a big part of the game, and as far as game balance, it's our goal to make melee as viable as using guns in killing off enemies. It's something we're obviously still balancing, but I expect melee to be more "lethal", as getting near an opponent can be more difficult, especially if they have a gun, but at the same time, you don't have to worry about your ammo counts, so that's an immediate benefit to melee.

2. Is combat playable in the zoomed out third person ("almost iso") perspective and how will VATS work from it, meaning - will it zoom into FP or something else? [kaos]

I'd have to say "no". Combat's not really playable when you zoom the camera all the way back and point it down. You can try, but it's not meant to be played that way, because you still have to aim at the center of the screen, and at that point, the center is the ground. It's playable from 1st and 3rd person, but closer-in over-the-shoulder 3rd person. Regarding VATS., it does zoom in on your target, from your eyes, so I guess you'd say it is a "1st person" view. So if you're playing in 3rd person and enter VATS, you zoom in on the target, and when you're done, it flips back to your 3rd person view. It happens pretty fast and it's smooth. I kind of see VATS as its own view.

3. For what else can we use AP`s while in VATS and what is the "cost" of such things in real time? Some time consuming animation perhaps? Example: if taking stimpacks or using inventory in VATS will cost AP`s - then what will it cost in RT? Besides that what else besides shooting can you pull off in VATS, and how do you balance those things with their real time counterparts? [MrHappy1991]

The only thing you can do in VATS. is shoot, and it's designed as just that. It's kind of an "aimed shot" mode, so no taking stimpacks, etc. When dealing with the AP regeneration, that's one of the big questions, even for us, as to what we set it to, and that's going to get serious tweaking the more we play the game. It's definitely tied to your agility, but we haven't pinned down the range, so I don't know if an agility of 10 gives you twice the regen rate over an agility of 1, or if it will be in the 5-10x multiple range. I'd wager closer to 2x on that one. When you're not in VATS., attacks use up AP as well. At this stage, we're playing the game so that the AP usage in real-time is less then the regen rate, so the end effect is that attacking in real-time slows down the regen. I imagine it will end up being close to that feel.

4. Because so many of us still don't understand, could you describe VATS in painstaking detail? No really, please! [Waterchip]

I'll try, but I worry it will raise more questions then it answers. I assume you know the basics: press a button and it stops time, you queue up shots on body parts using AP, and then press the "go" button and it executes the moves. The playback is done cinematically, sometimes it's fast, sometimes it's slower ? depending on if something cool happens.

Probably better if I give you a closer look at how we approach it and view VATS. First, I don't see it as an either-or thing. VATS is meant to be used with real-time, it's not one or the other ? they should feel like they go together. I don't want the fans confused that this is turn-based, because it's not. It's a glorified aimed-shot mode, and a pretty glorious one at that. You'll be able to use it a lot, but not constantly, because it is the most effective way to kill things. And that's how we define it usually, it's the most effective and entertaining way of killing something, and we break up those two parts while developing it, "effect" versus "entertainment", or the "gameplay" versus the "playback".

Let's start with the gameplay. One, you can enter VATS, whenever you want, you just may not have enough AP do take any shots yet, or enough AP to do as many shots as you'd like. The AP needed to do a shot is based on the weapon's rate of fire; pistols can get more shots off in VATS than a hunting rifle. The camera zooms in on the target from your eyes, as VATS does a scan of the target, and you get a percentage chance to hit each body part. This accomplishes two things: 1) it just looks really cool, we even use the "combat-turn" sound from Fallout 1 here, and 2) the scan actually is detecting how much of the body part you can see to get us a good hit percentage. That hit-chance is based on how much of the body part you can see, the distance, your skill, the weapon itself, and a base body part chance we set per body part. That last thing, the base chance, is needed for us to jack up or down the hit-chance for game balance, so even if the head is X size compared to the chest, we can adjust it.

A good example would be the antennae on the ants, they are way too small to realistically ever want to use your AP on, but we up the hit-chance on them and it just plays better. So in real-time, you almost never hit their antennae, but you can do it more in VATS. And that's the key "behind the scenes" difference between VATS and real-time, in real-time the bullets just go-where-they-go, based on your skill, the gun, and some randomness. We don't calculate a hit-chance and roll dice against it. In VATS, we calculate a hit-chance and roll dice. If you succeed, we send the bullet right for what you were aiming at, and if you fail, we send it off slightly, meaning it should miss, but we still let it hit whatever it hits, so you can still miss a guy's head and end up shooting his chest.

