I'm more curious why he didn't talk about his work on Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel...
Fallout Developers Profile - Brian Freyermuth
- Thread starter Per
- Start date
Josan12 said:
Fo1 had some things you can do by sneaking, such as enter the Raiders from the back and releasing Tandi from her cell. Or stealing keys in the Cathedral and sneaking around. I'm fairly sure you can't complete the game without fighting that way, though, and you miss out on dialogue and stuff (which I guess you also do in the "fight" solution if you define that as just opening fire on sight). An iron-man sneaking game would be about a thousand times harder than an iron-man diplosniper game.
Brother None said:
I thought his "respect them for trying something new" was a little ironic in light of that, but it's not really his fault for staying on the job while Interplay crumbled, it's the very existence of BoS that turns those words into a warning beacon and reminder not to believe the hype. Chucky, on the other hand...
Brother None said:
They sometimes mix the names, do you mean Tactics or the console game?
The list on the dev profiles page is not complete. E.g. Brian wasn't even on it before his profile was posted. Dunno really what the key is for some being listed by default and some not. E.g. some of the FO2 leads are not listed, while some regular designers are listed for FO1 (and some aren't).
He actually worked as a level designer on the console game.
Ausir said:
Oh, when Odin started the feature he put in a bunch of names he'd really like to interview but hadn't yet. I just left 'em in, never really thought about it.
Sure, why not.
programmer.craig
First time out of the vault
paul_cz,
Yeah, they probably don't brainstorm over their games in fastfood joints...they probably do it around the large table down there in their Bethesda building.
What would they have to "brainstorm" about? They've been refining the same RPG recipe since 1993 when Arena came out. They released Morrowind about 2 years after fallout. Is Fallout 3 more like Fallout 1&2, or more like Morrowind?
Seems like all they had to do for Fallout 3 was another incremental improvement of their existing game engine, and doing a bit of shuffling of the game world setting. Not exactly the kind of stuff where it's required to get all your creative nerds together and let them get their nerd on, you know? As another commenter said, the fallout guys did it old school. Bethesda wasn't old school, even in the old days. Bethesda has always had a very mechanical and "by the numbers" approach to game design. Hell, in Arena all the quests (except the "main" quest which was so barebones it was little more than a pretext to get people to play) were randomly generated. How much creativity goes into a RANDOMLY GENERATED quest? lol. At least they stopped doing that, eh? Bethesda is great at the "systems" stuff, but when it comes to content they really suck wind.
Yeah, they probably don't brainstorm over their games in fastfood joints...they probably do it around the large table down there in their Bethesda building.
What would they have to "brainstorm" about? They've been refining the same RPG recipe since 1993 when Arena came out. They released Morrowind about 2 years after fallout. Is Fallout 3 more like Fallout 1&2, or more like Morrowind?
Seems like all they had to do for Fallout 3 was another incremental improvement of their existing game engine, and doing a bit of shuffling of the game world setting. Not exactly the kind of stuff where it's required to get all your creative nerds together and let them get their nerd on, you know? As another commenter said, the fallout guys did it old school. Bethesda wasn't old school, even in the old days. Bethesda has always had a very mechanical and "by the numbers" approach to game design. Hell, in Arena all the quests (except the "main" quest which was so barebones it was little more than a pretext to get people to play) were randomly generated. How much creativity goes into a RANDOMLY GENERATED quest? lol. At least they stopped doing that, eh? Bethesda is great at the "systems" stuff, but when it comes to content they really suck wind.
No.
We already have "Meet the Devs", chock full of info.
UncannyGarlic
Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
Good interview, he had a lot of interesting things to say and seems like he was a great addition to the original team.
A [console Diablo clone], F3 - TES), I have no problem ripping into them, especially when it turns out to be anything less than a great game.
<off> Something I've been wondering about for awhile now is when and how they came up with the super hero idea for Fallout 3. I know that there was a discussion about a joke super hero special encounter and I can't help but wonder if they took the super hero part of it and went the complete wrong direction with it.
If they did try something new then I'd be inclined to agree with you but when the project is a rip off of another game (BoS - BG
A [console Diablo clone], F3 - TES), I have no problem ripping into them, especially when it turns out to be anything less than a great game.Agreed. I always felt that the raiders were extremely underdeveloped given how much they seemed to be mentioned and it would have been awesome to actually get to deal with three warring factions and ally yourself with them if you so choose.alec said:
Actually they don't like planning, they like to get into the development stage as fast as possible (paraphrasing of their words) so there is probably very little group brainstorming. That said, there seems to be a lot of "cool ideas" that people have that they throw into the game without really working them out before hand.Paul_cz said:
I think the real problem is a general lack of editing and an unwillingness to try something different when it comes to the underlying system. I really don't see Bethesda products as being very high quality so I'm not really sure what their employees are working on the whole time unless they are pretty terrible. The only exception I can think of is their concept artists who I actually think are pretty good.Dionysus said:
<off> Something I've been wondering about for awhile now is when and how they came up with the super hero idea for Fallout 3. I know that there was a discussion about a joke super hero special encounter and I can't help but wonder if they took the super hero part of it and went the complete wrong direction with it.
For someone with some knowledge in software development and buisness structurs (well 3 year and half in programming and informatics) that seems to be a extremly unprofessional way of how to make software in general. Even for games where developers and companies are anyway not always "that" accurate in standarts and such [its a difference to make a "game" where the costumer might not bitch or moan so much about bugs or if you make software for assembly lines and machines where some bugs ... in the software really make a difference. Well no one can at least say they follow with game devloping the same ethics like the usual software engineering. I see many times developers doing so fundamental errors that its not even funny anymore].UncannyGarlic said:
I mean you definetly have a bit of freedom with games of course. But still ... at one point it just hurts to much the quality of the product if you try to "develop on the fly". As it can be seen very nicely with Bethesdas Fallout 3 where a lot of things just seem to be not thought out well enough particularly the ending in relation with some of the followers like Fawkes or Charon that right away refuse to go for you in the purifier which could have been avoided already with begining before any line of code was written if you just sit down and "think" trough the scenario and spend a bit more time on the concept and design phase.
I always respect Blizzard for that. What ever if the a games for itself are good or not. But at least they seem to be able to throw out very stable games with very few serious bugs and issues.
MrBumble said:
Really difficult man, we or at least I don't have any other decent PA RPG to turn too.
I have zero interest in Rage or Borderlands and Fargo keeps dancing around the Wasteland license which he may or may not continue.
Jesse Heinig
First time out of the vault
The Dutch Ghost said:
Late in development of Fo1 we moved the formula more toward "three solutions of different types" without necessarily always leaning on fight, talk, or sneak - some puzzles would be approached with Repair, Science, or even Gambling. The core idea was always that you had several ways to handle any problem. I suppose it was a way to implement some more role-playing notions, in that you could decide how you wanted your character to approach various problems, but the consequences might vary depending on your resolution style.
Certain quests or problems, though, were just buggy in scripting and wound up having some of their alternative approaches damaged or cut, unfortunately. Still, I think it was cool that the original idea managed to stay mostly intact all the way to release!