Fallout 3 Podcast

The Official Xbox Magazine podcast interviews Todd Howard (starts in the 35th minute) about the upcoming Fallout 3 RPG. Fallout 3: A Post Nuclear Blog provides an overview of the info.
Over 200 endings, since last week. The 12 endings was surpassed long ago.

The game is twice bigger than what they thought in the beginning. Still "not as big as Oblivion", but bigger than they started with.

Always just one human companion, and another NPC like Dogmeat. Dogmeat can be given assignments done with his radiant AI.

Dogmeat can die, but they are working on his health and how you maintain him. If you're reckless, he'll die, otherwise he'll normally survive.

[They make the comparison between this dog and Fable 2's dog.]

Brotherhood of Steel doing their own thing, finished on the game, on the verge of extinction, you'll interact with them a lot more after a determined point in the game.

The game is finished, but needs a lot of polishing, they are doing many playthroughs, they keep adding stuff, sometimes it takes 100 hours to play, just the main quest is 20 hours.

Absolutely tracking at fall (2008).

"Fans sending death threats" says one of the OXM guys. "How do you handle Rabid Right Wing kind of fans".

Todd says that what bothers him is to give as much information as possible to the hardcore Fallout fans and newer Bethesda fans so they know what the game is and isn't. They still haven't released much information, he's used to lots of criticism from fans of the Elder Scrolls or from Fallout fans, tries to understand what's behind the colorful language, what the fans mean with their criticism, and to see if they (Bethesda) agree or disagree with those viewpoints.

He acknowledged that some of the new screenshots got positive reactions too, some fans are beginning to understand their take on the wasteland, visually.

Todd notes "Usually I'm concerned with making sure they understand what the game is and what the game isn't. I always worry that somebody reads about it and they get excited, whether they're old Fallout fans or a newer fans of ours. My concern is usually I want them to know as much as they can so that when they go to buy the game they know what they're getting. (...) The people who bought Oblivion and then said "I didn't like it, this isn't what I thought I was getting", that's usually what concerns me more (...)
We have a lot more respect for them [Fallout fans] than anybody thinks in terms of they're very very passionate and we wouldn't have it in any other way.
I think you have to look at those comments and they're usually not raging to rage, although that happens sometimes."

Todd not going to change the game, when people say they don't like the presentation, but on aesthetics and how things were interpreted by them, they go "hey is there something we're missing or didn't take into consideration" and deal with it.