Bethesda’s Pete Hines Fallout 4 interview

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You're giving them a lot of credits.

Again, we are talking about the people that have been totally OK with Fawkes telling you to basically go fuck your self with the purifier.
 
They are also the people who made an entire game of rigid linear quests that would break if you deviated from the path and got Game of the Year Awards (Skyrim). They have no reason to think they have to improve, worse yet, looks at how many people consider New vegas inferior despite it obviously being superior to Fo3 in every aspect, improving actually seems to be a bad thing.
 
Crni Vuk said:
You're giving them a lot of credits.

Again, we are talking about the people that have been totally OK with Fawkes telling you to basically go fuck your self with the purifier.
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Making games is hard. I'm inclined to forgive people for "not thinking of something" (or choosing to cut a scenario in which you would have thought of it) given that I expect/hope that if a flaw is addressed in the final text, they will hope to improve upon it the next time around. They did, after all, fix the purifier scene after it was pointed out that if Fawkes is just standing there, having you give your life is dumb. Likely this happens because the climactic scene where "you have to choose to sacrifice yourself, or doom the people of the wastes" was conceived of first and "a super-mutant companion" was conceived of later (and perhaps the person who observe "you know, we should really take the companions away for this last bit" was shooed away by telling them how soon the game has to ship.)

Regarding Karma, I think the real solution for games that want to have karma/reputation/how-much-this-person-likes-you meters, is to simply obscure the current value of whatever statistic from the player. There's no reason your pip-boy should know how good a person you are or how much the NCR likes you, you should just have to figure that out from "you have done good things" and "you have done things that help the NCR" and people express (in the actual text) gratitude for your actions. Combine that with "people don't forget the *really* bad stuff you do" and it's more or less fine.
 
Making games is hard. I'm inclined to forgive people for "not thinking of something" (or choosing to cut a scenario in which you would have thought of it) given that I expect/hope that if a flaw is addressed in the final text, they will hope to improve upon it the next time around.
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Hey! We understand that! But ... see New Vegas. Or the old Fallout games for that matter. It's possible. Anyway, the flaw for it beeing fixed it must be perceived as a flaw first. And I don't see Bethesda doing that. Do they feel that it was a mistake? I don't think so. I mean sure, what do we know how they feel about their game behind closed doors. But the feeling I have is that they are not only very confident about their game(s) but also believe that they are doing a great job - and why should they not? So far every of their games sold like hot cakes. I mean was Skyrim an improvement over Fallout 3 in that sense? Just as example. I would be more inclined to say no. Skyrim was just as blunt like F3, it didn't had a Karma system, but the way how you solved things was exactly the same.
 
TorontRayne said:
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.
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Well, I would only expect drones with shit taste to be working at a Gamestop.
 
Hey, some people just need the money. No reason to insult people in service industry, it's a pretty thankless job.
 
I won't blame someone for having bad taste. Bethesda games are bad because they are inferior RPG's. Not because the games are bad outright.
 
Well they are very poorly designed and are always riddled with bugs and shoddy texture work. I'll say there are many ways to consider them bad games, not just bad rpgs.
 
Yeah ToretteRayne, but it's kinda like you would say that raw salmon sold as vanilla ice cream is still a better dessert than poop.

Even if Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Skyrim would be sold as adventure games they would still have bad writing, bad dialog, bad quests, and the other nonsensical stuff :V

Hmm, Walnut kinda beat me to it :P
 
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I won't fault their games for being buggy because that seems to be increasingly common to the point where it is almost pointless to debate it. Almost every single game I have bought recently has had major bugs. At least with Bethesda games you can get unofficial patches to fix the worst ones.

Their world design is fairly impressive on a surface level - it is pretty to look at. It might not make much sense, but it can look good. If you look at the games from the perspective of someone who doesn't know what a RPG is, then you can start to look into the mindset of their average fan. I've known people who when asked if they played RPG's replied "Is that those games where you have to read a lot?"

Just like the Gamestop employee who claimed Fallout 3 had a great story with great characters, but New Vegas didn't. This person didn't have a sloped forehead btw. He actually found the story in New Vegas to be boring with no interesting characters. I went on to explain how the faction system worked, but his brain seemed to shut down because he just kept shaking his head no, like the possibility of New Vegas being a better game was too much to bear. The mouth breather went on to talk about fucking World of Warcraft and some other stupid MMO bullshit.

People don't want to think these days. They want to be spoon fed ice cream until they shit into their toilet throne.
 
TorontRayne said:
People don't want to think these days. They want to be spoon fed ice cream until they shit into their toilet throne.
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This is also why the new Tomb Raider is so popular. All the action now takes center stage when in the earlier games the main set pieces were the puzzles and the action/combat was only thrown in to give the player something else to do. Now it's just shoot, shoot, shoot, solve a mini-puzzle by pushing context-sensitive buttons that a four-year-old can figure out, shoot, shoot, shoot...

