During its press event in London last week, Bethesda not only cleared up the status of its long in-development project Rogue Warrior, but also announced it would be publishing A2M's action shooter WET and licensing a series of Elder Scrolls novels.

Rogue Warrior, a shooter based on the exploits of Navy SEAL Richard Marcinko, was originally announced in 2006 as a Zombie Studios project. The game has since been scrapped, and the core project turned over to Alien vs. Predator developer Rebellion.

"Suffice it to say, we were not happy with what the direction of that project was," said Bethesda marketing VP Pete Hines during the event.

Zombie's ambitious multiplayer plans for Rogue Warrior have been scaled back to deathmatch and team DM, while the singleplayer component is now a one-man affair that focuses more on Marcinko's unique personality. This focus is marked by an amusing, curse-laden Mickey Rourke voiceover, Dick's incredibly brutal "kill moves," and a general atmosphere reminiscent of 80s action movies. It's due out this fall.

Meanwhile, Bethesda also announced a duo of Elder Scrolls novels. The books are being penned by fantasy and science fiction author Greg Keyes (The Age of Unreason, The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone) and published by Del Rey. The first novel, "The Infernal City," will be out this fall.

And if that wasn't enough, Bethesda also picked up A2M's WET, the stylish, Kill Bill-esque shooter based on slow-motion acrobatics. Attempting to get a handle on the developments, I sat down with Hines to get his take opics related to the three projects--including whether WET's sexually-charged marketing would be carried over, the origin and canon of the Elder Scrolls novels, how Rogue Warrior's Marcinko is now more like Duke Nukem, and just when the Bethesda behemoth is going to stop growing.

Shack: With respect to the two Elder Scrolls novels by Greg Keyes, is Bethesda looking to increasingly leverage its franchises in this sort of way?

Pete Hines: In so much as we can find stuff that feels right for whatever particular brand or series we're talking about, in terms of what it is and how it's executed and stuff, yeah, I think so.

This was something that was born out of a conversation I had with folks that work on our strategy guide. They're also owned by the same parent company, and they eventually put me in touch with some of their book folks. And I talked with them a bit, and talked to a few of our guys on the dev team about it.

It was an initiative that really [Bethesda senior designer] Kurt Kuhlmann and I sort of ganged up and hounded [Elder Scrolls director] Todd Howard like, "We really need to do this, you need to let us do this." And Todd finally sort of came around. It's not that he didn't want to do it. He just worries about distractions to his team, and getting away from the focus.

But you know, we talked to him about it, and worked through a long list that they had suggested, and ones we had suggested to them. And we read Greg Keyes' book, and just loved it, and were like, this is the kind of guy who in our world could do some really great stuff. So not just doing the book, but doing it in the right way with the right author.

So in so much as we find opportunities like that where it just feels like a good fit--the right person doing the right project for a game--then, yeah. But at the same time, we're pretty selective, so if we don't find any of those, then there won't be any. It's not like go find five projects like this in the next year. We evaluate each one as it comes in and see whether it's worth doing or not.

Shack: These will be books that stand alone, but use the Elder Scrolls world as their setting?

Pete Hines: No, actually part of our thing is, if you're going to write it, then it needs to fit into the Elder Scrolls lore and canon.

Shack: So future games will take this fiction into account?

Pete Hines: It's hard to say. Hard to say, because we haven't gotten to future games yet. Certainly the reason that these two key guys--well, three: Bruce [Nesmith], Kurt and Todd are all involved in it--is to make sure that [Keyes] doesn't write anything that messes with the lore. "That race would never do that," or "those guys would never work together"--everything has to fit. But beyond that, we are doing it as if it's part of Elder Scrolls lore and canon.

Shack: Was A2M's WET a game that you actively sought out?

Pete Hines: Yeah, I mean we had known about it for a while. Todd Vaughn, our VP of development, it was on his radar for a while. He had talked to me about it, he had seen it, and then mentioned it to me. And they wanted to come down and show it to a number of us who hadn't seen it, and so--it's one of those things that probably wasn't, from a negotiating standpoint, my finest moment, because I was like, "Yeah, we should totally do this." Vlatko [Andonov], our president, was like, "Wow, okay. He wants to do it, now I guess we gotta figure out how to do it."

So um, yeah, I didn't really have a very good poker face. But it was one of those--I saw it, and I was just enjoying myself in the demo. I thought it was cool, and unique and had style. And style isn't necessarily a quality you get from a lot of games this day and age, and I just felt like that one had it.

And it's not like something that nobody's ever done before, completely revolutionary--but it had an edge, and it was a bit different and unique. It was the kind of thing that I was like, "I would play that." It was just fortuitous. We're very glad to be working with those guys. I have expectations that folks, the more they see and find out about it, the more they're going to like.

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An early trailer for A2M's acrobatic shooter WET.

Shack: You talked earlier about the sexuality of WET, in terms of getting away from the standard gratuitous female protagonist. Is that something you came to A2M with early on, and said, "If we're picking your game up, we are not doing this"?

Pete Hines: Well yeah, not just them, but also internally. [I said], "So everybody understands, this is a hot button for me." Even the name WET, for a while we were like, is that--are people going to miss the connection to wetworks?

And I was like, you know, I like it for the same reason I like the game. It's got a bit of style and it's cool. But yeah, I was pretty adamant from the beginning that we were not going down this route. Don't ask me for costume changes for Rubi for packaging or ads. And by the way, everybody across the company was totally on board with that. It wasn't like it was a fight.

But I wanted to be very clear with everybody from the beginning: I am not doing this. I see other companies do this, the gratuitous female protagonist thing, and I am not doing that. So if that's what we are expecting, then we should not do this, because I don't want to have anything to do with that. But everybody was on board with it. It needs to be treated just so, and it's not like we're embarrassed of her and want to cover all of her bare skin. But we think she can be kind of cool and hip and do it without being gratuitous or sophomoric or whatever you want to call it.

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