Happy Nuclear Year

Happy New Year everyone!

2007 was the last year without a Fallout 3 game on the shelves, and 2008 will be the last year of this blog. Thanks for your messages, comments and for your patience.

Special good wishes for the Fallout fans who are in troublesome places like Carib FMJ, the DAC and NMA veteran that you can see in the picture drinking tea in Iraque a few days ago.

All the best folks, now things are really going to be fun, stick around into the wastelands new year…

No big news for a while?

It would seem we’re still gonna have to wait for more info about Fallout 3. From a Gstaff’s post:

One good thing, with tomorrow being the first day of the new year, I can’t get away with the “Fallout 3 isn’t even coming out until next year” comment anymore. Don’t be surprised if I start a using, “We’ll share more details in the coming months” instead.

Oh well… Patiently waiting then.

Emil talks FO3 to PS3 at PSM

As we know thanks to the Bethesda blog there’s an interview with Emil Pagliarullo and a couple of new screens taken from the Fallout 3 demo on the January issue of the Playstation Magazine. Now a transcript showed up on the Gamefaq’s forum, it is worth a read:

PTOM: Given your experience with open-world game designs, what is the extra firepower of next-gen technology allowing you to do for gameplay, above and beyond the obvious graphical enhancements?

EP: Great question. I’ll admit I’ve become much more of a graphics whore than I used to be, but I still take rich gameplay experiences and immersion over anisotropic filtering and specular mapping any day. So for me, it’s all about using the tech to make the worlds more believable. Shiny graphics help with that, but so does full audio for every character, our Radiant AI system for a full range of character behaviors with full 24/7 schedules, and the ability to make worlds as large as they want. With today’s tech, the little sandbox becomes an entire playground. For a game designer, that’s a dream come true.

PTOM: What does radioactive mutation do to the denizens in your world?

EP: Well, a lot of the creatures you encounter in “Fallout” also adhere to that “1950′s vision of the future,” so the radiation has managed to affect even the most mundane animal and insect. Ants, cockroaches, scorpions, even mole rats have grown to giant proportions. The lucky humans that have been exposed to too much radiation drop dead- but sometimes they survive that exposure and become Ghouls. Take some zombie chocolate and dip it into the leper peanut butter and you’ve got a Ghoul. They’re hideous to look at, but human underneath. At least some of them.

But even those people and animals that haven’t been mutated by radiation (or something else) are affected by the harsh world around them. You know, there are sadistic human raiders who’ll hunt you for sport, or wild dogs looking for their next meal that will rip you to pieces. Outside of the established settlements, the Capital wasteland is a pretty inhospitable place.

PTOM: How many creature designs did you produce for the bestiary? Any particularly dumb ideas that are worth recounting for comedic value?

EP: You know, honestly, it really wasn’t like that. We had such a great roster of baddies to draw from already; the selection process was actually pretty smooth. So we’ve got lots of existing “Fallout” creatures, from the vicious Deathclaws to the brutish Supermutants. For those classics, our job is making sure we do them justice, making sure we bring them to life on next-gen platforms in ways that are consistent and respectful to the source material. And any time we’ve created a new character, we’ve been bound by the same principles. Does this fit into “Fallout?” Does this match the vibe of our unique world?

There’s more, so go get the Official Playstation Magazine.

Spotted at NMA .

Total PCGaming Fallout 3 Preview

Total PC Gaming has a huge six pages piece about Fallout 3, with lots of info and an interview with Pete Hines.

If you can’t get the magazine then try the great Vault of Mad Brahmin, a Czech fansite, they have a few scans of the thing, and they are a really cool bunch.

Spotted at NMA.

Death Ray!

There have been a lot of updates on Tales of Future Past, this time I’ll leave you with Future Fashion and Death Rays.

Sweet!

Wastelands Contest

A contest for post-apoc fans, coming from End of the World For.us:

It’s the end of the year, and you know what that means.. having to remember to write ’08′ on all your paperwork and taxes are coming soon.. but it’s also a new beginning.

Assuming we make it that far and we’re not eaten by zombies or disintegrate in a nuclear fireball, you’ll need something fresh to start your year right, and to help you do that, we’re giving away some free stuff:

Prizes:
5 people will receive a free copy of the just released short story compilation “Wastelands: Tales of the Apocalypse”, edited by John Joseph Adams. Other prizes items may also be included at our discretion, but we promise they won’t be radioactive or get you in trouble with Home Land Security.

How to Enter:
Just reply to the contest forum post with something to effect of ‘Enter me’ or ‘I want to win’. All respondents will be entered into the pool and 5 winners will be selected from Random. This process requires a valid email address.

