Bethesda PR man Pete Hines is touring Europe with the new demo, so expect a lot of European previews with exactly the same info as the American ones soon. Paris was hit last week, and today it was London's turn. The (pretty good) newsblog videogaming247 rushed home with their notes to type out some factoids from a quick Q&A with Pete Hines. On console:<blockquote>“The 360 is our lead development platform, so we got it working on that one first,” he said. I mean, we develop them all simultaneously, but one of them’s got to be the lead, so it was 360.”
The choice was made more by the timing of the console’s release than anything else, Hines added.
“We had a year’s head start on the 360 because it came out a year earlier, so we had final dev hardware to work with earlier on than we did with PS3,” he said. “But as this point all three of them are pretty much on par. The goal is that, if I get three versions in here and hide the console or PC and just had them running on the screen, that you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”</blockquote>On framerate:<blockquote>“Thirty frames a second is our goal, so it’s running at 30 frames a second and it’s nice and smooth,” he said, talking of the PC version.
“Yeah, that’s the goal,” he added, when asked if the 30FPS target was the same for Xbox 360 and PS3.</blockquote>On PC specs:<blockquote>“The goal is that it’s similar to what Oblivion was for its time,” he said. “So, it’s not Crysis but it’s not solitary, and hopefully it’s as scalable as possible. So if you’ve got a shit-hot machine and you’ve got all the latest video cards, and whatnot, then it’ll look amazing, but if you’ve got a standard gaming rig then it still runs good.”
In terms of a final PC spec for the game, Hines said it was still too early in the development cycle to be able to give a definite list.</blockquote>Edit in (apparently videogaming247 is a big of fragmentary coverage): On DLCs.<blockquote>“Given how successful it was for us on Oblivion, certainly it’s a given that we’ll look into it and what we’d like to do,” he said, talking of extra content for the anticipated post-apocalyptic RPG.
“But I can’t tell you when, I can’t tell you what it would be, or what it would look like. Will it be bigger stuff like Knights of the Nine or smaller stuff? We’ve no idea. We’ll let folks know once we get down the road.”</blockquote>Edit (ok they're starting to annoy me a bit now, why not just put all this in one post?): On Dogmeat.<blockquote>What happens if he dies?
“Dead,” said Hines.
Is there another dog?
“Nope. One dog. Be careful.”
Dogmeat can be sent to find ammo, food, stimpacks, and so on, but if you don’t think about what you’re doing with him he’s not going to last very long, from the sound of it.
“So obviously you have to be careful about where you send him foraging for stuff,” said Hines. “If you’re attacking a Raider camp, or something, and you’re running low on ammo and you say, ‘Go find me ammo,’ and he goes running through a bunch of Raiders, they can shoot and kill him while he tries to do what you told him. So you’ve got to be smart about where you send him off.”
Luckily, our canine friend isn’t necessary to the plot.
“It’s an homage to the original game to have a memorable dog that you can have with you, and it’s a way to give you a companion.”</blockquote>Wow, an NPC that dies and stays dead. What a friggin' novel concept.
The choice was made more by the timing of the console’s release than anything else, Hines added.
“We had a year’s head start on the 360 because it came out a year earlier, so we had final dev hardware to work with earlier on than we did with PS3,” he said. “But as this point all three of them are pretty much on par. The goal is that, if I get three versions in here and hide the console or PC and just had them running on the screen, that you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”</blockquote>On framerate:<blockquote>“Thirty frames a second is our goal, so it’s running at 30 frames a second and it’s nice and smooth,” he said, talking of the PC version.
“Yeah, that’s the goal,” he added, when asked if the 30FPS target was the same for Xbox 360 and PS3.</blockquote>On PC specs:<blockquote>“The goal is that it’s similar to what Oblivion was for its time,” he said. “So, it’s not Crysis but it’s not solitary, and hopefully it’s as scalable as possible. So if you’ve got a shit-hot machine and you’ve got all the latest video cards, and whatnot, then it’ll look amazing, but if you’ve got a standard gaming rig then it still runs good.”
In terms of a final PC spec for the game, Hines said it was still too early in the development cycle to be able to give a definite list.</blockquote>Edit in (apparently videogaming247 is a big of fragmentary coverage): On DLCs.<blockquote>“Given how successful it was for us on Oblivion, certainly it’s a given that we’ll look into it and what we’d like to do,” he said, talking of extra content for the anticipated post-apocalyptic RPG.
“But I can’t tell you when, I can’t tell you what it would be, or what it would look like. Will it be bigger stuff like Knights of the Nine or smaller stuff? We’ve no idea. We’ll let folks know once we get down the road.”</blockquote>Edit (ok they're starting to annoy me a bit now, why not just put all this in one post?): On Dogmeat.<blockquote>What happens if he dies?
“Dead,” said Hines.
Is there another dog?
“Nope. One dog. Be careful.”
Dogmeat can be sent to find ammo, food, stimpacks, and so on, but if you don’t think about what you’re doing with him he’s not going to last very long, from the sound of it.
“So obviously you have to be careful about where you send him foraging for stuff,” said Hines. “If you’re attacking a Raider camp, or something, and you’re running low on ammo and you say, ‘Go find me ammo,’ and he goes running through a bunch of Raiders, they can shoot and kill him while he tries to do what you told him. So you’ve got to be smart about where you send him off.”
Luckily, our canine friend isn’t necessary to the plot.
“It’s an homage to the original game to have a memorable dog that you can have with you, and it’s a way to give you a companion.”</blockquote>Wow, an NPC that dies and stays dead. What a friggin' novel concept.
