[GameRatty] tag: washington

What My Parents Taught Me About Video Games

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 10:29:00 +0000

[My Mom and Dad]

Part of the reason I ended up doing game journalism is, I think, because of my Dad. He was a tech journo when I was a kid, which meant we had everything in the house worth playing for a good chunk of my lucky, lucky youth, and it means he's still pretty up on things today.

Whenever I wonder about the Wii's new audience, I just picture my early-fifties Mom holding the Wii Remote and declaring, ecstatically, a revelation to my father: "Michael! I'm really doing it!" That was a pretty promising day, I thought, because up until then the only involvement Mom had with video game consoles was to passive-aggressively vaccuum over the controller cords while I was trying to play.

So when my parents drove me back to New York City after I spent Thanksgiving in Massachusetts with them, I decided to show my parents some more new stuff, educate them about the miracle of new technology and the richness of present-day player experiences. I think I ended up learning more than they did, though.

My Dad Is Sony's Ideal Audience

This time, my Dad wanted to know about the PlayStation 3. Jack Tretton would thrill if he could hear Dad tell Mom all about how the PS3 is worth its price for the Blu-ray player alone -- and plus, said Dad, the PS3 has Tourist Trophy. Vehicle games are a major selling point to my motorcycle hobbyist father.

To gamers, the much-touted PS3 Blu-ray drive justifies the console's decidedly uncompetitive price just about as much as Nintendo still makes "hardcore" games -- which is to say it's a hilarious idea. First, we all saw how angling the PS3 as anything other than a video game console came to bite Sony -- and how fast they backpedaled as publishers showed signs of skittishness. Now, everyone who'd like to see the platform succeed knows that it needs to be cheaper, and hangs the blame on the Blu-ray decision.

When Kaz Hirai introduced the PS3 by enthusing about Blu-ray, and became upset that no one was interested in Ridge Racer, we all wondered who Hirai thought he was talking to. Guess it was my Dad -- turns out that Blu-ray drive is a significant factor to someone after all.

Dad wanted to check out a game with cars, though, and I had the excellent Midnight Club: Los Angeles for the Xbox 360 on hand. Knowing him, I had to hurry to skip the introductory cut scenes in order to get to the gameplay. After all, this was one of my rare opportunities to share my hobby (and my career) with my parents hands-on -- they tend to glaze over during my articles -- and I knew that if Dad had to sit through dialogue he'd lose interest.

MCLA held Dad's attention for about five minutes. He liked accelerating, but complained that he hates playing an analog stick with his left hand (he's right handed). He tried flipping the controller upside down to reverse the situation, but, of course, that reverses the controls, too. After about 30 seconds of playing the 360 controller in his lap with his hands crossed, he had enough.

If You've Got A Gun, It's A Shooter

I decided to see what my parents thought of Fallout 3, expecting them to be floored by just how far games had come since I was a brat mashing buttons on their living room floor. I loaded up a save that I had just outside Vault 101, where the nuclear wasteland was breathtaking and ready to explore.

"What is this?" Mom asks. "Where are you supposed to be?"

"It's post-apocalyptic Washington," I tell her. "It's really, really cool."

"It doesn't look like Washington," says Mom. "It just looks like... I don't know what." She is not impressed. "How is this Washington?" she keeps wanting to know.

"So this is a first-person shooter, huh?" Dad says.

"No," I insist. "It's more like an RPG, where --"

"Well then, what's that?" Dad points at the screen, where my big pistol is filling up the corner of the first-person view. "Why do you have a gun if it's not a shooter? It sure looks like a shooter to me." He does this partly because he knows he's oversimplifying and thinks it's funny that I'm getting irritated (and now you know where my contrarian nature comes from).

I have to admit, though, he really does have a point.

I start explaining to my parents all about action RPGs, and how FO3 isn't really an FPS, and I'm trying to talk about "actions affect the gameworld" and "death of the American dream" and "environmental storytelling," and suddenly it sounds ridiculous to me.

