& # 39; We have removed two complete sets of The Elder Scrolls 6 & # 39; | E3 Interview

Gamer.nl: Congratulations on a successful show. In our opinion, the presentation was full of games and you could not do more to make the fans happy. Are you relieved now that it's over?

Pete Hines: Absolutely, from the moment it was over. It was a lot of work for my team and everyone, and we thought everything was fine. We had a lot of presenters on stage, including people who had not done anything like that before. I think they did well because it was like we love Bethesda: sincere, personal, self-conscious and always ready to make jokes.

When we spoke to you in 2015, you said that you were repeating for a press conference the hell it is. How were preparations made this year?

It's very difficult. Not the part where I walk on stage and just say what I have to say, because it 's super easy. I have no problem being on stage and talking, but there is also a lot of technology involved. Is the light good? Does the screen turn on when someone is talking? Is the camera directed to the right person? Imagine that I announce the new Wolfenstein and The Elder Scrolls: Blades appears on the screen. All these technical aspects stress us and force us to exercise day after day.

This was your fourth E3 press conference in Bethesda. Is it a tradition to announce everything at E3, or do you plan to organize your own event?

I think it is now a tradition that we are at E3. We do separate events, such as QuakeCon, where we fully reveal Doom Eternal. We also do this to spread things out a bit. When we fully explain Rage 2, it does not make sense to also show Doom widely. There are several possibilities and E3 is certainly important for us. Last year, it was all about what we were going to do in 2017 and this year it was good to look further. It varies, but I think E3 is a very important show for us. We are looking at each game to see if we want to announce it to E3, so we are constantly reconsidering it.

You let Danny O 'Dwyer make NoClip a documentary about Fallout 76. Given the number of leaks for E3, as in Rage 2, we wonder how you're facing the problem. early announcement of games. How difficult is it to keep the titles secret?

Some of our announcements were total surprises, and some were disclosed. I have read a lot of fake things on the internet myself. Is it a leak? It's really just someone who makes things or makes a guess. Of course, we do our best to keep things secret, because teams work very hard to talk about a game at the right time the right way. It's incredibly unfair to all these people if someone deliberately or accidentally cancels this job. It really hurts people.

In the case of Rage 2, we decided to participate. We were only a few days away from the announcement, and the PR and social media teams said, "We should not let our heads hang now, but we own them." They had the Idea to make fun of the website and have fun. We completely improvised. We are ordinary people, and that's what I want to show as Bethesda.

Some time ago you were saying that The Elder Scrolls 6 was not yet in development, but the game was announced this year. What is the current situation?

We are doing nothing more than ten years ago. Of course, there are more people in Bethesda now, but that's how we always do it. When we were working on Oblivion, people were already busy with Fallout 3. Maybe they were concepts, pre-productions or pitchings for what was coming next. Does this develop? At the moment, the majority of the team is working on Fallout 76 and some of them are working on Starfield, until this game is playable.

The Elder Scrolls 6 is discussed after Fallout and all post-launch content is complete, and the lion's share starts with Starfield. We have removed two complete sets of The Elder Scrolls 6 and I have no idea how many people are working there today. I wanted to be clear this year that it is not the next game, but that a new IP is being launched first.

Speaking of Fallout 76: Bethesda Game Studios is very focused on the development of solo games. The new Fallout will of course become an online RPG. Where does this idea come from?

Literally every time we developed a game, we talked about a possible cooperative mode or a multiplayer mode. Every time we quickly agreed that we would not do it, but four years ago we developed a concept that would work as a separate Fallout 4 game. The Fallout franchise is great for an online RPG. Why? We want each character to be a real player, but not hundreds of players at the same time. The story of the reconstruction of the world by a small population fits here because it makes sense that it is not very busy in the world.

How do you communicate to Fallout fans that the next part is not a singleplayer?

Our goal is not to clarify everything immediately after the press conference, but over time. We are deliberately vague in some areas because we test these things every week. It is very difficult to understand something if you do not have it in your hands. When I give a controller to people, I know immediately if it works or not, so we focus on the game tests.

For example, you can play solo if you wish, not interacting with the others. players. It's a big world with fewer players, so you can do what you normally do in a Fallout game. Make and build quests, it's just in the game. In older games, you've seen a red dot over enemies, with which we tell you exactly how you will interact with the person. But when it's about a real person, you have no idea how your meeting will unfold. That adds to the tension, because it would be exactly the same if we were left in a post-apocalyptic West Virginia and we met. We do not want to determine what happens

How do you manage the interruption by other players when you play solo?

We were busy with that. We have tried a number of versions and we continue to adjust them to find out exactly how it will work. There are different ways to encourage or discourage players by adjusting different things. I can imagine that even in the beta phase, we still do not know how the game will work. It will be a continuous game as a service and we learned from The Elder Scrolls Online how you can quickly make changes.

Beta also becomes extremely important. We do a lot of internal testing, but there is a difference between thousands of people testing a game and potentially millions. Then we look at things that are very important, for example if you can really mess up the experience of someone else. With the data, you can see a lot of things and in case of problems, we simply adapt the aspects of the game, after which we check if it always happens. During a beta, you can also see what is complaining about the forums, so you keep adjusting yourself.

Suppose you play Fallout 4 and you meet a legendary Deathclaw, and then you die. After five dimes you can think: it does not work, so I'll come back later. We want Fallout 76 to be a similar experience, even if it's online. The game will say for example that you get a reward if you are avenging another player, but also that you can continue a quest.

Services like Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Now have been around for a while and EA has announced this E3 EA Access Premium. Would you consider a Bethesda streaming service?

Honestly, I do not know. Right now, we are participating in other services, such as The Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 4 on Game Pass

Do you think there will be a traditional generation of consoles, or is it? everything will be streaming?

idea We watched and participated in streaming services, but we mainly play games. Whether they are streamed or played on a console, they remain the same games. It's not that streaming will have an impact, but for us, little will change.

When talking about new ways to play, The Elder Scrolls: Blades is obviously an interesting game. Do you see this game as an introduction to new players?

We see this primarily as a game that should interest everyone, no matter if you know the series. Fallout Shelter has proven that you do not need to know anything about Fallout to play the game, and this also applies to Blades. We did not create the game with a very specific target in mind. Just like with Rage 2, there are many people who might be interested.

Virtual reality is also an area where Bethesda is doing a lot of work. How big is the risk of getting out of virtual reality games and how do you face the product?

I do not know how to quantify the risk. Fallout, VFR Doom and Skyrim were worth it and we are happy with the way they did it. We like to see larger installation bases, as with any platform. We hope for example that Nintendo will sell ten times more Switch consoles in the coming year, because it is good for everyone. We see VR as any other platform and the more people can play on it, the better it is.

When we were working on the Prey-dlc, we wondered how much work it would be to be able to play it in vr. In the case of Wolfenstein, it was not logical to transfer the whole game because people are fed up, so we try something else. The fact is better than the other, but that does not mean you should not try to learn from it. I prefer to take it as much as we call it: "Quick, do a royal battle game!" We do not follow the trends because this is not our way to succeed. That was my biggest problem when I saw the speculation around Fallout 76.

One last question about Fallout 76: How do mods work in Fallout 76?

Mods are supported by the game, but we are still working on it. It will work. We want to launch a service after the launch of the game where the players have their own server and can play with their own mods. Then you have your own server where you can do what you want. We did a lot of work supporting the mods and for Fallout 76, we do not throw it suddenly to the sea.