Fallout 3 - Interview @ Washington Post

The Washington Post talks to Todd Howard about the city of Washington in Fallout 3:

Q: How close did you try and stick to the real-world map?

Howard: Not that close.

When it comes to really high-level geography, we did that, but the timeline in Fallout splits after World War 2. We did a lot of studying of D.C. and the history of D.C. and how it was built. We wanted to do the big things [like] the Mall and we did Dupont Circle and various other sections of the city in the flavor they are. Georgetown, the Key Bridge, the Pentagon -- but the Pentagon is now this big fortress that the Brotherhood of Steel lives in, they're kind of like the knights of this world.

The problem is, when you get into a game, when you're actually playing and walking around, the scale doesn't work. It doesn't feel right. So we would go down [to Washington] and walk around and see how it felt and translate that to an appropriate scale in the game. So it has a similar feeling but it's dramatically compressed in some places, and some places are opened up a bit.