Pete Hines on Fallout 3 - again, again and again
Pete Hines on Fallout 3 - again, again and again
Interview - posted by Monolith on Mon 18 August 2008, 23:13:22
Tags: Bethesda Softworks; Fallout 3Eurogamer has put up another interview with Bethesda's loud-mouth Pete Hines.
Eurogamer: Fallout 3's ravaged setting is hardly a departure for videogames. Is it a challenge to put a fresh spin on post-apocalyptic wastelands?
Pete Hines: It's a challenge in the sense that it has been done. We had to do something that was not only cool and good, but it had to be true to Fallout. If it was just Washington DC as it was two years ago and we were just blowing that up, that's actually substantially easier: You just look at everything and go, "Okay, blow all that up and then we're done." But this is a different world from the one we know, with a different timeline.
You have to ask, "What would have been in the Fallout universe? What would have existed before 1950, where this universe splits off from our own and goes in this different direction?" So, creatively, you are spreading your wings a little bit and asking what DC would have looked like with the future that these people had envisioned rather than the one that we know. What that does is make it both a little bit familiar and a bit quirky. A gas station looks like a big rocket, for example: you can do stuff that makes things both familiar and, "What the hell is that?" at the same time.So here I am, creatively guessing that where Washington DC - and the Pentagon in particular - is today, there would be a hole the size of the Grand Canyon - plus the radioactivity.
He's also talking about how choices have to be recognizable as good or evil and tells us about how, now hold your breath, the dialogue system is old school:
Eurogamer: You've gone for a very traditional dialogue system. Did you consider trying something new?
Pete Hines: It's old school. After a certain point, when you're taking on a project of this magnitude, you've got to pick your battles, and you can't pick them all because you just end up trying to be everything and not being anything. Dialogue wasn't a battle we wanted to pick. It is a bit old-school, but it works well for what we're trying to do, and there were other things that were more important for us to spend time and energy on, like trying to incorporate VATS into a real world combat system and still incorporate the stats and not unbalance the game. That's a big undertaking, and spending time from a development standpoint on the actual dialogue and the camera angle it's being presented on - we just don't have unlimited monkeys and typewriters.
Old school, like, with words and stuff. But he's right, not even Bethesda can have unlimited monkeys on typewriters - the one that's vice president of PR is enough though.
Eurogamer: Fallout 3's ravaged setting is hardly a departure for videogames. Is it a challenge to put a fresh spin on post-apocalyptic wastelands?
Pete Hines: It's a challenge in the sense that it has been done. We had to do something that was not only cool and good, but it had to be true to Fallout. If it was just Washington DC as it was two years ago and we were just blowing that up, that's actually substantially easier: You just look at everything and go, "Okay, blow all that up and then we're done." But this is a different world from the one we know, with a different timeline.
You have to ask, "What would have been in the Fallout universe? What would have existed before 1950, where this universe splits off from our own and goes in this different direction?" So, creatively, you are spreading your wings a little bit and asking what DC would have looked like with the future that these people had envisioned rather than the one that we know. What that does is make it both a little bit familiar and a bit quirky. A gas station looks like a big rocket, for example: you can do stuff that makes things both familiar and, "What the hell is that?" at the same time.
He's also talking about how choices have to be recognizable as good or evil and tells us about how, now hold your breath, the dialogue system is old school:
Eurogamer: You've gone for a very traditional dialogue system. Did you consider trying something new?
Pete Hines: It's old school. After a certain point, when you're taking on a project of this magnitude, you've got to pick your battles, and you can't pick them all because you just end up trying to be everything and not being anything. Dialogue wasn't a battle we wanted to pick. It is a bit old-school, but it works well for what we're trying to do, and there were other things that were more important for us to spend time and energy on, like trying to incorporate VATS into a real world combat system and still incorporate the stats and not unbalance the game. That's a big undertaking, and spending time from a development standpoint on the actual dialogue and the camera angle it's being presented on - we just don't have unlimited monkeys and typewriters.
There are 80 comments on Pete Hines on Fallout 3 - again, again and again
