Hey there, wastelanders and volleyballers. This is your host, Tom Horrorbots. And this week, we have a very different kind of episode for you. This is an interview that I got to do, or at least I got to do a little part of, with some of my friends.
Ken from the Chad Fallout 76 show, and Dave and I do another show that most of you guys are probably aware of, the Fallout Hub. And this episode was done as kind of a joint venture between the Fallout Hub and the Fallout Warcast, because we are interviewing Nate Pricketpile, the guy who had so much to do with the creative direction of Fallout and other Bethesda titles over the last decade. Plus we go into more detail about this when the episode actually starts. So I hope you guys enjoyed the episode.
And we'll be back next week with another regular episode, and then the Saturday after that, which is the 22nd, is the last Saturday of the month. So that will be our Fallout Patron episode we'll be recording that night. So you're welcome to come join us. And speaking of patrons, thank you to all of our patrons, especially Pieman, or Liberty Pie, I guess I should call him.
He's our Tier six patron. And Devin A, who is our Tier five patron, and everyone else. Those two get callouts every week. But everyone else who helps support the show.
You guys are amazing, all 46 of you. Thank you so much for your support. If you're interested in helping to support the show, check out patreon.com followlordcast and without further ado, here is this very special episode. I hope you guys enjoy it.
Your attention, please. Your attention, please. This is your official civil defense broadcaster. One of the greatest threats would be radioactive fallout radium, where fallout is heaviest.
It can even kill those who have not taken proper shock. Broadcasting deep underground in a questionly constructed survivalist bunker is Dave J. Bins and Kenneth Vigu and your host, as always, Mr. Robots.
This episode of the Fallout Hub is brought to you by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Open enrollment for advanced robotics courses starts now. Nothing sketchy going on? Nope.
Not at all. Welcome, everybody. This is. This is going to be the last main stage show that we're doing here for Fallout.
For Hope. $15,783.75 raised for the American Heart association this last week, which is just absolutely insane. That's 157 trees that the AHA will be putting in inner cities. This is still going through tomorrow, but tonight we have a little bit of a surprise.
An incredibly, incredibly special guest. Someone that we've always wanted to geek out with and have never had a chance to do is here Nate. Perky pile. And with me, as always is Mr.
Robots. Mr. Mr. Robots.
Mr. Robots. Mr. Robots.
Yeah. This is exciting. So this is, this is going to go up as an episode of the Fallout Hub. Fallout Lorecast.
Yes, sir. On the other piece of yogesh whole thing, you can check it out both those locations. Nate, we are super excited to have you. This is awesome.
This is awesome for us. We are big fans of your work. What was it a few weeks ago? You shared a whole bunch of your stuff online on Twitter and man, like awesome, awesome stuff.
Can you share a little bit about that real quick? We're going to do a little intro thing. We're going to do the robots dozen warm up questions and then we're going to get to the official interview stuff. But just so people, if people don't know who you are, can you just give them a little elevator pitch about who you are and what you do?
Sure, yeah. I've been in the Games industry about 17 years, but 14 of those years were all at Bethesda. So I've been there a long or was there a long, long time. And was the lead artist on fall 76 as the last big thing.
Yeah. And you've done a ton of work. A lot of the stuff that we play in that game, a lot of these other games that we absolutely love are in some ways your brainchildren, I guess we should say, or you worked or had a hand in some ways working with some of the other artists or your own concoctions, your own designs and things like that. So we're big fans of your work.
But as we normally do when we have a guest on the follow hub, we'd like to open this up with the robot's dozen questions. These are just some warm up questions. These are off the wall bunkers, questions that you can just answer however you want. Don't overthink them, just spit out the first thing that comes to mind and we're just gonna move from one question to the next.
We'll go through these relatively quickly and don't worry because we will absolutely judge you based on your answ. Here we go. Perfect. Question number one.
None of these are Freudian anyway, so this is probably the longest question in the group. One day you're out walking when a crazy looking old man approaches you and says, it's you. I was meant to give you this. Use it wisely.
