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Role Playing (Games)

Fallout IP Sold to Bethesda Softworks 174

Posted by Zonk from the sweet-jumping-nuclear-radition dept.
In what I can only see as good news, the Fallout IP has been sold to Bethesda Softworks. A long, long time ago simoniker posted that Bethesda was licensing the IP from Interplay; as of earlier this month, they now own it lock, stock, and barrel. Gamasutra reports: "According to the filing, first spotted by Fallout fansite No Mutants Allowed, the purchase of the Fallout license and accompanying IP was settled on April 9th of this year, with final payment installments expected to be delivered by the third quarter of this year ... In an interesting twist, as part of the agreement Interplay now acts as a licensee of the IP as it continues to ramp up production on its own Fallout-themed massively multiplayer game, first announced in 2004 alongside Bethesda's sequel, and shown via internal documents as recently as December to have a projected $75 million dollar budget and launch date of 2010."
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Fallout IP Sold to Bethesda Softworks More

Fallout IP Sold to Bethesda Softworks

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  • Farewell Fallout... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Murrdox ( 601048 ) on Thursday April 12, 2007 @07:11PM (#18711637)
    This is basically the death certificate for Fallout. We'll never see a Fallout 3 which the fans have been screaming for. Bethesda has a wonderful track record when it comes to their own Elder Scrolls game. They have a horrible track record for everything else. Their games are now (and will probably remain as such) X-Box 360 Games which are poorly ported to the PC. They have shown no desire for turn-based strategy games. They have so far refused to say whether or not Fallout 3 will be turn based or not, or whether or not it will use the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system that Fallout fans have grown to love. Star Trek: Legacy was a pathetic failure. They did a great job getting the voice-acting together, but then they threw half of the plot out the window. Just read some of the blogs of the writers for that game, and they've clearly said as much. The gameplay, the actual GAME that Star Trek fans had such high hopes for... was awful. Bethesda is going to give us Fallout 3... but it won't be the same game that we know and love. They'll convert it and change the gameplay so that they can mass produce it. They'll want to have it on the PC and all the consoles. They'll make it for the X-Box 360, and then do a terrible port of it to make a PC version. They won't make combat turn-based, because in spite of legions of screaming fans, turn based combat is too "niche" and won't appeal to the masses enough. Gone will be Fallout's mature content. Drugs, hookers, swearing? Gone. We'll get a watered down Fallout universe which is nice and PG-13 friendly. Remember, this was the company that took all the blood out of their own game, Oblivion, because they didn't want an M rating. Bethesda is going to give us a game. MAYBE it will be a good game. But it won't be Fallout 3. Unless they come out and say that they are making a turn-based combat role-playing game, it won't be Fallout 3. At best, it will be a bad spin-off, like the other forgotten Fallout titles that have emerged since Fallout 2. Actually, I thought that Fallout: Tactics was a pretty good game. If they drop the ball on this, they fully have the capacity to KILL the Fallout franchise once and for all. I'm still praying though. I really really really am. I hope everything I just said is completely false (Except for what I said about Star Trek Legacy, and Bethesda's habit of making awful PC ports. That's all true.)

    • Re:Farewell Fallout... (Score:4, Informative)

      by CronoCloud ( 590650 ) <[cronocloudauron] [at] [gmail.com]> on Thursday April 12, 2007 @07:54PM (#18712237)

      They'll convert it and change the gameplay so that they can mass produce it. They'll want to have it on the PC and all the consoles.


      Of course they'l want to mass produce it, they want to sell lots of copies and make money! Of course they'll want it on all the consoles, they want to sell lots of copies and make money.

      They won't make combat turn-based, because in spite of legions of screaming fans, turn based combat is too "niche" and won't appeal to the masses enough.


      Apparently the masses outnumber the rabid Fallout fans then. But I wouldn't call it niche, plenty of console RPG's are turn based.

      Gone will be Fallout's mature content. Drugs, hookers, swearing? Gone. We'll get a watered down Fallout universe which is nice and PG-13 friendly. Remember, this was the company that took all the blood out of their own game, Oblivion, because they didn't want an M rating.


      I have Fallout BOS for my PS2 and do you know what rating it has? M, for Blood and Gore, Strong Sexual Themes, Strong Language and Violence. One of the first characters you meet is a hooker.

      As for Oblivion, doesn't it have an M rating, why yes, yes it does.

