Interview Pete Hines interview at Edge

[JarlFrank]

And there are people who would swear that the 360 version looks better than the PC version, people who’d swear that the PC version looks better than the 360 version, and people who’d swear that the PS3 version looks better.

There are people who know how to tweak the PC version so that it looks better than all the console shit.

 

[JrK]

Seriously guys, all you who replied with "jrpg vs oblivion and he's right" are morons (or dumb shits, choose which you like best) for missing the point that HardCode pointed out.

 

[Inziladun]

Huh... how did that vampirism quest look like anyway? Did they forget to mark checkpoints and build in walkthrough messageboxes or are they aiming at something even more Diablo for their next project?

It was a broken quest, which makes what Pete said even funnier.

 

[Castanova]

HardCore didn't even have a point. Pete mentioned the dialog in JRPGs and then, in the very next phrase, mentioned that Oblivion also has lots of dialog. He never admitted that he thinks dialog is "teh sux0rz", in this particular interview anyway. You're just infusing his response with your own cynicism (however justified it may be). The rest of HardCore's post was just random bashing that had nothing to do with the interview in the news post.

 

[denizsi]

Pete Hines: Oblivion is such a big game, which sucks

Fixed.

And do you think Elder Scrolls games in the future would use anything other than a firstperson view?

Pete Hines: No, we would always include a firstperson view in The Elder Scolls

That's not a straight answer, silly. But then again, you can't really expect a straight answer from such a face.

Would we ever do an MMO? It’s certainly something we’ve talked about but for a lot of the reasons I’ve just said, doing an MMO in The Elder Scrolls would kind of move us away from a lot of the things that we really enjoy about making a singleplayer game.

Just like making MW moved them away from a lot of things in DF, and OB moved them away from yet more than in MW (also admitted by Todd or Pete if not another dev, in some interview). They certainly have a clear conscious about "moving away" from good things for retarded reasons.

I certainly think it’s possible we’d do one, but if we did we wouldn’t do one until we felt like we could bring something to the table that nobody else was doing, that we could sort of move the genre forward for MMOs like we at least try to do for singleplayer games in what we do with The Elder Scrolls and Oblivion.

Todd, fallen asleep playing his masterpiece, suddenly wakes from a dream in excitement: YES!! I FEEL LIKE WE CAN DO IT NOW!! - People of MMORPGs chant as one: Oh please Lord Todd, move the genre forward and save us from our looping doom of massive uninspiration!

There’s nothing wrong with bringing more people to the genre

What genre!?? Again, they think they are bringing people to the genre? A genre, perhaps. Say, the English language isn't suddenly attracting more people or more people care more about English because some retards utter non-literary words like "truthiness" before the millions, causing the phrase to catch on.

edit: It appears that, despite the awkward form of the word, it might have been in existance long before, but that's beside the point.

The PS3 and 360 versions are for all intents and purposes identical

What exactly does he refer to by that? Wasn't there, in some magazine recently, an "exclusive" information about the PS3 version, supplied by Beth, pointing out how certain graphical features are improved in PS3, with comparison shots featuring texture differences between X360 and PS3?

Pete Hines: I can tell you that right now there are no plans internally for us to do anything other than roleplaying

God forbid they defile more genres.

We would love to do another Terminator game at some point

Is there anything they wouldn't love to do? Gay porn? Anyway, even though Future Shock and SkyNET were very good games for their time, it's not the same Bethesda today. Also I think rights to Terminator is unlikely to go down the shithole like Fallout.

 

[JarlFrank]

HardCore didn't even have a point. Pete mentioned the dialog in JRPGs and then, in the very next phrase, mentioned that Oblivion also has lots of dialog. He never admitted that he thinks dialog is "teh sux0rz", in this particular interview anyway. You're just infusing his response with your own cynicism (however justified it may be). The rest of HardCore's post was just random bashing that had nothing to do with the interview in the news post.

Compare the Dialog Quality and also quantity of a Final Fantasy game to Oblivion's. Notice something? In Obvlivion Dialog is more like picking a topic and listening to an NPC monolouge with crappy voice acting. And the dialogue lines are fairly short. Most FF games have lots of Text which you have to read through.

So, what Pete meant: JRPG style Dialogue sucks, Oblivions is much much easier to understand lolz!

 

[denizsi]

Your character also has long+er replies to say back in FFs or JCRPGs in general to my knowledge.

 

[Elwro]

I wondered how much time it would take him to say "stuff"...

His brain automatically tells him to use "stuff" and "like" as often as possible.

Bethesda: bringing dumbing down to the hardware level.

 

[elander_]

It's nice that they are giving players a chance to skip the cure vampirism quest. That quest was very tedious and boring:
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Vampire_Cure

Otherwise there's nothing to get from the interview. It's just to get the usual blow job from the press.

