Opprinnelig skrevet av The Console Wars
The Console Wars: "Hi Pete, I really want to thank you for taking some time today to answer some questions for us here at The Console Wars. We are all excited about Oblivion and as MD natives we are huge supporters of your work. There is allot of buzz on Bethesda's upcoming next generation games, these questions are actually compiled from the most important people to you guys…the consumers.
Please start off by telling us a little about yourself and your position at Bethesda. How did you get into the business? What is the best part of your job? Anything else you would like to add? "
Pete Hines: "I’m the vice president of public relations and marketing. I have a bachelor’s and a masters in business, worked for a number of years for different associations doing pr and marketing while I also held down a side job covering video game for The Adrenaline Vault. This job was the perfect opportunity to bring together two things I was really good at (pr/marketing and video games).
I handle the day-to-day pr for the game, like this interview, as well as things like packaging, ads…pretty much anything you see or hear about the game. I also spend some time doing other things like writing the manual, editing the strategy guide, posting on the forums, playing the game, answering emails from fans… a little bit of everything. I enjoy getting to work with the dev team on different projects, or trying the latest game, or just hanging out at lunch playing board games or whatever. It’s the best bunch of people I’ve ever worked with.
The best part of my job is definitely landing a big cover story or article about the game and the team. I feel obligated to make sure the kind of coverage the team gets is a reflection of the time and effort they put into making such a great game and it’s rewarding to see them get excited about things like that."
TCW: "Is there any new word on whether or not user made mods for Oblivion will be available for download via xbox live? At the time of your Gamespy interview it sounded like a "No".
Pete Hines: "Right now we know for sure that we plan to offer downloadable content for Oblivion. Beyond that nothing has been determined yet. We still have some ideas of things we’d like to do and are talking to Microsoft about if and how we might be able to do them. We work hard at managing expectations and part of that is trying not to promise anything we can’t be sure we’ll deliver."
TCW: "Do you have any PS3 development kits and what did you think of them compared to the XBOX360 kits? What are the key differences? Do you have a favorite?
Pete Hines: "Right now we’re focused on PC and Xbox 360 for this holiday season. We aren’t talking about or announcing any other platforms for the foreseeable future."
TCW: "Are you going to keep making open ended RPG's or are you getting into some other genres? If so which ones and do you have any details?"
Pete Hines: "In addition to Oblivion we’re in the very early stages of development on Fallout 3, a post-apocalyptic role-playing game. But it will be a long, long time until we’re ready to talk about what we’re up to on Fallout 3. The teams here in Rockville will definitely continue to focus on The Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises.
As far as other games/genres, as a publisher we also look to partner with external developers that are making the kind of games we get excited about. We have a number of those in the works and will be talking about them as we go along.
TCW: "In Oblivion is there a slider to adjust how freely the Radiant AI is allowed to work? We read something about it being complete chaos if they allowed all NPC's free reign on their actions. That would be fun, maybe after beating the game, to see NPC's setting each other on fire and whatnot."
Pete Hines: "What you’re talking about is not really something that can be controlled with a slider (Sane -> Crazy). Rather, it’s about the way we build the system the controls the AI and fine tune it to the point where we iron out all the kinks. We do that by playing the game, watching how NPCs act, and tweaking things accordingly. For example, if the problem is that the NPCs are buying every item in town until there’s nothing left to buy, then we have to look at their buying behavior, how much gold they have, how much items costs, etc., until we fix the problem."
TCW: "Are there any mini-games in Oblivion? If so how many and can you give a few examples?
Pete Hines: "The two mini-games are the persuasion mini-game and the lockpicking mini-game. They were good opportunities to do something a little fun, a little different, without fundamentally altering the balance of the game or the impact your character, and his/her stats, have on the game. The lockpicking one is kinduv addicting."
TCW: " Do you plan on translating the more than 50 hours of spoken dialog and many books worth of game content for the over sea's launch? And if so how soon after a US launch do you expect to launch in other countries?"
Pete Hines: "We do have plans to fully localize the game in a couple of countries. Definitely Germany and France. The amount of dialog and text we have means that we can’t just do it for every and any country we want. You need a volume of sales to justify doing it, otherwise you can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to sell a few extra copies. Not smart."