For just a minute, I see the game as my parents see it -- a guy with a gun trundling across a wasteland. The end.

What Are You?

Instead, I decide to start thinking of the things Mom would enjoy about a game console. She loves casual games, and she pretends to be a technophobe, but if she actually has a chance to acclimate to social media-type things, she tends to get hooked. So I explain to her about small downloadables, indie games, online casual titles and leaderboards, and the only thing I have on hand as an example is PixelJunk Eden. It's no Zuma or anything, but I feel pretty convinced that my parents will find it more relatable than FO3.

It's kind of an art game, I explain, I talk a lot about music and color and flowers growing, and then I put it on.

"This isn't colorful," says Mom, wondering if she's missed something. "I just see blue."

"Well, the colors change when you get these things... you have to pop all these flowers --"

"What flowers?"

It's a little more understandable to them after I play for a minute or two, pollinate a few seeds and keep climbing, but Mom needs to know, "What are you? Is that, like, a scorpion?"

The question of what are you has always seemed highly irrelevant to me when playing PixelJunk Eden -- but, honestly, my best friend, who's a much more acclimated gamer, frequently gets hung up on the same issue.

"Nah," says Mom, after some assessment. "I don't think I would like this."

"Mom wouldn't like this," Dad agrees.

Still, my parents might get a PS3. But the real takeaway of their test drive, for me, was their perspective on this little capsule of my everyday living room experience.

And, you know, my parents aren't totally clueless.

"Your writing isn't as good as you think it is, you know," said my Dad to me earlier on the road trip. "Your articles are too long. You need to at least break things up with subheads, or add some pictures, or something. If nobody gets to the bottom of your article, you're wasting time."

My Dad definitely knows a thing or two about this stuff.

Blogs are irrelevant and subjective

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 06:46:00 +0000

One interesting subject from the open Sunday thread was why some people react so strongly when they read somebody praising a different game, or even start shouting "conspiracy!" when they read some less than raving report on their favorite game. And I think one anonymous commenter got a step closer to the answer by asking about the influence of blogs. It seems logical that if somebody believes that blogs wield a huge influence in the decision of people what to play, or even on the developers of those games, they would feel threatened if a blogger writes negatively about their favorite game, or positively about a different game. But I do think that would overestimate the influence of blogs. In reality blogs have no, or very, very little, influence on developers and players. They are just a reflection of the subjective opinions of one or few people.

The reason why I can state the lack of influence with some certainty is simple math. I'm proud to have a "popular" blog, but popular still means only 5,000 visitors a day, of which 55% come here from some search engine, 25% following some link, and only 20% by either typing the URL of my blog, or having me bookmarked. So I maybe have 1,000 regular readers. Most of them are of the "I read what Tobold has to say, but I sometimes disagree" type, which is how it should be. But even if I could influence all 1,000 of them to lets say switch from one game to another, the impact on the subscription numbers of a major MMORPG would be minimal. 99% of WoW players have never even heard of me.

Not only is there a lack of influence, but also there is no conspiracy or hidden agenda. I'm just a regular MMORPG player, with certain preferences. Just like everyone else, I get excited about new games, like some games more than others, and inside one game have features I like and others I dislike. I generally prefer PvE over PvP, and if I PvP I prefer the "carebear" sort. I like storytelling and variety of gameplay, and dislike grinds. I prefer content to be accessible to casual players, and don't like exclusive content for a small elite. Besides games, I have an interest in economics, so you'll often find me discussing game economics, both the real world economics of business models, and the virtual economics of tradeskills and auction houses. None of this is secret in any way, and since it is inevitable that I repeat myself in 5 years of blogging, you can find ample evidence of these preference all over this blog.

