Comments on: What the Hell

By: Daniel Carvalho

Daniel Carvalho — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:08:32 +0000

That so cool, because for a long while I was deeply entrenched in the modding community. Specifically the during the big boom of Half-Life mods, doing Level Design primarily. I worked on Household DEATH!, Master Sword - Continued and my own little Half-Life co-op experiment, that was just for me and my friends. I also made many Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat maps. But really there was only one that I officially released for Counter-Strike, named cs_thestation. Oh, and I think you've hit the nail on the head with your hopes regarding the merger. It has the possibility of being a perfect amalgam.

By: Alex / HeadUp

Alex / HeadUp — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 20:30:26 +0000

Yeah, one of my first major creative ventures was a total conversion mod for Call of Duty, a North Africa mod called Upon the Burning Sands, back in ‘05. ( http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Upon-the-Burning-Sands/213508 ) I used to do a lot of modding for Medal of Honor, Call of Duty 1 & 2 and Company of Heroes.

Anyway tho, maybe this merger can add a little more of a sense of purpose in such an open world, a bit more guidance to shape the gaming experience…after all, that main quest in Oblivion had no sense of urgency or connection to the rest of what was going on, making for a disjointed experience. It was addressed to an extent in Fallout 3, but not completely. Doom 3, on the other hand, had a much more focused story line but there was almost no sense of freedom outside of the task at hand. A successfully-executed combo of the best gameplay mechanics from both would be awesome.

By: Daniel Carvalho

Daniel Carvalho — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 22:18:36 +0000

I didn’t realize you were an avid gamer, good to know. You do have a nice, sober perspective towards the situation. I too could not help but notice the correlation between Rage and Fallout 3. At least for the fact that they are so thematically similar. I think it’s safe to assume that it helped solidify Id’s relationship with ZeniMax through its commonality. And yeah, as far as I know, Rage is a semi-open-world game. It features some degree of freedom, but with a sense of direction towards the main story arc, which I personally prefer. Because then there can be a focus on crafting the players experience, instead of me running around aimlessly getting distracted by everything and going nowhere.

By: Alex / HeadUp

Alex / HeadUp — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 21:41:41 +0000

An interesting take on this development. I agree with you, the thought of Id and Zenimax/Bethesda coming together is like, as you say, “chalk and cheese.” On one hand, you have straight FPS, graphics-intensive, mostly horror-based games, and on the other, huge open-world, hybrid FPS/RPG with fantasy as the focus. Even still, as an avid gamer and former game modder/designer, I think much more highly of Bethesda’s games, although it’s undeniable- what you’re saying bothers you has truth to it. If only there were some way to combine the polish of Carmack and Co., with the depth of Bethesda…I don’t see that happening with current hardware constraints, but who knows what the future holds. When you look at a game like Rage, which was intended to be open-world (if I remember correctly), you can sort of see why such an alliance makes sense, although I have no clue if that actually has anything to do with it.

Great take on the subject, nice to see critical thinking being applied to a form of media that is more about bias and hype than rationality. Let’s hope this new alliance works out!