Despite the hesitation from vocal Fallout fan boys concerning Fallout 3 using the Oblivion engine and emphasizing a first-person point of view, all signs point to the post-apocalyptic RPG being Bethesda's best title yet -- and the 36 video game journalists who comprise Game Critics would certainly agree. Game Critics recently announced that Fallout 3 won their prestigious Best of Show E3 award, as well as the genre-specific Best RPG.According to the official website, Game Critics bestows its awards upon games which "will shape the future of interactive entertainment, as demonstrated via hands-on playable form at the E3 Media and Business Summit in Los Angeles, CA."Download the latest Fallout 3 HD Trailer...

Have you ever spotted information about a game floating around the Internet, practically waving its hands and jumping up and down for your attention? Did you ignore that friendly, lonely information asking you to just give it a chance? Shame on you! Well, sorry, not shame on you, since you're obviously reading this Fallout 3 preview. Actually, calling this a preview would be a bit misleading. Instead, think of this as a look into the reasoning for you to love Fallout 3.In the spirit of Fallout 3, we've created our own mutant rats. We call them love-rats, which are foot-sized rats possessing shockingly tiny front-legs and disturbing large hind-legs. We hope that you're highly resistant to love-rats, because we're about to unleash them unto your face so they can skitter and nibble you with their filthy infected love-maws! Check out 5 reasons to love Fallout 3 >> Download the latest Fallout 3 HD Trailer...

We've already presented the latest Fallout 3 trailer to you in streaming form but we're now happy to offer the entire HD version of the E3 2008 trailer for download. Clocking in at 152MB you can relive the live-action educational magic which includes such gems as a dishwasher buddy that looks suspiciously like a Star Wars Probot and a creepy old man who reveals a young woman's future as a re-population hub for a nuclear ravaged world. After the live action shenanigans are over make sure to stay for the gorgeous gameplay footage from Bethesda's latest role-playing epic. Fallout 3 is scheduled to release this October. Download the Fallout 3 E3 2008 trailer now!...

Give 1-888-4-VAULT-TEC a call. Just do it. Or if you don't have a phone, check out the above-embedded video. After you've done that, come back.Done? Okay, so you just heard a voice explain that you've reached a nuclear holocaust survival hotline, right? And that you have over 100,000,000 callers in front of you, and you have to wait 78,643 hours, yes? Yes, that's rather odd. Here's the explanation.This is viral marketing for Bethesda Softworks' upcoming post-apocalyptic RPG Fallout 3, the latest title in what is arguably one of the greatest PC RPG franchises of all time. It has already announced that it's hosting a post-apocalyptic film festival in California. We also just found out hat Fallout 3 will get downloadable content on the PC. The point: things are looking promising on the ironic post-apocalyptic RPG front....

Bethesda Softworks, developer of the Elder Scrolls series as well as the forthcoming post-apocalyptic RPG Fallout 3, will partner with Geek Monthly magazine and the American Cinematheque to sponsor 'A Post-Apocalyptic Film Festival Presented by Fallout 3'."We are very excited to sponsor this film festival with the American Cinematheque and Geek Monthly magazine as this event brings together fans of film and video games like never before," said Vlatko Andonov, president of Bethesda Softworks. "This is an exciting time for us and this film festival gives us a fun platform to give people further insight into Fallout 3.""Co-sponsoring this film festival just made perfect sense for us here at GEEK Monthly magazine," said Michael Eisenberg, group publisher at Fusion Publishing. "The showing of post-apocalyptic films that have captivated movie goers' imaginations over the last 40 years and showcasing the definitive post-apocalyptic video game will make for a truly enjoyable festival for fans of the genre." The festival takes place in Santa Monica, California's Aero Theater and begins at 7:00 p.m. on August 27. Tickets priced at $10 each will be available on Fandango.com beginning July 25....

