The Vault:News

In the past weeks, we've been working on making our content easier to navigate and use. To achieve that, two areas have been worked on: overview pages and infobox header links.

Most of our readers and editors probably know overview pages like Fallout 3 weapons or Fallout 3 quests which are among the most-visited pages on this wiki (see also Did you know that... below). Overview pages help with comparing content and finding content if you don't know the exact name of what you are looking for. While Fallout 3 content was and is pretty well covered in that regard, the older games' content was not, a situation we have tried to remedy. As a result, a lot of new overview pages like Fallout 2 creatures or Fallout Tactics robots and computers have been created. Of course, missing overview pages for Fallout 3 were also added such as Fallout 3 holodisks or Fallout 3 paper notes.

The second improvement concerns the little links above infobox titles (e.g. "Fallout 3 weapon"). Previously most of them simply linked(…)

Recently, Paste Magazine came out with their list of the 20 best games of the past decade, honoring Fallout 3 with spot #3. Click here to see the full list.

Another piece of Project V13 (Fallout MMO) concept art has been released by lead concept artist Serg Souleiman in the Interplay forum.

A Flickr user by the name of Co.Pirate has been posting some pics of a homemade Shishkebab he's been working on, still a work in progress, and is probably one of the best replicas of a Fallout 3 weapon since the replica of AER9 Laser Rifle made a couple months ago. So far it looks like it's going along great, you can see the most recent photo to the right, and is making sure to get every detail he can in it.

1UP hosts a roundtable featuring Bill Roper (Cryptic Studios), Alan Miranda (Ossian Studios), Marcin Iwiński (CD Projekt) and Feargus Urquhart (Obsidian Entertainment) about the future of RPGs.

Several early designs for a Fallout game for the iPhone have been pitched and rejected in the past at Bethesda Softworks. However, now it looks like John Carmack of id Software, which has recently been acquired by Bethesda's parent, ZeniMax, has an idea for it that might get made.

Carmack told Kotaku that, while it's nothing official yet, he has an internal proof of concept made for a Fallout iPhone game. Both Carmack and Bethesda's Todd Howard are fans of the platform and any iPhone game based on Bethesda's IP will likely be made as a joint project between id and Bethesda.

Carmack said that he will likely be personally involved in making the game, although currently he is too overloaded with work on other games. "At the very least I'm going to be providing code," he said.

Recently, the 27th Annual Golden Joystick Awards were held, with an extraordinary 1,223,646 votes being cast, making it officially the most popular game awards in the world. The most interesting part of it, however, is that over a year from its release date, Fallout 3 is still going strong in the awards department, only showing the massive following that the game has had (sorry 1 and 2 die-hards).

These are the awards that Fallout 3 received from GJ09:

*First Place for "Ultimate Game of the Year"

*First Place for "PC Game of the Year"

*Second Place for "Xbox 360 Game of the Year"

*Second Place for "Rampage Soundtrack of the Year"

*Runner-Up for "Playstation 3 Game of the Year"

Read more about the 2009 Golden Joystick Awards here.

Chris Taylor (lead designer) and Serg Souleiman (lead concept artist) of Interplay's Project V13 (which everyone knows is Fallout Online but legal issues don't allow the devs to state the obvious) have commented on the concept art that has recently been posted in the Interplay forum.

Serg.S about his concept art in general:

Frymuchan, one of the Interplay stockholders, has posted about the court supposedly ruling in Interplay's favor in the preliminary injunction of the Bethesda v. Interplay case. However, it turns out that he mistook a proposed court order submitted by Interplay for an actual one. Christopher Nelson, Interplay's in-house lawyer stated:

Hey, everybody.

You will not often hear from me, but as Interplay's in-house lawyer I feel the need to set the record straight here...

The Court has not ruled on Bethesda's Motion for Prelminary Injunction. A proposed order was filed with our Opposition to the Motion, but that is not the same as an Order of the Court. The hearing is weeks away. Interplay will issue an official statement if there is a material development that needs to be addressed. Please do not rely on rumor or speculation.

In the meantime, we all appreciate your enthusiasm and support.

Thanks,

Chris

Meanwhile, we have a copy of Interplay's opposition filing to Bethesda's injunction motion, which(…)

Interplay has opened a forum for Project V13 concept art. Chris Taylor comments:

Some of the concept art for the game has been released due to the lawsuit. This forum will be a place where we can post high quality versions of the same art and you can give us some feedback on it at the same time.

