Morrowind Speed Run

I’ve been meaning to share this one for awhile. This YouTube video from Luke Harris shows him doing a speed run through Morrowind in about 14 minutes. On the video’s page, it sounds like there’s been some debate as to whether or not the video is legit or not. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, as I’ve seen some pretty impressive speed runs in the past (like this Fallout speed run in under 10 minutes).

Luke feel free to share how you did it in our comments section. As for everyone else, I challenge any of you to do it in a faster time

Student project “Closer to God” reminiscent of Fallout

Within our Fallout Series Discussion board on the BGS forums, I noticed a post from Alkar, who was sharing a post-apocalyptic cartoon he created with two other students in Germany. The short animation film, “Closer to God,” is an introduction to a fictitious film, and draws inspiration from some of their favorite post-apocalyptic works — including Fallout (just check out the billboards).

For more details on the project, check out the thread Alkar started. It’s great work…you guys deserve an “A” in my book.

Holiday T-Shirt Giveaway Winner #3

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!

Fallout “Defines” PC RPGs

This morning I noticed that over at GamerHelp, they have a feature called “Pinnacle Games: 18 Games That Define Their Genre.” Of these 18 games, Fallout is considered the defining PC RPG game. Here’s a sample of what they said about it:

Most RPG titles have you duking it out as a knight or a mage in a fantasy setting rife with clichÃ©d monsters like dragosn and orcs and trolls, oh my! But not so in Interplay’s Fallout, a breakthrough RPG title that was set in a memorable setting: post-nuclear holocaust Earth. The narrative dirve of the story was nothing new — a ‘chosen one’ ventures forth to save the world — but the presentation was something else: dark, gritty and visceral, the stark landscape of the atomically cleansed landscape was as inhospitable as it was compelling.

In addition to Fallout, there’s some pretty solid choices for other genres: Street Fighter II for fighting games, Ikaruga for the shooting genre, and of course Pete’s probably happy to see that Company of Heroes was their defining RTS game (Pete: I probably would have argued C&C or Warcraft is what got the genre started and established, but COH has changed what they’re about and what they can be).

Mod of the Year Contest

Since it’s the end of the year, everyone’s talking about their picks for Game of the Year (right now I’m torn between Super Mario Galaxy, Bioshock, Halo 3, and Everyday Shooter). In similar fashion, over at Mod DB, they’ve already kicked off the nomination process Annual Mod of the Year Awards. Looks like there are some great prizes for the winners: Gaming Rigs, Logitech prizes, cold hard cash, and more.

You can nominate a mod from one of our games (Oblivion, Morrowind, or Star Trek: Legacy) or one of the other games listed…it’s all good (Fallout 2 is even a choice). To give an example of how to nominate a mod, first head to this link. You’ll see that you can select a game from the drop list that says “Any Game.” For example, if you select “Oblivion,” you’ll get a list of choices. For example with Oblivion, if you click on the first choice, NPCs with Jobs, you’ll then go to a page that has a “Vote for Mod” link at the bottom…it’s that easy.

Good luck to all the modders out there.

In case you’ve missed it…

…our Fan Art section on the blog is continuing to grow. We’re continuing to get some pretty cool contributions from folks — for both The Elder Scrolls and Fallout (c’mon Trekkies…pick it up). The image above comes from Ali TunÃ§, who has contributed a few of his Fallout drawings.

If you’ve got some art to share, send us an email.

‘Tis the Season for Lists…

So lists are starting to pop up here and there in the form of Buying Guides and Wish Lists and whatnot. Noticed a few relevant things here and there I thought I’d point out.

Shivering Isles made the list at 1UP for their Xbox 360 Holiday Gift list.

Meanwhile, Oblivion PS3 made Gamespot’s Top Picks list (and at $30 bucks it’s probably the best deal on that list) while Shivering Isles 360 made their Top Picks for the Dungeon Master.

And, last but certainly not least, I noticed that Fallout came in at #33 on IGN’s list of the Top 100 Games of All Time. Here’s a snippit from the write-up:

What makes Fallout so great, though, is the character system known as SPECIAL. The acronym stands for: Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck — but the system also encompasses skills such as lock-picking, weapon proficiencies, or bartering, and “perks” selectable at certain levels further boost your stats. Its resulting character balance is, even by today’s standards, remarkable.

You can read the rest of the entry here. These lists are always fun for starting arguments if nothing else, and I do have to take this opportunity to say that it’s a travesty to have X-Com only at #21.

Marc-AndrÃ©, Come On Down!!!!!

It’s no small thing to enter a contest and beat out thousands upon thousands of entries to be named the winner. So having risen to the top we thought we’d have a brief chat with the grand prize winner of the Fallout 10th Anniversary contest to find out more about Marc-AndrÃ© from MontrÃ©al, the guy behind Grim Reaper’s Sprint:

How long have you been playing games?
Wow, I’d say around 20 years. I got a NES system back when I was in kindergarten and I’ve been playing ever since.

What’s your gaming platform(s) of choice?
Right now I’d say my Xbox360 and my PSP. Whenever I’m at home, I like to play on my PC or my console, but since I move around a lot, I like to keep my PSP with me (and sometimes my DS, but not so much lately).

Continue reading full article ›

Fallout 10th Anniversary Contest Winners Announced

After plowing through more entries than we ever thought possible, we whittled the list of over 17,000 entries down to the 12 finalists and picked a winner for the Fallout 10th Anniversary Contest. The entry that came out on top was ‘Grim Reaper’s Sprint,’ which restores all your action points whenever you kill an opponent. Congratulations to Marc-AndrÃ© Deslongchamps from Montreal for his winning entry. He selected the PC Grand Prize and takes home a boatload of goodies in addition to getting his Perk in Fallout 3. We’ll have a little interview up with Marc-AndrÃ© today or tomorrow.

But Marc-AndrÃ© wasn’t the only winner, and a lot of folks won some pretty cool stuff for their creative entries, as well as a few lucky folks who were selected at random just for entering the contest: ATI and NVIDIA cards, and an Xbox 360 from Microsoft, keyboards and mice from Logitech, Logitech PS3 controllers, bobbleheads, lunchboxes, etc. If you’re one of the lucky winners, you’ll be hearing from me shortly about your prize(s). Hit the jump for the list of winners and the Perk they submitted.

Continue reading full article ›

New Fallout Previews

Patrick at MSN in the UK dropped me an email to let me know his preview on Fallout 3 had gone up. It’s sort of the interview we did after the demo mixed in with info on the game from the demo/preview. In any case you can find the whole thing over at MSN.

In coverage elsewhere, Play.TM’s Luke Guttridge has put up his impressions after seeing the game in action last week.

Well, Fallout 3 is rich, ambitious and epic in scale. Whether it can blend perfectly RPG and FPS (with a splash of third-person thrown in) remains to be seen, but the lengths the developers are going to are more than apparent. We’ll certainly be following this new offering with interest as it is polished, tweaked and expanded ahead of a debut around this time next year. Until then, suffice to say that this is one wasteland we’ll be more than happy to revisit.

Check here to read the rest of his preview.

Bethesda Blog

Category Archives: Fallout