Fallout 3 artist was stopped by security after taking location scouting a little too seriously in Washington DC: "Turns out they don’t want you snooping around the buildings"

Fallout 3 designer Emil Pagliarulo says the location scouting that went into the development of Fallout 3's Washington, D.C. almost got one artist into big trouble.

Speaking to PC Gamer, the devs behind Fallout often spoke of just how fun it is to virtually destroy areas – especially when you live there. As artist Istvan Pely says, "it was actually a lot of fun," adding, "this tickled some part of the brain where it's just kind of fun to blow things up."

Fun aside, Pely says it was also "super convenient living here and being near all our references." However, when it comes to Washington DC, naturally the prospect of destroying the nation's capital comes with some raised eyebrows.

Pagliarulo recalls difficulties arising when location scouting for the game. "At one point," he explains, "one of our artists went to take photos downtown, security stopped him and was like 'what are you taking photos for?' Turns out they don't want you snooping around the buildings in DC, for obvious reasons."

But even with the potential charges associated with sleuthing around DC, the team is surprised it actually got away with some of the things it did. Pagliarulo recalled an ad campaign that saw the team put up standees showing the game's destroyed DC in the metro, which caused some confusion around the area: "They had newscasters interviewing people."

Pely also reminisced on the campaign, saying, "Now I look back and I'm like, 'Wow, they actually allowed that?" He adds, "I don't know if you could do that today."

It took Bethesda "several months" to get Fallout 3's Liberty Prime to do what he's told and stop fighting random NPCs: "It's all we're asking you to do, sir"