      So going cross-platform won't prevent a Fallout game from having that M rating

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Danse ( 1026 )

        Of course they'l want to mass produce it, they want to sell lots of copies and make money! Of course they'll want it on all the consoles, they want to sell lots of copies and make money.

        Which is one of the reasons that it will probably suck. With the focus on the consoles, the PC roots will be left behind and we'll end up with an Oblivion or Deus Ex 2 type of screwup with the entire interface being retarded and completely inappropriate for the PC. There will be all kinds of compromises made in the gamepla

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Agret ( 752467 )

        I have Fallout BOS for my PS2 and do you know what rating it has? M, for Blood and Gore, Strong Sexual Themes, Strong Language and Violence. One of the first characters you meet is a hooker.
        Fallout BOS wasn't made by Bethesda Softworks so your comment has no significance other than you being wrong.
        • The parent was implying that going cross-platform/console on a game would render it incapable of having that M rating, and also stated Oblivion didn't have an M rating when it does. I proved him wrong. That was my point.

    • I'm going to make the radical decision of having no opinion about the matter until we see screenshots and get more details about the game.

  • Two games? (Score:5, Funny)

    by EvilCabbage ( 589836 ) on Thursday April 12, 2007 @07:13PM (#18711673) Homepage
    So we get Fallout 3 *and* a Fallout MMORPG?

    Should I file for that divorce now or later?

    • Re:Two games? (Score:5, Funny)

      by FunWithKnives ( 775464 ) <.ten.tsirorret. .ta. .tcefrePxodaraP.> on Thursday April 12, 2007 @07:57PM (#18712285) Journal
      Funnily enough, in '98, my girlfriend actually broke up with me because I spent every waking hour playing Fallout II, and wouldn't even stop long enough to answer the phone when she called.

      And the thing is, it really was that good of a game.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by DrMrLordX ( 559371 )
        It had much-improved combat and character development (with respect to stats, perks, and skills) than Fallout 1, but I think they really messed up the setting in Fallout 2. New Reno was pretty stupid except maybe for the Bishops and their role in the Vault City/NCR conflict. San Francisco was totally underdeveloped and obviously one of the most rushed parts of the game. The Hubologists were, overall, moronic. No matter how much fun it was to wax that lot, it's pretty obvious that they were sort of a jok
      • My wife and I almost didn't make it because of Fallout 2. I would get up in the morning at 7:30, work all day, hang out with her (then my girlfriend) until around 10:30, and go back to my dorm room to play Fallout 2 until 3:30 AM. Her taking a weekend trip to her parents' house, allowing me to play the final 35 hours was the only reason we made it. :)
    • Should I file for that divorce now or later?
      Have no fear. If history is any guide Fallout 3 will now be pretty, very long and completely and utterly boring .

  • Meh (Score:5, Informative)

    by ZorbaTHut ( 126196 ) on Thursday April 12, 2007 @07:29PM (#18711947) Homepage
    I see this as terrible news, myself.

    I realize that Oblivion is a very popular game that a lot of people like. But I just can't get into it. If anything, it's too open-ended - it feels like someone sat down, made a universe, took a week to throw a plotline into it, and then spent a year or two making side quests. I never feel like I'm having a real impact in the world, and I feel like most of the world is in stasis waiting for me to walk by and solve their problems.

    I wouldn't even mind all of that, except that Bethesda appears to have no sense of which features are important and which are not. Sure, you can become a vampire. That's great and all. But why is my inventory so hard to navigate? I could do without becoming a vampire if they'd just make the interface not suck. (Yes, I realize there are now third-party mods for this. A game shouldn't need to be modded to be playable.) At least they're getting better - some of the bugs and glitches in Morrowind were hilarious. It's like nobody ever bothered to sit down and play the game, they just decided to put every awesome feature possible in it without any thought to polish.

    I think that, fundamentally, Bethesda needs to sit down and make an MMORPG. Their design style is practically ideally suited for it, and once they see what horrible problems their "game balancing" creates, they might learn how to balance a damn game for once. But I have to say that I'm not excited in the least about what Bethesda does anymore, and I'm deeply saddened that they now own the Fallout series.
    • "I realize that Oblivion is a very popular game that a lot of people like. But I just can't get into it. If anything, it's too open-ended"

      You're in good company, a lot of really crappy games (read: so easy even a retard could play it) end up becoming hits, if anything it's what happens to many good products when the market was smaller and the quality was higher, it becomes commoditized to the lowest common denominator. Read : Entertainment for hapless morons.

