VentureBeat » Fallout 3

Fallout and Skyrim developer teases new game on social media

Jeffrey Grubb — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:44:46 +0000

Put on your guessing cap because Bethesda Softworks has something new it wants to show off.

The developer responsible for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 3 is teasing its next game on Vine. The Twitter video app enables users to post video clips of up to six seconds in length. Bethesda posted a short clip of barbed wire followed by records spinning on a turntable.

Bethesda senior producer Jason Bergman retweeted the Vine with the message: “Consider yourself teased.”

The records featured in the clip include “Planned program service. Program no. 416″ by the Moonbeam Trio and “Air on the G-string,” an arrangement based on Johann Sebastian Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major. Bach composed that piece in the 18th century. The Moonbeam Trio album is apparently rare, but the U.S. Library of Congress has a copy. It includes songs like “I cannot sing the old songs,” which was originally composed in 1868.

Check out the Vine for yourself and hazard your guess in the comments:

Despite the allusions to old-timey music, the clip is not teasing a new Fallout game. The Fallout series is known for its use of classic tunes to set up its atmosphere, but Bethesda producer Pete Hines confirmed the Vine is not Fallout related.

@aegies You talking about the Vine thing? Guess again

— Pete Hines (@DCDeacon) April 16, 2013

We’ve reached out to Bethesda to ask them to explain their madness. We’ll update with any new information.

Yesterday, Bethesda announced that it is done with development on Skyrim. It will still support the title, but it is moving the bulk of its workforce to its next project.

Filed under: Games

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

Bethesda opens webstore to sell $300 Skyrim statue and other franchise merchandise

Jeffrey Grubb — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 18:26:10 +0000

Bethesda owns some of the coolest fantasy and sci-fi franchises in gaming. The publisher is taking advantage of its properties in a new online store that deals exclusively in merchandised based on games such as The Elder Scrolls.

The Bethesda Store is open now. It includes art, glassware, and apparel all decked out in popular Bethesda games like Fallout 3, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Doom.

Currently, the big-ticket item is a $300 statue of the Dragonborn from Skyrim. It currently isn’t available for purchase, but fans will have to plop down a $100 deposit to reserve one of 16-inch sculptures.

Other, less expensive items include a $48 Dishonored-themed Dunwall Whiskey hoodie, an $18 Doom T-shirt, and some dope Fallout-themed Vault 101 sneakers for $85.

Check out some of the cooler items in our gallery below:

Filed under: Games

8 button prompts we would like to have seen

Evan Killham — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 18:00:20 +0000

Video games give players the ability to do anything they want with just a few simple taps on a controller. Would you like to do a backflip? We have a button for that. Are you looking for Jason? Games have you covered. How about clearing a room of enemies via a series of increasingly complex fighting moves, including this really cool one that involves a lemon wedge and a stuffed duck? OK, that’ll be at least six or seven presses, but it will happen, and you’re gonna love it.

But sometimes, the interface fails, and we find ourselves wanting to do something that developers never really took into consideration. Here are eight button prompts we would have loved to see in some recent games — even if they wouldn’t all be particularly useful.

Filed under: Games

International Game Developers Association appoints new executive director

Jeffrey Grubb — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 20:04:51 +0000

A variety of people compose the game-development community, but they all want something similar: the ability to make a decent living while making decent games.

The IGDA advocates on the behalf of developers to help them accomplish that goal, and today the organization appointed Katie Edwards as its new executive director to oversee its mission.

“Kate’s knowledge of the global game industry and local cultures make her ideal to lead the IGDA,” said IGDA chair Dustin Clingman. “Her long service to our organization and commitment to the global development community will lay a foundation for ongoing international growth.”

Edwards worked for years with Microsoft as its senior geopolitical strategist. She helped the company adapt its business for new markets around the world. Edwards joined the IGDA in 2004. Her international experience helped her when she founded and chaired the association’s localization special interest group in 2007.

Throughout her career, Edwards has consulted on games like Halo, Mass Effect, and Fallout 3.

“Game development is an artistic endeavor with mass appeal,” Edwards said. “Developers and fans alike are increasingly aware of the diversity of those who both create and play games. Today, we’re engaged in creating great games for a global audience, and the IGDA remains the relevant focal point for supporting developers in the broadest sense of the definition. I’m thrilled to be given the privilege to lead and nurture this awesome community.”

Edwards lives in Seattle where she will perform her duties as IGDA director.

Filed under: Games

A soldier’s perspective on Call of Duty and its ilk (interview)

Jason Lomberg — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 19:55:37 +0000

It turns out that real soldiers don’t regenerate and machine guns don’t have unlimited ammo. Who knew?

It’s no secret that first-person shooters — in all their Hollywood-inspired clamor and spectacle — don’t simulate the realities of war very well. From basic rules of engagement, to gun safety (such as “don’t flag your buddies”), and the dynamics of combat, first-person shooters are more akin to interactive action flicks than a proper re-creation of armed conflict.

Of course, no one wants to play a hyper-realistic military simulator, as this hilarious Onion sketch illustrates.

No one wants to fill out endless paperwork, take mandatory sexual harassment training, write NCOERs (noncommissioned officer evaluation reports), sit through Powerpoint presentations with the potency of 10 Valiums, or stand 12-hour watches. No one wants to experience “hurry up and wait.”

Because that would be boring. Too realistic.

People want an escape from the mundane. But surely we can find a happy medium between silly action flicks and boring reality.

With the recent release of what will probably be the best-selling video game of the year, Call of Duty Black Ops II (for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, and PC), I thought it instructive to get the low-down from a real soldier, a veteran who deployed in support of the Global War on Terror. Sergeant Dave Mull deployed to Iraq in support of the Global War on Terror three separate times: ’04-’05, early ’07-late ’07, and ’08. His Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) is Cavalry Scount (19D), which essentially means that his job is enemy, area, and route reconnaissance. Altogether, he served 12 years.

Our conversation yielded some fascinating insights, and some of it may surprise you.

GamesBeat: It’s been pointed out before that many soldiers — and sailors, Marines, and airmen — like to play first-person shooters during their downtime in forward-operating bases (FOBs). From a layman’s perspective, this might seem odd, since the servicemember would, presumably, not want to experience a fictionalized version of reality. Have you experienced this phenomenon and how do you account for it?

