Interview Obsidian Media Blitz: Josh Sawyer and Feargus Urquhart Interviews

[Azrael the cat]

Such bad design, in fact, that it never happened.

didn't VtMB do this? I don't recall any such warning.

It's on one of the loading screens. The loading screens for VtM:B change over the course of the game, but the "the World of Darkness is a dangerous place, level up a fucking combat skill" (or to that effect, it definitely starts with the 'dangerous place' line) is on high rotation until the player completes Santa Monica.

Some players could well have blasted through Santa Monica in a couple of sessions without reloading and thereby missed the warnings, but that's a matter of misjudging the effectiveness of the warning. It was a well established means of warning the player at the time, as the same 'warning on the loading screen' (even worded in much the same way) was used in PS:T and other isometric crpgs. I suspect the low-level AD&D combat randomness made it more effective in those games - certainly there's better ways to warn the player than by relying on quickload spam, but there was still a deliberate choice to warn the player, regardless of whether it was implemented well.

 

[Azrael the cat]

I like how you bolded half the sentence and ignored the most important part, which is the fact Guido Henkel himself made that claim.

And I like how you assume that his version is false without any evidence.

You said it yourself:

Avellone made a gigantic document vision with the characters and the story detailed explained. The main attraction of the game is the story and he wrote everything, alone.

And this is Guido's description of his own role:

As a result my primary responsibilities on that project were primarily administrative in nature. While I did some work on some of the technical design aspects of the game, I was mostly the guy who was crunching the numbers and maintained the project plans to make sure everyone knew what they were supposed to do, and got it done in time. It was also my job to shield the team from the many corporate issues that surround a project, that may simply be distracting the team from the creative aspects. It is neither a fun, nor a glorious job.

You either believe MCA wrote the whole thing by himself (which isn't true, but ok) and that's the main attraction, or you believe Guido, through "primarily administrative" work, had a greater influence. The two opinions are mutually exclusive.

Call me crazy, but maybe a game like that needs a great designer/writer and a project coordinator who can keep the suits away and give the creatives their breathing space because everything is financially on track.

You just have to look at Double-Fine's history (and that of crowd-funded games in general) to see the value of a good 'head suit' who is passionate about the games, but keeps the project focused and on budget. Same way that film directors rarely create their best work when given 'full' creative control. It's always flabby - they need a hardass producer who can look at their 'perfect masterpiece' and say "you need to cut 13 minutes off the running time. That's over a tenth of the film, so you better prioritise and think about what parts are really important; why don't you start with those 2 minutes of driving that doesn't have any dialogue in it - yeah I get the symbolism but it's fucking boring", but who also knows when to turn around and tell the investors "this guy knows what he's doing, stay calm and give him his creative space".

 

[Iznaliu]

You just have to look at Double-Fine's history (and that of crowd-funded games in general) to see the value of a good 'head suit' who is passionate about the games, but keeps the project focused and on budget

The issue is that these kinds of people are exceedingly rare.