Fallout 3 - The Writing Of @ Gamasutra

Emil Pagliarulo has been interviewed at Gamasutra about the writing in Fallout 3, although many of the questions actually go to Emil's background or Bethsoft's creative structure rather than the writing itself:

With your title "lead designer," what is your balance between writing and design? How does that work at Bethesda?

EP: Bethesda's interesting because this is the first time we've actually had a "lead writer." The model for Fallout 3 was different than it was for Oblivion. With Fallout 3, I wrote the main quest and I laid out all the miscellaneous quests, and came up with most of the characters and stuff, but then everything was passed off to the designers. When the designers came onto the project, they were given a framework that was already in place.

My duties as lead writer and lead designer have shifted over the course of the project. It's been interesting.

Even as lead writer, since the designers are implementing the gameplay, they would write the dialogue for a lot of the characters. It was much more of an editorial role, giving them general creative direction after things had already been in place. It was interesting.

But I would still write some stuff -- the radio stations, I wrote all that. Every time I get a chance getting my hands dirty writing stuff, I love to jump in. It's hard to get used to passing it off to somebody else. You know -- "Auuughh... Okay, you do it. It's okay."