Fallout 3 interview at Shacknews
Fallout 3 interview at Shacknews
Interview - posted by Vault Dweller on Thu 8 February 2007, 19:33:57
Tags: Bethesda Softworks; Fallout 3Shacknews has posted a 5-page long interview with Bethesda's Pete Hines. Page 2 is dedicated to Fallout 3.
How do you respond to certain voices from the PC community who make claims such as that you're dumbing down games for the console platforms?
Yeah, I can't really... It becomes an issue of "Yes you did, no you didn't." They say that we dumbed down our game, that it isn't as complex as Morrowind or that it isn't as good as [The Elder Scrolls II:] Daggerfall. I say, the same people that made Morrowind made Oblivion. There were maybe three or four people total that worked on Morrowind that didn't work on Oblivion. We had designers that had key roles in Daggerfall that designed those same systems for Oblivion. The same ones that people said we dumbed down from Daggerfall were the ones that those same guys made.
Speaking of Fallout, is it being handled by essentially the same team as the Elder Scrolls team?
The answer to that really has to be yes, because we just have one team.
So you're pretty far into development, I'd think?
We're a fairly good ways away. Projects reach different stages of development based on how many people are working on them. You can have eight people working on a project for a year and a half and still consider yourself in preproduction just because they spend so much time speccing out what they want to do and how it's going to be implemented. But yeah, we've got a full team working on it now. Of course, as we said with all of our stuff, we don't believe in showing it or even talking about it until we can say, "This is what we're going to do." That time is not that far off.
We hope that when we show people what we're up to, they'll agree. Some folks will, and some folks will say it's not what they wanted. At the end of the day, we respect that, but we have to do what we think is right. Again, you can't make the game that everybody wants because you'll get ten different answers about what that game is.
Have you spoken at all to the original creators of the franchise--who from what I know already had less complete involvement with Fallout 2 than with the first game--in any capacity?
We have, on an individual basis. ... But at the same time, if we're going to move forward, we're really going to have to move forward. We can't just say, "Well, let's ask these guys what they think." As Fallout fans and guys who make roleplaying games and have for over a decade, we have pretty good ideas about what we want to do and how to do it.
Is there somebody at Bethesda who is really driving the vision of Fallout 3, like Todd Howard, or is it more a situation where it's the company vision?
It's the vision of a group of folks. Much like The Elder Scrolls, it starts with Todd Howard who drives everything, but then there's definitely the lead designer, lead artist, lead programmer. More than anything, those team leads are the guys who champion for things, saying, "This is what it has to play like, this is what it has to look like, this is how the systems have to work." It's definitely a group of folks but at the end of the day it falls on Todd to set the pace and and how he thinks it should look and play.So, it's a group efforts, but it starts and ends with Todd? Anyway, it's the longest Bethesda interview I've seen in a long time. Discuss!
How do you respond to certain voices from the PC community who make claims such as that you're dumbing down games for the console platforms?
Yeah, I can't really... It becomes an issue of "Yes you did, no you didn't." They say that we dumbed down our game, that it isn't as complex as Morrowind or that it isn't as good as [The Elder Scrolls II:] Daggerfall. I say, the same people that made Morrowind made Oblivion. There were maybe three or four people total that worked on Morrowind that didn't work on Oblivion. We had designers that had key roles in Daggerfall that designed those same systems for Oblivion. The same ones that people said we dumbed down from Daggerfall were the ones that those same guys made.
Speaking of Fallout, is it being handled by essentially the same team as the Elder Scrolls team?
The answer to that really has to be yes, because we just have one team.
So you're pretty far into development, I'd think?
We're a fairly good ways away. Projects reach different stages of development based on how many people are working on them. You can have eight people working on a project for a year and a half and still consider yourself in preproduction just because they spend so much time speccing out what they want to do and how it's going to be implemented. But yeah, we've got a full team working on it now. Of course, as we said with all of our stuff, we don't believe in showing it or even talking about it until we can say, "This is what we're going to do." That time is not that far off.
We hope that when we show people what we're up to, they'll agree. Some folks will, and some folks will say it's not what they wanted. At the end of the day, we respect that, but we have to do what we think is right. Again, you can't make the game that everybody wants because you'll get ten different answers about what that game is.
Have you spoken at all to the original creators of the franchise--who from what I know already had less complete involvement with Fallout 2 than with the first game--in any capacity?
We have, on an individual basis. ... But at the same time, if we're going to move forward, we're really going to have to move forward. We can't just say, "Well, let's ask these guys what they think." As Fallout fans and guys who make roleplaying games and have for over a decade, we have pretty good ideas about what we want to do and how to do it.
Is there somebody at Bethesda who is really driving the vision of Fallout 3, like Todd Howard, or is it more a situation where it's the company vision?
It's the vision of a group of folks. Much like The Elder Scrolls, it starts with Todd Howard who drives everything, but then there's definitely the lead designer, lead artist, lead programmer. More than anything, those team leads are the guys who champion for things, saying, "This is what it has to play like, this is what it has to look like, this is how the systems have to work." It's definitely a group of folks but at the end of the day it falls on Todd to set the pace and and how he thinks it should look and play.
