Despite the widely lauded story and player choice in Fallout: New Vegas, the ending was a disappointment. Siding with Caesar, House, Yes Man, the New California Republic, or doing your own thing got you a slideshow of narrated results and dumped into the end credits. That was it. You couldn’t even continue wandering the wastes for random adventuring. It was doubly perplexing because a similar ending in the original Fallout 3 was soundly criticized and later updated to allow gaming past the main quest’s finish. How did Obsidian drop the ball with New Vegas?
Chris Avellone admitted to Eurogamer that it was a missed opportunity. The studio originally planned to have post-story content, but they just ran out of development time. It wasn’t going to be anything fancy, but the player would’ve been able to go on walkabout and some NPCs would even comment on the character’s choices. The threat of adding more bugs to an already error-prone game, and the prospect of wasting resources on something that might not even matter to players was a significant roadblock. The idea of adding this feature with one of the DLC packs was suggested, but the plan was ultimately shot down.
“I even offered to pay for one of the milestones myself to allow for additional polish time on existing content, but that was refused because they didn’t want to extend the release date for the DLCs.”
Thus static images, narration, then credits. But there’s something to be said for having an actual ending, rather than anticlimactic aimless exploring, followed by ennui. Always leave’em wanting more!
Fallout 76 is getting its first seasonal event. The Fasnacht Parade is a repeatable week-long celebration in the town of Helvetia that will include gathering quests for party prep, robot marcher escorting, and dealing with uninvited guests that will culminate in a chance to win one of the cosmetic masks pictured above. Fasnacht for Fallout 76 begins on March 19th and ends on March 26th.
The “Fasnacht” in the game is likely based on the Fastnacht or Fasching Carnivals in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, a version of which has been transported to the United States via the Pennsylvania Dutch communities. A fasnacht is a type of pastry traditionally eaten during Carnival.
Bethesda Softworks has settled its lawsuit against Warner Bros. and Behavior Interactive. The suit, originally filed in June of last year, alleged that developers at Behavior Interactive, who worked on Bethesda’s Fallout Shelter, took some of that source code and used it to make a similar mobile app based on the Westworld show. It further characterized the Westworld game as a “blatant ripoff” of Fallout Shelter, copying mechanics and art. Bethesda asked for the Westworld game to be shut down and for Warner Bros. to compensate them for the theft.
Bethesda, Behavior, and Warner Bros. have announced that they have settled the lawsuit amicably. All parties have agreed to pay their own legal fees, but no other terms were disclosed. Both games are still available for download and in-game transactions remain live.
Owners of the Power Armor edition of Fallout 76 will be getting their missing canvas bags. Rest easy big spenders! According to Bethesda’s support team, they’re going to make it right as soon as they can. With the replacement canvas bags added back to the deal, it looks like you lucky folks just got 500 Atoms added to your $200 collector’s edition packages for free!
The early treatment for Fallout: New Vegas included race selections for the player character that offered ghouls and super-mutants as viable choices. Speaking to Eurogamer, Obsidian’s CEO Feargus Urquhart spoke about some of the decisions they made during the 2010 open-world role-playing game’s development. Originally intended as a large expansion for Fallout 3, Bethesda Game Studios and Obsidian expanded the scope of the project so it became essentially a sequel in size and complexity. “Fallout: Sin City” would eventually become the Fallout: New Vegas we all know and love. That three playable races idea? It was nixed due to technical issues.
“It really had to do with how all the weapons and armour worked. Trying to have them all work with ghouls and super-mutants was just going to be – [Bethesda] felt like it was going to be a nightmare. It wasn’t like they said no but it was a very strongly worded, ‘We would really suggest that you not try to do that.'”
Feargus Urquhart and Obsidian co-owner Chris Parker also addressed the now-infamous Metacritic contract clause that made the studio miss a bonus payment by one point.
“You can’t get mad at somebody for a contract you signed. We signed a contract, it had very clear terms in it. ‘Oh we were really close…’ We didn’t hit it.”
Fallout: New Vegas may not have allowed you to play a ghoul or mutant, but it did give us iron sights on guns.
Bethesda is advertising Fallout Shelter on Tinder. While joke profiles on the popular dating app are as old as a bottle of Nuka Cola, the profiles of “Vault Boy” and “Vault Girl” on Tinder is Bethesda’s creation. In fact, Bethesda is promoting the profiles on Twitter with #DateADweller. Hey, if you didn’t know it, Vault Boy is 25, into putting out fires, taking coffee breaks, collecting bottlecaps, and exploring.
For being the first ever event, Bethesda’s pre-E3 briefing was smoothly executed. (You can watch a recording here, if you were busy with the Game of Thrones season finale.) Bethesda showed off some Doom, Dishonored 2, and Fallout 4 as their big announcements. Doom includes monster loot pinatas, the return of the super shotgun, and Snapmap, a map editing system that will come to “all platforms” that Doom releases on. As a console controller editor it appeared to be rather deep, with the ability to cobble together pre-made map sections, place enemies, map details, and scripting links. For Fallout 4, Bethesda revealed that a major feature would be the ability to dynamically build settlements in the wasteland with pre-fab chunks, move in inhabitants, and defend them against enemies with traps and turrets. That dynamic construction will extend to weapon and armor creation as well. In Dishonored 2 the player can take on the role of Emily Kaldwin, or step into Corvo Attano’s spring-heeled shoes once again. This time, the stealthy assassinations take place in Karnaca, a steampunk version of Morocco. Bethesda dropped a surprise in the form of Fallout Shelter, a free-to-play iOS Fallout game available immediately.
Less enthusiastically received by the audience was the news that Bethesda is launching their own game client. Bethesda.net will be the portal for their games beginning shortly. The Doom Snapmap creations, for example, will use Bethesda.net for community sharing. Whether or not Bethesda will break off on their own and leave Steam on the PC remains to be seen.
https://youtu.be/GE2BkLqMef4
Bethesda has officially announced Fallout 4 for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The just-released teaser trailer shows us all the normal Fallout sights like power armor, bobbleheads, mutants, and kitschy 1950’s Americana that’s devolved into ruin. It’s a more colorful looking game than Fallout 3 or New Vegas, but it retains the post-apocalyptic setting that we’re familiar with.
Bethesda will have more information about Fallout 4 in their E3 presentation which begins at 7PM on Sunday, June 14th. The show will be co-hosted by Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb.
