Tag Archives: peter hines

Now-sold id Software is looking to ramp up for a new game by creating a third team, Bethesda’s Peter Hines has told TechRadar.

“They’d like to start building up a full third team and, as a result of this deal, they’ll be able to do that more quickly than they could have previously with the additional resources they have to work with now,” said the exec.

The developer, now owned by Bethesda, is currently working on DOOM 4 and Rage.

“We expect id will keep doing what they’ve always been doing,” said Hines. “And that includes the projects they are already working on.”

More through there.

All Fallout 3 DLC is to be released for PS3, Bethesda said today, including the three previously released episodes and two more upcoming chapters.

“Operation: Anchorage will be released for PS3 in June, followed by the release of The Pitt and Broken Steel 4-6 weeks apart,” said the company in a statement.

“Release dates will be forthcoming.”

Bethesda announced “substantial” DLC exclusively for 360 at E3 last year.

In a subsequent interview, the publisher’s comms boss, Peter Hines, told VG247 that keeping the content away from other consoles “was the right thing to do for Fallout 3.”

The two new episodes announced today are called Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta. Both will release on PS3, 360 and PC.

Point Lookout features a “massive new swampland area filled with new quests and content,” and will be available in late June for Xbox 360 and PC for 800 MS Points. The PS3 version will release after Broken Steel hits the console.

Mothership Zeta allows you to “experience an alien abduction first hand and find out if you’re tough enough to survive.” Xbox 360 an PC users get it in late July for 800 Points. PS3 gamers will see it after Point Lookout releases.

In addition, three new Fallout 3 products will release on disc over the next six months.

From the press release:

• Fallout 3 Game Add-on Pack #1 includes The Pitt and Operation: Anchorage on a disc and will be available for Xbox 360 and PC on June 12th across Europe.
• Fallout 3 Game Add-on Pack #2 includes Broken Steel and Point Lookout on a disc and will be available for Xbox 360 and PC in August across Europe.
• A Fallout 3 Game of the Year edition will be available in October. It will include the original game plus all five add-ons for £39.99 / €59.99 for Xbox 360 and PS3, and £29.99 / €49.99 for PC.

Consider that well and truly milked, then.

Broken Steel may have been the last scheduled bit of Fallout 3 DLC, but there may be more, Bethesda’s Peter Hines has told OXM.

“Whether it’s the absolute last one remains to be seen, because it’s been hugely successful,” he said.

“Operation Anchorage vastly exceeded our expectation. It was like, ‘Holy shit, we did how many?’ And the Pitt was really successful, after a bit of a false start.

“But Broken Steel is the one that… everyone has been bugging us the most about, because it removes the ending and changes the level cap and lets you play more in that world.

“I think it’s going to be hugely, hugely popular.”

Broken Steel’s out now.

Bethesda’s Peter Hines has said that the Fallout 3 developer has learned the hard way that smaller doses of DLC are best.

Speaking with Gamasutra, Hines explained:

“We did the entire spectrum for the most part. We did small things and then we did the really huge thing [with The Shivering Isles for Oblivion]. We did what I think was the first ever full expansion on a console for download. We looked at what we liked and what we didn’t, and what the people liked.

“What we discovered was that we want to be able to do stuff that doesn’t take a year to come out.

“All these people are out there playing our game by the hundreds of thousands on a daily basis and we want to be able to bring those folks something they could do in a much shorter time frame, rather than just saying, ‘See you next year.’

“That instantly ruled out doing a big expansion because those things just take so damn long to do.”

Hines went on to say that the Oblivion expansion Knights of the Nine was the first time Bethesda felt it got the length of a piece of DLC right.

More through the link.

Bethesda’s Peter Hines has told Kotaku that a new, unbroken version of Fallout 3 DLC The Pitt should be available today.

The update was removed yesterday after gamers complained of floating exclamation marks in the add-on, graphical glitches and freeze issues.

Bethesa eventually said there was a problem with a corrupted file and pulled the product. We’ll let you know when it goes back up.

The next batch of Fallout 3 DLC has slipped by a month, Bethesda’s confirmed to Gamespot.

“The next DLC for Fallout 3, The Pitt, will be out in March,” said marketing boss Pete Hines.

“Broken Steel will be out the following month, in April.”

The first piece of the game’s 360- and PC-exclusive DLC, Operation: Anchorage, has already shipped.

Bethesda PR chap Peter Hines has just confirmed that a patch for the PC version of Fallout 3 will release today.

“There’s a PC update coming out later today that will address a few PC-specific things that have come up,” he said, talking in a live interview with Eurogamer readers.