Mull: I’ve always looked at FPS as a form of therapy post-deployment. My first tour was still in the sixth generation of consoles, so when I could play, I was actually busy with tactical role-playing games like Square’s Front Mission 4. But by my second tour, guys were getting Xbox 360s shipped over, so in downtime, we were playing Halo 2 and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas.It’s like a cartoon version of reality — it lets you work out aggression and build hand-eye coordination at the same time.

GamesBeat: What are some of the most basic details that your average military shooter gets wrong?

Mull: A lot of times it’s simple things like nomenclature, the positioning of equipment, or a feature on the rifle. I remember Counterstrike used to have the M4 eject on the wrong side so there would be more interesting things occurring on the screen when you fired. Also, you have the realism aspects: There’s almost never any calculation for bullet drop or ambient wind, and dropped weapons and magazines are magically full when the player walks over them to pick them up.I happened to notice in the opening [of Call of Duty Black Ops 2], Frank Woods rambling about a C-130, but the plane that was shown had a high tail and a body more like a C-17 Globemaster … just with turboprops.

GamesBeat: And heavy automatic weapons rarely overheat — and have infinite ammo, of course.

Dave Mull: Definitely. The Army defines a hot barrel as 200 rounds fired within two minutes. Very few games use this mechanic. The recent Killzones are the only ones that really spring to mind, but they had unlimited ammo, with the only limiting factor being heat buildup.

The author firing the M249 SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon). The barrels get really hot and have a tendency to overheat.

GamesBeat: What inaccuracies seem the most jarring? Is there anything that would prevent you from playing such a game?

Dave Mull: Hmm … they seem to be trying far too hard to make everything “epic” in campaign mode. It can sometimes be a chore trying to figure out which enemies actually count and which ones are the infinitely respawning cannon-fodder bots.

It won’t stop me from playing it, but you’d think they could remember that sometimes nothing happening can be just as, if not much more, suspenseful.

GamesBeat: It does seem like the goal of many shooters — Call of Duty especially — is bigger setpieces, bigger explosions, and bigger bodycounts. Which naturally makes them more like a Michael Bay movie than anything resembling reality.

Dave Mull: Remember in the Metal Gear Solid games, it’s intended that you don’t kill anyone. Of course, you can, but it’s not the way [series creator Hideo] Kojima envisioned it.

GamesBeat: Indeed. And a reader on Bitmob, GamesBeat’s sister site, pointed out that MGS4 is one of the few games to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder. In many ways, it’s a more realistic depiction of war than any first-person shooter.

Dave Mull: Very much so — specifically toward the end with Adam’s adoption of Liquid Snake’s personality and with the four gals of the Beauty and the Beast unit.

Filed under: Games

Pages: 1 2

Skyrim developer teases new downloadable content

Jeffrey Grubb — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 21:18:07 +0000

So you played The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim so much that you lost your job, significant other, and friends. That’s too bad, but we have good news: It looks like Bethesda Game Studios will release a new add-on pretty soon, so you’ll have something to do with all of your spare time.

Bethesda tweeted the picture above, noting that it will release a full trailer on Monday, November 5. That’s all the information the developer provided, but we’ve heard rumors that the add-on could be titled Dragonborn and take place in Morrowind, which was the setting of The Elder Scrolls III.

Skyrim is a first-person role-playing game set in the fictional realm of Tamriel. It’s available for PC, Xbox 360, and PC.

Bethesda released two downloadable content packs prior to this. In May, Dawnguard told a tale of vampires and vampire hunters. In September, Hearthfire introduced home-building and parenting.

Bethesda Game Studios is the development wing of publisher Bethesda Softworks. It worked on The Elder Scrolls and Fallout 3.

Filed under: Games

Gaming art for your Twitter header (Part 3: PC)

Samir Torres — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 18:00:35 +0000

Your Twitter profile just got a whole lot prettier with the addition of header images. Our vast selection of video game-themed pictures covers a wide range of genres and platforms.

We’re releasing seven days’ worth of artwork, each with a different theme:

Monday: The modern era
Tuesday: Popular franchises
Wednesday: PC
Thursday: It came from Japan
Friday: Mobile
Saturday: Retro arcade
Sunday: Consoles

Today’s batch of headers features 10 entries from new and classic PC games. Right-click (or Ctrl-click for Macs) the picture you want and hit “save image as” to save to your computer. To add the header to your Twitter profile, please follow these steps:

Sign in to your account.
Go to “settings” and click on the “design” tab.
Scroll down to the “customize your own” section.
Click on “change header” and select the image you want to upload. No need to scale.
Click “save.”

Diablo III

League of Legends

StarCraft

Guild Wars 2

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

Crysis 3

Dungeon Siege

Fallout 3

Half-Life 2

Doom

For gaming-themed Timeline covers for your Facebook profile, click here.

Filed under: Games

Dragon’s Dogma is an ambitious open-world action fest (review)

Omri Petitte — Mon, 28 May 2012 21:00:11 +0000

Heroes crave freedom. Send a willing warrior into a trackless landscape ripe with challenge, and he or she handles the rest with ambitious enthusiasm. Open-world epics such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 3 empower gamers to carve individually unique experiences within a role-playing framework, and Dragon’s Dogma presents another grand adventure in this mold while sculpting some added flair.

Developer/publisher Capcom doesn’t bill Dogma as a by-the-tome role-playing game. Its development crew drew from the company’s top talent: Devil May Cry veteran Hideaki Itsuno assumed the director’s throne and producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi worked on the Resident Evil franchise since its inception. Both men’s influential game-design philosophies blend Dogma’s RPG roots with snippets of Capcom calling cards — hack-n-slash, survival horror, and ungodly levels of inventory management. The result: a satisfying yet mechanically rough action-RPG hybrid bursting with player-driven, that-just-happened moments.

WHAT YOU’LL LIKE

A world unleashed
Sure, fully explorable environments come stock for this genre, but Dogma nails the upjumped scale right from the start. It’s as if The Lion King’s Mufasa draped a fatherly paw across my shoulders and solemnly said, “Look, my somehow human son. Everything the light touches is accessible.”

