Todd Howard talks the pros and cons of bringing Fallout to VR

Last summer Bethesda revealed it would be turning two of its more recent big-hitters, Fallout 4 and Doom, into full-fledged virtual reality titles. 

We know both titles will be released for the HTC Vive, but other details have been thin on the ground, until now. 

That's because Bethesda Game Studio's executive producer Todd Howard has finally broken that radio silence in a recent interview with Glixel, revealing the studio is making good progress with its Fallout 4 VR project ( Doom wasn't mentioned, unfortunately). 

Offering some details about the nature of virtual reality conversion, Howard revealed that with Fallout 4 the studio lucked out in many ways. For example, the veteran designer believes the game's first-person Pip-Boy interface and measured approach to combat made the process a lot smoother.

"I will say that Fallout works because of the interface," explained Howard. "The Pip-Boy is on your wrist and we've been able to present so that it works the way you expect. 

"You look and there it is. The fact that the gunplay is a bit slower than in a lot of games has certainly helped us, but we have V.A.T.S., so you can pause or slow down the world. I assure you, V.A.T.S. in VR is awesome. We love it."

That said, there have been one or two challenges. And while they weren't exactly unexpected, overcoming them has required a lot of trial-and-error experimentation. 

"Locomotion is definitely the hard part, I will admit. Given the size of the world and the amount that you're moving in Fallout 4 that part is tricky because you're doing it a lot. Right now we're doing the teleport warp thing and that's fine, but we're experimenting with a few others."

You can hear more from Howard by reading the full interview over on Glixel.