看错了..................

themomoli

The official stance:
As far as our tools, no word yet on that. As soon as we know for sure, we'll let you know."
Pete HinesBethesda, November 4th, 2008.

I say:
Bethesda would be daft not to release Fallout 3 mod tools similar to the construction sets seen for Morrowind and Oblivion. They openly admit the tools are there but it takes time and effort to adapt them for a more general audience. The question is when they'll be released, not if. Read the article on what modifications might be possible for Fallout 3 before the release of the software development tools for a better picture of Fallout 3's modding potential.
From the biased perspective of an Elder Scrolls mod junkie with the traffic statistics of a major modding site I can't help but feeling let down by the lack of modding tools for Fallout 3. While I enjoyed both vanilla Morrowind and Oblivion, giving them perhaps 30 hours each, the few extra hundred hours I've clocked up in the games has no doubt come from the excellent modding capabilities of the games. Similarly, I know from Oblivion's release that there are some things that many people disagree with the developers on (for example the return of our friend; horrible levelled creatures), so the tools to remove a potentially game destroying dynamic (hello rogues with glass armour *facepalm*) is an absolute godsend. In the "2.0" internet era of opening the user up to more modifyable possibilites, releasing an SDK in-line with the launch of the game was a breathe of fresh air, a revitalising move from a game developer that other game developers should have taken heed of but for some reason didn't.

But do most people really care about modding their game? TESNexus has close to 750,000 members who have registered in order to download mods from the site, but is this a big number compared to the total number of people who bought the PC version of Oblivion? And of those 750,000, how many would have been content without mods in their game? That's one for Bethesda to decide I guess.

I cannot help but feel not releasing an SDK with the game on launch is a step backwards by Bethesda; a return to the run-of-the-mill game developers that litter the gaming industry who come out with phrases like "we're running a business here". Why not take a step forward by doing something (sensationalist word incoming) revolutionary; like open modding up to the console users? Imagine the press such a feat would achieve. Such things have been suggested but shot down by Bethesda as undoable, but are they really? I've got no clue; my layman brain sees two consoles with hard-drives and they can't understand why it isn't possible. Some people throw their DLC conspiracies around; that Bethesda don't want to release the mod tools or explore their open-source use more liberally because they want to promote their own "buy-to-play" downloadable content. I tend to think it might be more to do with Bethesda not really seeing much $$$ in such an endeavour compared to the amount of effort. And they may well be right. But you still can't help feeling hard-done by, even if they've done us good in the past.