As befit for a game touting copious amounts of nonlinearity, Dogma doesn’t gate its lands behind progress checkpoints. If a new area presented itself during my travels, I simply walked to it. Such a straightforward feature kept desires of wandering beyond the well-worn roads of the duchy of Gransys at a feverish high. Hours clicked by on the clock from simply romping through the countryside, and Dogma’s impressively detailed climes provided such playgrounds as rocky crags, windswept ruins, and shrouded forests.

Still, trudging turns tedious after a while. Thankfully, the game’s stable of bandits, goblins, monsters, and other enemies pepper the scenery for on-demand action whenever the urge to hit something becomes unbearable. And you’ll want to seek out scraps, because once the steel or spells start dancing, Dogma truly dazzles.

Do-it-yourself moments of glory
Capcom’s Japanese gaming origins jolts combat away from boring repetitiveness. Aside from accompanying small-fry thieves, spiders, and goblin packs — all entertaining victims to a degree — Dogma’s lumbering mythical creatures pack the biggest risk for the biggest reward.

Beasts such as ogres, griffins, golems, and cyclopes not only tower with appropriate immensity, but they’re also all climbable. It’s easy to spot the Shadow of the Colossus references here, as latching on helps melee characters reach critical weak spots. Plus, hanging onto a griffin’s feathery wing for dear life after taking a running leap off a crumbling archway beats whacking at shins any day.

Multiple time sinks
Take a straight shot through Dogma’s main story, and it’ll cost you close to 50 hours of playtime. For hapless completionists like myself, however, that figure easily balloons past the 100-hour mark thanks to the sheer volume of weapons, armor, upgrade materials, and combinables that makes the Library of Congress look like a tabloid stand. The loot-itch became a loot-rash while homing in on tantalizing chests and constantly checking vendors for updated wares. A multi-class leveling scheme and the opportunity to learn and swap between each class’ ability pool adds plenty of variety and flexibility for any situation.

Single-player focus
Some RPGs thrive without the “massively multiplayer” prefix attached to it, and Dogma excels at keeping its quests a strictly solo affair. It escapes tacked-on-itis by implementing a cleverly non-intrusive online functionality via its Pawn system.

Pawns are player-created, computer-controlled companions acquired from visiting Rift Stones within towns and encampments. Up to two Pawns can join your party, with the third slot reserved for your own handcrafted main Pawn. Simply resting at an inn uploads the latter’s stats and equipment to Dogma’s server, and searching for and filtering Pawns by class, level, usage, and ability type . The entire process is seamless, simple, and most importantly, it properly utilizes a multiplayer mechanic without diminishing single-player’s appeal.

WHAT YOU WON’T LIKE

Limited camera controls
Gransys possesses a mixture of natural and deadly beauty. Items and sacks of gold litter the ground as if a medieval pinata exploded somewhere. That cyclops wants to cave in my face with a fist the size of a house. All three elements necessitates a higher degree of camera control, a feature Dogma somehow skipped entirely.

Because of the restrictive degree of zoom, avoiding giant foes flailing with crushing force often involves whether I rotated the camera around in time to get my bearings. A Demon’s Souls-esque lock-on system would work wonderfully here, but barring that, the lack of zoom controls doesn’t make sense.

No fast travel
By the leathery wattle of the Great Dragon, this is the most frustrating drawback. Quests often demand a lengthy trek from one desolate corner of Gransys to the other, and lacking a fast-travel hop between landmarks means hoofing it on foot everywhere, devolving into a taxing battle with boredom during lengthy strolls.

Purchaseable Ferrystones zaps one back to Gran Soren, the capital, and valuable Portcrystals changes the stones’ destination when placed — but that involves even more walking to the desired transportation point. Capcom obviously intended players to poke around the wilds as long as possible, but the snails-pace walking handicap severely hampers long-term mobility.

Loading…loading…loading….
Entering and exiting areas and cutscenes arrive laden with lengthy loading times. Really, at this point in the current console generation’s unnaturally long cycle, developers should know the limitations and capabilities of the hardware. I often encountered loading screens for asinine things such as two-second cutscenes, a shot of a door opening, and other loading screens.

CONCLUSION
Pencil in Dragon’s Dogma as another success for Capcom. Though lacking polish from a mechanics standpoint, it nevertheless presents an awesomely addicting cornucopia of exploration, epic combat, and loot-chasing for hours upon hours of fun. Trading Pawns with other players brings an interactive edge, and I can see this game occupying the disk drives of many consoles for a very long time.

Score: 80/100

Dragon’s Dogma released on May 22, 2012 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. An Xbox 360 copy of the game was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.

Filed under: Games

Minecraft digs upwards and becomes most-played Xbox Live Arcade title

Omri Petitte — Wed, 16 May 2012 22:33:39 +0000

Microsoft’s Xbox Live Director of Programming Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb posted his regular activity roundup for the Xbox 360’s online network, and the Minecraft mania flows strong on the lists.

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition nabbed the top position for bestsellers as well as sliding in behind long-standing champions Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Call of Duty: Black Ops for unique-user counts. Other titans felt the squeeze: Battlefield 3, Halo: Reach, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Gears of War 3 trailed by significant margins.

Here’s the punchline: All of this happened in Minecraft’s first week of release.

Creativity spawns popularity, or so the legions of Minecraft’s stalwart community believes. Originally released for the PC on November 18, 2011, the open-world tinkering title arms players with pick, axe, sword, and other tools while throwing open the floodgates of crowdsourced content, resulting in masterful works such as a recreated Westeros from Game of Thrones and Portal’s test chambers.

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition launched on May 9, promptly fashioned a golden sword, and smashed digital-sales records on its first day in the wilds. Its 1,600 Microsoft Points ($20) cost, unusually large for an XBLA title, and its lack of a modding infrastructure didn’t prevent the acclaim rolling in.

Check out Major Nelson’s activity lists below. If you’re playing Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, what have you created so far? Let us know in the comments!

