Rock, Paper, Shotgun

After, ooh, hours of speculation, Bethesda has revealed the details of the next Dishonored expansion pack. The Knife Of Dunwall takes a parallel peek at the Dishonored storyline. And because Alec masked spoilers in the previous post, I’ll do the same. If you have Dishonored on your Steam wishlist, go there right now and stare wistfully. Everyone else, I’ll be over there. *blinks*
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If you’re anything like everyone else in the world, you’ve probably put at least 347,867 hours into Skyrim. Now you’re pressed up against the level cap, face like a grape about to burst against its impenetrable ice. Yours is the hardest life. But soon, you’ll never have to stop leveling ever again. In short, legendary levels will “effectively remove the overall level cap.” Also incoming: a new legendary difficulty mode to match. But how will it all work? Well, wouldn’t you like to know. And you can, but only if you’re capable of braving the notoriously merciless difficulty of the unforgiving realm beyond the break.

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I can’t say I’m particularly shocked by this news, but that doesn’t mean I’m not tremendously disappointed by it. In another entry on a snaking tapestry of departures from what makes Elder Scrolls, well, Elder Scrolls, TES Online won’t be doing your virtual eyeballs any favors. Yes, there will be a first-person viewpoint, but don’t expect any bells or whistles – or arms, legs, and torsos, for that matter. In fact, adventuring in first-person – taking in the sights and breathing in the chitinous wafts of a nearby Silt Strider – will put you at a distinct disadvantage.

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In case you haven’t figured it out by now, the DICE Summit is a place where a bunch of game developers congregate to say things. Lots of things. Promising things, important things, silly things. But these sorts of events tend to have a unifying thread running through them – something that stitches all the itsy-bitsy baby things into a mighty Thingzilla. This year, though, it was a bit strange. The conference’s main refrain was “So yeah, what’s next?” But the reply was a chorus of “Errr, I dunnos.” The future’s right around the corner, but is it bite-sized and lo-fi, biometric, entirely user-driven, mobile, console, open, closed, or something else entirely? On edge, is how I’d describe the general sentiment. Unsure. Well, except for when I spoke with Bethesda‘s Todd Howard. He didn’t seem particularly worried, in large part thanks to these here personal computing devices we’re so fond of.

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When you speak with someone in Las Vegas, the topic of conversation naturally shifts to Vegas-themed things. In the case of Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart, that meant Star Wars, of course. Oh, and I guess Fallout: New Vegas. During a DICE chat that lasted innumerable moons, months, seasons, and centuries, Urquhart and I briefly touched on his studio’s return to its old techno-magically irradiated Black Isle haunt. “Oh, we’d love to do Fallout: New Vegas 2,” he enthused. “It would be awesome.” But how would that work? And is Bethesda on board with the idea? Here’s what Urquhart had to say.

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Bethblog has word that the Rage tookit has arrived on Steam, along with some serious documentation to speed would-be modders on their way. Carmack has some advice, too, tweeting: “Doing significant work will require patience, because internally we use a 300 core renderfarm for megatexture creation.”

It’d be interesting to see what people could mod in using existing assets, though. If the toolkit gave enough access to get at the inventory and so on then I think there might be a true open world sandbox/economy game in there waiting to get out. But maybe not. Either way, significant work will require patience. And an enthusiasm for Rage.

I’ve totally missed the critical reception to Skyrim add-on Dragonborn, but operating on the no news is good news principle I’ll presume that people aren’t generally wanting to kill it with fire. Or maybe they’re still locked in shocked, appalled silence. I’ll find out very soon, as the PC version of the Morrowind-set, dragon power-boosting DLC is now available.
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SWTOR got it wrong – oh so very wrong – but here we are once again, looking at a mega-bucks MMO that could make World of Warcraft wriggle around uncomfortably, like it’s wearing underwear a size too small. Like it or not, Skyrim is a game which crossed to The Other Side, that strange and terrifying world of people who play games but don’t follow gaming. Y’know, Normals. As such, Bethesda’s upcoming massively multiplayer monster-stabber The Elder Scrolls Online has at least a chance at a very big audience, not purely the MMO-educated. We shall see!

Today’s big news, though, is that Bethesda have opened up beta sign-ups for TESO, and they have a fancy-pants new trailer too. Guess where I’ve put that?
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I have about as much interest in Elder Scrolls’ lore as I do in high definition photographs of infected hangnails. I’ve been playing the series since the release of Daggerfall but I’ve managed to absorb absolutely nothing about any ongoing plot or fantastic history. All that is about to change. The latest video promotion for The Elder Scrolls Online is hosted by ‘Loremaster Lawrence Schick’, who not only has an excellent job title and name, but also boasts superior facial foliage and a voice that is both wise and soothing. It is now one of my life’s ambitions to have Lawrence read The Silmarillion to me as a bedtime story.

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I am sad. I am sad because Fallout: New Vegas’ Project Brazil mod isn’t available yet, which means I can only ogle its incredibly impressive-looking peaks and valleys from afar. So here’s the skinny: it doesn’t actually take place in Brazil. Instead, the story begins in California years before New Vegas’ courier ever began his promising career by being shot in the head and buried in a shallow grave. Your new main character’s goal? To reach Los Angeles. But the entire new wasteland of San Bernardino is rife with factional conflicts, and oh goodness also there is this: “The vision of Fallout 2 will be honoured by Project Brazil. Project Brazil is a quieter, more harsh and severe world than Fallout 3 or New Vegas. It feels like a real place spotted with rare moments of absurdity and fear, split between multiple rising civilizations all trying to fight for what they want or need in a world recovering from the Great War.” Yes. Yesssssss.

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