Interview Brian Fargo Interview Roundup: On hustling around and rising development costs

[Xeon]

I looked up a video of the new Bard's Tale game and it looks pretty good looks wise, don't know much about the series tho and it seems to be similar to Legend of Grimrock type of game, don't really like combat mostly games.

I did google Bard's Tale when Kickstarter first announced I think and I saw singing game or something.

 

[Bohrain]

I'm too much of a storyfag to truly enjoy blobbers.

 

[Morality Games]

I'm too much of a storyfag to truly enjoy blobbers.

I value my time too much to give them the effort they deserve. You can play Dead State, Serpent in Staglands, Underrail, The Age of Decadence (multiple playthroughs), D:OS, and WL2 in all the time it takes to complete one Wizardry. Probably one or two of the Shadowruns as well.

On the other hand, they are a mostly dead genre. It's not like they are going anywhere.

 

[Nazrim Eldrak]

"...“Planescape: Torment wasn’t a huge hit either,” ..."
src: https://www.pcgamesn.com/torment-tides-of-numenera/torment-tides-of-numenera-sales


To Brian:
Yeah, but it generated a lot of gamer who were willing to support Torment:Numenera on kickstarter, because of it.
And you fucked it up!

 

[Trashos]

Yeah, I kinda understand that but aren't the lead developers who dictate what gets in to the game? For example, a grunt can't make a side quest on his own unless he gets approval from the lead writer or designer or something.

Infinitron or Tulus explained developer titles to me once or something but kinda forgot I think.

Yes, but the quality of the quest depends on the grunt, not on the lead. If there is no passion nothing can ignite the flame.

Yes, the project leaders can only do so much, and unless the grunts are really into it a project doesn't go very far. I have experienced this more times than I can count. A good example actually is the encounter design in PoE (the initial release). Some leads could do a decent job but didn't have time for it, the grunts had no experience with this kind of game, and we know the result.

"...“Planescape: Torment wasn’t a huge hit either,” ..."
src: https://www.pcgamesn.com/torment-tides-of-numenera/torment-tides-of-numenera-sales

To Brian:
Yeah, but it generated a lot of gamer who were willing to support Torment:Numenera on kickstarter, because of it.
And you fucked it up!

I am confident he understands this, otherwise he wouldn't have set off to make a successor. Pretty sure he is just trying to cover for his team and/or his own mistakes.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

If much smaller teams made better games decades ago, they are doing it wrong.

Meh. The whole culture has changed and so did the people involved. They were more like passionate and talented geeks back then. Today they are misfits, posers and hipsters. Who try to solve their head problems by being hip and "with the times". Their work shouts - the world does not understand me or even worse "I hate the world". They are just useless. You can sweep them like coal with a shovel or even better just hit them to the head with it.

The only studio I now see that has talented real geeks is Creative assembly. Fuck. I am just playing Warhammer total war 1; 2 and having such a blast I have not had in fucking ages. They know what they are doing, what they want to do and etc. And you can see by the way they know lore and look, that their problems aren't mental and passion is real (Not PR guys). 520 hours and still loving it...

I have never played a Total War game but the Warhammer one looked interesting so I got it on sale a few months ago. I started it up and was very impressed by the look and the game appeared to have so much depth and variety I actually stopped laying so that I could return to it when I have a bigger chunk of time to devote to it, because that is what it looks like it deserves.

In any event since then Warhammer II has been released. Is there any reason to play the first one, or should I just get the 2nd one and dive into that instead and skip the first version?

 

[l3loodAngel]

If much smaller teams made better games decades ago, they are doing it wrong.

Meh. The whole culture has changed and so did the people involved. They were more like passionate and talented geeks back then. Today they are misfits, posers and hipsters. Who try to solve their head problems by being hip and "with the times". Their work shouts - the world does not understand me or even worse "I hate the world". They are just useless. You can sweep them like coal with a shovel or even better just hit them to the head with it.

The only studio I now see that has talented real geeks is Creative assembly. Fuck. I am just playing Warhammer total war 1; 2 and having such a blast I have not had in fucking ages. They know what they are doing, what they want to do and etc. And you can see by the way they know lore and look, that their problems aren't mental and passion is real (Not PR guys). 520 hours and still loving it...

I have never played a Total War game but the Warhammer one looked interesting so I got it on sale a few months ago. I started it up and was very impressed by the look and the game appeared to have so much depth and variety I actually stopped laying so that I could return to it when I have a bigger chunk of time to devote to it, because that is what it looks like it deserves.

In any event since then Warhammer II has been released. Is there any reason to play the first one, or should I just get the 2nd one and dive into that instead and skip the first version?

Tbh in my opinion number 2 is much better than first. It's those subtle little things, like balance, variety of battle maps, battle map improvements, garrison improvement, addition of neutral armies ( that can be pain in the arse. One got own few settlements and stated war on me. At first I laughed as Scaven, but then started receiving armies with ~12 wood elf dragons, and the rest great eagles at my doorstep), the whole racial differences (dark elves can't use global recruitment- they use arks which floating fortresses to reinforce, lizards have special elite units, high elves have prestige that let's you hire better heroes, commanders and influence others trough diplomacy, while Scaven have food that lets players colonise a settlement up to level three with enough food.) and a lot of other small improvements that makes it significantly better experience. To a new player it might not look like much, but to someone who has spent significant number of hours it does make a difference.

And it's better than 1 even without the extra races. I just wouldn't reccomend playing Scaven on very hard (at least Qeek) got my ass handed to me (couldn't win the campaign, cause all the map declared war on me and I can't get extra armies due to upkeep costs to stop others from completing the ritual). Will have to replay, but not sure about the outcome.

