Rock, Paper, Shotgun

While on the surface this is act of love… it’s rather peculiar. It’s a Fallout 3 mod created for a single purpose, and a single person: to ask a Fallout 3 player player to marry the girl who – with the help of the Fallout 3 modding community – made it. The full story begins here on the Bethesda forums, and continues here. To cut a very long story short: a video of the marriage proposal mod being played is below. And he said yes.
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Bethesda have announced that their second Elder Scrolls game, Daggerfall, is now freeware. The classic RPG is notable for its enormity – being large and ambitious even by standards of the later games, even if it’s visually clunky today. You can pick it up here, and it’s under 150mb. You’ll also need DOSBox to get it working, as it’s quite literally that old. This announcement – made to celebrate fifteen years of the series – means that the first two Elder Scrolls games are both now free to play. You can pick up Arena at the same location.

News just in from Gamasutra. Bethesda’s Pete Hines, speaking in London, revealed that KOTOR2/NWN2 veterans Obsidian are working on a new Fallout game going under the name “Fallout: New Vegas”. The only facts we have are that it’s not Fallout Tactics, Brotherhood of Steel and doesn’t impact what the actual main Bethesda Fallout team are doing. Which does make the puzzle be exactly what it could be. My gut response guess would be something using the Fallout 3 engine, in a locale well away from where Bethesda are operating – perhaps, I dare say, in Vegas – and probably set in a different period. But that’s just nonsense I’ve just made up, obv. It could be a Fallout Slot Machine Game for all I know. The comments thread is your place for speculation.

It’d be fair to say that Fallout 3 is my… *counts on fingers*… fifth most anticipated game of the year, and I’ve actually largely been avoiding the coverage so that I can hit it fresh. Anyway, I couldn’t help but to have a look at this most recent trailer. I didn’t want to be disappointed: I know it’s the world and the RPGishness that will make it for me, but I am rather disappointed by the gunplay shown here. It’s the way the enemies do an “oh I’ve run out of hit-points” and fall over dead, that kills it for me. They need to be getting visibly battered by a torrent of lead, I need physics! Anyway, the environments look suitably derelict, and that missile-launcher is spectacular. Hopefully there will be enough awesome for this game to still be pleasing when we could to do that obligatory “games of 2008″ round-up in December.

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A new video feature with the Bethesda guys shows off a range of the weapons available to the player in the jolly-but-grim future of Fallout 3. The bolt action rifle looks like my kind of shooter, and the rail spike launcher looks… completely ludicrous? Can ludicrous be a kind of superlative? I think so.

I’m getting kind of anxious to play this, in the way I do when games are still an unknown quantity to me. Having not had any hands-on opportunity with it, well, I really want to know.

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