Currently I am very much excited and happy about the Wrath of the Lich King expansion of World of Warcraft, because it very much corresponds to my personal preferences: As always in WoW, it is mostly PvE, with some carebear PvP. It has better storytelling and more varied gameplay than the previous expansion. And it promises to be more accessible and less elite in the endgame. A near-perfect match. But I'm not vain or stupid enough to believe that the Blizzard developers read what I wrote on this blog and created the expansion to fit my personal preferences. What I do believe (and again I only have indirect evidence) is that The Burning Crusade was not quite as big a success as Blizzard had hoped. It sold a lot of copies early, but then relatively quickly lost players. I do believe that the reason for that decline was that the players reached level 70 and because raiding was relatively difficult never even got started in the raiding circuit. I think Blizzard got that message through various exit interviews from people canceling their accounts, and is trying to do better this time. My personal agenda just happens to coincide with what a large number of casual players prefers, it isn't as if they were in any way influenced by me. And Blizzard is influenced by profits and subscription numbers, not by what anyone says about their game on any blog or forum.

Another evidence for the lack of influence of bloggers on players and developers is that people who take the time to discuss games on the internet are already a minority among players in general. By definition they are less casual, because it takes an above average interest in a game to not only play it, but also to want to talk about it when not playing it. I believe, without having proof for it, that the people who discuss games on the internet on average have somewhat different, less casual, interests than players who don't. Thus aspects of gameplay which require more dedication, for example hardcore PvP or raiding, are more popular on blogs and game forums than they are in the games themselves. I think developers don't listen too closely to what people say on forums and blogs, because they know that doing so would risk to miss the interests of the silent majority.

While it is obviously hard to judge oneself correctly, I would say that overall I'm a rather rational type. I try to avoid posting obvious falsehoods, and I usually do see both the good and bad sides of any given game or feature. But that doesn't make the content of this blog completely fair and balanced. Blogs, by their very nature, aren't even supposed to be objective. The word "blog" comes from "weblog", and that is what this is: A log of my thoughts, a kind of public diary. Objectivity isn't even a stated goal of that, I write my subjective feelings on games, features, or sometimes even non-game issues. And, being personal and subjective, my attitude towards one game can, and frequently does, change over time. If you read my archives, you will find that I never liked The Burning Crusade very much, and during that time wrote a lot of negative stuff about World of Warcraft, including an "I quit" post, taking an extensive leave from the game. You will also find some very positive coverage of WAR from the late beta and early release days, until the preponderance of scenarios ruined that game for me. And then there are lots of games that get no or very little coverage from this blog at all, because they are simply not on my radar.

If somebody expects me to cover and praise every existing game equally, he simply is at the wrong spot. Being personal this blog reports on the games I play, with a subjective slant towards the games I like. I am certainly trying to be balanced and fair, but there simply aren't any game review sites that praise all games equally, because frankly that wouldn't be of much use to anyone. The very act of reviewing a game introduces subjectivity. Besides reviews and personal opinions this blog has some "MMO news coverage", but that very often consists of links to the totally subjective reviews and personal opinions of other bloggers, with my subjective comments thrown in. Game companies are private enterprises, and there is a lot of interesting data they have and don't publish. Thus subjects like subscription numbers or future strategy of a game are surrounded by a lot of speculation, some circumstantial evidence, and very few absolute truths. But the fun is in the speculation and discussion, nobody should expect the same level of proof from a blog post than what would be required in a criminal justice court.

So, in summary, I do think that some people overestimate the influence of blogs. And some people have trouble making the distinction between a blog and the Washington Post. It is obviously hard to convince these people that I'm neither out to influence the MMORPG world, nor am I likely to do that. So the best advice I can offer is that if you believe so strongly that a single person with a blog hosted for free can influence both developers and players, then you should go and make your own blog. If it's so easy to move millions of subscribers to one's preferred game, and change the way in which future games are designed, why don't you go out and do it?

Resistance 2 newspaper ad scares Dubliners

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 21:53:45 +0000

Clever marketing rules. Somehow the videogame industry has got a knack for it, with recent goodies such as the Washington Subway Fallout 3 advertising, the ingenious Matt Hazard strategy and the bizarre casting of Obama and Palin in Mercenaries 2. The ones responsible for Resistance 2’s PR outdid themselves today when they scared the crap out of Dubliners using morning papers Metro and Herald AM to alert readers that America is under attack by monsters. There’s even an open letter from Mr. President himself. Check out the scanned newspaper from Kotaku here.

