Bethesda can't see past RPGs

Those of you who enjoy a good bout of rat-punching, like myself, will be pleased to hear that Bethesda has no plans to move out of the role-playing genre, according to voice-of-the-company Pete Hines.

"I can tell you that right now there are no plans internally for us to do anything other than role-playing," Bethesda's vice president of PR told Edge recently.

The developer is currently tying the final knots for PS3 launch title Oblivion, as well as finishing work on the game's first full expansion, Shivering Isles. Bethesda believes the differences between the two console versions are largely in the eye of the beholder: both are virtually identical, with perhaps a teency-weency performance difference in load times and draw distances.

"I think that you could find any number of people who would argue that the platform they enjoy the most is the one that looks the best," Hines added. "Sometimes folks see stuff there that's real, and oftentimes it's imagined. The PS3 and 360 versions are for all intents and purposes identical."

"They're different platforms - we had to do different things for optimising and loading - but the 360 was the first one out of the gate and our goal was always that the PS3 version has to match the performance on that console, it can't lag even by a little bit. ‘As good as or better' was our mantra."

The next project for the developer will be Fallout 3. Unfortunately we know as much about it as we do about life on Mars, with no consoles specified or details divulged. We expect it will be available on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3, much like Oblivion, but we can only guess.