Posts Tagged ‘Fallout’
Live Action Fallout
Talk all you want about riveting, complex storylines and deep strategic experiences when many of us play video games we’re channeling our inner child. Not the curious, sensitive inner child looking on a new world with joy, but the one who ran around for hours with a stick playing space marine or constructed huge forts from legos.
It seems that simply exploring a digital recreation of post-apocalyptic America wasn’t enough for some Fallout fans though, because last month at an abandoned air defense base outside of Leningrad over three hundred Russian Fallout fans got together for a live action roleplaying game based on Fallout 2. The amount of effort some of them put into creating their own costumes and equipment is impressive, especially those who are decked out in full power armor.
While of course it would have been far more appropriate to locate the event much closer to Chernobyl, I’m guessing that for those involved their desire for accuracy and realism stopped just short of high levels of radiation exposure, though the guy dressed as a ghoul might have been okay with it.
Broken Steel Game Review–A Perfect End To A Nigh-Perfect Game
And so, the last addition to the Fallout downloadable content block has emerged, and amazingly, it will change the way you play Fallout 3 forever. It’s called Broken Steel, and what it’ll do to the game is create a series of changes that are vast and downright unnerving.
This time around, you’ll be able to resolve one of the most frustrating problems with Fallout 3—what happened AFTER you retake Project Purity. You’ve just made the Capitol Wasteland a better place to live, and quite possibly killed yourself in the process. Only now, even IF you were the one to take the poison pill yourself, you’ll manage to survive it and carry on the good fight, as our old buddy Three Dog would say. And now, you’ll be assisting the Brotherhood of Steel (and not those Outcast putzes either—they got their chance in Operation: Anchorage and did they EVER screw it up!) in three important overarching concepts.
1. Help get the newly cleaned water out to the various ports and settlements of the Capitol Wasteland.
2. Blast the godless heathen savage Super Mutants into insensate smoking oblivion, once and for all.
3. While you’re at it, put paid to those miserable soulless heartless Fascisistic thugs known as The Enclave.
Sound like a plan to anyone else? Oh yes. Yes it does.
Considering how many times I’ve railed against first person shooters in these pages, you might well wonder how I live with the hypocrisy of loving Fallout 3, which is a first person shooter itself. And if you were to ask me that, I’d look at you sorrowfully, shake my head with regret and tell you that Fallout 3 isn’t JUST a first person shooter. It’s a first person ADVENTURE. Most first person shooters like to focus on that last word at the cost of everything else, but it’s the rare ones like Fallout 3 that open up a world to you and let you run riot therein. You can be a hero or a criminal in these games, and the sheer variety of things to do holds my interest with every step.
And indeed, Broken Steel will, as I’ve said, change the way you play Fallout 3. One, the level cap has been lifted from level 20 to level 30. Of course, there will also be a collection of new items for you to lay hands on, and you’ll have several new plot elements to tangle with as well. The already deep, rich story of Fallout 3 gets nothing but enhancement from Broken Steel.
However, as good as this is—there are still some problems here. For those of you thinking the broken level cap will be an opportunity to catch up on those skills you missed, think again. For some strange reason, the game will give you new skills and perks when you reach a new level. I’m not terribly pleased about this, but I guess it could be worse. And there are many folks who will discover, seemingly randomly, that they’re unable to even play the game in the first place—but for those people, it’s not even that much of a problem. While you’ll miss out on the new items and new plot challenges, from what I understand the level cap will remain broken, allowing you to try out the new features.
As fond as I am of Fallout 3, I’m of the mind that the downloadable content so far has added spice to the original as opposed to really opening up game experiences. Broken Steel, meanwhile, has done a solid job of opening the world up even further. All I can say is, after six months of fantastic gaming, great work, Bethesda…and see you in Vegas.
Fallout Moving To Other Media?
