While posting the previews yesterday, we forgot to attach the following interviews. Apologies. Escapist has a good-sized 4-page interview with Feargus Urquhart (thanks Paul_cz).<blockquote>TE: When Bethesda was doing its rounds with Fallout 3, they talked a lot about how they weren't consulting with the original Black Isle team and how they wanted to make it their Fallout, and they weren't too concerned with the past. How has that shifted now? You guys are essentially taking responsibility for the Vegas portion and extending the original Fallout 1 & 2 storylines. How has that integration worked out?
FU: It's like thinking of a Star Wars game. We could run everything by Lucas, but there's ... all these things and - you just get to know it.
For Star Wars, that's what Chris Avellone did, he's the designer for Knights of the Old Republic 2. He literally just went and read everything. I mean everything - I mean really bad junior Jedi books. I'm like "Why are you reading that?" and he says "Well, there might be something in here."
When it comes to Fallout, and what's easy for the internal team, they have all of our design documents, they have all of our materials, they have the games, they had Chris's Fallout bible, they had all this stuff. Would it have been helpful to ask five or six questions, but that would have probably been it. With us, in working on New Vegas, we just already know it, for a lot of us it was something that we created. We still go back, because it is Bethesda's Fallout, it's not Black Isle's Fallout.
We all played Fallout 3 to death. One, because we wanted to, two, because we needed to really understand it. So we really wanted to understand what they were trying to accomplish and what their vision was. And then we followed up with questions. We haven't asked a ton, but things get run by Todd Howard all the time. The amount of conflict that has existed - like "Why can't we do this?" "Well you just can't," - it's been like four things. A lot of it has to do with that they have ideas for the future and so they just don't want us to go playing with where they see their future.
This is similar to what happened with the Star Wars stuff. One of the first things we wanted to do with KOTOR was we wanted to use Alderaan and LucasFilm came back with "No." So it's a collection of that, it's the knowing and the asking of important questions and being upfront with them about everything we're doing. We over-document everything. We're like "Here." And they're like "Stop writing."
(...)
TE: Are you ready for the inevitable mixed reaction from people expecting something they aren't going to be getting?
FU: Yeah. There's going to be a couple of fan sites that will vilify us, but that's the way it is.
But Josh has done an amazing job - he's broadly looked at everything. There's going to be a lot of fun things for people to do that are distinctly different than Fallout 3. There's always going to be "there's too much this," and "there's too little this," but in general, people are just going to have fun.</blockquote>Aye, I can imagine some Fallout 3 fans will be very upset that Obsidian is messing with their franchise.
IGN Video presents a video interview with J.E. Sawyer, in which he talks about the backstory, mechanics improvements and the reputation system, talking about the returning Brotherhood of Steel and Followers of the Apocalypse factions.
FU: It's like thinking of a Star Wars game. We could run everything by Lucas, but there's ... all these things and - you just get to know it.
For Star Wars, that's what Chris Avellone did, he's the designer for Knights of the Old Republic 2. He literally just went and read everything. I mean everything - I mean really bad junior Jedi books. I'm like "Why are you reading that?" and he says "Well, there might be something in here."
When it comes to Fallout, and what's easy for the internal team, they have all of our design documents, they have all of our materials, they have the games, they had Chris's Fallout bible, they had all this stuff. Would it have been helpful to ask five or six questions, but that would have probably been it. With us, in working on New Vegas, we just already know it, for a lot of us it was something that we created. We still go back, because it is Bethesda's Fallout, it's not Black Isle's Fallout.
We all played Fallout 3 to death. One, because we wanted to, two, because we needed to really understand it. So we really wanted to understand what they were trying to accomplish and what their vision was. And then we followed up with questions. We haven't asked a ton, but things get run by Todd Howard all the time. The amount of conflict that has existed - like "Why can't we do this?" "Well you just can't," - it's been like four things. A lot of it has to do with that they have ideas for the future and so they just don't want us to go playing with where they see their future.
This is similar to what happened with the Star Wars stuff. One of the first things we wanted to do with KOTOR was we wanted to use Alderaan and LucasFilm came back with "No." So it's a collection of that, it's the knowing and the asking of important questions and being upfront with them about everything we're doing. We over-document everything. We're like "Here." And they're like "Stop writing."
(...)
TE: Are you ready for the inevitable mixed reaction from people expecting something they aren't going to be getting?
FU: Yeah. There's going to be a couple of fan sites that will vilify us, but that's the way it is.
But Josh has done an amazing job - he's broadly looked at everything. There's going to be a lot of fun things for people to do that are distinctly different than Fallout 3. There's always going to be "there's too much this," and "there's too little this," but in general, people are just going to have fun.</blockquote>Aye, I can imagine some Fallout 3 fans will be very upset that Obsidian is messing with their franchise.
IGN Video presents a video interview with J.E. Sawyer, in which he talks about the backstory, mechanics improvements and the reputation system, talking about the returning Brotherhood of Steel and Followers of the Apocalypse factions.
