Our Fallout 3 week may be coming to an end, but that doesn’t mean the best has already been; far from it, the best has yet to come. We were lucky enough to have Pete Hines of Bethesda Software with us to give us some extra juicy information as he played through the Fallout 3 demo.

We must point out now that the demo that we saw was in fact the Xbox 360 version, but both versions should look and play the same. The demo started off at the beginning of the game, before the player chooses what their character will look like and what skills they want. The amount of freedom you have while customizing is reminiscent of Oblivion. In Fallout, players can choose what race they wish to play as and customize facial features such as, eyes, mouth, ears, and chin. From there, players can choose from the vast amount of hair styles and facial hair. What is really impressive is the attention to detail Bethesda has achieved. For example, when players see their father for the first time, he is covered up by way of a mask and glasses, but after they have finished creating their character, the game will model the father, who is voiced by actor Liam Neeson, based on what their character looks like. In other words, your father will have a familiar resemblance to the chosen character model. The attention to detail is quite remarkable.

We picked a preset character to go through the demo. Once our character was sorted, we were given a little baby board book called ‘You Are Special.’ Players flip through the pages of this book to assign points to skills they want to be good at. It’s wise to pick skills based on how one plans on playing Fallout. For example, if one put more points towards medical skills, they will gain more health from the likes of the stim packs. If one put more points towards strength, then they will be able to carry more items in their inventory. Like Oblivion, Bethesda has been kind by allowing changes to be made to the skills and special skills before completing this section, so before closing this baby board book, one can make some final adjustments to their skills and specials set.

Along with Liam Neeson, Ron Perlman will also be lending his voice talents to the game; you may remember Ron Perlman’s voice from other videogames, including the Halo series, Turok, and Conan. Ron Perlman will be narrating as the events occur within the Fallout world. Bethesda did tell us to expect more Hollywood talent to be lending their voices to the game, but were unwilling to reveal exactly who at this time.