Interview Interview with Brian Fargo at Dagon's Lair

[Zed]

Tags: Brian Fargo; InXile Entertainment; Wasteland 2

Dagon lets us know he has published an interview with Brian Fargo at Dagon's Lair. Among other things, Brian answers questions about his early career, his vision for the future, and of course Wasteland 2. Have a few snips:

Could you talk a bit about yourself, how you came into the video game industry. What made you start as a game designer, and what made you continue this way in this ever changing business ?

My resume is quite short for the games business. I was very fortunate that all of my interests as a kid set me up to get into the games business at its infancy. I was an avid reader of fantasy/science fiction, I collected comic books, I played Dungeons and Dragons and I liked to program computers. It’s hard to believe I’m one of the few people from that era that is still in the game so to speak. I have always like making games and am fortunate to be able to still do so.

How did you get Interplay to grow so well up to the 90s. What was your vision of the games your company created ? Could you comment on the creation of the RPG game standards you created : Bard’s Tale, Wasteland, Fallout, … and also how are they compared to other companies « old » games (Ultima, …)

For the most part I just kept producing games that felt right to me and the products led the way. I’m really proud of the number of memorable games we created from the late 80′s through the 90′s. Our slogan was By Gamers. For Gamers. and we did a pretty good job of staying true to that. Not 100% but not too bad. I would not quite know how to compare our games to others as I didn’t really think in those terms. As the teams grew bigger I made sure to try and keep the right sensibilities in tact and make changes that made sense as a gamer. It was definitely the golden era at that point in time.

How far are you in Wasteland 2′s creation ? Just an idea ? Design documents ? Main scenario done ? … Will you create your game you have in mind or try to please most of fans’ demands on the ideas… ?

Quite a bit of work was done by Jason Anderson while he was here. Lots of locations, dialogue, characters and story ideas were flushed out. Now we are bringing the design team on like Stackpole, Avellone, Danforth etc. to fill in more of the personality. It is a similar process that we did with the first game. Most of the fans « demands » have really been around the systems and tone and not the specific story points.​

It's a French/English interview. You'll have to scroll down for the English version.

 

[Humppaleka]

The interview felt like they asked questions in english, then translated it into french, then translated that into english. Them frenchmen...

Interesting of him to already count Avellone into the design team, wonder if it was his intention or was it too lost in translation.

 

[IronicNeurotic]

As the teams grew bigger I made sure to try and keep the right sensibilities in tact

At least regarding the mid-late 90's this is horseshit. Well not exactly, since he may as well have tried but from what we know (Tim Cain & Co) there were tons of communication issues at Interplay during that time.

 

[Crooked Bee]

What exactly is the problem between Brian Fargo and Tim Cain? Anyone care to elaborate on that? I must've missed it.

 

[IronicNeurotic]

What exactly is the problem between Brian Fargo and Tim Cain? Anyone care to elaborate on that? I must've missed it.

I don't think there is a real problem on a social basis but Cain (and subsequently Boyarsky and Anderson) left due to issues with the development process (IIRC). Can't seem to find the source at the moment though.

 

[DwarvenFood]

It was somewhere in an interview about the founding of Troika...

Cannot seem to find it right now.

 

[Davaris]

What exactly is the problem between Brian Fargo and Tim Cain? Anyone care to elaborate on that? I must've missed it.

They wanted artistic freedom and thought they had earned it, after creating Fallout.

I haven't seen Tim Cain talk about Fargo directly, but I got the impression from his comments, that all of the senior people at Interplay, wanted to stick their noses into this cool new IP, called Fallout, when Fallout 2 was being made.

He said something like, "it didn't feel like it was our game anymore", as if control of had been taken away from them.

 

[IronicNeurotic]

I found another source on the Obsidian boards

http://books.google.ch/books?id=lroZsP4zyIYC&pg=PA93&lpg=PA93&dq=Gamer's at work tim cain&source=bl&ots=K8MU3lwCiU&sig=lbxvqk5_w4-i0WFh488r5QVp4t8&hl=de&sa=X&ei=5dZ5T8iUIsTsObb-zOAN&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=Gamer's at work tim cain&f=false

Communication issues with Marketing, Brian and Feargus it seems. And Brian beeing clueless about a lot of it.

