Bethesda Softworks Inside the Vault Q&A: Jorge Salgado

Another “Inside the Vault” Q&A feature is online over at the Bethesda Blog, with this latest entry bringing us a set of answers from Fallout: New Vegas area designer Jorge Salgado.

Within the Bethesda community, you’re known for your work on Oscuro’s Oblivion Overhaul. How did that come to be?

Although I started releasing mods back in the days of Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, this time it all got rolling with a mod I made for myself, just a week after the release of TES IV: Oblivion. I’m a great admirer of Bethesda’s games. Naturally, I was itching to get into the next Elder Scrolls’ world, after having played TES III: Morrowind for more hours than I can remember.

Oblivion was vast, beautiful, and engrossing. While this is a matter of opinion, and Oblivion stood by itself as an undisputed GOTY, I think that its (Level Scaling) design didn’t captivate the hardcore RPG crowd.

I’m pretty hardcore when it comes down to RPGs, so I decided to mod Oblivion to transform its (Level Scaling) features into (Semi-Static Scaling.) I enjoy the thrill of discovering, and defeating, areas that are much harder than what’s suitable to my character’s (level.) Yeah, I’ll reload a zillion times until I manage to overcome great odds or I’m happy to just let go, keep adventuring in such immersive worlds, and then come back for a well-deserved revenge once my character is up to the task.

That’s how Oscuro’s Oblivion Overhaul was born just for my own use (I had done something similar for Morrowind, but never (officially) released that to the public). Pretty soon, though, the mod caught a lot of momentum. So, I started to work on more releases. These included all sorts of extra features like complete item, combat, and systems rebalance, new armor sets, new weapons, new creatures, new AI behaviors, new quests, new books, new scripted features, etc, etc.

With a lot of help and cooperation from the Oblivion community, OOO grew to a massive size (1.4+ GBs of stuff). I didn’t create all the new art assets for it, but worked alongside the community to include high-quality works into the overall structure I had laid for OOO.

Still today, in great part thanks to the efforts of Dev_Akm, Madcat221, Wrye, MiSP, and a host of other Oblivion modders. My personal favorite mod these days is FCOM. It managed to merge four massive mods into a coherent whole (Francesco’s + Warcry + Oscuro’s + Martigen’s).