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Fallout 3 Gets Leaked, Goes Gold
Posted by
Soulskill
on Mon Oct 13, 2008 01:42 PM
from the sorry-about-your-luck dept.
from the sorry-about-your-luck dept.
Fallout 3 is due to be released in a few weeks, and Bethesda recently announced that all versions of the game have gone gold. They provided the systems specs for the PC release as well. Unfortunately for them, the Xbox 360 version was leaked onto torrent sites almost three weeks early. Bethesda is "looking into" how the game was distributed. In preparation for the launch, game director Todd Howard spoke at length with Gamasutra about the scope of the project, and the differences from their previous games, such as Oblivion. CrispyGamer recently ran a three-part series detailing their four hours of hands-on time with the game. We've previously looked at some gameplay videos for Fallout 3, and discussed the fact that no mod tools will ship with the game.
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Gameplay Videos Released For Fallout 3 97 comments
Today Bethesda released walkthrough videos for their upcoming action RPG, Fallout 3. Joystiq has posted the trailers, which contain gameplay footage from the starting area and the city "Megaton," as well as combat scenarios and other features. One fight showcases the targeting system, which they demonstrate by targeting and then shooting off an enemy's arm. Another shows off the ability to create and use improvised weapons. Also shown are the lock picking and computer hacking mini-games, pickpocketing (or depositing something nasty in somebody's pocket), and general nuclear mayhem. Further detail is available at Shacknews.
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No Mod Tools for <em>Fallout 3</em> Launch 91 comments
Rock, Paper, Shotgun interviewed Bethesda's Pete Hines about the upcoming release of Fallout 3. He talks about dealing with misunderstandings about the game prior to launch, violence in modern games, and the fact that the game won't launch with mod tools. "Folk probably took for granted that every time we make a game, there's a mod tool. We explained to folk that it takes a lot of time and effort to get that tool ready for release, and it's not on our schedule right now. We need to get the game done and out. ... Right now, we can't say definitively 'there will be mod tools, and here is when they'll be out.' We discussed some Fallout 3 gameplay videos a few weeks ago. That work remains to be done." In related news, Interplay has picked up Chris Taylor, designer of the original Fallout, to help develop their Fallout MMOG.
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Some Fallout (Score:4, Funny)
There will definitely be some "Fallout" for the leak.
Re:Some Fallout (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Some Fallout (Score:5, Funny)
Unfortunately for them, the Xbox 360 version was leaked onto torrent sites almost three weeks early. Bethesda is "looking into" how the game was distributed.
Well you see, Bethesda, as a downloader downloads parts of the file, they also upload the parts they have to other downloaders, and so on from peer to peer...
Parent
Reminiscent of Halo 2 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:WTF Were They Thinking Going With Bethesda? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:WTF Were They Thinking Going With Bethesda? (Score:5, Interesting)
I dealing with the other component of the the complaint-- I'm not sure Bethesda won't do a good job here. Oblivion had a few problems, but IMO it showed at least a technical competence to make a good Fallout game. The writing and voice acting in Oblivion need to be improved, and I can definitely see lots of things that could be refined. I also hope that, in Fallout, they don't level enemies throughout the game.
In case anyone doesn't know what I'm talking about, in Oblivion, enemies everywhere become more difficult as you level up. That means you can pretty much go anywhere and do anything early in the game, but there is less payoff for leveling up. The old Fallout games took a different approach, making enemies harder in certain areas, those areas being places that you shouldn't really get to until later in the game.
But with Oblivion, Bethesda has succeeded in making a big and open world that feels relatively organic. You can find lots of little side-quests and explore on your own, and your choices make at least a little bit of a difference in what happens. Plus, you can really specialize your character, and what kind of character you build has a substantial effect on how you can approach problems, as well as how people react to you. Take all that and mix in a little Fallout style, and you have a game that I'll play. It might not be everything that I've always imagined Fallout 3 might be, but it should be interesting.
Parent
Re:WTF Were They Thinking Going With Bethesda? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just a note on Fallout 3 - the level scaling is pretty much nixed. Thee is a bit of here here and there (kinda like an instancing level scaling), but some areas will screw you over outright, and some places will be very easy when you return to them later on.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I enjoyed Oblivion, but I cheated a lot to gain that enjoyment. There was no penalty (that I could detect) for not sleeping, you only leveled when you slept for an hour, and skills appeared to continue going up regardless of your level. So I played most of the game at level 9 and then when I got tired of those critters and gear, stopped "waiting" (which did not level you) and did 4 1 hour "sleeps". Then did the same thing later.
