Bethesda’s Pete Hines Fallout 4 interview

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Because we get Mininukes, and Ghouls, and Super Mutants, and Vaults, and Dogmeat, and 50's Music, and 'sploding heads, and Teddy Bear gun. That's Fallout, right?
 
CRBASF23 said:
Has anyone seen this reddit post about the pattern in Fallout 4's dialog wheel?: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/3a7w5h/i_noticed_a_pattern_with_the_fallout_4_dialogue/
It seems like all four options match the four colored buttons in the xbox controller:

  • A is green (good)
  • B is red (bad)
  • X is blue (neutral)
  • Y is yellow (question)
And anyone expressing their option against this got downvoted, this is just insane.
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So, apparently, wanting to tear the licence to pieces has became a requirement to be considered as fan of the franchise.
Damn, i was so sure to be a fan myself...
 
I think press reviewers in general have been better with analyzing and reviewing story and writing in the past year, which I mainly attribute to the reaction to the popularized notion of "IGN-type ignorance." For reviewing Fallout 4, my criteria are of course that a reviewer has at least thoroughly played each of 1, 2, 3, and New Vegas.

One of the worst mistakes for reviewing an RPG is saying the open world compensates for poor story or RPG design. If 4 suffers from that and still gets GOTY... no hope
 
Practicat said:
I think press reviewers in general have been better with analyzing and reviewing story and writing in the past year, which I mainly attribute to the reaction to the popularized notion of "IGN-type ignorance." For reviewing Fallout 4, my criteria are of course that a reviewer has at least thoroughly played each of 1, 2, 3, and New Vegas.

One of the worst mistakes for reviewing an RPG is saying the open world compensates for poor story or RPG design. If 4 suffers from that and still gets GOTY... no hope
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Unfortunate that last is usually the case, "But it offers so much" the journalist says. Yes, but quantity does not equal quality.
As some people in the field of writing or even design sometimes have said to me 'less is sometimes more'. Best to make a handful of very good ideas, concepts, creations, and so on, than a shit load of them that feel bland, uninteresting, half finished, and so on.
Instead of thirty six places, make eighteen (or less) very interesting and varied places.
Instead of dozens of 'fed ex' quests, make a handful of very good and involving ones.

It is sort of the 'overwhelming' factor at place here rather than content complex, throw as much toys at people as possible.
 
All good things must come to an end. I sometimes wish that Fallout had just been allowed to die. So many things I love have been ruined because assholes who love money don't know or care when to quit.

I have no high hopes for reviewers. Aside from the fact that most of them will be bribed by Bethesda, almost all of them will be swept in by the hype and will unthinkingly love it. They did it with Skyrim, they'll do it here.
 
The Dutch Ghost said:
Practicat said:
I think press reviewers in general have been better with analyzing and reviewing story and writing in the past year, which I mainly attribute to the reaction to the popularized notion of "IGN-type ignorance." For reviewing Fallout 4, my criteria are of course that a reviewer has at least thoroughly played each of 1, 2, 3, and New Vegas.

One of the worst mistakes for reviewing an RPG is saying the open world compensates for poor story or RPG design. If 4 suffers from that and still gets GOTY... no hope
Click to expand...

Unfortunate that last is usually the case, "But it offers so much" the journalist says. Yes, but quantity does not equal quality.
As some people in the field of writing or even design sometimes have said to me 'less is sometimes more'. Best to make a handful of very good ideas, concepts, creations, and so on, than a shit load of them that feel bland, uninteresting, half finished, and so on.
Instead of thirty six places, make eighteen (or less) very interesting and varied places.
Instead of dozens of 'fed ex' quests, make a handful of very good and involving ones.

It is sort of the 'overwhelming' factor at place here rather than content complex, throw as much toys at people as possible.
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It's even worse than that. If it would be about quests and locations, that would be at least a start.

People already rejoice a lot over the fact that you can pick up forks in Bethesda games and that you can collect useless junk like garden gnomes playing the real life equivalent of a compulsive hoarder ...
 
There are people who collect teddy bears compulsively, to the point where the Wiki even gives tips on what to do if you are doing just that...
 
More power to them for enjoying pointless crap. They would be easy to entertain at parties.
 
Walpknut said:
There are people who collect teddy bears compulsively, to the point where the Wiki even gives tips on what to do if you are doing just that...
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Is that weird? Usually my New Vegas characters pick up every example they come across of some random thing (pencils, hammers, baseballs, cigarettes, cookware, etc.) appropriate to their character, and end up with hundreds of them by the end.

It's not something you do compulsively, it's just a "you see a thing of the right type, and you pick it up." One time I had hundreds of deathclaw hands in the bathtub in Novac.
 
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I like to collect things too like with some the unique clutter mods, but it isn't something I care too much about. I care more about meaningful consequences and a good story.

Side bar comment: Went to Gamestop yesterday. Ran into a guy that bad mouthed New Vegas, saying he dropped it after an hour. Of course he worked there. The conversation started with me saying I love Fallout then him recommending Fallout 4 for a - you guessed it - pre-order. Of course my response was "I fucking hate Bethesda.". He had a stupefied expression on his face, so I had to explain the reasoning. I said I liked New Vegas and he was like "But Bethesda made that."

"They published it, but Obsidian made it." I replied. This is where he brought up New Vegas being boring, and Liam Neeson adding so much to Fallout 3. At that point I sighed audibly in disgust. I also bad mouthed Oblivion and he laughed saying he liked it. Such poor taste.

This guy also talked about the Karma system and how he would manipulate it to get Fawkes. That is one of the points he used to say how great it was.
 
Manipulating it? I thought the blow-up-megaton-donate-water-to-beggars-to-become-the-saviour-of-the-wasteland was a trademarked feature by Bethesda role playing games? :ugly:

I mean who the fuck wants consequences in their game that make you actually pause and think for a moment, right? RIGHT!
 
Crni Vuk said:
Manipulating it? I thought the blow-up-megaton-donate-water-to-beggars-to-become-the-saviour-of-the-wasteland was a trademarked feature by Bethesda role playing games? :ugly:

I mean who the fuck wants consequences in their game that make you actually pause and think for a moment, right? RIGHT!
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RIGHT! Cause they make you think! Which is bad!
 
I only started collecting clutter because I installed a mod that adds like a thousand new crafting recipes so I can break a lot of garbage into usefull things.
 
Crni Vuk said:
Manipulating it? I thought the blow-up-megaton-donate-water-to-beggars-to-become-the-saviour-of-the-wasteland was a trademarked feature by Bethesda role playing games? :ugly:
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This is a funny bit in the psychology of game design. The role of putting puzzles in games is not actually to gate off progress unless the player is sufficiently clever, but to make the player feel clever because they figured out the solution (even if the solution does not actually require much in the way of cleverness.) Mechanical systems often create emergent puzzles then (e.g. "Given how the rules to this game work, how do I accomplish [goal]?"

The problem is though that when your puzzles are too simple, or too obvious, or are just something veterans of the genre have seen over and over again, then when you praise the player for having done the thing, then some portion of your audience is going to feel patronized and resent you. This is the "I'm a mass murderer but people love me because I give water to the thirsty" problem. People who don't really play games with their brains engaged (this is totally a legitimate way to play most games, FWIW) feel clever, but people who play games by thinking about them are going to resent it.

I would think that since Bethesda caught some flak for the meaning of these mechanics being pretty gross (Karma in Fo3 basically works by "it doesn't matter how much bad stuff you do, if you do enough 'good' stuff people are going to forget all about the bad stuff.) They will probably come up with something less simplistic next time.
 
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