Fallout 3 Not “Dumbed down” for consoles

In an interesting interview with Next-Gen, Bethesda Softworks’s Emil Pagliarulo (Fallout 3 lead designer) had a handful of things to say regarding the recent developer spree of dumbing down titles to appeal to a larger audience.

It’s funny. I look at Fallout when I play it every day, and I sometimes think that there’s a lot of old-school hardcore PC stuff in there too, and part of me thinks, “God, is this too inaccessible for console players?” There’s a lot of dialogue to read, a lot of just hacking computers and looking through things like “VAT.” I don’t know. Sometimes I think it’s just the opposite. So I don’t feel like we’re dumbing down the franchise.

…I think we’re starting to find that there is a market for [hardcore "PC RPGs" on consoles]. People like myself and some people that work here actually grew up as hardcore PC guys, and now we’re older, we have kids, we don’t have that much time, so we’ve transitioned. We’re console players now.

You can also hear Emil Pagliarulo on the GameTheoryShow.com podcast.

Alone in the Dark - Developer Diary 2

Atari released another developer diary for their upcoming survival-horror title; Alone in the Dark. The game’s lead designer Hervé Sliwa sheds some more light on the on-going development.

We were so impressed by the legacy of Alone in the Dark we wanted something very ambitious and very innovative, so the first proposal was in fact maybe a little bit too ambitious and too innovative, which meant it looked very risky to a producer. And we had a difficult start – the project was killed once, and after that we were so motivated to make this game, we worked on it and came back with a technical demo and a proof of concept of all the most risky elements, and Atari said OK let’s take the risk, and since then we’ve had full support to develop the game. Pre-production started in 2003 then full production started 2 years ago in early 2006. The team built up very fast and today there is around 120 people working on the game.

Read more

Crytek going multi-platform due to rampant Piracy

In an interview with PCPlay Magazine, CEO of Crytek; Cevat Yerli has revealed that they longer will remain PC exclusive. The rampant piracy of Crysis and the high-development costs have forced the german developer to this decision. Full quote below:

Cevat Yerli: We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a chart leading that is not desirable. I believe that’s the core problem of PC Gaming, piracy.  To the degree PC Gamers that pirate games inherently destroy the platform. Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us and I believe we wont have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusive anymore.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky Screenshots

We’ve got 32 new & high-resolution screenshots of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky in our image gallery. The prequel to the highly successful Shadow of Chernbobyl. In Clear Sky, players will be able to join factions and lead them to victory. Clear Sky will also have more open ended environments alongside enhanced A.I., physics and more Anomalies. Clear Sky will also boast DirectX 10 support for enhanced visuals. view the newly added screens after the jump.

Read more