Gadgetory

hey everyone this is Steve from gamers Nexus tonight and we are here at ECG C 2014 I think it's 2014 now this is the banner for ECG see check all links in the description below for any other content I am joined by Ken Ralston who is a nationally celebrated game designer first and also the director of design for turbine Warner Brothers hey so Ken here has quite extensive experience in the games industry can you run us through a couple of your major titles please started off on paper and pencil role-playing games paranoia a game in which you pretended to be trying to succeed when essentially you're only trying to kill everyone else in your party there's a wonderful Ling and then I came to computer games in about 1995 when I was in my 40s and everybody else was about 20 years younger than I am so I ended up at elderscrolls best soft and two of my liked classics are morrowind and Oblivion which I'm sure you all adore I know I did so with with morrowind this is reaching back to 2001 to like I remember Nike quite a while ago with morrowind the technology wasn't quite where it is today in terms of graphics and engines are there any design elements that looking back you really wanted to include them but you got cut off for technological reasons I think the great thing about morrowind as we did far more than we could far less polish than we could it's a miracle that it works at all and I mean that not in an ironic or jokey way the great thing about morrowind is that there's too much there and it's like jazz there's so many notes that you may not like all of them but you have so much to choose from that it is exciting when you look at a product like oblivion far better software and everywhere far better experience for the player but more wind there's much delicious nonsense is there any particular element of delicious nonsense that you cleans you the most there is a quest called hence gente needs pants and you're standing on the top of a ravine looking down into the water and you notice a guy is standing in the water and that never happens in a game it just doesn't make a lot of sense somebody's standing not moving around or fishing or anything he's just standing there you go down and talk to him and he's had his pants stolen and he doesn't want to come out of the water until you get himself get him some pants that was I think my favorite FedEx quest because it seems so important if he's very serious I'm not coming out if I guess advanced so that's how pants are an important currency of big dignity and honor and you feel like you've done a good turn for this fella I don't think you get a very good reward for it though probably cheap can you give us an idea for some of the items in the game that you personally had hands-on with ah no in fact almost all the items were made by really smart guys and one thing I can say is about one of the light quest lines I believe it's the Imperial cult there are maybe 10 different factions in morrowind and we just didn't have time to do that last one and I decided I would do it on weekends just as volunteer work and Gary Noonan had made a number of really cool-looking weapons I won as a helmet that's got a saber-toothed tiger built into it and he just gave me those objects and had me used those as rewards in the quests that made those quests work I apologized to Gary for not remembering what the name of those things are but I imagine hardcore fans and again don't forget I'm not a hardcore fan anymore because I never got a chance to play it people who really know the game and the people who got to play it and discovered everything because I made it and then made it again and changed it I don't really remember what I did and that wasn't such a hurry oh my god so moving into oblivion did you play a similar role on oblivion as he did with Moreland not as desperately in morrowind there were no people who are experienced at make making games with oblivion we already knew basically what we had to do and I had the privilege of making let's let's call him placeholder faction quests and then turning them over to each of the designers and saying it is now your job to throw everything away in this outline and fill it with whether ever you're excited about and I'll say for example Emel paglia rillo did an amazing job of taking a kind of a pedestrian but professional outline into something that sang with I mean Emal's just a great writer anyway moving on to Skyrim did you ever get a chance to even play never even a little bit I was so happy to retire at the end the end of oblivion I was really exhausted and I'd had all the fun I could stand and it's just two times in my life I've retired and I keep coming back luckily in more advisory and mentor roles where I don't have to do any honest work I tell everybody not gonna do a lick of work but I'll help you figure out how to do what you want to do you're in a Naval Air and Anna yes an abler that criminal sense yeah for fans of your work what's what's going on today where can they follow your proceedings they can't follow me anywhere because I'm far too important to what I be public and you're very clever to have snuck up on me and got in this interview essentially I've gone dark because we're working on things that we can't talk about so I love my privacy now so talking about old products that am i doing keep keep eyes on the website I suppose for any upcoming titles that weren't discussed here and thanks again for all of your time really appreciate the dive back to Moreland and we will see you all next time carry on