Erik J. Caponi is a developer who worked at Bethesda Game Studios on Fallout 3 as a quest designer and writer.
Work on the Fallout series[]
Caponi worked at Bethesda Game Studios from 2005 to 2009, working on Fallout and The Elder Scrolls. On Fallout 3, Caponi was responsible for writing dialogue, designing locations, crafting characters, implementing scenes and scenarios, and creating background story elements. Caponi's secondary duties included systems and content design.[1] Specifically, Caponi worked on freeform content that was not tied to a particular quest in the base game.[2] Some specific areas that Caponi contributed to includes the character of Charon,[3] Leo Stahl and his unmarked quest,[2] in addition to serving as one of the main narrative designers on The Pitt add-on, alongside Fred Zeleny,[4] as well as the main quest line of Point Lookout.[5]
Quotes[]
“Primarily what I do around here is known as "Freeform Gameplay." I started with it on Shivering Isles and it's now my full time role on Fallout. What it means is that I'm responsible for gameplay content that isn't related to quests. This can take the form of incidental dialog, NPC behavior, scripted scenes, town dialog, world encounters, lore, conversation systems, as well as any one of a million different things that might not be tied directly to a particular quest.”— Erik Caponi[6]
Employment history[]
| From | To | Company | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | 2003 | Xmachina Studios | Game Designer |
| 2004 | 2005 | Monolith Productions | Game Designer |
| 2005 | 2009 | Bethesda Game Studios | Game Designer |
| 2009 | 2012 | Big Huge Games | Lead Narrative Designer |
| 2012 | 2014 | 2K | Narrative Director |
| 2014 | 2018 | Ubisoft | Narrative Director |
| 2018 | ? | Relic Entertainment | Game Director |
| ? | Present | Splash Damage | Creative Director |
Credits[]
Fallout series[]
| Year | Title | Credited as/for |
|---|---|---|
| 2008 | Fallout 3 | Quest Designer & Writer |
| 2009 | The Pitt | Lead Narrative Designer |
Other work[]
| Year | Title | Credited as/for |
|---|---|---|
| 2005 | The Matrix Online | Mission Designer |
| 2006 | The Elder Scrolls IV: Knights of the Nine | Game Designer |
| 2006 | The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion | Game Designer |
| 2007 | The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles | Game Designer |
| 2011 | The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim | Special Thanks |
| 2012 | Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning | Principal Narrative Designer & Writer |
| 2016 | Watch Dogs 2 | Narrative Additional Thanks |
| 2017 | For Honor | Additional Narrative Director |
References[]
- ↑ Erik J. Caponi/Meet the Fallout 3 devs
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Vaulting ambition: how Fallout 3 changed the game
- ↑ Fred Zeleny on Twitter: "@q0rt @leighalexander Once, @DoctorSpooky found a CL fantasy-hookup request for Charon, the ghoul he wrote in FO3. He considered responding."
- ↑ Fred Zeleny on Twitter: "@mpacholik @BillZoeker Please save at least half of that love for the other main narrative designer for The Pitt, @DoctorSpooky."
- ↑ Fallout 4 Point Lookout Mod with Joel Burgess and Nate Purkeypile (13:00)
Kenneth Vigue: "What about some of the particular quests that you started putting out, how did that process come about? So when you put together the Blackhall quest, Plik... was that from that initial pitch that you both kind of picked around, or did you develop the quests as you went along?"
Joel Burgess: "I think Blackhall and all that stuff kind of came as we went. Y'know, obviously to say that Point Lookout is Purkey and I would be a gross injustice against the team, right? So as we started working with more folks and it became more clear who the Point Lookout team was that we could collaborate with, a lot of the quests shook out of... y'know, I think it was Fred in there who we were working with on the quest side. So we had some ideas, like we knew that we wanted to revisit the Dunwich horror. We had some various points of interests that we were interested in. Nate and I are very world-first people. So we kind of knew points of interests and locations that we were excited about. And then like we're working with Fred in there on quests and story stuff to try and weave those into like, the mansion and the boardwalk and the internment camp, and all these things sort of started to shake out of that creative process. [...] The central storyline I think really was like, maybe a 70-30 split? With us like being the 30% influence onto I think it was Erik that did the main story for Point Lookout."
Nathan Purkeypile: "Yeah, we were just kind of guiding it, I would say." - ↑ Oblivion's Real Estate: Princess Stomper interviews Megan Sawyer and Erik J. Caponi from Bethesda