Brother None said:
To be honest, the "we don't care about fans" isn't even the bit that bothers me most, personally.
It's the "we don't feel we owe the original designers anything." That is arrogant and insulting…They should feel honoured and privileged that…turning away Leonard Boyarsky, is just smack-in-your-face God complex/heavy case of narcissism….Hell, they probably honestly believe the game they're making is better than the originals. :barf:
Emil doesn’t necessarily believe they don’t owe anything to the fans or designers, but it comes across that way because he was set up by the question and isn’t the best politician. He can’t say yes, because then people will complain about their not getting more input and making radical changes, and can’t say no because that would be disrespectfully rude, as well as inconsistent with the idea of loving the original games. He could have said they just want to make the best possible game they could and leave it at that, but instead says 'can't' and launches off into the ‘doing their own thing’ routine as it has no doubt been hammered into the team countless times, probably by Todd as part of the strict authorial control that Gavin mentions. "When I first started I think did feel like that, and there was a period of coming to terms with it," shows his doubts. It is a case of trying to ignore conflicting ideas to do the job rather than not caring about them personally and emotionally. This sort of thing would also explain why they might not hire Leonard Boyarsky or the like, as ‘doesn't really get the culture here’ could equate to not going along with everything or liking what one is told and potentially providing an inordinately influencing alternative perspective. Yes, you can put that down to ego and power games, but it isn’t necessarily God complex arrogance, more like mortal fear of being challenged by quality ideas and threatening competition. They wouldn’t want to share the credit for their work with others much so again at least some ego and arrogance comes into it.
Fallout 3 is Bethesda's triumphant return to gunplay games, after swords and sorcery for so long. For me it's about bringing back /that/ legacy.
Ouch. To be really optimistic we would have to put this down to a brain fart. He could be thinking defensively about the differences between Fallout and Oblivion, rather than merely answering the given question diplomatically. Impulsively making the link back to the Terminator games to distance Fallout from Oblivion might reinforce the idea of a more realistic, modern setting, and impress management with some spin, but turns out to be a PR disaster among fans.
Why buy the license? Firstly because they like the setting, freedom and atmosphere of the game, even if they don’t really understand it.
Continuing on with ridiculous optimism, they could be trying to work on a sequel with some real depth in role-playing, even if they also put in lolzers mini games, gratuitous violence etc. Sure, many might want to sleep on piles of money with another blockbuster, but any real professional would care about doing something with real quality if possible, such that it would get unbiased critical acclaim as a classic to be proud of decades from now. Gaining even some positive recognition from a fan base like NMA would be a great feather in their cap.
, straight from the horse's mouth.
