Fallout 3 Interview

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Written by BuckGB on July 9th, 2009

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GameObserver: After Oblivion, what made you guys decide to reuse the Gamebryo engine for Fallout 3?

Ashley Cheng: Gamebryo allowed us to get up and running very quickly with Morrowind. Since then, we've taken this core technology and added new features on top of it. We've actually had the guys at Gamebryo come to us, and ask if we would be interested in a particular shader or feature, only to turn them down and say, sorry, but we've already written our own version. With each new project, we scope how much time we have and decide which systems to upgrade. A major reason many projects are delayed or never ship is because the developers decide to start from scratch. Games these days cost way too much for that kind of reboot. For most programmers, it's easier to write new code than to read old code -- it takes a lot of discipline to selectively upgrade parts of your technology and to maintain others.

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GameObserver: One of the biggest complaints about Fallout 3 was that it resembles Oblivion too much. What made your team decide to make it play like The Elder Scrolls game? Was it a marketing decision (to attract Oblivion fans) or a technical decision (easier to use the same tools and programming techniques)?

Ashley Cheng: Well, we mostly made a Fallout game that we ourselves want to play. We also wanted to leverage our strengths as a studio, and one of our biggest strengths is making big, open ended worlds ripe for exploration. So whether we're making an Elder Scrolls or Fallout title (or any other title for that matter), you can be assured there will be a huge open ended world for you to explore. You aren't going to get a Final Fantasy style RPG from us because we're not interested in making RPGs that way (though we do LOVE playing Final Fantasy).

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