Fallout fan Wikia The Vault believes them to be, writing today that they were acquired from an “anonymous, but reliable source” and that they’re a part of Interplay’s defence in a lawsuit filed against the developer by Fallout-rights holder Bethesda.

The screens at least appear to be in line with what the Project V13 concept art hinted at, even if the purported in-game stuff looks like a very brown, very bleak place to spend one’s online time.http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Ausir/Another_batch_of_V13_concept_art

The Vault blogger Ausir also has more PV13 concept art, should you be turned off by the reality of the in-development MMO.

According to reports from Kotaku tipsters affected by the save and posters on Bethsoft’s official Fallout 3 forums, the problem appears to be limited to folks in Canada (with one from Sweden) who have the PlayStation 3 version of the re-release. Limited though it may appear to be, the inability to play with characters cultivated over dozens or hundreds of hours in the complete Fallout 3 package is understandably frustrating.

Fortunately, Bethesda Software appears to be investigating the issue.

“Wanted to let you know I’ve been working with folks here at the office to investigate the issues with GOTY in Canada,” assures Bethesda’s Sr. Community Manager. “When I have more details to share, I’ll let you know. Stay tuned.”

So, buyer beware, especially if you’re from America’s hat and have invested heavily in the original version of Fallout 3. Kotaku readers, who’s having similar issues? Who’s getting along in the wastelands without issue? Let us know in the comments.

Thanks to Wolfsong, Evan and everyone else for the tips.

GOTY saves not working. [Fallout 3 Forums]
Fallout 3 GOTY – Now Available [Bethesda Blog]

But does the heroine deliver enough fun in third-person shooter WET to justify the price, or is the game all flash and little substance?

Loved
Acrobatics: That’s really what this game is all about: Flipping, sliding, tumbling, spinning, all while blasting away at bad guys in slow-mo, often with two guns. Rubi’s talent for acrobatic gunplay is most often tested in arena-like maps which require players not only to kill off an absurdly large group of enemies, but also block or jam doors that act as spawn points in the game.

It is in these acrobatic moments that the game sings. The controls are deftly tuned and making Rubi do spectacular things is as easy as pushing a button to slide on the ground, another to jump and then aiming her motion with a controller. The rest is nearly automatic.

While you don’t have to constantly jump, wall run or slide under and around objects, it would be hard to survive without doing so. That’s because when you’re doing these acrobatics the game automatically slips into slow motion. It also takes over the aiming for one of your guns, allowing you to focus on aiming the other so you can blast enemies down two at a time.

As the game progresses, the challenge increases drastically, shifting a gamer’s attention from scoring lots of points with strung-together attacks to simply surviving the onslaught. And it is always a satisfying challenge.

Weapons and Ammo: Rubi starts the game armed with just two six-shooters and a sword. As she progresses through the game you unlock dual shotguns, dual submachineguns and even an explosive-firing crossbow. All of the weapons serve different purposes, so you’ll find yourself switching between them quite a bit on the fly.

While the ammo for the three unlockable weapons is limited, the six-shooter’s ammo is not. That’s a key to some of the game’s success, I think. Because you don’t have to worry about ammo conservation while using the six shooter, you can instead focus on doing spectacular moves while spraying the room with unending gunfire.

Style: The game oozes style. From the apt “face-melting, musical debauchery” of the soundtrack to the quirky little retro movie theatre ads that run at odd moments between pivotal scenes in the game.

The design choices of WET pushes what could have been a generic title into something with flavour; something that’s so enjoyable to watch at times you may lose a life or two doing so.

Rage Mode: WET is essentially broken up into three types of game play: Those enemy-spewing arenas that force gamers to focus on acrobatics as much as gunplay, sections that feel like a platformer with some gunplay, and rage modes.

Every rage mode kicks off with a splash of blood. The music goes psycho, the graphics shift to highly-stylised silhouettes of black, red and white and the action unhooks from its already weak grasp of reality. In essence, Rubi loses it. This turns the sections you typically play through into pulse-pounding, over-the-top moments of exuberant thrill kills.