To me it was a very pretty sandbox game with a storyline. I expect more of the s
Oblivion was NOT good (Score:5, Insightful)
The autoscaling of everything was pretty much the worst thing in O3.
It meant that you could go and beat the Big Bad Guy with a total wimp. It meant that if chose your skills wrong, you'd get slaughtered just by traveling along the main road when you were on a high enough level.
I meant that there was almost no point in exploring. You could search the most remote ruins and only find broken knives if you were on low level and once you had enough levels under your belt, every damn critter dropped stuff worth a fortune.
Lots of side quests? Sure. Your choices make a difference? Oh really...
Sure you could choose if you wanted to join the mage guild or the fighter guild or thief's guild or save the world or just do all of these. None of it mattered except within that quest. Sure you just saved the world, became the top fighter on arena and became the leader of the mage's guild - but when you decide to join the fighter's guild, no one has even heard of you. Hey, if it had been more like 'Oh, you may think you're the big hero, but in here you're a nobody' I'd have been overjoyed but the harsh reality was that all the quests were totally separate.
And did you have actual choices? What if you wanted to be the good guy and actually arrest the notorious thieves guild leader? Nope, as soon as you joined the thief's guild, even your journal assumed you had become a bad guy. And the only options were to complete the quests as a bad guy or to totally ignore them. I've heard one of the last quests even involved a 'traitor' who was basically trying to get the thief's guild leader arrested - and you could not actually leave the room unless you killed him. Choices indeed...
I don't even want to talk about combat except to say that compared to the highly tactical, engaging battles in Fallout 2, Oblivion was just totally boring.
Now Fallout 3 may turn out to be a good game, but after Oblivion I have serious doubts about it.
Parent
Re:WTF Were They Thinking Going With Bethesda? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:WTF Were They Thinking Going With Bethesda? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Oh come on (Score:2, Funny)
I want the PC version leaked!
Re:Gimped For The Xbox 360 (Score:5, Insightful)
In fairness, the number of people who actually download and run the Xbox 360 leak will be tiny compared to what the effect would have been with a PC-version leak. Getting pirated games running on a 360 involves the kind of hardware modification that is beyond the level of the average user and, in any event, makes the machine unusable on Xbox Live.
The impact of this leak will be fairly tiny in terms of lost sales. Plot spoilers etc are going to be more of a concern.
Parent
Pirating on the 360 is actually easier than PC (Score:4, Interesting)
I disagree. Once you've made the single hardware modification, you never need to jump through that hoop ever again. Also, the people who sell the hardware to you provide enough instructions so that even a 10 year-old who has played with legos can successfully mod their xbox. Anyone who knows how to torrent a game is going to have the mental capacity to successfully modify their xbox.
PC games, on the other hand, require a different software patch depending on the copy protection scheme that you need to get around. This can be something simple like copy-pasting a crack, or you may have to install other software packages. And this needs to be done for EVERY game.
Pirating an xbox game is just as easy as pirating a PC game the first time. After that, pirating an xbox game is MUCH EASIER than pirating PC games. The people who think otherwise have never actually tried both.
Parent
I don't know what flabby crevice you got that from (Score:3, Informative)
Getting pirated games on a 360 involves:
1) Opening the 360.
2) Taking the DVD drive out.
3) Connecting the DVD drive to your PC.
4) Turning on your PC.
5) Running a program on your PC.
6) Turning your PC off.
7) Putting the 360 back together.
That's a "hardware modification"?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't know what flabby crevice you got that f (Score:4, Informative)
Firmware is just software stored in flash memory. It is not generally considered a hardware mod to upgrade a cell phone or a dvd player or an ipod. Supertusse's definition is the common usage, your definition is not.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I wish I was that good at trolling... (Score:4, Insightful)
Convincing Slashdot to upmod you for saying "Let's transfer money from video game studios, which we love, to Microsoft, which we hate, because they have hardware problems". Really, there needs to be a meta-meta-mod for subverting anti-capitalism like that. I'd love to see your take on how we should abandon Linux to tie up MS' support lines, spend millions on iTunes to DDOS Apple's DRM servers, and vote straight-ticket Republican to convince everyone the Diebold voting machines must be rigged.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Convincing Slashdot to upmod you for saying "Let's transfer money from video game studios, which we love, to Microsoft, which we hate, because they have hardware problems".
