Arcade has some long and complex lines and Zach usually knocked them out in one take with little to no outside direction. It seems like energy weapons got a lot of love in New Vegas, especially after the patch changing how their ammo worked. Was that a deliberate decision, or just kind of flowed from changes you were making to the weapons in general? Energy Weapons, especially in the low- and mid-range, were lacking prior to the last patch.
The ammo and weapon modifications were to address general dissatisfaction with the EWs as a whole. Not sure if this has been asked before, but do fans or other people sometimes send you their game concepts and ideas? Do you enjoy reading them? They sometimes do, but they shouldn't. Anything submitted to us or pretty much any company effectively becomes ours.
If you have a cool idea for a game, keep it to yourself or make it on your own. Game developers have no shortage of ideas for games coming from publishers and less commonly from within the company. Projecting the scope of the world eighteen months ahead of release.
It's difficult to get a sense of how large the world is when you can only look at a few pieces at a time, especially since the technology base was entirely new to us. But once we had established a world scale that seemed reasonable, we really had to stick to it.
The scope determined the pace that we had to work at, which became marathon-like after a few milestones. I just would like to say I really enjoyed playing Fallou New Vegas. You did a very good job!!
I'd just like to congratulate you and the team at Obsidian for the RPG of the year awards and other awards you guys won for New vegas. What's the premise for Caesar's Legion being so sexist, esp. Is it just breeding issues? Breeding issues are pretty huge in cultures that took a big step back from infant mortality progress made in the last years. Those are pretty awful odds of reaching adulthood. Remember that Caesar's Legion is basically a roving army that continually breaks down and absorbs tribes that it conquers.
That can only go on for so long, and Legionaries who are indoctrinated from birth are even more loyal than adolescents who are integrated. Breeding new generations of Legionaries is vital for the Legion's continued existence.
Even though breeding is incredibly important in the Legion, there isn't any concept of family outside of the Legion's structure. All of the places where the player encounters the Legion are forward camps where direct military service is given the most weight and is of the most immediate importance.
Because only males are involved in that service, they look down upon females even though it's incredibly short-sighted. What's up with these bitchin' classical tracks in the new vegas music folders? The SW wiki site says that Mandalore the Ultimate was killed by Revan during the Mandalorian Wars and was then succeeded by Mandalore the Lesser who was also later killed.
But Bioware's timeline trailers say that Lesser was killed by Ultimate! What happen. I have read that you were in a production of Assassins. Is this true? If so, which assassin did you play? Okay, whose idea was the Wrecked Highwayman? F-in awesome nostalgic moment, even made me start replaying Fallout 2 again. The last time Lee was dreamy was probably 20 years prior to Appomattox. What was the reason behind rechambering the Varmint Rifle from 22s to s before the release? Given its slow rate of fire, the low DAM of the weapon was irritating to people despite the weapon's high accuracy.
I didn't want to have one. It also gives the player the option of using. How do you feel about how Boone turned out? At face value, a reticent, repentant sniper with a death-wish seems like a pretty troperiffic character, but he never strikes me as completely cliched. Do you feel you still could have expanded his character?
I think Eric Fenstermaker did a great job making Boone's arc feel complete. If anything, like Arcade, Boone suffers a bit from "too reticent" syndrome; i. It does fit his character well, though. So, here's my first question : I think it's important for a Game Designer to think of the game's feeling, before doing anything else.
In your opinion, what are the "feelings" a player should have when playing a Fallout game? Especially in a tabletop game, I think the feelings depend greatly on the type of players and GM. In a CRPG, designers ultimately are crafting experiences for a large audiences. Whether it acts as a major or minor theme in any given storyline, I believe it's central making the world feel as it does. Was there any vault to protect the country from the bombing?
I think it's a bit presumptuous of me and unfair to other designers who may be working on the world in the future. You grew up in the midwest, would you have any inkling to do anything with that area? Yes, I would enjoy developing a Fallout game in the Midwest.
Hey josh I was wondering how you guys decided on cutting back on the amount of unique guns. I don't think we ever actually cut back on the number of unique guns.
I only allocated a specific number of unique guns to be made for logistics reasons. I thought it was important for every unique weapon to have at least a unique texture, which meant that not every base weapon could have a unique variant. Ran out of room with the recoil question. But I was also curious why the Weaver stance was chosen for each handgun?