While by the end of the game I found the arena sections of WET to be the most satisfying, the rage modes were always a welcome diversion.

Ending: Finally a game that doesn’t spoil a tight plot with a self-indulgent, rambling ending. WET ends as it plays: Quickly and brutally.

Hated
Wonky Controls: While the acrobatic controls of Rubi in flight and during gameplay work quite well. Controlling her during the sections when you have to manoeuvre through hazardous objects and leap across sections of maps can be a challenge. It feels like Rubi is never ready to run straight forward and always sort of veers to the left or right, making it hard to hit the right spot on some of these controlled jumps.

Wonky Camera: Again, the camera works mostly fine in the arena, but get Rubi in a confined area and you start running into problems. It probably would have been a good idea to limit gameplay to what WET does best, wide open scenes.

Platforming: The forced platforming sections of WET not only slow down the action, combined with the controls, they really deflate the entire game. It’s annoying to survive hand-bruising, intense encounters with crowds of thugs only to miss a simple jump from open doorway to nearby wall.

Worse still, many of these moments don’t do a good job of explaining where exactly you’re supposed to be moving Rubi, leading to death by confusion. Something that shouldn’t be happening in a game like this.

Graphics: While the style of the game is an undeniable attraction for WET, the graphics are not. Even with the deliberate, scratchy film effect it’s hard to miss that the characters look hollow, like skin wrapped around air. This is most noticeable in the cut-scenes that still manage to deliver an intriguing plot. It’s unfortunate that bad graphics plague the game, because it distracts from an otherwise engaging experience.

One would think that being essentially forced to turn every sequence, every bit of action, every moment of confrontation into something you’d expect to see in Cirque de Solei would get tedious. It should get tedious. Why does Rubi need to slide across the pavement on her knees in slow motion to plug a guy standing with his back to her. Or wall run and flip over a lackadaisical henchmen before gutting him with her sword. She doesn’t, but man is it fun. And no, it never gets old.

WET is an oddly satisfying experience. Despite its many flaws, some critical to gameplay, WET delivers a quick run through a fun story that delights in shocking, but doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s a little short, a little wonky, but when it delivers, it delivers big.

WET was developed by Artificial Mind and Movement and published by Bethesda for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 on September 15. Retails for $US59.99 USD. Played through entire campaign and several challenges on the Playstation 3 version of the game.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

The details of that case come from a complaint filed in the District Court of Maryland earlier this week. That complaint alleges that Interplay did not seek approval for the sale of the Fallout Trilogy bundle, which features the original Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics. Bethesda claims that the title Fallout Trilogy is “confusingly similar” to that of Fallout 3 and takes issue with Interplay’s marketing, sale and distribution of other Fallout packages named Fallout Collection and Saga Fallout.

Bethesda also takes issue with Interplay’s licensing of Fallout games to digital distribution services Good Old Games (GOG), GameTap and Steam, which Interplay was said never to have sought approval or permission for. Basically, Bethesda takes issue with pretty much everything Interplay seems to be doing with the pre-Fallout 3 games, which it believes is cannibalising sales of Fallout 3.

The Fallout 3 developer furthermore wants to officially terminate Interplay’s rights to create a massively multiplayer online game with the Fallout licence. Bethesda believes that Interplay has breached its trademark licensing agreement by failing to enter into full-scale development of a Fallout MMO.

Earlier this week, tipster Dan M. snapped that screen pic of the 22 trophies. Tipster Player X went comparing trophies with someone in his friends list and noticed them, too. They’re listed below.

Sit tight, PS3 owners, your wait is almost over. The DLC will release in the same order as it did for Xbox 360, beginning with Operation Anchorage, then the Pitt, Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta. Correction: Broken Steel will be the first expansion, followed by Operation Anchorage, then The Pitt, then Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta.

