Shivering Isles: Bethesda Interview

Kikizo talks to Pete Hines from Bethesda Softworks to bring you this detailed interview on all things Elder Scrolls as the release of Shivering Isles beckons.

Page: 1  2  3 

Page 3

Kikizo: It certainly looks great from what you've shown us earlier. Now we've got some people insisting that we ask you about mudcrabs as well as werewolves, I am not sure what they are getting at but can you talk about those!?

Hines: Well... I don't know what that question means! Haha, there's no mudcrabs in Shivering Isles. Werewolves are something we get asked about now and again - we've done it in previous Elder Scrolls games, we did it in the expansion for Morrowind, and folks enjoyed that. But, we definitely do not like to get into the rut of doing things just because we did them before. We're trying to move forward with the kinds of experiences that we offer and the kinds of things that you can do in our games, and honestly it's just a feature, and we don't feel like we want to repeat the same features over and over again from every game.

Kikizo: Are you maybe thinking about a Game of the Year edition of Oblivion with Shivering Isles, the Knights of the Nine content and so on, all included?

Hines: I am sure it's possible but it's something that we wouldn't contemplate or be able to do for a while, because we have to wait until the expansion is done - that actually takes quite a bit of integration to pull off, so it's not contemplated for any time in the near future for the time being - it's just retail version for PC and downloadable version for 360.

Kikizo: I think you've mentioned that Shivering Isles is going to come to PS3 at some point in 2007...

Hines: Yep.

Kikizo: Presumably this is going to be through the PlayStation Store?

Hines: That's a good question, I have no idea. I honestly have no idea when it's going to be available or what the delivery mechanism is going to be. So right now that is still to be determined. Honestly it's not something we've really thought all that much about, we're trying to get the core game out for PS3 first and make sure it's good, before we start worrying about other stuff we might put out for it later.

Kikizo: Sure, but I mean as a developer, has Sony taken the opportunity to sort of show you how the Store works and things along those lines?

Hines: Yeah, we're certainly kept in the loop on what their online strategy is and functionality and so forth, and how all of that works. But you know, it is a different platform and a different set up. And it is something we feel like we can deal with and worry about once we get Oblivion for PS3 out.

Kikizo: I'm pretty sure microtransactions has been a big issue with Oblivion to date. Are you going to take advantage of that as a revenue model with Shivering Isles?

Hines: Once we get Shivering Isles out, we may do one or two additional downloads, but for the most part we've done just about everything we have planned. Like I said we've got one or two left in the pipe, that we may put out after Shivering Isles, but we're not planning on any download specifically for Shivering Isles.

Kikizo: So we're not too far from release of Shivering Isles itself, are you doing more expansions afterwards?

Hines: No. Shivering Isles is the only one that we have planned or in the works, so that's going to be the only one.

Kikizo: And obviously we have to ask when can we expect an Elder Scrolls V?!

Hines: I have no idea! It's not even... it's nowhere in the works right now. All of our attention is on getting out Oblivion PS3, getting out Shivering Isles and the bulk of our folks moving to Fallout 3 - that's our next big project we're focussing on.

Kikizo: Sure... and those wanting to know about Fallout 3 this year might want to know if Bethesda can continue to exceed expectations... is Bethesda the greatest developer out there?

Hines: I have no idea! No, probably not but that's not for us to say! I mean as much as possible, we try to take a very humble approach. We feel like we want to focus on making the kind of games that we want to make, making them as good as possible, making sure everybody knows about them. But ultimately, what people have to say about them and how good we are or are not, is not for us to day - we sort of try to keep our heads down and focus on what it is we're doing, and let everybody else sort that sort of stuff out.

Kikizo: But things are increasingly competitive, and when you look at other people's products, how do you sort of compare these against your own in that sense?

Hines: That's really an internal process for us, I mean we look at what we've done in the past, what we feel has worked well and what hasn't, and we don't really look at what anybody else is doing right now... I mean, you can get ideas for stuff from anywhere, you can get great interface ideas from a great football game or a baseball game - the ideas come from all over the place.

But in terms of what we want to do, we tend to look internally in terms of where we want to push the genre, push what it is we're doing, not just where we want games to be next year but where we want them to be several years down the road, because obviously our development cycles are really long - we don't do games in 12 months, we take 3 or 4 years - and so we have to think pretty far ahead in terms of what we want out games to look like and feel like at that point down the road.

Kikizo: Thanks for your time and good luck with Shivering Isles.

Hines: Thank you.

Page: 1  2  3 

Our thanks to Pete and the folks at 2K Games and Ubisoft. Special thanks also goes out to NeoGAF, whose users helped contribute some of the stuff we had to ask Pete.

Click here for Kikizo's interview archive.