Xbox 360 Top Live Titles (based on unique users)

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Call of Duty: Black Ops
Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition
FIFA 12
Battlefield 3
Halo: Reach
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
NBA 2K12
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Gears of War 3
Grand Theft Auto IV
Trials Evolution
Forza Motorsport 4
Mass Effect 3
NHL 12
Madden NFL 12
Halo 3
Red Dead Redemption
Saints Row: The Third
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Top Arcade Titles (Full Versions purchased)

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition
Trials Evolution
The Walking Dead
Fable Heroes
Fez
Pinball FX2
Awesomenauts
I Am Alive
Castle Crashers
Family Game Night
Fruit Ninja Kinect
Bloodforge
Toy Soldiers: Cold War
Gotham City Impostors
Toy Soldiers
Trials HD
Dungeon Defenders
Full House Poker
Peggle
Magic: The Gathering — Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012

Top Indie Games (Full Versions purchased)

CastleMiner Z
CastleMiner
Total Miner: Forge
The $1 Zombie Game
FortressCraft: Chapter 1
The Impossible Game
Avatar Paintball
Avatar Deathmatch
Fortress Wars
FLIRT
End of Days: Infected vs. Mercs
Avatar Legends
Flight Adventure 2
Toy Stunt Bike 2
Solar 2
Firing Range 2
Miner4Ever
Avatar Air Wars
Don’t Die Dateless, Dummy!
Attack of the Zombie Horde

Games for Windows Top Live Titles (based on unique users)

Grand Theft Auto IV
Age of Empires Online
Batman: Arkham City
Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition
Microsoft Flight
Batman: Arkham Asylum
DiRT 3
Gotham City Impostors
F1 2011
Resident Evil 5
Fallout 3
Street Fighter X Tekken
Toy Soldiers
Fable III
BioShock 2
Colin McRae: Dirt 2
Bulletstorm
F1 2010
Street Fighter IV
Section 8: Prejudice

Filed under: Games

Walmart.com strikes again: more mind-boggling game descriptions

Evan Killham — Sun, 13 May 2012 18:50:21 +0000

Recently, I wrote what would happen if the crazy-bad copy writers at Walmart.com described some of 2012′s most anticipated games the same way they mucked up Diablo III’s product description. It should come as no surprise that the Diablo III write-up was not an isolated incident; Walmart didn’t become the biggest retail company in the world by spending a lot of money on things like writers, editors, or research, and the games section of its website is full of comedy gold. To save you some trouble, I’ve mined it (or maybe I’m milking it at this point, but I don’t want to mix my metaphors) and pulled out some truly perplexing summaries.

These pages were current as of May 12.

Mass Effect 3

Choice bit: “In it players continue the adventures of Commander Shepard utilizing extreme character customization which is the hallmark feature of the series.”

Puss in Boots

Choice bit: “With the Puss in Boots Ds Game, you can turn into ‘Puss in Boots’, the legendary hero of the movie form DreamWorks Animation.”

Tomb Raider

Choice bit: “The games present a world in 3D: a series of tombs, and other locations, through which the player must guide Lara.”

The Last Guardian

Choice bit: Granted, nobody knows a whole lot about this game, yet. The writing is actually okay in this one (I’ve seen it other places, so Sony must have sent it to them), but it’s hilarious that they repeat the same two sentences as a bulleted list like they’re game features.

Uncharted 3

Choice bit: “With the explosive adventure and interactive environments, the single-player campaign is played in a unique online multiplayer mode.”

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations

Choice bit: “The PC video game lets you (Ezio) tap into enhanced abilities and weapons like free-running, hook blade combat, bomb crafting and Eagle Sense to eliminate enemies.”

Metroid: Other M

Choice bit: “It also features exciting play options, like pointer and sideways Wii remote controller preference, stunning in-game cinematic and a mix of Metroid action and puzzle-solving game play.”

Sniper Elite V2

Choice bit: “There is only a single opportunity for players to do what so many wish had been done take out the leader of the Third Reich.”

Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition

Choice bit: “The Fallout 3: Game of the Year Xbox 360 is a well-crafted, role-playing videogame, which doesn’t require players to have played any of the previous Fallout games to enjoy this one.”

Filed under: Games

Gamers held the line: Mass Effect 3 ending is being addressed

Sebastian Haley — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 18:01:01 +0000

Mass Effect 3 should have been a momentous moment for gaming, truly something to celebrate; not just for the countless gamers who have deeply invested in the universe and characters for five years now, but also for the many developers who have spent eight working on it.

Instead, it has been plagued by one massive disappointment after another: day one DLC, the inability to import your Shepard, the inability to properly import your decisions from previous games, greedy watered-down multiplayer, and last but certainly not least, the ending. I say ending (singular)–even though there are three–because they’re almost completely identical, and they all had the same exact effect: fans hated them.

After two long weeks of thousands of forum posts and articles and charities that raised over $60,000 for sick children, all in the name of demanding a better Mass Effect, BioWare has finally–begrudgingly–admitted defeat.

Dr. Ray Muzyka, co-founder of BioWare, released the following statement this morning:

As co-founder and GM of BioWare, I’m very proud of the ME3 team; I personally believe Mass Effect 3 is the best work we’ve yet created. So, it’s incredibly painful to receive feedback from our core fans that the game’s endings were not up to their expectations. Our first instinct is to defend our work and point to the high ratings offered by critics – but out of respect to our fans, we need to accept the criticism and feedback with humility.

Muzyka goes on to point out (again) that he believes Mass Effect 3 is BioWare’s best game ever (take that, Dragon Age!), and that the feedback from fans was unpredictable and surprising, given how “more than 75 critics [gave] it a perfect review score.”

BioWare has previously addressed the endings by saying “We’re listening,” but not necessarily that anything was being done about it. There’s an extremely interesting read on the official Mass Effect 3 forums where a former public relations agent breaks down BioWare’s careful manipulation and damage control tactics of the ongoing controversy.

But having the co-founder of BioWare step in is undoubtedly the company raising the white flag (perhaps it was all those Amazon returns?). Muzyka doesn’t share exact details, but he does reveal that something aimed at alleviating the criticisms of the ending is coming.

“…the team are hard at work on a number of game content initiatives that will help answer the questions, providing more clarity for those seeking further closure to their journey. You’ll hear more on this in April. We’re working hard to maintain the right balance between the artistic integrity of the original story while addressing the fan feedback we’ve received. This is in addition to our existing plan to continue providing new Mass Effect content and new full games, so rest assured that your journey in the Mass Effect universe can, and will, continue.”

Notice that the ending is not being “changed” per se, only that additional closure (or closure of any kind, in this case) will be provided. Also a sequel/spin-off and lots of DLC have not so subtly been confirmed, by the co-founder of BioWare no less. That’ll help make people forget how angry they are, right?

