Star Trek Online is deep under construction as Cryptic Studios prepares for launch with a timeline update.

The latest article brings gamers up to speed on the state of the Romulan Empire after the death of Praetor Shinzon. Romulus and Remus are on the brink of civil war which is a little odd considering Ambassador Spock’s unification movement continues to grow even after his return to Federation space.

Bajor and certain members of the Cardassian government are still at odds requiring the Federation to intervene. If that not enough to keep players busy, there’s a real possibility that the Borg have found a way to recreate a new Borg Queen in the Alpha quadrant. Get all the details in the STO Fiction Update 2381.

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Bethesda were part of the story. Fallout 3 previews, between explaining VATS and the Megaton dilemma, made sure to note the long-standing concerns over whether Bethesda could pull this off.

Bethesda had inserted themselves into the history of someone else's series: Fallout, ardently mythologized as a classic, although its commercial cachet had declined. After Bethesda cultivated their house franchise into a well-received cross-platform hit with Oblivion, they suddenly had everything to prove.

Their motivations find parallel in the story Fallout 3 tells about the player character's father, James. One day and without any specific impetus, James abruptly leaves home and the security it provides. He risks everything on resurrecting a certain project commonly thought to be untenable after some recent failures.

Why'd he leave, and why did Bethesda decide to do this? Fortunately they did, because at worst, Fallout 3 would have been an undetermined game; a cautious compromise between the varying design sensibilities of Bethesda and Black Isle and a half-hearted and restrained remake of the original Fallout.

That's not Fallout 3. Here's why it mattered to the post-apocalyptic, profanity-laden, morally vague wasteland that Bethesda make it this time.

The Hopelessness After The Explosion

Game worlds which exist in their fiction as monumental achievements -- like Rapture and Liberty City, grand and exhaustive -- can reflect their developers' real-life dedication to building a quality game.

Instead of vicariously crafting in-game opulence, Bethesda recreated Washington, D.C. as a blasted shithole devastated by nuclear war and depressingly rendered in decrepit detail. BioShock was a toast to failed ambition; Fallout 3 a toast to failure.

Given Fallout 3's timing, reintroducing the series' conceit of war beginning with an Alaskan invasion is faintly hilarious. Now that the resultant wasteland exists in one of Bethesda's open and persistent worlds, you're forced to survey the full extent of the destruction.

You can't ignore all the bombed-out highways, the bridges to nowhere, the irradiated waters, the torn-apart schools, the abandoned cars, the skeletal remains embracing on the beds of shattered houses, or the random and meaningless firefights and explosions. That's the world, and you have to deal with it even when it has no quest relevance.

No previous Fallout game has actually felt so plausibly Post-Nuclear. If Fallout 3 doesn't seem as funny as its predecessors, it's because there's really nothing funny about that. A video game has never been so appropriately painted in brown and gray; the thematic prerogative of Gears of War wasn't hopelessness.

Why Washington DC Works

The decision to set Fallout 3 in D.C. was ostensibly made to further distance Bethesda's game from the West Coast adventures of Fallout 1 and 2, and because the Maryland-based developer were more familiar with the Capitol. This is workmanlike reasoning, which doesn't hint at the massive implications the decision would have on the creative direction of the game.

It's not until after the player leaves the pristine sanctity of Vault 101 in search of his father -- and makes it to Washington proper -- that you remember what's specifically important about D.C.

Not until you march down the Mall, through the wrecks of the Washington Monument, the Capitol Building, the Museums of History and Technology, the National Archives and the Lincoln Memorial to the tune of the America the Beautiful, ducking the street-gangs and mutants further blowing apart the ruins, can you can tell that this is the dismal coda to American history.

America as it was conceived in 1776 is in gradual decline. While some civilians still go about their lives, it seems inevitable that the light will blink out sooner rather than later. When you're able to casually scavenge the Declaration of Independence, and sell it, whatever immaculate prestige American history once had is probably gone.

On your tour of D.C., you're made to revisit all the initial promise inherent in that document, while you're picking up the pieces and kicking around the ashes. The buildings stand remarkably intact, frozen in time, for you to look up at and think about how this all went to hell.

