Pete Hines talks to Guardian
Pete Hines talks to Guardian
Interview - posted by Vault Dweller on Thu 22 February 2007, 23:12:57
Tags: Bethesda Softworks; The Elder Scrolls IV: OblivionGuardian has noticed that interviews with Pete Hines are very trendy now, so they quickly put some questions together:
Talking of leveling, there has been some criticism about the leveling structure in Oblivion... What are your thoughts on this?
You do see different creatures based on what level you are, but they don't level to your level. We only level up boss creatures in certain cases, so it's not something that happens all the time. It's a fair comment, but the challenge is to try to make a game that allows you to go wherever you want and do whatever you want while also making sure that you can actually do something there.Which coincidentally removes all the challenge from the game. I'm playing Geneforge 4 now, and damn, the game is unforgiving. I have a list of places where I was forced to retreat from. Makes a huge difference.
Oblivion is still a HARDCORE game, with little handholding, though it is more friendly than Morrowind (quick travel etc). How do you get the balance right between keeping your hardcore fans onboard and making the game more accessible?
Well, the goal was to simply try to make a game that was more fun to play than Morrowind. That's always a goal in every game we do: make it better than the last one. So there were a lot of little things we did much better in Oblivion than in Morrowind, and I think those things make the game more accessible, to anyone...not just one segment. The combat is more fun, information is handled better for quests, etc. As far as the hardcore, it still has all that stuff for the hardcore folks. You want high character customisation, we have that. You want to obsess over numbers and stats, we got that. You want freeform role-playing where you can decide what your experience will be and how you want to play, we got that. So the game is accessible for anybody, but how deep you want toget into it is up to the individual player.Fallout 3 is so doomed.
Talking of leveling, there has been some criticism about the leveling structure in Oblivion... What are your thoughts on this?
You do see different creatures based on what level you are, but they don't level to your level. We only level up boss creatures in certain cases, so it's not something that happens all the time. It's a fair comment, but the challenge is to try to make a game that allows you to go wherever you want and do whatever you want while also making sure that you can actually do something there.
Oblivion is still a HARDCORE game, with little handholding, though it is more friendly than Morrowind (quick travel etc). How do you get the balance right between keeping your hardcore fans onboard and making the game more accessible?
Well, the goal was to simply try to make a game that was more fun to play than Morrowind. That's always a goal in every game we do: make it better than the last one. So there were a lot of little things we did much better in Oblivion than in Morrowind, and I think those things make the game more accessible, to anyone...not just one segment. The combat is more fun, information is handled better for quests, etc. As far as the hardcore, it still has all that stuff for the hardcore folks. You want high character customisation, we have that. You want to obsess over numbers and stats, we got that. You want freeform role-playing where you can decide what your experience will be and how you want to play, we got that. So the game is accessible for anybody, but how deep you want toget into it is up to the individual player.