While this is a major victory for all those who felt wronged by BioWare’s ill-conceived finale, it’s certainly not the first time a developer has accommodated fan feedback. Bethesda did exactly that with Fallout 3, allowing players to choose an alternate ending and continue their adventure through a handful of expansion packs.

Filed under: Games

Technically disastrous Skyrim is Bethesda’s “most solid release” yet

Sebastian Haley — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 03:24:42 +0000

Bethesda Game Studios’ Todd Howard has finally broken his three-month-long silence regarding The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’s notorious technical issues.

“Statistically, it is not nearly as bad as it seems,” Howard told IndustryGamers. ”Meaning, by all the internal and external data, this is our most solid release.”

Bethesda Softworks’ games have a long history of being released with countless bugs and glitches, often rendering certain quests and content impossible to complete. The PlayStation 3 version of Skyrim in particular suffered from tremendous slowdown after a couple hours of play.

The PlayStation 3 “lag” also occurred in previous triple-A titles from the studio, including Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, so the whole “Oh man, we totally didn’t expect this” line is a little hard to believe. A member of Obsidian Entertainment, who developed Fallout: New Vegas (also published by Bethesda), acknowledged the issue and explained why it keeps popping up.

“[Skyrim is] also our most popular by a large factor,” Howard said, “so we do have a lot of people on the PS3 who play the games a lot, and their games are at a state that the game is just taxing the PS3 enough. That’s a fact; so, it really wasn’t until we were able to get save games from the users — because, literally, how they play the game over 100 hours — some of it, very little of it, we were able to reproduce and take care of on our own and a lot of it that you’re seeing now, we weren’t. So over the course of, like, December, the community helped us. We got their save games. We’d literally have to look in and say, ‘What quests do they have running, what order? Oh, he’s doing this. He’s got these dragons here. This script is running. Why is it kicking out this many things?’”

For those not familiar with game development, what Howard is referring to is also known as “quality assurance,” and is usually done before a game releases.

Howard gave the opening keynote at last week’s DICE 2012 conference in Las Vegas, Nev. and curiously did not take the opportunity to address Skyrim’s issues. Instead, to kick frustrated customers while they were down, Howard obliviously teased a number of highly desirable features (such as dragon mounts, new weapons, graphical enhancements, etc.) that the development team had created in one week.

The Bethesda Blog post announcing the 1.4 patch (which allegedly corrects nearly 60 major bugs including the PS3 slowdown) quickly became overrun with users listing many more outstanding issues.

I understand that Skyrim is an extremely ambitious title, and for those unaffected by the PlayStation 3 lag effect, the game is quite enjoyable, even despite many of the technical issues. But the fact that unfinished, untested retail releases have become a seemingly acceptable signature of Bethesda, all while selling upwards of 10 million units, is concerning. It fuels what is already a dangerous mindset of many publishers who believe a product can be released now and fixed later — and ultimately diminishes the overall quality of new games. This is in direct opposition to companies like Valve (Half-Life, Portal) and Blizzard (Warcraft, Diablo) who are known for the tagline: “It will be done when it’s done.”

The silver lining is that Howard also stated downloadable content for Skyrim will be far more substantial than in Bethesda’s previous games and will feel more like expansions. Luckily none of the DLC has been tied to an arbitrary marketing date like 11/11/11, so there’s a better chance they’ll be given more rigorous testing before being sold.

Filed under: Games

Fixing Skyrim would take a lot of time, according to developer

Sebastian Haley — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:31:15 +0000

Bethesda Softworks is undoubtedly looking at numerous game of the year awards for their epic role-playing game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, but their long-running history with releasing utterly broken games continues to dampen any design achievements. While there is no end to the list of complaints, bugs, glitches, exploits, and miscellaneous issues players have experienced, the severe slowdown that’s demolished the playability of the PlayStation 3 version (see video below) has endured the recent patch intended to fix it.

In fact, that patch brought with it a number of new problems, including rendering magical resistances useless and backwards-flying dragons. The slowdown is caused by an ever-expanding save game file. After a few hours of playtime, the save file gathers too much data for the PlayStation 3 to handle, causing the gameplay to stutter so drastically that a manual reset is required, which temporarily dumps the extra information causing the slowdown . This specific issue doesn’t affect the Xbox 360 or PC versions in any notable way.

Recently, a member of Obsidian Entertainment–who previously developed what is arguably one of, if not the buggiest mainstream game ever released, Fallout: New Vegas, for Skyrim publisher Bethesda Softworks–has spoken out on the cause, and the hypothetical cure. Answering questions on his personal Formspring account, Obsidian’s Project Director Josh Sawyer explains:

The Xbox 360 has a unified memory pool: 512 megs of RAM usable as system memory or graphics memory. The PS3 has a divided memory pool: 256 megs for system, 256 for graphics. It’s the same total amount of memory, but not as flexible for a developer to make use of. It’s not like someone wrote a function and put a decimal point in the wrong place or declared something as a float when it should have been an int. We’re talking about how the engine fundamentally saves off and references data at run time. Restructuring how that works would require a large time commitment.

To be clear, Sawyer is not a Bethesda employee or spokesperson, and he’s referring specifically to Fallout: New Vegas, yet he does directly connect the two games (Fallout and Skyrim) to the PlayStation 3 memory issue. This revelation is particularly troubling, especially given that previous Bethesda titles using older engines suffered from many similar issues that Skyrim’s new, highly-touted Creation Engine failed to address. Project leader Todd Howard stated in an interview that the development team reached all of the technical goals they set for themselves and “kept going.” Apparently making sure that their game worked properly at launch was not on that list.

Meanwhile, Bethesda has (somewhat) acknowledged they may have screwed up their multi-platinum technical Jenga tower:

To be safe, we are prioritizing code side fixes right now over data fixes. Quest and balance issues are usually data, and those will start rolling in a large way with the January updates. We all know this is a huge game, and everyone has a different experience. We’ll continue to do everything we can to make the game better and better for as many people as possible every day. We’ve also realized that with the millions upon millions of people playing Skyrim, we need to treat our updates with greater care. If we get too aggressive trying to fix a minor issue, we run a risk of breaking something larger in a game like this.