      I'm sad to say many "successful" games are bad g

  • Fourth Floor: Tools, Guns, Keys to Superweapons (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have a great deal of misgivings on this. I really don't think Bethesda should be in the business of making RPG's. Their games have been [in my eyes] a downward slide since Daggerfall. Morrowind had fantastic atmosphere, but the combat and most importantly the Quests and NPC's, were incredibly boring and dull. Oblivion vastly improved the graphics and combat, but the NPC's actually got worse: They retained their wiki-like dialogue from Morrowind, except with fewer things to talk about. What they could talk

  • $75 million dollar budget??? (Score:4, Funny)

    by j00r0m4nc3r ( 959816 ) on Thursday April 12, 2007 @08:15PM (#18712465)
    Holy fuck.
    • The fact that any game company would consider spending that much money on a game suggests that there's something seriously wrong with industry game design. How much did Id Software spend on, say, Doom II?
  • Did you snort cocaine before writing this? The only good news that could have come about fallout was that interplay had pulled the rights and was locking them away until a developer worthy of them showed up. Fallout will not survive the Bethesda treatment.

  • Bethesda != Crap (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SageinaRage ( 966293 ) on Thursday April 12, 2007 @10:38PM (#18713827)
    You'd think that Bethesda had raped everyone's dog the way people are reacting to this news. I would have thought Slashdot to be a little more open minded and thoughtful than NMA.

    Just because you didn't like Elder Scrolls doesn't mean Fallout will be bad.

    Just because they made Elder Scrolls doesn't mean Fallout will be LIKE Elder Scrolls.

    If you don't want Bethesday to make it - who the hell DO you want? Should the IP just sit unused until everyone forgets about it? Should we let the next generation of gamer's only impresssions of it be the Interplay MMO? At least wait until you play a demo or something before you start screaming bloody murder.
    • That's unfortuniatly pretty much what every Fallout fan wants.

      I've seen a lot of fan communities, and Fallout lovers are undoubtedly the worst of the lot. Yeah, after Brotherhood of Steel some of it might be justified, but personally, I think BS makes awesome, if flawed, games. Besides, if Fallout 3 gets the level of mod support that the TES games have gotten, the Fallout community can simply mod in or out anything they feel like.

    • You'd think that Bethesda had raped everyone's dog the way people are reacting to this news.

      Well, it's like being a tolkien fan and finding out Micheal Bay is directing the trilogy. It might be fun, but it's really far from what you wanted.
      • Or maybe it's a bit like being a Tolkien fan and finding out that Peter Jackson is directing the film trilogy? Before the first film I don't think many would have considered him to be the right person for the job (I guess some people still don't think so).
    • If you don't want Bethesday to make it - who the hell DO you want?

      If I can't have Leonard Boyarsky and Tim Cain? I'd take Warren Spector.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )
      Bethesda has a long history of releasing bug ridden software with wide open spaces of nothing and boring rewards.

      seriously, it isn't a matter of liking a genre, it's a metter of there horrible implimintation.

    • You'd think that Bethesda had raped everyone's dog the way people are reacting to this news.

      I'm sorry! I tried to keep Bethesda from doing that to my dog, but I forgot to keep Dogmeat behind the forcefield.

  • The problem with Bethesda. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MaWeiTao ( 908546 ) on Thursday April 12, 2007 @11:09PM (#18714081)
    I realize some people love Oblivion but I think Oblivion epitomizes what's wrong with PC gaming. It's a fabulous tech demo but otherwise lacking real substance and style. Bethesda seemed to be so obsessed with creating a photo-realistic world that they've sucked the life and art out of the game. I have to admit that those landscapes look phenomenal. But then you walk up to any NPC and they look goofy. Monsters look like claymation and humans look like second-rate actors from some crappy fantasy movie.

    I haven't seen a single NPC from Oblivion or any of the expansions that doesn't look goofy. They don't look like people who would inhabit a true fantasy world. They don't have battle-hardened bodies, some even have a chin fat like they've eaten one too many pop tarts. Many look like they probably Bethesda employees complete with the look of amusement at the fact that they're going to be featured in a game.

    The tech demo feel never leaves me, what with the obsessive use of texture mapping. Almost everything in Oblivion has this lumpy wet look. It feels like it's there to impress the viewer as opposed to actually adding substance to the game.