 

[Texas Red]

I wondered how much time it would take him to say "stuff"...

His brain automatically tells him to use "stuff" and "like" as often as possible.

Bethesda: bringing dumbing down to the hardware level.

You dont understand. Pete is clever, you see. He doesnt use sophisticated speach because he knows that his target audience would be too confused to understand. Everything Pete and his gang do is for the sake of the poor ADHD children *tear*.

 

[Sovy Kurosei]

It's nice that they are giving players a chance to skip the cure vampirism quest. That quest was very tedious and boring:
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Vampire_Cure

Otherwise there's nothing to get from the interview. It's just to get the usual blow job from the press.

Looking at that webpage I found this:

A much easier vampire cure, the Font of Renewal, is made available if you buy the official plugin Deepscorn Hollow.

So if you can't figure out how to cure vampirism why not just make a plug-in that cures you without doing the "long and difficult" quest? :wink:

 

[Bradylama]

A more apt question would've been "in what ways is Oblivion different from GTA?"

 

[suibhne]

A more apt question would've been "in what ways is Oblivion different from GTA?"

For starters, GTA has much better characters and plot.

 

[aries202]

As for the Casey Hudson quote mentioned on page 1, I think this was really aimes at the
(previus) FPS players, where my guess is that
non-linear and do quest in any order is 'hype'
(sort of).

As for the Jrpg comparision to Oblivion, Pete Hines is correct. I once played one or two demos of Final Fantay 5 and 7, I think. The demos just consisted of cutscenes and an add sort of (tb) combat.

But maybe I just hor unlucky.

Oblivion, and the TES games are different from say the D&D inspired games as they always have given the player freemdom to do whatever he or she wants: If the player doesn't want to do the main quest, then the player simply doesn't do the main quest. You are put into the game's world, and then it is up to you how to decide how you want to play the game.

This is different from the D&D inspired games like BG1, NWN1, and such games, since these are centered around a story and in order to finish the game, you need to follow the story from the story's beginning to its end.

As for the Vampire quest, I have read posts on the TES forums which says that they really think that that quest, the 'to rid yourself of vampirism quest' was particular well designed. And that they felt they have partaken in a deep, tragic and moving
story.

As for the text issue, The Shivah and The blacwell Legacy sort of handles speech etc. the same way Oblivion does. You pick the tone of what you want to say, and then you both read and hear the response. In the Shivah, you have the choice of
choosing 'rabbinical response' or 'agressive response'. And then the game will pick what you're going to say. Much like in Oblivion. This works pretty well in The Shivah, but maybe not so well in Oblivion.

 

[suibhne]

Oblivion, and the TES games are different from say the D&D inspired games as they always have given the player freemdom to do whatever he or she wants: If the player doesn't want to do the main quest, then the player simply doesn't do the main quest. You are put into the game's world, and then it is up to you how to decide how you want to play the game.

Sure, as long as you don't want to face any consequences for your choices. :wink:

This is different from the D&D inspired games like BG1, NWN1, and such games, since these are centered around a story and in order to finish the game, you need to follow the story from the story's beginning to its end.

To be fair, in order to "finish" Oblivion or Morrowind you actually need to "follow the story from the story's beginning to its end"; they each have a central narrative. Neither game is anywhere close to being a sandbox - they're just games with big gameworlds and lots of sidequests. They don't tell stories any differently from, say, BG or NWN; they just tell a lot more (mostly smaller-scale) stories, but with no greater narrative sophistication (and possibly much less). As the saying goes, it's a difference of degree rather than kind.

In any case, I won't argue that the basic design approaches aren't somewhat different, but none of that has anything to do with whether the game is D&D-inspired. Sure, D&D is inherently narrative in that it's essentially based on in-person collaborative storytelling, but there's nothing that says D&D games have to behave like that.

 

[elander_]

A much easier vampire cure, the Font of Renewal, is made available if you buy the official plugin Deepscorn Hollow.

So if you can't figure out how to cure vampirism why not just make a plug-in that cures you without doing the "long and difficult" quest? :wink:

It isn't because of me but those pitiful console suckers can't install mods or use the TESCS.

 

[taxacaria]

No, no. I mean, Oblivion is such a big game, which sucks people in and has them play so much

It should be: "Oblivion is such a big game, which sucks."

Todd agrees. (in an Interview at Gamasutra about Fallout)

...trying to make a better game than our last.

>>interview<<

Toddy knows that Oblivion sucks, he prefers Ultima.

 

[cutterjohn]

There was dialog in Oblivious?! WTF?! I missed it!