Ok, now the "playback," or the entertainment part of it. Based on what is going to happen with what you chose, we select a number of camera angles and various playback shots to show you, the playback is only a few seconds. They are always pretty quick, the longer playbacks are rare, and we're the first ones to get annoyed if something repeats itself too much as we're playing the game. We have a VATS camera section of the editor where we make cameras and can setup almost anything we want, such as a special camera that tracks a bullet in slow motion that shoots a gun out of someone's hand, but only if they are using a specific pistol and only on a certain enemy. Pretty much anything we want to do; we can setup quick, so expect lots of various camera shots. One of things to know about the playback is it's not a "replay", it's the actual game time moving forward, so what you see is really what is happening right now. The selected cameras control how fast various things move, so most of the time, you, the player, are animating in real-time, the enemy you are shooting at is moving at one-tenth speed, and the rest of the world is paused, or updating slowly. We found just playing everything at the same speed doesn't feel or look good at all, we had to separate the three out; you, the enemy, and the rest of the world. Another thing we stumbled into, because time is moving forward, is that while you are watching an enemy react to getting shot in this great camera angle, your character can be getting mauled by another enemy. Really frustrating early on as we played it, so we do two things now: 1) depending on the camera chosen we essentially pause the rest of the world, and 2) we have a setting that dramatically reduces the damage the player takes during such an occurrence. You probably wouldn't notice any of these things, the playbacks just look "right", but you'd be surprised how much tweaking goes into making a two second snippet work well.

Hope that addresses the question, hard to answer that one. At some point in the future we'll probably release even more info on body part damage and how that affects the gameplay, as that's the key decision you are making in VATS - what body parts to shoot.

NPCS

5. Will party members be deep and interesting characters, with their own unique personalities and desires? Maybe even secret agendas? Or will they just be henchmen who do your bidding? [Calgone]

There are a very limited number of followers you can get, I would never call them "party members" because I think that leads to a different expectation. Yes, they have pretty strong and defined personalities. I'm always leery of the follower thing, because if I'm not in direct control of someone who's supposed to be helping me, they often seem to do something stupid. That being said, I'm pretty happy with how far we've come with them, and the amount of things you can tell them to do.

SPECIAL

6. What skills will be in the game? And why the lower than usual stats in the Pip Boy screenshots? [Ausir]

Sorry, we're not talking about what all the skills are yet, that will be later. In regards to the SPECIAL stats, that just happened to be the player's data we set for the demo, and until you asked, I didn't even notice they didn't add up to 35, which they should. When you create your character, you get a total of 35 points, we go with the assumption you can make every stat a 5 if you want, so 5 is the "average".

7. Are all the old traits and perks returning? Are certain perks adapted for the new combat system and how so? [anonymous]

Sorry, another area we aren't talking about yet, but I can say yes, many old ones are returning and some new ones that work with new game systems; combat and VATS being obvious ones. I'm happy with how many old favorites have been translated, and the new ones fit in seamlessly, that is, it's hard for me to tell the old ones from the new ones in flavor.

8. The stealing (and getting caught) system? Does it differ from Oblivions system? [kaos]

It differs a lot, in that there is no "jail", or specific crime system with money on your head. It's actually a lot easier for us to handle in Fallout, where it's ok to have violence break out when you do something people don't like and then calm down later. Also, instead of a "global" thing like Oblivion, it's on a faction level in Fallout, which also makes it work much better. And we use factions for any type of group, so the town of Megaton has its own faction.

INTERFACE

9. Will you have the written descriptions of items or just the visual? Granted, the visuals work just fine for me, but I loved the descriptions from the earlier Fallouts about how nasty the bed looks or whatever. Will there be something like our beloved text box anywhere in the main HUD? [anonymous]

We just show the object name, like "nasty bed", but in general, I think if we're relying on text to describe how something looks, sounds, etc, then we screwed up not having that come across naturally with what the player is seeing. It annoys me whenever we have to resort to describing something like that, even in Oblivion, with, say a journal describing how I feel or what I am seeing?it should just happen naturally.

FACTION

10. What sort of factions & faction action/interaction/conflict/reputation can we expect? [MrHappy1991]

Going off the crime question above, we use "faction" pretty heavily, and it's at the heart of many of our systems now, from crime to combat. So each faction knows how they feel about you and the other factions. It guides them in how they handle group combat, how they react to crimes, and how they handle the player in general.

A.I. (Artificial Intelligence)

11. What is being done to improve the AI as seen in Oblivion - wall staring, oblivious to people being killed around them, guards knowing when a character does something unlawful half a map away etc.? [anonymous]

First we've rewritten all the pathfinding systems, which eliminates the majority of the "NPC acts stupid" problems. We've also centralized the "crime" stuff into the factions, so in general, they behave better, or at least in ways that make more sense ? either joining in or running away. We've spent a lot of time on combat AI, which is almost all-new as well, in that we are going into a game with guns and groups of enemies trying to find cover, angles of fire, and such.

