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A former Bethesda developer who worked on both Skyrim and all three of the studio's Fallout games says RPGs "live and die" on the strength of their story.
Jeff Gardiner served as project lead on Fallout 76, and also worked across Skyrim, Fallout 3, and Fallout 4. Before joining Bethesda during Oblivion, however, he also worked on Activision's 2005 Fantastic Four game. During an interview with the Boss Rush Network podcast, he was asked about the differences between making the game in someone else's IP, and getting to play around in a more original franchise.
"It's a little scary to work outside of an established story," Gardiner replied. "You're creating things whole cloth. It's a shocking amount of work that I wasn't even really prepared for. We spent a lot of time working on back history and story, and making connective tissues." All of that is extremely important, Gardiner says, because "these RPGs, they live and die on the story."
"I will overlook shitty game mechanics for hours if I'm enjoying the story. Hours, in an RPG. And you have to have really compelling characters, a narrative that's pulling you through, and those are all the things I remember most. I don't remember all the rats I fought in turn-based Fallout, where it took me 20 minutes to kill a freaking rat, but I remember story," the project lead says.
Gardiner turns his attention from there to the Fallout TV show, suggesting the success of that project stemmed directly from an understanding of the games' "setting and tone:" "It was enough connective tissue and glue for Jonah Nolan and the showrunners to make an amazing series out of."
It's an interesting perspective, and personally not one I think always rings true. When it comes to something character-driven, like The Witcher 3, I think Gardiner is spot on. But for Bethesda's RPGs, I was much more interested in design than story, particularly when it comes to Skyrim - you can weave me the wildest narrative you like if you've got a good stealth archer that you can give me.
