Fallout 3

While John Carmack's speech at QuakeCon 2009 was super long, Todd Howard's speech today was under an hour but still highly informative and extremely funny. The executive director at Bethesda Softworks made his QuakeCon debut with a video and slide presentation that was very entertaining.

Howard pointed out that Bethesda and id were very similar; both were PC hardcore developers that slowly turned into multi-platform teams. Currently Bethesda has between 85 to 90 employees. To work at the company you have to have several qualities, according to Howard, including having a "low a**hole quotient".

Most of Howard's presentation went through some of the things they did while developing their last game, Fallout 3.They looked through not only the previous two Interplay made RPGs but also old reviews of the games to see what people responded to in the games.

Bethesda makes marketing part of the process of developing their games because marketing is how people are first introduced to the game before actually playing it. Even things like designing what the art will look like on the game disk is part of that process.

Check out more from Howard after the jump

Fallout 3 players complete a ton of fantastic achievements after stepping from Vault 101, the least of which includes saving (or dooming) humanity and working to revive (or conquer) the irradiated Capitol Wastelands. So, why limit those accomplishments to Earth? The newest downloadable content expansion, Mothership Zeta, takes former Vault dwellers toward the final frontier as they're abducted and beamed aboard a giant flying saucer high up in Earth's orbit. Players have a chance to fight a ship full of aliens using their advanced technology in an effort to figure out what they're up to and find a way to escape.

With the release today of Mothership Zeta, Bethesda Softworks has now sent out the last of their downloadable mini-expansions for Fallout 3. However if you are one of those folks who haven't yet bought the post-apocalypse RPG revival, you are in luck this week.

Direct2Drive has just announced that they have put their downloadable version of Fallout 3 on sale for just $24.95. That's a 50 percent cut from the game's normal price on Direct2Drive. The sale runs through August 9. Also we have a bit of an update on that Prototype $10 off sale that we mentioned Sunday. Direct2Drive has apparently decided to extend that offer until August 8. Finally Call of Juarez: Born in Blood has had its price cut by 30 percent from now until Sunday.

The first full week in August brings a downloadable expansion and a WWII strategy game to PC gamers:

Fallout 3: Mothership Zeta: In the fifth (and final?) downloadable expansion for Bethesda Softworks' post-apocalyptic RPG, you character finds a smashed spaceship and finds himself beams into orbit aboard an alien mothership. Look for new weapons and, yes, aliens to shoot with them.

Fallout 3: Mothership Zeta, the newest DLC expansion is August 3rd. In it, players are abducted by aliens and brought aboard the mothership. Players will have to uncover the aliens' secret plans and escape... preferably with armfuls of alien technology.

"A strange Alien signal is being broadcast throughout the Capital Wasteland, originating from a crashed UFO. Is it a distress call, or something far more sinister? That question is answered when you find yourself beamed aboard an enormous Alien spacecraft, with only one alternative – to fight your way to the bridge of the ship and secure your escape."

Download HD Fallout 3: Mothership Zeta Trailer (80 MB)
Check out all Fallout 3 downloads

This patch updates Fallout 3 to v1.7. It includes the achievements for the upcoming Mothership Zeta downloadable content expansion.
Download Fallout 3 v1.7 Patch [US] (52 MB)
Download Fallout 3 v1.7 Patch [UK] (52 MB)

Fallout 3 has had four mini-expansions available for download (the fifth, Mothership Zeta is due on August 3) but so far only one of them, Broken Steel, has raised the level cap for the hit RPG. The expansion raised the cap to 30 but can developer Bethesda Softworks raise it even more?

MTV Multiplayer put that question to Bethesda's Jeff Gardiner and he states, "I know from the outside this seems like a fairly simple proposition, but doing this could unbalance the game in a variety of ways." While he hints later on that they could change their minds at some point we don't expect this to happen anytime in the near future.

Bethesda Softworks previously announced that their next DLC expansion for their hit RPG Fallout 3 would be titled Mothership Zeta. Today the company released more info about the mini-expansion and as you might guess it's all about aliens coming to probe your character's . . . er, body. The expansion will be made available for download on August 3 via Games for Windows Live for 800 Microsoft points (about $10).

