Fallout: New Vegas developer quotes round-up

WorstUsernameEver

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Our friend Ausir at The Vault provided us with another juicy round-up of quotes from developers of Fallout: New Vegas. This time it's almost only Josh Sawyer and it deals mainly with the upcoming patch and modding.

On Energy Weapons' balance:<blockquote>As Lord Vukodlak suggested, it's difficult for the DAM readout to account for the interaction between DT and various ammo effects. We settled on the "order of operations" for ammo effects to ensure that hollow point rounds and armor piercing rounds behaved in a fashion that made sense. OC/MC ammunition doesn't use any DT bypass currently, so it winds up suffering from that order. I ruled out allowing for variable orders of operations because it would make testing/debugging (much) more of a pain.

For the upcoming patch, all energy weapon ammo types (including MF Breeder and including base types, but excluding Flamer Fuel) have built-in DT bypass. I have made other tweaks to individual Energy Weapons across the spectrum, but the modification to ammo effects is probably the most noticeable and significant. </blockquote>On one of the many bugs, concerning Damage Threshold's value:<blockquote>There is a known bug that DT added through effects/direct modification of the actor value are doubled. This is fixed in the next patch. </blockquote>On dialogue depth compared to Fallout 1/2:<blockquote>One of the depth problems is the fact that a lot of quest-related dialog options reside amongst first set of choices, negating any need for investigative approach. NPCs loose depth from their blind belief in PC and from PC having less incentive to explore

Forcing players to wade through dialogue they may not be interested in doesn't make that dialogue more compelling; it just makes it mandatory.

If you're interested in details and background information, explore the dialogue trees. If you're not, don't.</blockquote>
 
Forcing players to wade through dialogue they may not be interested in doesn't make that dialogue more compelling; it just makes it mandatory.

If you're interested in details and background information, explore the dialogue trees. If you're not, don't.
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I think i like the guy, but he is wrong in this matter. Lynette, Mr Mordino and others had some reeeally neat dialog tree, if you lacked respect to them, or say the wrong thing in the conversation, you'd get your ass ripped. Little thing like having the vault suit or having talked to lil' jesus, or being a slaver could help, but i still would need to use my brain to choose the dialogue option I thought the protagonist would like to hear. It made them feel more alive, gave them an existence outside of being there for the player's tourist information (Tell me about yourself... Tell me about your faction...What are you doing here... tell me about deep...)

I was a little disapointed by the lack of complexe conversation in new vegas, especially since Chris Avellone is supposed to have played a big hand in shaping those kind of characters. Even without that, it still is the best game i played in 10 years...
 
WorstUsernameEver said:
On dialogue depth compared to Fallout 1/2:<blockquote>One of the depth problems is the fact that a lot of quest-related dialog options reside amongst first set of choices, negating any need for investigative approach. NPCs loose depth from their blind belief in PC and from PC having less incentive to explore

Forcing players to wade through dialogue they may not be interested in doesn't make that dialogue more compelling; it just makes it mandatory.

If you're interested in details and background information, explore the dialogue trees. If you're not, don't.</blockquote>
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There's more of that shit on his Formspring http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer
I honestly can't believe his reasoning. I totally lost faith in this guy.



As of "emotional/intent loading", you ended up making PC's dialog really characterless and it's hard to care about a generic character. I understand if you don't want to over develop PC, but not developing it is not an answer.

It certainly is an answer; it's just one that you don't like. The lines with specific intent were ones that didn't have to do with run-of-the-mill queries. I think you risk alienating a lot of people by adding secondary tone to basic questions and statements. It does give character to dialogue, but there's no telling if any given player will like the character that's being given. And if the only way you can ask an NPC what should be a straightforward question is to pick a line you don't like because it has a side-order of sass the author decided to throw in for chuckles, it can get irritating.

As far as "depth" in dialogue, I think that dude might mean literal depth, as in really deep trees with lots of nooks and crannies since that's what people mostly mean. tbqh it DOES feel like there are fewer of those outside of the Legate Conversation.

Without doing a side-by-side comparison to F1/F2, I think F:NV has a large number of deep dialogues. Off the top of my head, Caesar, Mr. House, and many of the companions have extensive dialogues.

To expand on previous question by someone else - in Fallout 1/2, player could say some really long lines of dialogues. This is not existing in NV. Is it (yet again) engine limitation? Or console one?

Part of that was a mandate from me that the writers not shove words into the player's mouth with basic dialogue responses. Generally speaking, the more the author defines what the player says, the less freedom the player has to maintain his/her character concept. I call it "emotional/intent loading". The exceptions to this are for stat-, skill-, or perk-based unlocks since they demand a higher level of specificity.

