Yesterday’s hotly anticipated DICE talks, first an interview wtih Todd Howard about all things Bethesda and then a conversation between Guillermo del Toro and Hideo Kojima on each other’s work, took place as planned. As perhaps expected, nobody decided to announce PT2 or Fallout 5, but there were a few tidbits of info out of each interview. They’re also both fairly fascinating talks that are well worth your time.
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Todd Howard said that Bethesda had three “long-term projects” on the go, and that each was quite different from what the studio had done before. Still massive in scale as is their way, of course, and probably at least some of this is deliberately worded so it doesn’t sound like The Elder Scrolls VI, which, well probably, eh? He also said they are “busier now than [they] have ever been”, working on the various bits of Fallout 4 DLCand the overhaul of Survival mode.
He also goes into the current Bethesda policy of holding announcements back until the last possible moment, and how well it worked for Fallout 4. That seems to be the plan going forward now, and one I can’t disagree with – the long-term public development route is fine, but it can lead to trailer overload and slowly building apathy at best, resentment at worst. As much as we enjoy hearing about games that excite us, that two-ten year wait for the next Final Fantasy, Team ICO game or Ubisoft production isn’t the best.
Todd’s chat starts about 2:30:20 into the below video, provided by Polygon.
There’s plenty of other talks though, including Sid Meier chatting Civ, Tomb Raider with Rhianna Pratchett and, of course, del Toro and Kojima’s convo.
In that, it quickly becomes clear that the two will work together again. Asked about his prior experiences with games, del Toro says it’s probable that Kojima’s teeth will fall out (or other parts of his anatomy) as soon as del Toro walks into the new Kojima Productions, but he will do anything Kojima asks. Everyone else? Definitely not, he’s done watching companies explode around him as soon as he starts working on a game.
Geoff Keighley, ever on the chase for the scoop, asks Kojima if that’s something he’d be up for, who obviously says yes. They don’t know what it will be yet, if it will even be a game, but the two are going to work together. With news coming that Norman Reedus met again with Kojima quite recently, it’s possible the game that was to be Silent Hills may just get made, with a few key adjustments. Perhaps the lack of an attached franchise will allow them to get even weirder – if they decide to go down the horror route at all.
There’s also some interesting bits about the making of PT, and how Kojima decided to deliberately lower the framerate and some other visual effects so that it didn’t look like a big budget production. They wanted people to think it was indie for as long as possible, with the original intention that it would take days – rather than hours – for the mystery to be revealed. As one of the most memorable announcements in games history, I think it worked.
That kicks off about 4:48:00 through the above, and if you aren’t a fan of del Toro you will be why the end. He even swears like I do, because he’s the best, and his line about it only being limited by “the bastards with the money” is fantastic. Well worth your time.