Bethesda’s Pete Hines Fallout 4 interview

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How can anyone even claim they are going for being closer to the first Game when they not only have removed the skill system, but their marketing strategy is "Let's blow shit up!" and claiming that what makes Fallout special is shooting things to 50's music (something that wasn't even there until FO3 btw). Fuck Bethesda. Seriously.
 
TorontRayne said:
The good thing is we have even more ammo to spew out at the legion of fanatics that will eat the shit up. That dialog comment pretty much drove the nail in the coffin for the Fallout series.

http://kotaku.com/fallout-3-isnt-really-an-rpg-1725444327

Fallout is not a RPG. Hahaha.
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Well, Fallout 3 is not an RPG since Bethesda doesn't make RPGs. More or less the article is correct. It's an "immersive sim" or a "power fantasy theme park" but it's not an RPG.
 
I had to skim through parts of it. I felt my blood pressure reach critical levels.
 
Seriously "Brilliant world design", are they forgetting the endless grind of going through repetitive metro tunnels? WHat about the Vampires in the sewers? The tower of rich people that are rich for no reason? The endless abandoned intact buildings that people ignore in favor of shanty towns around nukes? Then they say New Vegas has a less living world while they ignore that New Vegas went through the trouble of stablishing a set of consistent rules in the form of trading routes, farms, ranger outposts and such while FO3 didn't even bother having more than a single cow in one of it's main settlements (one that, bears repeating is built around a bomb.... in world that got devastated by bombs....).
"Breathing living world" is the most overused and completely devoid of meaning sentence in gaming press.

Whatever, people in the comment section making defense statements by saying that Fallout was never about cohesion because they have only played 3..... fuck gamers, seriously.
 
TorontRayne said:
I had to skim through parts of it. I felt my blood pressure reach critical levels.
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I think at least the conclusion that New Vegas and Fallout 3 appeal to fundamentally different groups of people is spot on. While I disagree that the appeal of Fallout 3 is its "brilliantly designed world" (since I wouldn't use that sort of phrase to describe a game whose world doesn't actually make sense), pretty much those who prefer New Vegas are the people who actually like roleplaying games.

Fallout 3 appeals to people who want a sandbox to play in that caters to their every whim and makes them feel really powerful.
New Vegas appeals to people with an interest in roleplaying, with a world and narrative that follows consistent internal logic.

People who love the former don't necessarily care about the latter and vice versa. I have nothing personally against the Assassin's Creed/Far Cry/GTA set, and Fallout 3 is a game for them, I just dislike those games so Fallout 3 isn't a game for me.
 
Completely unpredictable response from NMA

I love how the Fallout audience is looked at as a bunch of mutated retards now
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Gee, I wonder why

(Reads address bar)

double-u double-u double-u dot N, M, A

.........ah.
 
Well I guess we do get a bunch of FO3 fanboys in here registering to throw a temper tantrum, so we still have those mutated retards in here, guess it's our fault for letting them be visible.
 
Walpknut said:
TorontRayne said:
Maybe it's an age thing. I don't know. Makes me feel old.
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I am pretty sure I am younger than whoever wrote this article, so that can't be it.
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I guess. It seems to me the style of game we want isn't really being made as much. We have to depend on Kickstarter to even get a decent RPG made. I can't blame people for liking what they like, but I don't have to like it. :)
 
I think it has more to do with this sudden rise in tryhardness in the gaming press, an old Movie Critic says games can't ever be art, a bunch of people got really upset and instead of showing the medium can be art they instead just entered Ball licking mode so they lavish everything with exageratted praise. It's gotten so bad that the word "Fun" is almost taboo to use when praising something. Yet none of them really changed their predisposition towards analyzing anything, they are still the kid who threw the horns and said "EPIX" when running hookers over in GTA but now they have dressed it up with pretensions of eloquence and depth.
 
"Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas appeal to very different crowds for precisely this reason. If you’re into the immersion, you’re probably going to enjoy Fallout 3’s brilliantly-designed world. If you’re an RPG fan, New Vegas is probably your thing."

I wish they would find a new buzzword.

:|
 
TorontRayne said:
"Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas appeal to very different crowds for precisely this reason. If you’re into the immersion, you’re probably going to enjoy Fallout 3’s brilliantly-designed world. If you’re an RPG fan, New Vegas is probably your thing."

