Kieron Gillen interviews Pete Hines for Eurogamer:
Eurogamer: What I’ve never quite understood about Fallout 3 is why would Bethesda buy the licence? Arguably “Bethesda does post-apocalyptic game” is a bigger story than “Bethesda makes Fallout 3”. Fallout is a relic to modern gamers. If you’d made your own world, you’d have sidestepped all the stress of dealing with over-protective fans.
Pete Hines: It’s like, if George Lucas died tomorrow – God willing, he doesn’t – and you’re a film director. And you’ve grown up making big epic films – maybe you’re Peter Jackson. And he finishes whatever his big next film is. And someone asks him, “what do you want to do next?” And he says, “I always wanted to make a big space movie. A big epic movie full of action.” And they ask, “do you want to do generic space movie that you make up yourself, or do you want to do Star Wars.” And he says, “I could do whatever, but I grew up as a kid and Star Wars made me want to get into making movies. It had such a profound impact on me, I would love to pick up this thing I loved and cared so much about and make the next one. And I’m not the guy who did the originals, but it means so much to me, and would mean much more to me to work in this world. It would be easier, perhaps less controversial and less pressure to do my own, but I’d rather do this thing that someone else did so much more.”
That’s the best analogy I can use. We could have made anything and people would have been interested in it, probably, but Fallout meant a ton to us, and we love the tone and flavour of that world, and how meaningful it was for its time, how different it was from other stuff that was out there. We said, “we could do anything, but what we’d really love to do is Fallout”. Use that character system and that world that’s so unique from anything else that we might come up with. We’d rather do that than come up with our own thing. Bring that to life – and bring it not to just people who played the it before, but people who’ve never got to play or experience it. There’s this great game and world which somebody came up that we really think you’ll want to play.
Eurogamer: You’re driven by love. Do you think that’s something the very hardcore Fallout fans miss?
Pete Hines: I don’t know whether they miss it or not – it may be that they don’t care and think, “that’s all well and good, but you’re not the ones we wanted to make this”. I don’t pretend to know exactly what their motivations and thought processes are. Those guys are very enthusiastic – we’re talking about the very hardest of the hardcore Fallout fan. They’re very passionate about this thing and protective about it. And that’s okay. It’s something they’ve clearly got a lot of attachment too. At the same time, we are making the very best game that we can. It’s not for any one group of folk – we’re making the best game we know how for a lot of people who’ll come to play and enjoy it.
Before I slap Kieron with a large trout, because of this last question, let me advise you guys and girls to read this interview, there’s a lot more to be read there. Even the mandatory (for Gillen) Ken Levine reference is interesting. Nothing new about the game itself though.
Update: this interview sparkled a great discussion on Rock,Paper,Shotgun, also worth a read.
Fallout 3: A Post Nuclear Blog 
Wasn’t the official story that after… Morrowind I think it was, Bethesda devs were asked by someone (Zenimax?) what they would like to work on, and they sort of casually talked about how they would like Fallout (and maybe there were a few other games mentioned) and then whoever was responsible went out and bought it? Somehow I had gotten the impression that it was a bit unexpected for them.
Or am I mixing things up (again :P)?
so when are we sending Pete a valentine’s
I am a game nazi, I’ll admit it, but first and foremost judge games on game mechanics, details in design,depth in design and fun.
I also like to see games evolving gameplay mechanics and level layout designs, for series/games like DOOM 3,quake 4,dues ex 2 and Bioshock they are taking the core design elements BACKWARDS and for what to make a profit alil faster instead of another 20 months to get it done right?
One dose not turn a adventure shooter with a bunch of targets(DOOM) in a corridor in the dark shooter with less targets…. Gdamn design elements that destroy the flow of a game.
I’ll pour over fallout like I poured over Bioshock and dismantle the core element flaws, BS has a nice concept anda ok story if youcan put off enough disbelief but the level design,weapon design, AI design(if there was any used at all) balancing and whole plasmid system is lacking.
Interaction with the environment is meek and there are all kinds of holes in the immersion, invisible walls and water not always handling electricity right break the flow of the game, casuals wont give a damn, but casuals will buy anything thus why hollywood has record profits.
BTW my inter PC nazi is screaming about reptile and “Aquarin”(horse and fish) not being represented in the don’t eat me picture.
And you have 2 birds in it… it must be true Bird brains run peta…
And yes,I’ll eat just about any meat but dog or cat, and if you want to get into semantics plants have a nervous system and feel pain.
(warning salty sarcasms mode)
Oy we are all animals no matter how evolved or not we are, the chain of life demands life feed life, so you don’t want to make a impact on the world,go shoot yourself and save us all the trouble…
ah that felt so goood….. *skips away*la la la la la la la
(discliamer: sorry for my strange rambling humor, I drool therefor I am)
I actually don’t eat fish because I worry more about the damage to the ocean’s ecosystem than those genetic malbreds we raise suffering. Vegetarianism isn’t for me, I enjoy ostrich stake too much
But poor fishies.
As for BD, zippy, I agree. I tried dismantling it in my review for GameBanshee though I probably did less well a job at it than forum users at QT3, but I was still one of the few reviewers to even recognize BS’ glaring flaws. I love the game, because of its surface, its great graphics, its fantastic setting, but c’mon guys, there’s more to games than just veneer.
As for BD = As for BioShock
ftw
It’s interesting to see how the atmosphere had changed on TTLG since December 2006. There was a lot of excitement then, it seemed that virtually everyone was really looking forward to it. There’s plenty of criticism now, even though there are some who still love it.
There’s a few interesting ongoing debates, worth checking out. Although by now every aspect has been thoroughly analyzed and beaten to death.
Brother None
realistically and statistically it dose not matter if you eat the fish or not, either someone eats them in the store or they go to waste, they will always be ship out to the store until 80% of the population dosen’t eat it.
Now theres a better reason to dislike seafood, location of the catch and the damage humans are putting on that areas environment, as good as fish oils and sea food is for you with the cross globalization of things you just cannot track where some things come from, be more worried over the quality of the fish and the containments there of than the damage humans are doing removing it from the waters.
Its like media pirating on an indavendaul basis, people that tend to pirate are not consumers they are ever going to have in any kind of stable way,and the block buster if its not a hit its fail mentality of the game industry will ensure even if a title gets a extra 50K it wont be enough to get it fully patched or discarded and forgotten.
Media company’s are just raping the sheep and scaring them to only buy from them, the CP laws have been distorted for their greed, IMO CP law to be changed so that after a couple years indavendaul in a private non profit setting can trade and store data, let the corporations fight over the business/profit aspect of it because they will always have the majority of sheeple to sell their wool to……..
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rant mode is over 9000!
“Media company’s are just raping the sheep and scaring them to only buy from them”
only buy new from them is what I meant lul ><
uhg Ineed coffee anda brain befor I psot more…mmmm bbrrwaaiinnsssss *shuffles off*
Gimli
any clues to the change of format for BS(besides typical new game dev process of make it casual and get it done quick), for me it was always billed as a FPS RPG not some casual drool fest…. if they called it a casual shooter from the start and didn’t do a sloppy PC port I would not feel my 30$ was raped from out of my hands…
Well somewhere down the line they said that it would be FPS 2.0. Now, TTLGers claim (I’m not registered, so I can’t do a quick search) that even after this was said, Levine came and told them that it was only PR and it was still a spiritual successor to System Shock 2.
spiritual successor is PR spin, as long as it has 6 out of 10 things something can be a spiritual successor to anything.
is a shame to see them cash in so be in I will avoid the brand hell 2K sucks so I’ll remove that pub from my over 14$ list.