J.E. Sawyer Social Interview, Continued

Project lead J.E. Sawyer is fully utilizing social interviewing website Formspring to answer remaining questions about Fallout: New Vegas, including a series of answers on who wrote what in New Vegas: Eric Fenstermaker did Vault 11, John Gonzalez did Yes Man, Fenstermaker did Veronica, Sawyer did Arcade Gannon, Gonzales did Caesar with Sawyer directing the Hegelian dialectics. Further Q&As:

I’m curious (and I mean this question in a very basic way) about how you develop on three platforms at once (PC, PS3, and 360). When it comes time to test a ‘build’, I imagine that you can just launch the PC version. What do you do to run it on 360/PS3?

We have proprietary tools on the PC that allow us to transfer local or remote builds to the 360/PS3 dev kits. This transfer copies over any platform-specific data as well as any current user data (plug-ins/local design overrides) to test content. Once it’s transferred, we (developers) launch the game from the console’s dashboard or remotely from the tool.

Testers do something similar but may be running under optical drive emulation or off of an actual burned DVD depending on what they are testing.

Why are a disproportionate number of FO:NV’s human companions gay or bisexual? Perhaps “disproportionate” isn’t quite right, as it implies a culturally mandated norm. But if 9/10 people are straight or straight-acting, 3/4 gay/bi characters seems high.

There are many things about the human companions that are statistically atypical, but there are only four of them, so it shouldn’t be surprising that they don’t break down along probabilistic lines. If designers strictly followed what was probable in companion design, there would likely never be gay or bisexual characters at all given the relatively small pool players are choosing from in any given game.

Ultimately, the companions who do express their sexuality (of any sort) do so as an aside and usually only when being directly asked about themselves by the player.

Hey! My dad wanted me to tell you that the encounter that Fenstermaker put at the end of Vault 11 reminded him of the BGII Tactics Mods. He said it was too easy though because you could game it with C4. This isn’t really a question tho, so w/e.

C-4 is made for situations like that, so your dad is Good At Video Games(tm).

My Dad says that the problem is that C4 is overpowered and increases the effectiveness of metagaming (IE trapping paths you know the AI will cross) over actual tactical skill or skill at the game’s primary mechanics. He also is looking over my shoulder.

C-4 is a limited resource but fundamentally isn’t much different than a big pile of frag mines. Using C-4 or frag mines or equipping pulse grenades ahead of the end of the scenario are all meta-gaming. Really once the “big reveal” is done, either you get through the fight or you reload. Once the reveal has happened , meta-gaming about the scenario that follows on a reload is sort of inevitable.