Feargus Urquhart Interviewed by Gamasutra

Mikael Grizzly said:
Feargus said a lot without actually saying anything. His words are hollow.
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well how do they say you dont bite the hand that is feeding you. I think one should not try to overly analyse what he said now regarding Fallout 3 in particulary and its value as a Fallout game.

I am more schocked about the comment/qustion about :

<blockquote>The Western RPG is in a renaissance of popularity and creative richness right now, thanks to titles like BioWare's Mass Effect and Bethesda's Fallout 3.</blockquote>
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Creative richness in mediocrity? I mean thats like talking about creativness when it comes to the pop-music of Britney Spears when she did not even wrotte the lyrics, music or made the sound and anything she did was give her voice compared to something like Classical Gas from Mason Williams for example.

RPGs, and even more so the "western RPGs" are so popular today cause they have become mainstream products mainly trying to get as well more attention from gamers that have a small range of concetration regarding a game (doesnt mean those gamers are inherently stupid or have a bad tase they just prefer a different kind of experience, I would for example not try to sell a casablanca-like-romance movie to a die-hard-terminator loving person for example. But can mixing Casablanca with Die Hard or Terminator, why not all 3 of them! really work? Suer its possible, but should it be done?).

The reason why a game like Fallout 1 or 2 was not that accessible was cause it did not tried to be that. It was meant to be played as a cRPG. And thus it was attractive to the fans of this kind of game. That Fallout 3 is more popular is not surprise for me and considering Bethesda recent past with Oblivion and Morrowind only shows me what kind of gamer they want to attract, those that set "action" over "content/gameplay". I dont see as well how mixing a first person shooter with the ideas of a cRPG can ever really work. At one point one of the two sides WILL suffer and loost its meaning completely (which it now, thx to all this super meaningfull DLCs does ...). Hands down Fallout 3 is more a shooter then a RPG. It doesnt mean that it has not some qualities of a RPG, but they get more and more cut out in favour for the shooter part. And a few dialoges of low quality here and there coupled with black & white choices will not change anything.
 
Crni Vuk said:
Creative richness in mediocrity? I mean thats like talking about creativness when it comes to the pop-music of Britney Spears when she did not even wrotte the lyrics, music or made the sound and anything she did was give her voice compared to something like Classical Gas from Mason Williams for example.
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Now, now, don't get heated up over it. It's a scheme between bethesda and the media, to portray us as glimmering gems of hatred and thus render our opinions obsolete! I just know it! :boy:

But seriously, these epic lines are just too ridicolous to be mad at. It's like holding a grudge against a person with a psychological disability. :shrug:
 
its not against the person feargus since he more or less said "nothing" with value in my eyes since he was very vague in his answers but the question he got is that somewhat bothers me which shows to me just how "mainstream" RPGs have become when the target never was to be mainstream. Well not the kind of RPGs that tried be cRPGs or anything comparable with it. That things like Diablo always tried to attract action loving people is clear, but most agree those have not much to do with usual role playing. Well here I guess anyway
 
Crni Vuk said:
....but the question he got is that somewhat bothers me which shows to me just how "mainstream" RPGs have become when the target never was to be mainstream....
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And this comes as a surprise to you? This is the case for mostly everything: music, movies etc... As the consumer base is expanding, you take something that has a resonance of being a quality product, then dumb it down to something that a mainstream consumer could digest and vuala! You have youself a perfect combination - something that's considered hardcore yet still easy enough to be utilized by an average person without frustration (it's pretty funny how often these days developers/publishers state that they have made the game much more accessible to the mainstream, yet still maintain the hardcore aspects :D)
 
In other words, you have a publisher who's like, "Well, we have these seven games. What do you think?" Bethesda is, "No, you're buying this damn game." So, I think that the success was from both ways. They were able to get the feeling of Fallout, and they really believed in their game. And that belief in the game came through in how they were talking to everybody and pimping it and all that kind of stuff.
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Translation: Bethesda's games are good because Bethesda says they are.

