Bethesda's Pete Hines

Correct.

Well, you've seen from some of the announcements we've made that there other folks using id Tech. Skyrim is such a completely different kind of game that when you're talking about big, open, go-anywhere-you-want do-anything-you-want games, the id Tech engine isn't... The id guys would be the first to tell you that that's not the kind of game that engine was made for. The inverse of that is that the kind of engine we [Bethesda Game Studios] make for what we do is not the kind of engine you use for a fast-paced first-person shooter with multiplayer, nor for an MMO that's server-based.

So I think in the case that we had something that works that a similar product would want to use, then we'd do that. If not, then we're not going to force a round peg into a square hole.

It's not as much about a genre for us as it is, like, "What are you trying to do?" I say that with some hesitance, because I don't think you would see a rugby game from us any time soon. But that doesn't mean we say we don't do adventure or horror.

Oh yeah, always.

We like those guys.

Sure, absolutely. We've known Vince [Zampella] and Jason [West] for a while. Infinity Ward and before Infinity Ward. The Insomniac guys are here - known those guys for a while, have a lot of respect for them. It's just that we have lots of people we know and have known for a long time, and whenever we can we just like pulling them in [at QuakeCon] to get another perspective. I think people find it interesting. I think we'll continue to do that specifically as it relates to QuakeCon because we think it makes a better show and more interesting.

I don't know about that. I don't know what the right number of internal studios is or isn't, but again our intent is to continue to have conversations with people we think are talented and make the kind of games we respect and like, and to see if there's any possibility of working with them. Sometimes that results in an acquisition, sometimes it's a game, sometimes it's a series of games - who knows? But it's healthy to just continue to have dialogue and conversations, because you never know what might happen and what might fall into your lap.

Probably. Probably. Although my personal philosophy, and in a lot of ways Bethesda's philosophy, is we tend not to do a lot of post-mortem stuff, at least in a public way. In some ways it feels a bit like airing dirty laundry. Certainly I think there's things on both projects we would have done differently, but I wouldn't want to get into specifics.

Certainly. It's something we continue to try to address and design for. I think if you go back and look, Fallout 3 was an incredibly stable game. Certainly not bug-free, but there's a difference for us between a rock that's floating a little above the ground, which is technically a bug, and one you might have that causes your game to crash or your save-games to get corrupted.

So there's degrees. We start at the top and work our way down. Does the game load when you click on it? Does it save properly? That stuff. So it's something we're cognisant of. I think for Skyrim we built a number of things into the game to cover that and to try to improve that. But the truth of the matter is that it's far easier to bug-test and playtest a game that's very linear than one that's very open.

It is a bigger undertaking to wrangle all of that and make sure you've squeezed out every possible thing, like, "Oh, you've picked up this sword then talked to this person then gave them that, then this thing happens." It is literally approaching infinite when you talk about all those possibilities.

I think we have and continue to get better at it. When you look at Fallout: New Vegas, it was not a Bethesda Game Studios title, it was different experience for those guys even though we worked with them on it, but I think Todd [Howard] and his team have continued, over the 12 years I've been here working with them, to make improvements, and I think they're in a good place with this.

I don't know. That's a tougher one. In the case of Obsidian it was a really unique opportunity. We had a studio that had availability and a group of guys within that who had worked on previous versions of it. You don't have that same situation with Elder Scrolls at all. So I doubt it. I guess technically never say never, but I don't see that being something we actively look at or explore.

I haven't the foggiest idea. It's with the lawyers. They're sorting it. Beyond that, honest to god I haven't the foggiest idea what's going on with it. I would hope and assume that it all gets resolved soon.