I weep for humanity. :(
 
TorontRayne said:
Just like the Gamestop employee who claimed Fallout 3 had a great story with great characters, but New Vegas didn't. This person didn't have a sloped forehead btw. He actually found the story in New Vegas to be boring with no interesting characters. I went on to explain how the faction system worked, but his brain seemed to shut down because he just kept shaking his head no, like the possibility of New Vegas being a better game was too much to bear.
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Actually a coworker of mine prefers Fallout 3 to New Vegas and his description leads me to believe that it's because of the strong main story line in Fallout 3. That is strong in the sense of being a clear, central drive to the game that carries you from area to area, not that it was good. I've avoided Fallout 3 but New Vegas is crap as far as I'm concerned. There is too damn much walking, combat is crap, and the writing wasn't particularly captivating. It doesn't help that a number of quests make you do excessive amounts of walking between characters and places. I'm patient to a point but one of the worst things in games, MMOs do this a lot, is long stretches of traveling. I enjoy exploring interesting worlds but the world of New Vegas is mostly uninteresting. I doubt Fallout 3 is much better in that aspect but a number of players do better when their wondering is to unveil an expanding central plot rather than a bunch of small stories. I'd wager that New Vegas does a much better job of having all of the events tie into the world rather than offering a bunch of self-contained amusements but it still doesn't add up to enjoyment for me. I also think that a lot of the enjoyment in those games comes from just enjoying going out into the wilderness and blowing away baddies, something which doesn't interest me if the mechanics aren't there to make it interesting.
 
It's one of those catch 22's. They don't want their hand held, but when confronted with a true open ended story they get bored.
 
IrradiatedGarlic said:
TorontRayne said:
Just like the Gamestop employee who claimed Fallout 3 had a great story with great characters, but New Vegas didn't. This person didn't have a sloped forehead btw. He actually found the story in New Vegas to be boring with no interesting characters. I went on to explain how the faction system worked, but his brain seemed to shut down because he just kept shaking his head no, like the possibility of New Vegas being a better game was too much to bear.
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Actually a coworker of mine prefers Fallout 3 to New Vegas and his description leads me to believe that it's because of the strong main story line in Fallout 3. That is strong in the sense of being a clear, central drive to the game that carries you from area to area, not that it was good. I've avoided Fallout 3 but New Vegas is crap as far as I'm concerned. There is too damn much walking, combat is crap, and the writing wasn't particularly captivating. It doesn't help that a number of quests make you do excessive amounts of walking between characters and places. I'm patient to a point but one of the worst things in games, MMOs do this a lot, is long stretches of traveling. I enjoy exploring interesting worlds but the world of New Vegas is mostly uninteresting. I doubt Fallout 3 is much better in that aspect but a number of players do better when their wondering is to unveil an expanding central plot rather than a bunch of small stories. I'd wager that New Vegas does a much better job of having all of the events tie into the world rather than offering a bunch of self-contained amusements but it still doesn't add up to enjoyment for me. I also think that a lot of the enjoyment in those games comes from just enjoying going out into the wilderness and blowing away baddies, something which doesn't interest me if the mechanics aren't there to make it interesting.
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Don't like travelling eh?

Play Fallout 1 and 2. The travelling system was well done. But oh wait... you sound... in between. Eh you seem to me not a total Bethtard but still a person who prefers blasting shit for no reason.

Just try the first two games, though you probably won't enjoy them.
 
Come Fly With Me is one of the few quests in New Vegas I hate doing. Not because of the characters or plot or anything. It's just a huge fetch quest and it's so inconvenient. Most annoying bit for me is at the end when you're required o get two items in Novac, but you can only get one item at a time. Why couldn't I get both items while I'm in town instead of being forced to get them both separately? Just an annoyance to me.
 
Big No said:
Come Fly With Me is one of the few quests in New Vegas I hate doing. Not because of the characters or plot or anything. It's just a huge fetch quest and it's so inconvenient. Most annoying bit for me is at the end when you're required o get two items in Novac, but you can only get one item at a time. Why couldn't I get both items while I'm in town instead of being forced to get them both separately? Just an annoyance to me.
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Don't like the quest much either, but I don't think that there's anything stopping you from getting them both during the same trip to Novac (and the radioactive site). The only fond memories I have of that quest are Davison and Antler.
 
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I honestly like "Come Fly With Me" a lot, I think it's a really well designed quest. The only quibble I have with it is that you cannot actually "complete" the quest by just going to the RepConn building and killing everybody, like Manny suggests at first (doing so fails the quest). I don't think I'd want to do that, but it seems like it should be a solution (I guess "not doing the quest" is also a solution since you can just read Manny's e-mail or sweet-talk him.)

But yeah, you don't need to make separate trips to get the materials. You can actually have the radioactive material before starting the quest (Just loot the store-room at the Dino De-Lite, or the vending machine upstairs at Mick & Ralph's) so you just need to pay a visit to Old Lady Gibson, and the Gibson Scrap Yard and RepConn test facility are really close. Of all the quests to complain about being kind of tedious, that one surprises me. "Bleed Me Dry" and "Return To Sender" are way more tedious.
 
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I didn't know that you could do it all in one trip. I thought that Rad guy at the facility wouldn't spawn if you chose Gibson first or her dialogue wouldn't be there if you chose the other, but I guess I was wrong. Still, I find Come Fly With Me more tedious than Return to Sender probably because CFWM all takes place in pretty much one big facility and it gets kinda repetitive to me to see the same places over and over again though that's only really a problem if you do the quest all in one go like I do. RtS lets me travel around the Mojave which varies up the scenery.
 
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