Fallout 3, Now With Over 500 Endings...

That's the word from a recent interview with Bethesda's Peter Hines. There are over 500 different variations at the end of the game.

Now, sadly most of my so-called "gamer" friends have never played Fallout or Fallout 2 so they might not understand what this means. Does this mean there are over 500 individual endings? No. There are variations.

See, in Fallout and Fallout 2, at the end of the main quest, they do a little ending. In this ending, they tell you what happens to the various factions, groups and settlements in the game. Some of them are destroyed, some prosper. It all all depends on how your character interacted within that group or if you encountered them at all. In the first two, I believe there could have been as many as four endings for each faction(and some only had two) and I wouldn't say there were more than ten factions(the Brotherhood, Enclave, various towns, etc.) so 500 is still an impressive number.

I'm also enjoying all the Fallout 3 information that is pouring out. Bethesda actually did their reporter previews right. They let them play the game for 30 minutes. They don't force them to go on any particular quests or anything. Most of the articles I read the reporters simply head out into the wastelands and start exploring. Since it's a totally open world, you get a lot of different things from the different reporters. Good job, Bethesda! I've been looking forward to this game for a long time.