 

[felipepepe]

I found another source on the Obsidian boards

http://books.google.ch/books?id=lroZsP4zyIYC&pg=PA93&lpg=PA93&dq=Gamer's at work tim cain&source=bl&ots=K8MU3lwCiU&sig=lbxvqk5_w4-i0WFh488r5QVp4t8&hl=de&sa=X&ei=5dZ5T8iUIsTsObb-zOAN&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=Gamer's at work tim cain&f=false

Communication issues with Marketing, Brian and Feargus it seems. And Brian beeing clueless about a lot of it.

In that text Fargo appears as a BRO, always with Tim and saying for him to do what he think is right, even giving marketing control to him. Feargus tried to push in stupid things, so Tim had to always ask for Fargo to step in and he always favored Tim.

But at the end, I can understand that Tim got pissed at having to develop a game asking for Fargo's protection, so ragequited; and Fargo probably got pissed at Tim ragequiting after he gave him all the protection needed...probably they still can sit down behind some beer and have some laughs, but just prefer to work apart.

 

[IronicNeurotic]

In that text Fargo appears as a BRO, always with Tim and saying for him to do what he think is right, even giving marketing control to him. Feargus tried to push in stupid things, so Tim had to always ask for Fargo to step in and he always favored Tim.
But at the end, I can understand that Tim got pissed at having to develop a game asking for Fargo's protection, so ragequited; and Fargo probably got pissed at Tim ragequiting after he gave him all the protection needed...probably they still can sit down behind some beer and have some laughs, but just prefer to work apart.

Yes, and completly clueless till Cain comes to him. Like that part when Fargo is completly surprised with the issues Cain has. Or what the marketing department in general does. That shouldn't be happening. That's what I meant with communication issues.

 

[the_dagon]

The interview felt like they asked questions in english, then translated it into french, then translated that into english. Them frenchmen...
Interesting of him to already count Avellone into the design team, wonder if it was his intention or was it too lost in translation.

Everything was in english (questions & answers) THEN translated in french. Nothing was lost in translation as the answers were cut/pasted from Brian Fargo's Email. If the questions look strange, it must be because english is not my native language.

Great having this interview with him

Dagon (not the_dagon)

 

[sgc_meltdown]

About the game itself : your focus is to please the community and fans with top-down view, turn-based combats, well, all the old-school good stuff, fans loved about old RPGs. But how far will you go ? Many gamers evolved and are now used to easy interface, and often being «hand held» in games.

Many gamers evolved

in the dinosaur to chicken sense, I take it

 

[Oesophagus]

We are not going to stray from the original formula that made these classic games work so well and perhaps the challenge/difficulty will be more than some can handle. But there is no reason to not take advantage of UI conventions like allowing the user to customize it the way they want. There is more flexibility in change when it doesn’t hurt the core experience but it isn’t like Fallout 1/2, Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale weren’t accessible. I think people spend too much time trying to dumb down the experience when in fact most the players are quite smart.

This I really like. No dumbing down, accessibility can GTFO. Really looking forward to seeing the consoletards' reactions

 

[G.O.D]

What makes you think they would care?
Just saying.. they have their Mass Defect 3, DAII, Twitcher 2 (arguably) and the likes.
Heck, i'd be surprised if the majority of that audience would even notice, or better, give W2 any attention at all.
Doesn't seem to be the nature so to say.

 

[Oesophagus]

Well obviously I'm referring to those of the lesser people who stray away from stramlined gameplay into Turn Based territory.

 

[Brayko]

It's too bad combat won't be more like JA2, I came buckets when I first played that game. I do understand how trying to integrate all that into a huge RPG would be difficult though so it is good to take some examples from the game for Wasteland 2.

The interview seems like the same old stuff he's been saying but with (not so) different words, but it's good he's doing them because more interviews = more people coming across the game and therefore an open Kickstarter page.

 

[G.O.D]

Well obviously I'm referring to those of the lesser people who stray away from stramlined gameplay into Turn Based territory.

Sure, dude, I got your point. I wasn't arguing with you.
What i meant was, I just don't think it would be likely that people who like those games are going to stray to TB on a worthwile scale.
Them spending their money on W2 on the other hand, surely is profit for InExile and backers of W2 whether they like the game or not.