“The dog can’t die. Yes, you can applaud for that.” – Todd Howard

This afternoon Todd Howard sat down at E3 for a special interview for the lucky attendees of the annual conference.

While Todd hashed out some things we have heard time and time and again, like how difficult it is to hang onto a secret that hundreds of thousands of people are pestering you about, or how focused on freedom the team was when developing. “The more we can say ‘yes’ to the player, the better we are” was a theme that seems to run through the veins of the project, from the extremely customization in weapons to the house building and detailed character creation.

While all of that is old news to those of us living day to day on this project, there were a few details that we picked up on.

1. The Dog Can’t Die

First of all we can all breath a sigh of relief upon learning that the dog, whom you can presumably name yourself (or name “yourself” if you’re into that sort of thing), cannot die. It can, however, be incapacitated. While this will disable his assistance for a period of time, it will not permanently remove him from the game. We can now sleep easy at night knowing our furry friend “Bones” is safe, unless they are lying and plan to snatch him away while we are emotionally vulnerable. Let’s just try not to think about that.

2. Mr. Handy is a companion

As expected, there will be multiple companions to join you on your journey across the wastes, and one of those is confirmed to be Mr. Handy, your personal robot butler. It is up in the air whether he’ll be able to assist you in combat, though he certainly has a mean buzz saw, so he is definitely equipped for the task. While he probably won’t be as popular as dog meat he will definitely add to the variety of your choices as you explore the wastes.

3. Dynamic Weather and Nuclear Storms

The weather in game will change as you play, something we have not seen much of in previous Fallout titles. This dynamic weather will include all your normal phenomena as well as a new feature, the nuclear storm. When a storm kicks up in an area with dense radiation it can acquire some sort of radiation spreading features and spread across the land delivering rads to all the local flora and fauna. It’s not clear how much this will impact the game but it is clear that it will deliver a more diverse and tense experience as you run for shelter from a hellstorm of radiation and death.

4. Color Palette

Less of an in game feature and more of a design choice, Todd noted that the colors in the game were a big focus but the dreariness still makes an appearance in a big way the closer you get to the bomb sites. This will certainly add to the atmosphere of desolation as the colors start to fade and the fauna becomes sparse as you approach the bomb site.

5. Creation Kit

Todd mentioned that the creation kit will be made available after launch in probably “early 2016”. This may be old news or not news at all as we expected Fallout would have a heavily invested modding community, but it is nice to know it is coming shortly after launch.

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Everyone is very excited for this game, and we here at Pretty in Pixel are eager to jump on any new fact we can about this awesome game. This game is sure to be huge and open, with millions of things to discover. Howard put it well in his interview, “You are the director of your own experience… the world ultimately becomes the main character of our games and we want to show you that world.”

As our team explores E3 we’ll be sure to let you know if we find out anything new. Until then, you can see the rest of our recap of Bethesda’s Conference on Friday here.