Brian Fargo Interview

The folks at the Russian videogame website GameStar (not to be confused with the German publication by the same name) have quizzed inXile’s Brian Fargo on RPG design and the state of the market for the genre. While the English in the questions is a little shaky, it still makes up for an interesting piece. Here’s a snip:

Could you please explain further developer’s actions after having received the money from Kickstarter? Is he becoming absolutely independent from the publisher? What about packaged versions of the game? Is the developer about digital distribution market only?

We are indeed becoming independent from a publisher and for me that is a good thing. There is a packaged good business still and I could decide to sell the packaged goods if I wished. Fortunately the world is going digital so there is no requirement for needing retail.

Is it safe to say that role-playing genre is having the second birth now? Which RPG do you consider to be the main ones in this console generation?

Indeed we are seeing an era of bringing back the classic RPG and that is just amazing to me. It was only 6 months ago that I was in China lamenting the death of the genre. The main RPGs of the console generation are certainly the ones from Bioware and Skyrim.

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We are very disappointed that the majority of the developers make us manage a no-name deaf-and-dump Chosen. Should the main character of the role-playing game be a «full-bodied» like Adam Jensen from Deus Ex: Human Revolution? Or it would be harm to identification of the player with the character?

Well that is a debate that many people have. We have made games using both sides of that approach. When we did our last Bard’s Tale we had the main character have a lot of personality in his snarky approach to the world. This allowed a very distinctive writing style. However, many RPG people want a fully customizable party or lead character. When it is truly customizable the players might be playing a woman or boy or a Russian or someone who is Chinese. In fact we are going to allow you to import your own character portraits so you can fully identify with your group.