Wasteland 2 Interview

The folks at Edge have conjured up an interview with inXile Entertainment’s Brian Fargo, and as I’m sure you probably guessed, the Q&A revolves entirely around Wasteland 2, the “triumphant” Kickstarter campaign that made it a reality, and why it took an entirely new business model to get a CRPG inspired by the classics greenlit. An excerpt:

Those early ’90s PC RPGs – Fallout, UFO, System Shock and so on – had so much promise, it felt like technology was the only thing holding them back. Now that side of things has caught up, do you think games have lived up to that promise?

I would argue to some degree no, because it became such a console world, and there was an oversimplification of things at points. I think part of the frustration we’ve tapped into by doing an old-school RPG is that a lot of people feel like games have been dumbed down, that the audience has been treated like they’re not intelligent. Those games had a million words, there was a literary vibe to them.

They’ve become a little more shooter-oriented, and tutorials treat you are as if you’ve never played a game before. On console there’s no keyboard, which removes a lot – being able to type in something as simple as a noun can really open up dialogue and choice. So I think they’ve become different, but by getting off the PC, things changed quite a bit.

…

Being without a publisher doesn’t just give you freedom to work how you want, but to say what you want.

Listen, I would go on press tours and be told in extremely strong terms to avoid using certain words. I wasn’t allowed to use the word ‘dungeon’ when I was talking about Hunted: The Demon’s Forge. I was unable to use the word. You get kinda stifled, you know? On one hand, they’re paying the bills so I’m trying to be respectful; on the other, you end up going through these scenarios you’re not comfortable with. If you don’t stay to the script, you get these nasty emails if something wasn’t said right so after a while, yeah, you don’t want to talk to anyone anymore because it’s not worth the fear of repercussions.

Does the word “dungeon” really invoke a negative reaction from a segment of gamers?