Fallout 3 - Interview @ VideoGamer

The ubiquitous Pete Hines has been interviewed at VideoGamer after they recently viewed the game.  The usual topics are covered, although some readers will find these answers interesting:

VideoGamer.com: Interesting moral choices have always been a big part of the Fallout series. The whole Megaton situation has been given lots of coverage, but are there a lot of similar decisions to be made in this game?

PH: There are various parts of that spectrum. It can be as simple as the fact that the first time you show up outside of Megaton, there's a beggar asking for purified water - which is really hard to come by in the wasteland. If you want to, you can give him some and get good karma, and he'll be like, "Wow, I can really have this?". Or you can tell him to got to hell and screw himself. At another moment you'll meet a ghoul bartender. Ghouls are sort of outcasts in the Fallout universe, looked down upon by human NPCs. When you talk to him you can choose to be horrified by his appearance, or you act along the lines of, "Hey, it's alright man - you're cool," and you'll get karma for being a decent guy. It's really about how you're going to treat people in the world. The Megaton thing is sort of the ultimate example, but there are a lot of variations along the lines of moral choice, and how they are reflected in your karma.

VideoGamer.com: So there aren't many moments on the scale of the Megaton choice?

PH: We can't have the player going around deciding to blow up or not blow up every city on the map; that would get old very quickly. It's an interesting way to give the player a sense of the tone. Yeah, you can really blow this town up. If you come back later, there's going to be a big smoking crater - all people are dead and all the quests are gone. It's all gone! You'll know we weren't bluffing... So it's sort of like a stamp we can put on the game. There are going to be moral choices to make, and people will react to the way that you behave.