MATURE CONTENT

12. Will we see anything similar to the sixual encounters possible in both of the earlier Fallout games? The first 2 games had all of that but they kept their ratings by fading out (as did Fable). There was one quest in F2 where you could lose a bet and end up as a supermutant's toy for the night (you got to keep the ball gag as a gift). Can we expect that kind of advlt content? [anonymous]

Actual player goes off and has six? Not right now, but if a situation called for it, I wouldn't flinch at adding it with the fade-out. We did that in Daggerfall using the fade out. We actually did paintings for the scene and it never made it in Daggerfall, but I still have the paintings. In regards to adding a supermutant rendezvous with a ball gag, the marketing department has been asking for this to put on the box, but we just haven't found the time.

13. Will Fallout 3 maintain the same amount of drug content as the earlier games or will we see more or less? [thenightgaunt]

It's about the same as the previous games, there are various drugs, and each as its own positive effects and side-effects if you get addicted to them.

CHOICES & CONSEQUENCES

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.

15. In Fallout 1 and 2, it was entirely possible to say the wrong thing or make a mistake and have no way of fixing it. Unless you used a walkthrough, every player experienced the game differently. Will Fallout 3 be like this? Or will it be more like Oblivion where you could do almost everything in the game with one character and one play through? [El_Smacko]

It's pretty much like Fallout 1 and 2 there, and not like Oblivion; each person's game should be different, and you can't do it all. In terms of dialogue, we are careful to make sure you know the route you're taking if it's a big game thing, like blowing up the town of Megaton, and avoid the "make a mistake" part you mentioned.

QUESTS & STORY

16. Will the structure of the Main Quest be more like Oblivion, where you had to perform a series of tasks in the right order to progress, or more like the originals where most of the progress you'd do consisted in gathering information, which was not a pre-requisite in order to end the game? [Thomas Stehle]

Closer to Fallout, in that you can actually skip entire parts of the main quest in Fallout 3 if you stumble across important information on your own. We debated that, but in the end, I think that's a positive, and has a better feel then an artificial barrier that feels too "gamey", and it's something I liked about Fallout 1.

17. It's been said that the game world in Fallout 3 is smaller than that of Oblivion's. How does it compare with the number of quests you can pursue, or the amount of things you can do? [anonymous]

On the quest side it's a lot smaller than Oblivion, but keep in mind these quests have more in them. In regards to "things you can do", all the freeform stuff, exploring, etc, it's about the same. Since we have a lot of little freeform activities, like "help this NPC survive" that you run into that we don't even define as a quest anymore, it's just an event that takes place.

18. A developer (possibly Howard, Pagliarulo or Carter) has stated that they are trying to ensure that each quest has at least two ways to complete it. Does this mean that there are two different outcomes to each quest, or simply that there are two different ways to complete the quest with the same outcome either way? [Lingwei]

These means there are multiple ways, whether that is to the same outcome, like "get X information" or multiple outcomes. Often we just do what feels natural, so if it makes sense that the outcome would be dramatically different, we do it, if not, we don't force it.

DIALOGUE

19. Please outline in detail and give an example of an actual or hypothetical FO3 conversation: Dialogue options, what influences them, length of PC lines and NPC replies, what is the effect on the game. [GhanBuriGhan]

I'm not going to write out an entire dialogue here, but I'll tell you what I can, and I realize for many, this is one of the key things that made Fallout, and I assure you it is for us too. If you look at Fallout 1, our dialogue trees are larger and more in-depth. I'm incredibly proud of the job our designers are doing with them, and they know they have a lot to live up to.
First, it's all dialogue trees, like the previous Fallouts. You always see your own voice and it's all tree based. It's is not topic based like Oblivion.
Second, there are "speech challenges" ? these are for using your Speech skill when talking to NPCs, and they are specific things you can say with a percentage chance they will succeed. This chance is based on your Speech skill, how much the NPC likes you, and the difficulty of what you're asking for. Asking for something small is easier then asking for something big. If you fail, the person is going to like you less.
Third, your skills determine the "extra" dialogue options you get, so depending on the character you are talking to, and your own skills, you may get an extra choice based on any number of skills, karma, or perks. These choices are always successful, unlike the speech challenges.

The length of the lines is as long as we need them to be, again pretty much like Fallout 1.

CREATURES

20. How much do you plan to stick with the Universe of the original series from the point of view of living creatures? Will you have mutated ghouls and FEV-treated supermutants portrayed as living "persons" with needs, or will there simply be "ghoul-villain" and "Supermutant-enemy" who will only engage in combat? [anonymous]

We stick to it pretty close, so the Supermutants in this game definitely have an agenda. It really depends on the creature, and many come in different flavors. I guess I can say that, yes, we do have ghouls in the game, and most are used as NPCs you talk and interact with. We use them heavily. But there are also other ghouls, the Feral Ghouls, these are more "creature" like, and are aggressive.