    Then there's the ridiculous gameplay mechanic of enemies scaling to the player's level. Doesn't that defeat the whole point of leveling up in an RPG? It seems like an ill-conceived solution to the leveling problems encountered in Morrowind. I'm inevitably left with the impression that the developers didn't spend much time thinking about gameplay.

    Then there's the performance aspect. Oblivion is one of those games that can make a 1 to 2 year old machine feel obsolete. Buy a console and performance isn't even an issue. There's comfort in knowing that not only will the system handle any game designed for it but the games will almost certainly improve throughout that system's lifespan. Not so with PCs. I can't help but think this alienates many PC gamers. It alienates me and I much prefer PC gaming over console gaming.

    But Bethesda like other PC developers are obsessed with pushing the limits of hardware. So gamers get stuck with the same old genres with not much to look for but increasingly realistic graphics with little style. World of Warcraft doesn't have anywhere near the graphical sophistication of Oblivion, but I think it's far more entertaining to look it because it has such a strong sense of character. I'd argue that a single screenshot of the most recent Final Fantasy game has more creative style than all of Oblivion, even if Oblivion is more impressive technically. But I just don't feel like there's a real sense of creativity.

    I didn't really intend on getting on that sort of rant about Oblivion. But I think it illustrates what I expect from any new Fallout game. I expect Bethesda to apply the Oblivion approach to Fallout. It's going to be another lifeless tech demo that wont run well on anything but the latest hardware.

    • hey don't look like people who would inhabit a true fantasy world. They don't have battle-hardened bodies, some even have a chin fat like they've eaten one too many pop tarts.

      I agree, network administrators don't belong in a fantasy setting.

      Seriously, though. Not everybody, in any setting, should be a bronzed, buff bulldozer. People aren't the same - some are in good shape, but some are fat. Some are thin, too. Some are balding, or are even completely bald. Believe it or not, but not everyone is the same he

  • Open request to Bethesda re fallout (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MikShapi ( 681808 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @12:20AM (#18714559) Journal
    1. Game balance: PLEASE, oh PRETTY PLEASE, make the game (monsters, items) not level up with the game.

    I realize it's a seriously cheaper solution than paying a group of people play the game many times to find the fine line between laughably easy (and thus not fun) and impossibly hard (frustrating and thus not fun), with properly controlling player's access to powerful items and monsters in an open-ended world. It's the ultimate challenge for someone who makes an RPG. Your choice in Oblivion did not sidestep the issue. It FAILED the issue. The game may have been fun to people who play it with a side-quest tick-list, not really caring what comes between tick and tick, but your core crowd, both oblivion-side and fallout-side, will be the people who diligently explore every nook and cranny of the virtual world, expecting to be rewarded by some meaningful (read: NOT scaled and otherwise easily-attainable) item that was scaled to their level anyway and could have thus been found in any easily-accessible container. You have done this in some places in Oblivion, you need to do it MUCH MUCH MUCH MORE. I've reached numerous hard location, and found nothing but items my level would have gotten out of any other, usually easier to come across, chest.

    2. Random Treasure - NOT IN HARD-TO-REACH locations. Well-protected or Hard-to-get-to chests, whether in dungeons, some hard-to-find sunken ship, some well-locked-up merchant's house etc should NOT EVER be random. They should have unique and helpful items, to reward diligence in getting to the hard-to-reach location.

    3. Your game system, XP (as in experience points, not the OS) and SPECIAL.
    XP is a WONDERFUL concept. It is the utterly best coin by which you can reward a player. Better than gold, better than items. There is NEVER enough XP (and if there is, bump your level cap). XP should buy levels, and levels should buy abilities that COMPLEMENT those given by items, not require you to displace old items like /additional/ items the player gets given require him to do.

    Oblivion had no XP system. (as a side-note, XP and levels were a bit on the uninfluential side, considering you didn't get any edge over anything by leveling up, if anything, even after all the new items that magically appeared around the world, you could still barely keep up with the monsters).
    It had a leveling system that screamed macroing. If you'd stand in one place and jump 5000 times, you got more bonuses when you leveled up. It was geared towards semi-exploitation, i.e. do something the game allows to get more powerful, but spend a lot of boring game time doing it. So you choose between either boring yourself to death, or throwing powergaming out the window. BAD choice to impose on your clients. powergaming SHOULD NOT be made boring.