Keep in mind that this is concept art. It's not finalized art, but it will give you a feel for what we are aiming for with V13.

(And I'll keep bugging the lawyers to release more art when we can... I'm pretty excited that we're finally able to show you some of the work that we've been doing up until now.)

The first image, created by Serg.S and called "Factory", can be viewed on the right or directly at the source, provided you have an account at the Interplay forums.

1. Another one named "Graveyard" up at the Interplay forums.
2. Yet another piece of concept art called "Survivor" can be found at the Project V13 concept art forum.
3. Another piece of concept art called "Desert" was added.

File:Project V13 concept art 3(…)

One of the major influences of the Fallout series' asthetics, the Mad Max series of films has had a 4th film given the green light and filming is to be done, as per the originals, in outback Australia.

The film has been stuck in development hell for more than 20 years and this is a major step towards realising another film. Previously, it had been indicated that it would be made as an animated feature but a live action version will now be produced.

More details here.

Are we going to see Fallout returning the favour and providing some artistic inspiration for this movie? Have a look at this gallery to see some raiders who could fit right into a live-action Fallout.

According to GamesRadar, there's a new peripheral called Nvidia 3D Vision. This makes images for both your left and right eye respectively so when you wear the glasses, it makes it 3D. There were three games tested by GamesRadar: Resident Evil 5, Left 4 Dead and Fallout 3. Here's an excerpt:

It runs at a hefty price, $199 USD and includes the following:

• Wireless glasses
• IR emitter
• DVI-to-HDMI cable
• Two USB cables
• VESA 3-pin Stereo Cable
• Interchangeable nosepieces
• A cleaning pouch and cloth for your fancy new glasses.

Check it out here. You can also find the full list of supported games here.

Play Magazine has posted an interview with Inon Zur regarding his soundtrack for Dragon Age: Origins. However, there is one question related to Fallout 3 as well:

I have to ask about the “Butcher Pete” song in Fallout 3. Steeped in controversy, this old-timey song by blues musician Roy Brown was included among the “period pieces” of the Fallout 3 soundtrack and helps to further steep the wasteland in retro American lore. There is some debate about whether the song is about a guy who likes to have sex with a lot of women, or sex with anything, or if he is a serial killer who preys on women, or all of the above. But this makes me think of “period piece” songs that fit the game’s era and which are played by NPCs who live within the gameworld, as opposed to atmospheric songs which only outsider viewers can hear. Did you include any such “period” songs in Dragon Age: Origins? What do you think of the dynamic between period songs versus atmospheric songs for the audience?

Like in any project, de(…)

Interplay has filed an 8-K SEC filing concerning its legal battle with Bethesda. It has the same information as the forum post by frymuchan, one of the company's shareholders, but is written in a less biased way.

On October 16, 2009, Interplay Entertainment Corp. (“Interplay”) answered the lawsuit filed by Bethesda Softworks LLC (“Bethesda”) in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland on September 8, 2009. In conjunction with its Answer, Interplay asserted Counter-Claims against Bethesda seeking affirmative relief, including for Breach of Contract, Declaratory Judgment, and other relief. Interplay alleges Bethesda breached the terms of Asset Purchase Agreement related to the sale of the FALLOUT® intellectual property to Bethesda.

Interplay’s counter-suit alleges that Bethesda interfered with Interplay’s business, including distribution of the previously released FALLOUT ®, FALLOUT® 2, and FALLOUT® Tactics games, by attempting to terminate Interplay’s distribution rights, among(…)

A site called Sankaku Complex (warning, the site also contains adult content) has posted scans from a Japanese magazine (although they did not mention the magazine's title) with the results of a poll regarding the readers' favorite RPGs. The top 10 list is:

1. Final Fantasy X
2. Dragon Quest III
3. Final Fantasy VII
4. Persona 4
5. Kingdom Hearts II
6. Dragon Quest IX
7. Tales of the Abyss
8. Dragon Quest V
9. Chrono Trigger
10. Fallout 3

As you can see, Fallout 3 is the only non-Japanese RPG on the list. I had no idea it's so popular in Japan. Maybe one of the Japanese fans would like to adopt the Japanese version of The Vault?

We have launched a new version of our article creation page, this time in a tabbed format. It lets you easily add new articles on various topics, as it preloads the necessary templates and categories for you to fill in.

We have introduced a new infobox template - Template:Person, to be added to articles about real-world people like developers or voice actors.

After a lengthy discussion about the new policies, we are also introducing new format for items (particularly weapons and armor) that can be found in multiple games. Previously, the generic name, like Laser Rifle, functioned as a disambiguation page, while the stats for the same item for each game, if a given item was the same in-universe, were listed on the same page (e.g. Wattz 2000 Laser Rifle, with stats for both FO1/2 and for FOT).

In our new version, on the other hand, the generic title is an overview page, like at Laser Pistol, and there are separate pages with game-specific info for each game an item of a given type appears in (…)

Senpay from Fallout Encyclopaedia managed to create a script that allows exporting 3D models from the Van Buren (original, canceled Fallout 3 by Black Isle Studios) tech demo into 3D Studio Max. Given the nature of the tech demo, some of them are just low-quality placeholders, but others can be quite useful for Fallout 2 modding (they're probably too low-res for Fallout 3). It's unclear how many exactly can be exported, but Vault-Tec Labs (our Fallout modding wiki) admin Dude101 estimates the number to be 500+. Some of them, like the creatures will probably soon end up at The Vault too. Here are some samples:

On the Raging Bull Stockholder forum, an Interlay stockholder called frymuchan details the countersuit filed by Interplay against Bethesda in reaction to Bethesda's lawsuit over the rights to Fallout Online and the original Fallout games. Interplay argues Bethesda is in breach of contract and the contract to sell the rights to the series to Bethesda is null and void and Interplay owns the franchise again. These are excerpts from the stockholder's posts:

"Interplay argued that they purposefully retained the rights to the original Fallout games when selling the Fallout license to Bethesda knowing full well (as did Bethesda) that Interplay was going to exploit the original Fallout games upon release of Fallout 3. Why would Interplay keep the original Fallout rights and sell Fallout for so cheap unless this was built in as part of the package deal? The original Fallout games are only worth something in relation to sales generated from the release of FAllout 3. Therefore, Interplay did not harm Bet(…)

David Hodgson, the author of the Fallout 3 Official Game Guide has a new post up on his blog, describing what is new in the Game of the Year Edition of the guide. Here's an excerpt:

I’m particularly happy with Chapters 3 and 4: brand-new Wasteland Census and Gear information. The Census showcases every single person with a name that appears in Fallout 3. And I mean EVERYONE, along with where to find them, their biography, and their related Quests. Each Wasteland dweller has their own portrait too; a screen-taking process that took 72 hours alone to accomplish. But you will be able to look up information on anyone you meet, whether it’s Split Jack the Bandit or Leaf Mother Laurel. The Gear features every available weapon (along with a render of it), and all the wearable equipment you can find, with statistics and advice on how (and where) to find each type. Naturally, this includes associated Quests, unique weapons, custom weapons, and every other possible piece of information you need.

So, (…)

Some PS3 users are are reporting problems with their saves from the original edition of Fallout 3 not working with the Game of the Year Edition. It seems that it does not affect players in the US, but it does affect those in some other countries, like Canada and Sweden. It is caused by the game's ID in original and GotY versions being different. Hopefully, Bethesda will fix this issue through a patch.

Matt Grandstaff, Bethesda's community manager, says "We're aware of that and looking into it. We also know right now it's not an issue in the US."

Some of you might have seen the fansite set up by some fans at falloutnewvegas.com, which, while understandably lacking in content, had mostly the #1 spot in Google searches for Fallout: New Vegas. However, as of October 5, the site has been shut down. According to registration data, the domain is now registered with CSC Corporate Domains, Inc. As it turns out, so is bethsoft.com, zenimax.com and other domains owned by Bethesda Softworks/ZeniMax Media.

Honestly, I was surprised that Bethesda had not registered the domain on the very day they announced the game, and them taking the domain over from the fansite now is simply them protecting their trademark. The fansite will likely be free to continue at some new address.

Now that the Game of the Year Edition of Fallout 3 is out, maybe we'll finally see some news about Fallout: New Vegas at the newly acquired address soon?

The Fallout 3 Game of the Year edition, which includes all five add-ons will be coming to stores in the United States today for all three platforms. It might take some time until it comes out in other countries, from probably a few days in the UK to possibly months in Poland. In the US, the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions costs $59.99, while the PC version costs $49.99.

Maybe now that Fallout 3 GotY edition is out, Bethesda will finally release some information about Fallout: New Vegas?

We already posted about Gearbox's Randy Pitchford's dislike of dialogue trees in Fallout 3. Now Gamasutra has published a five-page interview with him, where he talks more about what the Borderlands developer likes and dislikes about Bethesda's game. Here's an excerpt:

BS: How are you pacing that experience? Fallout 3 does it pretty well.

RP: Fallout 3 starts from a role-playing side, and they start to layer shooting on top. The shooting is okay. If the shooting was better, would that gave have been worse? I don't think so. I think that game would have been better. I thought that that system was cool -- I liked the presentation of it -- but frankly I hated the dice rolls. Like, "Dude, I shot that guy in the head. I had a 90 percent chance, and you rolled a freaking 7? Fuck you. I score a hit. I fucking shot that guy in the head. Fuck you," you know?

And I love Fallout. It's hard to say, "What's your favorite game?", but it certainly was one of my favorite games last year if not my favorite(…)

The Collector's Edition Back Cover

With the Fallout 3 Game of the Year Edition finally coming out, comes its huge Prima Guide. The GOTY edition of the guide contains the original game guide (no doubt with fixes for the many errors found in the first edition) and added sections for the five add-ons.

Of course, there will also be a Capital Wasteland map, along with maps for the new locations added by the add-ons. In fact, this guide--at an amazing 752 pages--is officially the largest game guide Prima has ever written. The author, David Hodgson, actually proclaimed that the guides are a full pound heavier than the original one... which may I add were not too slim in the first place. The GOTY guide comes in two editions: Regular and Collector's Edition, which has all the same content, but is in hardback and has a specific production number, so you can brag to your friends and solidify your fanboy status.

We have reached another milestone in terms of the number of articles in our wiki. The fact that we now have 7000 articles is not only interesting because it's a round number, but because our article count doubled within a year - in October 2008, shortly before the release of Fallout 3, it was only ca. 3500 articles.

The Vault's policy and guidelines project has finally been finished, after two months of lengthy discussions and work, mostly by Porter21. Its goal was to create a comprehensive framework which codifies the substantial amount of unwritten rules at this wiki. This was done to reduce workload for the administrators and to help new and old editors with contributing to our wiki. The starting page for our new policies and guidelines is The Vault:Policies and guidelines.

This is the list of all the new policy pages:

Policy/guideline
What it concerns
Administration policy
Administrator actions in general; blocking, deletion and page protection
Article layout guideline

Chris Avellone (currently of Obsidian Entertainment, which is developing Fallout: New Vegas) has answered some general fan-submitted RPG design questions on his blog. Here's a short excerpt:

5. Who was your first character to design, and what has changed in your design process since then? (how you design characters now)

The first characters I designed was Myron for Fallout 2. I was given the "child genius," but I did what I could to make sure he wasn't the Wesley Crusher archetype, which I thought was pretty played out in most media forms. In the end, however, Myron had his problems - he talked too much, could get really annoying in parts (especially if you were female) and was useless in combat. I do think he succeeded in being a highly-reactive character to events in the game and things your player did, and it was pretty awesome for high Intelligence and high Science guys to argue with him about his own creations. I really like it when he gets frustrated when you keep asking him insightful ch(…)

Randy Pitchford, the boss of Gearbox Software, has been interviewed by OXM. Among other things, talks about the differences between his Borderlands and Fallout 3 and what he sees as flaws of Bethesda's game:

"I understand why we do those games [like Fallout 3] but I don't know - do we want that? I think that game could have been much better if it didn't have a single dialogue tree. Honestly. And if it was more action-orientated, and if the shooting was better."

Accordingly, Borderlands is a much more action-packed take on the wandering-the-wasteland concept. Pitchford knows that's putting his money where his mouth is: "Maybe we're right. We'll see. We'll find out when we decide what people are gonna buy."

While some dialogue in Fallout 3 could sure use improvement, I certainly wouldn't consider getting rid of dialogue trees much of an improvement.

Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta, the final Fallout 3 add-ons (previously released on Xbox Live and Games for Windows Live), are now available from the PSN Store for PlayStation 3 in North America - more should be coming soon. Each add-on costs $9.99/£7.99/€7.99. The Game of the Year edition, which will include all add-ons, will be released on October 13, 2009.

The weekly digest is a weekly summary of The Vault's internal news with the purpose to help editors keep up with what's going on at the wiki. It is the place to mention all the small things and improvements which do not justify an own news item and will be posted weekly on the main page.

A Fallout Humor Wiki has been started by the user The Lone Grunt. If you feel like contributing to a general parody wiki about the Fallout series, you can do so there.

There have been some changes to Wikia's blog functionality. First of all, blog comments can now be edited by the commenters themselves, wiki administrators and Wikia staff. If a given comment has been edited, a link to its edit history is visible, so even if you change it, the original comment is still preserved. The comments are now also grouped in the Recent changes, which means that they don't clutter the page that much. However, currently the title of the blog post that is commented on is not displayed in RC, unless you hover your mouse curs(…)

Bethesda's Todd Howard appears in a new interview at Game Informer.

Excerpt:

With Fallout: New Vegas moving to Obsidian, Is difficult to let go of the day-to-day operations on a game you helped reinvent?

Sure it is, but they obviously know what they’re doing when it comes to Fallout, and I get to just play this one, so I’m looking forward to it.

Starting today, I’m christening you video games’ George R. R. Martin. It’s been four years since Martin released A Feast For Crows, and we’re up to three years since Oblivion still with no announcement of Elder Scrolls V. Reading Martin’s blog, I see he spends his days watching football and painting pewter miniatures. What’s your excuse?

I too like to watch football. In my spare time I play and make video games. Made this little one called Fallout 3. So, yeh, that one took some time, that’s my excuse. It’s not like George R. R. Martin wrote some other epic recently, so can I get a pass on that?

No.

He also mentions an iPhone game that Bethesda is wor(…)

The November issue of PC Gamer is now available and features mods from Morrowind, Oblivion, and Fallout 3 in their feature The PC Gamer 50 Essential Mods. This is probably only to be expected, considering the massive amount of mods Fallout 3 fans have chugged out since the G.E.C.K.'s release.

Lithuanian gaming site Games.lt has interviewed Bethesda's Pete Hines about Fallout 3.

Martin: I want to ask about hero's father - James. At the game beginning player see him for very short time. Than father ran of the Vault 101. Than player found him and soon he's dead. Why is it so? Why are no more choices in this situation which don't let James to die ?

Pete: Well, not everything that happens in life is your choice. James made a choice to leave you behind in order to go back to this project and try to finish it and bring people clean water. You also have choices. You can choose not to go looking for your father. You can decide how it is you interact with him when you find him, but it’s still his choice to do what he did.

Martin: About G.E.C.K. - game modifications developing application. Will Bethesda release some more patchs for it? For now it still have some serious bugs.

Pete: I don’t know if we’ll be making any additional changes to the G.E.C.K. or not at this point.

They also ask him abou(…)

Operation: Anchorage and The Pitt Fallout 3 add-ons (previously released on Xbox Live and Games for Windows Live), are now available from the PSN Store in the US and Europe for PlayStation 3. Each add-on costs $9.99/£7.99/€7.99. The final two add-ons, Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta will be released next week.

The weekly digest is a weekly summary of The Vault's internal news with the purpose to help editors keep up with what's going on at the wiki. It is the place to mention all the small things and improvements which do not justify an own news item and will be posted weekly on the main page.

Since this is the first issue, this digest will feature some news which are older than a week.

The first project has been completed. Congratulations to the team of the MSG Wikification Drive who managed to wikify 1,111 dialogue files in a bit more than a month, a task which had been pending for a long time.

A new member has joined our administration team. Itachou has been working hard on the articles for the often neglected Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel as well as other Fallout classics and as a result the community decided to grant his request for adminship.

A Georgian language version is the latest addition to the Vault family, created by the user Vaxoiva‎. If you speak Georgian and want to help create a comprehensive(…)

Recently, shacknews interviewed Bethesda's Pete Hines about the upcoming title Fallout: New Vegas, being developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Bethesda Softworks.

Excerpt:

Shack: When did Bethesda start thinking about a Fallout spin-off?

Pete Hines: It's something that we've discussed at night for a while, and just had talked about doing. And we said, well, if we're going to do this, we want to do it with the right kinds of folks, and the folks that could do right by it, have the right kind of experience, the right background.

Honestly, we just felt like Obsidian was a great fit for that. They have experience doing this kind of thing, they have guys that worked on the original Fallout games. We really liked their idea for what it is they wanted to do, and we just said, "Okay."

You can read the rest of the interview here.

The first Fallout 3 add-on, Broken Steel (previously released as third on Xbox Live and Games for Windows Live), is now available from the PSN Store in Europe and the US for PlayStation 3. The add-on costs $9.99/£7.99/€7.99.