Hines didn’t expand on what the patch would specifically fix, and refused to be drawn on other updates across any of the game’s three versions.

“Can’t give you any details yet beyond that as far as what else might be in the works for any of the three platforms,” he added.

The interview’s still ongoing. Ask him how glad he is the game’s shipped.

Bethesda’s Peter Hines has confirmed that Trophies are on the way for Fallout 3.

“It’s going to happen, just not sure when. We’ll let folks know when we have something more definitive,” said the comms boss in a live interview with Eurogamer readers.

He’s still answering questions, so go and hassle him.

Eurogamer‘s holding a live interview with Bethesda’s Peter Hines at 4.00pm GMT today, which means you get to ask the questions. Hines will then answer them. Some of them, anyway.

Fallout’s pretty big news at the moment, obviously, what with it topping the UK chart and all, so get over there and hassle him about the next Elder Scrolls game. May as well.

Bethesda’s Peter Hines has admitted that people looking for the complete Fallout 3 experience may want to think about DLC before they choose which platform to play the game on.

“If you really sort of deadlocked and you’ve got to have your reasons to make a decision between one platform or the other, then yeah, DLC may be one that may push you towards one platform,” he told MTV.

The action RPG’s to release on PC, PS3 and 360 in the coming weeks, but only 360 and PC versions are going to be party to extra content in the future.

More through the link.

Speaking to Shacknews, Bethesda comms boss Peter Hines has confirmed that digital distribution is being looked at as a buying option for Fallout 3, although specifics haven’t been nailed as yet.

“We’re thinking about a lot of stuff,” he said when asked if the game would appear on Steam.

“I don’t actually know if any of that is set in stone yet, but hopefully there will be multiple digital distribution options for folks that want to go that route.”

Some new shots here, as well.

Speaking to Edge, Bethesda’s Peter Hines has confirmed that the version of Fallout 3 censored to pass for release in Australia will be the version that ships worldwide.

“We want to make sure folks understand that the Australian version of Fallout 3 is identical to both the UK and North American versions in every way, on every platform,” he said.

“An issue was raised concerning references to real world, proscribed drugs in the game, and we subsequently removed those references and replaced them with fictional names.

“To avoid confusion among people in different territories, we decided to make those substitutions in all versions of the game, in all territories.”

More through the link.

Bethesda’s Peter Hines has admitted that showing RPGs like Fallout 3 at tradeshows like E3 and Games Convention can be a frustrating business.

“Sometimes, yeah,” he told VG247, when asked if showing such a large game to people in such a short space of time was problematic.

“We had a lot of discussions about E3. Todd Howard and I sat and talked about what to show… Anything we do is just one thing, and we’re not about, ‘Here’s one quest.’ It’s more about, ‘What do you want to do?’ Do you just want to run around and shoot stuff and combat’s fun for you [then that's fine]. Our games are about not forcing you to do anything, and having a demo that makes you do that cuts against it.

“To your point, it does make it a bit like, ‘Well, what are you doing at E3?’ versus, ‘What are you doing at Leipzig?’ Go do what you want. If you played it at E3, go in a different direction this time. That’s what we do well.”

Fallout 3 did come under some fire after E3, where journalists were allowed to play the game for 30 minutes.

“You play the game and you see what you think,” Hines said previously on the matter.

“At E3 we let people play the game for a half hour, and if in a half hour you can make up your mind one way or the other, OK. I don’t really get into judging the rightness or wrongness of it. I just give people a chance to play it and they draw their own conclusions.”

Fallout 3 launches in both the US and Europe at the end of October.

Speaking to PSU, Bethesda’s Peter Hine has confirmed that the PS3 version of Fallout 3 won’t have Trophies at launch. Dang.

“Not at launch,” he said. “It remains to be seen what we do down the road. It wasn’t something we were able to incorporate into the game for launch.”

Game’s out for 360, PC and PS3 in October.

Peter Hines has described Fallout 3′s open-world gameplay as “organised chaos,” saying the player is free to do what he or she likes but can always be easily sucked back into the post apocalyptic RPG’s main quest.

“It’s sort of like organised chaos,” the Bethesda man told VG247 at Games Convention.

“In order for the player to be able to go wherever they want, they have to know they can get back to whatever it is that they wanted to be doing, or were supposed to be doing, which for most folks is the main quest.

“By making sure they know where to go next to get into that they feel much more free say, ‘Yeah, I’m just going to go over here and see what this is,’ and they get sucked into that for an hour and it’s fun, and then they go back into where they were before.”