Or was it just re-used from Fallout 3? Fallout 3 used what is colloquially called a "teacup" grip with an arm position that is similar to Weaver Stance and the support hand below the magwell. F:NV's 1H pistol grips were changed to a more traditional Weaver grip where the support hand wraps around the dominant hand. Among other things, this allowed us to build extended magazines into weapons like the 9mm Pistol without having the mag penetrate the support hand.
Was realistic recoil implemented into some firearms? It seems like some firearms in game have adequate recoil for their real world counterparts. The BHP seems adequate enough.
However, others definitely have less like the Anti-Materiel. First, F3 and F:NV do not model recoil. Weapons have fixed spread values that can increase based on things like limb condition, running, etc. The speed with which you fire a weapon in F3 and F:NV has no effect on its spread.
The 9mm Pistol is a single-action short-recoil semi-auto pistol, so the operator has more than enough time to pull the trigger while recoil from the previous round is still significantly affecting the gun. So the 9mm Pistol has a high RoF but it also has some spread. In contrast, the AMR is a bolt-action rifle with the equivalent of a. The recoil effectively makes the rate of fire colossally slow, but when you fire it, it's very accurate.
How'd you feel about the hacking mini-game Bethesda designed? Was it because it wasn't received as well as the lock-picking mini-game that you guys decided to massively dial back its prominence and importance?
There was no intentional downscaling of the importance of hacking, but we did intentionally avoid doubling up locks with an optional hacking unlock. That was much more common in F3. I observed the following things regularly:.
When people knew these things, they seemed to enjoy the hacking minigame much more, for obvious reasons. I'm playing a tiefling cunning bard in a Dark Sun campaign right now, but my main character is a human warden in the Scales of War campaign.
The more I play 4th Edition, the more I like it, but I've only ever played in heroic tier. I really enjoyed the "mid-level" play 6th to 15th in 3. So far I like the low-level game in 4E more, but I need to see how paragon and beyond pans out. Will it raise my Coolness Quotient significantly enough with the ladies? My R32 is a really good car, but it's still a Mk. IV Golf with all of the problems that brings e. Everything I've read about the Golf R has been good. It still uses a Haldex AWD setup, but oh well.
It's factory turbocharged, which makes modding for power easy if you like that sort of thing and the U. Performance-wise, it's a significant step up from the Golf R. But the STi is a really great hatchback. Why do I feel like New Vegas has so much wasted space?
One of the examples I can think of is traveling north to the Trading post. The whole left side of the road is just sand and ants. You probably feel that way because the Mojave Wasteland is much flatter than the Capital Wasteland. The density of locations is pretty similar to F3. Is there a reason you wrote so many lines for Kris Kristofferson? One of the best parts in NV is shooting the shit with him and Caesar, who is played like a very literate college football coach.
I just thought it made sense for the character. He's old by NCR military standards and he's been relegated to the back lines relatively-speaking , so he's more than happy to talk to someone outside of the military about his past and his opinions on what's currently happening. Christine in particular stands out as an excellently-written and developed character.
Did you consider adding vehicles? It really wouldn't matter that it was unrealistic just give them some sci-fi power source , because it would make the game so much more fun. You need more radio stations too.
I never seriously considered adding vehicles. To do it "right" would have been a huge undertaking. Why was the stealth effect removed from the Chinese stealth suits? Was it just that it made sneaking too easy? What do you think about Extra Credits? I like everything about it except for the "HA!
The actual content is good. Up until high school I wanted to be a fantasy illustrator and that's what I put most of my effort toward. In late middle school I started performing more in theatre and choir and that's eventually what I went to school for at the Lawrence Conservatory in Appleton, Wisconsin.
I was a bad student overall at Lawrence but I was worst as a music student. I switched over to the college with a history major, though I didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted to do.
I taught myself web design while I was in school, and that's what got me my job at Black Isle in Until that job, I had thought that it would be great to be a tabletop RPG designer, but I had no real plan for how to go about it. I eventually got a chance to do development work on the original Icewind Dale and I ran with it from there. They were developed primarily because they could be made on a compressed schedule and because they filled a different niche than the Baldur's Gate games.
