Bethesda Speaks On Gamebryo Engine, Final Fallout 3 DLC

PsxMeUP writes "Game Observer conducted an interview with Ashley Cheng, Production Director at Bethesda. He answered questions about the Gamebryo engine, why they prefer it over other engines and the advantages it presented while making Fallout 3. Cheng also talks a bit about what inspired their designers while making Fallout 3 and what is in store for the PS3. Apparently, much of the team has read Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which inspired the look and story of Fallout 3. Bethesda, according to Cheng, will never create a game like Final Fantasy because the Gamebryo engine is better at handling 'open ended worlds ripe for exploration.'" Meanwhile, Bethesda's Jeff Gardiner spoke recently about the game's fifth and final DLC release, Mothership Zeta, which finds players aboard an alien spaceship in orbit. He said, "The player will have a handful of tasty alien technologies to play with. There are new fire arms and melee weapons, which will comprise the most powerful weaponry in the game."

Comments

Re:Recycling skins and textures from other games?

[oneirophrenos]

Alien spaceship? Seems like a bit of a deviation from the Fallout universe, unless I've missed something....

You have. There was a discoverable crashed alien ship in the original game as well as the third installment. The DLC is just extrapolation on the concept.

Re:New stuffs

[PrescriptionWarning]

If you have the PC version, FOOK is a terrific mod that adds tons of weapons to the game (though a couple are a bit unbalanced, such as a shotgun that does 300 damage)

Re:Five DLC releases?

[elrous0]

Nonsense! Bethesda has posted a helpful pdf right on their website entitled "Three simple steps to getting DLC on the PS3." I'll summarize it here:

1) Go to your local electronics retailer
2) Buy a Xbox 360
3) Download content

Problem solved!

The Problem with Fallout3

[masmullin]

The problem with fallout 3 is that it was so close to being a FPS, but wasn't. I want to play it like a FPS but its just too inferior. I keep thinking to myself how awesome the game would have been if it was built on an FPS engine like the one used in Call of Duty 5

I also miss the Magic from Oblivion :(

Re:The Problem with Fallout3

[CodeBuster]

I keep thinking to myself how awesome the game would have been if it was built on an FPS engine like the one used in Call of Duty 5

So why not just play Call of Duty 5 and leave us Fallout fans our Fallout experience? Seriously, there are any number of "me too" FPS games out there to satisfy the mouse-twitchers and "gaming keyboard" masses; Fallout, on the other hand, is something unique and special in the history of computer gaming. The point of Fallout is to become immersed in the rich game world of post-apocalyptic alternate earth and enjoy the ironic gallows humor of the optimistic retro-future (epitomized in the sci-fi serials of the 1950s), in ruins by the time of the Fallout games, contrasted with the bitter realities of survival in a bombed out wasteland. If the game were to depend too heavily on FPS type skills then it would detract from the immersive RPG experience whereby the player "becomes" the character in the game world. Fallout is an RPG; if that is not what you are looking for then play something else and leave us RPG gamers our own niche. I almost wish that Fallout 3 had NOT been released on console so that the true Fallout fans would be spared the indignity of hearing the complaints of the unwashed console FPS masses who play War Game 200X and Madden Football 200X and then complain when they don't "get" Fallout and ask why it couldn't be more like any of the other forgettable console games which come and go each year.

Re:The Problem with Fallout3

[CronoCloud]

Fallout 3 is an RPG, it's not an FPS and not meant to be played as such.

Re:Recycling skins and textures from other games?

[Shadow of Eternity]

not to mention their art department is apparently composed entirely of people using 10 inch laptop screens from 1997 with the brightness and gamma turned all the way down.

At least that would be my guess considering their obsession with making EVERYTHING glow like the freaking surface of the sun covered in a layer of radioactive maple syrup whenever HDR or bloom is on.

Re:Gamebryo

[UnknownSoldier]

Having seen & used the Gamebryo source back in 2003 (right when it got renamed from Netimmerse to Gamebryo) I wasn't too impressed. It uses its own version of RTTI, along with auto_ptr, and custom un/serializers. The PS2 version was decent though -- major optimizations using the VUs for skinning.

It was used on Elder Scrolls 3, which explain the horribly broken physics of getting stuck in geometry.

The games rock, but the character models are poor

[TheJodster]

I'm not sure if the engine referenced is responsible for rendering graphics. I am a HUGE Bethesda fanboy... I'll admit it. I LOVE Oblivion and all of it's DLC as well as Morrowind and Fallout 3. However, those plastic looking expressionless faces are sub par for such fantastic games. I realize that this is a difficult thing to accomplish with current technology and that most games suffer from this to some extent. The other thing that bugs me about the engine is that the women are very manly looking. If I were Bethesda, my big focus for my next engine iteration would be on having the character models show at least a little bit of emotion and make the women look like women.

The game mechanics portions of their engines are wonderful and their talent at creating atmosphere in a game is spot on. That has got to be quite an achievement in games where people play for sixty to over a hundred hours. Their games never feel terribly repetitive to me. I stay engaged pretty much the whole time.