Where did the witty/expansive dialogue go that was in the previous Fallouts? The conversation in FNV, despite being leagues above F3 in terms of writing and moral ambiguity, seemed to still be a tad superficial and not as in-depth as F1 or 2's. Why?

I don't think I can answer this because I don't know what you consider "depth".
 
I think the main thing I miss in terms of dialogue is that in the previous games, you can really "fail" and get in trouble if you say the wrong thing. You shouldn't be able to get away with being uppity with faction leaders and such. That you could mess up in the previous games gave dialogues a whole other tension that's really lacking in NV.

Other than that, I think the "complexity", quantity or depth of the previous games is a bit overstated here. Convos like Lynette are not exactly the norm. It's not PS:T we're talking about here.

Same with the main character dialogues, I think they did a good job with keeping the main character "straight" while still having some fun lines here and there (most notably the skill checks, which are far more numerous than in previous games). I dunno, I didn't think the "Hey, I'm the Chosen One!" dialogues to be particularly funny.

Furthermore, I'd say the characters are (generally speaking, there are exceptions) far better written in New Vegas than in previous games.

There are definitely areas where I think NV don't hold up to the older games but I'd say that dialogues, writing and choice in general are areas where NV pushes the series forward.
 
To expand on previous question by someone else - in Fallout 1/2, player could say some really long lines of dialogues. This is not existing in NV. Is it (yet again) engine limitation? Or console one?

Part of that was a mandate from me that the writers not shove words into the player's mouth with basic dialogue responses. Generally speaking, the more the author defines what the player says, the less freedom the player has to maintain his/her character concept. I call it "emotional/intent loading". The exceptions to this are for stat-, skill-, or perk-based unlocks since they demand a higher level of specificity.
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I really dissagree. I always thought the long answers by inteligent characters would be a expression of role playing a "really" inteligent character. Just remembering the dialogues with Myron when you had high science and inteligence. Or explaining dumb characters what laser weapons actually are (and not just some guns which shoot light instead of bullets), this explenation was meaningless for the game as you dont get anything but it gives you a feeling of "wow, my character IS a smart ass!". This was not present in either F3 or Vegas. If you have high spech, inteligence or barter or what ever, you dont feel like a smooth talker with high spech nor do you feel like a scientist with high science skills nor do you feel inteligent with the high skill. Its more or less generic. I am glad to have the checks, but they dont feel like you represent a role here.
 
Little Robot said:
I agree with Crni. Another "part" was certainly that the dialog had to be simple enough for console users to read.
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Get over yourself for Christ's sake. :roll: "Those simple console peasants couldn't possibly wrap their minds around the complex and interesting dialogue that we, the PC gaming master race, can." Jesus fucking Christ.
 
*presses A repeatedly to get through forum posts*

Instead of just being a snide asshole, I will say this: Ever since western RPGs have been popularized for console gaming, we haven't seen the same dialogue depth as Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate or Fallout 1/2. It further upsets me when little things like looking up the "Almost Perfect" perk leads me to a gamefaqs board where a bunch of 360 users are drooling about the perk.
At least it's been pretty good this last couple of years(Dragon Age, Fallout: NV) but still I doubt it'll ever be the same. Everything HAS to be voiced now, otherwise people will complain about the lack of polish in the game. I suppose you could blame this on the "evolution" of gaming, but I feel that consoles(and their users) have played a large part in that entire scheme. Console games sell much better, so I guess that's who I'd want to develop for, too.
 
All these words are boring me. Can't you guys just settle this in combat?

Get over yourself for Christ's sake. "Those simple console peasants couldn't possibly wrap their minds around the complex and interesting dialogue that we, the PC gaming master race, can." Jesus fucking Christ.
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*shrugs* It doesn't matter if it's true, it matters that this is how developers see it. Our perspective doesn't matter.

This whole thing is a good reminder that you shouldn't blame every flaw in New Vegas on the engine or platform. Sometimes it's just the devs being boneheads.
 
Brother None said:
All these words are boring me. Can't you guys just settle this in combat?

Get over yourself for Christ's sake. "Those simple console peasants couldn't possibly wrap their minds around the complex and interesting dialogue that we, the PC gaming master race, can." Jesus fucking Christ.
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*shrugs* It doesn't matter if it's true, it matters that this is how developers see it. Our perspective doesn't matter.
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I believe that he is referencing the attitude that some people here have, that console users are invariable inferior and not as advanced as PC users. I mean, I have F3 and NV for the 360, and F1 and F2 for the PC. It really doesn't make a difference. There are tons of crazy, FPS, counter strike people out there on the PC as well.
 