Rules:
Contestants must enter before 12:01 AM On Wed, Jan 3st, 2008 EST to be considered eligible. Prizes will only be shipped inside the United States and Canada. International shipping may be considered at the discretion of the contest operators, if you wish to be considered for international shipping, please contact us via Email or Forum Private-Message with your shipping address so we can figure if it’ll break our bank (sorry!). Limit 1 entry per household and person.

Winners will be announced Friday Jan 4th 2008, and will be contacted via Forum Private Message for shipping information.

RPGCodex Reviews Year

RPGCodex has another twisted take on the Year Reviews that are popping up in every place of the web, with the official RPG Codex Year in Review 2007 Platinum GOTY Edition!

Let’s see their take on the year regarding Fallout 3:

Arguably the biggest RPG news of the year is the unholy union between Oblivion and Fallout. We’ve seen Bethesda acquire the Fallout IP outright from Interplay, launch their official forums for the game, but most of all – show us graphic scenes of their ill-conceived flipper baby. Forget harlequin fetus, Fallout 3 is the new shock.

It seems Bethesda likes all things nuclear. By shooting at abandoned cars, you’ll be able to provoke small nuclear explosions. One of your weapons (called “Fatman”) will use nuclear bombs as ammunition. The game also has its own Fargoth, but this time it’s a whole city! Creatively named “Megaton”, it was built in (or around, if you prefer trusting Desslock to believing Pete Hines) the crater of an unexploded bomb. And you can bet your vintage Ink Spots collection that the magnificent example of choice given to the player (you can explode the bomb, or NOT!) will be mentioned a hundred times in the game’s previews to come. The screenshots we’ve seen contain almost exclusively bloom; the teaser we’ve watched was uninspired at best. (The magnificent concept art we were shown turned out not to have anything to do with the game.)

All in all, it seems that Bethesda vaguely know which direction they should take to stay true to the original game, but unfortunately it also looks like they’re failing at doing so. For example, perhaps they heard someone somewhere praising Fallout for exploring the „shades of grey” approach to morality, so… (if you trust a recent interview with Hines) Fallout 3 will have Good Folks and Bad Folks, but the player will be able to stay neutral!

As a sidenote, the only really informative preview of the game is due to NMA’s Brother None and SuAside, who attended the Fallout 3 demo show during the Game Conference in Leipzig and wrote down what they saw, which appears to be beyond the capabilities of “professional” gaming journalists.

Remember you can read a post mortem of NMA’s Fallout 3 demo trip here on this blog.

Fallout 3 T-Shirts Winners

News are pilling up so I’ll have to end my brake a little sooner.

Let’s start with two winners of the Vault Boy Fallout 3 T-Shirts Contest. The first is a rather scary looking (but probably delicious) cake from Andy Barnes, and the second is a Stimpack ad from Devin Clark, someone with a great portfolio that you should check.

It’s the End Of The Year As We Know It

Well it’s time for my wishes of Happy Holidays for all, I’ll be around on Meebo and checking my mail if you need anything.

In the meantime don’t forget to check the Atomic Ninjas Interview, and leave your comments with the usual Christmas best wishes or flames. Have a great time folks.

Fallout 3 at 3

GameInformer has a new Ten for 2008 XBox360 games list, and Fallout 3 shows up on number three:

If you want to stir up a nest of angry Internet hornets, poke the Fallout hive. If Bethesda Softworks wasn’t sure of that fact before, they’re certainly well aware of it now. Despite only having two “proper” Fallout games, the series has attracted a faithful following that’s keenly aware of goings on within its beloved post-apocalyptic universe. When word got out that Bethesda was working on Fallout 3, critics assumed the worst and the “Oblivion with guns” cry was born. Having sat through a demo of the game, we can’t say who’s right here, if making such a determination is even possible. All we know is that seeing your character step out of the nuke-proof vault for the first time in his life is a breathtaking gaming moment. We’re eager to explore this terrible world all over again, through a new set of eyes. In the meantime, we’re happy to occupy ourselves by playing the originals.

Spotted at MaxConsole.

Between Good and Evil

A message from Tower of Creation, the modding group behind the Fallout: Between Good and Evil total conversion:

Relatively long time has passed since we updated our webpage which is usually a signal of a certain “zombie” condition of the mod – in case of Fallout: BGE, that is not true. We have worked very hard and probably more than ever [/propaganda]. Thanks to last four months of constant endeavour, we can promise complete English translation of the game, new animations, critters, graphic sets and probably even talking heads.

Several new images are accessible in our gallery – Avrocar by Nyibelunger, characters’ concept art (Zahartof) and several dialogues from Czech version (English screenshots will be as soon as Crow creates them, come back in January).