If Youre Playing Fallout 3, Dont Miss Vault 106

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:00:46 +0000

I have invested more than 20 hours in “Fallout 3″ so far, and I have no intention of stopping my adventure through the wasteland anytime soon.

Last night, I had my favorite “Fallout 3″ moment so far. It was completely unexpected, had nothing to do with the main storyline and made my heart race. “Fallout 3″ is depressing, but it’s not scary. This freaked the hell out of me.

On the way Vault 112, which is party of the main storyline, I happened across Vault 106. It’s completely optional. You might never find it. If you don’t, though, you’ll be missing out on a part of “Fallout 3″ so exceptionally wild.

I recommend finding Vault 106 on your own, but if not…SPOILER WARNING!

There were a group of raiders just outside of Vault 106, so I’d pumped up my character with combat-ability drug boosters for battle. As I entered Vault 106, the character was coming down from them and suffering from withdrawal. Moments into Vault 106, my character started experiencing wild hallucinations and the screen began changing colors. Is there something wrong with my TV, I wondered? No, it must be a side effect of the withdrawal symptoms I haven’t experienced before.

It wasn’t, though. The hallucinations kept coming.

I kept seeing dead inhabitants of Vault 106…alive. Or…was this my own past? This “safe haven” was in shambles. Something happened here, but I didn’t know what. There were no diaries, no computers to explain what went wrong. All I could do was delve deeper into the madness of Vault 106 — hallucinations included — and fend of the occasional “insane survivor.”

At the end of my journey into the pit of Vault 106, ‘Fallout 3′ had become ‘Silent Hill.’

What caused them to go insane? I had no idea. But Vault 106 went deeper into the ground and the hallucinations continued. Scientists stalked the halls as the screen went a dark purple, before I was warped back to reality. “Fallout 3″ seldom messes with your visual perception, aside from splashing blood on the screen or warping your eyesight after you use a drug. This was a completely new way of messing with me.

By the end of my journey into the pit of Vault 106, “Fallout 3″ had become “Silent Hill.” I was nervous around every corner, dropping my controller when accidentally tipping a garbage can. In Vault 106’s darkest corner, there was a scientist. She wasn’t insane; she was simply holed out at the bottom in hopes of avoiding the others, who had clearly lost it.

She fought me, though, and I had to kill her. There was nothing in her possessions to explain what had happened. I had reached the end of Vault 106 without answers.

A chance encounter with a computer while on my way back up, however, explained everything. Vault 106’s overseer had decided to secretly test on the residents with toxic gas — and the plan backfired badly. The residents went insane, killed one another and the survivors simply stalked the halls of Vault 106 in a mental rage. It was all a botched experiment.

How screwed up is that? If these are the kinds of experiences I can look forward to happening on by continuing to explore the entirety of “Fallout 3,” I will not put down this game anytime soon.

Round-Up: Gamasutra Network Jobs, Week Of Nov. 21st

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:00:53 +0000

In this round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section, including positions from RealNetworks, TimeGate Studios, Factor 5, and more.

Each job posted will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, downloadable console games, cellphone games, independent games, 'serious games', and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted in each market area this week include:

Gamasutra.com - Game Industry Jobs

RealNetworks: Casual Game Designer
"GameHouse Studios is a leading provider of games serving the Casual Games market since 2000 and has over 50 games to its credit. We have an open environment and value creativity and hard work. GameHouse Studios is owned by RealNetworks, Inc. a rapidly growing, cutting edge technology, web based digital music, online gaming and streaming company headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Real provides the universal platform for the delivery of any digital media from any point of origin, across virtually any network, to any person on any Internet-enabled device, anywhere in the world."

Factor 5: Combat Designer
"Designers at Factor 5 are responsible for a combination of level and system design. Depending on the specific role the balance may shift towards one discipline or the other, but each designer is expected to have at least a basic understanding of all aspects of design and be able to learn quickly even in areas outside their primary expertise. Designers will work with the Lead Designer to document all game systems and levels, then work iteratively with all other disciplines to create 'AAA' quality gameplay."

