Rock, Paper, Shotgun

You may not know Adam Adamowicz’s name, but if you’ve played either Fallout 3 or Skyrim, you’ll have seen masses of his work. His job was to produce the vast and imaginative collections of concept art that made their worlds so exciting to explore, from characters to weapons, to the jaunty hats your hero could opt to wear while slaughtering deathclaws and daedra alike. Very sadly, Adam passed away on February 8.

Find out exactly what he contributed to your adventures with this fantastic eulogy and collection of his works from a fellow concept artist over at Awesome Robo.

It’s the Duke Nukem Forever of gaming-based legal scuffles, and apparently it’s over at last. We don’t yet know the details – i.e. who’s won, who’s paying who what and most of all who, if anyone, will be releasing a Fallout MMO – but we do know that, after an awful lot of back and forth and he said no he said but he started it but yeah but no a settlement has finally been reached in the long-running Bethesda and Interplay battle.
Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the story so far. Interplay are developing a Fallout MMO title and Bethesda are attempting to block further development through application of The Law. When their previous injunction failed, Bethesda took things all the way to the United States District Court of Appeals, claiming that the previous court had “misapplied the law”. If it was indeed a misapplication, the very same slip up has occurred once more. Stop misapplying Law, courts, you’re getting it all over the drapes.

Read the rest of this entry »

The great and terrible Final Battle between Bethesda and Interplay regarding the latter’s right to create an MMO based on the Fallout licence they part-sold to the former some years ago is still yet to be fought, but the litigation-lovin’ folk at Bethesda have seen a potentially major setback in their efforts to take full control of wasteland adventuring. For a while, the two parties have been locked in snarling battle about whether Interplay are still allowed to make a Fallout MMO, with Bethesda claiming they failed to meet time and budgetary criteria outlined in the original license-selling deal. Interplay have claimed they’ve stuck the agreement, and thus continued with working on said MMO (actually contracting developing Masthead Studios to do it for them). Bethesda tried to stop ‘em, but a US judge has now stopped Bethesda from stopping them. Got that? Read the rest of this entry »

I have been to the Zion National Park in Utah, but I don’t remember there being any murderous men with bandaged-wrapped faces, desert renegades being killed in slow-motion or weird naked masked dudes. It’s possible I just went to the wrong bit, though – I’m not very observant. Fortunately, the second spot of Fallout: New Vegas DLC means to address my errant tourism. It’s called Honest Hearts, it’s out May 17 (same day as the Witcher 2 and Fable 3 – the gods of roleplaying can be so very cruel), and it goes a little something like this…
Read the rest of this entry »

Times were an awful lot easier for Interplay back in 1998. A string of hit franchises, apparent sovereignty of the new RPG kingdom and, it appears, big, brassy enough cajones to start up a film division. While nothing much ever came of this, we now know that a Fallout movie was in the works, based on the first game. Whatever would it have been like? Let’s find out.
Read the rest of this entry »

Beyond Black Mesa turned up to a mixed reception last week, and due to taking a few… liberties led to internet troubadours suggesting what they felt were superior fan-films. Here’s one of them, set in the Fallout 3 universe. As well as being built on a whole lot of love, attention to detail and – gasp! – decent acting, it starts with a heartfelt plea that Bethesda doesn’t sue them, which I think we can all get behind. Recreated weapons, costumes, crumbled bridges and 50s ad reels await…
Read the rest of this entry »

We don’t know much, but there are some clues. The most recent of these was bagged by Eurogamer.dk (via VG247) which suggests that the new game is not only in development, but is a direct sequel to Oblivion. An Elder Scrolls game had previously been touted for a reveal at this year’s E3, but did not show. Of course that doesn’t mean it’s not already a long way into development. Bethesda boss Todd Howard has already mentioned that two new games are in the works and we’re going to speculate that one of those has to be an Elder Scrolls game. The big question for many people has been whether the technology would move away from the Gamebryo engine – the recent id acquisition probably wouldn’t have provided time enough to base the game on id tech 5, but we can still dream – and a quote in this interview suggests that it is that familiar engine: “That’s our starting point – the Fallout 3 tech,” said Howard. “The new stuff is an even bigger jump from that.” Perhaps we’ll get something concrete about the release in the new year.

So, engine aside, what would you want from a new Elder Scrolls game?

Emil Pagliarulo started his career this side of the fence, writing for the venerable Adrenaline Vault. Since kicking his way into development, he worked in the twilight years of Looking Glass – where he was designer on the eternal Life Of The Party – before moving to work on Bethesda, where he was Designer on Oblivion (Think “Dark Brotherhood”) before becoming Lead Designer on Fallout 3. He’s optimistic about the future, will surprise you by how big an influence Deus Ex was on Fallout 3 and has enormous sympathy for Eidos Montreal…
Read the rest of this entry »