Unfortunately, most Skyrim owners without access to the internet have no way of patching their game. I don’t how care how good a game is (and yes, it can be very good), it’s unacceptable for a product to hit the market in such shoddy condition, regardless of how ambitious it may be or how well it ends up selling. It took me all of about three minutes to encounter my first glitch in Skyrim, and about five hours before I reached a quest that couldn’t be completed, just like in Oblivion; you can’t tell me that an entire team of QA testers didn’t notice that this game was fundamentally unready to be released.

Filed under: Games

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim ships 7M copies, actual sales unclear

Sebastian Haley — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 19:02:42 +0000

Bethesda Softworks, publisher of last week’s long-awaited The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, has announced that its latest game has shipped seven million copies globally across the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows PC. Digital distribution platforms such as Steam also seem to be counted towards this figure.

It’s important to note that “shipped” is not the same as “sold.” By comparison, Battlefield 3 sold five million copies in its first week, making it the biggest ever game launch for publisher Electronic Arts, while Activision’s Modern Warfare 3 has sold over 12 million copies during the same period, making it the biggest launch in entertainment history. Modern Warfare 3 was released on Nov. 8, three days before the release of Skyrim.

Still, shipping 7 million games to retailers is a good indicator; those retailers wouldn’t take the games if they didn’t think they could sell them. The question is whether or not they’ll be placing reorders soon as well.

Previous Bethesda games include the award-winning The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and Fallout 3, both developed internally. Although the studio, owned by Zenimax Media Inc., only publishes a couple of games each year, they tend to be extraordinary successes such as Skyrim and id Software’s RAGE, or very poorly received products such as 2009′s Rogue Warrior, which currently has a 27 on Metacritic. Bethesda also released Hunted: Demon’s Forge and Brink to disappointingly low reviews earlier this year. However, even Bethesda’s most well-received titles, including Skyrim and last year’s Fallout: New Vegas, are notoriously plagued by technical issues.

You can read VentureBeat’s Skyrim review here and our tips guide here. Although we agree the game is definitely worth playing, we cited more than a few glaring flaws that prevent it from being the masterpiece it truly had the potential to be.

Filed under: Games

Review: Ezio’s not the only thing getting old in Assassin’s Creed: Revelations

Sebastian Haley — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 15:59:55 +0000

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is the fourth title in Ubisoft’s award-winning, multi-platinum franchise. Developed by multiple internal studios around the globe and spanning more than 400 individual team members, the Assassin’s Creed series needs to sell better than most in order to offset its undoubtedly massive production costs. But can Ubisoft sustain such an ambitious annual business model while still keeping the sequels fresh and compelling?

Each holiday season since 2009, the Assassin’s Creed team has provided a robust, open-ended game experience, easily rivaling anything the competition puts out once every few years. Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is the third and final entry following the life of Ezio Auditore da Firenze. As a brief recap, the original game featured Altaïr Ibn La’Ahad, an assassin during the Third Crusade. The second game switched to Ezio and bumped the setting up a few centuries to the Renaissance. Last year’s Brotherhood again starred Ezio, and as such Revelations effectively completes his trilogy. Both Ezio and Altaïr are the ancestors of Desmond Miles, a modern day assassin and the true main character of the franchise, who accesses their memories through a machine known as the Animus.

And it’s the ingenious Animus mechanic that truly gives Assassin’s Creed a ton of freedom to explore, both in terms of story and gameplay. It also gives the developers some breathing room with regards to things that would be considered flaws in a different game. Unlike many of today’s AAA titles, Assassin’s Creed is not striving for utter realism. In fact, it’s a very arcade-like experience, with no small amount of suspension of disbelief required. But that’s where the Animus comes in. The player is not directly living out the events of Ezio and Altaïr, but rather recreating them through a machine. These recreations are not perfect, nor do they have to be. It’s all quite akin to The Matrix. Where I might slam a game like Skyrim for having odd, realism-shattering glitches or poor design decisions, no one’s going to complain about seeing inhuman feats or the same cat twice inside the Matrix, and that applies to the world within the Animus as well. Except for the cat thing.

Teaching an old dog new tricks

This year’s title brings with it a number of additions, and a few subtractions. Revelations takes place primarily in Constantinople around 1511 AD, making the once-brazen and youthful Ezio approximately 50-years-old. By now fans should feel right at home in the virtual world, complete with towers to climb, viewpoints to synchronize, and merchant shops to renovate. But Constantinople feels like a step backward from Rome, which was the featured city in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. There are no particularly memorable areas or landmarks, nor any countryside to roam. I felt the open rural spots in previous games gave the claustrophobic city game play a rest, so it’s unfortunate to see it removed here. This is also the first game in the series to not feature horses, though there are two sequences involving horse carriages, if that makes a difference (it doesn’t, and they’re annoying).

While Ezio may be the master, the assassins of Constantinople still have a few new tricks to teach him and gifts to give him, including the hookblade. The hookblade replaces one of Ezio’s hidden blades and opens up new gameplay opportunities such as latching on to climbable objects and ascending them more rapidly. After three games, this aging assassin has nothing to prove, and players will undoubtedly appreciate the expediency the hookblade allows for. Still, aside from riding the occasional zipline, you don’t ever actually need to use it. The way Assassin’s Creed games are designed, every jump or vertical obstacle is crafted to be overcome with Ezio’s natural (or some might say, supernatural) abilities, so the hookblade is really more of an optional tool. It does however allow for some pretty cool executions when fighting guards, but I’m genuinely left wondering if the hookblade was included merely as an afterthought.

The second major addition to Ezio’s already robust arsenal is customizable bombs. Using ingredients found all around the game world (they’re literally around every corner, it seems), you can craft a variety of lethal, tactical, and diversionary explosives. Although you may have heard Ubisoft touting 300 different bomb variations, the reality is nowhere near as impressive. In truth, there are less than a handful of different effect types for each of the three bomb classes. These can then be given different powder to determine the radius of the blast, and different fuses, such as a tripwire or time-delay. The thing is, like the hookblade, I found very little use for the bombs. Outside of a few specific instances, I’d actually have to go out of my way to use them, as a crossbow or throwing knife would usually be just as effective, if not more so. I suppose if a player really wanted to incorporate bombs into their play style they could, but I’d rather the game had been developed to take advantage of the new features slightly more. Still, if you want to go on a rampage or screw with the guards, the lamb’s blood bomb and caltrop mine can be quite entertaining.