And hands you a dollar bill from the year of your birth with Your mother's name written on it in ink. He disappears before you can ask more. What do you do? Go spend it.
What do you buy with it? Chips. Chips. That is correct answer.
Congratulations. The correct answer is always chips. The correct answer is chips. We end out buy bag of chips.
That's why we say question two. What is the sum of orange and rectangle? An orange rectangle. That's a valid answer.
That's a valid answer. All right, question number three. Which of us, between me and Ken, seems most likely to know how to tap dance? Me.
I'm the tap dancer group. Yes. Congratulations. Let me tell you, down a few.
I can do some jazz steps. That is absolutely true. Question number four. What creature in Fallout would you ride like a horse?
Smell gaster. Yes. I'm doing Woohoo. All right, that's.
Yeah, it would be very gross. Probably stinky ride, but for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I don't know how you put a saddle on there without accidentally covering one of those weird eyes that's just kind of like all over its back.
And you're welcome. Thank you. All right, question number five. Where do you go where everybody knows your name?
Like the Cheers bar. All right, there you go. The Cheers bar. Congratulations on that.
I was sad when that closed in Boston. I didn't realize it closed. Yeah, it's. It's gone now because of COVID It's permanently closed.
Bummer. Freaking Covid. Killing all our childhood memories. Okay, number six.
If you were a dog, would you wear a sweater? Nah. No. No.
Yeah. What do you mean a spider for? All right, so here's another question. My friend Dave does the follow up with us as well, and he'll potentially join us later or maybe after I leave because I have to go do another show.
But if Dave gives you a haunted doll and tells you to put it somewhere safe, that nobody will ever find it, but you will not be harmed. Where do you put it? It won't be harmed or I won't be harmed? It won't be harmed.
I mean, it's a haunted doll. I've watched Supernatural. I'm gonna burn it. Yeah, that's absolutely right.
You do not follow the instructions and you burn it right away. Very. Put some salt on it and burn it. Yes, perfect.
Question number eight. How many Super Munrons does it take to screw in a lightbulb? I think they can. Maybe one of the smart ones, but most of them, like you, just gain that single place with supernumes, then.
No, no amount is good. Good enough to screw in A lightbulb. You are correct. All right, number nine.
Who is the. You know, that isn't famous? I think of this one. Yeah, maybe.
Concept artist has done tons of stuff and he's also super fast. Is there something specific he's in that we would have, like, recognized? I know this is channel. You probably won't know.
What things did you work on? A ton of cat pangs. He did those. So, like, recognize this kid from the cat panics?
Yeah. Cat looks really irritated to be held up to the camera. It's like son of a star, put me back in the way. Well done.
Question 10. You're a mood director choosing music for an ironic romance scene. You must choose a song that clashes with the mood of the scene. What do you choose?
Death metal. Is there a specific song that you would pick? Question number 11. You discover irrefutable evidence that you are a synth with the memories and personality of Danny DeVito.
Danny DeVito is still very much alive. Do you murder him and take his place? No, I just go start another shows, see if anyone notices. Do you go by the same name?
He's number two. The Sequel. All right, number 12. Why not?
Two thumbs? Yeah, why not? Let's do it. I saw a robot second thumb thing, actually, that attached to your hand, so.
Seemed cool. Seemed very useful. You got a perfect score. Congratulations.
And unbeknownst to many of our guests, this robust dozen also counts as a goat. And so we have determined that your. Let's see. Hold on.
I gotta put this into the system. We've determined that your perfect job is a fruit vendor. Congratulations. Respectable work from the apocalypse.
So here's the question, though. Is a potato a fruit? Isn't it a vegetable? Is it a vegetable?
Isn't it like a combination of potatoes and tomatoes together? Right, right. Okay, so. But tomatoes are technically fruit that we treat like vegetables, and potatoes are like roots.
Yeah, Fruit, vegetables. So it's a French. It's a fridge table. Okay, so you're a tato bender.
There you go. I like it. Very cool. That was awesome.