I loved Alpha Protocol despite its shortcomings. What was your input on it? Does Obsidian have any plans for a game with a similar degree of reactivity? What's your thoughts on Cannabis? I just guessed you're the sort of guy who grows his own and smokes it, never have been good at that though. The only drug I use is caffeine, but I'd much rather be around people high on pot than people drunk on alcohol.
I think it should be decriminalized in a sensible manner. Can you explain the concept of the picture in that link under your name? Dogs look cute though. Diogenes of Sinope lived in a tub and among many other things thought that dogs in many ways behaved better than humans. He was also known as Diogenes "the Cynic", with the word "cynic" being derived from???????
A legend about Diogenes involved him running around the streets during the day with a lantern searching for an "honest man" he never found one. Given your feelings on human behavior do you think you could take the lead on a game that emphasizes optimism and the beauty of the human spirit? I've always wondered how and if creators could make a work that emphasizes ideals contrary to theirs. I think individuals can be good and do good work in spite of the circumstances surrounding them, but I think the societies most of us live in are generally blundering, ignorant, and destructive.
Our population also continues to grow at an insane rate, which, if you think about our per capita consumption of resources, is probably more singularly devastating than any individual behavior in which we partake. If you live in an industrialized, consumption-based society, I can't think of any socially-celebrated act that causes more environmental destruction than creating more human life.
I just played through Alpha Protocol, the writing is exceptional. NV's writing is strong comparatively to F3's, but AP's just blows that away. Any crossover there? NV's writing can be patronizingly videogame-like here and there, is it just the premise? I think the differences can most likely be chalked up to F:NV's volume of characters and lines, dialogue structure, and the development timeline. Why hasn't new vegas gotten any praise for its sound design?
I can't count how many times I tripped out because a water tower groaned overhead or one of those little dinosaurs roared as I walked by. But I think F:NV's audio team did a great job.
I realise that the NCR had a much more firm grasp on the Mojave Desert, but why did you drastically limit Legion quests and leave out Legion characters? I find then extremely interesting and would've loved more content. Though New Vegas had much less scope reduction than many of the other projects I've worked on, it still had areas and characters e. Ulysses that didn't make it to the shipped product. I would have liked for the Legion to have more locations, characters, and quests of their own.
Will there be any changes to weapon damages, spread and so forth in the next update? What about more random encounters? Given that populations are projected to decline in many developed nations - with many more only staying at replacement rate due to immigrants which tend to reproduce at a higher rate than natives , your concerns about population growth seem ill-founded.
Is the Automatic Rifle gonna be tuned up for the patch? I love the BAR and it's a great weapon, but it was pretty useless. That squeaky video got me thinking. He says New Vegas doesn't have an opening act, but isn't it the parts between getting shot and the strip?
It gets you used to the setting's normal and The Courier's normal and the problem gets posed at the Strip. Well, he's incorrect about the Courier; you absolutely do not have amnesia. There is no point at which you are unable to remember aspects of your past and, more importantly, outside of being a courier in the wrong place at the wrong time, your past is considered irrelevant to how you move forward in the story. Whether it's due to immigration or native reproduction, the most consumptive developed nation, the United States, continues to show population growth.
And what about developing nations that are continuing to rise in consumption as their populations increase? Short of accounting for a worldwide pandemic, I have never seen a projection of global human population growth that is anything but enormous over the next 40 years.
The fear that a smaller, younger population will have to care for a marginally larger, older population seems so insanely trivial compared to the environmental impact of continuing to grow the general population. But as long as the children of the 22nd century enjoy living in a world that looks like the end of The Lorax, I'm sure it will be fine. All three plots follow this basic structure:. The "catastrophic event" or circumstance bad water chip, drought, shot in head is already in place when the stories start.
You say that the Courier's past is irrelevant to the story, but yet there are hints that a future DLC will deal with the Courier's past with the other Courier. Do you think that would result in a disconnect with the player?
Mine, but it's just the P94 Plasma Rifle from the original Fallout, so I can't take any real credit for it. Paul Fish modeled and textured it. So now that New Vegas has come and gone, so to speak, do you go back to being a nobody? Not trying to be mean. Did you considered during development, the posibility of nto only weapon mods, but also armor mods thign like reinforcing the jumpsuit yourself with speial parts, etc? Was the possibility of crating weapons or armors considered?
