Fallout 3 Interview
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Why are companions not an option for inputting the Project Purity code? You already have the option to have Sentinel Lyons input the code in your place. There are three viable options for an alternate to input the code: Fawkes, Sergeant RL-3N, and Charon. The player has already experienced a situation where Fawkes can enter an irradiated room and perform a task, RL-3N should follow his programming to obey you, and Charon would not only become healthier due to the radiation, but he's established as essentially a slave who will do whatever his contract-holder orders him to do. To the player, the inability for either to input the code seems really contradictory.
EP: That's a great question, and one that's obviously come up quite a bit in different forums. Let me try to shed some light on why the game is like that -- it's a pretty interesting look inside the development process.
All of the followers were implemented into the game fairly late in development, after the main story had already been nailed down. So, you know, we had the scene at the end of the game, with deadly radiation, and never really compensated for the fact that you could have a Supermutant, or Ghoul, or robot, who could possibly turn the purifier on for you. We'd only ever planned for you sending Sarah Lyons into the purifier, because we knew, from a story standpoint, that she'd definitely be in there with you.
What we could do -- and what we did ultimately do -- is cover that stuff in dialogue. You can ask those followers to go into the purifier, and they'll tell you why they won't. We felt that fit with their personalities, but really, they didn't "sell" that to the player in a single line of dialogue. So, in the end, the player's left with a, "Huh, why the hell can't they do it?!" sort of feeling.
So the story does kind of break down. But you know what? We knew that, and were OK with it, because the trade-off is, well, you get these cool followers to join you. You meet up with Fawkes near the end of the game, and it's true you can go right with him to the purifier. So we could've not had him there as a follower, and that would've solved the problem of him not going into the purifier -- because, at that point in development, that was the only fix we had time for. But we kept it, and players got him as a follower, and they seem to love adventuring him with. Gameplay trumped story, in that example -- as I believe it should have.
So if we'd planned better, we could've addressed that more satisfactorily. But considering how it all went down, I feel good about the decision we made there.
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Can you say much about your downloadable-content plans? It looks like one piece of content per month -- is that the rough outline? Is a Shivering Isles type of expansion still on the master plan? Would that new region/expansion be the Commonwealth -- is the Commonwealth the Fallout 3 version of Boston?
EP: We announced three new DLCs for Xbox 360 and PC. Operation: Anchorage first, then The Pitt, and then Broken Steel. The plan right now is to release them a month apart. That may change, but we're working hard on them and hope to keep as close to that schedule as possible. Right now, there are no plans to do anything as big as Shivering Isles for Oblivion. All the DLCs we announced for Fallout 3 are around the size of Knights of the Nine for Oblivion. So it's still a substantial amount of content, with new quest, new enemies, new locations, new 360 achievements, and several hours of gameplay -- all that good stuff.
Oh, and no -- no current plan to visit the Commonwealth, which is indeed Massachusetts: Home sweet home for me! Go Southie!
