Here's some of the comments from Van Buren developers in the Interplay forums.
First off, JE Sawyer elaborates on customising avatars:
You will have control over the following basic attributes:
* Build (normal, wiry, strong, fat)
* Skin color/texture (a number of variants within a number of different "races")
* Hair style
* Facial hair style
* Hair color
Even before adding equipment, you should be able to get a lot of variation. On a title for the game:
I really dislike subtitles for anything other than expansion packs. Fallout 3 should be simply Fallout 3: A Post-Nuclear Role-Playing Game. Comments on Fallout visual styles:
I believe there are three distinct visual styles in the Fallout series: Vault, Wasteland, and Enclave. Vault is sterile, clean, retro-50s sci-fi with lots of dorky looking doo-dads, Jacob's ladders, vacuum tubes, diodes, horn-rimmed glasses, plastic-looking hair, etc. Key ideas: optimism, naivete, bland and sterile survival. Wasteland is dirty, broken, mish-mash 50s with a few earlier and later elements. Things half-working, salvaged and pieced together. Key ideas: pessimism, immorality, brutality, survival of the fittest. Enclave is clean, futuristic, sleek, powerful, and quick. Integrated circuits, ergonomic designs, lightweight materials, advanced science. Key ideas: pragmatic realism, amorality, power and grace, winner's history.
I think Fallout generally is best represented as roughly 60% Wasteland, 30% Vault, 10% Enclave. The discussion on visual styles came from some unofficial concept art at No Mutants Allowed. Finally, Puuk (aka Damien Foletto) argues his case for playable races:
But ghouls live a VERY long time. It's not unreasonable to have a ghoul be more than 150 years old, or more. Also, playing a ghoul, or super mutant, would result in a lot of prejudicial treatment by the smooth-skinned locals. It would definitely be a different playing experience. The player would have to carefully weigh how much emphasis he would put into his speech skills just to avoid getting in a lot of fights, or at least heavy emphasis on stealth skills. Also, not every human would instantly go homicidal on a ghoul or super mutant on first sight. In fact, a ghoul or super mutant might be able to use their scary appearance as an intimidation tool. Just because the PC is a ghoul or super mutant does not mean they must fight through the whole game; the player would just have to play strategically. |
Fallout 3 Forum Tidbits