You could do that in Fallout 3 weapon schematics but not in New Vegas, and quite a lot of mod add that. I think it's more useful to allow the player to create consumables than standard weapons and armor. The Mojave Wasteland is also filled to the brim with effective weaponry. Recipes to create a new type of slugthrower don't seem as appropriate when there are more than a few guys walking around with Anti-Materiel Rifles and Light Machine Guns.
Who in particular comes up with the indivual stories for each vault? Chris Avellone? The whole team? Obviously some have movie inspirations. But others seem just.. I wrote the basic concepts for F:NV's vaults but individual designers fully fleshed the concepts out and implemented them.
Vault Jorge Salgado. What does someone in your position at a game company do during downtime between projects assuming such a thing exists? There usually isn't downtime, though there might be a period of less work. Our development cycles are usually staggered, so often when devs roll off of one game they might roll on to another game that is in alpha. For someone in my position, specifically, I start working on new project pitches and going out with Feargus to talk to publishers.
Not really. Though there are grenade machine guns in real life, they are usually mounted on a vehicle or set up at a fixed position. Do you feel "Vaults" are becoming too common in the Fallout universe? Are they necessary for the game or do they just replace the generic "dungeon" of other RPGs? I don't know if they are "necessary", but I don't think it's bad to have them unless designers stop making them interesting.
I think all of the vaults in F:NV had different ideas that went into them and very different ways for playing through them.
Why were some of the "cowboy guns" chambered in. It just seems more appropriate to have "cowboy guns" chambered in something closer to the time of the frontier. Because then they'd be as terrible as cowboy guns from that era. Lever-actions in. There are a bunch of. Henry and Marlin make. When picking new base ammunition types for F:NV, I tried to avoid ammunition types that are oddballs.
A lot of "non-gun" people have a general idea of what. It was a good rimmed cartridge to be a step down from. Given the common use of. So in North America, consumption of Beef has fallen by one third per capita in since However, production of beef has shifted significantly towards less sustainable production.
If we take beef as a case study in meat, is the overall outlook good? And although beef production is very conspicuous in its environmental impact, the move away from beef since may due to a shift to other meats like pork and chicken, the factory production of which still has a lot of problems. As a society, we still consume a pretty huge amount of "meat" including fish and poultry considering what people lived on prior to the 20th century.
A lot of Americans consume meat with two out of three meals, some with every meal. Even if you believe that humans need meat to have a balanced diet, we certainly don't need as much as we consume. What are your personal feelings on the place of "wacky" content i. Wild Wasteland in the Fallout universe? They belong in a place where people who really hate them don't have to see them, i.
I critique games on being well-executed or poorly-executed and how well they meet the expectations of their intended audiences. After doing this for almost 12 years, my personal feelings barely come into the equation. Who created and designed Legate Lanius, and why there are so many inconsistencies in his background s and his actual appearance?
Like him being a legionnaire since 12 in one story, having his face destroyed in-game he's OK in another, and so on. What's your view on the pip-boy quest marker, I found it was over used, I didn't mind when it directed me to a well known building but I didn't like it when it pointed me to the long lost items that the BOS had been looking for, made it a bit easy IMO.
For something like "find a thing" or "look around this area and talk to people", the quest marker would need to have an optional radius or trigger volume so players understand the boundaries of where they are supposed to look. Assassin's Creed 2 does this very well, alternating regularly between "go right here" and "go to this area".
Like FO3, NV gives the player too many items, making the game too easy and ruining the survival feel, imo. In the original games, finding, say, a new gun was a big event.
Did you guys ever consider this a problem and try to fix it? What's your view on it? The original games threw a bunch of loot at you as well. You upgraded weapons less often, but I think that has more to do with the large steps between weapon tiers and the small number of distinct weapons and armor types.
F1 and F2 did hold back more on specific types of loot: even though dudes are walking around the Hub in Combat Armor, you can't take that from their dead bodies. But at about the time you deal with the Khans for Aradesh, armed humans start dropping a fair amount of loot.
