Fallout 4 Interviews

In anticipation of the release of Fallout 4 and the reviews (which should be going live later today), we have rounded up a few interviews with members of the team at Bethesda and voice actors that have worked on the product.

iDigitalTimes talked with Todd Howard about broad themes like the experience of Fallout 4, the development culture at Bethesda and Howard’s own quirks. It’s not the interview you should read if you want more mechanical details, but then again, we’re only a day away from the game’s release. Personally I found this couple of snippets to be particularly telling:

The games you’re most well known for, The Elder Scrolls and Fallout games, aren’t technically your creations. They’re games that were conceived by other people. So do you ever have any remorse over that? Is there a game that you want to start from the ground up before you finish your career?

I have two answers to that. One is that they were the kind of games I wanted to make. So even though the genesis of the Elder Scrolls isn’t mine it’s very much like ‘here’s an open generic fantasy game what do you want to do with it?’ I would say Elder Scrolls became more mine than Fallout. Fallout was a much more established world when it came to us.

We thought about creating our own. Like, we like Fallout but let’s do our own post-apocalyptic thing. We had an idea and I remember we were at a meeting about it and I said that if we got Fallout , because no one was making another one, that that idea would be better. And they were like why? Why is that world better than one you’d create?

The 1950s thing – and that aesthetic and that vibe with the suit and the whole thing – is the best. There was no remorse. And we had meetings where people were like ‘This is a waste of the company’s money. This franchise didn’t sell well. No one cares about it anymore.’ And it was me and others saying ‘no this is perfect. We can make this really sing.’ I felt good about that even though the genesis wasn’t ours.

Do we have ideas for other stuff? All the time! We’re guys who make games. But they take a while to make and we’ll see what happens. You never know what the future holds.

…

It seems like you guys have more fun with the Fallout series than the Elder Scrolls series. True?

Fun is the right word. You’re having a conversation and say ‘wouldn’t it be cool if … ?’ And whatever you’re describing there’s a really good chance you could put it in Fallout . It’s two different vibes. We love both, they’re like our children. The Elder Scrolls tone is more compressed. But Fallout can go from serious family drama to B-movie lizardmen pretty quickly and it just works. You can have quote-unquote more fun.

The folks at VentureBeat talked with, ehrm, the folks at MIT, who reassured them they have nothing to do with the MIT-inspired villainous Institute from Fallout 4:

Well, I’m sure that you, like the characters in Fallout 4, are now sufficiently horrified about what MIT is up to. So we asked it straight out to convince us that it isn’t really a dark, secretive organization hellbent on using Synths to usurp power from real people.

Here’s what MIT had to say for itself:

(Information systems and algorithms already have a significant influence over how we interpret reality,) said Tan. (The Metal Gear Solid series often explores the idea of widespread societal control through networks. We study these sort of issues in our program, and some of my colleagues build tools to help people counteract the biases and misinformation that often emerge from our current networked environment.

Video Game Sophistry chatted with Brian T. Delaney, who voices the male protagonist of the story. To get the full interview you’ll have to listen to the audio, but they have a transcription of some salient snippets for the most time-starved of us:

(A button guy is just that straightforward guy and honest to God, I’m giving these generalities there are even nuanced within the button itself but generally it can be either positive or it can either diplomatic.

It can be straightforward. It could be just . positive is too specific a word because it’s not always positive. But B button guy at some points it could be, Kal would say (Put a little Eastwood on this one) You know what I mean? And it was kinda cool. It was neat.

X button was kind of .. .he could either be the vacillating guy .. the wiseass guy .. kinda like make a flippant remark. Kinda dicky.

B button could also be dicky but a threatening dick or a X button is kinda like a douchey dick, a funny guy or a guy who doesn’t want to answer the question. The Y button is questions which I think is pretty well known to gamers, I think. Yeah, that’s the general breakdown.)

Finally, Mingle Media TV Network has two video interviews, with game director Todd Howard and female protagonist voice actress Courtenay Taylor respectively, fresh off the game’s launch party: