I fully expect Bethesda to improve on their storytelling in Fallout 4, partly because I can’t honestly imagine it getting much worse, and partly because they did showcase some improvement in Skyrim. But I don’t expect a sea change, sadly. They’ve done and said very little that suggests they’ve made monumental strides,…

Van Buren was pretty far along in development when the axe fell (the engine and script were both basically finished, and the maps were about 50% finished). The project lead (J.E. Sawyer) was later the project lead for Fallout: New Vegas, and many of the things originally planned for the aborted project found their way…

There’s bitterness, yes, but that’s not where it comes from. The bitterness comes from the fact that these are people who have been legitimately passed on by the gaming industry. Many of them don’t just prefer older styles of games, they flat out don’t like newer styles. Telling them, in essence, to get with the times…

I guess I mostly just don’t understand why fans of Fallout are not happy with two amazing games that are different from the series roots, whn the alternative was no more fallout or, at the very least, more games like Fallout Tactics and Brotherhood Of Steel. Bethesda loves this franchise and Interplay doesn’t. Bottom…

That presupposes that these critics agree that “anything good” has happened in the first place. That’s my point: if you don’t enjoy the “updated” mechanics of the new games and plain old don’t enjoy them, you don’t have anything to be happy about. The continued existence of a series that has changed so radically that…

Yeah, but so what? Saying it’s the “closest” to the classic games isn’t really saying much. Until Wasteland 2, New Vegas was probably the closest thing to the classic games. And, while I love it, it isn’t really much like the classic isometric Fallout games in any objective sense. Both are fine games, but they don’t…

Define “backlash,” though. I generally steer clear of NMA because a lot of the stuff there veered away from criticism of the games to attacks on Bethesda’s developers, which isn’t cool. But criticism, even harsh criticism, of the games themselves doesn’t need to be justified, IMO. It doesn’t lead to a very cheerful or…

I’m not actually convinced that Wasteland 2 is an effective spiritual successor to the Fallout games. It’s a successor to the first Wasteland title, which, despite inspiring the setting and story of Fallout, is a very different game. Wasteland 2 is a squad-based strategy game with RPG elements. Fallout was a single…

I would ask, if the basic features that drew me towards a series are so fundamentally changed, why should I be grateful that the series is nominally still around? I’m somewhere between NMA and the rest of the Internet: I don’t hate Fallout 3, but I don’t really care for it, either. I’m not sure why I should care that…

I see where they’re coming from, though. It’s difficult when something you love is so completely supplanted by something very different. And it’s even worse when the rest of the world doesn’t acknowledge the difference in the first place, or worse, treats it as an obvious and clear advancement. Being told that the…

The problem is that none of FO3’s characters have much depth, let alone development. Some of them have interesting character quirks, but it’s all fairly superficial, especially compared to the three other main line games in the series.

The Jim Henson Company doesn’t hold the rights to any of the Muppet characters, though. The classic Muppet Show crew belong to Disney, and the Sesame Street characters are owned by the Sesame Workshop. The only famous characters still retained by the original company are the Fraggles.

The sad thing is, Jim Henson Studios legally has nothing to do with the Muppets. The Muppets trademark, and all characters associated with it, are the property of The Muppets Studios, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company. The properties that the Jim Henson Studios still owns (including the…

Skyrim’s gay marriage was really weird, IMO. Actually, strike that: Skyrim marriages were just really weird in general. My problem is that they were just so lazy. None of your possible spouses have much of any personality as far as relationships go. At the absolute most, you might have to complete an unrelated quest…

I like the new crafting system, but I’m less thrilled about the apparent lack of item degradation/repair. It didn’t bother me when Bethesda removed it from Skyrim, but somehow it feels more important to the survival/scavenging vibe of the Fallout games. Also, it’s one of the features that I don’t expect modders to be…

It looks like power armor helmets have a HUD display. Is that what you were talking about?

Ooh, I really like the idea of linking perception to VATS speed. On the face of it, I’m not a fan of making VATS slow motion instead of full stop, but that idea might make it worthwhile.

My biggest fear about having a voice protagonist was borne out in the presentation. When you have voiced dialogue, developers don’t want to “spoil” the voice over by actually letting the player see exactly what his or her character is going to say beforehand. So you obnoxious, “gist of” shortened versions like “No” ==…

That doesn’t mean it’s wrong, though. Bethesda could be using it for publicity or some such. But given the date’s significance to the Fallout series, even if that does wind up being the release date, I wouldn’t say it amounts to much more than a decent guess.

Well, they were unpleasant and generally unlikable, but I wouldn’t call them the bad guys. They were at least grudgingly on board against the Enclave in Fallout 2.