Bethesda’s Pete Hines Fallout 4 interview

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Today Metro posted an interview with Pete Hines, VP of PR and Marketing at Bethesda, giving us an interesting look at how Bethesda operates. There are several statements which I'm sure our community will find amusing so be sure to check it out. There isn't a whole lot of new information about Fallout 4 which seems to be intentional. He did speak of the differences between Fallout 1 and 2 which I thought was interesting.

Polygon also announced a book featuring concept art from Fallout 4 appropriately named The Art of Fallout 4. A limited edition version will also be available on the Bethesda store. The Art of Fallout 4 will be available for purchase December 22nd.
 
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Yeah, the interviewer noted that lack of information, too.

The comparison and discussion over placement of pop-culture references is interesting. A more subtle approach may work well, perhaps in the way you sometimes see amusing descriptions with the Look function, or the propped dinosaurs and teddies you see around. What I fear will happen is that we'll get a really blatant and unsubtle poster on someone's wall (per Hines's description of the 'walk into a house, notice thing' approach to gameplay) that just has a Bioshock reference on it or something. Better than overly scripted encounters, but...
 
Not a very interesting interview but that's more to the fact the interviewer failed to ask the right questions. Instead of picking up on the complaints of 12 year old youtuber who see nothing but "graphixxxx" giving Pete Hines the floor to shine and answer trivial questions, I wished there were more "hard" questions. Same goes for the humor, which I think is a fair question, but nevertheless a minor factor of complaint. Only part I find refreshing is that he mentioned Hines doesn't like design by committee, which is rare for a large company and a good approach, that would ultimately explain the stringency in... the absolute shit Bethesda releases haha.
 
GC: And the other issue I think is a fair complaint is the dark humour, which was a big part of the earlier games but you seem very reticent about introducing in your Fallout titles. Which can be a little dry.
PH: I think we steer a lot more towards the original Fallout and kind of use that as our bar. Because if you look at Fallout 1 and 2 they are pretty different from one another in terms of how many pop culture references and fourth wall stuff the second one does.

I think there is a fair amount of that in the game, it’s something that’s important to them and is part of the Fallout universe, but in the interests of time and so forth you only have so much you can show and show the context. Some of the stuff I’ve seen is much better served when you come across it and you’ve been playing the game for half an hour and you go in a house and you find this thing – as opposed to, ‘I set it up as this kind of canned joke’.
GC: Do you know if there was a specific push to put more humour in Fallout 4? Because the previous games could be a little dry, and that’s in contrast to the first couple which were actually very darkly comic.
PH: I’m probably not qualified to answer that in that level of detail, really.
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snip
 
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"I like what we’ve done with the dialogue system… and having played Fallout 3 again recently I keep, in Fallout 4 when I’m playing, I keep hitting the button to leave dialogue. I keep forgetting, ‘Oh, I can just walk away’. I don’t have to wait for this guy to stop talking’. And now I’m playing other stuff, where there’s dialogue and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, I wish I could just walk away’. Because I don’t have the attention span for long dialogue!"

Oh, Pete. You and the rest of the bethesda fanbase.
 
"I wish I could just walk away" uhmmm you don't know wha tthe "Goodbye" dialogue option does?Also pretty sure clicking or pressing A advances the dialogue automatically....

Definetly this is Bethesda as it most stupid "Brah!" shit, in Skyrim you could leave dialogue with a button but it serve no porpouse, it was clunky as shit too. Then again, Fallout is about killing things to 50's music with no consequences.
 
I really don't see how any Bethesda fan can straight-faced go "nuh-uh! Bethesda totally cares about the RPG part!" any longer when their PR guy or whatever the fuck Pete Hines is himself thinks that his own studio's dialogue is so shit he just wants to skip it. I mean, it's wonderful to hear the fucker say it. It's wonderful to know that this is a position he holds. It's wonderful to know that this is most likely the reason they implemented it in the first place (which means more than just the PR guy feels the same about it). It's wonderful because of the honesty of it all. To get that kind of confirmation that "yup, we can't stand our own dialogue so we just wanna skip it".

