Skyrim was awful to play for the longest time.
Look at any image of heavy metal horror gameThe Axis Unseenand youll recognise an archetype: the stealth archer.
Its probably not the best idea for most people to do a solo open world, he says.
But at the same time, this is like my sixth one.
Im pretty sure what goes into these.
In fact, Purkeypile knows better than almost anyone how to fill an enormous environment with meaningful detail.
And then once I hopped on Fallout 3, we started to bring those lessons forward.
you’ve got the option to observe the effects of this approach over time on Bethesdas games.
While dungeon delving in Oblivion, it wasnt uncommon to experience deja vu.
It was basically the artists who made the kits who were tasked to make 30 dungeons.
And when Joel came over, he started that level design department.
Its basically freeform for the level designers, they can do whatever they want, Purkeypile says.
Its not really guided in a lot of cases, Purkeypile says.
Plus a less pretentious case to be made for the amusingly-positioned skeletons.
When youre making a space, youre like, What would be something funny?
A teddy bear watching a guy whos dead in the toilet?
But joining Bethesda in the wake of Oblivion was not the victory lap you might imagine.
We as a company still felt like we had a lot to prove, Purkeypile says.
Skyrim was awful to play for the longest time, and it just didnt work.
People would joke about the new guy in the studio.
And hes like, Ive been here seven years!
Early on, Burgess and Purkeypile led the making of trippy Fallout 3 DLC Point Lookout.
We did that whole thing in four months, he says.
That was a pretty sizeable landmass, and with, like, 20 people and zero programming support.
A lack of resources creates obvious problems.
But a tight-knit team brings its own rewards.
you’re able to trust people a little bit more when its at that scale, Purkeypile says.
Me and Joel just did it.
At that point, really early on, the art style wasnt fully established.
It was a lot more graphic, almostTeam Fortress 2looking, and slowly became a little more real.
Theres telephone wires to help lead your eye to the power core in the middle.
I had to fight with Design over that.
It came about because he needed a test bed to try out the art teams industrial-themed building kit.
Had to verify it works.
Over time, however, that tight-knit feeling changed.
And thats before you factor in the outsourcing.
Broadly speaking, why I left is because of those changes, he says.
Id rather focus on game creation, so making that jump to solo made a whole bunch of sense.
A series of prototypes led ultimately to The Axis Unseen.
Around that time I had been playing a lot of theHunter: Call Of The Wild, Purkeypile says.
It seemed like a really good opportunity to add monsters to that jot down of thing.
Here is where it goes full nutso with giant skulls and all these weird monsters, he says.
Its nice to double down on that.
It makes sense to me to make a game about hunting Bigfoot, listening to heavy metal.
Youre either gonna get a deer, or its gonna get scared and run away.
But in my case, those creatures attack you.
In this nightmarish world drawn from folklore, creatures will follow your tracks, just as you follow theirs.
You have to pay attention if youre walking on the rocks or the dirt, Purkeypile explains.
And you have to be careful with stone because stone is also louder.
Its a welcome return to the floor-based-thinking that distinguished the Thief series.
As are the elemental arrows, which are designed to be combined in lots of different ways.
Then you have this flaming creature attacking you, and youve got to watch out for that, too.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given Purkeypiles background, these immersive sim elements are complemented by environmental storytelling.
Hes contracted a series of writers to scribble journals that players will find dotted across the landscape.
Im actually leaving it pretty open.