-Bonus Questions-

NPCS

1. Will there be NPCs that you can hire/recruit to join you in your quest? If so, how many NPCs will you be limited to at once and approx. how many joinable NPCs will be available in the game? Also, will there be more detailed behavioral settings as in Fallout 2? [Nukem354]

Yes, and like I mentioned above, they have personalities, and you can give them a host of directions for how they should help you. I'm really encouraged by how cool they are. Right now we limit you to two with you at a time, because there are also other quests where you get more people with you, and we obviously need to limit it. Total number in the whole game to hire? As of today there are only six, but we're just focused on getting them working great and being deep characters. Wouldn't surprise me to see that number go up.

QUESTS & STORY

2. Is there going to be any character type specific quests that other types of characters will not have at all, or will all the quests be open to any type of character? [kaos]

Depends on what you define as a quest, we mostly design situations that can be approached from a number of angles, so we have "quests" with very different paths in them depending on your character.

3. Who wrote the main story, or is it a group effort? Are you not afraid that introducing a father figure limits the freedom to imagine your avatar and imposes motivation on the player that may not be in keeping with the avatar he imagines? [GhanBuriGhan]

Emil Pagliarulo, the lead designer, does the bulk of the writing. I can't say enough good things about his stuff, it's fantastic. We both wanted to do a father/child thing very early on, with you growing up in the Vault. We also have three other designers working on large chunks of the main quest; Kurt Kuhlmann, Alan Nanes, and Brian Chapin. In regards to pushing a persona on the player, yes, that is a concern, and we're pretty careful not to do that. You don't have to be nice to your father. I think you run that risk with any character driven story, the risk that the player doesn't actually care about the characters, or isn't motivated to follow them. You'd be surprised how much that enters our conversations about any quest, "What's my motivation? Why do I want to do this?" The answer sometimes is "because the game told you to", but that's never a good answer, so we keep pushing until it feels right.

[semi-Bioshock-spoiler]

I did love how Bioshock handled the "because the game told you to" dilemma. They twist that brilliantly halfway through the game. If you haven't played it, do so.

MAP TRAVEL & SPECIAL ENCOUNTERS

4. What exactly will the map travel look like - will we see 'Indiana Jones' style dotted line travel across a stylized map or something like Oblivion fast travel and will there be a quest compass that we can turn off and how will the random/special encounters work? [Blinzler]

Sorry, but not ready to discuss that stuff yet. I will say the feedback from the Oblivion map system was really good, and I think it struck a good balance of finding locations while wandering and quickly get back to ones you've been to already. Regarding the quest compass, you always need an easy way to tell the player where you want them to go, so we'll use something similar. I don't think it's a question of the system, it's a question of how often/specific you want the player pointed. Sometimes we want the location to be a mystery, sometimes we don't.

ENDING

5. How will the endings work out? Will the 9-12 different endings be like Fallout's ending slides, or will it be a Daggerfall-esque, whoever gets the MacGuffin at the very end triggers what ending? (Frank Horrigan)

The ending is based not only on specific choices you made, some of those near the very end, but also how you acted as a whole throughout the game. So it's permutations of a number of things, and that's why the number of endings is still fuzzy, some of them are only slightly different than the others.

After long last, here's the 2nd Fan Interview. Along with it, we hope you all enjoy these three exclusive screenshots, that we took just for you. I just want to say again, thanks for being so patient with us on this one, I know it took awhile. And thanks to everyone on these boards for supporting our games for so long.

http://fallout.gamesas.com/images/art/fallout3screens/fanscreens/megatonbar.jpg

http://fallout.gamesas.com/images/art/fallout3screens/fanscreens/shotgunexplode.jpg

http://fallout.gamesas.com/images/art/fallout3screens/fanscreens/pipboyskills.jpg


1) Which of the following, if any, will be featured in Fallout3; Romance, six, Homosixuality, Nudity, Prostitution, Slavery, Cannibalism, Children, Child killings, drugs, addictions? And of the things that won't be featured, can you explain why they won't be included in the game?

It touches on most of those. Slavery, children, drugs and addiction more than the others, as those factor for into the setting more. In regards to nudity and child killings, no, it features neither of those, as they don't really add to the flavor of the game (I'll get into children in the next question more). I think if you look at Fallout 1, and the footprint it has with the topics you ask about, Fallout 3 is pretty much the same, in that it features the types of things you mention at about the same rate, no more, no less. Drugs and drug addiction play a larger role perhaps, as it's a key gameplay device. I think the heart of this question is "has the harshness and maturity of the world of Fallout 3 been tempered from the earlier games?" and I can certainly say "No, it hasn't been."