Before we pop in here, I do want to remind everybody if you hit the hashtag perky, that's turkey, but with a P. Shea, who's. I apologize for. CZ is ready, people.
Spell it correctly. It. Yep, there you go. Shia, who's in chat, who said to say hello to you, she's going to be giving away two ink drawings tonight.
So make sure to enter that. So hashtag perky. I'm going to do a drawing here at the end of the Interview. I love.
I love Shia's work. I've been combing Shia's work. One of the. One of the goals that we had set on the Fallout Warcast Patreon was to hit regularly more than $500 a month, which we've moved on for a few months in order.
And if we pass that goal, I would get a tattoo. So I want to get like a fallout tattoo. And I've been combing through Shia's work to figure out if there's any of those that I could put on my shoulder, make it look really cool. So I love Chia's work.
Awesome stuff. So go. Go get yourself one of those pieces of work. Looks like modus.
And what was the other one? Modus. And then some of the scorched. Yeah.
Crystals and awesome stuff. Awesome stuff. I love she style. Very good.
She's great. Well, guys, I have to head out. I got another show. I got some lunch.
I wish I could stay, but we got a cyberpunk forecast and massive podcast patriarch episodes tonight. That'll be on my channel. But you guys stay here. Listen, when he has to say he's got awesome stuff.
I'm definitely be listening to this later as well. But thank you for being here, Nate and Ken, for setting this up. I'll see you guys later. Yes, sir.
Good talking to you. Yep, yep. Let me turn. Here we go.
Right? And then there were two. You started making video games back in third grade. I'd read.
What. What was that first game? I don't know if I even remember the specific one, but I know I made like tons of these just like terrible text adventures on old Apple II computers. Oh, yeah.
Lost the time probably. Thankfully. Yeah. I fondly remember I made a Doctor who role playing game on my T83 calculator in algebra class.
Yeah, my teacher didn't like me doing that also, so I'd do the same thing on calculator. Yeah. Math was not your forte. What.
What games were you playing back then? What did you. What did you really start with? I mean, back then I was mostly playing like Nintendo games, so I always like to go rent different games from video store.
Played all my stuff. What? So you started playing games. You really started enjoying them.
When. When did you make the decision that this is something I want to do for a lifetime? Great. At the same time, I was like, this is awesome.
I'm just gonna keep doing this. And I just never changed my mind. You know, some people are like, I want to be a fireman, but not me. Oh, did back Then when you were.
You had that vision in your head, were there any. Were there any gamers or developers, people in the industry that you looked to back then, you thought, you know what, I could be that person. I'm trying to think of who the celebrities would even be for that period. That would be.
I don't think that was really a thing for me until like the Doom era. It's offered everyone there, like Carmack or Romero, like I really looked up at them and loved those games. But before then, I don't think I even really knew who was making the games because you'd see like Nintendo Power once. Wild didn't have that kind of exposure to who was doing it.
Yeah, back then it was more about the. It was more of a focus on the deep end product than really the people behind the scenes. But I think then again, we've come so far in terms of artistry and what you can do now versus, like the original Super Mario Bros. Game.
Yeah, for sure. And then you went on to do art and game design college. How did you. How did you find the right college to go to for that?
So initially I went to a different one actually. I went to Academy park for about a year. But you know, I was more into games, but they were really fine arts focused. So eventually I left that.
Spent about years working on Half Life mods instead. And then I applied to Digicam because they're basically focused just on games. And that ended up being a great choice. I'm really glad I went there.
The. Yeah, it was the. You were the project leader on Desert Crisis, which is a mod for Half Life. How did you.
How did you get involved in that project? Did you play a lot of Half Life? It just kind of organically happened. Yeah, that's pretty much why I got Half Life in the first place.
It's like, first off, it was an awesome game, but I also wanted to make a mod for it. So I started this project with a few friends from school and then slowly found other people on the Internet and grew from there and worked on it for years. What? You ever still go back and play it?
Every once in a while. Yeah. There's like events that show up now and again on Steam where there's a whole group that still plays every once in a while and it's a lot of fun. That's gonna be a little weird to go back to the stuff that you did so long ago.
Is it a little nostalgic or do you get in your head and think, I could have done this A little different. Knowing what I know now, I think it's mostly nostalgic. Like I know I could probably do better now and all that. But it was a really fun game to work on and still enjoy combat.
I like it. Jumping off of walls and throwing sledgehammers at people and stuff like that. Yeah. So then.
So games that you worked on, even before Bethesda, you worked on BloodRayne 2, Aeon Flux, which I used to watch at the wee hours of the morning that cartoon was on. Metroid Prime 3 Corruption. What do you remember most about those, those early games that you did and what did you do for them for all those? I did Warlord and Lighting because that's always been my focus.
But I think the thing I remember most of was Turmoil Reality was this studio full of super talented people but did a lot of crunching stuff like that. So everyone ended up leaving. But from that studio, if you go to any major studio now, there's always someone from Terminal Reality, Naughty Dog, Valve, they're all over the place. There was like this incubator.
So that was really cool. And Metroid prime was very, very different from that because Nintendo games, everything is very like specifically crafted and I would get like a whole month just for one room which is like the complete opposite of games. Like you would demodding every single rock and every crack by hand. So I learned a lot about how to make really good looking interesting spaces but also learned that I think that's a terrible way to make a game.
It takes forever, right? It does look like middle ground there. So you can do a lot of custom stuff but maybe not every rock. That's maybe a little too far.
How do you, how do you approach level design and animation then or even now with the games that you've worked on? I think I usually just try and think of myself as the player and what I would enjoy and what's convenient. Like one example I would go to is like Diamond City. All the shops are just like dead center in a circle and you don't have to look for all of them except for one.
So because I knew players would go there all the time and I didn't want to be like load come out. I'm going to run to the other side of the city. Because I knew that would just annoy me. So I was like, let's put them all right there.
We're going to do it hundreds of times. So that's the main thing I think of. Yeah, that particular space feels like such a good centralized hub and even layout Wise, the way in which you get streets and alleys and you get a verticality to it as well as when you're wandering down in there, the space feels so much bigger than it really is. In the same way that maybe Megaton back in Fallout 3 had that kind of verticality where you're making your way around.
But you obviously had a lot more to work with in Fallout 4 versus 3 in terms of what you could build out in a space like that. Yeah, we were able to do a lot more with that. Spent even more time on that than any of the other cities I've worked on. So spend.
What I'm thinking, if I was living in this baseball stadium, like, would I build it up? Like, where's the food? Where they put their trash? Stuff like that.
Where's the bar? Exactly. That's super important. Did you.
You did a lot of scouting for Fallout 76, but when you were doing that space, working on Diamond City, did you. Did you do a lot of scouting in Boston, the same that you did throughout West Virginia? Yeah. Ended up going on multiple trips there and went on like a tour of Family park and stuff like that.
Thousands of pictures probably over the course of years ago. That's not that far away. So we'd make excuses to go to Boston and not let our friends into why we're taking so many pictures. Are you guys thinking there?
Yeah, sure. Why are you taking pictures of the floor? That's kind of weird. Don't worry about it.
I'm getting into architecture. It's five that we love. Where. Where do you find inspiration?
So much of what you do and what I think is really memorable about the spaces you've created is they have such a strong presence or atmosphere that you feel when you're going into a room or Diamond City or Little Lamplight or the deep in Fallout 76. Those spaces have such atmosphere. Where do you find inspiration when you design stuff like that? A lot of it is from, like, travel.
Like, there's sort of a connection there with auto spaces and scuba diving, which I've done a lot of, because they're almost like. Especially like Black Reach and the Limelight. They've got all these sort of glowy, sort of ethereal feeling spaces. So that was something that was always really inspiring.
We're just going to other places and there's always other games, movies, just kind of what it is, I guess. Yeah, I definitely got the feel. I waited to the zee for the first time. I was like, am I.
Am I at Elder Scrolls all of a Sudden. Yeah, I did that one for fun on the side. And everybody liked it enough that we ended up making it part of the main quest. That entire space was such a cool feature.
There are parts of the map, like even the cave system whose name is Deep Sea. Now, that's the tourist attraction 76. Yes, that's the one. That is such a space that's so well designed, too.
But unless you have a reason to go there, it's kind of one of those spaces that if it's not part of a quest or daily, you kind of go there once and then you forget to go back. But it's laid out so cool. Like, that entire cave system is just amazing. Even with, like, little boxes, you can learn as you're going through.
Yeah, I like that. That was really touching my space. Here's Dave. Hello, hello.
Hello. How's everybody doing? Good to see you. Everybody good?
Dave. Hey, how are you? Thank you for coming on. No problem.
Even though I didn't invite you, I just invited this. I don't know why I'm saying thank you. Just, you know, it's like, right at the dinner party together, and we just happened to be there. And I thank you for coming over to another person's dinner party.
It's kind of. But I just did. So I'm trying to make it less. Settle down.
Yeah. What's. What do you have? Do you have consistent style in terms of the way that you.
You design, like, a particular aesthetic that maybe is consistent to your work? I think I do sort of stuff that is, you know, aiming in the realistic category, but also with, like, those weird touches. So it looks real, but it's also absurd. Like the giant mushrooms and blackberries and stuff like that.
Like, I like those really extreme touches. Like, the Crash Space station's another one. I always wanted that in Fallout, but if they tell me, like, no, we don't have time. No, we don't have time.
Well, I'm just gonna make it so I have time. I'm gonna do it. Yeah. I feel like there's enough.
Sometimes I feel like there's not enough whimsy. Maybe. I like, like, post apocalyptic whimsy, I suppose. But it's like something that's, like, really out there.
Like, it's always really fun to see. Yeah. And, like, I think that's a hallmark of the Fallout universe. It has.
It's so absurd in different ways and whimsical in the way that you think of, like, 1950s sci fi into the early 1960s. It's all very Ridiculous. It's robots and flying cars and, you know, mutated floating brains. And we kind of.
We've had the total gamut of that throughout the years of Fallout. And that's why I like that franchise because you can do all those things within that. So even though it's like using ideas is kind of narrow sometimes, but this one's like, you can do whatever you want, time travel, whatever. And it's like, if you think about, like, Mad Max, like, like the movies or something, like, there's four movies.
And what's the one location you remember? If you name one, it'll be a Thunderdome. Because two go out, one go in, or one, two go in, one go out. That's like.
There's not. It's like a, you know, a desert. A desert land where there's not a lot of different locations. And it's like even trying to remember names of.
I mean, especially from like, the ones in the 80s and 90s, it's like those. It's like. It's not rememberable, but like a good, well designed location, like the Thunderdome. I mean, you remember that.
You remember when they have, like, you know, the big guy and little guy fight each other, you know? Yeah, it's a classic one. I have a little story about the Thunderdome, actually, that I think most people probably don't know about this one. But before I was art lead on 76, I fought the previous art lead in a Thunderdome.
So we went to Burning man together, and we had a Thunderdome there with the budgies and everything. Swing around and everyone's up on the cage. Only one of us will emerge. I get to cross this off my bucket list.
I just had a vision, like, you become lead artist at Bethesda by a death match. Just like in the middle of the century. Yeah, that's exactly how it works. Oh, yeah.
I mean, that's a great business. I mean, great. I mean, look at. I mean, upper mobility and career movement.
I mean, the field is open for people. That's the case. You know, you literally fight your way. I mean, it takes out some of your frustration.
You know, if I could go fight my boss in the Thunderdome and then take over his job, you know, that would be. That would be ideal. I would take that. Yeah.
Less arguments that way. I actually. I did fight. I did fight my boss once in one of those inflatable sumo costumes.
It was for a holiday party. I actually felt pretty good. Let's try that. I felt pretty good.
By the time I was about it, it Was a good way to let stress out. Speaking of colleagues, so many of them on LinkedIn, I was being a total creeper before the interview. I was looking back for your LinkedIn profile and a lot of them said a lot of similar things about you. In that you achieve a lot of quality and polish with your work under very strict timelines, sometimes even less than time that you need, as well as your drive.
What drives you in this industry? What drives you to create? Where does that come from? It's just that I've always really liked games, so I'm doing everything I can to make those games and put as much stuff in as you can without spending too much time on it.
Not to say don't college stuff, but, like, the thing about the Desi game in particular, it's like you can spend literally forever on a game like that. You just gotta find what's the right spot for, like, how much time to do looking as good as possible before moving on to something else. And coffee and hotties. So that's the secret.
You want one of those mouses of words that have, like, you know, like the 24 different mouse buttons on the side. You're like, all right, this one I press. You know, this button is all. NEFA is everything macro.
If I want to cursor, it's that. I have one of those, too. I have one of those, too. I have a gaming mouse or like my programming job.
Cyberpunk. Did you have the big, weird round red ball that had like a. Remember when that was a thing? It was like a chunky mouse, but had this big red ball on the side.
I saw that one. That was just me. How did you get the nickname the Phoenix? So that was from back in my wild tangent days when I was an intern and every week I did a poker game after work.
So my kind of thing in poker was that I would just do terribly at first and just almost lose, but then come back and do really well. But every time that was. So I was the Phoenix then. Coming back from my ashes of terrible poker playing.
NASA Ringer confirmed. You have a really interesting mix when it comes to skill sets. You have that technical background in terms of modeling, animation as well as you approach the games from the player perspective. I mean, as you're creating, like you said, you think in terms of, if I was playing this, what would I want?
Or what would people look for when it comes to world design, too, you bring this artistry together. How has that really helped you in your career to have that kind of skill set? I think it's helped me to talk to other departments a lot more because some people just focus on art and make other specialty. But I've always been sort of this cross discipline person.
I didn't even actually really do art, period, until 1999, because before then I was only programming and designing games. So that ended up being super helpful for putting in new tools and redesigning lighting system on 76 and stuff like that. Or even writing my own tools. That's been super helpful to get stuff done faster.
Writing your own tools. Yeah. Surely, like this code is terrible to get the job done. Like there's a lot of making games.
It's just like repetitive nonsense. So you can easily script stuff up and write stuff like my script and stuff like that to do it for you. That's awesome. What's your Go ahead?
Okay. I was just gonna say on Fallout 3, like, we had to do edge trims for decals and everything because everything's ruined. But we have to do it on hand at first. So I broke something to do it for us.
And that probably saved me five years on the game. I don't know how we would have done without it. Alyssa, I remember you talking too about the lighting system in Fallout 76, how you. You worked on creating more dynamic lighting system.
A new lighting system that I remember particularly when we were looking at wastelanders in pathetic game days and got a chance to actually sit down and play it properly. The very first thing that struck me was how different the world looked and how much the lighting was more dynamic and the world just looked more beautiful. But in Fallout 3, you had to light things by hand. Yeah.
It wasn't until 76 that that stuff would now light for you. So every single, like little pocket of darkness and light, if you like have sunlight coming into a room. Right. You would have to then put all these extra lights to fill that room with light yourself.
So that was like thousands and thousands of lights versus one. And you had to do that. There's no way to descript that, really, because it had to be really done by the eye. Got that?
Yeah. The way I would do it is I would turn off all the lights and just kind of like do it by feel. So I can't use the lights and you just like duplicating them and adjusting the brightness, making all these little lights going through doorways. If you watch toxic.
Don't do it this way. Imagine it's like. It's like rearranging your living room and you're like, all right, put the cash up here. All right, now I know I want armchair in the corner, but there and see how that looks.
Okay. And then like, you know, four hours later you're like, okay, I think I like this. And then the next day you're like, no, this is a crap by hand. Yeah, because it's like you move one light and then you have to move.
Yeah, it's a ton. What was your first Fallout? What got you into the Fallout franchise? Well, Disney's incredible.
That was the first one. I played the first one like way back in the day. That's probably not what I was saying about him. You're never see the special award.
We're going to ship it to you right now. It's coming in the mail. Yeah, that's. I never.
I wish I'd had into gaming later. We had a Nintendo but not a PC. By the time I did, it was Doomquake. But I never got a chance to really play and appreciate Fallout 1 and 2.
Fallout 3 was my first game that was playing those early games. What drew you into that world? Was it just the wackiness of it or just the post apocalyptic feel? It's both.
I've always liked that blend because like how it's dark and serious but then also just so goofy at the same time. That was really enjoyable to me. It was always like this formative game for me. My junior NCR project in high school, both on nuclear weapons, which they probably thought was kind of weird.
What. That's what like how you would theoretically build one or like what kind of experiments we talk about here. So one was on like the history of nuclear weapons and the other was purely on the physics of just like how the blasts work, radiation and all these things. Did you do a scale model of the school and be like, well, this is what would happen if.
I'm sure they would have not liked that. So in West Virginia they have this thing called the social studies fair, which is like, it's like for like middle schoolers and high schoolers will go, they'll present a project of something from social studies. But after Fallout 76 released, it was like predominantly kids doing Mothman and Flatwoods Monster because everybody was talking about them again. And normally like every year you get like one or two people doing that.
But the next year was like, everybody was like, this is the thing. Mothman and Flatwoods Monster. Everybody was like going crazy. It was like, see the pictures from the different, the different displays because it's by counting.
And so it's like pretty much every kid Will participate in it. A lot of them did that right at flaw. So that's so cool. It inspired more people to do fun little projects like that.
That's so cool. Cryptid is the best. Yeah, you're talking to the Cryptid master over here, Dave. Did you show him your degree?
I'm sorry. Dave literally has a cryptozoology. So, Nate, I'm a West Virginia native. I'm from Charleston, grew up in Bluefield, which Bramwell is in the game.
And I know it's in the game because there's a terminal entry that talks about Bramwell, but it's never mentioned locations. And I knew it even when watching the trailers right now. But I got a degree from. Yeah, the mega mansions.
Yeah, I got a degree from the. It's in the UK. It's called the University of Paranormal Studies. I paid 50 bucks and took an exam and I have a certificate for a degree in cryptozoology.
You had to take a little exam and you had to like a lot of it. Now the thing is, there was no questions about Mothman or flyback monster, the grappling monster, whatever. It was primarily like, what's a mermaid, What's a kelpie, what's the Loch Ness monster? So it was very UK based.
So I'm not sure if I have an international degree, but I have like, you know, you know, it's all semantics at this point. So like if monsters invade, you should go to the UK to fight monsters. Is that what you're telling us? But here's the thing.
I don't know. I know more about the West Virginia monsters, but I'm not sure if they've made a degree. So I think that maybe I should start my own. Like, you know, like, you know how they sell, like prescriptions for emotional support animals.
Maybe I should do that for West Virginia, for physiology, since I'm in degree professional already and. Go ahead and that's like a great. I'm talking about my genius small business idea right now. And I'm a little uncomfortable because this, I mean, this could make it big for me.
Yeah, I know. They take notes. Right now he's starting venture capitalism firms. Yes, Emotional support, crypto.
He scroll down in a note. Talk about a derail. That's what I'm here for. That is what people book me for.
Thank you for bringing the chaos. And I deliver every time. I deliver every time. So bring it on back.
Now. You started as a world artist with Bethesda after interning at Wild Tangent, you worked your way up the ladder there well over 14 years, which, when you work at a company that long, like the last company I worked on, I was there for 11 years, it becomes like family there. So much of your personality, your memories and all of that becomes really wrapped up in there. But you never really forget where you started.
What was like those first years? What was it like walking in the door there and working on Fallout 3? It was really exciting since, you know, I've always been fan of the franchise. And just seeing that initial demo they made where it was like this little school area that was taken over by super mutants and seeing that for the first time and most people in world haven't seen it, you know, at all.
At that point, I was just super sad, like, hell yeah, let's build this. So I was all in. And I think you'd said too, that Fallout is what brought you to Bethesda. It was one of the reasons that you really wanted to be there.