It's wonderful because how the fuck is anyone going to be able to give any kind of constructive argument against it? Their own people think their own dialogue is so bad they don't even want a part of it. And this studio is considered an "RPG Studio"? RPG studio my ass. An RPG studio would not implement a "our dialogue is so fucking dull and boring that I just want to skip it"-button.

I mean, it's awful for Fallout, but come one. Fallout's been screwed ever since the reveal of Fallout 4's E3 showcase. Some could even argue it's been screwed since Fallout 3. It's awful but it's just another awful detail about Fallout 4 and the future of Fallout, which has already been littered with awful details.

It's wonderful, and it's awful.
I love it, and I hate it.
 
Mr Fish said:
I really don't see how any Bethesda fan can straight-faced go "nuh-uh! Bethesda totally cares about the RPG part!" any longer when their PR guy or whatever the fuck Pete Hines is himself thinks that his own studio's dialogue is so shit he just wants to skip it. I mean, it's wonderful to hear the fucker say it. It's wonderful to know that this is a position he holds. It's wonderful to know that this is most likely the reason they implemented it in the first place (which means more than just the PR guy feels the same about it). It's wonderful because of the honesty of it all. To get that kind of confirmation that "yup, we can't stand our own dialogue so we just wanna skip it".

It's wonderful because how the fuck is anyone going to be able to give any kind of constructive argument against it? Their own people think their own dialogue is so bad they don't even want a part of it. And this studio is considered an "RPG Studio"? RPG studio my ass. An RPG studio would not implement a "our dialogue is so fucking dull and boring that I just want to skip it"-button.

I mean, it's awful for Fallout, but come one. Fallout's been screwed ever since the reveal of Fallout 4's E3 showcase. Some could even argue it's been screwed since Fallout 3. It's awful but it's just another awful detail about Fallout 4 and the future of Fallout, which has already been littered with awful details.

It's wonderful, and it's awful.
I love it, and I hate it.
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That's odd; I just hate it. What I hate about this prick is that he overtly has such contempt for anyone with a modicum of interest in this game, how can this misanthropic dick have such a cynical approach to game development and the shit-eating pigs we are as consumers of this derivative, hackneyed tripe that has been a cancer on a once-great videogame series since, ooh...2007? I think it can be all summed up with this bit of verbal gold

"I mean, certainly it ought to look and feel similar. If you played Fallout 3 you ought to be able to see things that are recognisable or similar or whatever. Because we didn't make a completely different game. But at the same time, when you're playing it's a mix of familiar and different "

Replace 'played Fallout 3' and 'playing' with shitting, and then 'game' with shit, and I think he's succinctly captured the essence of Bethesda's approach to making videogames.

I'm not going to buy Fallout 4 but I want to actively and incessantly complain about it regardless, because I feel truly embittered and sullen at what has become of Fallout and I hope they read this and come to their senses and hand the keys back to a more capable dev (preferably reuniting members of Interplay as an isometric RPG Justice League).

 
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SikTh said:
That's odd; I just hate it.
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Well, the reason I love it is because it is so clear cut. I don't get a whole lot of times I can point out something about Bethesda that proves they don't give a flying fuck about RPG development to someone who is a diehard Bethfan. Most of the time I have to suffice with how I interpret something or how I feel about something or what I assume something is. So the reason I love it is because I finally have something concrete I can point towards and go "You're wrong. Just look at this.".

And I obviously hate it because it is killing Fallout yada yada yada we've all talked about this crap before ad nauseam. But my complete and total loathing for Bethesda has reached a point where I just can't be bothered to be angry any more. Sure, deep down in my cold black shriveled up piece of coal pretending to be a heart I loathe them, but it's done. It's over with. Fallout is dead. No amount of rage or heartache can fix that. Nothing is going to fix this. Not until Bethesda falls apart and someone else snatches the IP, and that ain't gonna happen for a long time. Despite knowing that I have yet to be able to move on completely. Until I do, I find it glorious to be given such a delicious piece of information to throw in the face of those valiantly defending Bethesda from all criticism and point out to them that no, Bethesda does not care about RPG design cause if they did, they wouldn't have implemented a fucking button to skip dialogue.