2) Are children and otherwise non essential or non-quest related NPC's vulnerable or invulnerable to accidental or purposeful (deadly) harm? And how about quest essential people? Please elaborate as much as you can, especially on why you choose to do it that way.

You will not be able to be a child killer. There are several reasons for this, some of them are very basic, like we wouldn't be able to sell the game, anywhere to anyone, if the children could be killed. I'm not using that as a scapegoat. We never wanted the game to offer any incentive or desire to be blowing kids away, so from our initial designs, we didn't know how we were going to handle if you shot them, we just knew it was going to be a big no-no, especially with a system like VATS and the graphic fidelity the gore has. Anyway, when attacked, all children flee and any regular NPCs friendly to the children will instantly attack you, so it feels good in the game, in that there is an appropriate response.

In regards to essential NPCs, it works like Oblivion, in that when they "die" they get knocked "unconscious" and get up a little while later. It worked well in Oblivion, so we kept that system, as you can still attack everyone that you want, and get at least a small benefit (being able to avoid them while they are down). I will say that the number of essential characters is minute compared to Oblivion and we've gone to pretty big lengths to cover a lot of people's deaths, but sometimes that's just not possible.


3) Could you outline your thoughts on the matter of ensuring that choices and consequences provided by the various quests within your game are crafted so as to be more nonlinear than simply the superficial choice between "good, bad and neutral"/"affirmative, negative and nothing?" Also, will there be other aspects to choices in Fallout 3? Political? Philosophical? Exactly how far will you go with the player's moral freedom, the "gray" solutions?

That really depends on the quest, so it's hard to say. There are certainly some that are clearly good/bad, like blowing up Megaton. It's clearly bad to nuke an entire town. It's clearly bad to kill innocent people throughout the game, and your karma is affected. It's also clearly good to help people in need, giving to charity, passing out clean water, and more. Those are specific examples in the game. I think many people want to play "good" and want to play "evil". Both are fun in different ways. The gray area comes into several quests, where the situation is just "bad". Some feel like no-win situations and they come across as "make a hard choice." I think that's where it feels best honestly, but we do need to mix it up between that and simpler good/bad.


4) Are most of the non-human entities in the game of hostile intent, or can some be reasoned with, or even recruited as companions under the right circumstances?

Most are hostile, but not all. Yes, some can be reasoned with and even hired.


5). Will crimes committed in one place automatically be known everywhere and by everyone? Or is this limited to the zone the PC committed the deed in?

It's limited to the faction you did the crime to, and we also put towns into their own faction. So a crime committed in one town will not affect another, but crimes committed to a group will be known to that group (say the Brotherhood of Steel) throughout the world.


6) Would you take us through a hypothetical dialog tree that demonstrates the typical choices made available to the player?

I don't have enough space to really do that. They are big. If you look at Fallout 1, it's deeper than that. To give you the scale, we have over 40,000 lines of dialogue, compared to a few thousand in Fallout 1.

Usually we start a conversation with an NPC with some flavor from the player, kind of the "how do you want to act towards this person?" Are you going to be nice, direct, polite, an ass? We cover it all. Some of my favorite player responses are simply "", and playing the silent type. But probably my favorite opening is the first time you talk to a Ghoul, one of the choices is "Gah! What the f*#$ are you?"

Depending on the character, there's usually a list of common questions about him or the town/area you are in. If it's quest related, it can get pretty deep with that character, as most have different paths to how you handle them. You can also use your Speech skill to persuade, and sometimes special dialogue options come up based on other stats, whether that is strength when talking to a tough guy, or options that come from perks you may have.


7) What can you tell us about the way Armor works, will it come as a full set or as parts, and how will it influence perception? Will there be a special HUD when wearing it?

It comes as two parts, the body part and the helmet. So you can mix and match. And then you can also put on things like glasses and other items. Different outfits also come with different stat boosts sometimes, and do more than basic "damage resistance". Like mechanic's coveralls that boost your repair skill, that kind of thing. We wanted a reason that you might wear clothes as well as armor. There's a merchant's outfit that ups your Barter skill for instance. When it comes to armor, and in particular power armor, yes it does affect some stats (Power Armor lowers your Agility). There is not a special HUD when wearing Power Armor.


8) How does the inventory system work? Is it slot based? Or a never ending back pocket like with the original games?

It's based on weight. No fiddling with slots. The Pip-Boy separates your items into categories for you ? Weapons, Apparel, Aid, Misc, and Ammo. The "Aid" category is for things like meds, chems, food; anything that you can consume to modify stats. It also contains the books, as like Fallout 1, these are read/consumed and raise a skill (permanently). Also, Ammo has zero weight, as we didn't want the player having to micromanage that aspect.


