We’re already had two expansions for Fallout 3, but if you’re waiting for a full expansion a la Shivering Isles for Oblivion, don’t hold your breath.
Costing around $10 and taking a few hours to play through, Fallout 3’s downloadable expansions, Operation Anchorage, The Pitt and the upcoming Broken Steel seem to have gotten the formula just right, and part of that winning formula is down to you, the gaming public.
In an interview with Gamasutra, Bethesda VP Pete Hines spoke about how the company ‘experimented’ with downloadable content with Oblivion, ranging from the ludicrously overpriced horse armor pack, to the full length expansion Shivering Isles:
“We did the entire spectrum for the most part. We did small things and then we did the really huge thing [with The Shivering Isles for Oblivion]. We did what I think was the first ever full expansion on a console for download. We looked at what we liked and what we didn’t, and what the people liked. What we discovered was that we want to be able to do stuff that doesn’t take a year to come out… That instantly ruled out doing a big expansion because those things just take so damn long to do.”
It was with the Knights of the Nine expansion that Bethesda felt that they had found the perfect length:
“So we started looking at the biggest stuff we’d done that people really liked, but that we could do in smaller, digestible chunks. That’s where we came to the Knights of the Nine model — it’s substantive and it adds multiple hours of game play and new items.. But we can do it in a time frame that allows us to get it out without waiting forever. That’s what we’ve gone for with Fallout 3.”
Having found the perfect length has not protected Bethesda from a whole host of other issues however. Operation Anchorage and The Pitt have both received mixed reviews, and technical issues – fast becoming Bethesda’s hallmark – still plague the content; raising the question of whether being able to release DLC quickly is really such a good thing.
Source: via Joystiq