Beyond those two additions, Ezio already has everything he needs from the previous games. His hidden blades, a sword, a dagger, a crossbow, throwing knives, poison darts, hidden pistol, and even parachutes. The combat is still extremely solid, but again there’s not much new here. You can now counter grab and counter steal, but outside of that it’s the same exact system as it was last year, which was nearly identical to the year before. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but perhaps you’re starting to notice a trend with this game?

Filed under: Games

Pages: 1 2 3 4

Review: Skyrim is far greater than the sum of its parts

Sebastian Haley — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:00:18 +0000

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the latest blockbuster hopeful from developer/publisher Bethesda Softworks. Following in the footsteps of the studio’s previous award-winning open-world role-playing games Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Fallout 3, Skyrim avoids tacked-on multiplayer and overpriced rainbow-colored launch day weapon DLC in favor of delivering the most rich and compelling single-player experience in video gaming history, a rare goal in a market dominated by competitive online titles such as Halo and Modern Warfare. Was Bethesda up to the ask? The answer is both yes and no.

Terrible first impressions
After over 80 hours of dungeon-crawling, dragon-slaying, and potion-making, I was finally ready to write my Skyrim review. Although I literally lost five pounds (out of a total of 145, mind you) from not eating or sleeping while playing Oblivion when it was first released in 2006, Morrowind for the original Xbox and PC still stands as my most memorable Elder Scrolls title. There’s something about building pillow forts, summoning Golden Saints and delivering writs that leaves a warm fuzzy in my stomach. So I’m very familiar with the series, and while I simply wanted this latest chapter to be a good–hopefully great–game, it’s hard for anyone not hiding under a rock to avoid Bethesda’s infernal hype machine. “Radiant AI” this and “Creation Engine” that. It all creates a certain expectation that, technically, Skyrim is going to blow away not only anything that Bethesda has ever done, but everything else on the market as well.

Skyrim gets off to a rough start, with an on-rails prologue displaying some of the game’s worst graphics. It’s a terrible way to start off a game that promises so much, and I’m surprised that the opening hour, considering how linear it is, isn’t the most polished piece of the entire package. Even if you can look past the pixelated shadows, weak dialogue, and ho-hum scripted sequences, you’ll soon learn that Skyrim takes one of Oblivion’s cardinal sins and runs with it. In Morrowind, you could kill everyone. If you wanted to exterminate every citizen, villager, and straggler in the game world, you could, even if that meant permanently breaking a main quest. It didn’t matter, that freedom was yours. In Oblivion, Bethesda saw fit to limit that freedom; pivotal characters would simply be knocked unconscious whenever you went on a rampage. But they’d eventually recover and all would be forgiven. Now, in Skyrim, some characters won’t even acknowledge that you’re standing there hacking away at them with an axe. The man who guides you through the opening scene can have six arrows sticking out of his head without so much as interrupting his exposition to ask that you kindly stop doing that. Combined with the underwhelming visuals, and I had this creeping feeling that I had been duped.

Seeing characters not react realistically to events and damage rips me out of the intended immersion. And yes, there are some very rough patches in the graphics throughout the vast world. The much-touted animations can be particularly wonky, but there are also some extremely notable textures that stand out, not just compared to the rest of the game, but compared to all other games from 2011 as well. It’s almost as if you can chart which areas or items were created earlier in development and then never retouched to meet the game’s generally high standards.

Dragons should be fearsome, not target practice
Although superior to Oblivion in scope, variety, and production values, I was left feeling like Bethesda chose to refine the wheel rather than revolutionize it. This decision is not necessarily a bad one, but it is somewhat disappointing given that the Elder Scrolls franchise sees a new release once every five years. That being said, Skyrim does make some sizable additions to the formula, with the implementation of dragons being the most notable. These colossal winged beasts play an integral role in the main storyline, as well as the game world itself, but their execution is not quite what Bethesda promised it would be. Like the Big Daddies in BioShock, dragons should be intimidating entities that give the player serious pause as to whether or not it’s a battle worth engaging in. But like the Big Daddies in BioShock 2, I quickly found myself darting across the land anytime I saw one in the distance, hoping I got there in time to slay it before it ran away. Aside from a few troublesome encounters where I was caught out in the open with no protection, dragons never really put up much of a fight. Instead, I eagerly rushed them all, frothing at the mouth to harvest more valuable dragon bones so that I could buy myself pretty things.

While there are a few non-generic or story-related dragons, the majority are all nameless Frost and Blood Dragons, or literally just “Dragon.” And they’ll never stop spawning, regardless of what events unfold throughout the main quest. Of the 30+ dragons I’ve slain, only a few were memorable, delivering a remotely exhilarating experience, even if the challenge wasn’t there. But more often than not, they were deftly felled like any other enemy. I once killed a dragon in the forest only to have another dragon immediately land next to us and start attacking. I killed the second one in less than 20 seconds with repeated blasts of my most powerful lightning spell and harvested his bones before his body had even fully hit the ground, then carried on without a second thought to go find more butterflies for my alchemy. Speaking of spells, lightning not only drains health but magicka as well, meaning it’s entirely possible to eliminate a dragon’s ability to breath fire altogether. If you’re at a distance, they’ll just dry heave at you. So frightening!

Then there was the time that a dragon literally dropped out of the sky dead before I even knew it was there. What killed it? I’ll never know. If you do find yourself having trouble with dragons, you can always lure them towards a tower or city. The guards and even common peasants will all take up arms, helping to deplete its health in record time. If there aren’t any cities around, you have a fairly good chance that the dragon will waste its valuable final moments attacking mudcrabs or wolves while you blast away at it from safety. Whatever you do, just don’t stand directly in front of one….

The already-questionable animations in Skyrim are at their worst when it comes to the dragons. What are allegedly totally dynamic battles have very clear scripted events. Generally speaking, when you kill a dragon it just dies where it stands. But there are a few battles where the dragon’s health bar will disappear preventing it from taking further damage, then it will fly away and circle around for a pre-determined crash landing (which usually results in the game turning into a slideshow for a few seconds). It’s very poorly implemented, and the animations for this sequence are usually horribly unpolished and glitchy.