9) Will the PC version of the game include some sort of SDK or level editor like Elder Scrolls games have? If not, might one become available via download in the future? And how about the console versions, what have you done to give them the same options PC players have?

It will definitely not be included on the disk. If and when one is available, it will be a free download. I wish I could promise that an editor will be coming and when, but I can't. Our focus is first and foremost the game, and it's a major undertaking getting an editor ready for release, and making sure the game plays nice with the data users create. That being said, we'd love to see it happen. We're really proud of our tools and what the community has created for Morrowind and Oblivion, it's really awesome stuff. It's one of those things that even if only a thousand people use it, they create enough great stuff that keeps the larger audience interested and going. I always found it a great "pure" RPG experience, creating your own stuff and sharing it, like a good DM. I still have "Stuart Smith's Adventure Construction Set" for the Apple 2 on my shelf. I have no doubt that Fallout would benefit from such a thing as well, so we'll see what happens, it's not something we can just throw out there.

As far as consoles go, that's not happening for this game and user content. It's something we keep talking about with Microsoft and Sony, but there are a lot of barriers there right now, from delivery to security. We'd love to see that happen. I'd love to see Oblivion content created by PC users available to all platforms, because the data is the same, most of them would pretty much "work" right away.


10) How advanced will the AI of NPC's be this time around? Are they really going to have a life? Speaking to other NPC's in a logical manner, traveling and trading with/in faraway places, Submitting to the player rather than fighting if they know, or think, they're no match for him?

I wish I could answer with a number, like "it will be 17 advanced." AI is difficult to define, the NPCs certainly appear much smarter than our previous stuff, by a lot. Much of that is us giving them better data, massaging what they do so the player gets to see more of it. We added a lot of animations, so people in town are doing more. They "seem" to be interacting with the world in a more realistic manner, but that usually means going up to something and playing an animation. It can be something really simple, like we added "lean against wall". It's funny how something that small can give life to a person. They walk into a space, and just lean against the wall, arms folded. Like Oblivion, we use our Radiant AI system, so most of the NPCs eat, sleep, work, etc. I think we take it for granted now, but it's pretty great to have that level of control. We've also done a lot to the conversation system, which makes them seem a lot smarter, but again, that's better data, not a new system.

On the technical side we spent most of our time doing an all new pathfinding system. Morrowind/Oblivion use nodes for pathing and Fallout uses a navmesh. This is the difference between an NPC having a valid point to stand on (node) versus an area to stand in, or walk around (mesh). You can do much more sophisticated actor movement and behavior with a navmesh, and I think you'll see the results onscreen, especially when the bullets start flying. The actors do a great job of finding cover and using the space well, something we could never have done with pathnodes.

In terms of the NPCs traveling around, many travel around town, and some travel the wasteland. There are a few caravans in the game that go from town to town trading. Radiant AI handles something like that really well.

Lastly, as far as submitting to a more powerful foe, yes they do that, in that they run away. If they're overmatched, they holster their weapon, flee and try to hide. While this sounds cool on paper, it's often not fun at all, and we've ended up really dialing that back, because it gets really annoying really fast, to have people run away all the time. The main faction that still acts like this are the Raiders, the others don't do it so much.


11. How common are the 'Dungeon' areas, and do they play a part in the main story, or are they isolated side quests of their own with little bearing on the outside world. And regarding the creatures inside the dungeons, do they re-spawn or can players clear the area permanently?

They are common, and play a part throughout the game, whether that's the main quest, side quests or just exploring. To even get to downtown DC you're going to have to go through some metro tunnels. And then when you are downtown, the whole thing is like one giant "dungeon". Any structure of size, an office building, destroyed factory, school, hospital, you name it ? we use all of these as "dungeons".

Most of these do not respawn, once they are cleaned out, they are clean. Some respawn for specific reasons, and some have a limited number of creatures respawn to keep it interesting if it's a huge area that we don't want to feel "dead" later on.


12) From the four archetypes (Charisma Boy, Stealth Boy, Science Boy and Combat Boy) which of these are carried over into Fallout 3 and to what degree will that change the gaming experience? Will it change our starting equipment? Will the rewards and/or results of quests actually differ depending on the way you play through it or the way you play at all?

Actually, we think of it purely in terms of skills. How useful is the particular skill? As much as possible we want the choice for which skills you are going to use to be even, so "Science" is one skill, but there are many combat skills. I can definitely say that what skills you focus on is the largest element in how the game plays for you. Skill choice does not change your starting equipment. And as far as quest rewards, yes, many, but not all, have different rewards for not only the outcome, but how you achieved it.


