How frakking cool is the Fallout 3 Collector's Edition?

Personally, I only get a Collector's Edition of a game if it comes with something substantial. The lockbox and duffel bag for GTA IV, for example.

So I was really psyched when I learned we were doing the bobblehead and lunchbox, similar the ones we included in the press kit for our big announcement event several months ago. That�s some really sweet Fallout swag, yeah.

Tell me a little bit in your perspective, Inon, since you first started until now, how do you feel that music in video games has changed?

In the beginning we really had to take into consideration a lot of hurdles and a lot of limitations that we wrote for. PCs were quite limited, and PS2 was the new thing. Usually we could stream only one stereo, but we had to. The whole memory issue was a big deal so we couldn’t decode the music like now, in full .wav’s, it was close to a more primitive .mp3. So let’s put it this way, everything was not as great. Not just talking about surround of course.

The other thing is people really didn’t think that music for games was such an important aspect. Music was something that sort of looped in the background, sort of like part of what you accidentally hear when you are shooting, hacking, or slashing stuff. Then came the new generation of games, and slowly people started to realize that, if you utilize it in the right way, music has a lot to offer. It could add a very important dimension to the game, which is a dramatic and emotional aspect not being brought anywhere else. Soon we were able to write more music instead of a few tunes. We started to record orchestra, and things started to obviously sound much bigger and better.

Is there any truth to some peoples' opinion--and this is a lot of the hardcore Fallout fans that are saying this--that games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 that are targeted towards a very large console audience have been, put most cynically, "dumbed down," or more positively, "made more accessible"? Is there any truth to that? Have you made concessions for the mass market?

...I think we're starting to find that there is a market for [hardcore "PC RPGs" on consoles]. People like myself and some people that work here actually grew up as hardcore PC guys, and now we're older, we have kids, we don't have that much time, so we've transitioned. We're console players now.

In this episode of Start/Select, GameSpot UK heads to the London EA Games preview, talks to Bethesda about Fallout 3, and interviews the developers of Haze on the game's multiplayer modes.