Gary likes Jones

Remember the backlash after the Lead Character Artist on Fallout 3 Josh Jones remark that he never played a Fallout game?

Well Gary “VXSS” Noonan commented in the blogpost in defense of Jones:

I am one of the Bethesda Fallout nutjobs and I work quite close with Josh on a daily basis in the animation dept. Him, having not played the previous Fallout titles has not in any way hampered the animation team, or any other cells of art production.

There are tons of job titles in the game art prison. Lead Character Artist is not the same as Character Animator, Conceptual Artist, Character Modeler, or overall Lead Artist. Josh is a tier in the design team. His duty is to keep the flow of the animation team smooth and on track and to oversee character models go from concept to model to animated actor…. while dabbling in some animation. And besides, without him around, I would stand around staring at the mocap system scratching my head. His technical skills with the tools we use are most useful and appreciated.

Now, if you will…. cut the guy some slack so he can finish playing whatever random game he wants. :p

Thanks Hiver.

Fallout from the past week

Well this was an exciting week, and the repercussions are still going on. Neoseeker has this piece on the NMA ninja survey of the Fallout 3 demo:

With James Bondian resolve, two ardent Fallout fans – with the help of wub-sites Gamernode and Madshrimps – insinuated that they were members of the press, in order to get behind a closed-door, 45 minute demo of Bethesda’s upcoming Fallout 3 game. The game is not due for another year, but the demo showed quite a lot – and of what they did see, the two diehard Fallout fans, who go by the assumed aliases of Brother None and SuAside, were unimpressed.

While the two enjoyed some aspects of the game, such as the graphics, and aspects of character design, their extensive impressions of the game, as they have posted on No Mutants Allowed, are permeated by lack of optimism in the game’s overall direction. Of course, the ‘fan’s fans’ of the Fallout 3 series will be the hardest people to impress with the game. Nonetheless, it is refreshing to have a fan’s view of the game, as Brother None and SuAside relate many sincere reservations concerning 2008′s Fall release of Fallout 3. Presumably, many of these reservations are shared by the legions of Fallout fans out there, who consider the first two games to be some of the best RPGs ever made.

Aeropause has an editorial on Fallout 3 and dialog, following Emil’s interview to 1Up:

Now, Bethesda has decided that we do not need huge branching discussion trees like this, becaue they do not want the player to miss out on something. I hate to tell them, but the ravenous fans that have been waiting for this game for so long, they remember when Interplay was a good company. Those fans would have researched and played through every possible dialogue tree possible through multiple plays.

Well Emil already explained this, as you might remember.

And finally on the PCWorld blog you can find this piece against NMA’s adventure on the Fallout 3 world:

I can’t remember the last time I saw a feature as meticulous, as literal, as utterly photographic. I’m counting somewhere in the vicinity of 10,000 words of fastidious blow-by-blow obsessing over the 45 minutes Xbox 360 demo Bethesda’s Pete Hines was running in the GCDC press center, a demo Hines explicitly instructed attendees not to record…no ifs, ands, or buts.

So, to be perfectly honest, I’m a little disappointed to see that these guys thought it’d be just dandy to apply “for the demo showing in name of another media company,” video the whole shebang, then transcribe it with unsanctioned screen grabs. Me envious? You better believe it. I had a recording device too, and I would’ve killed to use it. But I didn’t, because playing games is something you do in front of your computer or TV, not at the expense of a respected industry publisher.

Brother None already explained on the comments sections why he feels the author of the piece is wrong. Time for me to comment on the issue too, I’ll leave it here since it’s impossible for me to comment there:

Hello Matt, this is Briosafreak from Fallout3:a Post Nuclear Blog.

First let me correct you on one thing, I send the pics to NMA, and I was thousands of miles away from Leipzig, the pics were released to the public by Bethesda before the article.Maybe you could edit that part.

I disagree on your negativity towards the detail of the NMA piece, instead I find it comendable. Still if you read the previews of Ron Burke at Gamingtrend or Brendon Lindsey at Gamenode you’ll find other examples of extremely detailed pieces, NMA was the most thorough but not the only one.

Finally as you can read here there was a time Bethesda allowed fansites to see the demoing of the games by themselves, if it discriminates Fallout fans than it seems reasonable they use direct action in order to better cover the game and give the info their viewers deserve, the best possible, as it should be on the gaming media in general.

All the best for the future

Briosafreak

Nukes on the Newsletter

The Bethesda Softworks Newsletter was released, bringing no awards from Leipzig, as expected, talking about the Gram.pl review of the Fallout 3 demo, completely in Polish, the review at Electric Playground:

If you asked me what the ultimate RPG looked like, I’d probably put two requirements at the top of my list: a world like Oblivion, and the character system of Fallout.

Welcome to Fallout 3.

And this hilarious piece from TenTonHammer:

I came in with a few reservations about where the game could be headed, and I came out with the biggest grin on my face. The best way to describe Fallout 3 can be summed up in this way:Fallout 3 is Oblivion on steroids. With nukes.

Seems Brother None is more alone in not calling the game Oblivion with guns.