This may have been modded Troll, but this bit is actually quite insightful. If you like the game, it's a lot smarter to pay for the game than for extra hardware.
Re:Gimped For The Xbox 360 (Score:5, Informative)
No, you have to open the case. There are add-ons like the Xeno Top Gear that insure you only have to open the case once, but open it you must to flash the firmware on the 360.
Contrary to what you're being told, Microsoft DOES ban consoles with modded firmware on Xbox LIVE. Not all consoles all of the time (certain older consoles are unblockable). However, my understanding is they'll kill your Xbox Live Gold account (cancel it with no refund), so you'll want to keep the modded hardware off XBOX Live. This means, as a practical measure, many people will need 2 360s and if you want to play games online, you're probably going to have to buy them.
BTW, The are reasons for banning other than piracy. Some people use firmware hacks to cheat in online games, notably Halo 3.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There is absolutely no evidence to prove that people who have flashed their drives on their xbox with the latest firmware will recieve a live ban. Hence why no firmware update for almost a year now.
But XBOX Live updates HAVE blocked users with modded firmware in the past. It's just a fact. There haven't been many XBOX Live updates for the past year due to all the effort put in to the new XBOX Live Experience (with avatars and other crap) due out in November. That update will possibly affect current modders and if not, there is noting to prevent Microsoft from pushing out new updates. We certainly can't say that Microsoft has "given up" on
Flashed drives can only play exact replica games not ones moded for cheats.
This is simply wrong. Flashing drives breaks the "locking" that
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You can play chess [wikipedia.org] with one hand on the mouse (or occasionally used to move pieces on the board, if you wanted) and the other hand down your pants. Is chess dumbed down too?
More computer game-ish, NWN and NWN2 played just fine using only the mouse if I recall correctly. Needing only the mouse doesn't mean it's dumbed down (though NWN2 and especially NWN1 was somewhat dumbed down from the traditional non-computer D&D ...)
My problem with Diablo II is that it made my clicking finger ache. :)
Re:PC Users Need To Make Themselves Heard (Score:5, Informative)
Diablo was a Nethack clone (or at least a rogue-alike), not a Gauntlet clone. This was more obvious in the frst Diablo where everything moved at the same speed. D1 was turn-based in early development, really just Nethack with graphics, but at some point the devs saw the light. (Then the devs went on to found Flagship Studios and become the laughing stock of the industry, but that's a different story.)
Parent
You need a modded 360 to play it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually the PS3 is pretty annoying in that regard, had to go buy me a standalone DVD player since the PS3 Hypervisor prevents me from playing any region DVDs on it. Thus far I have found no work around, so it seems like Sony figured out how to do it proper.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
does anyone have any idea how big PS3 games actually are? Sure the console may support 50 gigs on one disc but I would have thought with multiplatform games at least they would be about the same size on all the platforms they supported.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The two I know about are PS3 only:
I'm not sure of others, though I've heard that Resistance 2 is also nearing 50gb (another PS3 exclusive).
The only thing I've heard from the multi-platform crowd is that Oblivion used some more space for better textures on the PS3 version of the game, but beyond that tidbit there was no news about what the size differe
review copy (Score:5, Informative)
Re:review copy (Score:4, Interesting)
Fine by me.
I torrent games to use them as somewhat of a Demo. I play it to see if I like it, if I like it and am still interested I go out and buy it.
Parent
Re:review copy (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:review copy (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd also point out that you're typically not allowed to return video games after purchase. If you buy it and you're unhappy, you're SOL. Some retailers (Gamestop) will refuse to return games that are defective. I found this out with Lost Odyssey, where the 3rd disk on every single copy in the store was scratched. It took legal threats for them to give me a store credit.
It's crap like this that drives people into piracy.
Parent
No demo coming ever (Score:3, Insightful)
They give some BS reason about not being able to give the "full experience" of Fallout 3 in a demo because they would have to ship the entire game. Ummm, sure whatever. You can always tell when they're lying and frankly it's insulting.
Anyway they've been whining about piracy but all this will do it make sure that everyone goes out to piratebay and downloads it for free. In this economy people don't want to pay $50-$60 to try out a game and a) hope their system runs it well and b) hope they like it. But hey,
Re:Well one good thing about leaks (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Well one good thing about leaks (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Well one good thing about leaks (Score:5, Funny)
Better for everyone because it makes them come out with the game sooner!
What boggles my mind is why sit on the game until some arbitrary release date and why not sell it sooner?