13) What will the map travel look like? Is it a dotted line that slowly crawls towards the destination on the map, or Oblivion-type fast travel? And will there be random encounters during said map travel?

It works like Oblivion, it's a system we got great feedback on from that game and while we tossed other ideas around, it works best for us. It has a different flavor than Oblivion, in that when the game starts you don't know any locations, so you have to discover everything on foot, by yourself. The world map only acts to get you back to places you have already been.
There are no random encounters while you fast travel, but there are random encounters while you walk around. We actually have a great system for random encounters in this game that we're really proud of.


14) How much diversity will there be in the factions (and structures of factions) found in Fallout 3? And what can you tell us about those factions and inter-faction politics?

They all have it to some level. Some of that is hard to see as a player unless you really look, we only shove it in your face where it makes sense. I think the Brotherhood of Steel is probably the one players will get a feel for the best. See Emil's dev diary for a taste of what the Brotherhood is going through.


15) How will the real-time combat skills work? Will the chance of missing be larger as the skill is lower, or does it affect the amount of damage done? Or will this be featured in weapons swaying and/or recoil compensation?

The skill affects both how well you aim (your hand wobbles on screen), and how much damage you do with a shot. Over the course of the project, we really dialed back the skill wobble, and dialed up the damage effect. It's really not fun to miss all the time, it just made the game feel terrible. You can also "aim", like many shooters. You use the right mouse button, or left trigger on a console, and your character aims at the target. You can't run while you are aiming, but it negates most of the skill wobble. Not all of it, but enough to compensate for a really bad skill. What you find is, as your skill raises, you don't have to rely on aiming as much, so it's a good balance.

Keep in mind the guns have condition too, which affects how much damage they do as well. The gun condition used to also affect rate-of-fire as well as the spread of bullets, but we took those elements out, it was just too much going on, and you usually started the game with a bad skill and a bad gun and it just felt "broken", with bullets shooting off in all kinds of crazy directions. Now the gun condition affects damage and how much the gun jams when you reload it, which ultimately equates to a rate-of-fire, but feels better when playing.


16) What will be the interaction between two aggressive NPC's (or creatures) in regards to each other? On a scenario where a couple of ghouls and some mutants are at a close distance do they fight among each other? Do they ignore you? Do they both attack you? Will they follow you until you reach the next town?

They don't treat the player any different than anything else. In the case you laid out, they fight each other. One may switch to you for any number of reasons, but you aren't deemed "special." As far as enemies following you, yes, they can follow you for a while, but we eventually have them break it off so you don't train legions of mutants back to other areas.


17) How much can you tell us about the stats, skills, traits and perks featured in the game? And what skills/perks were carried over and which were dropped from previous Fallout games? And why choose the ones you did carry over and why did you not choose the ones that were dropped?

Big question, and I can't discuss all the specific stats yet. I do know the skill list is coming out in a few weeks, perhaps by the time you read this. Perks will not be until much later, as we're still doing some final tweaks on them. I think when you see the skill list, the choices will be obvious, and they're the ones most of you would agree with.

Ok, time for some, perhaps, bad news. Traits have been rolled into Perks. That was a hard decision for us, and one that took, literally, years. We kept coming back to it, and re-discussing it, and once we were playing the game, found that the difference between the two systems was so similar that even half the entries in the community "design a perk" contest were actually traits. Take "Bloody Mess" for example, probably the most famous trait. Is the game really more fun if that can only be taken at the very start? Why can't you pick it at level 6? What's so important about having it only at the start? The perk choice is probably one of the most fun parts of the game, and to relegate certain ones to only be chosen when you first start, before you've even played the game and know how any of it feels, just didn't prove as fun to us. How do you know you want Bloody Mess if you haven't seen how bloody the current mess is? (did I just type that?) Anyway, trust me when I say this one was a debate, a long one, and a decision we're not naive enough to think will be understood or applauded by everyone.

Anyway, many traits from Fallout return, but as perks. And many perks return, as perks. Another change over the last year is that you now pick a perk every time you level, and the perks have been balanced accordingly. Like I said before, we found the level-up-pick-a-perk experience to be so enjoyable, it was actually confusing people why they couldn't do it every level. Perks also still have prerequisites for certain stats, including your level. New perks open up at even levels, so while you still get to pick a perk at the odd levels, you won't see any new ones based on your level, but may see a new one based on say, your Science skill.

The good news is that there are a ton of perks, around 100 if you include the multiple ranks. And with a level cap of 20, you still have only 19 times you get to pick one, so you need at least 5 playthroughs of the game to use them all. It was important to us with all of this, that the choices were hard for the player, no matter what the skills/traits/perks were, and that you couldn't see it all the first time through.


