So, I asked a number of lead developers about the nature of creative vision within the industry and how their specific visions have been changed by various forces within and outside of internal development. Obsidian Entertainment creative director and co-founder Chris Avellone (formerly of Interplay), Hinterland Games creative director and co-founder Raphael van Lierop (formerly of Relic Entertainment and Ubisoft Montreal), and Carbine Studios art director Matt Mocarski were kind enough to talk to me.
All three developers have been involved with the industry for some time now, and all three have seen ideas and concepts fall by the wayside. During development of any game, the vision is constantly being compromised for various reasons.
"We wanted this group of female sky pirates as an enemy faction. We did a ton of concepts. They had a pink motif with striped socks and one of the girls had a tooth knocked out," answers Mocarski, whose studio just launched the MMO WildStar. "This was early in the development process and we were still finding our voice. Our Senior Producer disliked it and we reluctantly took it out."
"Funny thing is, I feel like we could easily get that into the present game. That's sometimes the trick with developing a new IP: everyone has their own idea in their head of what it should be. Knowing what I know now, I should have stuck to my guns, but sometimes you need to choose your battles. It's possible that because I agreed to pull the pirates that the Chua got approved as a player race. Who knows, maybe you'll see the pink pirates show up in a future patch!"
Van Lierop attempted to bring Far Cry and its sequels together in a single cohesive narrative. Unfortunately, he left Ubisoft Montreal in the early stages of Far Cry 3's development and the game took a different direction afterward.
"During the pre-production phase of Far Cry 3, I invested significant time in crafting a narrative direction and overall IP flavor that would reconcile all previous Far Cry games into a coherent setting and also set the tone for the new Far Cry game to carry on the mature aesthetic introduced in Far Cry 2, which was a fantastic game," he explains. "This work involved generating ideas for new settings, a new protagonist, and an overarching narrative framework for the franchise. After I left the development, Ubisoft decided to take the game in another direction, which is 100 percent appropriate but was still disappointing given the personal investment."
...
"I feel that the Far Cry franchise took a weird turn with Far Cry 3 and Blood Dragon, and now has become synonymous with oddball antagonists and brash spin-offs," Van Lierop says of the series' current direction. "Perhaps this has made it a more profitable venture. In my case, I have no interest in playing Far Cry anymore."
...
"There was an attempt in Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer to create a bisexual character, although that was not accepted by the franchise holders," says Avellone. "We made attempts to persuade them that we would handle it properly, but that was not a direction they wished to go. With the arrival of the next editions of D&D and Pathfinder, however, as well as the progress with romances from BioWare, I think this would be a moot discussion today, and for that, I'm grateful. Discriminating based on sexual preference seems backward now, a move that even the franchise holder has stepped back on."
According to Avellone, outside forces haven't dictated too much of the content of Obsidian's games, despite the fact that the studio has worked on franchises like Star Wars, Fallout, and South Park. Most cuts were due to publishers explicitly veto-ing certain additions, like power armor prototypes and Forced Evolutionary Virus variations in Fallout: New Vegas' DLC, Old World Blues.
"LucasArts were comfortable with the story in Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords (they had six comments on it), and when it came to Fallout: New Vegas, there was little we weren't allowed to do, but I credit the smooth discussions there because the publishers understood empowerment, and our development teams had shown evidence that we understood the franchise we were designing for," he adds.