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Interview RPG Codex Retrospective Interview: Leonard Boyarsky on Fallout, Interplay and Troika
- Thread starter Crooked Bee
- Start date
Menckenstein
Lunacy of Caen: Todd Reaver
"As I said before."
Great interview!
I will cry.
Pretty depressing, indeed. On the other hand, we can't blame him for his reluctance to resurrect Troika after all he's gone through... there's just too much risk involved.
Anyway, that was an excellent read, the interview feels incomplete without a question like "How hard would you like to punch Todd in the face?", though.
hiver
Guest
Well yes, but still... some happy middle ground between being rabidly berserk and all proper and dandy could be achieved?^ I somehow prefer more impersonal touch in interviews. Gives them more 'professional' vibe as I see it - which ceratinly was the case here.Very informative and up to the point. Great article.
Another day saved by Bee.
I mean, ok ... it is blizzard after all and Bee probably sent more questions than these we see answered but...
Why not just send a slew of crazy questions as addition to regular ones, textured with some humor to it all and then just let devs answer in any way they want?
Would be a bit more entertaining for them too...i think.
What do you mean by 'crazy questions', exactly? You have to consider the (fact?) that these high profile (as in Blizzard) interviews have to pass through the eyes of the PR Gestapo Division before it reaches the actual dev and probably after he's done as well.
Johannes
Arcane
Just because it's not, doesn't save that bit from having shitty writing and inadequate dialogue options quite worthy of ridiculing a bit. What's the point of being so apologetic, considering you provided no insight that isn't blatantly obvious?
Best stick with art and world building, Lenny.
Yep, because this is the only dialogue you are presented during this quest, right?
Of course he was going to replay something like that, the guys is working at Blizzard, what should he have said, "yeah, i'll just finish shitty Diablo 3 and go back to making real RPGs"?Pretty depressing, indeed. On the other hand, we can't blame him for his reluctance to resurrect Troika after all he's gone through... there's just too much risk involved.Great interview!
I will cry.
Anyway, that was an excellent read, the interview feels incomplete without a question like "How hard would you like to punch Todd in the face?", though.
And we understand that he doesn;t want to be a CEO anymore, just a designer. So if Tim Cain and Jason forms a crowd-funded company and hire him....
FeelTheRads
Arcane
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2008
- Messages
- 13,716
Somehow missed this post. No, it's not him. It's the guy who did the IWD portraits.
http://www.justinsweet.com/GALLERY/index.html
Go to illustrations and you'll see it.
- Joined
- May 29, 2010
- Messages
- 36,873
I wouldn't consider any part of it well-written and the quest itself is meh, just like the rest of the Boneyard. At least he had the courtesy to give you the option to skip out on the big battle at the end so you don't have to go through the tedium of all those persons taking their turns one by one to get its conclusion. I'll give him props for allowing me to skip bad content. A button to skip combat, what a concept.
I criticize everything, even things I like.
hiver
Guest
KevinV12000
Arcane
What I found most interesting in this interview is yet more confirmation that not all souls are cut out for business. The longer I was in the private practice of law, the more and more apparent it became to me that running a business, especially the financial aspects of it, is not a highly distributed talent and, indeed, most people find it downright distasteful. And the people that do have the talent for it really don't understand those who do not. The result is that a lot of folks take the plunge only to find out that they simply aren't interested, even when it's theirs and the source of support. It's just speculation here, but it appears to me that if one of the three of the Troika had had some business inclinations, they probably would have found a way to continue. It's a shame, because we all really lost out when Troika went down. But I totally get not wanting to be a CEO and being happy as a worker in a large company.
Troika died for our sins.I'm still angry that Troika shut down.Whyyyyyyyy?!
Excidium
P. banal
The fact that unnoficial patches are a must to play any of their games might be a hint.:D I'm still angry that Troika shut down.
Kz3r0
Arcane
- Joined
- May 28, 2008
- Messages
- 27,026
I hate you for saying this but you are right.The fact that unnoficial patches are a must to play any of their games might be a hint.:D I'm still angry that Troika shut down.
hiver
Guest
Its not a problem of not being capable of managing the business side. The problem was doing two things at once. Both very demanding, specific and totally different, maybe even opposite.
What they needed was someone extra but very good at business and PR side to take over that load.
Someone who is not only very good at it but also really understands what they are about so that he can work from his side in specific ways to enable and strengthen their specific kind of approach to creation and design of games.
Not just some yuppie who would meddle in everything and produce constant vomits about first person, action and whatnot.
There weren't many like that in those days, in the industry.
What they needed was someone extra but very good at business and PR side to take over that load.
Someone who is not only very good at it but also really understands what they are about so that he can work from his side in specific ways to enable and strengthen their specific kind of approach to creation and design of games.
Not just some yuppie who would meddle in everything and produce constant vomits about first person, action and whatnot.
There weren't many like that in those days, in the industry.
Thats a hint only to how badly their publishers treated them. Publishers are directly guilty for those patches... and even worse, GUILTY for preventing them to even make patches. Which then they did on their own time, for free.The fact that unnoficial patches are a must to play any of their games might be a hint.:D I'm still angry that Troika shut down.
Excidium
P. banal
What you said of Obsidian being Troika 2.0 is also p. accurate. If it wasn't for all the slam dunking, Obsidian would have suffered the same fate as Troika many years ago.
But now it's different, we have the
villain of the story
Arcane
Obsidian's Kickstarter game will be a shitty RTwP game with decent to good writing, good quests but everything else shit. They won't even do TB. I know they have TinCan onboard now but let's get one thing clear:
TinCan was involved with the following five games: Fallout, Fallout 2, Arcanum, TOEE, Bloodlines. Fallout and Fallout 2 had acceptable casual TB combat. They had many exploits and crowds was a drag but it was servicable and enjoyable. Now, Arcanum had shit combat, Bloodlines had shit combat and TOEE was only a solid and faithful DnD impelementation; nothing original in there. So, to score TinCan's talent on writing combat systems, it's like +1, +1, -1, -1, +0 = 0
It will be interesting to see how combat in that Kickstarter game will turn out.
TinCan was involved with the following five games: Fallout, Fallout 2, Arcanum, TOEE, Bloodlines. Fallout and Fallout 2 had acceptable casual TB combat. They had many exploits and crowds was a drag but it was servicable and enjoyable. Now, Arcanum had shit combat, Bloodlines had shit combat and TOEE was only a solid and faithful DnD impelementation; nothing original in there. So, to score TinCan's talent on writing combat systems, it's like +1, +1, -1, -1, +0 = 0
It will be interesting to see how combat in that Kickstarter game will turn out.
Little harsh on Timmy there aren't you?
hiver
Guest
Nah, he is just retard in internets.
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