fallout-3 posts

The rights to the Fallout RPG franchise have been part of a big legal battle between publishers Interplay and Bethesda Softworks. This week the dispute left the court room and entered into the interwebs with reps from both companies basically saying, "We own the rights."

Eurogamer chatted with Interplay's president Eric Caen who admitted, "We sold the Fallout IP to Bethesda in exchange for a certain amount of cash and the right to do the Fallout MMO." However Caen claims that the actual IP agreement gave Bethesda to make just three Fallout games. Caen claims, "So they already did Fallout 3, then Fallout: New Vegas, and they can only do one more Fallout, 5, if the sale of the IP is cancelled by the court."

Not so, says Bethesda Softworks PR head Pete Hines. Chatting with VG247.com, Hines states, "We own the rights to everything Fallout. The licence is ours. Fallout belongs to us. That's what I'll clarify." It's clear that the two parties are well out of agreement which also means a protracted legal battle.

It's one of the most, well, Western RPGs ever made but 2007's release of Fallout 3 has just gotten an official remake from its publisher Bethesda Softworks. The Bethblog web site has a link to the the company's Japanese web site where you can now play a 8-bit version of Fallout 3 via a browser.

Yes, Fallout 3, or at least part of it, has been made into a retro 8-bit game. Yes, it's almost all in Japanese so good luck to most of you with figuring out what may be going on while you play the game (and yes you will be playing it). Yes this this pretty much the coolest thing we can remember seeing from a publisher in some time. Enjoy.

With five days to go before the BIG DAY, the Steam PC game download holiday sales event has now gone live. This is the third annual event and it's usually the biggest sale of the year for Valve's download service as nearly all the game in its library have at least some kind of price cut from now until January 2. In addition there are publisher game bundles and indie game packs that save you even more money. Mac gamers are not excluded; over 125 Mac titles are on sale as well.

There are simply too many deals to go over in this one news post but we will mention the price cuts that are in place from now until 1 pm Eastern time on Tuesday. That includes the launch of the promised Oddboxx bundle of the four Oddworld games, including two that are new to the PC platform.

F1 2010 - $19.99
Super Meat Boy - $3.75
Titan Quest Gold Edition - $4.99
Battlefield Bad Company 2 - $6.79
The Oddboxx - $12.49
Deus Ex/Deus Ex Invisible War - $2.49
Peggle/Peggle Nights - $6.99
Lego Batman - $4.99
F.E.A.R/F.E.A.R. 2 - $9.99
Fallout 3 Game of the Year Edition - $20.09
All Prince of Persia games - 75 percent off
Portal - $3.74 or $2.25 if you own Half-Life 2

Fallout New Vegas' PC owners are getting some rapid fire patch support for the just released post-apocalypse RPG. The game just got its second patch about 24 hours after the release of the first patch for the game.

As with the first patch, released via Steam, there are no detailed patch notes. The note on the Steam web site does say, "Preferences, quicksaves, and autosaves should behave normally." That should be a relief to some players that have reported playing the game and then having issues with save games. However, it looks like Steam Cloud support for save game isn't working as the note states, "Cloud support currently disabled."

Fallout New Vegas' reviews has been mostly on the positive side so far. However there have been a number of reports that the just released post-apocalypse RPG from developer Obsidian Entertainment has a number of bugs and other issues. Kotaku has listed some of those issues that have been discovered so far which include some ... interesting .... tricks with heads.

Big Download contacted the game's publisher Bethesda Softworks to find out when the first bug fix patch for Fallout New Vegas would be released. Its PR head Pete Hines emailed back this response: "We are currently working on releasing patches/updates as quickly as possible for Fallout: New Vegas, for all platforms. Announcements regarding the patches are forthcoming." Any patches for the PC port will be issued automatically via Steam.

If you are like us and don't really care to go out at midnight to some retail store to purchase Fallout New Vegas, the folks at Bethesda Softworks have now announced that the digital download copies of the RPG will be unlocked via Steam, Direct2Drive and other outlets at 3:01 am Eastern time on Tuesday morning. For folks on the west coast that means your digital download copies will unlock at 12:01 am Pacific time tonight.

In related news, Bethesda announced that the first official paid downloadable content for Fallout New Vegas will be released later this year but that it will be an exclusive to the Xbox 360 version. Hopefully that means the PC port will get the same DLC sometime after the Xbox 360 released. Finally, Obsidian Entertainment co-founder Josh Sawyer talks about how the game's entire team helped to make the game in a new developer's diary.

We are just a couple of days away from the release of Fallout New Vegas to stores but this weekend it was time to party in the real Las Vegas for the RPG's official launch party. The event for the game included a performance by Vampire Weekend which Bethesda Softworks' PR head Pete Hines managed to take a picture of and post on his Twitpic account. The launch event for the Obsidian Entertainment-developed game also had a number of Hollywood actors attending including some that voiced characters in Fallout New Vegas.

Speaking of which, USA Today has some little known info about the game in a new Game Hunters blog post (semi-spoiler alert) including the reveal of another voice actor. William Mapother, cousin of Tom Cruise and best known for his creepy role as Ethan on the TV show Lost, voices Colonel Hsu of the game's New California Republic faction.

In about one more week, gamers head back to the post-apocalyptic wasteland of the Fallout RPG series. This time the game, Fallout: New Vegas, not only takes place in a new location but also has Obsidian Entertainment at the development helm. Some of its team members worked on the first two Fallout RPG games at its former home at Interplay.

With the game now set for release on October 19 via publisher Bethesda Softworks, Big Download got some more info on what to expect from this next installment from Obsidian's associate producer Tess Treadwell, including some info on the game's skill system, the dialog system and more.

The Collector's Edition of Fallout: New Vegas will contain, among other things, an original comic book called All Roads that acts as a prequel to the storyline in the upcoming RPG. But could we see more Fallout-based comics in the future. Maybe, if fans demand it.

That's the word from Chris Avellone, the senior designer of Fallout: New Vegas at Obsidian Entertainment. He also wrote the All Roads prequel comic and has written Star Wars-themed comics for publisher Dark Horse. And it's clear that Avellone wants to do more Fallout comics. In a chat with Comic Book Resources he states, "If there's enough fan interest, I hope that might be enough of a push for a regular series. If readers would be interested in seeing more stories in the Fallout universe outside of DLC and 'New Vegas,' say the word on forums." In the meantime Fallout: New Vegas is due for release on October 19.

Gallery: Fallout New Vegas Screenshots

Fallout Online remain as mysterious as ever (and somewhat in question thanks to its publisher Interplay's current legal battle with Fallout's current owners ZeniMax Media) but this weekend the upcoming MMO showed some more life. We got an email that directed us to a new viral web site that expands on one of the post-apocalypse franchise's long running characters.

That character is Harold, the mutated ghoul who is the only character that has appeared in all three Fallout RPG title. The viral web site suggests that the MMO will have a "Church of Harold" organization that is "open to all". We just wonder when Interplay will stop teasing us and show us some actual Fallout Online gameplay.