AiLive: Art Director
"AiLive is a California-based company best known for its motion control products on the Wii. AiLive has spent years perfecting a one-of-a-kind machine learning technology for behavior capture, which will drive entirely new forms of gameplay. Earlier this year, the lead designer of Guitar Hero and Rock Band joined AiLive as Creative Director. The Art Director will join as another key member of a growing, world-class team that is determined to exploit their unique strengths to create amazing new games."

TimeGate Studios: Senior Technical Artist
"TimeGate Studios, developer of the award-winning F.E.A.R. Extraction Point and Kohan series, is looking for talented and driven individuals to work on its current line of next-generation products for major publishers. Projects in development include the Unreal Engine 3-powered Section 8, a team-based first-person shooter where elite powered-armor infantry wage war on epic sci-fi battelfields."

WorldsInMotion - Online Game Jobs

Bluehole Studio: Director of Marketing
"Bluehole Interactive is seeking a Director of Marketing for its flagship MMORPG title in North America. The title is being developed by the core members of the team that developed and serviced Lineage II, which achieved worldwide revenues second only to World of Warcraft. The new title is envisioned to be one of the top three MMORPGs in the world by 2011. The title has been under development since March 2007 by 100 + developers, and it is on schedule for beta release in the summer 2009."

SeriousGamesSource - Serious Game Jobs

America's Army Game: Artist Squad Leader
"Launched in July 2002, the America's Army game has penetrated contemporary culture and is one of the most recognizable game brands as a result of its unique inside perspective of the U.S. Army and its exciting game play. As the game's popularity continued to grow, the Army has expanded its brand through a variety of products including console and cell phone games In the near future, the America's Army brand will expand with America's Army Game version 3.0. We're looking for an experienced, exceptionally knowledgeable, talented, and motivated Lead Artist to join our team."

To browse hundreds of similar jobs, and for more information on searching, responding to, or posting game industry-relevant jobs to the top source for jobs in the business, please visit Gamasutra's job board now.

Adults-only collectors edtion of House of the Dead announced

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:03:57 +0000

The 360 and PS3 have their fair share of Super Mega Awesome Collector’s Editions of games. The Wii? Not so much. Luckily Capcom likes the sound of money and thinks that their forthcoming House of the Dead: OVERKILL is well worth a Collector’s Edition. We’re inclined to agree, since anything the reinforces the whole grindhouse style of the game gets a big thumbs up from us. Even better is that the Collector’s Edition is free with pre-order of the game.

As if it didn’t get sexier than free Collector’s Editions of games with zombies in them, the package will include not only a special slipcase (OK, not that exciting) but also Prelude to an Overkill, a graphic novel starring series staple Agent Washington and newcomer Varla Gunns. It tells the breasticle filled tale of the two on the night before the events in OVERKILL occur. The graphic novel will be illustrated by Steve Copter, of dissident punk band ‘Black Mekon.’ I’m not sure why an illustrators credentials would be a band, but from the image above it looks like he’s doing a decent job. How great is the intentional wear and tear on the cover there. Thank god SEGA is stepping up the awesome on the Wii.

The Google Wasteland

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:51:22 +0000

There sure is a lot of stuff in Fallout 3. Granted, most of it involves messily shooting things in the face or enduring woeful characterisation, but not all of it. There’s a ton of fun quests and epic scenery awaiting the casual adventurer. If, however, you’re finding it tough to stray off the beaten path or have fallen into aimless mutant-bothering, the goodly readers of Planet Fallout are busy constructing an interactive, ever-swelling Google map of Washington DC’s ravaged environs. Should help you fillet through the game’s oodles of quests’n’secrets to find the more interesting bits. Good work, those fanboys. Related stories:

Posted by ento. | 9 comments | Donate or subscribe to RPS | Post tags: fallout-3
This article is from Rock, Paper, Shotgun. If you're reading it on any other website, they're stealing it from us without permission.

