Tuesday was a record breaking day here in this blog. So many people coming, so much happening, that a few blogposts were placed on hold. Now I’ll just make a miscellaneous post, starting with Javno’s take on Fallout 3 and Fallout:
Out of the blue, the executive producer of Fallout 3, Todd Howard, on March 22 ceased a cease-fire between Bethesda, nosey journalists and crazed Fallout fans, saying coldly that the creation of the third part of the trilogy has been completed.
Er not quite, and the article has an incredible amount of errors. Still this idea is rather unique:
What Hitchcock is to film, Shakespeare to literature and Rolling Stones to music, Fallout is to video games. Evergreen in nature, the post-nuclear role playing game (RPG) at one point, without restraint and compromise, broke all known criteria, ignored all limitations and bravely offered a healthy dose of madness that can affect a person’s maturing of character in the same manner as Lucas’s balancing of the Force.
Speaking of not so well thought out articles there’s this piece at Crispy Gamer:
Somehow, lost within all of this concern was a simple fact to which I should have paid more attention: Oblivion, though not without its flaws, is the single best game that I have played in nearly four years. It’s better than BioShock, better than Mass Effect, better than the Half-Life 2 episodes and certainly better than fun-but-less-inspired titles like Gears of War. It is, in fact, the best game I’ve played since the original Half-Life 2, which was in turn the best game I’d played since Deus Ex (released in 2000, and still my favorite game of all time). You may not put Oblivion on quite so high a pedestal, and that’s an individual choice I won’t begrudge you, but almost any rational gamer will admit that it’s a fine example of the craft.[…]
I believe Fallout 3 is going to rock. I’m telling you this not because a developer asked me to, or because a publisher paid me to. I can’t name a single member of the development team, nor do I have any further information than what is publicly available. I’ve never seen the game in action, and I know next to nothing about the plot. I work in the gaming industry, yes, but in this instance I am simply a gamer, analyzing what I know and what information is available to make a conclusion.
So he doesn’t know a thing about the game but already made up his mind because Oblivion rocked? Ok then, point taken, still Chris Buecheller shouldn’t talk of rationality regarding Oblivion, and then ask for leaps of faith (inherently irrational) regarding Fallout 3, that’s pretty contradictory.
Moving along there’s this interview with Jay Barnson at RPGWatch that, although it has nothing to do with Fallout, I recommend. Just because I always recommend everything from the mind behind Tales of the Rampant Coyote:
RPGWatch: So, your current indie project is Frayed Knights – what is it and what is it all about?
Jay Barnson: Frayed Knights is Rampant Games’ upcoming comedy-based fantasy RPG. It’s a blend of old-school style (first-person, turn-based, party-based adventures like Wizardry, The Bard’s Tale, Dungeon Master, and Might & Magic) with “real” 3D graphics, a healthy dose of character-based humor, and some quirky gameplay innovations. It’s part parody, part homage to both CRPGs and pen-and-paper RPGs.
It’s primarily a story about four misfit adventurers in a world that tries to justify all the weird things that happens in RPGs. The world of Frayed Knights is one with a subset of the population that were “adventurers” and acted like Player Characters tend to act. Which is to say, often amoral, ruthless, and greedy. Most of the time.
However, the adventurers are starting to die off. That in itself is not too surprising – the life of an adventurer is often short but exciting. But something is changing, and the rate of “morts” (deaths) is becoming alarmingly high. Plus, there are rumors of an “Ancient Evil™” rising out in the boonies. Things are going bad for the “adventurer community.”
But the Frayed Knights – themselves pretty much the laughingstock of adventurers everywhere – may be the only ones who can save them.
Jay is great, always.
Finally I’m adding Retro Thing to the blogroll:
Retro thing is an independent vintage gadget website run by a team of renegade elves with bases in Calgary and Chicago (I guess wanna-be job applicants should live somewhere that follows the pattern: Cardiff, Copenhagen, Calcutta…). Each month we present a never-ending stream of classic and almost-classic gizmos and books. OK, so I made up the bit about the team of elves. Everything else is true, though.
They also have an incomplete FAQ. Welcome to the club.
Fallout 3: A Post Nuclear Blog 