Ultimately, the game benefits from the inclusion of dragons because, even in the disillusioned state they’re in, there’s something awesome about seeing the wings of a massive dragon flapping in the distance and hearing its roar as it zones in on you, or prepping your arsenal and potions as you zone in on it. I’m left wishing Bethesda had done a better job, but at the same time, even if your pizza is cold and has anchovies on it, you’re still getting pizza.

Filed under: Games

Pages: 1 2 3 4

Bethesda reinvents its Prey shooter series with elements of popular Oblivion, Fallout games

Matthew Lynley — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 21:41:55 +0000

If a game isn’t broken, don’t try and fix it. In fact, make the rest of your games follow that same formula.

That’s a strategy that Bethesda Softworks now appears to be applying to the rest of its franchises. The company is changing the direction of its Prey series, which was originally more like a corridor-based first-person shooter (FPS) game that sent players from point A to point B, to be more like its open world games like Oblivion and Fallout 3.

Bethesda Softworks showed off a new demo for Prey 2, the latest game in its Prey series that features players traversing an alien world, at the Electronic Entertainment Expo today in Los Angeles, Calif. It looks like it’s the whole universe and vision of Prey with a dash of Fallout and a few extra slivers of Oblivion baked into the package.

Both of those games give players the option to explore a massive, vibrant world and carry role-playing game elements that let players incrementally improve their skills and equipment. And both Oblivion and Fallout 3 were critically acclaimed. Fallout 3 earned a score of 91 out of 100 across 48 reviews and Oblivion earned a score of 94 out of 100 across 90 reviews on review aggregating site Metacritic.

Prey 2 tells the story of Killian Samuels, a U.S. Marshall who was abducted by aliens when his plane got sucked into a vortex that landed him on an alien planet. He was captured by slavers and lost parts of his memory but was able to escape. The player joins Samuels when he has begun making a name for himself as a bounty hunter in the slum alien cities, using the skills he learned as a U.S. Marshall to effectively take down marks.

The game begins with Samuels waking up among the wreckage of his plane on an alien garbage area. The rest of the survivors are dead, so he breaks out his pistol and starts to move toward higher ground. He’s immediately ambushed by alien slavers and has to take cover and start chipping away at the bad guys. It’s a FPS that lets players see the game through Samuels’ eyes and hide from enemy fire with cover.

The game also has a few elements of Mirror’s Edge in that the player can execute some pretty sweet parkour-like moves. Players can vault over pieces of cover, climb up their surroundings and execute an action slide under obstacles and into enemies. They can also shoot enemies while doing any of those parkour-like actions. For example, the player can hang from a ledge and use the vertical building as a piece of cover when they peek over the ledge and open fire with a pistol.

It’s an open-world game like Oblivion or Fallout and takes place on the planet Exodus. That planet always has one side facing the sun and one side in the dark, with the largest city on the border between those two parts. That’s where the game takes place, and it features an “alien noir” art style that harks back to the old detective movies that focus on the gritty parts of cities like Los Angeles, Calif.

Since he’s trapped on an alien world, Samuels has access to a lot of cool alien gadgets that help him as a bounty hunter. He can activate a scanner that automatically turns non-playable characters a certain color — green if they’re harmless, red if they’re hostile and yellow if they might turn around and try to kill you. Enemies that the player is trying to track down and kill or capture are highlighted white and some additional details pop up — such as the reward for the quest or what the mark’s name is.

The whole game is a quest to help Samuels piece together his memory and try to find a way back to Earth. It’s carried out through a series of bounty quests that make Samuels use his abilities to chase down, track or assassinate certain marks. The longer bounty quests reveal more details about Samuels’ surroundings and how he ended up on Exodus, as well as clues to help him get home.

The bounty hunter quests reward the player with money that they can use to buy new equipment and weapons. Guns have upgradeable parts that add new features to each weapon and change the aesthetic look of the weapon. There are also different ammo types for each gun that the player can purchase, although Bethesda wouldn’t get into any additional details about that ammo system.

Like most modern open-world games, players are given the choice to be a nice guy or a complete dick. But it’s really over the top in Prey 2, and it’s fantastic. Sure, you can choose to kill baddies and help out people who are getting kicked to the ground. But players can also walk up behind a guy just minding his own business looking over a railing and kick him right off the ledge.

The consequences for being a jerk in the game are pretty minimal at first because it takes place in a slum-like area where there’s only loose authority. There are robots around the city that will track your movements and keep track of your actions. Those machines will start to open fire on you if you continue randomly killing people or just being a generally terrible person. The more bad actions you take, the worse the repercussions become — to the point of teleporting in reinforcements to take you down.

Prey 2 should come out sometime next year.

We’ll be exploring the most disruptive game technologies and business models at our third annual GamesBeat 2011 conference, on July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. It will focus on the disruptive trends in the mobile games market. GamesBeat is co-located with our MobileBeat 2011 conference this year. To register, click on this link. Sponsors can message us at sponsors@venturebeat.com. To participate in our Who’s Got Game? contest for the best game startup, click on this link.

Filed under: Business, Games

Japan's wrecked nuclear plant remade in game Fallout 3

Matthew Lynley — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 17:00:23 +0000

Someone has recreated the ruins of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fallout 3, an adventure game that features the player trekking through the ruins of Washington D.C. after a world war resulted in a nuclear holocaust.

A modification like this is probably going to spark questions about whether it’s too soon to recreate this kind of disaster in a video game without offending anyone — Japan’s 9.0 earthquake, devastating tsunami and radioactive leaks are still open wounds. But professional and casual game developers have been using video games as a medium to pay homage to lives lost in disasters or as a tribute to individuals for about as long as they have been able to create custom modifications of popular games. The ruins are an addition — or mod — of the original game, which featured destroyed landmarks like the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.

Games like Fallout 3 and BioWare’s Star Wars epic, Knights of the Old Republic, usually end up creating massive communities that create modified versions of the game because they are so open-ended. That means it’s easy to create new content for the games, which typically ends up generating more publicity for the game because many of the mods are major improvements over the original game or are very well written. Some of them are also controversial — but the same is true for just about any storytelling medium. However, modifications are typically restricted to PC versions of games because they are easier to develop, limiting their audience.

Reactions from Japanese gamers range anywhere from impressed to disgusted — which is probably the kind of divisive reaction you’d expect — according to gaming news site Kotaku. The modification is available at the Fallout 3 Nexus, an online host for modifications to Fallout 3.

Filed under: Business, Games