Ghouls and some other creature types are heavily melee-oriented, so often they drop little to no loot. Sure, but the difference is not extreme, IMO. There were only a few points in either game where I felt that resource scarcity was an issue. Isn't it a bit counterintuitive to set a game which has a whole difficulty mode focused on survival in one of the most advanced regions of the setting? You hardly eve feel like you're strugglin' to survive in NV.
You also hardly ever feel like you're struggling to survive in F1 and F2. The point of Hardcore Mode was to introduce a game mode that changed the combat and inventory mechanics in a way that added another layer of challenge to the base game. Even with Hardcore Mode, the game isn't exactly Das Schwarze Auge-level difficulty, but it's a step up. When you guys were making New Vegas, did you ever get in contact with the series creators to see what they thought of it and get advice from them?
I sent Tim Cain and Colin McComb a few messages asking to clarify something that either wasn't clear or to ask them what their intention was when doing certain things.
There were also some times where I had to walk a whopping fifteen feet to ask ScottE something about how the maps were laid out or what certain prop details were in the original games. So will there be another "anchorage" type of dlc cause it be cool to see more pre-war tech like the M1 garand so maybe a vegas detective file that has been put it a virtual world and u need the pimp-boy 3billion to start it and there's alot of s guns. You answer questions in German?
Sind deutsche Autos in den USA cool? Deutsches Autos in den USA sind toll, aber teuer. I find it interesting that your very livelihood is financed by this consumption based society. How can you look down your nose at it but still profit from it. It's like saying, "I hate that my wife's a prostitute, but I like the money. The material impact of video games is fairly low, as are individual rates of consumption for the majority of people, anyway.
The more video games move toward full digital distribution, the smaller their environmental impact should become. Video games do require a lot of electricity to both make and play, which does have a negative impact and is perhaps the most difficult thing to reconcile. I try to make games that are enjoyable but not addictive. I want people to be able to pick them up, put them down when they have something more important to do which should be almost anything , and eventually stop playing entirely.
I've attempted to find other occupations into which I could go, but most of them require going back to school for two or four years. I do not have any marketable talents or vocational training outside of what I have learned in the game industry -- very little of which is applicable outside.
Whether I'm good or bad at it, video game development is the only place where I can make a wage that allows me to fulfill financial obligations to people who depend on me. A true believer in minimalist consumption would sacrifice everything for the principle of it, but I'm not That Guy. If you sacrificed your comparatively trivial interpersonal relationships in pursuit of an abstract ideal such as stoic minimalism you would not be forced into a profession that conflicts with your beliefs.
As is stands your lifestyle constrains you. I'm not trying to be rude but reading a lot of your answers regarding game development, it seems like you're just going through the motions and are not very passionate about your work. Have I misinterpreted? It's more than going through the motions, but it is relatively dispassionate.
The things I make don't belong to me, they aren't made for me, they aren't made on my own timetable, and I don't have much, if any, control over when they are released. I make things to fit into boxes that are put in front of me. At any point in time that box can be changed, moved around, pulled away, or removed entirely -- sometimes because I screwed up, and sometimes for reasons that have nothing to do with me.
It's hard to find good reasons to invest a lot of myself in something like that, especially when there are personal interests for me to pursue outside of my job. Sounds like you're not happy with your job or maybe even your life. Have you considered making changes? And no, I'm trying to be mean.
You just seem unhappy from the answers I just read. I've looked at other professions, but I'm not really qualified to do anything else, and certainly nothing that would do a better job at fulfilling creative and financial goals.
There are too many important things in life for me to be seriously upset about the amount of creative ownership I have in my paying job making video games. You can do whatever you want in life as long as you don't expect anyone to thank, praise, or pay you for it. If you want thanks, praise, or money, you probably aren't going to get to do what you want -- or if you do get to do what you want, you probably aren't going to get to do it the way that you want or when you want to do it.
I've grown up around and lived with professional freelance artists my whole life. You know what consistently makes them unhappy? Not being able to pay rent. For most people, there are always trade-offs. That is great. I am not one of those people, but I am very happy that at least I get to do something I like and get paid for it.
Some people have to perform dangerous physical labor and get paid virtually nothing for it. Some people pour their hearts into creations that go unrewarded.
Some people are willing to do almost anything and no one will hire them. I don't have to deal with any of that other than my self-imposed financial obligations to others.