The storyline has your character finding a crashed alien spaceship in the Capitol Wastelands. The problem is that the aliens are still around and beam you to their orbiting mothership. Your goal is to explore the ship, get to the bridge, and escape. Of course the aliens and their robot drones have other plans. New weapons like the Alien Atomizer, the Alien Disintegrator and the Drone Cannon will be used along with new outfits and of course new enemies. Mothership Zeta is the last of the downloadable expansions that Bethesda Softworks has announced for Fallout 3 but there's every possibility that more could be in the works.

We will make a stand here and now and say we are not a fan of "live action role playing". Yep, we know that's going out on a limb but we can't help it. Adam Sessler's coverage of a LARP event for X-Play several years ago pretty much made us think that folks who participated in such events were even nerdier than us (and that's pretty nerdy, let us tell you).

However word got out this week of a LARP event in Russia that actually sounds pretty darn cool. According to these reports a group in that country created a LARP based on the Fallout universe. From the photos taken from the event last month, many of the participants went all out to make their costumes look like the post-apocalyptic RPG series. All in all it looks like something we might actually be interested in doing, and that's saying something.

Like other PC game download sites this week, the Steam service is starting their weekend sales pitch a little bit early thanks to the US-based Fourth of July holiday. Today Steam announced that for the next few days the price of the hit Bethesda Softworks RPG Fallout 3 will have a 50 percent price cut.

Yep, that means that the highly acclaimed 2008 game, which is normally $49.99 on Steam, can now be bought for the next few days for just $24.99. It's too bad that you can't download the four (so far) mini-expansions to the game via Steam as well.

GoGamer.com has launched their latest 48 Hour Madness sale on their site and this time the PC game sales are mostly of recently released titles rather than those that are several years old. Indeed the sale includes the just released Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen game which is priced at just $19.99 for the sales time period.

Also cut in price is Spore Galactic Adventures, the first real expansion pack for the alien evolution sim. GoGamer has the title available for $24.90. Other games with price cuts include Fallout 3 ($32.90) Grand Ages: Rome ($12.90) and Terminator: Salvation ($24.90). The sale lasts until 3 am ET on Tuesday.

Point Lookout, the latest downloadable content expansion for Fallout 3, takes a short break from the retro sci-fi theme that defines the rest of the game. Instead, this new area centers on more of a B-movie horror theme. Players get to go to some secluded swamplands and unload using a double-barreled shotgun on its mutated, cannibalistic, locals while confronting a local cult. In the meantime, you end up in the middle of a long running feud, uncover a book of the occult, and brew up some moonshine.

Check out the Fallout 3 downloads

This patch for Fallout 3 updates the game to v1.6 and installs the Point Lookout achievements.

Download Fallout 3 v1.6 Patch [US] (51 MB)
Download Fallout 3 v1.6 Patch [UK] (51 MB)
Check out all Fallout 3 downloads

After the last few weeks with only one or two new releases, this week has a bunch of PC game titles being released to stores. In addition we get the latest downloadable expansion to last year's big RPG release.

Overlord II: Developer Triumph Studios and publisher Codemasters put this sequel to the unusual action-strategy-RPF game to stores. As with the 2007 original you are playing the "bad guy" in a fantasy universe controlling his Minions to destroy and maim the members of a Roman Empire-like land. You can download a playable demo of the game right here at Big Download.

Bethesda Softworks is getting ready to release the fourth mini-expansion to their best selling open world RPG Fallout 3. Today the game's official web site has added six new screenshots from the DLC expansion, Point Lookout, along with an extensive developer's diary on the expansion

The dev diary talks about how the creative team used the real swamp and marsh land region around the real Point Lookout, MD as their basis for the setting of the expansion along with trying out some new artisitic styles and putting more of a dense setting than the original game's Capital Wasteland. The expansion will be available for purhase and download via Games for Windows Live on June 23.