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Bethesda Licenses Fallout Franchise, To Make Fallout 3
An anonymous reader writes "According to an official press release, Bethesda will now develop and publish a brand-new version of Fallout 3, after the company 'licensed the rights to the Fallout [videogame] franchise from Interplay... with the option to develop and publish additional sequels.' Interplay, who is presumably licensing out its IP due to recent financial difficulties, is keeping the rights to its theoretical Fallout MMO concept, however, and this new attempt at Fallout 3 from the Morrowind developers doesn't look to be using code/assets from the previously half-completed Black Isle version."
Heh, that is cool. It would be nice to see what exactly they are going to do with Fallout, considering what a good job they did with morrowind.
I really wanted to see someboyd like Obsidian get their hands on Fallout III, since they already had a lot of the talent from Black Isles. I'm not going to get too excited with Bethesda behind the wheel. They've never disappointed me (in fact, they've uusally exceeded my expectations) in the Elderscrolls series, but I don't know how well they can shift from that to Fallout. Morrowind had great story behind it, and the open-endedness was above and beyond either of the Fallout games. I hope they can keep that level of depth, but fit it into the coarser feel of Fallout. Then the gameplay... When Black Isle had talked about making Fallout 3 real-time, a lot of people on the messageboards were upset, and wanted them to keep a system simmilar to the first two Fallout games. Especially after Brotherhood of Steel, I don't see many fans -myself included- of the series being very open to a shift to first-person like Morrowind. Especially with the sort of weapons that Fallout is based on, it'd be a very fine line between RPG and FPS.
You knew you were in for a treat when you fired up Fallout: the kitschy black and white TV airing 50's style media slowly zoomed back and back and back, all to an optimistic tune, revealing finally a desolate cityscape devestated by nuclear war.
The game certainly took a number of popular concepts in the bleak future of a post-nuclear holocaust, but it did it with such style that you could ignore many of the familiar sci-fi memes. It was just a heck of a lot of fun to play, to discover what actions would lead to widescale changes in what were the remnants of California.
Although by the time Fallout 2 came out there were vast advances in graphics and sound, the game didn't take advantage of them, re-using the same engine from before. And that was OK, actually, because while others pushed for so much in 3D goroud shaded volumetric fullbrights with translucent starbright shadows and supercharged texels, the folks at Interplay concentrated on story. (OK, they threw in some excellent voice talent, too.) And it, too, was a damn good game.
I wonder what directions Bethesda will take with the franchise.
RPGs need more variety. The first Fallout was great. It had great gameplay, an interesting story, and most importantly, didn't involve elves, rangers, swords and spells.
It's not that I have anything against Dungeons and Dragons. I just think that a pen and paper RPG doesn't necessarily make a good computer RPG, and that it's great to shake things up a little.
Far too many modern RPGs still have annoyances that just don't need to be there. Why must I play inventory tetris instead of playing the game? Why are my classes always "Fighter", "Paladin", "Ranger", "Wizard" instead of "Inventor", "Lawyer", "Cop"? Why are the races the typical "Elf", "Human", "Barbarian" rather than "Elemental", "Ape-man" or "Grey Alien"?
Fallout 3 may not be a great game. The Fallout franchise has become worse and worse since the first game came out. But, even if it isn't a great game, I'll be really happy to see it come out, because it means variety in a genre that desperately needs it.
most of it was interesting with the right frame of mind.
you know, if you followed any of the plots.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Half-Life is a little too far down the scale of pure twitchiness and reflexes vs. strategic thinking and planning.
But people should NOT bash the first-person perspective at all. Done right, it really allows for more impressive graphics, and it doesn't all have to be about how fast you can click.
I've been playing City of Heroes lately, which takes place in a very futuristic city with incredibly nice graphics. The best part is by scrolling the mouse wheel you can move the camera back away from your character into a wide 3rd-person view, or all the way in to a 1st-person. You get to control it. I'd have no problem with something like that.
As to the combat system, City of Heroes is real-time, but every weapon has a limiting recharge time, so no matter how fast you click you have to wait X amount of time for those brass knuckles to cycle, or X+5 for your Red Ryder BB gun. It's first (or 3rd) person, but not a shooter. It's an RPG.
I'd love to play a Fallout game in a system like that. Hopefully they'll do a good job!