As recent rumors have indicated, GamesIndustry.biz brings word that Bethesda Softworks' Fallout 3 will not be released in Australia. "An RC rating by the Office of Film and Literature Classification effectively means the game is banned from sale in the region," explains GamesIndustry.biz writer Matt Martin. "Many publishers have fallen foul of the strict classification system in Australia which does not grant games a rating above 15+, but allows movies to receive 18+ ratings."Fallout 3 has been refused classification, effectively preventing it from being released in the region.Depending on certain concessions Bethesda may or may not be willing to make, the title could see a future Australian release. Martin notes that D3P's Dark Sector was finally released in the land down under after the development team agreed to cut certain content from the title....

GamePlasma has noted that Majestic Studios, developer of Limbo of the Lost, seems to have stolen assets and environments from Bethesda Softworks' Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, for use in their RPG title. You can view screenshots of both games at GamesPlasma. The similarities are striking, to say the least. The apparent pilfering of Bethesda's intellectual property, combined with using Geocities as a host, seems indicative of the studio's poor financial status. Unfortunately for them, that status will only worsen if Bethesda is able to find proof of the purported theft -- and judging by the above screenshots, finding that proof shouldn't be too difficult....

Most of the online gaming community loves The Escapist's Zero Punctuation -- the animated video game reviews created by a disgruntled British-Australian gamer named Yahtzee. Sometimes, though, they also hate it. Why? Because Yahtzee has a propensity to ruthlessly and humorously trash fan favorites!This week, he dove into Oblivion, the latest entry into the Elder Scrolls franchise. That franchise has been a staple in PC RPGs since 1994, so it's borderline sacred at this point. That doesn't stop Yahtzee though! He never says it's a terrible game, mind you. He just finds a several things to complain about it. Head over to The Escapist and watch the clip. As usual, it's very amusing.As the case has usually been with Zero Punctuation reviews, this video is decidedly NSFW (unless you have headphones), although it's a bit tamer than usual -- a bit!...

Have you ever wanted an in-depth look at the people creating one of this year's biggest titles, Fallout 3? Well if you have then you're sure to be pleased with the IGN Bethesda Blog's verbal exchange with Liz Beetem, character artist at Bethesda Softworks. Liz actually has quite an interesting story about her journey into the videogame industry and the luckiness of Fallout 3 being the first game she's worked on. We always love the opportunity to learn more about the people working on games we'll end up pouring hours of our lives into. For instance, we're very happy to hear Liz's favorite game is Silent Hill 2 with Shadow of the Colossus coming in at a still-important second. Now we can rest easy knowing that someone who appreciates symbolism in videogames as much as we do is working on Fallout 3....

The post-apocalyptic world of the Fallout franchise has always been rife with humor and innovative imagery. While we all think we know what the aesthetic should resemble, it's up to the actual artists to try to find new ways to spin that aesthetic in novel ways, to keep the look fresh and appealing. Leading the charge is Bethesda's Adam Adamowicz, Concept Artist on Fallout 3.In his latest Diary, Adam details the sometimes rigorous brainstorming sessions and countless revisions it takes to arrive at a truly immersive look and feel for the game, and presents several concept art sketches for our enjoyment. Included in this overview are the clothing, machines, architecture, robots, and assorted mutants and bad guys that populate the ravaged world of Fallout. If the finished product is anything even remotely like these sketches, we're all in for quite a treat. Enjoy!...

If you were to ask Bethesda's Fallout 3 lead Emil Pagliarulo, "Are you dumbing down Fallout 3 for consoles?" the answer you would get is probably, "I look at Fallout when I play it every day, and I sometimes think that there's a lot of old-school hardcore PC stuff in there too, and part of me thinks, 'God, is this too inaccessible for console players?'" That's the response he gave in an interview with Next-Gen where he was asked that very question.There are some original Fallout series fans who've made such accusations towards Bethesda. In fact, there were some The Elder Scrolls fans who felt that way about the last game in the series, Oblivion. However, Emil points out that there are a lot of systems in Fallout 3 that aren't the usual RPG experience for consoles -- such as the multiple -point targeting system featured in the VATS mode. Our position on the matter is that we'll wait to see how the game turns out before making use of our accusation fingers....

