It took a bit, but with thanks to Ausir we have another Fallout dev to add to our regular old Hall of Fame: Jesse Heinig, who the sharpest ones amongst us will remember as being mentioned by Chris Taylor as one of the three designers of SPECIAL (together with Tim Cain and Taylor himself). A programmer and a designer, he is also - go figure - a verbose individual.<blockquote>Pop Culture played a big role in Fallout, what pop culture influences you?
I really enjoy thoughtful science fiction. Badly-done SF is like pop culture junk food; it's entertaining but empty. Well-done SF is more akin to literature with scientific underpinnings. For this reason I really wanted my contributions to Fallout to make sense in the context of the world, so I leaned on science fiction pop culture that spoke about artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and the (re)discovery of technology. Though Fallout 1 had far less pop culture references than its immediate successor, there were certainly influences there. Some were just meant to be tongue-in-cheek; there's a note in the Glow, for instance, that is presumably an exchange between Mulder and Scully regarding the alien corpse in one of the tanks there. Conversely, the idea of ZAX - a benevolent AI - is more in line with, say 2010 and the notion of intelligent computers as partners for humanity's explorations instead of as enemies or threats.
I like the Mad Max movies, Star Trek and Star Wars as much as the next sci-fi gaming guy, but I also think that sometimes the "pop" part of pop culture does a disservice to good SF. When fans complain about movie studios "ruining" a given graphic novel or book in a movie adaptation, oftentimes they're really griping about the fact that the studios have changed fundamental elements or conflicts in the story just to appease the mass audience. If you sell to the mass audience, you're selling to the lowest common denominator, and that doesn't have a very high threshold for science fiction, which often presumes some actual scientific understanding on the part of the reader/viewer.
(...)
What is your hope for future Fallout games? Would you like to be a part of a future Fo team?
I've played Fallout 3 and I enjoy it quite a bit. I think that Bethesda made a great game and they did an excellent job of paying homage to the Fallout continuity while bringing some fresh, new ideas to the table. I think that what I would like to see in a future Fallout is the same as addressing my only real issue with the game: All of the old familiar elements of the Fallout world migrated to the east coast, so we have the Enclave, the super mutants, the Brotherhood of Steel; I'd like to see more new groups, more power factions and societies that have sprung up in a big way. I get the feeling from Fo3 that there's a sort of "power vacuum" in the east and that these groups moved out there to fill that hole, but this is probably not the way things are going everywhere. I bet there are other big groups out and about making their mark on the wastelands, some of whom may have crossed swords with the existing power blocs, others who have never heard of 'em. (See Caesar's Legions in the design docs for Van Buren - a large, organized power group that runs the show in a particular area of territory.) I'm glad to see the BoS and the super mutants and the centaurs and whatnot, but I don't have to see all of the old groups to know that it's Fallout. I guess we don't have Followers of the Apocalypse in Fo3, though. Most of the new power groups in Fo3 are relatively local in the game, such as Rivet City (which is a thriving metropolis, but it does not try to project its power across the Capital Wasteland) or the Temple of the Union (which is an awesome idea but I get the sense that they're very "new" and not super influential). Anyway, for future Fallout games, I hope that Bethesda (and Interplay, on V13 - assuming it is in fact Fallout Online, 'cause I'm not in a position to confirm anything) continues to look at the franchise with a critical eye and say "How can we tell interesting stories in the same vein established previously for Fallout?" I'm really looking forward to the downloadable content. I really want to see the Pitt.
I'm sure that Bethesda has a ton of really talented and experienced people on their Fo design team already, but if they offered me a shot at working on Fallout again, I probably wouldn't say no!
(...)
In your opinion, what are the key ingredients that every RPG should have?
An RPG is a role-playing game, so you are playing a role - that is, you are making choices about the protagonist. In some RPGs the only choice you make is which stat to increase when you level up. A good RPG, I feel, gives you more meaty choices. To do that, you must do three things:
1. Establish a setting with versimilitude. It doesn't have to be a simulation of reality, but it needs to have enough internal consistency that the player buys into it. Then the player can feel "grounded."
2. Create groups or individuals about whom the player has a sense of investment. In Fo3, you are trying to find your father, and since the entire tutorial section has interactions with your dad, this establishes a tie and a sense of character investment. In Fo1 you are trying to save your entire vault, and later humanity. In Planescape: Torment, you are just trying to figure out who the hell you are. All of these games put you in situations where you make connections with people - or even with just your own protagonist - so you have a sense of investment in what's going on. Your choices matter because their outcomes affect the people that you, the player, have come to know and perhaps care about. Sure, they're ultimately just pictures on a computer screen, but if you even paused for a second and thought about whether it was all right to steal from Killian, or to swipe the water chip from the ghouls, or if you cheered when your character killed the Overseer, you just felt investment in the game.
