No Mutants Allowed

[Brother None]

Well, you already know Todd Howard, but still:

Who am I and what do I do?
Todd Howard, “person-in-charge” of Fallout 3’s development. I’ve worked on most of our stuff, but the one’s that I “created/was in-charge-of” would be Future Shock, SkyNET, Redguard, Morrowind, and Oblivion.

What are your inspirations…
Oh, whatever. You guys just ask these questions because you’re subversively trying to get a better understanding of who we are and what makes us tick, because that will give you insight into what Fallout 3 is and what’s going to make it tick, so I’m not going to answer the questions, since I think you guys have proven you deserve something more, straight from “the horse’s mouth”.

Obviously I can’t talk about the game itself yet, but I can give you a look into how I/we approached it. When we first got the license in 2004, I was pretty ecstatic, I pushed pretty hard for us to get it, because I really liked the first game and thought Fallout would be a great fit for us, it has all the big things I love about RPGs – player freedom, big world, go do what you want type of stuff. But once you have it – you obviously get to work on how to approach an icon like Fallout. And it’s much harder then you think, because it’s certainly a game that has grown in its legacy as time goes on, it’s hard to sift through what its “essence” or “soul” is, because it’s aged, and people often discuss it in nostalgic tones.

I obviously replayed the games, and Fallout 1 remains the truest inspiration for what we’re doing, but again, it can be hard to get at the “soul” of it, because of its aging. So I look to things like the first game’s manual. The fiction and tone of it. There is also a great, great section in the Fallout 1 hintbook, “One Woman’s Path through the Desert”, which is a journal of going through the game, as if it was real. In some ways, that section is a better look into the game then the game itself. I also read old-reviews, because they gave me a better understanding of how those games felt then. Again, removing the aging.

I obviously looked at all the PA movies – Boy and his Dog, Mad Max, Strangelove, etc. Though I find the actual PA movies end up fairly generic, and don’t capture what is special about the Fallout world, and that’s not the world that you end up with, but the world of 2077 that gets destroyed, and then built upon. I became far more interested in the “pre-war” world, then the “post-war” world.

I also looked a lot at my own reactions to other franchises that have had long gaps and were reborn/updated again in another era. Mostly movies, and such, The Lord of the Rings, Superman, Batman, etc, etc. Now, I’m a recovering comic book junkie, so I’ll probably be throwing around a lot of superhero references, and I hope they make sense. Speaking of which, I’d really like to sell a bunch of long-boxes from my basement if anyone wants them, you just can’t have my signed Frank Miller Dark Knight. Speaking of Dark Knight, Batman remains my favorite (one day I’m gonna rock the house with an open-ended gotham city Batman game, mark my words). The recent Batman and Superman movies, or even their earlier counterparts are pretty good examples of classic iconic franchises that were reborn again. I love…love…Batman Begins. Chris Nolan is a @#$*!^& genius. See the Prestige if you haven’t. Now, I have problems as a huge Batman fan with it, but the pure “soul” of Batman beats in the heart of that movie, and Nolan’s current “I believe in Harvey Dent” tease from The Dark Knight is further proof of his genius.

I also love the first Superman movie, and I think I draw many parallels from Bryan Singer doing Superman Returns, which tries to follow Superman 1 and 2 and ignore 3 and 4, to our own situation. Reg Richard Donner’s Superman, one of my mantras, and it’s a word he used for making that movie, is “verisimilitude”. Look it up if you don’t know what it means. Donner made a sign of it and put it up (maybe I’ll do the same). I want to bring that to Fallout, I want to make it real again, and come alive like it’s the first time you’ve ever seen it. Treat it with respect, and don’t cheese it up.

I wish I could give you real, true, insight into what we put into our games, and this is not me just trying to sell you, or smooth you over, because I’m Ok, really, if you don’t love what we do. We’re fans, we’re passionate about what we do. We go on a crusade to make the best game we can. We make the game we would run to the store and buy, we argue, we debate, we scream, we stay up all night, we clap and cheer the highs and curse the lows. One day we’ll find a way to make you a fly on the wall in one of our design meetings – they’re pretty damn inspiring. And I wish you knew all the faces of the 80 people busting ass to make this game great. The secret superstars you don’t know of like Istvan Pely, Mike Lipari, and Scott Franke. I could go on and on.

I’m often asked about the fans and our forums, and I think you all want to know if your opinions are heard or it you’re shouting into a black hole. And I can assure you that we have these forums so we can hear from you. And yes, we read most of it. It’s like a car crash you just have to watch sometimes, lots of violence and parts exploding, but there is something awesome in its power. Your opinions do matter, and we want them. We are influenced by what gets said about us on these forums, in the press, the letters we get and so forth. Speaking of letters, we do get a lot, and the letters are different then the forum posts. One of the popular letters we get is from someone who’s had a life-changing experience, or gone through a bad time, and had to write us to tell us how much Morrowind/Oblivion meant to them. That it became a real world to them, that they got to escape and play a stronger/different person then they are in real life, and it helped them. You have to pretty jaded to not have that affect you. And that’s why you come to these forums and that’s why people outside of RPGs and/or Fallout may think you are crazy. Because they are not just games, they are worlds, and for the time you play them they are as real as anything you have experienced in life, they become part of you and you care. That’s why you and I are both here.

To say we care about Fallout would be an epic understatement. We are excited/humbled to be the ones to bring it back. I know we don’t have all the right answers, or the one’s you would make when it comes to how it should be or look. We can only do what we think is right and what makes us the most excited, and that’s what we’ve done. We’ve left no stone unturned in trying to find Fallout’s “soul”, but those decisions are ours, not yours. I just hope you give the game a look and decide if that soul is there for you.

