Brian Fargo chats up GameSpy
Brian Fargo chats up GameSpy
Interview - posted by Saint_Proverbius on Wed 1 October 2003, 17:31:49
Tags: Brian Fargo; inXile Entertainment; The Bard's Tale (2004)Good day for these things, because there's an interview with Brian Fargo of inXile done by the boys at GameSpy:
GameSpy: What do you think of the direction RPGs have taken in recent years?
Brian Fargo: Let me think about that question for a moment. [pause] Well, I feel like it's funny because I think about what we were doing at Interplay and it seems like a lot of the direction of RPGs that were coming from us and our group, between BioWare, Troika, Black Isle ... On the PC side of the business ... I think they were focused on size as opposed to depth. We tried to focus more on the depth of it, as you know. But they've been great products ... I think the most interesting one, really, is Knights of the Old Republic, because it's the first time I've seen a PC-type experience on a console machine.
As you commented earlier, is that a trend? Yeah, I think it is, I think it is. I've never been that interested in console RPGs. I found them to be talking down toward a demographic that I'm not part of. More of that 14-year-old mentality, more like it was only about big spell effects and getting +5 sword and +6 sword and +7 sword, just because +7 sword is better than +5 sword, so I found that the console RPGs tended to be very unsophisticated in that way.
Not to nitpick, but Brian should have looked around more. There have been some earlier PC CRPGs for the consoles. There was Ultima VI for the SNES, for example. Oh, and Pool of Radiance for the NES. Then there was... Eh.. Why bother? Knights of the Republic sure wasn't first.
Spotted this at RPGDot.
GameSpy: What do you think of the direction RPGs have taken in recent years?
Brian Fargo: Let me think about that question for a moment. [pause] Well, I feel like it's funny because I think about what we were doing at Interplay and it seems like a lot of the direction of RPGs that were coming from us and our group, between BioWare, Troika, Black Isle ... On the PC side of the business ... I think they were focused on size as opposed to depth. We tried to focus more on the depth of it, as you know. But they've been great products ... I think the most interesting one, really, is Knights of the Old Republic, because it's the first time I've seen a PC-type experience on a console machine.
As you commented earlier, is that a trend? Yeah, I think it is, I think it is. I've never been that interested in console RPGs. I found them to be talking down toward a demographic that I'm not part of. More of that 14-year-old mentality, more like it was only about big spell effects and getting +5 sword and +6 sword and +7 sword, just because +7 sword is better than +5 sword, so I found that the console RPGs tended to be very unsophisticated in that way.
Not to nitpick, but Brian should have looked around more. There have been some earlier PC CRPGs for the consoles. There was Ultima VI for the SNES, for example. Oh, and Pool of Radiance for the NES. Then there was... Eh.. Why bother? Knights of the Republic sure wasn't first.
Spotted this at RPGDot.
