sajon77 on 8/5/2011 at 13:00

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After a bit of a hiatus (I went to Spain) the next podcast is finally up. Here's the link:

(http://outsideyourheaven.blogspot.com/2011/05/interview-with-tim-stellmach-laura.html)

Here's the text from the blog:

Part 3 of a continuing series, where I interview members of the now-defunct but highly influential Looking Glass Studios (1990-2000), which wrote the book on 3D first-person narrative game design throughout the 90s, in such games as Ultima Underworld, System Shock, and Thief.

In this episode I talk with Tim Stellmach and Laura Baldwin. Tim was lead designer on Thief and Thief II, as well as a designer on Underworld II, System Shock, and Terra Nova. Laura was a designer/writer on Thief. She also worked in System Shock 2. Joining us is also Sara Verrilli, QA on System Shock and designer on Thief and Thief 2.

The discussion mostly covers Thief, though there is some discussion of other projects. If you want to find out where lingo like "taffer" comes from, or what it means, be sure to check it out

jtr7 on 8/5/2011 at 16:55

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Yay! Thanks! I've been waiting for this since Tim mentioned doing this interview on his blog. :cool:

Thirith on 9/5/2011 at 13:50

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Thieves Guild - the Magnetic Scrolls one? I always liked the atmosphere but never made it very far into the game, most likely because my English wasn't particularly good at the time. It's easy enough to get through something like Ultima V with an okay passive but dodgy active vocabulary, but those grand old text adventures needed a better command of the language than I had at the time.

gunsmoke on 9/5/2011 at 18:42

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lol, it was a bit more involved than that, but lol. I played it on the Commode 64, but man, look at the Atari ST and DOS screenies. They were awesome. At least I didn't have to suffer the 8-bit Atari ver. though.

Muzman on 9/5/2011 at 19:19

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Hah, the tale of Abe Girhan's head. Oh I remember figuring that one out. It was kind of a revelation that you could just do so many things in that game. Interactivity was always fairly specific in games. Even if really you could lever open a window with a screwdriver if you wanted to you'd still have to find 'A Crowbar' or some such. Although admittedly, people's severed heads weren't exactly rich with applications in System Shock, so it's not a good example.

It must be underlined though that the utter genius of the whole thing isn't that you are just using a certain person's head on the retinal scanner. Oh hell no. It was Abe Girhan's head. He was the character who was doing what you were doing. He was the other renegade action man fighting SHODAN. Every really tough challenge and horrid place in the station, you'd find one of his logs. He'd been there first. He was doing what you were doing. It was a sign you were on the right track. For most of the game, it gradually dawns on you that you are following in his footsteps. And then you find his dying words at a point where it's not exactly obvious what you're supposed to do next. Abe didn't make it and now you're stuck too.

As cliched as it sounds, they really do not make 'em like that any more.

Anyway, that interview could have been three times longer without complaint from me.