In the continuing community corner feature, Briosafreak is interviewing heads of the community. Next up: Per Jorner:<blockquote>You are also known to be an expert on Wasteland, the old Interplay game that inspired Fallout. Any take on what Bethesda could get from wasteland? An homage here and there or is there something more they could learn from it?
Two things come to mind. The first one, and the one I guess they’re least likely to pursue, is the importance of words. One example of how Fallout used this legacy to good effect is the combat taunts and messages, where people would say “I’ll gut you like a lobster” or something similarly witty as they took pot-shots at you, or the message window would say “The huge creature goes down in a shower of blood” when you got in a particularly devastating hit. Another is the scenery descriptions, where hovering your mouse over anything from weeds to fire hydrants would yield a hundred little mood setters. I think it is a mistake to think of these things as redundancies. Show me a soda can a thousand pixels high and it’s still just a soda can. Toss in some funky quip and you can add a dimension to my perception of the can that goes beyond the pixel count, and more importantly separates your soda can from those in the next game. Ironically, as games move away from words in favour of visuals, in a way they become less evocative, less characteristic, less memorable.
The other thing is that Wasteland was oftentimes over-the-top in a way that Fallout wasn’t and Fallout 2 only began to approach. In Wasteland, descriptions were vivid, pulpy, and unapologetic. Since the graphics were relatively abstract and constant, they could represent a wide range of goings-on. Fallout had the gory deaths, but the world was fairly low-key, locations were cramped and the engine didn’t really leave room for any swashbuckling antics or giant robots taking up half the screen. I think this is the aspect of Wasteland that Bethesda reasonably _could_ draw on in various ways, which is a bit ironic, since Fallout took another path.</blockquote>Link: Community Corner: Per.
Two things come to mind. The first one, and the one I guess they’re least likely to pursue, is the importance of words. One example of how Fallout used this legacy to good effect is the combat taunts and messages, where people would say “I’ll gut you like a lobster” or something similarly witty as they took pot-shots at you, or the message window would say “The huge creature goes down in a shower of blood” when you got in a particularly devastating hit. Another is the scenery descriptions, where hovering your mouse over anything from weeds to fire hydrants would yield a hundred little mood setters. I think it is a mistake to think of these things as redundancies. Show me a soda can a thousand pixels high and it’s still just a soda can. Toss in some funky quip and you can add a dimension to my perception of the can that goes beyond the pixel count, and more importantly separates your soda can from those in the next game. Ironically, as games move away from words in favour of visuals, in a way they become less evocative, less characteristic, less memorable.
The other thing is that Wasteland was oftentimes over-the-top in a way that Fallout wasn’t and Fallout 2 only began to approach. In Wasteland, descriptions were vivid, pulpy, and unapologetic. Since the graphics were relatively abstract and constant, they could represent a wide range of goings-on. Fallout had the gory deaths, but the world was fairly low-key, locations were cramped and the engine didn’t really leave room for any swashbuckling antics or giant robots taking up half the screen. I think this is the aspect of Wasteland that Bethesda reasonably _could_ draw on in various ways, which is a bit ironic, since Fallout took another path.</blockquote>Link: Community Corner: Per.
