Fallout 3 - Roundup #7 [Updated]

Not too many Fallout 3 things today, either.

3D Zone.bg  has an interview with unspecified members of the Bethesda "team".  A wide range of questions but nothing really new:

3dz: OK, let’s talk about the balance between role-playing and action elements in Fallout 3. It seems that RPG elements are a bit hardcore, while the action feels more like a FPS. Is this intended?

BT: Well, we want people to feel like they can play the game however they like. If you’d rather play it like a story-driven FPS and not get into the stats and role-playing, feel free. If you really want to power game and get into the stats and numbers and how best to buff out your character, or spend all your time in dialog, or however you want to roleplay, you can do that too. We don’t think it’s up to us to tell you how you should play the game. We want to give you that freedom and let you go, and do, whatever you want, however you want.

Well-known RPG press specialist Desslock has been interviewed at Planet Fallout by Briosafreak about his thoughts on FO3:

PF:You went there and came up with a column in PC Gamer, the famous “Memo to Bethesda”. In it you gave five tips for Bethsoft not to screw up Fallout 3. Now that you’ve played the game let’s get back to those tips. Did they got the combat right?

Desslock: Yes, the combat is great, in my opinion – it’s repetitive, and over-the-top violent (necks are apparently very brittle after the apocalypse), but it’s consistently rewarding. I’m very pleased with VATS.

PF:But no kicking rats in the groin now, though…

Desslock: One of the bigger disappointments is that there’s no targeting of body parts in melee combat at all, apparently for balance reasons. Melee combat definitely gets short shrift in general, and there’s far too much ammo lying around compared to the other Fallouts, although the change in locale somewhat justifies that.

The Prima Guide blog has an entry on the Bestiary

Yahoo has an article on sequels, with Todd Howard suggesting Fallout 4 should around three years away

[Update]...and adding an interview with Emil Pagliarulo at Gaming Nexus.  Again, nothing new, so here's a random snip:

How will the missions work out in Fallout 3? Any chance you could describe some of the new mission types we'll be seeing in the game?
For us it’s never been about trying to squeeze in a certain number of quest types, or filling a quota. For Fallout 3, we really just wanted to tell some interesting stories, and give the player a chance to make real choices and determine the outcomes of those quests. So there are fewer quests than there were in Oblivion, but they’re much richer, much deeper. Most have multiple paths and solutions. And, because it’s Fallout, even the simplest task might seem like a clear-cut fetch quest on the surface, and then reveal itself to be something much deeper. So we had a lot of fun with that.