One of the things Obsidian is known for is the way the companions are shaped, making them more "alive" and with deep unique personalities. Will we see this in Fallout: New Vegas?

Yes, Pete also covered this in his interview. Each has a perspective on events in the Mojave, a quest arc, and a meaningful change in their behavior based on the resolution of that arc.

The hardcoe Mode seems exciting, can you tell us more about it?

If drinking out of toilets makes you a hero, hardcoe mode delivers. I've never been so conscious of water sources in each environment until I played in hardcoe mode. And I eat until I'm stuffed and then some. The player has to worry about dehydration, ammo weight, resting, starvation, and healing items (Stimpaks) healing over time instead of instantly... all the things that make you more a virtual man than the next virtual man who's playing on normal.

A central town, New Vegas, with casinos, organized crime, factions struggling for power and currency, this reminds many older players of New Reno, from Fallout 2, an area you worked on. Was New Reno in fact an inspiration and did you take anything from what you liked best and lessons from what you thought was less well made in that area for New Vegas?

New Reno wasn't an inspiration at all that I know of. I hope not. Aside from the types of quests and quest solution structure for the area (which I felt was genuinely rewarding for a number of character builds), there's a lot we didn't include from New Reno (ambiance). New Vegas is a different game, and it would never have been my choice to simply re-create a location we'd done in a previous game, as there's really nothing interesting in terms of design that I can see in doing that.

Fallout 3's modding scene is very active and productive. Was Obsidian keeping an eye on this? Got any inspiration from it?

Yes, the weapon mods in New Vegas were an inspiration from the modding community, and we also check out mods to this day. We also took steps to add functionality to the G.E.C.K. to make it easier for modders to create content - the dialogue editor, the recipe editor, and the ability to modify ammo lists, ammo subtypes, and other new bits of data have been added for mod-makers to take advantage of. We want to make it easy for the community to make more mods that we can play - we're selfish that way.

the companions have a "meaningful change in behavior" based on how you finish their quest arc

What, in your opinion, are the crucial elements for a good RPG these days?

The range of character development and customization, and reactivity to that character choice and development within the game world. The more you can do to bring story, world, and characters into the equation, the better, but ultimately, players want to build the character they want, customize their character, and then have the world respond appropriately through dialogue choices, ways to solve quests, or even NPC's reactions to your character's purple mohawk.

Really liking that two hitsquads will start fighting if you get out of their way. Makes me excited to piss both of them off.

I went to sleep in a small community and forgot that I was being hunted by Caesar's Legion. I woke up to the sounds of crazy gunfire because there were elite NCR troopers stationed there and the Legion assassins had just rolled in after me. A battle royale ensued. Unfortunately, the regular townsfolk in the area were NCR citizens so they tried to "help" the NCR troopers against the Legion. Guess how that went down. At the end of the fight almost everyone in the town had been killed by someone, somewhere. The only survivors were a little kid, some Brahmin, and an unaffiliated merchant caravan that abstained from the fight. Good times.

I went to sleep in a small community and forgot that I was being hunted by Caesar's Legion. I woke up to the sounds of crazy gunfire because there were elite NCR troopers stationed there and the Legion assassins had just rolled in after me. A battle royale ensued. Unfortunately, the regular townsfolk in the area were NCR citizens so they tried to "help" the NCR troopers against the Legion. Guess how that went down. At the end of the fight almost everyone in the town had been killed by someone, somewhere. The only survivors were a little kid, some Brahmin, and an unaffiliated merchant caravan that abstained from the fight. Good times.

I went to sleep in a small community and forgot that I was being hunted by Caesar's Legion. I woke up to the sounds of crazy gunfire because there were elite NCR troopers stationed there and the Legion assassins had just rolled in after me. A battle royale ensued. Unfortunately, the regular townsfolk in the area were NCR citizens so they tried to "help" the NCR troopers against the Legion. Guess how that went down. At the end of the fight almost everyone in the town had been killed by someone, somewhere. The only survivors were a little kid, some Brahmin, and an unaffiliated merchant caravan that abstained from the fight. Good times.

I guess the only reason that would svck is if you had some quests to do and the guy/gal you needed to get it from just got themselves killed in combat with elite assassins. :tops:

I went to sleep in a small community and forgot that I was being hunted by Caesar's Legion. I woke up to the sounds of crazy gunfire because there were elite NCR troopers stationed there and the Legion assassins had just rolled in after me. A battle royale ensued. Unfortunately, the regular townsfolk in the area were NCR citizens so they tried to "help" the NCR troopers against the Legion. Guess how that went down. At the end of the fight almost everyone in the town had been killed by someone, somewhere. The only survivors were a little kid, some Brahmin, and an unaffiliated merchant caravan that abstained from the fight. Good times.

I went to sleep in a small community and forgot that I was being hunted by Caesar's Legion. I woke up to the sounds of crazy gunfire because there were elite NCR troopers stationed there and the Legion assassins had just rolled in after me. A battle royale ensued. Unfortunately, the regular townsfolk in the area were NCR citizens so they tried to "help" the NCR troopers against the Legion. Guess how that went down. At the end of the fight almost everyone in the town had been killed by someone, somewhere. The only survivors were a little kid, some Brahmin, and an unaffiliated merchant caravan that abstained from the fight. Good times.

If thats not an awesome/hilarious enough argument for mass non essentialness then I don't know what is.


I wonder if we get any indication at all that we just murdered the hell out of a quest NPC or do we have to figure it out sometime after the fact?

I would hope atleast some sort of message would pop up for a quick second.

Mmmmm modder food:

A recipe editor?!?! This is the first I've heard of that, cool!

That's pretty awesome, all right.

First thing I'm making is sweet and sour radroach.
Or maybe some gecko filet mignon. Strange meat hotdogs maybe? (Then again, isn't that what hotdogs are made of already?)