With a lot of thanks to the former Wassenaarder bloody hypocrite, here are some excerpts. For the complete article, grab the OXM as it hits the stands this Monday.

"When we started this, we would go to great lengths to explains the differences from Oblivion," explains Fallout 3's executive producer, Todd Howard. "If you're talking to an enthusiast, there are so many differences, and we feel it's under-selling the game to say it's Oblivion with guns. But when we started talking to more consumer-oriented magazines, we'd have, like, two seconds...and we'd say, 'it's like post-apocalyptic Oblivion with guns.' And they're like, 'Awesome!' To Joe Public, it's mainly first-peron, wide-open game and you get to do what you want. The game it's closest to is Oblivion. So now when someone asks, 'Is it Oblivion with guns?' my main answer is, 'in all the best ways.'"
The truth is, the list of comparable titles is pretty short. As Lead Designer Emil Pagliarulo puts it, "How many massively single-player role-playing games are there?"
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"I think it's more in the Tarantino fashion, which is to have some fun with it," says Howard. "It keeps it almost surreal. All these posters and the music are winking, but when the guys die, it's over-the-top. It's rendered really nicely, so on some level, it's believable - but it's ridiculous. That's the point."
"It would be a lot less fun without that level of gore," adds Pagliarulo. "It's part of the visceral experience. You laugh your ass off when you see a mutant's leg get blown off. It never gets old - it hasn't yet."
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And that's the final piece of gear you'll need to pack before your vacation at the end of the world: a wicked sense of humor. "It's so depressing that you have to see the humor in it," says Pagliarulo. "If not, you'll lose your mind or slit your wrists. Part of your brain refuses to admit it will ever happen, so you have to look at it and laugh. The dark humor of talking to an old lady who's really nice to you, and then blow her head off, put her head on a counter, and pretend to talk to her...there's a certain charm to that."
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"We're still messing with how your companions heal, but you can give him stimpacks if he's hurt," says Howard. "We're not sure how much of that [companion maintenance] is interesting. But we think Dogmeat is going to be pretty popular - 'I'm going to do the Mad Max thing and wander the wasteland with my dog.'"