And with the release of mortal empires you will be able to play grand campaign with all races including from the first one. So I wouldn't bother with the WHTW1.

 

[ArchAngel]

So Fargo is already trying to justify the future flop of Wasteland 3. Interesting.

After BT4 flops as well I don't think we will get WL3 anyways. I saw it coming and didn't back WL3.

 

[agris]

My money is on bards tale 4.

BT4's likely having budget troubles on account of its weak kickstarter and none of the money they were expecting from ToN flowing in. It's also not going to bring in much, if any, money either.

One of the problems with building on top of a pyramid is that when the base is weak, the top can fall down.

I still hope BT4 doesn't suck, but hope is all there is after WL2 and Numanuma.

 

[m_s0]

They need to go for broke on WL3 and make it a smash hit to stabalize.

That's still a game away, though, and you can't really run a business on the assumption that the game after the game you're actively developing right now and having issues budgeting/raising funds for will be enough of a success to keep you going.

It's kind of interesting watching this unfold, and it will be even more interesting to see how Fargo navigates away from crashing and burning with W3, but I'd prefer if the drama meant we'd be getting better games as well. Also: karma.

 

[Ismaul]

I'd prefer if the drama meant we'd be getting better games as well

Better games? Who wants that? Better drama is where it's at!

 

[duanth123]

Even talking about this hack feels like charity.

I'm too much of a storyfag to truly enjoy blobbers.

I value my time too much to give them the effort they deserve. You can play Dead State, Serpent in Staglands, Underrail, The Age of Decadence (multiple playthroughs), D:OS, and WL2 in all the time it takes to complete one Wizardry. Probably one or two of the Shadowruns as well.

On the other hand, they are a mostly dead genre. It's not like they are going anywhere.

For most people, there"s sizable enough backlog not to dirty your hands with some grad level unity abomination.

And there are plenty of Jap crawlers coming every few months if you can stomach the weeb

Which Id support any day over the cul de sac that is InXile's future

 

[Cross]

BT4 is most likely going to bomb. Might & Magic X is still sitting at only 173k owners according to Steamspy and that's from a series that's much better known than the Bard's Tale, and released at a time when the 'new wave' cRPG's were still garnering a lot of attention and buzz. And for all of Fargo's talk about the lessons learned from his decades of industry experience, InXile's development practices don't seem very sound (e.g. T:ToN's visuals looked worse than comparable isometric RPG's despite having a significantly higher budget and being a smaller game with fewer locations).

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Are we still paying attention to Fargo? And if so, why?

 

[Sentinel]

Because hope is the last thing to die.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

I thought it died with the release of Wasteland 2 tho.

 

[Davaris]

I thought it died with the release of Wasteland 2 tho.

Hope died for me when they announced they'd be using Unity for W2. Unity saves you time. lol

 

[Ismaul]

Because death is the last thing to hope for regarding inXile.

fix'd

 

[Daedalos]

Wasteland 2 was decent. No reason why W3 shouldnt also be.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Wasteland 2 was decent.

Was it though? I mean, was it really? Also: Are we back to being happy that things are "decent" again? Welp. So much for the resurgence of incline, folks. We're back to the "good for what it is" days!

 

[ColonelTeacup]

Wasteland 2 was decent.

Was it though? I mean, was it really? Also: Are we back to being happy that things are "decent" again? Welp. So much for the resurgence of incline, folks. We're back to the "good for what it is" days!

If things go from shit, to decent, is that not incline? Shit does not travel upstream.

 

[mwnn85]

I thought Wasteland 2 was just a big ugly, clusterfuck of ideas which don't gel together in any cohesive way.
Dropping in a few Wasteland references all over the place just doesn't cut it - strip those away and it could've passed for generic shovelware.
Don't know what the $3 million+ got spent on as the game doesn't excel in any area.

At it's worst it's easily as bad as Fallout 2's New Reno/Chinatown.
I certainly think they should've been a bit more serious and dropped the statues/shrines.
Dropping the MSPE rules and learn by doing skill system was a massive error.
The combat is forgettable. Prefer the phased based combat of the first game - they didn't do a good job of capturing the feel of it. A ToEE style system could've worked really well.
The random placement of loot boxes smacks of lazyness.
Probably would've helped to make the scale of the game smaller; I'd rather have fewer well made locations over multiple poor ones any day of the week.
Poorly conceived all around.

Could've Should've been so much better.
I'd rather play the first game in DOSBOX and I'd suggest that they should've done the same.
I don't think they'll redeem themselves with Wasteland 3.

 

[Cross]

I thought Wasteland 2 was just a big ugly, clusterfuck of ideas which don't gel together in any cohesive way.
Dropping in a few Wasteland references all over the place just doesn't cut it - strip those away and it could've passed for generic shovelware.
Don't know what the $3 million+ got spent on as the game doesn't excel in any area.

Wasteland 2's final budget ended up being significantly higher than what it raised on Kickstarter, even before the director's cut:

http://www.pcgamer.com/wasteland-2-early-access-sales-helped-double-the-games-kickstarter-budget/

At it's worst it's easily as bad as Fallout 2's New Reno

 

[ColonelTeacup]

At it's worst it's easily as bad as Fallout 2's New Reno/Chinatown.

How DARE you insult New Reno. It was one of the best cities in Fallout 2.

 

[mwnn85]

At it's worst it's easily as bad as Fallout 2's New Reno/Chinatown.

How DARE you insult New Reno. It was one of the best cities in Fallout 2.

This has been posted about hundreds of times.
For roleplaying: A+
Fitting into Fallout lore: F