• Aiding the Outcasts (silver)
• The Guns of Anchorage (silver)
• Paving the Way (silver)
• Operation Anchorage! (gold)
• Into The Pitt (silver)
• Unsafe Working Conditions (silver)
• Free labour (gold)
• Mill Worker (silver)
• Death From Above (silver)
• Shock Value (silver)
• Who Dares Wins (gold)
• Devil (bronze)
• True Mortal (bronze)
• Messiah (bronze)
• The Local Flavor (silver)
• Walking With Spirits (silver)
• A Meeting of the Minds (gold)
• Bog Walker (silver)
• Not of This World (silver)
• Among the Stars (silver)
• This Galaxy Ain’t Big Enough… (gold)
• Alien Archivist (silver)

This room of humming computers, quietly clicking keyboards, and energised gamers is the throbbing heart of QuakeCon, id Software’s annual fan gathering held last week in Grapevine, Texas.

While the free convention, held in a Dallas, Texas-area hotel each year, sheds light on new projects in the works by the famed developers behind Quake, Doom and Return to Wolfenstein, what makes this gathering unique is it’s sense of camaraderie. Gamers from across the country, and sometimes around the world, bring their own computers to the event to hook them up in a massive network and game together.

It is, id Software says, three days of Peace, Love and Rockets.

This year the event drew more than 7,000 people to the Dallas-area and included a more than two-hour talk by id developer John Carmack. But QuakeCon hasn’t always been so auspicious. The convention grew out of a gathering of gamers in the summer of 1996 that was more pilgrimage than celebration, said id Software president Todd Hollenshead.

“A bunch of guys made a pilgrimage to Dallas to see if they could get (John Carmack) to talk at their LAN party,” he said.

The group all gathered at a hotel in Garland, Texas a few miles from id Software. They set up an impromptu tournament and then emailed Carmack asking if he could swing by.

On the last day, Carmack showed up and talked to the group in the hotel’s parking lot for about half an hour.

The late night parking lot chat and the days leading up to it have, over the years, blossomed into a gaming party of sorts, with tournaments, music, gaming and Carmack’s annual chat.

Although the event has always been held close to id Software’s Texas offices, that doesn’t stop a group of id developers from moving into the hotel for the show’s four days so they can check in as often as they’d like on the 24-hour a day gaming.

“People who come to QuakeCon are genuinely enthused about PCs,” Hollenshead said. “They lug their PCs to the hotel just to play for 72 hours.”

QuakeCon provides the tables, the chairs, the power and the cabling to hook all of those thousands of computers together, the gamers provide everything else.

“I think this is the largest free event of its kind in North America and the largest bring-your-own-computer in the world,” he said.

The lights in the massive gaming room go off Thursday and don’t come back on again until Sunday, and some people try to take advantage of every minute of that potential game time.

“There are people who will literally go down there and play until they are done,” he said. “We’ve had instances of people who pass out at their computers.

“People will bring pillows, lay them over the keyboard and go to sleep. We don’t encourage that, because it’s probably not the best thing.”

The computers, many modified into outlandish shapes like small coffins or Transformer Optimus Prime, light up the otherwise darked space.

“It’s a cool thing to see – the monitors and the neon,” Hollenshead said

While QuakeCon is returning to its roots in some ways, it’s also moving forward in others. Earlier this year id Software was purchased by the company that owns developer Bethesda Games.

Last week Bethesda Games attended their first ever QuakeCon, remaining quietly in the background of the show typically dedicated to id. But that is something that could change in the future.

“The potential is that we could have a bigger and more exciting QuakeCon” with Bethesda’s help,” Hollenshead said.

It makes sense for QuakeCon to try and expand from an id-centric experience to one more broadly dedicated to PC gaming in all of its forms.

The current stable of cutting-edge consoles have eroded the home computer’s already failing gamer-base and groups like the PC Gaming Alliance are bringing groups together to try and draw that audience back.

Hollenshead believes that as this generation of consoles age, PC games are regaining their advantage.