In this add-on, the player joins the ranks of the Brotherhood of Steel to rid the Capital Wasteland of the Enclave remnants once and for all.

In addition to amending the game to let players continue their adventures after the end of the main quest and raising the level cap to 30, Broken Steel includes a few hours of new quest line. In order to access the new story content from Broken Steel, the player has to have finished the main storyline from the base game. However, the level cap expansion will take effect upon installation of the add-on, so players previously stalled at level 20 will once again accumulate XP even if they haven't finished the main storyline.

As some of you have probably noticed, a new feature called My Home has launched across all Wikia wikis, and now all registered users are redirected from http://fallout.wikia.com to Special:MyHome instead of the Main Page. Here's a quote from Wikia Staff Blog:

My Home includes a lot of new elements:

• Activity feed is a friendly version of Recent changes that shows the latest activity on the wiki. The Activity feed adds some new information that you can't get on Recent changes, including thumbnails for new pictures and videos added to a page. You can also see your Watchlist using the new Activity feed layout.

• Hot Spots is a new way to see what's happening on the wiki, showing the articles that have been edited by the most people in the last few days.

• Community Corner is a spot for wiki admins to highlight things that are important to the community. Admins can use that space to organize a project, show off new pages that everyone should see, highlight a discussion that's happening on the wiki, or giv(…)

Harrison Krix, the guy behind an impressive Big Daddy costume that got him some press, has now created a replica of the Fallout 3 AER9 Laser Rifle. You can see more pictures from the process of making the prop on his blog.

Bethesda Softworks has announced that the Fallout 3 Game of the Year edition, which will include all add-ons, will be released on October 13, 2009. We also know what the box of the GotY edition will look like. In the US, the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions will cost $59.99, while the PC version will cost $49.99.

We also know the release dates of all add-ons on the PlayStation 3. Broken Steel will unfortunately not be released today, but next week - on September 24, followed by Operation: Anchorage and The Pitt on October 1 and by Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta on October 8.

1.6.1 patch for the PlayStation 3 version of Fallout 3 has just been released, which probably means that Broken Steel will be released on the Sony platform soon. Stay tuned for more information.

Upon loading up the game, you are prompted to update the game and the download will begin. It is roughly 21MB.

Features:

• Adds the trophies to the actual trophy menu so you no longer need to compare trophies to see them.
• Another feature is the addition of the Downloads section under the main menu.

If you purchased Fallout 3 and all of its downloadble content, you've stuffed $110 (or almost £70 if your from the UK, like me) in Bethesda's pockets. To thank you for your generosity, the company is issuing a free premium Xbox 360 dashboard theme.

It certainly seems like a nice gesture (given that the only other way to acquire the theme will be to buy it), but those fans who purchased the Fallout 3 Game of the Year Edition package in an effort to consolidate all that excess data are out of luck. According to Bethesda, this theme is only for those truly devoted fans who have forked over the most cash.

Actually, it sounds a lot less sinister coming from Fallout 3 game director Todd Howard. "This is something we've been asked about a lot and we're happy to finally be able to bring it to fans as a small token of our appreciation," he says.

If you're eligible, keep an eye out for a token offering the download beginning October 1.

Personally, I quite like the look of it, not sure what the plans are for(…)

A few weeks ago, The Vault launched the Good old Games Character Overhaul Competition. Now that contest is over and the results have been determined. Congratulations to MikaelGrizzly, the contest winner, and all other participants who have won prizes!

Update: all participants who have won prizes must make an account on GOG.com and posts this username on Ausir's talk page, along with the titles of the games they want to get their games.

The final scores are:

Score
Participant
Prize
 #1
332
MikaelGrizzly
4 download codes
 #2
53.5
Sentinel 101
3 download codes
 #3
43
Kingclyde
2 download codes
 #4
37
Teh Krush
2 download codes
 #5
17.5
SplittingTheAtom
1 download code
 #6
6
CNavellier
1 download code
 #6
6
Remontoi
1 download code
 #8
2
BigDogW

I knew that Bethesda developers were using The Vault wiki as a source when working on Fallout 3. As it turns out, their legal department also does! Shacknews has a few more details about the Bethesda v. Interplay case, and their article includes a few quotes from the actual court filings.