To be upset that my life is not more dreamlike and pampered than it already is would be absurd. Why did you say you want people to eventually stop playing your games entirely? And why are you making RPGs if that's the case, since they're usually lengthy games and made with replayability in mind?
Because there is a world outside that is awesome and terrible and people should engage it most of the time instead of continually retreating from it. RPGs are long and can have a lot of content, but they don't encourage you sit and play them incessantly. They don't demand that you play them multiple times. And if you do play them multiple times, there's nothing that says you have to do back to back playthroughs.
Replayability is a side-effect of non-linear quest design and supporting role-playing in general, not a goal in itself. Many MMOs are designed to be addictive and actively encourage players to play incessantly -- or close to it. A lot of social games encourage players to play the game at regular intervals.
I don't like that. I don't want to make games that cause people to deprioritize other aspects of their lives. Your last few answers make me think you need to go the Jeff Vogel route and make games you are passionate about that are entirely yours for niche audiences.
Obviously he makes a living. Even Jeff Vogel recognizes that being an independent developer can be extremely difficult. He also transitioned directly from grad school to making games, i.
Game developers currently in the employ of a company don't own the rights to the things they make, so that sort of transition isn't possible unless you're willing to stop working in the professional game industry entirely before starting your own thing.
If I were to work alone, I would have to learn to program. That's outside of my skill set, and if it were in my skill set, I would have many more potential career opportunities than making games. That's a small amount of skill set and a much larger amount of practical vocational experience. It doesn't transfer well into other careers, not even into an independent one-man game development show. What other professions have you looked at?
Honestly, you seem intelligent enough to be able to pick up just about any profession and excel at it. I understand wanting security, but it can come with the regret of "what if? Vocational experience is extremely important in almost any field, arguably more important than "natural talent" or intelligence.
I don't have any "what if" regrets because a that's dumb as hell and b I've already had more success and fun in 12 years of game development than most people will have in a lifetime of jobs. I know I'm ruining some visions of game development as this Real Genius-esque environment where passionate imagineers in wacky goggles chuck dry ice around and re-assemble cars in offices as pranks, but there is a pretty big gulf between that and, say, mining coal for thirty years and dying of pneumoconiosis.
Artists who work in movies often have less creative freedom and are generally paid more than those who work in games. Creative occupations fall at various points on a sliding scale between full creative control and big bucks.
I don't have complete creative control, nor much control over logistics, but I'm paid far beyond my practical value to society at large and I still have a healthy amount of freedom in what I do. A group of guys made the original Fallout at Interplay, but it belonged to Interplay, not them. Bethesda bought the rights from Interplay and Bethesda internal developed Fallout 3. Where will the Fallout license go next? Beats me. Intellectual properties are just that: properties.
In the hearts and minds of gamers, they might "rightfully" belong with certain parties, but in a court of law, it's a much different story. Developers do work for hire and, short of independent operations like Jeff Vogel's, that's pretty much how it goes. I think you missed the point of an earlier post. Why do you impose financial obligations to others upon yourself? Is that more important to you than pursuing your other beliefs? Isolating yourself would be a good first step towards your professed ideal.
Yes, paying the mortgage on the house my parents live in is more important to me than ending my career in an industry with relatively low environmental impact so I can live the life of an ascetic hermit doing something I have little to no skill at.
Count me out of the fourth wave RAF. How can you expect anyone else to make the necessary changes to save the world when everyone can come up with lame excuses why it would just be too hard to change?
Founded in November , Formspring give people a fun, new way to find out more about each other. Creator, Ade Olonoh from Indianapolis focused on making Formspring a simple and interesting way to ask and answer people's question, just like a quick conversation. It doesn't matter if you are a regular person like me or a famous blogger, artist or celebrities, Formspring is open to everyone.
You can ask anyone just about anything. Of course the person being ask has the option whether to answer or just dismiss your questions.
Besides asking questions and answering them, you can also anonymously follow any Formspring member whom you would like to learn more about and by doing that their answers will show up in your home page. All you have to do is just write your question and select whom you want to send it to. Also formspring. So, you can easily publish and share your answers on any of these sites and can also link up your account with them, so that more of your friends and contacts can ask you questions or learn more about you.
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