Sitting in the Museum of Technology's planetarium, you can watch the stars flicker across the ceiling from an antiquated projector, listening to an earnest narrator explains the great dream of mankind to explore outer space and some '40s nostalgia drifting over the radio. A pair of super mutants interrupt with lead pipes and miniguns, screaming about tearing your head off. That's Fallout 3.

Vault Boy's Lament

It's a heartbreaking picture, even though Fallout is still decorated with contrarily cheerful '50s duck-and-cover iconography, replete with the perpetually enthused Vault Boy character. As much as that imagery serves as ironic commentary, it almost exists to leaven the psychological burden of walking around awake in this nightmare.

If you can point to something out-of-place or ridiculous, then you can detach from the world -- rather than submitting to it as a reasonable state of existence.

Even so, Fallout the third is the sober one in the family. Whether you think that's a deliberate choice or Bethesda's Achilles' heel, it works for this game. Fallout 3 executes its humorous interstitials as well as anything in the first game, while rejecting the broader pop culture excesses of Fallout 2's Monty Python prostitute showcase. It is, after all, the end of the world.

Far Cry 2, another sequel from a different studio, has absolutely nothing to do with the first game. The name is a vehicle for an unrelated design document and the game's called Far Cry 2 only because Ubisoft doesn't own the Mercenaries license.

The new Far Cry team and the new Fallout team offer new perspectives. Far Cry 2's Africa abandons aliens for malaria, item degradation, civil war and all-purpose ugliness -- while Fallout 3's wasteland is deliberately and unremittingly tragic. To the history of their respective series, they introduce a conscience.

They tell gamers that they can have their open-world shooter and post-apocalyptic wastelands, with their bloody conflicts, nuclear weapons, headshots, political intrigue and all the occasionally goofy video game accouterments, but they won't pretend anymore that it's all unreservedly awesome.

You should feel bad in Far Cry 2 or sad just walking around in Fallout 3. That Fallout 3 is able to convey all this entirely through atmosphere, rather than disadvantaging the player (a page out of the survival horror playbook) is a pretty remarkable achievement.

Enter The AntAgonizer

Fallout 3's weirdest moment has two costumed crusaders fighting on the outskirts of a remote town, calling themselves the Mechanist and the AntAgonizer. It's a moronic premise, albeit one right in line with Fallout.

When you talk to the AntAgonizer, though, and persuade her to knock it off, the game treats her with completely dignity, as she presents a reasonable case for how she wanted to help the impossibly lost inhabitants of the wasteland, before running away in tears.

As Fallout's setting is such an unnatural mode of existence, it's especially worthwhile to observe how the residents of the wasteland choose to live their lives. What are you supposed to do when all of civilisation's institutions have been erased?

Everyone you meet has written their own self-help book on post-nuclear living. Most subsist on vice, as murderers, dealers, slavers and prostitutes. Skilled fighters hire themselves out as mercenaries or anarchically pillage towns. Others go flat-out insane.

Personal survival can be so insurmountable a bar that few rise above self-interest and do what's right for what little remains of the world. Some try, like the semi-righteous order of knights, the Brotherhood of Steel, but even they're divided on how much they want to help out humanity. The Capitol Wasteland lacks any government or ideology and as chaotic and sociologically fractured as it is, it's a perfect setting for an unfocused open-world game.

There's exactly one person in Fallout 3 who will sacrifice for the greater good and you can follow him if you want. It's impossible to believe that in this world enough people like Alexander Hamilton or James Madison will emerge; a small number of smart people who, though ideologically divided, could do something as immense as drafting and ratifying the Constitution. You can't expect any such coherence or drive from the people of Fallout 3.

Carry On, Regardless

Most interesting among the populace are not the raiders or the samaritans but those going on as if nothing happened. Isolated in private zones or secluded in vaults, they run restaurants, sweep floors, nurse high school crushes; reintroducing domesticity to the post-apocalypse.