House of the Dead: Overkill gets Euro release date, Collector's Edition

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:50:00 +0000

Filed under: News

Sega will release The House of the Dead: Overkill in Europe next February, and there'll be an optional bonus at "selected retailers" for fans who preorder: this rad Collector's Edition. Arriving in a fetching minimalist slipcase (loving the authentic scuff marks), this will come bundled with a graphic novel that tells the stories of Agent Washington and Varla Gunns, and the events that lead up to the game.

Here's the downside: this sweet package has so far only been announced for PAL regions -- apart from Germany, obviously. Sucks to be Germany, eh? Hit up our gallery for a closer look at the comic's cover and a sample page.

Gallery: House of the Dead: Overkill

[Via press release]

House of the Dead: Overkill gets Euro release date, Collector's Edition originally appeared on Nintendo Wii Fanboy on Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Opinion: Fallout 3 - Escape From Vault 101

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:00:22 +0000

[In this in-depth analysis, commentator Duncan Fyfe looks closely at Bethesda's Fallout 3 to discuss why it's "distinctly unlike those "choose fate, save world" games", but is oddly affecting nonetheless.]

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?

A Tendency For Violence

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:37:00 +0000

So I finally resolved my decision paralysis crisis in Fallout 3 -- to which, incidentally, I hear it's preferable to refer as FO3, and not "F3," to avoid associations with this.

Truly, the first moment of emergence from Vault 101 gave me the chills. We travel through a lot of ruined wastelands in games -- abandoned labs, haunted tunnels, destitute villages, the headquarters of various nefarious parties. But when the game environment manages to retain such a grim and telling imprint of what life in the place must have once been like, and when it just begs you to ask, "what happened?" I just go all jelly in the knees, I do. I've got a real post-apocalypse fetish.

I felt this way about BioShock's underwater once-paradise; I felt this way about Fatal Frame's cursed mansions, and I felt this way about Alex's house in Silent Hill: Homecoming, to name just a few, and I feel this way about Springvale and Megaton. It's strangely satisfying to be able to see, either traced in the dust of wreckage or subtly, in the lines of social structures, the long and lonely road back from a tragedy.

Which is why what I'm enjoying most about Fallout 3 is the permanent after-image of innocence. My colleague Chris Dahlen's review at Variety says the game's vision of Washington D.C "didn't just wreck the buildings, it twisted the American Dream itself." And maybe I'm a closet patriot -- or, at least, patriotic in the fashion of the American subconscious -- but this touches me, deeply.

I was struck by something as simple as the idealistic, propaganda-style pop art pastel of a family apparently playing football in a park. It sometimes appears during interim screens, but poignantly, it's one of the last things you see as you flee your room in Vault 101 for the last time.

I stepped out into the sun and to the irradiated dust, and I really, really did get chills.

Then I wanted to shoot some things. A lot of things.

My first thought, on seeing my first live humans for several stretches, was not, "hey! How are you holding up? What's your story?" No, it was actually, "I wonder what will happen if I kill them?"

MTV Multiplayer's Tracey John and I have joked that we Twitter to one another so often that we feel that we know each other better than we actually do -- I wrote that I wondered why I felt so tempted to shoot the salesman's two-headed pack-cow. Aren't I supposed to be feeling... exploratory? Moved? Anything but gleefully murderous?

"Dude," Tracey wrote back. "I totally killed that two-headed cow. Had to put it out of its misery."

But I didn't just want to cap the cow, I wanted to try and take down the chick standing guard over the cow, execute the guy with the cowboy hat, Why is it that, given such a stirringly nostalgic playground, framed in the cultural touchstones of one of my own nation's most painful-charming eras, just makes me want to kill?

Then again, how would you feel if you saw such absolute destruction of the American Dream?

Anyway, I think what I'm loving most about Fallout 3 is how aptly it blends the idealistic with the sinister -- which probably makes it even more of a thought process you're deciding which of these your character responds to more.