With only a few days remaining before the world premiere of one of the industry’s most loved franchises, we have sat down with Bethesda to talk about the past 4 years of blood, sweat and debugging. What their expectations are, what do they have in store for us, and what follows afterwards, for all of the Fallout fans out there, here it is:

3dzone: What is your main target audience for Fallout 3? Will it be mainly the franchise fans or the new players?

Bethesda Team: It’s for both. We want to create a game that is a true sequel to the original games that those fans will enjoy, but also can be fun for people that never played the original games. That’s always been our approach with The Elder Scrolls as well. When you create something that’s fun and true to the series, it can be for franchise fans and new players.

3dz: How are you going to attract those new players?

BT: Hopefully by creating the kind of game that they look at or hear about and say “that sounds really cool, I’d like to play that.”

3dz: It is well known that Fallout fans like non-linearity and that the Fallout story in the past went through incidental dialogues, things that you pick-up, things that you can read, etc. What can we expect in terms of story-telling in the new installment of the series?

BT: At its core, Fallout 3 is about you and how you want to play the game. So you really get to tell your own story. You can focus on the main quest, you can do lots of side quests, you can go and do whatever you want and be whatever kind of person you want. Along the way you’ll have a chance to find that interesting dialog, or something funny, or discover notes or pieces of info that tell a story or provide some interesting pieces of information.

3dz: Can we expect key points from the plot which players are obliged to experience?

BT: We really aren’t talking about the main quest. Just that it’s about growing up in the Vault with your father, and one day you wake up and he’s escaped the Vault. So it has to do with what was so important to him that he’d leave you behind, and you going out into the world to find him, and find out.

3dz: Back to the original Fallout and the subject of linearity, there were three locations (The Cathedral, the Military Base and the Necropolis) which the player was able to visit and actually complete the game. The key point there was that the player was able to finish those locations in any order that he wants and this was the essence of the Fallout franchise – non-linearity. How Fallout 3 is structured in terms of linearity?

BT: We don’t have quite the same structure in terms of you have to visit X number of locations, but you can do it in any order. The non-linearity of the game comes from allowing you to decide what you want to do, and when, and also in terms of how you want to finish the game. What kind of character are you going to play? Who are you going to side with? Those things really allow the player to change the story to fit the kind of person they want to be in the world and what they want to spend time doing.

3dz: We already know that when Fallout 3 ships it will not contain editor tools. The mod community played an important role in the success of Oblivion and the Elder Scrolls games before that, so it was kind of surprising for us that there won’t be any editing tools. What was the reason behind this decision and what are your plans for the future (in terms of mods)?

BT: Well, this is the first time we’ve shipped a game on three platforms at the same time. So that’s a massive undertaking and an incredible amount of work, not to mention all of the different localized versions as well. Mod tools are another “product” for us, another thing we have to finish and make ready for public release and make sure they’re well supported. That simply wasn’t something we were able to commit to with everything else we were doing. We’ve never said there won’t be any, just that we couldn’t commit to having mod tools or when that might be. We’ll let folks know if/when we have more information on that.

3dz: What about downloadable content? Free? Fee?

BT: We’ll be doing downloadable content for Xbox 360 and Windows. We haven’t said what that will be yet, or when it will be out. It will be similar in size to Knights of the Nine for Oblivion…something that adds quests, items, etc.

3dz: Fallout 3 is the first major Bethesda product in the sci-fi genre, so the fans are having some concerns about this. What were the games that you drew inspiration from and are there any titles that you used as a reference point for some of your concepts?

BT: Well, we drew most of our inspiration from the original Fallout games since that’s the series we’re trying to continue. Obviously we’re influenced by a lot of other things, since we play lots of games. So we took a lot of feedback from Oblivion in terms of how people like to experience big games like that, what kinds of things they liked and didn’t like. We absorbed everything we could find on post-apocalypse…books, movies, TV, you name it.

3dz: Are there elements of the game that you are worried that people will not understand and accept?

BT: No, not really. Not based on early feedback we’ve gotten. You can never tell about any one individual, but in general people seem to get it and like it.

3dz: When talking about concerns, Australia already showed their restrictions about Fallout 3 (first they stated that they are against drug use into games, and will not permit publishing such products, but then OFLC gave a MA 15+ rating which is the equivalent of ESRB’s M and PEGI’s 18+). Are you going to resolve this problem using some kind of in-game censure strictly related to some aspects of the content?

BT: The issue was a very minor one and Australia was not the only place it came up. We had created a new drug for the game, called Morphine, and there were questions about that. All the other drugs from the previous games used made-up names (Jet, Psycho), so we simply changed the name of the drug so that it was also made up and everyone was fine with it.

3dz: What were the most difficult parts of the development process and of course the most interesting ones?

BT: The difficult part is always taking this gigantic world and all of the content it contains and playing it and testing it and polishing it. The most interesting ones are playing the game for so long and always finding something new or different you hadn’t seen before. In a game this big, it just takes a long, long time to see everything. It was also a lot of fun watching V.A.T.S. develop and change. It was a system we spent a long time on, making sure it was fun, and balanced, and had good camera angles, and so forth.

3dz: It is pretty obvious that the world of Fallout 3 will be huge (as all of Bethesda games). But how vast it will be actually?

BT: Uh, very? :) It’s probably twice the size we intended when we started. All told there’s at least 100 hours of gameplay. There is a LOT to see and do.

3dz: Which are the elements that can point as “flesh and bones” of such enormous world?

BT: Well, one is combat. In a game like this, most folks like to run around and kill stuff and take their loot and use it, or sell it and get new stuff to run around and kill stuff with. So we spend a lot of time making sure that basic activity is fun. Beyond that, the world has to feel fleshed out, lived in, there has to be lots to see and do. We always want there to be something new to discover just around the corner. And we need to make sure we do a good job organizing information so you feel like you have the freedom to go wander off and still be able to find your way back to what you were doing an hour ago, or five hours ago.

3dz: OK, let’s talk about the balance between role-playing and action elements in Fallout 3. It seems that RPG elements are a bit hardcore, while the action feels more like a FPS. Is this intended?

BT: Well, we want people to feel like they can play the game however they like. If you’d rather play it like a story-driven FPS and not get into the stats and role-playing, feel free. If you really want to power game and get into the stats and numbers and how best to buff out your character, or spend all your time in dialog, or however you want to roleplay, you can do that too. We don’t think it’s up to us to tell you how you should play the game. We want to give you that freedom and let you go, and do, whatever you want, however you want.

3dz: Loading times… The curse of all modern games… We already know that in the Xbox 360 version of the game there is no loading or pausing, so could we expect the same for the PC and PS3 versions and if not why?

BT: Expect the same on all platforms.

3dz: Are there differences between the console versions of the game?

BT: Nope, same game on all three platforms, with the caveat being that on a PC your performance is based on your hardware configuration. The better the specs of your PC, the better the game will look and the more graphics options you can turn on/up.

3dz: Are there any exclusive content or some kind of bonuses in any of the three versions (PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3)?

BT: We are doing downloadable content exclusively for Xbox 360 and Windows.

3dz: Any chances for demo version before the official release? Or after that?

BT: No, no plans for a demo.

3dz: Is 28th of October the final ship date for all platforms? You promise ?

BT: We are locked and ready. 28th in North America, 30th in Europe, 31st in UK.

3dz: OK, thanks for your answers. We’re looking forward to the game and your next projects. Any idea when we’re going to get some information on that?

BT: It’ll be a while. We’re still trying to get this one out the door.