DuckAndCover: What, in your mind, are some of the things that differentiate the Fallout games (ignoring FO: Tactics and FO: Brotherhood of Steel, which didn't happen) from the Elder Scrolls series of RPGs?

Todd Howard: Outside of the obvious flavor and setting, the number one thing is stronger characters. Fallout really set the standard for me on believable people, good dialogue, and character choice and consequence. With Elder Scrolls, we do aim for something enormous, and we simply can't focus on say - 20 to 40 really deep strong characters and just do them. With Oblivion, we're doing a much better job than we've done before, but the scale of game is so different that without sacrificing some of what makes The Elder Scrolls what it is, I don't think we'd be able to have the same level of characterization in NPCs Fallout did. So with Fallout 3, that's something we want to do well, a limited number of super-deep NPCs.