Japanese style RPG are usually on rails, esp wrt to quests. However there are usually open worlds that you can roam, even if you can do little other than fight(level up grinding prep) or get your party's ass handed to you as a not-so-subtle indication that your party shouldn't be where it is.

BTW: Notice that he implies that Oblivious has a play time of 500h now? WTF, do Bethesda people just go around adding zeroes to the previous playtime every interview. Not to mention I got no where near 500h out of Oblivious and now feel cheated that I am not so stupid that it took me 500h to figure out what a POS RPG it was.

I was surprised that the Toddles could handle Ultima. I bet that he had to use walkthroughs, cheat books, and plain outright cheats.

 

[Section8]

Meh. I scanned, and discovered I didn't really want to know the answer to any of those questions. I have to say though, that if it were an audio Q&A session, there would probably be a very troubled tone in Pete's voice as he says "I don’t know that we could have done anything else to make the game more accessible to folks."

It's one of those moments where you suddenly realise just what sort of demographic you've effectively marketed to, and think - "dear god, what have we started? And where do we go from here?"

Of course, the panic only last for a few seconds until the answer swiftly manifests itself on the tip of your tongue. Dungeon Siege.

 

[sabishii]

There was dialog in Oblivious?! WTF?! I missed it!

Japanese style RPG are usually on rails, esp wrt to quests. However there are usually open worlds that you can roam, even if you can do little other than fight(level up grinding prep) or get your party's ass handed to you as a not-so-subtle indication that your party shouldn't be where it is.

BTW: Notice that he implies that Oblivious has a play time of 500h now? WTF, do Bethesda people just go around adding zeroes to the previous playtime every interview. Not to mention I got no where near 500h out of Oblivious and now feel cheated that I am not so stupid that it took me 500h to figure out what a POS RPG it was.

I was surprised that the Toddles could handle Ultima. I bet that he had to use walkthroughs, cheat books, and plain outright cheats.

That's because you're not reading the books. Thus you're not playing through the whole game and missing out on HUNDREDS of hours.





That's what Summer told me at least.

 

[Elhoim]

Yeah, books that were mostly writen for Daggerfall. They even censored some of them.

BTW, I noticed your sarcasm

 

[sabishii]

Yeah, books that were mostly writen for Daggerfall. They even censored some of them.

BTW, I noticed your sarcasm

Damnit, if only I knew that when I was trolling that day, a few months back. Would've shut her up.

Maybe not.

Edit: You know what would have been fun, though? If there were unique, ancient books hidden in dungeons that required some gameplay to find (as opposed to just going into the local library). These books could perhaps contain lore that's not found above-ground, or perhaps even could introduce more gameplay by having clues to some treasure hidden somewhere else. Of course, I guess this is MUCH too complicated for Oblivion, but it sounds like AoD might do something like this. Just imagine, instead of the only reason to go into dungeons being to gain experience, find magic weapons, and finish quests, there could be other motivations such as finding long-forgotten knowledge that you could use for your own disposal in the outside world. I'm pretty sure Indiana Jones didn't delve into dungeons to kill monsters and get magic swords.

 

[HardCode]

HardCore didn't even have a point. Pete mentioned the dialog in JRPGs and then, in the very next phrase, mentioned that Oblivion also has lots of dialog. He never admitted that he thinks dialog is "teh sux0rz", in this particular interview anyway.

He exactly did just that - admitted that dialog is something negative, and then back-pedaled a little with "Oh, there is dialog in Oblivion, too! and stuff!". That is exactly the point I made. He openly referenced dialog as a negative, until the realized that the foot went into the mouth and made a weak back-pedal. You lose. Game over. r00fles.

 

[dagorkan]

So... when's that NWN2 review coming?

 

[zioburosky13]

What's your opinion of Japanese RPGs? What do you think are the main differences between them and your own games? And do you think Elder Scrolls games in the future would use anything other than a firstperson view?
I’ll answer the last one first. No, we would always include a firstperson view in The Elder Scolls. I think the main difference for us – it’s not just Japanese RPGs, although certainly more with those than any others – is how open-ended we are.

Open-ended my ass. Nothing but plagued with repeated quest and encounter which don't have much relationship with the main quest.

mostly because I haven’t really enjoyed them. They have lots of cutscenes (at least the ones I’ve played)

Strictly speaking, we all know Jrpg is nothig but cartoonish interactive movie.

lots of dialogue – and obviously we have lots of dialogue as well (Obviosly - VD) – and they’re very linear and very scripted.

Oh, so a dialogue with more than 2 choices is consider 'lotsa dialogue'? :shock:

whereas in ours it’s very much a player-driven thing – you decide what your story’s going to be.

Bullshit. TES has fixed ending.