I think I know what it feels like to adopt kids now, because we adopted Fallout and for the last 3 years we have been doing our best to care for it, and now I love it like it had been our child forever; and soon, very soon, we can show him to the world again. I think he’s got something to say, and I think it’s important.

You may not agree, you may be too cynical to look at it objectively anymore, but I’m going to guess that you’re reading this forum because Fallout really does matter, and it does mean something far more to you then just “a game.” So for my final superhero reference, I leave you with this quote from Christopher Reeve; insert Fallout:

"I've seen first hand how Superman actually transforms people's lives. I have seen children dying of brain tumors who wanted as their last request to be able to talk to me, and have gone to their graves with a peace brought on by knowing that their belief in this kind of character is intact. I've seen that Superman really matters. They're connecting with something very basic: the ability to overcome obstacles, the ability to persevere, the ability to understand difficulty and to turn your back on it.”

Link: Meet the Devs
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No Mutants Allowed, your Fallout resource - Fallout: New Vegas - Brother None counts down his favourite games
"There are two novels that can change a bookish 14-year-old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.
The other, of course, involves orcs." --John Rogers

[Hellion]

"I can't talk about the game yet...", "We all loved Fallout, but it is aged...", "You may be too cynical to like what we do with the game...".

Such a long post full of...the usual Todd speak. He expresses himself like he's addressing the UN or something. Probably spent an hour or two putting that post together for maximum effect.
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"For I (Alexander I) myself am by ancient descent a Greek, and I would not willingly see Hellas change her freedom for slavery."

(Herod. IX, 45, 2 [Loeb])"

[Autoduel76]

I don't know. It sounded relatively sincere, to me.
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[Starwars]

The thing about finding "Fallouts soul" is great and all, I'm just rather frightened that they may just think of it as a nice setting to have a RPG (in the broadest possible sense) in with some adult stuff thrown in for good measure. That the "soul" just lies in the setting and its atmosphere.

Much of Fallouts soul lies in the PnP feel of the game, and it's what drew me personally to the game in the first place. And what is "aged" really? The game mechanics can all be brought up to date without changing them into something else. The turnbased system can get get options for it to go a lot faster/slower to fit the user. Graphics will obviously be updated, interface can be improved etc.

If they get rid of the PnP feel, and just keep the setting, then why bother make a sequel?

Again, it will be really interesting to see if that teaser trailer shows some footage from the game.

[Brother None]

I'm not sure what Todd means by aged, he could just mean "lol it are not realtime it need teh innovationz!"

However, he could also be referring to the fact that it is always hard to get at the core values of something that is from "another era". Which is true, you can not perfectly analyse something in retrospect, and the gaming paradigm of Fallout in 1997 was different than the gaming paradigm now. Tim Cain probably wouldn't duplicate it on a 1:1 basis, were he to produce Fallout 1 now.
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No Mutants Allowed, your Fallout resource - Fallout: New Vegas - Brother None counts down his favourite games
"There are two novels that can change a bookish 14-year-old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.
The other, of course, involves orcs." --John Rogers

[Vault 69er]

As always, I find the unwillingness to acknowledge any of Oblivion's numerous flaws disturbing; a sign that they're making the same mistakes.
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[I_eat_supermutants]

I agree, for the most part
The run around is making my ass hurt.
I just don't feel as though they are sharing enough to make me feel comfortible with Fallout being in their hands.
Besides, I also don't wanna read another goddamn story about Batman.
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You're goddamn right

[radnan]

Awfully Coy.

Hope this isnt too short but to me it summs it up
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A teen skater takes a crackpot's DeLorean back to 1955, where he fends off his lustful future mom (1985) ***1/2

[bonanza]

God that was an awful read.
The guy manages to write 15 big paragraphs or so, and after reading the only thing I know more about than before are Todds comic book and superhero preferences.

Funny how he says how he replayed the game, but he spends the rest of his time talking about various things completly unrelated to fallout, instead of describing what he got out of his fallout experience, besides the typical "player freedom, big world, go do what you want type of stuff." bullshit.

And the last paragraphs are some stupid joke right?

"we do get a lot, and the letters are different then the forum posts. One of the popular letters we get is from someone who’s had a life-changing experience, or gone through a bad time, and had to write us to tell us how much Morrowind/Oblivion meant to them. That it became a real world to them, that they got to escape and play a stronger/different person then they are in real life, and it helped them."

He, I strongly doubt the fat part. If I've got such e-mails, I'd have a pretty bad conciense that my game helped to even deeper another persons psychological crisis.

[DirtyDreamDesigner]

The doublespeak about "aging" is disturbing.
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Fiat iustitia ruat coelum, et pereat mundus.

[Grotesque]

"The secret superstars you don’t know of like Istvan Pely, Mike Lipari, and Scott Franke. I could go on and on."

so..these guys are the new voice actors for Fallout 3?
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[El RadEscorpio]

Sounds to me like Todd's been taking a few too many hits of Jet.
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[Briosafreak]

[Styrofoam Peanuts]

This is amazing! He actually immediately one-upped the Fallout player community by saying "Yeah, I'm not answering your question because I know what you silly vault boys want. And as a special added bonus, I can't give it to you!" And then went on about how he can't wait to work on his hit Batman game! I feel insulted.

-Brian
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Marla Singer wants to have my abortion...

[Cimmerian Nights]

[alec]

Sounds like a jerk.

No, really.

Someone I wouldn't wanna have a beer with.
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[Mani]

Perhaps it's best to make a comic analogy in every question for Todd..

So will Fallout 3 be like 300 or like Catwoman?
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How high?

[Smoke_Jaguar]

Todd sounds like the kind waiter who can't help to what's going on in the kitchen, when actually he's the goddamn chef.
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An opened mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.

[Val]

[Autoduel76]