Joel Burgess Fallout 3 Special

 

Joel Burgess was a talented musician on the band Roller Chair Derby and a developer at Majesco, working on games like Aeon Flux and BloodrayneII when he joined BethSoft and at one point got the gig of being Fallout 3 Lead Level Designer.

 

He’s very active participating in the Fallout 3 Forum in the last days, so here are some quotes by him, first in a clumsy style replying to Avu’s assertion of “I want to click things and I want a text box that describes what I am clicking. Call me old fashioned but that is the kind of immersion I need to enjoy fallout.“:

That’s kind of ironic, if you think about it.

Anyway, this thread is silly - you all know we can’t divulge any details yet, directly or otherwise. Unfortunately, that hampers most of the posts we’d otherwise be making on the boards. Sorry to dissapoint you, but we won’t be saying anything yet about jumping, combat, or even the deathclaw hair-braiding minigame.

Oops.[...]

If we take as an assumption that the gold standard of ‘immersion’ is along the lines of being jacked into the Matrix, then I’d say that text boxes rank pretty far down on that scale. Of course, so does interacting with a world through a keyboard, so I won’t split hairs. I’m picking on you for a poor choice of words, though. Sorry about that. What you really mean, I think, is detail, and I understand your point. Fallout had tons of detail, and a good amount of it was conveyed simply through text boxes.

I wouldn’t try too hard to read into my posts, by the way. You’re likely to strain something. I can assure you that I’ve not said too much. Sorry I can’t tell you guys anything yet. No, I can’t even say when I can say the things that I cannot currently say.

This proves that they are running out of things to say while not really saying anything

The next day he wrote more interesting posts, like this:

My personal opinion - and this applies to game development in general, not specifically Fallout or us here at Bethesda - is that everyone involved on a project has a responsibility to be knowledgable and passionate about the setting and story. If may not be *as* relevant to a set artist that this is the lair of Bobcat Nickel, grizzled raider captain with a penchant for collecting Nuka Cola bottles, but if she knows that, it’s going to reflect in her work, at least at some level.

So while I don’t think everyone really needs every qualification on the pole, but nobody’s walking into this blind, either.

Well said, later he replied to a small questionnaire by Spacemankungfu:

I can’t let Grant be one iota cooler than me, so here goes.

1) what’s your job at Bethesda?
Lead level designer

2) what previous projects have you worked on at Bethesda and elsewhere?
I came on towards the end of Oblivion. Most of the dungeons had been built by then, but us noble few were able to re-vamp some to be more interesting. I also worked on some DLC, mostly Mehrunes’ Razor, which I did with another LD, Jeff Browne. Shivering Isles was next, of course, and now we’re on Fallout. We’ve got a lot of big ideas for the game, I can’t wait for you guys to get a hold of it.

3) what have you drawn on for inspiration in developing Fallout 3? Books, movies, music, etc would be fine, if you don’t want to name any games.
Talk about enjoyable research. Let’s see… Books; The Road, the Postman, the Wasteland comics, The Martian Chronicles, Tank Girl, heh. Film; Testament, The Day After (not tomorrow…), A boy and His Dog - which is really the closest-to-template Fallout film I’ve seen - the Mad Maxes, some campy 50’s flicks, Six String Samurai, Damnation Alley, Soylent Green, Omega Man (gotta love Heston), and of course the games - Arcanum, Bloodlines, Planescape, Fallout 1&2 - obviously all of those, but so many other games that we can be inspired by or learn from - from Zork to Facade to STALKER.

Yeah, and I feel cheesy admitting it, but Apocalyptica really helps me get in the mood to work on Fallout, as well as Ben Hogue’s stuff. Hendrix, too, though that’s really got nothing to do with Fallout!

Good references Joel, good luck.