Fallout 3 Interview
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 700
WP: Karma. There are a lot of numbers and a lot of stat values in Fallout 3, but with everything our player had, we didn't see any specific numbers for Karma, although we did see a lot of "Karma up," "Karma down" notices while playing through the game. What can you tell us about Karma?
PH: Karma is intentionally meant to be a bit ambiguous in terms of, you get some feedback about whether you're good, neutral or evil and how good, neutral or evil. There are different ranks of Karma, but we didn't want to assign a number to it and say, "Your Karma is now 14," or "It is now -32." We'd prefer it to be a rough guide, a rough barometer of how you're playing the game, how good or evil or neutral you're being in the world based on your actions and the decisions that you've made. We want to allow the player to adjust that as they go along by the kinds of things that they do. If they find themselves being too much of a Goody Two-shoes and they want to go out and wreak some havoc and terrorize people, they can, and their Karma score will slide down appropriately. Or vice versa, they've done evil things and decide that they want to try and repent and do better, then they can spend a lot of time doing nice stuff and getting their Karma to go up. We wanted it to be ambiguous, and it's not the focal point of the game, it's just another aspect of how you're acting in this world, what kind of person you're being.