You have to wonder how responsible that actually is. Are they doing the right thing in rebuilding familiar societal constructs, or should they accept that the world's in decline and do something about it?

You're an actor in the wasteland like the rest, with more agency and influence than all of them combined, which prompts you to consider what you are going to do. In Fallout, making moral decisions isn't a feature designed to encourage replayability, it's arguably the entire point.

Fallout is distinctly unlike those "choose fate, save world" games like Mass Effect (or Oblivion, for that matter) since their worlds are never believably imperiled. The world is in pretty good shape for the entire game; the danger is theoretical and only ever exacerbated by the player allowing the linear plot to progress.

Here, the world is already a write-off. You can't fix the wasteland or the war but there are so many people whose lives you can affect, and that in turn determines what kind of person you are. All that really matters is the quality of your character. If you help whoever you meet, you won't get anything out of it -- not really, not the world or power or glory or any kind of meaningful relationship. All it is is karma.

See What You Can Do

In a weird way, the wasteland is an inviting avenue for change. There are no rules, no institutions, no laws. What do you do when nobody is watching and you can't be held accountable? If you try and approximate the moral and legal standards of today, then that's a statement in itself: you want those structures to endure.

The place is already so desolate you don't even have to do much to improve it. It reminds me, tangentially, of reading about post-invasion Iraq and the early stages of the occupation when the country, bleached to a dreamlike blank slate, so briefly overflowed with possibilities, and an influx of bright young graduates headed out to the Green Zone to reconstruct the country.

I remember thinking, for one dangerously unguarded moment, that wouldn't it be great to move to Baghdad. A place where there's so much to achieve and you can finally have an impact even though you'll probably ruin everything and get murdered.

When the Ink Spots' shiftless anthem "Maybe" is broadcast over the in-game radio, the song being the first thing you heard in Fallout 1, it invokes the series' own memory. Bethesda inspire nostalgia for something they had nothing to do with and recall how unlikely it once seemed that they'd be the ones to restart this thing.

The lyrics -- "Maybe you'll sit and sigh, wishing that I were near/Then maybe you'll ask me to come back again/And maybe I'll say 'Maybe'" -- contradict what this game is all about. Fallout 3 is about making a decision. It's about commitment. It's about doing something.

'A Tribute To Intent'

If it seems like an overly general theme, consider Bethesda's own history with this game. Consider how, out of unspecified desire, they left the safety of the Elder Scrolls for this, and how many development studios are factories for endless variations on popular franchises or uninspired sequels nobody cares about.

Fallout 3 is a tribute to intent. It's not a rallying cry for any cause or even a cautionary tale about the hypothetical horrors of nuclear holocaust. It's a statement on the worthlessness of inaction. It's about not staying in the vault.

In the spirit, then, of conclusive action and definitive answers, we are at last able to resolve every question we've ever had about this game. Does it work; did they pull it off; was it worth all the time, the money, the effort, the mistrust and the suspicion; with everything that this game says and everything that it achieves, well, finally, is this Fallout?

His name might be Cheshire Cat, but like today's other Your Turn contributor, he is not smiling.

Cheshire Cat is a 30-year-old environmental engineer from Port Macquarie who has been playing games ever since his pro-active mother programmed a cute "monkey maths" game for their Texas Instruments home computer when he was four.

Cheshire is also a staunch opponent of censorship, so had to write in after reading a recent article on the proposed internet filters.

Click below for the second Your Turn debut of the day.

Censor this!

A recent article on the SMH website finally riled me up enough to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard as the case may be). The story I am referring to is the Federal Government's planned introduction of an Australia-wide internet filter and the fact that they are misleading the public and ignoring all opposition to it by both experts and the community.

Censorship of any kind is something I personally don't agree with. While I may not like the views of some or the particular fetishes of others, I believe it is their right as an adult to do as they please so long as it causes no harm to others (therefore something like child pornography or snuff films being illegal doesn't count as censorship). Even in those instances I think it is a case of 'keep your friends close and your enemies even closer'. By blocking access to those sites you remove an easy means of monitoring these people's actions and therefore catching and prosecuting them.

