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That engine does indeed look incredible. Though it must be said that the website is designed very awkwardly. Who decided where the buttons would go? You register through the bird and the "about" page is just thin air.

Agree with the bold part completely. While I recognize it's a lot easier (read: cheaper and quicker) to make 1-2 hour DLC than full on expansions Actually some of the recent interviews with Todd Howard indicate that it's a lot easier and more easily successful to create a Shivering Isles-type expansion than a half-dozen bite-size excursions. He indicated that Bethsoft would probably not revisit F3's DLC model in the future.

Keep in mind that NWN2's combat was relatively languid in pace, due to the real-time turns. Actually having said that I really have very little idea of what you mean by "the combat experience". I would think spell visuals would be the best thing about combat which prominently features endlessly recycled attack animations.

What is up with those lens flairs? Is JJ Abrams your visual director? Heyoooo

Nuh uh, Ferg was interviewed post-DS3 announcement and he's said there's another game they haven't announced. It doesn't seem like WoT is going much of anywhere at present, though that may have changed. And Project Director is more or less a different name for "Executive Producer", if I understand it right. So given that MCA is a machine from the future, his design duties should be compatible with the processes of approval and revision that are endemic to the Exec Producer role.

The game has been content complete since E3. They've been doing QA since then.

So is Victor a JNPC then? Or does he "shadow" the player?

His team certainly is. Irrational is owned by 2K. They could walk out en masse and create a studio from scratch (it's been done, certainly) but that would likely invite a lot of legal trouble, and no small amount of closed doors from publishers concerned about the "temperament" of the people they contract. It's just a bit ironic that you show such disdain for big-ticket games and deign to characterize James Cameron as an artiste in the world of film.

Christopher Nolan is not owned by investors. He can walk away and make movies for different people if he wants to. This is not how game development works.

It's called Psychonauts and it's awesome. Meanwhile at 2K offices: Man you don't know anything about 2K do you

Could be neat, but gameplay-wise it sounds worryingly like a Bioshock Total Conversion Mod with extra bells and whistles. After the pretty dismal sequel (before that, even) I've been worried about the "CHA-CHING CHA-CHING" sound that no doubt sounded loud between the ears of the 2K brass who, if you remember, were in pretty dire financial straits around the time of the first Bioshock, looking for a buyer but possessed of too many expensive franchises (GTA and Bioshock, in particular) to find one. The squandering of Irrational's potential is almost certainly the fault of their owners. Bioshock 2 was a rush job with some pretty stupid ideas, where it actually had them. Anyway, the 4 years of development time might not really be a smooth unbroken process. They could have gone through several revisions of the game or they may have started a different game before working on Infinite. Game development is littered with false starts and cancellations that fans never hear about. My hope is that they've used that time to fashion a new engine, because the version of UE3 they used for the first two had some major limitations.

Wasn't the Arcade character (Zach Levi voicing) from Van Buren? Am I misremembering that? One thing from VB which I hope makes it in, in some small way, is the tribal guy who speaks only in corporate slogans.

**** you Billy Mitchell You will forever be a locus of my hatred.

You could think of it as a throwback to Fallout 2 (or most other Avellone projects, natch) wherein the Big Bad is right out there in the open from pretty much the get-go? I mean I didn't read the spoiler, but if they're just going to toss it around like that it won't be much longer before somebody drops it minus the spoiler tags.

To my knowledge, Marcus wasn't going to show up in Van Buren. I know VB is not New Vegas, but all the same I wonder if Marcus would be in the game had Bethsoft not killed off Harold. Still kind of sore about that.

Also if Michael Dorn is reprising his past role there will be much rejoicing. Also: I'm guessing Matthew Perry is either a casino shuckster / comedian, or Mr. Fantastic.

Border Lord mother****ers. Border Lord. Seriously though it's nice that they got a number of (geek friendly) character actor types to do VA instead of blowing all their cash on a Sean Connery cameo or whatever.

Not really specifically about Fallout, but the Denver Post has compiled a photo archive of pictures relating to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Haunting stuff. You can see them here. Nagasaki, before and after. If I recall correctly, Nagasaki was actually the least efficient of the two bombs, given the geography of the area. Makes you wonder what an "optimal" blast would look like.

Josh isn't an idiot, you know.

Remember Fallout where you could shoot someone in the eyes and most of the time it wouldn't automatically drastically incapacitate or kill them? That game sure was bull****.

HA. Ha ha. Heh. Hmm.

Given that Onyx was originally developed as an engine for a game with acid-blooded enemies, I would hope it has the capacity for at least some destructible environment stuff. What we've heard so far about DSIII seems to peg the action as being heavily physics-based, so that holds some promise. I'd hope for a powerful telekinesis spell, or something. Troika used an early alpha of the engine. Besides, if you look at promo videos they made early in development, the physics are curiously much more robust than they ended up being in the finished product. I'd imagine that had to do either with cut content for the sake of nonexistent QA, or the emphasis on stat-based gameplay.

Josh insinuated that the Alien RPG was going to cost somewhere around $30 million. AP had been in development for way more than two years. All that time x salary for the studio could definitely rack up that kind of price tag.

Wait, so Nat Chapman is the lead designer then, and Rich Taylor is the PD? Also that trailer wasn't much.

FO1: Stop the Hulk Army FO2: Stop Oil Rig President FO3: Stop Computer President Moon sounds good. IIRC you were supposed to be able to see some sort of moon settlement when you arrived at BOMB in VB. It's certainly the sort of thing that people in the 50's thought would definitely happen in the future.