GamesIndustry.biz: How far are you going with the 'go anywhere' sense in this game?

Pete Hines: Very. If you want to see how many of the hours you can play without seeing an hour of the main quest, give it a shot - it will be lots. You could spend 50 hours, 70 hours, just doing stuff in the world and never once make an effort to figure out what happened to your dad. We want it to be a self-directed world, for players to just see what happens.

And the idea is that the main quest is not the only cool stuff going on - there are tonnes of miscellaneous free-form things out there for you to do that will be a lot of fun, that maybe you've got five or six quests at any time where you can figure out what to do next.

How do you deal with the hardcore fanbase - that is, in development, how do you balance the need to be true to the series to the point where you are satisfying those people, but not to the exclusion of those who don't live and breathe Fallout?

PH: I think, ultimately, it comes from us having been in this space for a while, and kind of - you know, I mean, we hear this a lot with The Elder Scrolls. You know, with the folks that were around in 1994, when Arena came out, versus the folks that showed up in 2005 because they were interested in Oblivion. And it gets back to listening to what people have to say, and understanding not only what it is they want, but also sort of the root of what their concerns are.

I think that we do have a pretty good understanding what all of the different sections of our fan base are interested in, but it comes back to the thing of, you know, gotta make the game that we think is the best. Certainly, try and take those things into consideration, but there are people in the office who spend 14, 16, 18 hours a day making this game, and sometimes, if you're going to break a tie, you go with our instincts.

The people who know everything about it are the folks who know - you know, you can't make a game with a committee of three thousand, or three hundred thousand. Just, nothing would ever get done. Somebody has got to break the tie and say, "This is what's best for the game."

I think we've tried to make that our approach, and we've tried to do the best that we can to listen to all the segments of our fan base, and give them what they want, and I hope that all of them will give the game a shot, and it will be something that they'll enjoy.