Well, thanks to consoles, we got at least a shitty interface, thanks to modders, we are able to fix it on the computer. So consoles *are* kind of inferior. :>
 
NiRv4n4 said:
I believe that he is referencing the attitude that some people here have, that console users are invariable inferior and not as advanced as PC users.
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And I'm saying people are directing their anger at the wrong people when they're raging at PC elitists over this. The fact is that independent or niche intelligent games still get made, but only for PC. It's the console publishers that insult the console users intelligence by dumping all this crap all over you. So if anyone's to get angry at the perspective that console gamers are dumb, get angry at the publishers, they're the one enforcing the idea.

Dragon Age: Origins and The Witcher are PC-first games. Their sequels are both more multiplatform minded, and "coincidentally" also dumbed down. It's that kind of thinking that's the issue here.
 
we will see if the Witcher will be dumbed down. Well on the level of Dragon age ... (but I do fear they will do that ...)

Something which I dont understand though is really why they are doing it. I mean as we say "dumping games" down which sold well before. With the comlexity in gameplay or story they had. I mean would people not want to see that extended ? Regardless if on the PC or console ...

I really would like to know the reason for that.
 
My feeling, that he isn't someone who's got in delivering emotions through character interaction or even knows to value character interactions, i got from some answers he gave about NWN2 is only reinforced through this answers...

Than again i shouldn't judge him by some short answers he gave here and there.
 
Crni Vuk said:
we will see if the Witcher will be dumbed down. Well on the level of Dragon age ... (but I do fear they will do that ...)
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Here:<blockquote>Eurogamer: Dragon Age II's combat is more action-driven than the first game's, and so is The Witcher 2's. Why are role-playing games becoming more action-orientated?

Tomasz Gop: You're right, but it's misleading for a lot of people. I can't say it's not true. It is true. Developers want to have more action in their games. Boring games are not good. It's not like you're changing the genre of the game. Role-playing games will not become shooters... I mean, Mass Effect was an exception. OK, we're not doing Mass Effect.

What I'm trying to say is a lot of things that were happening in role-playing games on a daily basis years ago are too hardcore right now. It's not like we're doing a completely different genre. This is what the role-playing game is right now.

The story is never dumbed down. Good role-playing games kept really good story, and you experience the story in an even deeper way than you would previously because of better graphics, direction and cut-scenes.

Combat is more spectacular. The means to express it is just to make it real-time. Previously combat was more turn-based. We don't have turn-based combat right now. It's a better means of expression.

Eurogamer: Why do gamers complain about dumbed-down role-playing games if modern designs are better?

Tomasz Gop: Have you played Demon's Souls?

Eurogamer: Yes. It's very hard.

Tomasz Gop: It is very hard. I've played through it twice – hundreds of hours of gameplay. I loved the game. That's why I can put myself in the place of these guys who complain. They're used to stuff not too many people are doing these days because they're putting hundreds of hours into single games. To them, playing a game that has more dynamic and fluent combat is probably something against what they're used to, and they're probably screaming loudest.</blockquote>
Crni Vuk said:
Something which I dont understand though is really why they are doing it.
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Because dumbed down games are much cheaper to make and sell at least as well.
 
Well not to forget that it doesn't only happen for Computer games, but also for movies.

A while ago i watched "The Fearless Vampire Killers", and one thing that i recognized allmost immediately was that there were scence where you had nearly complete silence.
This is something you don't have much in today's movies. Even compare other more 'classic' movies with todays and i would say the got overall more action oriantated.
 
Like mainstream gaming and niche/indie, there's a divide between Hollywood (and Bollywood) and the rest here too. It's a lot richer in films though. Even a pop film like Stilyagi has an ending single-take shot that lasts four minutes because that's just how Russians role, while it would be daring for American cinema.

*shrugs* I don't mind my tastes being niche as long as there's still people catering to it. The gaming industry's tendency to ignore niches is a bit of a pain.
 
Eurogamer: What's happening with the console version? I want an honest answer.

Tomasz Gop: This is too difficult a question because I can't tell you directly what's happening inside the studio, but I want to tell you we're doing everything we can to make sure one day The Witcher 2 will be released on the current generation of consoles.
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Oh hai. Coincidence? Maybe, just maybe..
 
Makagulfazel said:
Instead of just being a snide asshole, I will say this: Ever since western RPGs have been popularized for console gaming, we haven't seen the same dialogue depth as Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate or Fallout 1/2.
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It has far less to do with being ported to consoles (this isn't a new thing, it was happening back on the NES) and everything to do with trying to reach a bigger, broader market.

Lexx said:
Well, thanks to consoles, we got at least a shitty interface, thanks to modders, we are able to fix it on the computer. So consoles *are* kind of inferior. :>
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They are clearly inferior, they are simply less of a hassle and can be less expensive.
 
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