We have also seen throughout history that prohibition does not work. It didn't work for
alcohol, it's certainly not working for illicit substances and it's unlikely to work for pornography or piracy. Even countries with very strict pornography guidelines have a large black market for it. Add the technological constraints of this filter system and the abilities of those with enough determination and you have a system destined to fail.

As reported:

"In Senate question time today, Greens senator Scott Ludlam accused the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, of misleading the public by falsely claiming his mandatory censorship plan was similar to that already in place in Sweden, Britain, Canada and New Zealand.

Despite significant opposition from internet providers, consumers, engineers, network administrators and online rights activists, the Government is pressing ahead with its election promise of protecting people from unwanted material."

The countries listed have only an opt-in internet filter while the countries with mandatory country wide filters are those of the civil liberties calibre of Iran, China and Saudi Arabia, yet the government still thinks this is a good idea!

The Federal government already has software for internet filtering offered for free to all Australians. By all indications it has been a complete failure as reported by the Communications Minister during a senate estimates sitting in February. Less than 150,000 households had taken up the software (from a predicted 1.4 million) and less than 20% of those are still in use.

Tests for the new filters provide a substantial number of false positives with plenty of material slipping through that is meant to be blocked as well as a significant slow-down in the speeds achieved (which in Australia's ailing internet service would place us another step behind the rest of the world).

This is hypocrisy at its finest. While the Federal Government lambasted the poor take-up of one internet filtering system they then try to enforce a more severe one on a public obviously not wanting any.

These points are an indictment on the overall state of government in this country where those in power seem to constantly ignore the wishes of the public, the evidence of experts and generally do as they please.

The examples of this are present all around us not just the poor performance of one attorney general in South Australia (who has somewhat relented, we get our public discussion now and public release of the R18 report. Keep up the good work everyone).

The Iraq war, Workchoices, the alcopops tax, you name it and a Federal Government has done it in the past few decades against the advice of experts or the wishes of the public. Let's not forget the NSW state government (I can't speak for anyone else's) abysmally managing the state and attempting to sell off the state run electricity companies against the wishes of a public very hostile towards this issue. I think we are up to about five resignations in the past few months over these issues of mismanagement.

The censorship debate is one that will never be agreed upon, however I think we can all agree that the government should be run in the interests of the public taking its lead from the wishes of the public and the advice of experts.

As stated I personally don't believe in censorship and think this type of blanket internet censorship leads us down a very slippery slope.

What starts out as blocking illegal material such as child pornography, will likely become all hardcore pornography and gambling (thanks to Mr Fielding and Mr Xenophon) and where to next? Political sites the government doesn't like? All torrent and file sharing sites because some of the content is illegal? Youtube since some of its content is illegal? Blogs with dissenting views? Where does it end?

Since the R18+ issue has made gamers a bit more politically motivated perhaps it's time we turned our attention to something on a grander scale. Winning this war could well see the other issues looked at more closely. So what can we do? Do you think it's important to protect the freedom of the internet? When will a government in Australia be held to task over something it does? And can enough public outcry really have an effect? Or are we doomed to only voicing our disdain once every 3-4 years?

On the flip side, do any of you agree with the proposal? If so why?

- Cheshire Cat

Screen Play readers can submit articles or ideas for consideration in Your Turn using the email address screenplayblog@gmail.com. The best blog post each month as judged by Jason Hill will win a PlayStation 3 console from Sony Computer Entertainment worth $699. The next Your Turn prize winner will be announced on November 28. Only Australian residents are eligible and the judge's decision is final.

The game was playable in an “arcade” ballroom set up as part of the BMO Capital Markets 16th Annual Interactive Entertainment Conference, where gaming executives such as Reggie Fils-Aime (Nintendo), Peter Moore (EA Sports), and Strauss Zelnick (Take Two) were giving investors reasons to believe in the health of the gaming industry. The mood was somewhat dark given these economic times. You know there’s trouble when the gift bag includes a research book called “Recession Scenarios: What To Own.” That’s scary!