Some people's underscroll before it was 100% fallout. That's awesome. It had to be tricky too, to go from the isometric style of Fallout 1 and 2 to fully realized 3D and complete transformation of the game with that. Yeah, it was cool to see that.
I was a little used to that since I worked on Metroid Prime 3 and that's kind of the same thing where they took all those old games and transformed it. It was fun to see what they've done with Fallout and I really enjoyed that. I'm sure there's curious out there who just like the originals more, and that's fine, but really enjoyed them. So what's it like going back and forth between, like, you work on art design for something in the fall game and then you're moving over to Skyrim and then you move back.
Like, is there like something that you need to rearrange your brain every time? It's like, okay, okay, Bob Ross. Gotta channel some Bob Ross for this. And then what's that process like?
Yeah, it definitely takes getting used to switching those styles after you're doing all these destroyed buildings for years. But do you have to feel like a breath of fresh air? Are you like, ah, yeah, for some people. But for me, like, I was fine just doing all the destroyed stuff.
It was awesome. To me, who hasn't mistaken a draugr for a feral ghoul? I mean, it happens. Yeah, there's parallels there.
Exactly. All right, here's a question quiz for you. You can only save one of these that you've made. Little lamplight Paradise Falls, Tenpenny Tower, or the Underworld.
I think we go with Little Lamplight. That's one that's really special to me. I spent a lot of time on that one and even took the photos myself of the caves. There's like Lorraine Cavern.
Caverns. There's a cave nearby and I took pictures there, built them into the cave kit for Little Lamplight. That's awesome. Really cool.
You modeled that after the caverns? Yeah. Interesting. That's cool.
That's like. That's like the premier spot. I grew up, so I am from West Virginia, but I grew up in Virginia. So what that means is born in West Virginia, lived in Virginia until I was 18 to move back to West Virginia.
So Luray Caverns was like the premier spot for like third graders. That's like if you are going on the field trip, like that's one of the places you're gonna go. You're get a big whole scoop of ice cream and go to Larry Caverns. That's interesting.
That's funny. We didn't cuss any time though, when we went to Larry Caverns. There wasn't a whole lot of cussing, but I know a little inflight there maybe. Yeah, Fair amount of it.
Who hasn't been sworn at by a small child before? Happens to the best of us. You served as lead artist on the Pit. What inspired the art design of that space?
I think it all comes from like the blast furnace and steel and all that. So the whole thing has this fire theme. And that also kind of worked with the timeline of that project because it was like two or three months. It was incredibly fast.
So it's like, what can we do to make this as unique as possible? Seven kind of like except pieces of glass furnace and then just kind of recolor and change. Everything else beyond that feels different as good. So you're really going to this new place.
Yeah. So much of there are certain DLCs that to me, that is one of them. And even in New Vegas, the Sierra Madre, that whole world space almost feels like a completely different game. Like the Pit as its own could be its own game.
It's such a different world space than where we were at in dc. Everything is very urban and dark and even the choices that you make there in terms of what to do with the baby. Oh my God, that's dark. I think there's a lot more freedom than dlc.
It's like even though the Fallout games can do a lot like on dlc, you can do even more like Aliens and All kinds. Yes. Mothership Zeta. I love me some Mothership Zeta.
Which brings us also to dlc, where co project lead and artist on Point Lookout, which when you think about that one, the feel of that. When I first checked out Far harbor with Fallout 4, it felt like I was going back to Point Pleasant. It had the same kind of dreary, like, swampy atmosphere. It was oppressive and foggy.
That DLC broke out and the whole Calvert mentioned you, your team put that together in four months, which is just insane. That's the other nice thing about DLC is at that point, you've spent so much time building that stuff that you know how to do it anyway. So the tools all work and are stable. So you can just do stuff a lot faster than you do the rest of the time, really.
So that was a lot fun to work on. Learning a lot about how to lay out the world too. Which was useful for 76 for how you like coming into point of time and see the mansion and all those control you like math. Exactly.