While Interplay claims that they haven't officially announced Project V13 as a Fallout title, Bethesda claims that "V13" is an obvious reference to Vault 13, "both the starting location and the the initial working title of the original Fallout game." Sounds familiar? That's because it's only a slight paraphrase of the following section in The Vault's Project V13 FAQ:

What does "V13" stand for?

It likely stands for Vault 13, which was the starting location in the original Fallout. Vault 13: A GURPS Post-Nuclear Adventure was also the initial working title of what eventually became Fallout.

It's especially evident when you google for "starting location" + "initial working title". And given the fact that it's not exactly cor(…)

On the official PlayStation page for Fallout 3, Broken Steel is listed under Featured Downloads and that this may be a sign for a release this Thursday. Because of this, rumors are currently circulating that the Fallout 3 add-ons will be out this Thursday, September 17th.

EDIT: Patch 1.61 is now released for PlayStation 3 systems.

New details have surfaced about Bethesda's lawsuit against Interplay over trademark infringement. Or lawsuits, because, as you can see in the court filings, there are two of them.

The first one, as we described in the previous newspost, is over the rights to Fallout Online (codenamed Project V13). The second one, however, is over Interplay's re-releases of original Fallout games, like the Fallout Trilogy pack or various digital distribution sites.

Turns out that, while Interplay was permitted to sell Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics the contract required all advertising, packaging and other promotional material to be sent to Bethesda for approval first, which, according to the lawsuit, was never done regarding neither the Fallout Trilogy pack, nor any of the releases through Good Old Games, Steam and other digital distribution platforms. Bethesda also claims that the name Trilogy constitutes unfair competition, since it suggests that the pack includes Fallout 3.

To sum it up, Interplay is accused of t(…)

Bethesda Softworks has sued Interplay for trademark infringement, claiming that Interplay is in breach of the Fallout MMO agreement for failure to commence full scale development by April 4, 2009 and to secure certain funding for the game. Interplay disputes these claims and still maintains that it has the right to develop Project V13, together with Bulgaria-based Masthead Studios.

Meanwhile, Natiq "Defonten" Aghayev, Project V13 concept artist and Fallout fan community member has released another one of his concept sketches done for the game, Which you can see to the right.

See: Bethesda Softworks LLC v. Interplay Entertainment Corporation court filing

A site called The Next Level had a chat with Bethesda's Emil Pagliarulo, lead designer of Fallout 3. Here's an excerpt:

Emil: Yeah, the whole “Oblivion with Guns” criticism was hurled our way so long ago. But it’s funny, because in order for that to resonate with you, you have to sort of feel that Oblivion isn’t a good game, and “Oblivion with Guns” would be a bad thing. Well… we think Oblivion is a damn good game. And so did millions of people who bought it. And scores of reviewers. So, you know, we started to realize, “Hey, that’s more a compliment than an insult, isn’t it?” So for us, Fallout 3 is “Oblivion with guns” in all the right ways. Meaning, you wander around a huge world, and talk to lots of interesting characters, and get lots of quests. But instead of killing them with a magic sword, you kill them with a gun that shoots teddy bears.

You can read more here.

The version of Fallout 2 that has recently been made available from Steam turns out to be broken. Well, it is still playable, but only if you know both English and French, since all of the voices and interface are currently in French, while the text is in English. Additionally, regardless of where you are located, if you buy the game from Steam, all the children are missing, as in the UK edition of the game.

Anyway, if you want to buy a digital copy of Fallout 2 (and Fallout + Fallout Tactics, while we're at it), Good Old Games is a much better choice anyway, given that, unlike the Steam version, it comes fully in English, uncensored and with no DRM. And lower price, at that, especially given the ongoing buy one, get one free promo.

Update: Looks like the issue has been resolved. Still, Good Old Games is a much better option.

GOG, also known as Good old Games, is celebrating it's first anniversary with a sale; any two Interplay games in GOG's catalog can be bought for the price of one, including Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics.

"Looking back at the first year, I think we can say it's been a really successful time for us - we've added lots of great publishing partners and amazing games. But we couldn't have achieved any of that success without the fans who support us in so many ways. We decided to say thank you to our fans and run this promo," said GOG Managing Director Adam Oldakowski. "We know there are still a lot of things to improve and a lot of games to be revived, but we're just starting and the future is looking really bright for us."

For more information, check out this page. And don't forget to take part in our very own Good Old Games competition!

In the September issue of Official XBox Magazine, Fallout 3 was awarded the title of 7th Best XBox Game of All Time. Not very long after being voted Game of the Year by G4TV... Coincidence?