Chris

Yeah, that's particularly common during the Vault intro and it was really irritating.

It's not de rigeur, though. Very few games actually do this. Also, in the modern era when you have to budget every single one of those decisions with all that multiplied voice acting cost and other potential asset creation, it's pretty amazing. Bethesda is charging $60 for this, same as anyone else would charge for a straight up on-rails game with only one meaningful path. If they weren't independent with the means, I don't know how they could pull this off and still make what turned out as a pretty polished game--it's quite a feat to do both in this climate. But yes, what you say is also true. I mean, just as a random example, clearly it would be absurd to withhold praise of great level design simply because many other games have had great level design.

No, I'm really not talking about the concept generally, I'm speaking about it specifically in the case of Aisle, where it would present absolutely zero technical or design challenge like it does in those other games, and from a structural perspective (but not an end-user one of course) it would in fact be the exact same game; the only difference would be the text written.

I believe you are referring to Alex Navarro's video review of Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. PLEASE.

I don't have enough time to play the games I think are bad! Really though, I think we were pretty critical of Fable 2 in the third episode, at least compared to the exultant reviews it's been getting. It just kind of happens that at the moment there are so many goddamn games coming out, and since I've already played most of them at press events, I already kind of know what I want to play the full versions of. 'Tis the season.

I thought your post was fine, I didn't see anyone taking you to task for it. It definitely didn't come across as upbeat though. That seems a little unfair--if somebody does a good job at something, it shouldn't be brushed aside simply because of an official lineage that is really only legal in nature to begin with. I'm not making a call on whether it's a "bonus" or a "necessity," I'm judging how it actually plays and feels. It's of course fair to compare it to the past Fallout games, but if it was a positive element of those games, why wouldn't it be a positive element of this one as well?

I didn't get into Oblivion, but I love Fallout 3 so far. I hate the character animation, and the game takes an immersion hit for me as a result, but the sheer variety of possibilities--while maintaining an impressive writing and voice acting standard, a pleasant surprise after Oblivion--is exciting to me. Speaking with people about the conversations they've had and the choices they've made, it's just awesome realizing the range. The engine feels like Oblivion to me, but the experience doesn't at all, at least not the experience I had with that game.

This isn't remotely what we said!

Minutes after it went up, a fellow journalist messaged me to inform me that he is one of those people and has read the books and in fact it does all fit together.

Sadly I am not very confident in my ability to keep up this one-song-a-week pace, which is why we've not publicly advertised it anywhere. I'll try though.

A wise choice

Nope, he hadn't even played it as of July. The last one he really played much was Sands of Time.

That's fine!

It's a widely-read online game forum. A lot of industry people post there, and a lot more lurk. It can be kind of outrageous but it's not really like 4chan because it's heavily moderated.

It's not that it was subtle, it's that it was there.

Awesome concept, enticing trailer. Hopefully they have enough ideas to keep it from becoming tedious.

It's not unconscious, I'm pretty aware of my opinions on it! I was just really compelled when I felt I was finding clues, and piecing them together. But even in the game as it is currently implemented, the individual "stories" don't actually stand alone. I don't think I've found any of them that can't be fleshed out with others. Each one is definitely a single piece of a story, it's just that there are several stories.

Yes, I understand the design and content issues with branching narrative, and obviously I understand why they are not an issue for Aisle, but I don't understand how writing the fiction to center around one narrative rather than many would introduce any problems that are common to branching narratives. It's entirely an issue of writing, and nothing else. Writing the various "endings" such that they all would inform a single reality rather than an indefinite number would not cause the game to run into any design challenges or roadblocks. The factors you mention really have nothing to do with Aisle, because regardless of which avenue is taken--one reality versus many--it simply requires just however many blocks of text the author feels like providing. The difference is entirely a question of aesthetics.

I don't see what you mean by this.

When I first realized there were many possible realities, it was an interesting moment, but ultimately it leaves me less intrigued and compelled to continue as when I was under the impression that I was working towards uncovering the full extent of one reality.

Jesus, this is great.

Yeah, that's definitely a potential avenue. I didn't get the sense from the presentation that was the route they're taking, but who knows at this point? (I suspect they may not know yet themselves. )

No, the repository is still there.

Yes, and also while Steve is our friend generally speaking, I don't think we're going to be inviting anyone on to play hardball. Despite the mentions of Hot Scoops, we're not so much interesting in sussing out juicy details of upcoming games or internal team strife as much as we are having interesting guests who have interesting things to say about games, from an informed perspective that might be different to ours.