By Kieron Gillen on November 21st, 2007 at 11:29 pm.
Do you want to design a perk to be included in Fallout 3? Well, Bethesda’s Fallout 10 year anniversary compo will be of clear and obvious interest to you.
Sadly, unless you’re actually one of Bethesda’s designers, your freshly-inspired perk-creating desires are going to be completely thwarted, as it’s already finished and the winners have been announced. The top entry is somewhat uninspiring at first glance (“Grim Reaper’s Sprint: Everytime you kill an opponent, all your action points are automatically restored.”), especially compared to some of the other amusing ones (“Crazy Eye: Opponents attacking from the front suffer a penalty to hit you because, seriously, that eye is freaking me out”). That is, until you notice the winners name: Marc-Andre Deslongchamps. Let’s repeat that, with italics: Marc-Andre Deslongchamps.
Frankly, if you’ve got a choice of awarding a prize to someone not called Marc-Andre Deslongchamps and someone who is called Marc-Andre Deslongchamps, you go with Marc-Andre Deslongchamps every single time, if only for the thrill of posting such a brilliant name. Marc-Andre Deslongchamps! Fuck yeah.
21/11/2007 at 23:33 drunkymonkey says:
I want to be that man in the period of his life when he went to school, purely so I can write my name on every piece of paper that appears in front of me.
21/11/2007 at 23:39 MisterBritish says:
That name is made for high-score tables.
21/11/2007 at 23:41 Schadenfreude says:
Jesus; that perk wouldn’t work in the first two games at all. You could romp through the whole thing in one turn. It doesn’t say, but are these winning perks actually going in the game? ’cause if they are, I’m filled with dread.
Crazy Eye is brilliant though.
21/11/2007 at 23:55 Janek says:
Crazy Eye is ace, aye. Clumsy Mother is good, too, and I think fits with the “feel” of the series.
21/11/2007 at 23:56 TychoCelchuuu says:
Too bad your mom died in childbirth in Fallout 3. I guess it could be called “Clumsy Futuristic-50′s Robo-Nanny” or something.
I liked my entry, but Crazy Eye should totally have won.
22/11/2007 at 00:01 wiper says:
Damn, that perk’s a little… well, too good. I liked the ‘puppet master’ perk, though I imagine it would’ve necessitated too much work for them to bother with.
22/11/2007 at 00:01 wiper says:
^oh, and by ‘good’, I meant ‘overpowered’, rather than actually well-designed. Oh well.
22/11/2007 at 00:24 The_B says:
Part of me feels a little disheartened you didn’t report this when I first mentioned it (I.E: while it was still running) but I can forgive you for reporting it with the most awesome competition winner’s name ever.
22/11/2007 at 01:14 Briosafreak says:
Only the winner perk will be on the game, with some tweaking (I hope…).
22/11/2007 at 05:23 Mo says:
You guys know there the designers at Bethesda know what “balancing” is, right?
(in other words, quit yer whining, they’ll tweak it if they have to! :))
22/11/2007 at 07:34 Zeno, Internetographer says:
I think it needs to be more along the lines of, maybe, half your action points restored.
But hey, what do I know? I never played them Fallouts very much.
22/11/2007 at 10:07 GibletHead2000 says:
Or, if it only worked once per turn that might be OK too.
22/11/2007 at 15:37 Springchicken says:
“Puppet Master
You have a special little friend, your hand puppet who has followed you through thick and thin, and always has an opinion about things. (Gain an extra dialouge option)”
Best thing ever. Shame it’d be too much extra work for Bethesda, but imagine the choice of always talkin’ through your puppet!
22/11/2007 at 15:50 Janek says:
I dunno, it wouldn’t be much more work than the moronic dialogue which has been there for low-INT characters in the previous Fallouts (and Arcanum, NWN etc).
And I guess you could have it as a more occasional thing, rather than every single dialogue.
22/11/2007 at 16:09 Kast says:
I don’t think anything could beat Vampires’ Malkavian dialogue – every single line in the game twisted into almost incomprehensible yet hilarious ramblings.
22/11/2007 at 18:11 Dr Snofeld says:
I totally agree about the Malkavians, especially the conversation with the stop sign.
“No, you stop.” “I said stop!” “You’ve made a powerful enemy today, sign…”
23/11/2007 at 03:35 CrimsonAngel says:
I miss troika