Interview Brian Fargo and Thomas Beekers interviewed by Guy Cocker

[Infinitron]

inXile has a good deal with Deep Silver - DS don't get a cent from the game's digital sales, unlike in Obsidian's deal with Paradox.

But I guess the flipside of that is that DS has more of a say with regard to release dates. Gotta release simultaneously to give the physical box more of a chance.

 

[Grotesque]

Brother None is producer/writer for the game?
You got to be fuckin kiddin me, right?
Right?

 

[Infinitron]

Brother None is producer/writer for the game?
You got to be fuckin kiddin me, right?
Right?

No. He's also writing for Torment (but we already learned that during the KS).

 

[WetWorks]

Underling is such a wonderful term, on par with minion or henchman.

 

[felipepepe]

Cue 5-10 years, and Neo RPG Codex newfags will be interviewing Sea and BN.

We might even get a stalker spaming "Thomas Beekers Words of Wisdom".

And we'll become RPG Watch 2.0.

 

[WetWorks]

Brother None is producer/writer for the game?
You got to be fuckin kiddin me, right?
Right?

No. He's also writing for Torment (but we already learned that during the KS).

See what some dedication can do kids? It's one of our own/NMA actually making a real game (sorry not counting underrail yet).
I for one is looking forward to a creation with the scent of codex.

 

[WetWorks]

Cue 5-10 years, and Neo RPG Codex newfags will be interviewing Sea and BN.

We might even get a stalker spaming "Thomas Beekers Words of Wisdom".

Then someone will pull a warden and pester Beekers until he becomes to good for this place. He disparagingly describe us as having grown insular and malcontent - glittering gems of unpleasantness. In the end, after having made billions of dollars with a FPS video games series built on the invasion of Luxembourg 2022, he will die in bed, dropping his beloved snowglobe -shattering into a millions little pieces of water and phony snow - whispering the words "...codex...".

And thus will end the legacy of Thomas Beekers.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Or his writing will be shit and he'll get a job in equality reporting at RPS.

Too soon to tell.

 

[Grotesque]

Brother None is producer/writer for the game?
You got to be fuckin kiddin me, right?
Right?

No. He's also writing for Torment (but we already learned that during the KS).

On what other game projects as a writer was he involved that recommends him to write for these games that want to stand out also for the quality of the written word?
If this and Torment are the first, I think he skipped quite a few natural important steps.
He should have started writing for Mass Effect 4 or something like that.

 

[Athelas]

Pretty sure some of the programmers on PS:T did some (minor) writing during the game's production. It was very common for 'old-skool' RPG's to have its developers wearing several different hats.

Kickstarter mega-success Wasteland 2, which will finally be with us in its full, completed form in just a few weeks after a lengthy beta, has almost as many words in it as The Bible - and more than War and Peace, says creator Brain Fargo.

"I haven’t known the exact word count because it’s all been in pieces, but when we started doing localisation it became clear - it's more than half a million," he told me back in June. "We've passed the Lord of the Rings at 500,000 words, and we’re about to pass War and Peace, and if we put up another 100,000 words we will pass the Bible. We’ve still got all the epilogues to go, too. I’m confident we’ll pass War and Peace - I’m not 100% sure about the Bible, but if we do an expansion I’ve definitely got the Bible beat!”

That's less words than most Bioware games after BG1. This clearly means WL2 is inferior to all those games (Kotor and all the Mass Effects and Dragon Ages).

Spoiler

Spoiler

Seriously though, the boasting about word count is just silly.

 

[Infinitron]

Brother None's good at English. Better than I am, to be sure.

That doesn't mean he's a brilliant creative writer, but from what I understand Chris Avellone at least approved of his work on Torment. And Wasteland 2 doesn't require as good writing as that.

 

[Shannow]

But will his writing be art?

 

[Jaesun]

And art he did....

 

[Paul_cz]

I always enjoyed BN's writing on NMA, and in fact NMA kinda sucks since he stopped posting (it feels completely dead to me to be honest), I am glad he went from line producer to writing as well.

 

[sea]

Brother None is producer/writer for the game?
You got to be fuckin kiddin me, right?
Right?

Thomas' writing is excellent. A while back he did an extremely awesome test concept for Torment (that is, not intended for use in the game, just sample work) that was on par in terms of originality and cool ideas with what was proposed by the rest of the writing/design team, and he is very good at writing in distinct "voices" for different characters - something that is much more difficult to do than one tends to realize.

For the record, I believe his contributions to Wasteland 2 include a lot of lore entries (mostly California), as well as a lot of item descriptions and helping with a lot of the Kickstarter backer content. He will be doing much more for Torment and his work there is great from what I've seen too.

And yeah, level designers and coders generally do a bunch of writing in the game for side characters, UI, and other relatively less significant stuff. Nathan Long still probably wrote something like 85% of the text in Wasteland 2, but, well, there is a lot of text. Heck, even I helped write/design some minor stuff, along with all the usual QA-type poking I do.

 

[felipepepe]

And I did that guide for Blackguards. You guys go on and become the next-gen Sawyer, I got the next-gen Brenda covered.

 

[Roguey]

More Wasteland 2 UK media blitzing at Kotaku.uk: http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2014/07/30/wasteland-2-almost-many-words-bible

It seems from talking to him that Fargo has kept close control over Wasteland 2's tone, and though he has not restricted the writers in terms of subject matter, he has attempted to preserve its maturity. "I’ve removed stuff I thought was juvenile," he says, "like a guy called the Sperminator, or something like that." Wasteland 2 isn't lazy about the choices it offers players, and it mustn't be lazy in its writing, either.

Hh I'm more interested in

"I wanted to avoid any kind of stereotype, also - I remember when we started this, I said 'let’s not just be a bunch of white guys making this game'," Fargo says. "Let’s ensure we have varied ethnicities, but not in their stereotypical roles. Let’s not have the women always be scantily clad."

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

ffs, guy cocker: hire some guy overseas ($5 literally) to transcribe this. I'm not wasting 48 minutes of my life on this.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Brian Fargo and his faithful underling Thomas "Brother None" Beekers

Whenever I read Brother None's real name...

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

meep!

 

[Metro]

Brian Fargo and his faithful underling Thomas "Brother None" Beekers

Whenever I read Brother None's real name...

View attachment 3835

I saw him pictured on some piece he did on Fallout 3 several years ago... that isn't too far off. Well, Beaker has more hair.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

I don't get why Brother None is using his real name around, I mean, I knew I would't.

 

[Sensuki]

Thomas B. None

 

[Infinitron]

Whenever I read Brother None's real name...

View attachment 3835

This is the first time I've heard this joke

 

[Sitra Achara]

Here you can find some of Beekers' embarrasing teenage fanfics:
http://web.archive.org/web/20020109011438/http://gunsandbullets.cjb.net/