To hasten the development, we still seek scripters and people skilled (!) in converting art for Fallout (we have art, but not enough people to convert it to frm). If you feel you can help, contact us using forum or email. We also appreciate freelancers, who contribute with single assignments (art, sound, music, video,…)In longer term, we are looking forward to welcoming English proofreader(s) in our team, artist with passion for video and several Polish, Russian or other translators – depends on number of Fallout fan(atics) in each country.

Well, as lousy carols in every shop suggest, we should wish you Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, hopefully without any need for Vaults and fallout shelters. See you in January!

Looking at their art on the top of this post and in the following example the mod is getting better and better. All the best to them!

The real Avrocar     Avrocar from ToC

OldFuture

I’ve been following an independent post apocalyptical MORPG called OldFuture for a while now. It’s time for you to check their new website and to start to know what they are up to. Remember to check their first teaser too, and they are looking for beta testers.

Thanks for the heads up Kuhein.

Lady Wasteland 4

The web based post-apocalyptic series Lady Wasteland now has a new episode online, number 4. Go get it while it’s hot.

Vault 101 Holiday Party!

From the Bethesda Blog:

Today we will be releasing our final Bethesda Softworks Newsletter for the year of 2007. It’s been an exciting 2007 for us — releasing Shivering Isles, Oblivion GOTY, and Star Trek: Conquest, as well as finally unveiling Fallout 3.

To celebrate the holidays, the newsletter will give access to a couple of Vault Boy-themed wallpapers for your desktop.

To sign up for the Bethesda Softworks Newsletter, click here.

If you’re a big Oblivion fan keep your eyes on this one!

TGR put up a list of their 10 most anticipated games of 2008 and has Fallout 3 in…number three:

[...]The game begins in one of these underground vaults, where the player is eventually tasked with venturing out into a 1950’s style futuristic world that was ravaged by the apocalyptic war. What you do after that is up to you as the game allows the player to freely traverse the world looking for quests. Unlike the previous Fallout games, this one will take place in the first person, although Bethesda has made it clear that this is no FPS, saying that combat will be determined by the player’s skill set. Even though it’s still a ways off, Fallout 3 is looking to be a very engrossing RPG with an almost overwhelming amount of depth, if you’re a big Oblivion fan keep your eyes on this one.

Oh boy.

Spotted at the Bethesda Blog.

Community Corner: Atomic Ninjas Interview

A new featured series of interviews starts today in this blog, talking to Fallout community members and other gamers, recording their views now that the last year of development of Fallout 3 is underway.

The first interview is with the Atomic Ninjas Brother None and Suaside.

I feel they are a good example of how communities and individuals are more and more creating their own content and participating actively on the Web, instead of being passive receivers of pre formatted info, something that it’s quite close to me, particularly in these post-GerstmannGate days.

A few tidbits:

What did you think of the reactions on the web, inside and outside the community?

BN: What, to the review? I think people appreciated the density of information. As one press guy told me, it is the “next closest thing to having seen the demo”, and that’s good.

S: I was quite pleased with the feedback we received. I think most reactions validated our work, which is of course always nice. While many fans told us we had confirmed their fears, others told us that they would give FO3 a chance while they had been very negative on the subject before. While our own opinions were strong, I think we did a good job at telling people what we had seen at the best of our capability.

Even the professional press chipped in, usually with a kind word here and there. With the exception of a few overly negative comments of course… But overall, the reactions were rather positive.

Apparently many fans thought it good enough to donate a little bit of money, which meant we were able fund the trip without too much of a financial hangover. Thanks again for that, guys! Much appreciated.

There’s a lot more on Community corner: Atomic Ninjas Interview.

Action Trip: The Year Ahead

Action Trip has a 2008: The Gaming Year Ahead feature online:

The year 2008 is practically around the corner and there are plenty of games we think you should be on the lookout for. Instead of getting into the details about each game individually, we decided to single-out what we feel are the top candidates for making an impact in a specific genre. So, without further ado, let’s check out what awaits us next year.

So what’s their choice for an RPG? Fallout 3:

After its successful title, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Bethesda Softworks turned towards reviving the popular sci-fi RPG franchise, Fallout. When we witnessed Fallout 3, the gameplay had that distinct Oblivion-ish feel. The setting looked quite good, but there’s a long road ahead. Last we checked with Bethesda, the production of the game was in full sway, with around 70 people working intently on the very meat of the game. So, while the designers, artists and programmers are filling out the world of Fallout 3, we twirl our thumbs in anticipation for one of the most promising single-player RPGs, slated to launch during Q4 2008.

You can check their other choices here.