The video games that films and television shows have been based on are often poorly chosen and seem to be picked for more summer blockbuster potential than any other reason. Generally they ignore IPs with interesting character and well-fleshed out plot lines. That might be in part because it’s usually the big film studios who seek out these projects with little actual involvement from their creators.
Bethesda however is taking a more active interest in the possible direction other Fallout media could go. They’ve filed patents for both a Fallout film and television show. With the huge volume of material already created for the series there are plenty of avenues to go down. The main storylines and side quests of all three games give dozens of possible storylines; defeating mutants, questing for parts to fix a dying vault, etc.
The only problem of course would be the high cost of doing a Fallout TV show, with the budget for special effects, props, buildings, etc. Unfortunately a film probably wouldn’t do the well crafted Fallout universe justice, but I doubt we’d see more than a season of two of the TV show.
Bethesda Considering Legal Action Over Fallout MMO
Fans awaited the arrival of the long-over due Fallout 3 with excitement, only to weep when it was announced that Interplay was ceasing work on the game. A tech demo hit the internet which only rubbed salt in the wounds of many but Bethesda swooped in and picked up the rights. While fans are still hotly debating whether or not their take on the universe was well executed or not, others are waiting with the same contained anxiety for the planned Fallout MMO.
When Bethesda purchased the Fallout IP from Interplay they left behind the MMO rights as part of an agreement that hinged upon Interplay beginning ‘full scale’ work on the game by April fourth as well as having secured funding for the development of the title. Bethesda is considering legal action as they claim that Interplay has fulfilled neither of these conditions.
Interplay is denying all of these claims and their work on a game called ‘Project V13′ hints that there might be more going on than Bethesda is aware of. Unfortunately for Interplay if Bethesda goes ahead with legal action and wins, they’ll have lost all rights to the license and that could lead to problems with the financing as MMOs based on a brand new IP have a low rate of success due to the colossal grip WoW has on the market.
Original Fallout designer working on new RPG
Jason Anderson, one of the game designer’s who worked on the original Fallout game at Interplay, has joined developer inXile Entertainment and is working on a new game “that will push the boundaries of RPGs”, as said in a statement.
After working at Interplay on Fallout and Fallout 2, Anderson left for Troika Games, where he made Arcane: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines.
At inXile, he joins former Interplay co-founder Brian Fargo, who founded inXile in 2002 and currently serves as the CEO of the company.
Onion Says Violent Video Games Important Training Tools For Apocalypse
With a global financial crisis destabilizing governments and the world as a whole and a sizable nuclear arsenal still in existence in many nations, the threat of an apocalyptic war has never been more looming. All it would take is some recently struggling country to supply a fundamentalist group with a warhead, or the fissionable materials required to make one and boom, we’re launched into universal devastation. While economists and politicians alike are discussing stimulus packages and how to best implement them, the Onion is discussing something far more important.
They’ve raised a question that, although bleak, is a necessary one to ask: are violent video games truly preparing our children for the collapse of civilization? A panel of experts have assembled to discuss the topic and as one might expect, dissenting opinions are being expressed. Some maintain that the industry is preparing our youth quite well for scavenging through the rubble-strewn wreckage of cities for weapons and ammunition as well as how to use health packs to heal zombie bites. Others point out that games like Fallout 3 have informed their children of the importance of effective weapon choices, teaching them that it’s easier to kill a cyborg with a well-placed grenade than a flurry of assault rifle fire.
Dissenters point out that it’d be far more important to teach them other skills including how to construct shelters out of burned out shells of automobiles as well as insisting that children need to have a more realistic look at how difficult it is to fight giant mutant irradiated insects.
Fallout 3 Pre-Orders on Steam
Steam is now allowing players to pre-order Fallout 3 via Steam. It is priced at a significantly lower price than the Xbox 360 version, retailing at $49.99 compared to $59.99.
The Steam version, of course, does not include the retail box, and only offers a download. In any case, three ways to get Fallout is better than two ways. Fallout 3 will be on shelves (or on Steam) on October 28th in the United States, and on the 30th for Europe and Australia.
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