Fallout 3 - Post Mortem Interview @ NowGamer

NowGamer has a Fallout 3 Retrospective inteview with input from Emil Pagliarulo and Todd Howard:

A particularly lazy criticism of Fallout 3 is that it’s just ‘Oblivion with guns’. But beyond the jarring way the camera fixes every speaking character lifelessly in the centre of the screen, genuine similarities are difficult to spot. The fact is, Oblivion may be great, but it’s inferior to Fallout 3 in all matters but for those of personal taste. The progress is obvious in the dialogue, the voice-acting, the characters, the environmental design and – most importantly – the quests. The absence of guilds released the design team from having to honour restrictive categories, and allowed the shift in emphasis towards more choice, rather than more missions. This is the root of Fallout 3’s side quests being as compelling and considered as its main story. They provide all the incentive a player could need to stray from the path and remake the future, and Bethesda sweated and strained to make it work.

More information.

Actually, I would say that Oblivion also had better music.

You can really tell that the interviewer was neutral towards Bethesda

If bethesda had spent half the money they spend on bribing journalists to write these pointless circle jerks on actually creating the game, we would have had a timeless classic. Instead they gave us oblivion with guns.

I don't think it's a matter of money, tolknaz — many timeless classics have been produced for far less than FO3.

well fallout 3 will always live in my memory as a fun idiotic game, but sadly it doesn't even approach it's black isle predecessors…