In the arcade, they mostly had the kinds of games people who invest in games might like to play in civil company: “Midnight Club” (not “GTA“), “Wii Music” (not “Animal Crossing“), “Rock Band,” Gameloft’s iPhone games and… “Prince of Persia”? Ubisoft even sent a Frag Doll, a pro female gamer named Morgan, to show the game. But I don’t think that game was ideal for the crowd.

Thankfully, that game was ideal for me to watch and play while killing time between eating a free muffin and going to Zelnick’s speech. Morgan was playing a near-final Xbox 360 build and had gained about half of the Prince’s new acrobatic powers. She was working through various regions, using the Prince’s acrobatic flips, jumps and wall-runs to collect orbs of light with “Crackdown“-esque collection obsession. When she’d collected enough, she’d either get new powers or unlock another region in a map of interlocked regions. The impression I got, though we didn’t get to try it, was that the game will have more than the one repeating boss enemy that I thought it was going to have. It looks like it may have as many as four recurring bosses, each designed to be fought in extravagant set-piece fashion at the end of regions in a grouped set, getting more powerful each time.

What was most promising to me were the controls of this new “Prince of Persia,” which combined the best of the acrobatic maneuvers from “Mirror’s Edge” and “Assassin’s Creed” with an ease of move-chaining more akin to a “Tony Hawk.” When I took the controls, I found that I could easily run to a gap, press a button to jump and immediately trigger a wall-run without another button press, press a button to leap off that wall into another wall run, press one more button to grab a ring bolted to the wall to twirl around it, press the same jump button once more to half-cross a larger gap and then press the button that summons abilities from your ever-present female companion, Elika, to have her double-jump/pull me across the second half of that long gap. With just a few taps of three controller buttons I had triggered an incredible acrobatic routine. And I did this with little anxiety, because you cannot die in this game. If you fail to press a button and plummet to your apparent doom, Elika reaches down and pulls you back up to a checkpoint, usually on the last safe platform you stood on. So it’s easy to take another jump at it.

“Prince of Persia” is the last major game coming out this holiday season and a somewhat forgotten one, given its December date. I’m not sure why it’s coming so late, but from what I got out of it yesterday, my first hands-on with it since E3, I’m excited to play more. I’m not worried about a “Prince of Persia” game for the first time since “Sands of Time.” Instead, I’m looking forward to it.

Next: This weekend, I’ve got to finish “Mirror’s Edge.” And still go to “Resistance 2” next? But what about “Call of Duty“? “Animal Crossing“? “Left 4 Dead“? Oh, it won’t be that painful to choose.

We’ve talked about Mosby’s Confederacy’s before. It’s Tilted Mill’s second product of their self-publish-online movement, after Hinterland (Which I still need to go back and play some more). Anyway, their period skirmish-level wargame has revealed some screenshots and video. Except it’s not embeddable, so you’re going to have to toodle off there to watch it. Man!

Initial impression: A sad lack of Pangolin.Related stories:

• Gordian Yes! Children Of Nile Add-On
• Civil Ceremony: Mosby’s Confederacy Announced
• Hinterlands: One To Get Behind?

Posted by KieronGillen. | One comment | Donate or subscribe to RPS | Post tags: Mosby's Confederacy, No Pangolin, Tilted Mill
This article is from Rock, Paper, Shotgun. If you're reading it on any other website, they're stealing it from us without permission.

• New PRO-IP anti-piracy law in US approved, ESA ecstatic
  

• New PRO-IP anti-piracy law in US approved, ESA ecstatic
  

• New PRO-IP anti-piracy law in US approved, ESA ecstatic
  

In Hidden Mysteries ™: Buckingham Palace you must peel back the curtains on one of the grandest buildings in the western world to look for treasure and uncover its deepest secrets. Learn fun facts about several royal locations while you search for hidden objects and play ingenious mini-games. Follow romantic notes strewn across beautifully rendered scenes in this exciting sequel to Hidden Mysteries: Civil War.

• Learn fun royal facts
• Use items to solve puzzles
• Clever mini-games

Hidden Mysteries: Buckingham Palace ™ puzzle game screenshots: