Planet Fallout got to talk to one and only MCA about his background in the industry and development of Fallout: New Vegas.<blockquote>The dialog system, something that you've known a lot of success in games like Planescape: Torment, changed a bit from Fallout 3, can you explain us more on what changed and what remains untouched?
We added more skill checks for various skills (Barter, Explosives, Sneak, Guns), displayed the success values for skill checks, added some stupid-speak at points for low INT characters, and changed the text of the line if your skill isn't high enough (as an example: adding [Crappy Speech] "uh... maybe... you'd be making a mistake?" vs. [Good Speech skill] "You pull that trigger on someone that's got NCR's full support, you'll be making a mistake.")
Torment's dialogue system is a scaled-down version of what was in Fallout 1, without the empathy perk and expanded alignment reactivity to compensate for D+D's alignment axis. There's not many other comparisons between Torment and Fallout aside from possibly companion depth in New Vegas and the quest solutions for different character builds, so I don't want to misrepresent either title by drawing any other comparisons between them. Torment owes a lot to Fallout, and not the other way around.
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A central town, New Vegas, with casinos, organized crime, factions struggling for power and currency, this reminds many older players of New Reno, from Fallout 2, an area you worked on. Was New Reno in fact an inspiration and did you take anything from what you liked best and lessons from what you thought was less well made in that area for New Vegas?
New Reno wasn't an inspiration at all that I know of. I hope not. Aside from the types of quests and quest solution structure for the area (which I felt was genuinely rewarding for a number of character builds), there's a lot we didn't include from New Reno (ambiance). New Vegas is a different game, and it would never have been my choice to simply re-create a location we'd done in a previous game, as there's really nothing interesting in terms of design that I can see in doing that.</blockquote>
We added more skill checks for various skills (Barter, Explosives, Sneak, Guns), displayed the success values for skill checks, added some stupid-speak at points for low INT characters, and changed the text of the line if your skill isn't high enough (as an example: adding [Crappy Speech] "uh... maybe... you'd be making a mistake?" vs. [Good Speech skill] "You pull that trigger on someone that's got NCR's full support, you'll be making a mistake.")
Torment's dialogue system is a scaled-down version of what was in Fallout 1, without the empathy perk and expanded alignment reactivity to compensate for D+D's alignment axis. There's not many other comparisons between Torment and Fallout aside from possibly companion depth in New Vegas and the quest solutions for different character builds, so I don't want to misrepresent either title by drawing any other comparisons between them. Torment owes a lot to Fallout, and not the other way around.
[..]
A central town, New Vegas, with casinos, organized crime, factions struggling for power and currency, this reminds many older players of New Reno, from Fallout 2, an area you worked on. Was New Reno in fact an inspiration and did you take anything from what you liked best and lessons from what you thought was less well made in that area for New Vegas?
New Reno wasn't an inspiration at all that I know of. I hope not. Aside from the types of quests and quest solution structure for the area (which I felt was genuinely rewarding for a number of character builds), there's a lot we didn't include from New Reno (ambiance). New Vegas is a different game, and it would never have been my choice to simply re-create a location we'd done in a previous game, as there's really nothing interesting in terms of design that I can see in doing that.</blockquote>