The game’s out on October 28 in the States and October 31 in the US.

Speaking to CVG, Bethesda’s Peter Hines has admitted he finds dealing with censorship boards across different countries a difficult business.

“The frustrating thing for us is that the standards and rules can be so varied across territories, that we work with five or six ratings agencies and each one has different ‘hot buttons’,” he said.

“In one place nudity is a big deal but violence is fine, and in another place drugs are a problem but nudity is fine. I guess that’s the way of the world – not every country is the same. You’re not aiming at one target, you’re aiming at six different ones, worrying about how each one will feel about different things.

“We just go through and make the game that we want to make – We have our eyes wide open, mindful of the things that could be flagged up and how we’re going to resolve them if that becomes a problem,” he added.

Hines told us at Games Convention that the version of Fallout 3 now rated in Australia – after the original submission was refused – couldn’t be classed as “cut” or “lesser” than any other version, as the game was yet to be rated in all territories.

Fallout 3′s out for PC, PS3 and 360 this October.

Bethesda’s Peter Hines reckons Games Convention’s just as important as E3 for games like Fallout 3. He told us so in Germany.

“It’s hugely important to ‘do well’ here… to get a lot of people to see it and get excited about it,” he said.

“It’s just as important as E3 was. E3 was important for a different reason because it has the distinction of being first. That sort of sets the tone going forward for ‘how did you do?’ We had… many hundreds of people come through and play the game.”

E3 hasn’t had the best year, and Hines certainly isn’t the first to say E3′s dominance is well over.

Let’s hope gamescom can pick up where Games Convention left off, eh?

Speaking to VG247 at Games Convention, Bethesda’s Peter Hines has indicated that you may not just be seeing one more Fallout from the publisher: you should be thinking along the lines of EA and FIFA.

“That’s why we bought it,” he said when we asked him to expand on recent comments that Bethesda was going to continue with the series past Fallout 3.

“We didn’t buy it just to do one and then to never anything again. So it’s sort of like confirming there might be another FIFA next year. It’s their franchise and they’re going to do another one. We bought it for the purposes of doing another one. If we were just going to do one, there’s any number of things we probably could have done differently.”

Fallout 3′s out in October in the US and Europe, and December in Japan. After that there’s going to be the 360-only DLC announced at E3, then we’re going to be waiting for the next full game, from the sound of it. Just don’t call it, “Fallout 09,” OK?

Bethesda’s Peter Hines has refused to confirm differences made to the Australian build of Fallout 3, saying talk of cuts made to the game to get it passed the OFLC was “presumptuous.”

“It would be presumptuous to assume what that build did or did not contain at this point,” he told VG247. “We’re still in the process of going through and getting rated everywhere in the world right now and so, I wouldn’t define it as being ‘cut’ or ‘lesser’ [than any other] version.

The game was refused classification in Australia for drug use references, but has subsequently been passed by the board. It was thought that changes were made to the way the player takes drugs in the game, specifically to the animations associated with smoking something that looks like a crack pipe.

Hines, however, wouldn’t be drawn.

“It is the version that’s coming out in Australia,” he added. “We don’t get into describing differences between builds, but it would also be premature to talk about what’s different in this build until we’re done with every build, because we have no idea what’s going to come up with everybody else until we’re done.

“I would just say that we went into the ratings process with our eyes wide open about what that was going to be like with all these different agencies.”

Did Bethesda expect to run into trouble with certain ratings bodies?

“No comment.”

Post apocalyptic RPG Fallout 3′s looking pretty damn swish. The game’s out at the end of October for PC, PS3 and 360.

Bethesda communications boss Peter Hines has shrugged off post-E3 criticism of Fallout 3, saying he’s not willing to judge negative previews – the most notable of which was this this Eurogamer piece – based on 30 minutes play at the event.

“Everybody has their reasons why they do or don’t like something, so it’s not really for me to say, ‘That’s a good reason not to like it,’ or, ‘That’s not a good reason not to like it,’” said Hines when asked if some negativity surrounding the game after the show surprised him.

“You play the game and you see what you think. At E3 we let people play the game for a half hour, and if in a half hour you can make up your mind one way or the other, OK. I don’t really get into judging the rightness or wrongness of it. I just give people a chance to play it and they draw their own conclusions.”

Hines was speaking at the Bethesda booth at Games Convention last week. Fallout 3′s now been confirmed for an October 28 release in North America, followed by an October 31 launch in Europem so you’ll soon get a chance to judge for yourself.