I wish they would find a new buzzword.

:|
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Yeah, "immersion" isn't the key issue here. Immersion, being defined as "losing yourself in the game" is something that happens in either game for different reasons.

Fallout 3 is "immersive" because it doesn't ask you to think. You see a house over there, you can go see what's in it. You see a cave, you can go in it. Everything in the world is available for you to poke at without really asking anything from the player. This form of immersion is basically abnegation writ large; you can tune out and play this game so the world of the game subsumes you.

Fallout: New Vegas is "immersive" because it demands that you think, and it rewards you for doing so. If you run into some Cazadors you can look around and find a nest. If you are asked to do something, there's lots of different ways to do it. If you want to know why things are the way they are, there's generally a story told by the people or in the environment. This is immersion accomplished through internal consistency; the place follows rules, the rules are internally consistent so they make a certain kind of sense, so it feels real so you can commit to it.

I would say Fallout 3 is passively immersive while New Vegas is actively immersive. The former doesn't punish you for not thinking or observing, the latter rewards you for doing exactly that.
 
TorontRayne said:
"Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas appeal to very different crowds for precisely this reason. If you’re into the immersion, you’re probably going to enjoy Fallout 3’s brilliantly-designed world. If you’re an RPG fan, New Vegas is probably your thing."

I wish they would find a new buzzword.

:|
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Yeah, "immersion" isn't the key issue here. Immersion, being defined as "losing yourself in the game" is something that happens in either game for different reasons.

Fallout 3 is "immersive" because it doesn't ask you to think. You see a house over there, you can go see what's in it. You see a cave, you can go in it. Everything in the world is available for you to poke at without really asking anything from the player. This form of immersion is basically abnegation writ large; you can tune out and play this game so the world of the game subsumes you.

Fallout: New Vegas is "immersive" because it demands that you think, and it rewards you for doing so. If you run into some Cazadors you can look around and find a nest. If you are asked to do something, there's lots of different ways to do it. If you want to know why things are the way they are, there's generally a story told by the people or in the environment. This is immersion accomplished through internal consistency; the place follows rules, the rules are internally consistent so they make a certain kind of sense, so it feels real so you can commit to it. This is a game so thoroughly written and considered that when House tells you how many bombs he was unable to stop, you can go and find each crater to verify his count.

I would say Fallout 3 is passively immersive while New Vegas is actively immersive. The former doesn't punish you for not thinking or observing, the latter rewards you for doing exactly that.
 
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I really hate that word, "Immersion", if we are to actually take it for what it really means, anyone who actually gets "Immersed" in game should probably be on medication and wear a helmet daily.
A better word would be Invested or Compelled. But I guess those are not "EPIC" enough to sell games.
 
Walpknut said:
I really hate that word, "Immersion", if we are to actually take it for what it really means, anyone who actually gets "Immersed" in game should probably be on medication and wear a helmet daily.
A better word would be Invested or Compelled. But I guess those are not "EPIC" enough to sell games.
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It's also a bad word to apply to a game since it's a massively subjective property. One person can be "immersed/invested/compelled" in/by a game and another person might find that it's the most boring thing they've ever encountered and both people would be absolutely correct. It's not a property of games, it's a property of specific people's experiences with games. At this point you might as well just go with "fun" or "interesting." Even if the game does enrapture you for weeks at a time, there's a lot of different ways a game can do that; so talk about why it's compelling, not that it's compelling.

I'm not sure if anybody bases their purchasing decisions on promises of immersion, so it's of questionable value as a marketing buzzword as is.
 
I have to agree to the observation that all of these questions Pete was asked were softball questions. Makes me wish a site like TechRaptor, GatherYourParty (wrote a few articles for them before), or the like would interview him and have some hard-hitting questions at the ready.

Stuff about why they're emphasizing the shooting so much over everything else, even though this series is an RPG series more than a shooter.

About why they decided to marry Skills into Perks, a surefire way to kneecap character builds, as well as put excess stress on an existing system versus relieve it of some.

About why, if they are, as they claim, very adamant about being DRM-free, why they are so married to Steam as a distribution platform, still refuse to give GOG the rights to sell the original Fallout games again, much less any of their library going back to Morrowind.

I'm sure there's a lot more this site has had stewing for Bethesda.
 
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