GB Feature: Sean K Reynolds Interview
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GB: What were your responsibilities during the development of Fallout 3 ("Van Buren") and Baldur's Gate III ("Jefferson")? Can you give us a brief background of what each game was going to be about?
Sean: Well, Interplay hasn't officially confirmed what each of those code-named games was, so I'll just refer to them by the aliases....
For Jefferson I was assigned some of the game areas or (for the larger areas) pieces of areas. I was responsible for populating those areas with creatures and NPCs, writing their dialogues, and describing their general behavior (the exact details were handled by the scripters). I was nominally in charge of one of the factions/regional groups, so I created a style guide for their attitudes, accent quirks, and manners of speech, which the other designers used when their areas called for a representative of that faction. The crux of the story is that your character ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time, becomes associated with a supernatural creature, and because of that association everyone else in the game suspects you of treachery, wants to kill you, or wants to recruit you to their cause, all of which tie to the activities of a determined female criminal.
For Van Buren I started out as a designer but after a time JE Sawyer (who was lead designer) wanted to focus more on the technical design aspects and offered me the story lead position. My duties as story lead were to keep track of continuity not only with the game's story but within the game universe, to revise the story as we added or subtracted areas, and work in overall story changes as we clarified and expanded each of the game areas. The story puts the PC in the role of an escaped prisoner, locked up for an unknown reason and freed by an attack by an unknown military force. The prisoner wanders from community to community trying to survive and figure out what has happened in the past few years as well as the identity of the people who freed him, and why.
Both games would have been really fun; it's too bad Interplay had us stop working on them.
