Bethesda's Pete Hines Speaks

6 Comments

Bethesda's Pete Hines has seen the developer become one of the most important players on Xbox 360.

Advertisement:

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was the start of their rise to prominence on Xbox 360, as it proved one of the earliest must have titles.

This was followed up with Fallout 3, which also stands tall as one of the best games on Microsoft's console. It's not just been the games though, as Bethesda has been one of the biggest DLC contributors to Xbox Live to date.

OXM catches up with Pete Hines to talk all things Fallout, Oblivion and DLC...

You can't talk about Fallout New: Vegas, but in general terms, is this the first step in Bethesda expanding the Fallout IP and world?
First step would presume that there are other steps. We felt that this was a good opportunity that we wanted to take advantage of because these are guys that know Fallout, including a group of folks who worked on the original Fallout. We felt this was a good way to do something in the universe that was appropriate and cool but not affect anything that Todd Howard and his group wanted to work on going forward.

And is Broken Steel the last DLC for Fallout 3?
Yes, that's the third of the three things. Whether it's the absolute last one remains to be seen. Because it's been hugely successful. Operation Anchorage vastly exceeded our expectation. It was like "holy shit, we did how many?" And the Pitt was really successful, after a bit of a false start.

But Broken Steel is the one that. when we first announced all three, this is the one that everyone has been bugging us the most about, because it removes the ending and changes the level cap and lets you play more in that world. I think it's going to be hugely, hugely popular.

I'm expecting a big no here, but is there an official comment on the Interplay / Bethesda situation?
I'll give you a bit more than a 'no'. It's a whole legal thing and we let the lawyers sort out what takes place there and when they come to a resolution we'll have information to share and we'll let folks know. Something like that there's legal involved, PR is the least of our concern.

Anything on a Fallout MMO then?
It's to be seen. Our intention is that Fallout is ours, we went to great lengths to acquire it. It wasn't just something we were working on but something we owned. We want to make sure whatever it is we do is appropriate and we have a lot of love for it and respect for it.

Look, we ran a gauntlet for four and a half years doing this - there was a lot of folks weren't really sure if we were the right guys to have this. Were we going to fuck it up and destroy what was beautiful? But for the most part I think we've proven that we can be stewards for this thing and take care of it.

Bethesda is also doing Oblivion books. Will this be a continuation of the Oblivion story, or will it lead into another game or product?
It's not a continuation of Oblivion but it does fit into... so it's not like "well, Martin sacrificed himself and Tameriel was saved and next day what happened..." It takes place years or some period of time after that.

It refers to the events of Oblivion and gives people who are into Oblivion a look into what's going on in this world now. As you read through the book you get that sense that its not telling that story - it's telling another story in the world.

You get a sense of what's happened, who's in charge and what happened to everything after the events of Oblivion. But whether it has anything to do with anything we might do next is entirely up in the air. But it's intended to be accurate with and play nice with Oblivion.

Looking back on the past for a moment, from Horse Armour to Broken Steel Bethesda has, for three years, been at the forefront of Xbox 360 DLC - looking back what do you think are the lessons learnt?
What I think we learnt the most was that it doesn't actually matter what something costs. What matters is how much value you're getting for your dollars.

So people weren't really, in our opinion, because we were on the receiving end of it for a long time, perceiving horse armour over the price. It was the combination of the pack at this price, at this particular time. The horse armour was the first thing we'd done... in fact anyone had done. So it was sort of like - if that was the fifth thing we had done and the first thing was the Thieves Den or the Vile Lair, there would be no such hubbub.

We did a thing, spell tomes. It helped you if you couldn't find spells - it let you find spells - it was pretty small thing in the universe of DLC, ninety-nine cents and nobody had a problem with it because it was the right content for the right price, people are fine with it.

No one had a problem with us charging for Shivering Isles, it was far and away the most expensive thing. Why? Because it's a giant full expansion. It's like playing a whole other game. No-one's really worried about the price as long as what they get for that price is appropriate. Whenever you see anybody react to our, or anyone else's game it's usually then asking "am I getting milked here?"

With games that are so huge, we think of it as "we gave you one hundred or two hundred hours of gameplay for sixty bucks" It's really hard to scale that down - does that mean it should be four hours for a dollar? Because we'd never be able to pull that off. So its just us finding stuff that if you asked me to pay, that its apporopiate.

That's why we changed it so much for Fallout 3 so we could release something that we thought was appropriate for the amount of time we spent on it so the person would think "I would pay that much, to get that much". So Knights of the Nine hit that sweet spot. It wasn't a small thing but it wasn't Shivering Isles. It fell in the middle of several hours of gameplay, new armour, creatures, weapons but we could do it and it not take a year.

That's the other thing we learnt from Shivering Isles- not to make you wait a full year. We'd rather do stuff that was all along the way and you're still into it, still into it, still into it and we provide you with more stuff and closer together.

Gillen McAllister