    Further, if you accidentally level up (by practicing your chosen skills - this might be by running enough for example) before you practiced the skills that would give you the correct attribute bonuses, you MISS OUT on the bonuses. To anyone who is informed of his char sheet and future development plans, Leveling in Oblivion is an annoying minefield to be meticulously planned from day 1 and very carefully treaded throughout the game, instead of the satisfying gameplay perk it should be. I realize you can just play the game and ignore leveling bonuses, but that's no better than playing any RPG without proper /informed/ consideration to the types of bonuses given by leveling, just picking stuff at random like someone who doesn't understand all those long technical words. It's not fun to those of us who ARE trying to achieve their best using your game mechanics (i.e. attempt to obtain the best "numbers" that the game mechanics allow us to). It's our way to try and get ahead, win. Your system encourages game mediocrity, and throws us to hell.

    Enter SPECIAL, fallout's levelup/skill system. Like Oblivion, albeit in a very different way, it is classless (as compared to, say, classic AD&D). But it isn't jus
  • I am a huge fallout fan! I own all the games, and played them all through a couple times (including the Xbox game... which I would give a solid C-, it was mildly entertaining! It is definitly worth a $9.99 bargain bin purchase!), and I am definitly looking forward to Bethesda doing a new Fallout game.

    Seriously, who else would you rather see do a Fallout game? (OK, who else would you rather see do a Fallout game besides Bioware? :) ) Aside from Bioware, Bethesda are an excellent choice. I would rather see a

    • What do you think are the chances of seeing another Starflight game?
      Starflight 3 is coming out "Real Soon, Now." [starflightcentral.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mcvos ( 645701 )

      I would rather see a Bethesda game than to let the IP become worthless and totally die out.

      Doing nothing with it isn't what makes IP worthless. Doing something bad with it is. For ages after its release, Star Wars was the greatest thing ever. But the prequels (though I'm sure they made a lot of money) really lost the franchise a lot of appreciation, and therefore value. The next Star Wars movie won't make nearly as much money. Same thing for Terminator. Terminator 1 and 2 were brilliant, but 3 killed

  • I love some of Bethesda's attitude, but...

    The whole point of an RPG is that you make decisions, and that resolution is based on your CHARACTER'S skills.

    Bethesda has really stressed interfaces where combat resolution is based on the PLAYER'S skills.

    I can't see this working out well for Fallout, where a great deal of the fun was being able to make characters with widely different abilities. Bethesda will give us a twitch-friendly game with realistic graphics but a combat system that's more FPS than RPG. And

  • Babies (Score:5, Funny)

    by __aamkky7574 ( 654183 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @06:36AM (#18716401)
    I have never seen such a pitiful bunch of whining elitist crybabies as I've seen in this thread. I'm thinking of applying to Bethesda just so I can work on Fallout 3, make it rubbish, and watch with glee as you fling yourselves off the nearest cliff, mewling with self-pity all the way down to the welcoming waves.

    P.

    • Re:Babies (Score:4, Funny)

      by wuie ( 884711 ) on Friday April 13, 2007 @12:24PM (#18720779)
      and watch with glee as you fling yourselves off the nearest cliff, mewling with self-pity all the way down to the welcoming waves.

      I'm glad I picked the perk 'Bloody Mess', this is going to be exciting!
  • I could swear the big fuss about this was three years ago. [gamespot.com] I think you guys are a little behind.
  • I'm kind of struck by the fact that Interplay actually sold the rights to Fallout, when they had already sold the license a couple years ago. This kind of sounds like they don't have the funds to work on their Massive online version. Could this be a desperate move for some quick cash? I doubt that we will ever see that Fallout Online version. More than likely, Interplay will fold like a deck of cards. Shame really...
  • Didnt know what to think about Bestheda getting getting the rights to Fallout, I knew it wasnt going to be isometric and that worried me, but after playing through STALKER I have to say I am looking forward to what this game might become. Stalker was able to make a great First Person Shooter that wasnt too linear and told a great story with a great atmosphere. Creepy, desolate enviroments, I can look at Fallout 3 and think of getting attacked my a Bloodsucker in Stalker and applied it to be a Bloodclaw inst
    • first off, sorry to be a nazi - but thats a "Deathclaw"

      second off, personally I liked the level of control that Fallout 1+2 had that came with the hex-honeycomb grid and turn based combat, but not too much like in tactics...
      • Deathclaw!!! I was typing it out and thought it looked wrong.

        Yea I loved the style the first two where built on as well. PLanning out fights and making sure you had enough AP to put a round into a guys eyeball.

        I like the world that Fallout is in, and I am willing to give this a chance if it is done well.

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