We've been updating our meet the devs feature, here's something interesting quotes:<blockquote>One question for the dev that I always wondered about is what are your stances on violence, mature contents in games? Do you guys have a target audience in mind?
[Gonzalez] For those ill at ease about the possible lack of mature content in FO3, the devs have a thread on the internal forums titled "Sick S%^& You'd Like To See In the Game", which contains various uncensored depraved ideas for content / gameplay / dialog, a goodly portion of which are either already implemented or in development. Yeah, I'm not too worried about FO3 being "watered down"...
Have you visited &/or toured any nuclear missile silos, nuclear powerplants, or military bases/bunkers of any sort?
[Zeleny] I've toured a power plant or two, and I've spent time on military bases, but I haven't been in silos or bunkers personally. But I've also trekked through plenty of wild landscapes, old steam tunnels, abandoned buildings, and decrepit steel mills that have slowly been overrun by squatters and animals. Y'know, the sort of sites one might find in a post-apocalyptic area.
Have you played the VanBuren Alpha? If so, what were your feelings on it?
[Caponi] I played it a while ago. Obviously, it's pre-release software and needed a lot of work so it's pretty unfair to judge it as it is, but I'dve bought it. But then again, I payed full price for Brotherhood of Steel just because it said "Fallout" on it, so my purchase might not mean much.
Do you feel the idea of a Fallout version of BG
A was inherently bad, or just the execution for BoS?
[Caponi] A little of both. Well, a lot of both. I admit that I had not heard much about Brotherhood of Steel before is came out, but what I had heard worried me. I had apprehensions about a Gauntlet-style action game based on Fallout from the start, but even still, if the execution of the idea had turned out to be amazing, I would have never remembered the worry that I had in the beginning. As it was, the execution was less than amazing.
What are you're thoughts on being evil in games, or just not being the classic hero?
[Caponi] It depends on the game. It belongs in some, but in games where I am handed a blank slate and told to make my own choices, I absolutely want to be able to make evil ones. Or at the very least, morally ambiguous ones. I liked how morality was handled in Baldur's Gate and Planescape:Torment, where evil wasn't always presented as an obvious choice, but there were more selfish responses in the dialog that weren't always obviously evil. But, if you established a pattern of behavior, it started to affect you and push your alignment and NPC reaction in a certain direction. As far as KOTOR goes, I think that the dark/light side points worked while for the black and white morality of the Star Wars setting, but as a player, I found that having my path to evil highlighted for me wasn't as satisfying as I wanted it to be. Calling someone a jerk can add flavor and voice to my character, but it isn't evil. Calling someone a jerk, cheating them out of their life's savings and driving them to suicide is. So, if evil is a choice in a game, I prefer it to be a meaningful one.
Have you played any Troika game, for instance, Arcanum or Bloodlines, did you enjoy them?
[Caponi] I mentioned being a fan of Arcanum earlier -- I love steampunk settings. However, it seems that they almost always fail in the marketplace, which is unfortunate. It seems hard to convince the general public that magic can exist outside of medieval fantasy settings. Steampunk just may be stuck as a niche setting, I mean, even Will Smith couldn't get a big audience to buy it.
As a long time played of White Wolf games, I thought that Bloodlines was great, especially since the other games based in the World of Darkness were not go great. Unfortunately, the games tragically flawed. I think that it needed some more polish on it, but it seems that in their downward spiral, Troika just didn't have the manpower to give the game the love that it needed. But, it was good enough that I could look past the flaws. I enjoyed the dialog, character, and experience systems a lot. Combat was so-so, but it's not why I picked up the game in the first place.
It's a shame that Troika went down, I had really enjoyed the things they had done and was looking forward to what they were planning for the future. Ah well, it's a rough business, you know?</blockquote>Link: Meet the devs
[Gonzalez] For those ill at ease about the possible lack of mature content in FO3, the devs have a thread on the internal forums titled "Sick S%^& You'd Like To See In the Game", which contains various uncensored depraved ideas for content / gameplay / dialog, a goodly portion of which are either already implemented or in development. Yeah, I'm not too worried about FO3 being "watered down"...
Have you visited &/or toured any nuclear missile silos, nuclear powerplants, or military bases/bunkers of any sort?
[Zeleny] I've toured a power plant or two, and I've spent time on military bases, but I haven't been in silos or bunkers personally. But I've also trekked through plenty of wild landscapes, old steam tunnels, abandoned buildings, and decrepit steel mills that have slowly been overrun by squatters and animals. Y'know, the sort of sites one might find in a post-apocalyptic area.
Have you played the VanBuren Alpha? If so, what were your feelings on it?
[Caponi] I played it a while ago. Obviously, it's pre-release software and needed a lot of work so it's pretty unfair to judge it as it is, but I'dve bought it. But then again, I payed full price for Brotherhood of Steel just because it said "Fallout" on it, so my purchase might not mean much.
Do you feel the idea of a Fallout version of BG
A was inherently bad, or just the execution for BoS?[Caponi] A little of both. Well, a lot of both. I admit that I had not heard much about Brotherhood of Steel before is came out, but what I had heard worried me. I had apprehensions about a Gauntlet-style action game based on Fallout from the start, but even still, if the execution of the idea had turned out to be amazing, I would have never remembered the worry that I had in the beginning. As it was, the execution was less than amazing.
What are you're thoughts on being evil in games, or just not being the classic hero?
[Caponi] It depends on the game. It belongs in some, but in games where I am handed a blank slate and told to make my own choices, I absolutely want to be able to make evil ones. Or at the very least, morally ambiguous ones. I liked how morality was handled in Baldur's Gate and Planescape:Torment, where evil wasn't always presented as an obvious choice, but there were more selfish responses in the dialog that weren't always obviously evil. But, if you established a pattern of behavior, it started to affect you and push your alignment and NPC reaction in a certain direction. As far as KOTOR goes, I think that the dark/light side points worked while for the black and white morality of the Star Wars setting, but as a player, I found that having my path to evil highlighted for me wasn't as satisfying as I wanted it to be. Calling someone a jerk can add flavor and voice to my character, but it isn't evil. Calling someone a jerk, cheating them out of their life's savings and driving them to suicide is. So, if evil is a choice in a game, I prefer it to be a meaningful one.
Have you played any Troika game, for instance, Arcanum or Bloodlines, did you enjoy them?
[Caponi] I mentioned being a fan of Arcanum earlier -- I love steampunk settings. However, it seems that they almost always fail in the marketplace, which is unfortunate. It seems hard to convince the general public that magic can exist outside of medieval fantasy settings. Steampunk just may be stuck as a niche setting, I mean, even Will Smith couldn't get a big audience to buy it.
As a long time played of White Wolf games, I thought that Bloodlines was great, especially since the other games based in the World of Darkness were not go great. Unfortunately, the games tragically flawed. I think that it needed some more polish on it, but it seems that in their downward spiral, Troika just didn't have the manpower to give the game the love that it needed. But, it was good enough that I could look past the flaws. I enjoyed the dialog, character, and experience systems a lot. Combat was so-so, but it's not why I picked up the game in the first place.
It's a shame that Troika went down, I had really enjoyed the things they had done and was looking forward to what they were planning for the future. Ah well, it's a rough business, you know?</blockquote>Link: Meet the devs