“As consoles go into their fifth Christmas the technology advantage of the PC is going to become an important factor,” He said. “It’s likely over the next couple years that PC gaming will have a a bigger competitive advantage.”

Not only that, the original design of Fallout 3, by Black Isle, there were no plans to include Dogmeat. But Bethesda ultimately brought him back. It seems bizarre that they could have left out a dog companion, one of the most motionally fulfilling features of the original two games.

The Escapist’s latest issue examines canines in gaming, and no such study would be complete without a discussion of Dogmeat, the unwaveringly faithful follower your Lone Wanderer picks up in all three Fallout titles. The game’s creators never imagined how attached players would become to the dog, going to hell and back to keep him alive until the end of the game.

Junktown Dog

“Dogmeat was definitely inspired by The Road Warrior,” says Cain. “Leonard Boyarsky, the art director… had that movie running continuously in his office, and I think he remarked on several occasions that having a dog in the game would be really cool. [It's] why we wanted a dog in the first place.”

Many pieces of the Fallout games were inspired by The Road Warrior, from the opening “newsreel” monologues (narrated by Ron Perlman of The City of Lost Children, another inspiration according to Cain) to the games’ stylized leather armour and medical braces. One of the most vivid images from Bethesda Game Studios’ Fallout 3, the latest installment in the series, is that of the Lone Wanderer with Dogmeat by his side, a mirror image of a scene from Mad Max. Even the breed is the same: Both are Blue Heelers, known for their loyalty, trainability and heterochromia (one blue eye, one brown eye).
image

What isn’t derived from The Road Warrior is Dogmeat’s name; that likely comes from a scene in the 1975 film A Boy and His Dog where Vic (Don Johnson) refers to his mutt as “Dogmeat.”

“A Boy and His Dog inspired Fallout on many levels, from underground communities of survivors to glowing mutants,” says Heinig. “My understanding is that (Fallout designer) Scott Bennie settled on the name ‘Dogmeat’ for the character, and it’s likely that he did pick that from the story in question.” Good thing, because according to Bennie, Dogmeat’s original name was “Dogs**t.”

In the original Fallout 3 (aka Van Buren), designed to near-completion by Black Isle, there were no plans to bring Dogmeat back, but fortunately for dog lovers he made it into Bethesda’s version as a presumed descendant of the original dog who – according to the developers – perished in a “force field accident.” Fallout 3’s Dogmeat not only follows and defends you, but will fetch food, ammo and weapons (even boasting the curious but helpful ability to pilfer things from locked containers). When he goes missing, he can often be found waiting patiently outside Vault 101, perhaps inspired by the final scene from A Boy and His Dog where “Dogmeat” waits outside a vault for his owner.

[...]

Dogmeat’s unwavering devotion lets players “Pet the Dog,” a fiction trope wherein a potentially despised character appears kinder by demonstrating a love for dogs: In Equilibrium, Cleric John Preston slaughters a dozen policemen to save a puppy; Discworld’s Lord Vetinari (veterinary?) is an ex-assassin with dogs named Wuffles and Mr. Fusspot; even Richard Nixon had Checkers. In an uncaring wasteland where you can play a total psychopath if you so choose, Dogmeat is a moral compass: Though your needle might swing towards good or evil, his centre always holds strong provided you protect him. If you don’t, his death becomes a sad reminder of the consequences of reckless slaughter.

For many reasons, Dogmeat is arguably the most successful NPC companion ever, according to Chris Avellone, Level Designer for Fallout 2, creator of the Fallout Bible and Chief Creative Officer of Obsidian Entertainment, developer of Fallout: New Vegas.

“One, he doesn’t talk, so the players can project a personality on to him,” says Avellone. “Two, he’s effective in combat … and three, he’s a dog that stays with you through thick-and-thin. I don’t think there’s a deeper ‘awww’ sentiment than people have in their hearts for their pets.”

