Hines: Fallout 3 tradeshow demos can be frustrating

Bethesda's Peter Hines has admitted that showing RPGs like Fallout 3 at tradeshows like E3 and Games Convention can be a frustrating business.

"Sometimes, yeah," he told VG247, when asked if showing such a large game to people in such a short space of time was problematic.

"We had a lot of discussions about E3. Todd Howard and I sat and talked about what to show... Anything we do is just one thing, and we're not about, 'Here's one quest.' It's more about, 'What do you want to do?' Do you just want to run around and shoot stuff and combat's fun for you [then that's fine]. Our games are about not forcing you to do anything, and having a demo that makes you do that cuts against it.

"To your point, it does make it a bit like, 'Well, what are you doing at E3?' versus, 'What are you doing at Leipzig?' Go do what you want. If you played it at E3, go in a different direction this time. That's what we do well."

Fallout 3 did come under some fire after E3, where journalists were allowed to play the game for 30 minutes.

“You play the game and you see what you think," Hines said previously on the matter.

"At E3 we let people play the game for a half hour, and if in a half hour you can make up your mind one way or the other, OK. I don’t really get into judging the rightness or wrongness of it. I just give people a chance to play it and they draw their own conclusions.”

Fallout 3 launches in both the US and Europe at the end of October.