14 DAY TRIAL // I had my doubts about Fallout 3, especially when the less than stellar E3 videos appeared earlier in the summer. Now we have new videos from the PAX show and the game seems to be much more of a successor to the previous two versions than a simple, mod-like, Oblivion with guns game. What's still missing is a few more details regarding the way the writing is being worked into the game.
Emil Pagliarulo, who is the Fallout 3 lead designer and lead writer, has recently sat down for an extended interview with Gamasutra in which he touched on the subject of how the game was written. In an unexpected turn, he says that he literally began to write the game with the starting point, by creating the text that Ron Perlman, the actor that voiced the first game, would deliver, kinda like a mission statement, at the beginning of the third game.
He said that "If there's one thing you don't want to screw up, it’s that," while admitting that "finding the right tone" was a challenge, mainly because Fallout 3 will reach a much larger audience than the first two games and because the public needs to be able to connect with the game from the first few minutes.
He contrasted Oblivion, which is Bethesda's biggest success to date, to Fallout 3, by saying that "In Oblivion, it's not only fantasy, but it's an empire at the height of its power. But in Fallout, people are living on the fringe of existence. ...Some people have gone a little bit crazy, and some people are living in their own fantasy world, and some people are just cynical and vicious." The game will be mature in its themes and in the way it approaches dialog, while trying not to be too harsh on the ears of the audience.
The designer says that games like Mass Effect, BioShock, Call of Duty 4 and all of Valve's titles are clear examples that the gaming industry is learning how to tell a story by gameplay rather than by simple exposition.
Check out one of the videos below: