Obsidian defends Fallout: New Vegas’ ‘impressive’ tech

Outside of its glitches, Fallout: New Vegas has often been criticized by gamers for its outdated graphics and animation. Obsidian designer Chris Avellone, however, has defended the game’s GECK engine, saying that it’s an impressive piece of RPG tech in spite of its visual quality. 

“One thing I like about GECK is that when it comes to creating an open-world environment, like we’ve done for New Vegas, it’s pretty impressive and took care of a lot of what we needed — and we have experience with working with an open-world engine before,” urges Avellone. “Being able to see that technology and see how [Bethesda] structured all of the data was really important for us as a studio and we thought the GECK was pretty solid, even though it’s been through a couple of iterations and is a long standing piece of technology.”

“I’m not going to say it’s the prettiest engine out there — it doesn’t have the best animation and there’s certain limitations to the facial structures you can build with the characters. But at the same time it allowed us to create really fun quests, really cool characters and a really huge world that was fun to explore. So from an RPG perspective that’s what I want.”

Say what you want about GECK, Gamebryo, and New Vegas‘ issues (I certainly have), Avellone has a lot of my respect for putting gameplay above graphics and caring about crafting a fun experience rather than a bunch of shallow eye candy. If only other RPGs released this year could say the same for themselves. 

Obsidian defends ‘impressive’ Fallout: New Vegas engine [CVG]

Outside of its glitches, Fallout: New Vegas has often been criticized by gamers for its outdated graphics and animation. Obsidian designer Chris Avellone, however, has defended the game’s GECK engine, saying that it’s an impressive piece of RPG tech in spite of its visual quality. 

“One thing I like about GECK is that when it comes to creating an open-world environment, like we’ve done for New Vegas, it’s pretty impressive and took care of a lot of what we needed — and we have experience with working with an open-world engine before,” urges Avellone. “Being able to see that technology and see how [Bethesda] structured all of the data was really important for us as a studio and we thought the GECK was pretty solid, even though it’s been through a couple of iterations and is a long standing piece of technology.”

“I’m not going to say it’s the prettiest engine out there — it doesn’t have the best animation and there’s certain limitations to the facial structures you can build with the characters. But at the same time it allowed us to create really fun quests, really cool characters and a really huge world that was fun to explore. So from an RPG perspective that’s what I want.”

Say what you want about GECK, Gamebryo, and New Vegas‘ issues (I certainly have), Avellone has a lot of my respect for putting gameplay above graphics and caring about crafting a fun experience rather than a bunch of shallow eye candy. If only other RPGs released this year could say the same for themselves. 

Obsidian defends ‘impressive’ Fallout: New Vegas engine [CVG]