- Michael Fiegel

MTV Multiplayer recently asked Bethesda Softworks’ Jeff Gardiner if there were any plans to extend the game’s level cap, as was done when Broken Steel took it from 20 to 30. Gardiner was also asked if the game could handle boosting the stats above 10 and/or the skills above 100 without breaking. Short answer, no.

“I know from the outside this seems like a fairly simple proposition, but doing this could unbalance the game in a variety of ways,” he told Multiplayer. The game’s replay value, he said, is in going through it again as different characters having different experiences.

Gardiner’s followup didn’t explicitly slam the door on a cap extension later. “We’re very happy that people enjoy Fallout 3 so much that they want to keep playing it, and I’m sure we’ll look into addressing these concerns in future games,” he said.

We’ve heard never-say-never from Bethesda before, and it’s a sound policy. But it sounds like “future games,” means “games other than Fallout 3.”

Kotaku AU Note: My own experience suggests he’s right. It’s already far too easy even on the Hardcore difficulty setting. Unleashing a level-40 character on the wasteland would totally break the experience, unless Bethesda rebalanced the entire game. Which ain’t gonna happen.

Bethesda: Further Level Cap Increases Could Unbalance Fallout 3 [MTV Multiplayer via Joystiq]

The only thing it’ll cost you is 148 megabytes of hard drive space, a small price to pay for the game Johnny Wilson of Computer Gaming World once called “Revolutionary!”

The Elder Scrolls Downloads [ElderScrolls.com - thanks, Andrew!]

Where does a sprawling game that’s already sprawled across three downloadable expansions set partially in Alaska, Pittsburgh and an Air Force base go in a fourth? To the rocky beaches, creepy swamps and faded boardwalk of a new island called Point Lookout.

With so much content already released that makes the massive Bethesda game more massive, the offering of another $US10 expansion is either a tough sell or a necessary fix for those who’ve been buying everything. Following the bombastic, level-cap-raising, end-revising Broken Steel, however, the next piece of content just can’t seem like that big a deal. Good thing it’s interesting.

Loved
Creepy Creeps:Point Lookout is no Resident Evil. It’s not as scary as the first of those games. But it’s got a double-barreled shotgun and plenty of shambling enemies to be shot with it. It’s got a boarded up mansion, a propensity to exhaust its visitors’ ammo supply, and some great psychological tricks similar to what Bethesda’s designers dabbled with in one of the Vaults in the core game. It also has a bunch of new inbred enemies and a lot of people swinging axes in close quarters where your rifle is poor defence. If you like to panic while playing your games, this is the Fallout 3 DLC for you.

Beauty And The Beach:Games grounded on real world terrain such as Grand Theft Auto and Fallout benefit from art designers who draw from interesting elements of real geography. Forget lava bridges and rainbow roads. There’s beauty in bringing a strong art style and the player witnessing it to craggy cliffs that overlooking a shipwreck and the shoals of sand exposed by low tide. A smoky sky, a looming Ferris wheel, a lone lighthouse in the distance, a cave littered with coffins… this is the scenery to make you feel uneasy.

Hated
Strange Pace: It starts hard. It ends easy. There are lots of optional side mission, at least one that was surprisingly simple for a Level 26 hero. An expansion’s degree of challenge certainly doesn’t need to be set to a steady incline, but when you feel like it’s getting good is when it’s ending.

This one’s the haunted side-trip of the Fallout 3 downloadable expansions. It offers players a more significant change of scenery than any of the DLCs since Operation Anchorage. It breaks no new ground for gameplay, but advances Fallout 3’s aesthetics.

Recommended for those seeking uneasy and weird. And, hey, if you play Fallout 3 and already have your hero eating the flesh of the ghouls he kills, then uneasy and weird is just right.

Oh, and it features Mother Brain. See? Weird.

Fallout 3: Point Lookout was developed by Bethesda Softworks and distributed to the Xbox 360 and Windows for download on June. It’s also announced as coming to the PS3 later. Retails for 800 Microsoft Points (US$10/AU$13.20). Played the five core quests, one extra, sampled the new weapons, raised my hero from Level 24 to Level 26