Fred Saberhagen Quotes

Designing characters for 'Dragon Quest' is fun but difficult work.

First of all, I don't dislike direct storytelling - people seem to think that about my games! Actually, the truth is, I'm just not good at implementing direct narrative in my games.

'Dragon Age' needs to have big story moments. It is a game about character first, and the party is an absolutely central part of that. I want to keep pursuing interactivity with the world: taking crowds to the next level or having things catch fire because you indiscriminately cast a fireball into a wheat field.

I can move my characters through it easily, because I understand the background; I've really studied it.

Games are getting more interesting. I mean, when we talk about books, they can be anything from a summer blockbuster to 'War and Peace' - well, games are the same. I think the creative side is catching up with the technology.

I don't know how video game narrative works.

I think 'Overlord' has definitely benefited because I work with every single level designer, and working where we have space to tell the story. That's what it's all about - getting writers and storytellers involved in the team and being a back and forth process.

The video game market is huge, and the ability to tell stories, and tell different kinds of stories in the gaming space is quickly evolving and changing for the better.

We're not used to seeing any videogames character express sentiments like fear, uncertainty or remorse.

Stories in which the player doesn't inhabit the main character are difficult for games to handle.

There's a misunderstanding that I've always tried to address straight on when this question comes up, which is that a 'Half-Life' story can somehow exist outside of a game. It can't. The story is created through the process of trying to figure out how to best use the features of the engine within the interesting set of constraints it poses.

I am most proud of the development of the characters as personalities that game players could relate to and care about.

It's a wonderful thing to have a character with tons of attributes.

My goal with 'Beyond' is really to create a strong sense of empathy between the player and Jodie Holmes.

Most games end up with quite caricature scripts because they are just here to serve the game-play mechanics but not to trigger any emotional response.

When we decided to make 'DMC5,' one of the things we said off the bat is, 'Let's make a new character.'

You can even express movies and poetry using video games. For those reasons, I've decided to create stories through video games.

The technology for radiant stories in 'Skyrim' is phenomenal. We tried and pared it back.

Every time you try to create an experience with a character who doesn't use a gun, doesn't drive a car, doesn't jump off platforms, doesn't solve puzzles, you are taking a risk.

'Heavy Rain' is really 'Fahrenheit' with more experience, more maturity, and probably a better vision and understanding of how this type of experience can be created.

With 'Heavy Rain,' we're creating something that changes many traditional game paradigms.

I think if someone has a gaming obsession, 'Ultima' became mine. I would say no other series ingrained itself in how I want to make games or what I want them to be more than 'Ultima' did.

Most single player games put a lone character against an army that is just standing around waiting for the player to show up and defeat them.

I don't differentiate game design and script; it is one and only document. I think that one of the biggest problem with storytelling in games is that people tend to separate story and interactivity. Both should be conceived as one entity, each using the other.

Game development combines all this disparate art stuff I'd been doing into one single thing that I could use to say very specific stuff.