18) How far will physical character creation be able to go? That is can we go so far as to add scars and tattoo's in player selected places? Can we decide the body type, facial appearance etc? And will stat changes or fights or anything else later in the game change that appearance?

You get to create your face, but not your body style. You choose your race (Caucasian, African American, Hispanic, or Asian) and six (Male or Female). You can manipulate your face any way you want, shaping it to your liking. We also have a number of "preset" faces, so you can start with a decent looking face. You can also pick your hair style and color. There are not scars or tattoos you can pick. But, there are beards. And not just any beards. We have them all. We have the most ridiculous list of beards in any game, ever. One of our artists went crazy with beards and didn't stop. We've joked about making a prerelease video of "the beards of Fallout 3". Anyway, they look great. Lots of cool hairstyles as well, from 50s style normal, to half shaved wasteland Mohawks. There are also some ways to "get a haircut" and change your hairstyle later in the game.


19) Will the PC be able to crouch, kneel, lie down, and climb? And what are the benefits to that overall and in a combat situation?

You can crouch, this is good for taking cover and also acts as "sneaking". When you do so, you get an indication of how well hidden you are as well. You cannot kneel, lie down, or climb.


20) What sort of weather effects will we be seeing and will it effect the game play in some manner (e.g. change the landscape, people get off the street to take cover etc.) or is it more or less just 'eye candy?

Other than different cloud types that come and go, there are no other weather effects. We toyed with rain and windstorms but decided not to do them.


21) What can you tell us about companion NPC's? About their limits, their abilities, how everything works exactly.

There are a very limited number of them and they are hard to get. Not only do you have to find them, your often need significant money, and you also need to have the correct karma for many of them. Some won't come with you if you don't "match" with them.

They are pretty special though, they have great personalities and we've found them great fun to play with. You can also give them stuff, that they will use, so it's fun to give them weapons and armor you aren't using and watch them play dress up and use other weapons. But we're careful not to overpower them, so for them to survive, you need to manage them a bit. You'll want to give them stimpaks to heal, and better weapons, etc.

You can only have one follower at a time, you have to "fire" the one you have to get a new one. Except Dogmeat, he's special, you can always have him with someone else. Lastly you can also give them some basic commands, like how they should fight, whether to wait for you, or to go someplace else.


22) How much will the main storyline tie into the storylines of the previous games? And how have you worked towards making it both accessible to new players and recognizable for veteran players? And do you think it will feel more like a reboot of the series or a continuation from the previous games?

It has the themes of the previous games, but is not a continuation of that specific story and those locations. Events from the previous games are referenced, sometimes subtly, sometimes very specifically, but if you never played the first two, you wouldn't even know, it just feels like good history you'd see in any "first" game, for how the world is the way it is. If you're a fan, I think you'll get it all. At the same time, I've never really viewed Fallout 2 as a direct continuation, since it's not a "here's what the hero did next" sequel, it has a decent sized distance from the first. I think if you look at our Elder Scrolls stuff, and how we keep the timeline and overall world moving forward, but each game is its own thing, that's how we approach this.


23) One of the previews mentioned perception effects when you see enemies on your radar. How does the player's Perception affect the radar's maximum number of targets? Should we think of something along the lines of Counter Strike, or a quest compass like Oblivion had? And if it's the latter, are we able to toggle it?

It's most like the Oblivion compass, and "ticks" appear on it when you "perceive" other NPCs or creatures. If the creature/NPC is hostile, the tick will appear red. If not, it appears green. No, you cannot toggle it off unless you toggle off the entire HUD, which you can do.


24) Will it be possible to finish the game using no weapons but only hand to hand combat? And when you level that skill up, do you just do more damage with the attacks you already have or do you learn different and more moves?

Playing the whole game with only hand-to-hand wasn't a goal of ours. I'm 99% sure you can, but it will be hard. As your Unarmed skill number goes up, you do more damage. There are also weapons you can get to use with this skill, like brass-knuckles. Lastly, there are some perks that give you special things like new moves.


25) How much of a role does morale or fear play for an enemy? And how much difference is there in intelligence and combat tactics found in different enemies?

Like I mentioned before, they have a "confidence" setting that determines when and if they will flee, but we've dialed it down a lot. NPCs, for the most part, are much smarter than creatures, but mostly because they simply can do more. They can use any number of weapons, take cover, and use chems. They'll even pickup weapons lying around. Super Mutants can do the same. You think you've played it great when you take out the arm of one Super Mutant and he drops his mini-gun, only to see another one pick it up and use it on you. We've really tweaked how they play depending on their equipment and the area they are in, and I'm really happy with how that part turned out. I think that ends up being the pure "meat" of the game ? exploring a space and using your skills and equipment to deal with the enemies there.