So in short:
I don't care enough to be sad or angry about Fallout's future any more. Fallout's dead. I know it and I'm just waiting to move on. In the meantime that I haven't, I just feel happy that I have something concrete to throw in the faces of those defending Bethesda. I'll always have Fallout 1/2/T/NV to return to if I want a Fallout fix.

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Or well, I do care sometimes, my cold black shriveled up piece of coal pretending to be a heart has to beat sometime and when it does it gives me a little burst of passion for my loathing and I'll go on a rant about Bethesda. But most of the time I just don't care any more.
 
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I don't even get why this "leave dialogue at any time" """"""feature"""""" is even usefull for? Like they keep talking about it in every promotional material, but they have failed to give it any use beyond "So you can just shoot them in the hedz", like, that's something you could do before, pick Goodbye or the "<attack>" options and you would end dialogue and shootthem in the head. Seriously, what does it even do? What is gained from it?
 
Yeah, that too. What use is to promote the "You can just shoot them" if it's obvious a lot of them are immortal npcs anyway.... Also it's not like you couldn't just shoot people in ALL previous Fallouts. Why are they treating it as a new feature?
 
Walpknut said:
Yeah, that too. What use is to promote the "You can just shoot them" if it's obvious a lot of them are immortal npcs anyway.... Also it's not like you couldn't just shoot people in ALL previous Fallouts. Why are they treating it as a new feature?
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Cause it's Bethesda, and Bethesda are innovative. Haven't you heard?

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As to the concept art, I don't really care much at all for concept art. The only time I've cared about it is when Obsidian showed off theirs for Legion. I mean, we got so little Legion lore in the game that I basically want to take any piece I'll get to expand on some Legion lore, even if that means using concept art. But most of the time concept art isn't representative of the finished product so it's like "here's a piece someone worked their ass off for and now you can compare how much we failed to represent that in the game."

Fuck man, I draw, I ain't that good but I draw and if I were to be hired as a concept artist it'd bum me out that after all the work I slave my ass for barely any of it is truly represented in the game or film or whatever I'm doing concept art for. Sure, they use it as a template and part of my work makes it into the final product but still. All that work and they can't even bother to represent it. It'd feel like such a waste.

So a book that showcases the difference in intention and final outcome? It'd just get on my tits really. Concept art often looks better than the final product anyway.
 
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Does it actually have an effect on character interaction at all, this walking away business? Or is it akin to mashing the 'skip' button? If it actually elicits a unique response depending on what point you do it, then it would be quite an interesting feature, but I think it's far more likely they just want you to skip through whatever embarrassing, hyper-retconning verbal diarrhoea is spewing from the character's mouth. God forbid someone actually catch on to what these charlatans are trying to pedal as an engrossing and engaging open world game....HA! :yuck:
 
Skyrim had that too, it did nothing, it actually bugged some dialogue out if you did it. Gotta love those Bethesda features.
 
SikTh said:
Does it actually have an effect on character interaction at all, this walking away business? Or is it akin to mashing the 'skip' button? If it actually elicits a unique response depending on what point you do it, then it would be quite an interesting feature, but I think it's far more likely they just want you to skip through whatever embarrassing, hyper-retconning verbal diarrhoea is spewing from the character's mouth. God forbid someone actually catch on to what these charlatans are trying to pedal as an engrossing and engaging open world game....HA! :yuck:
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If they're talking about what is essentially what they did in Skyrim then no, it won't really do anything. The NPC, if you quit at the beginning of a long line, will keep talking while you move further and further away until you can't even hear him/her any longer.
 
I'm glad NMA has responded appropriately. Carry on troops. :grin:

Bethesda finally gave us a reason to hate them more. When you would rather listen to the story in a bland cinematic action game, as opposed to a REAL RPG, then you fucked up. Skipping dialog is the best thing they have to say about dialog, aside from having voice acting to make the crap dialog stand out more. What a fucking joke. I wish the game would get middling reviews but I have no doubt it will perform well. I love how the Fallout audience is looked at as a bunch of mutated retards now, who swallow up whatever jizz Bethesda ejaculates at them.
 
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