Want to send Bethesda your white hot questions pertaining to Fallout 3? Then you should no further than this Bethesda blog post over at IGN. Methods of sending your questions include (and are limited to) emailing them to bethblog [at] bethsoft [dot] com and asking in the comments section of the announcement.We're sure there are plenty of you out there who'd like to scan the brains of Bethesda, we know that we'd love the chance. This is the closest you're ever likely to get, so get your questions in as soon as you can and for the love of Vault 101 don't ask the isometric question.We're hoping for some good results, as the last time that Bethesda did this we got some really great answers from them....

Peter Hines decided to sit down with Eurogamer and give them a short interview on several topics related to Bethesda's upcoming Fallout 3 -- including a mention of why there'll be no demo. We can't say that we're not a little jealous of them, since before the interview they had just been demoed a piece of the game. Still, it's a good interview and easily worth a read.From what we can gather, the guys over at Eurogamer tried their best to get even the slightest big of juicy information out of Peter, but he didn't budge. We were especially intrigued at the attempt to get him to talk about some kind of corpse eating statistic characters may have when Fallout 3 launches -- hopefully later this year.This begs the question: Can players become zombies in Fallout 3, just as they could become Vampires in The Elder Scrolls series?That would be, in a single word: awesome....

How could you take a chunk out of a whole experience? You can't just remove a slice from a compelling post-apocalyptic world and toss it out there for the ravening masses to consume in a furious rampage of gaming. That's what Peter Hines and the rest of the folks at Bethesda would have you believe anyways.Announcing that there would be no demo for Fallout 3, Peter Hines said to Eurogamer, "When you build it as one thing, there's no way to portion off a section and have it stand on its own without putting the whole game in the demo, which we're just not going to do." As I recall, the same thing was said about BioShock.A demo can make or break most normal games, so under other circumstances, this would be dire news. But since Fallout 3 is predestined to sell approximately hojillions of copies, this isn't anything much. Just don't plan to play a miniature version of the game before you head out and buy it (hopefully you get the lunchbox!).[Via Joystiq]...

Fallout was one of my favorite PC RPGs of all time. Granted, I'm not as crazy about it as some people, but I still love the universe and the game systems. videogaming247 sat down with Betheda's marketing director Peter Hines and got some excellent information out of him about Fallout 3 today, and it's a must read for any Fallout fan.The big news is that Fallout 3 will feature DLC at some point in the future. Whether this means new quests, new weapons, or perhaps even armor for Dogmeat (please don't), Peter Hines didn't specify. Also, how it would be distributed on PC was also not specified, although you can bet it'll at least be distributed through their own online store.Of other notable news is that the PC specs will be "comparable to the specs required by Oblivion from computers of the time" (read: you need a top-of-the-line computer). Given whatever specs will be required, the team is apparently aiming to have the game play at 30 FPS across all systems.The final tidbit of news is that if Dogmeat takes lethal damage, he will die for good. This isn't surprising, as the original Fallout series had that same result for NPC partners. Unfortunately, as Dogmeat is not necessary to the plot, being more of a nod to the original Dogmeat, there are no real story consequences to him dying.Fallout 3 is shaping up to be an excellent addition to the series in my eyes, and this interview only confirms it. Falout 3 will be released in fall of 2008 for PC, 360, and PS3.Read - Fallout 3 DLC: "It's a given that we'll look into it" says BethesdaRead - Fallout 3: If Dogmeat dies, he stays deadRead - Fallout 3: 30 frames a second "is our goal" across PC, 360 and PS3Read - Bethesda on Fallout 3 PC spec: It will be "similar to what Oblivion was for its time"...