Where we talk about people talking about us, and then you comment about us talking about them talking about us.
The folks at TVG have put up a retrospective on Oblivion that I had chatted with them about a while back. Other than referring to me as Peter (twice), it’s an interesting read.
Before we ring in the New Year, I thought we’d pick one more winner for our holiday t-shirt giveaway. This one comes from Ramon Alvarez. With his submission, he gave a short description of the image, so I’ll let Ramon take it from here:
This piece may require a bit of an explanation my my behalf. As you can see Santa is delivering the G.E.C.K (Garden of Eden Creation Kit) from Fallout 2 to this poor fellow but his time has passed on. Santa is wearing a special suit to fight back the radiation, almost everything in the room is burned or destroyed except for a small silhouette where a man was standing which is at the right of the picture. The silhouette is the Bad Karma perk that you can get in all the Fallout games (though maybe not Fallout 3…thats up to you guys).
If this image doesn’t sum up the holidays, I don’t know what does. Congrats on winning one of our new Vault Boy shirts!
Well, we made it into 2008, but coverage looking back at 2007 and looking ahead to this year continues to surface.
Looking back at 2007, Robert “Apache” Howarth has put up Voodoo Exteme’s “Game of the Year Awards.” In the “Best Expansion Pack” category, we’re happy to see Shivering Isles came away as the year’s best.
Over at Joystiq, Justin McElroy has put up a post of his favorites games of the last year, and declares that Shivering Isles was his favorite RPG of the year. He writes:
“I’m going to need you to deal with something: TES IV:O:THS [sic] was, hands down, the best RPG released last year. “What? What did he say?” I’ll repeat it. Thanks to its beautiful graphics, engrossing story and overall radness, The Shivering Isles was the best RPG of 2007. I feel much better now with that off of my chest.”
Moving on to Fallout 3, a few more folks are chiming in that they have high expectations for the game. Charles Husemann at Gaming Nexus put together 20 questions for 2008 that concludes with the question: “How awesome will Fallout 3 be?” You can read his thoughts on that question here.
On non-gaming specific sites, Christopher Fong of the San Francisco Chronicle and John Gaudiosi of WRAL (Raleigh-Durham) both declare Fallout 3 to be one of their most anticipated games of the year. To our north, the Canadian Press has also included Fallout 3 on their list.
Finally, Fallout 3 has received mentions of being at the top of folks’ lists for 2008 on a few blogs. A couple of days ago on Gamers with Jobs, Sean Sands declared that Fallout 3 is his “Game of the Coming Year.” In similar fashion, Mark Wilson of Kotaku sees Fallout 3 as being the game he’s most looking forward to this year.
On that subject, what games are you most looking forward to this year?
Before taking off in celebration of the New Year, I thought I’d share a few nuggets of information that we’ve come across recently…
Various websites continue to forecast which games they’re pumped to play in 2008. The staff at CVG have put up a list titled “2008′s Essential PS3 Games,” which includes Fallout 3. It’s nice to see the game make the list with such great company (MGS 4, LittleBigPlanet, and GTA IV were among some of the other games that made the cut). Discussing Fallout 3, they wrote:
Here’s a few interesting items I noticed while catching up on things after being away the past few days.
Game Informer has listed their top ten games they’re looking forward to in 2008 for the 360. Fallout 3 cracked the list at #3. Here’s a short sample of what they had to say:
“When word got out that Bethesda was working on Fallout 3, critics assumed the worst and the “Oblivion with guns” cry was born. Having sat through a demo of the game, we can’t say who’s right here, if making such a determination is even possible. All we know is that seeing your character step out of the nuke-proof vault for the first time in his life is a breathtaking gaming moment. We’re eager to explore this terrible world all over again, through a new set of eyes.”
On the Elder Scrolls front, both Oblivion and Shivering Isles have picked up some year end accolades and nominations. At IGN, the PS3 release came away with the Best RPG award. Sticking with PS3, it was also a runner-up in the Game of the Year, Best Graphics Technology, Best Original Score categories. In their PC category, Shivering Isles was a runner-up in the Best Expansion category. On 360, Shivering Isles was a runner-up in the Best RPG and Best DLC categories.
Over at Gamespot, Oblivion and Shivering Isles also received some recognition. On PS3, Oblvion is one of five finalists for PS3 Game of the Year. As for Shivering Isles, it was recognized in two categories, Best Expansion and Best DLC, on Xbox 360.
Today’s winner of a Vault Boy t-shirt comes from Devin Clark, who came up with this clever ad for a Stimpak. Ouch…personally I’d rather have a lump of coal then need to use that. Still, we dig the creativity…you earned the shirt!
If you like what you see of Devin’s work, be sure to check out his website…cool stuff!
A couple of weeks ago, we mentioned that we would be giving away our new Vault Boy shirts to folks that came up with creative Fallout/Holiday “stuff.” We’ve received quite a few entries, and we’ll continue to accept them through the end of the year. That said, we thought we’d start sharing some of the winners.
The first winner (and actually, the first entry we received) is from Andy Barnes, who sent this post-apocalyptic gingerbread house and giant-sized Vault Boy.
Congrats to Andy.
Today we will be releasing our final Bethesda Softworks Newsletter for the year of 2007. It’s been an exciting 2007 for us — releasing Shivering Isles, Oblivion GOTY, and Star Trek: Conquest, as well as finally unveiling Fallout 3.
To celebrate the holidays, the newsletter will give access to a couple of Vault Boy-themed wallpapers for your desktop. The first is the image you see above. Be sure to check out the latest newsletter to see the other one, which is currently on my desktop. Hope you enjoy them!
To sign up for the Bethesda Softworks Newsletter, click here.
Little bit of everything in this round up.
Over at Yahoo the YVG crew has put up their list of the 10 Best Games of the Last Decade and has included Oblivion as their pick for 2006, noting:
“There are big games, there are huge games, there are epic games, and then there’s Oblivion.”
Always cool to see your game on a list like this. Head over to see the full list and what else they had to say about their pick of Oblivion and their other nine selections.
I also noticed a note over at TGR that the videogame symphony tour Play! has announced some new dates, and since it features the music from both Morrowind and Oblivion, I thought it was worth nothing it’s headed to Fort Worth and Seattle in January ’08 for two shows at each stop. Visit the Play! site for more info.
Fallout 3 coverage continues to trickle in. The latest coverage comes from the online magazine, PCGZine, who recently spoke with Pete about the game. Here’s a sample of the interview:
Fallout 3 looks to be a very dark game. Where will the glimmers of hope come from? The plot? The gameplay? Twisted moments of black humour? How would you describe the game’s personality?
Pete: The glimmers of hope come from the people you meet. Where there’s humanity, there’s hope – people have dreams and aspirations. And you can squash those dreams, or help people fulfill them. Definitely plenty of dark humor, but I don’t’ know if that’s where I’d look for glimmers of hope.
Is Fallout 3 an action game, or a strategy game? And if it’s both can you tell us about passages of play that typify each element. Actually, why not tell us anyway…
Pete: It’s a role-playing game. First. Last. Always. Any role-playing game always absorbs bits of other genres in terms of how it presents combat or what the player is doing, but it is a post nuclear role-playing game to its core.
To read the rest, download PCGZine’s latest issue (#13) here.