I noticed a crapload of games slated for end of oct/begining of nov. Stuff like Fallout 3, gears of war 2, wow: lich king. Who's great idea was it to flood the market at some seemingly random time?
Sell the damn game when it's ready!
Unless it's some marketing ploy that's sold as a "Fire your employees before the game comes out so you can cash in on it's success even better(TM)".
Isn't there some big holiday soon after that where a lot of people spend a lot of money on consumer stuff... Jeese... It is right on the tip of my tung...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You want your big advertising spend to coincide with the timem of year when the most people are buying. A month-old game just doesn't have the same buzz.
It quite rare, of course, for any game to be ready *early*. November usuallly sees a bunch of half-fininshed games rushed to market as patchware.
Re:Well one good thing about leaks (Score:4, Interesting)
I came here to say exactly this. They wouldn't have any problems with early leaks if they made it available for downloading as soon as the final image was mastered.
Parent
Re:Well one good thing about leaks (Score:5, Insightful)
Parents start shopping for the holiday season starting in late October, early Novemeber. They are more likely to choose to buy the game that is most prominantly displayed. During the holiday rush, dozens of games are release and games don't get to have the massive display for long before it is pushed out by some other game. Therefore, it can be extremely advantagous to wait until the holiday rush has begun to release your game.
Marketing and timing can make a huge difference in a games success, especially for games released for the holiday season. To be fair, I don't think it would matter as much for games such as Fallout 3, it is targeted to an older, already attached audience. If this were a title like LittleBigPlanet (new audience, younger target) for instance, releasing a couple of weeks early could be devastating.
Parent
Re:Well one good thing about leaks (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead, their biggest competition will be Guitar Hero World Tour, which I don't really seeing big competition to Fallout.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There's going to be some heavy competition in the weeks ahead. Thankfully I can afford both.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Release dates mean a lot. Playing with them lets you adjust your income based upon your fiscal year (look at Harry Potter 6 release date shenanigans.) Shareholders want consistent earnings from year to year, not large fluctuations, for example. There are also times of the year when people tend to use their disposable income more freely, such as around holidays. Releasing your game too far from, say, Christmas means that a great deal of your marketing (which will almost certainly coincide with the releas
Re:Well one good thing about leaks (Score:4, Insightful)
What boggles my mind is why sit on the game until some arbitrary release date and why not sell it sooner?
They don't. You don't understand game development.
The fact is, virtually all "big" games like Fallout 3 ship late. Usually VERY late. This is because of unforeseen problems that arise during development which stretch out development times. Typically development times are stretched to fix bugs and add features as long as possible, and even then the game is "rushed out the door" with engineers working very long hours to fix bugs and finalize code. Much of the time the release date is picked because that's the day when the company runs out of money to keep moving the project forward (really). Developers are also rewarded for shipping a game "early" (which, in general, means not as late as usual), but more often than not they don't meet these targets.
Only games with deep multimedia connections, like Force Unleashed, are delayed due to the marketing and the tie-in products not being ready.
And finally, as many posters pointed out, games in general tend to be released between late October - early December to take advantage of the holiday season.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Thanks for keeping us posted one the minutia of your life, man. Be sure and post here to let use know about all the other stuff you don't have or aren't able to do. We're dying to know. /. dude)
Isn't that what twitter is for?(not the
Re:STOP RIGHT THERE (Score:5, Interesting)
Either this is the greatest troll of all time, or you really missed out. Go and play Fallout. Then play Fallout 2. You'll realise why the rest of us pretty much gave Tactics a miss.
Now, I give it ten minutes before some old bugger with a three-digit ID comes along and tells me to play Wasteland.
Parent
Re:STOP RIGHT THERE (Score:5, Funny)
Will a four digit ID do?
I played Wasteland on a C64.
I can remember swapping disks around to get a full inventory to the shop in Las Vegas..
And killing that massive bot at the intersection.. What was it some sort of Scorpion bot?
Parent
Aaahh... Innocence... (Score:3)
Aaahh... Innocence...
Rhymes well with ignorance and nonsense.
With incense too, but that is from another song.
Re:Do we know the fscking system requirements yet? (Score:4, Funny)
It all depends on how you compile it. Once you get it to run on your platform of choice, no file system is actually required to see usage information. The recommended system requirements would be to have a file systems supported by fsck to get maximum use out of fsck.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Next thing you know they'll make a kid's BB gun the most powerful weapon in the game.