GamesIndustry Brian Fargo Interview

Brother None

Brother None

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GamesIndustry offers an article-style interview with inXile CEO Brian Fargo, talking Wasteland 2 and the games industry.<blockquote>Development on Wasteland 2 is moving rapidly, with multiple writers (including Chris Avellone, Michael Stackpole and Liz Danforth) creating scenarios. "The story now is 900 pages long," said Fargo. How does that compare to the original Wasteland? "It's much bigger," Fargo noted. "I'm doing one of the smaller maps, and I'm at 40 pages so far, and I'm not verbose. It's a lot of content. What if I rescue the kid? What if I don't rescue the kid? That's what everybody wants."

The project is large in scope, with many moving parts. Fargo is pleased with the team that's assembled, but is the schedule on track? "It's still too early to tell," Fargo admitted. "I'm very happy with the team; we have three or four ace programmers and the designers are having trouble keeping up with them. The design is the biggest short-term concern. We've just signed up three other writers."

The overall result is that Fargo believes the project is achieving his goals. "I think it's going to be one of the densest, deepest RPGs ever; just the cause and effect is fantastic. Ultimately, that's what everybody wants. That's what made GTA so great, it's what made Sim City so great - when you do something it has an effect, and things hold together smartly."</blockquote>Thanks RPGCodex.
 
I hope that W2 will not be a collection of hundred of small quests.
Even in FNV where it was well made it quickly become tiresome and kill the "mystery" and exploration part IMO.
I'm more for complex quests with a lot of interactivity between the different locations and that everything reveal a big pitchure (like in fallout 2).
I'm also for some parts without any "quests" other than exploration.
The game would not feel like a quest machine.
 
I get more and more excited about this game with each news article. And I honestly don't mind if Fargo goes "we need another year". I know it'll be worth the wait.
 
Sub-Human said:
Just interested, is a 900-page story really big for an (unfinished) RPG? Because it sounds really exciting.
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I think Planescape Torment had 600,000 words of dialogue, so that's about 2,000 pages. Though that has to be on the higher end of the spectrum.
 
I think by story he means dialogue variations when you interact, so that's great:

Brother None said:
Fargo noted. "I'm doing one of the smaller maps, and I'm at 40 pages so far, and I'm not verbose. It's a lot of content. What if I rescue the kid? What if I don't rescue the kid? That's what everybody wants."
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Yes, really what everybody wants! Hope they really do it this way. I don't care if the scenario is 900 pages long or not (Fallout 1's was certainly not so long), but if they write tons of dialogues because there are tons of interactions... Hell yeah!

Sobboth said:
I hope that W2 will not be a collection of hundred of small quests.
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I certainly hope it will be. Not being all about the main quest is the key to freedom. Also just because a quest is small does not mean it's uninteresting / not complex / not linked to other quests or stuff :p
 
The usual stuff from Mr Fargo, pulling the right strings at his target audience while veibg intenionally ambigious. Since when is Quality measured by quantity? It might aswell ve 900 pages of derp, his example with the kids given is already a nice indicator of it.
 
For sure. Citing number of pages/words is the kind of thing Bethesda or BioWare do as PR. It's nice to know the work is progressing at a high rate, so I guess it's ok for that, but as a point of PR, citing quantity is weak.
 
Nice that we agree. Why not annoy Mr. Fargo to ask if he can write down something more substantial, giving that you seem to be pretty close to his source? ;) That would be a more a nice news article I would say and even sceptical me that I am would love to read it.

EDIT: Hell even this "lol puppies in wasteland!1" update on facebook was kinda week. It all sounds like trying too hard.

And before anyone gets mad at me, here is a Ricky Nelson song to calm down: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I6kgkeUkbw
 
Surf, I think the cynicism is warranted. Hell we are the most jaded community on the "internetz" right? Fargo will always be the PR guy, so this can be expected to a certain extent. Boasting of the page count is understandable in a way if you are keeping the community informed of the progress. Either way it did rub me wrong. Also, the Sim-City and GTA comparisons felt wrong. GTA I get I guess, but not Sim-City so much. Maybe I'm just weird, let me check...

*Looks in mirror* :tired:


Yeah I'm just weird. Ignore me. Things are still progressing nicely. :)
 
Brother None said:
For sure. Citing number of pages/words is the kind of thing Bethesda or BioWare do as PR. It's nice to know the work is progressing at a high rate, so I guess it's ok for that, but as a point of PR, citing quantity is weak.
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Well, the Toddler is actually dismissive of long design docs, so...

(The other snippets there are interesting, Todd illuminates us of course, but there's Carmack, Sid Meier, Molyneux, Spector, Levine, Schafera nd many others.)

EDIT: The GTA and SimCity references hit me the wrong way too hah, but guys, seriously, the overall picture they are painting is *very* promising.
 
I think by the 900 pages comment he was trying to say its going to be like fallout 2, without saying fallout 2. I loved fallout 2 because there were a lot of quests and dialogs and freedom, Fallout 1 stood out more for its feel of post apocalyptic and the music set the scene. I didn't like the tribal music crap in fallout 2. Fallout 2 had better game play imo though with all the dialogs and quests.
 
I'm not too worried about the 900 pages things.
I think it's just a number to show the game will be heavy in dialogue/C&C and to "show progress".
I'm much more skeptical about the Sim City/GTA reference.
Those 2 games have almost nothing to do with old school cRPG.
I just hope (like other things Fargo said) he is just doing his PR/marketing job on this topic.
 
Don't hang yourself onto it so much. I see no reason at all to be skeptical because of that- feels to me as if people are searching for words to nail them down. This overstatement stuff will just end in Brian not talking anymore at all.
 
Actually, I think he meant what he said - cause and effect.
That you get feedback for what you do. That you have a sense of achievement. This is genre-independant.

For Sim City, this is very apparent.
For GTA, not so much, other than story progression, so I don't know how the GTA comparison got in there.
 
TheSHEEEP said:
For GTA, not so much, other than story progression, so I don't know how the GTA comparison got in there.
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Probably that if you shoot a guy in the face, the cops will come running after you, and then you can increase your wanted level.

Personally, I don't agree with him on that type of cause-and-effect. A better comparison would be that GTA allows you to go everywhere, and do everything.
 
I think it was more the 'kill or spare a guy in an early mission and later missions will change to suit your decision' thing in 4 and on.
 
I think what brian fargo have been saying here is very exciting. Dont see the :"Brian Fargo the PR guy" at all. Having cause and effect is awesome and definately something I want in my RPGS more than anything in fact.
 
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