Bethesda is sticking to RPGs for now
Pete Hines, VP of Public Relations, took the helm and decided to answer another set of questions regarding not only Oblivion, but Bethesda as a whole. We'll go ahead and make a fantastic list.
Shivering Isles isn't a standalone game because they want you to keep the character you've worked so hard on... they want you to be able to trek back and forth between the main game and the expansion with that character.
Bethesda is sticking to the first-person view of their RPGs and think JRPGs are all the same, too linear, etc. Obviously, they haven't played that many JRPGs or they probably wouldn't say that. For the most part, it's true, but there are some amazing non-linear titles from Japan. The Romancing SaGa games are fantastic non-linear JRPGs.
There is a slight desire to create an MMO, but only if Bethesda can find a way to move the genre as a whole forward. They've been very focused on single-player interaction, making the world alive and not so "get this quest to get the items certain monsters may drop but probably won't so you can get an item to activate another quest to get more items that, in the end, amount to you accomplishing nothing at all." That's me quoting myself, not Pete Hines.
About the PS3 and 360 versions, now Hines says this: "Sometimes folks see stuff there that's real, and oftentimes it's imagined. The PS3 and 360 versions are for all intents and purposes identical." What? Stop flip-flopping.
Last but not least, Pete Hines says that "right now there are no plans internally for us to do anything other than role-playing."
Bethesda is going to go with those answers and we're gonna take them. But if he said before that the PS3 had some differences to the 360 version and now he says they're the same... which is true? Why the doublespeak, Mr. Public Relations? If they're the exact same, that's perfectly fine – just say so and stick to it. Anyone else want to offer up non-linear JRPGs also?