3. Give the player choices that impact that setting and that investment. The "slideshow" at the end of Fo1 (and now at the end of many an RPG) gives you a sense of closure. It shows you that your actions mattered and that you actually made things happen. Similarly, when you have a choice between helping two good people (but you can only help one of them) or having to work with bad people to fulfill your goals (people who would normally be your enemy, but you can't kill 'em 'cause you need 'em), this creates a real conflict of interests that makes you think about what you're doing. Given enough time, or some cheat codes, you can overcome any fight or problem that a game can throw at you. The question in an RPG is less whether you can pursue an option, and more whether you should and why. In the Fo series, you sort of see this in the sense that you can choose to gain karma by doing heroic things without pay or compensation - "heroism is its own reward," so to speak. A more telling sort of choice would be if you have to decide something where you're not sure what outcome is really best and you make a choice based on your investment in the story and your hope for how things might turn out - like the bit with Harold in the Oasis in Fo3 (I won't spoil any more than that). </blockquote>
I really enjoy thoughtful science fiction. Badly-done SF is like pop culture junk food; it's entertaining but empty. Well-done SF is more akin to literature with scientific underpinnings. For this reason I really wanted my contributions to Fallout to make sense in the context of the world, so I leaned on science fiction pop culture that spoke about artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and the (re)discovery of technology. Though Fallout 1 had far less pop culture references than its immediate successor, there were certainly influences there. Some were just meant to be tongue-in-cheek; there's a note in the Glow, for instance, that is presumably an exchange between Mulder and Scully regarding the alien corpse in one of the tanks there. Conversely, the idea of ZAX - a benevolent AI - is more in line with, say 2010 and the notion of intelligent computers as partners for humanity's explorations instead of as enemies or threats.
I like the Mad Max movies, Star Trek and Star Wars as much as the next sci-fi gaming guy, but I also think that sometimes the "pop" part of pop culture does a disservice to good SF. When fans complain about movie studios "ruining" a given graphic novel or book in a movie adaptation, oftentimes they're really griping about the fact that the studios have changed fundamental elements or conflicts in the story just to appease the mass audience. If you sell to the mass audience, you're selling to the lowest common denominator, and that doesn't have a very high threshold for science fiction, which often presumes some actual scientific understanding on the part of the reader/viewer.
(...)
What is your hope for future Fallout games? Would you like to be a part of a future Fo team?
I've played Fallout 3 and I enjoy it quite a bit. I think that Bethesda made a great game and they did an excellent job of paying homage to the Fallout continuity while bringing some fresh, new ideas to the table. I think that what I would like to see in a future Fallout is the same as addressing my only real issue with the game: All of the old familiar elements of the Fallout world migrated to the east coast, so we have the Enclave, the super mutants, the Brotherhood of Steel; I'd like to see more new groups, more power factions and societies that have sprung up in a big way. I get the feeling from Fo3 that there's a sort of "power vacuum" in the east and that these groups moved out there to fill that hole, but this is probably not the way things are going everywhere. I bet there are other big groups out and about making their mark on the wastelands, some of whom may have crossed swords with the existing power blocs, others who have never heard of 'em. (See Caesar's Legions in the design docs for Van Buren - a large, organized power group that runs the show in a particular area of territory.) I'm glad to see the BoS and the super mutants and the centaurs and whatnot, but I don't have to see all of the old groups to know that it's Fallout. I guess we don't have Followers of the Apocalypse in Fo3, though. Most of the new power groups in Fo3 are relatively local in the game, such as Rivet City (which is a thriving metropolis, but it does not try to project its power across the Capital Wasteland) or the Temple of the Union (which is an awesome idea but I get the sense that they're very "new" and not super influential). Anyway, for future Fallout games, I hope that Bethesda (and Interplay, on V13 - assuming it is in fact Fallout Online, 'cause I'm not in a position to confirm anything) continues to look at the franchise with a critical eye and say "How can we tell interesting stories in the same vein established previously for Fallout?" I'm really looking forward to the downloadable content. I really want to see the Pitt.
I'm sure that Bethesda has a ton of really talented and experienced people on their Fo design team already, but if they offered me a shot at working on Fallout again, I probably wouldn't say no!
(...)
In your opinion, what are the key ingredients that every RPG should have?
An RPG is a role-playing game, so you are playing a role - that is, you are making choices about the protagonist. In some RPGs the only choice you make is which stat to increase when you level up. A good RPG, I feel, gives you more meaty choices. To do that, you must do three things:
1. Establish a setting with versimilitude. It doesn't have to be a simulation of reality, but it needs to have enough internal consistency that the player buys into it. Then the player can feel "grounded."
2. Create groups or individuals about whom the player has a sense of investment. In Fo3, you are trying to find your father, and since the entire tutorial section has interactions with your dad, this establishes a tie and a sense of character investment. In Fo1 you are trying to save your entire vault, and later humanity. In Planescape: Torment, you are just trying to figure out who the hell you are. All of these games put you in situations where you make connections with people - or even with just your own protagonist - so you have a sense of investment in what's going on. Your choices matter because their outcomes affect the people that you, the player, have come to know and perhaps care about. Sure, they're ultimately just pictures on a computer screen, but if you even paused for a second and thought about whether it was all right to steal from Killian, or to swipe the water chip from the ghouls, or if you cheered when your character killed the Overseer, you just felt investment in the game.
3. Give the player choices that impact that setting and that investment. The "slideshow" at the end of Fo1 (and now at the end of many an RPG) gives you a sense of closure. It shows you that your actions mattered and that you actually made things happen. Similarly, when you have a choice between helping two good people (but you can only help one of them) or having to work with bad people to fulfill your goals (people who would normally be your enemy, but you can't kill 'em 'cause you need 'em), this creates a real conflict of interests that makes you think about what you're doing. Given enough time, or some cheat codes, you can overcome any fight or problem that a game can throw at you. The question in an RPG is less whether you can pursue an option, and more whether you should and why. In the Fo series, you sort of see this in the sense that you can choose to gain karma by doing heroic things without pay or compensation - "heroism is its own reward," so to speak. A more telling sort of choice would be if you have to decide something where you're not sure what outcome is really best and you make a choice based on your investment in the story and your hope for how things might turn out - like the bit with Harold in the Oasis in Fo3 (I won't spoil any more than that). </blockquote>
I've got some hella backlogs from some devs. Scott Everts promised us a dev profile roughly 4 years ago, and Gary Platner 2-3 years ago 
