Rock, Paper, Shotgun

This broke on Friday, but RPS were dividing and conquering across the world, requiring Kadayi – cheers! – to bring it to our attention. In short, Gamasutra reports that the coldness between Interplay (Original Fallout IP holders) and Bethesda (Purchaser of the Fallout IP) has crossed into an actual legal suit. However, it isn’t about the MMO situation, as described in the link. It’s to prevent any further distribution of the compilation Fallout Trilogy’s sales via Digital Download companies causing “immediate, substantial, and irreparable harm”. Do read the whole thing, and a little industry thought below…
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We don’t waffle much about Fallout 3 here, as it wasn’t a game that especially grabbed any of us. Which hardly matters a jot inna final analysis: the rapturous reception from other critics and gamers alike has meant Bethesda have cheerfully been DLCing up it to the eyeballs since release (with, I gather, wildly varying degrees of success). The upcoming Mothership Zeta caught my eye more than the others (aside from the ‘yeah, we did mess up Fallout 3’s ending’ admission that was Broken Steel), simply because it takes us out of that desaturated post-apocalyptic wasteland and onto a fully armed and operational alien battlestation, via the fun plot-twist of having you suffer alien abduction. Are there colours in space? Find out after the break…
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Shock news, everyone. Bethesda Software – or rather Bethesda’s sinister overlords Zenimax Media Group – now own id Software. As in Quake/Wolfenstein/Doom id Software. It’s a wantonly strange turn of events for a veteran PC studio that’s always been fiercely independent (well, depending on how you feel about their unending sequel-suckling upon the Activision money-teat). It is not, however, necessarily bad news, for all the fact that the internet just exploded. Below, a short statement from id’s big-haired money baron Todd Hollenshead, some quotage from Lord Carmack, and, oh yes, some rampant speculation.
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Gaming diaries: all the rage, eh? Buoyed by the splendidosity of the likes of Roburky’s Sims 3 chronicles and Tom Francis’ Galactic Civilizations II bible, I’m embarking on something I’ve had brewing for a while – a diary of my (mis)adventures in Morrowind. I’ve always maintained it’s a far better game than its sequel Oblivion (which was also pretty good), and now’s my chance to prove it. I’ll commence with the diaries proper in a few days, but ahead of that I thought I’d share the setup.
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Splash Damage’s new game, being developed in conjunction with Bethesda, is called Brink. It’s a game of future war. The teaser trailer below offers very little in the way of additional clues about the title. Eyes, it seems, will feature in the game. And you can bet it’s a multiplayer FPS (because we know it is). It’s scheduled for Spring 2010. That’s all eye got. (Sorry.) Perhaps you guys can speculate the game into existence, below. Oh, and the official site is here, although it doesn’t contain much more than the video, yet.
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Confused squinting at legal dispute time! We’ve known for a while that Fallout 1/2 publishers Interplay had clung onto rights for a Fallout MMO as part of their skin-saving deal to flog the Fallout 3 license to Bethesda, and a few months back the reborn publisher had coolly revealed they have one ‘Project V13‘ in the pipeline. Deal done, right? Apparently not. Bethesda may now dispute Interplay’s right to make Fallout Online…
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Hip-hip-hooray. Fallout 3’s official mod tool is out, and I’m celebrating by badly quoting Tina Turner songs. I’m far too stupid to use the construction kit myself, but I’m dead excited to see what Fallout 3’s community (both those who love and those who want to see Bethesda strung up by the nipples for it) comes up with. Oblivion was massively enhanced by its mods, but Fallout 3’s wilder, weirder world means there’s room for all manner of madness.
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They said it would never might happen. And now it has. Fallout 3, controversially released without official modding tools, will be blessed with the GECK come December. That’s the Garden of Eden Creation Kit in the Fallout universe, but in our rather less post-apocalyptic universe it’s the F3 equivalent of The Elder Scrolls games’ powerful Construction kit. Oblivion’s a game that quickly became mpre than the sum of its officially-made parts thanks to the unending glut of enthusiastic and often enormous mods. So, toys to bend’n’shape Fallout 3’s delightfully ravaged world can only be good news.
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It’s almost as if Bethesda Softworks have just finished a game and so have decided to work on a new one. Imagine! Yes, a date for The Elder Scrolls V has been confirmed. Well, sort of confirmed. Well, mentioned. A bit.

“Potentially there’s a new Elder Scrolls title in 2010,” says Bethsoft exec Chris Oughton over at GI.biz. Woo!

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As three-quarters of RPS quietly recover from the Thinkosium, this brought a smile to our collective faces as we tried to work out how to remove cheese from the floor our of my oven. In a move which I have to assume will be rejected as another half-baked notion by AIMs, Eidos Montreal send Bethesda a cake to congratulate them on shipping Fallout 3. Bless.

More on the Thinkosium in a bit. In short: THIS WAS A TRIUMPH, etc.