Its like some crazy schrodinger's video game paradox. The game is both good and awful at the same time and the game immediately becomes awful if you open it up.
 
Eternal said:
In other words, you have a publisher who's like, "Well, we have these seven games. What do you think?" Bethesda is, "No, you're buying this damn game." So, I think that the success was from both ways. They were able to get the feeling of Fallout, and they really believed in their game. And that belief in the game came through in how they were talking to everybody and pimping it and all that kind of stuff.
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Translation: Bethesda's games are good because Bethesda says they are.

Its like some crazy schrodinger's video game paradox. The game is both good and awful at the same time and the game immediately becomes awful if you open it up.
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No, he's saying that even though they're a fairly big company, they focus entirely on one major game at a time. Instead of saying "here's our fall lineup" they say "This is the game we're trying to sell you this year" which is commendable in a way.
 
34thcell said:
In the future all genres will converge into a single game, you guys are missing the bigger picture.
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Yeah,that would be the day, when tastes would become as one,and humanity would fall into a state of Idiocracy. :irked:
 
What really was great about the original Fallout, Fallout 1 and Fallout 2, was the feeling of being in this world. And that was attractive. Well, attractive is maybe the wrong word. It was compelling. (laughs) That's a better word.
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He seems intelligent; I'm for Feargus.
 
Mikael Grizzly said:
Feargus said a lot without actually saying anything. His words are hollow.
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Feargus hasn't quite been himself since he left Interplay. :ugly:


<blockquote>The Western RPG is in a renaissance of popularity and creative richness right now, thanks to titles like BioWare's Mass Effect and Bethesda's Fallout 3.</blockquote>
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The whole genre is on life support now, sustain by small indie developer like Iron Tower studio, Spiderweb software, Basilisk Games for its Eschalon series and CD Projekt (okie maybe not that small consider they have 300 employees).
When a thing goes mainstream, either the developer retain the flavor of what makes it a unique thing among competitor (game play, artstyle, you name it) or face the chance to lose a franchise.
 
Rosh had a number of choice things to say about Feargus long before he left Black Isle/Interplay. He's primarily a producer, not a designer.
 
Per said:
Rosh had a number of choice things to say about Feargus long before he left Black Isle/Interplay. He's primarily a producer, not a designer.
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I remember something like calling Feargus a coffee boy.
Oh wait I think that's for Josh? :lol:
 
The Western RPG is in a renaissance of popularity and creative richness right now, thanks to titles like BioWare's Mass Effect and Bethesda's Fallout 3.

I personally found it very hard to read past that. How old is this interviewer? 12? I've been playing CRPGs since the 1980s and I can authoritatively state that there has NEVER been a low-point lower than this. Not even during the RPG drought of the mid-1990s that Fallout helped end. The genre is for all intents and purposes, defunct. All that's left is pseudo-RPGs like the ones Bioware makes, and other-genre-with-RPG-elements like everyone else makes. I doubt today's fan base even knows what an actual RPG is. Which may be this character's problem, actually. Stats? OMFG, its an RPG! Interactive NPC dialog!? Cool! An RPG!
 
AskWazzup said:
Crni Vuk said:
....but the question he got is that somewhat bothers me which shows to me just how "mainstream" RPGs have become when the target never was to be mainstream....
Click to expand...

And this comes as a surprise to you? This is the case for mostly everything: music, movies etc... As the consumer base is expanding, you take something that has a resonance of being a quality product, then dumb it down to something that a mainstream consumer could digest and vuala! You have youself a perfect combination - something that's considered hardcore yet still easy enough to be utilized by an average person without frustration (it's pretty funny how often these days developers/publishers state that they have made the game much more accessible to the mainstream, yet still maintain the hardcore aspects :D)
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Nice description :clap:

But yeah Diablo or Oblivion is to RPG is what Dragonforce is to metal, Hollywood compared to Fellini or Tarkovskiy, KyoAni's anime to Kon or Oshii, etc etc etc
 
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