Pop

Do you mean "me" by you? No.

So Kotaku had this post, see, about "auteur theory" and how it might apply to game developers. Basically the idea is that if a director has a consistent vision, with consistent thematic elements reverberating throughout his work, he is considered an auteur. Example: David Cronenberg, whose movies, even the non-horror ones, tend to revolve around the concept of psychological sickness and change manifesting physically (see: The Fly, Existenz, The Brood) So are there game developers we can think of as "auteurs" with singular visions? Tell me. Here's my argument presented for one Master Chief Avellone. I probably butchered some names and concepts, what with reciting from memory, but the basic points stand:

You could buy space monkey meat on the Krogan world. I have no idea where it goes, though...

Liara / Shadow Broker stuff will likely be DLC, along with the new JNPC.

Don't know if anybody posted it but MCA wrote a blog post about what he thinks of Fallout 3. In short, he doesn't hate it as much as you do. Perhaps you all should loudly question his judgment and / or faculties.

Squeenix copyrights Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Of course Deus Ex 3 hasn't been given an official title so it's probably that, but my heart did jump a bit when I saw that

I am going to hold you to this.

I don't think it'd be for them, really. Squeenix hasn't been shy about wanting a bigger share of the Western market - Final Fantasy sales are flagging even in Japan and it's got 'em scared. Ideally they want to be like Capcom, who are probably the most successful AAA japanese game company stateside, what with Resident Evil and Street Fighter selling in the millions. With Dead Rising 2, Capcom will be doing what Squeenix would really like to do - publish successful games that are made stateside. You'd definitely hear no end to the complaining by... everybody, really. I'd be really surprised if Obsidz does in fact work with FF (that's assuming all this twitter stuff indeed points to a publishing deal). It seems to me like it'd just be really difficult to pull off in true Obsidz style. Which is why I'm assuming Obsidz would be working on an Eidos property.

"Square Enix president Yoichi Wada gave a thumbs-up to the idea of a non-Japanese developed installment of his company’s flagship Final Fantasy series. “That is one of the possible paths, but it’s not something that we would shift completely over to,” he said. “There is always a possibility that Final Fantasy could be produced with the input of our Western developers, overseen by our Japanese developers.” Sounds a bit like the Red Eagle deal, no?

That's a pretty short following list. Either he's a big fan of Obsidz in particular or there's something going on there. They are known to be interested in western gaming these days. Squeenix now owns Eidos and is overseeing the new Deus Ex and Thief games. If Obsidz ends up making a Deus Ex RPG I will flip my ****.

It can't really be understated how big of a splash Fallout 3 made. After Bioshock it was maybe the game that normal people heard about.

I seem to remember it being a bombing by Atlas.

The shooter aspect of the game is spruced up a bit but I have two gripes with the game. One is that it kind of mangles the storytelling of the first game. For one, the audio diaries are now mostly one-offs, instead of series that tell stories of people in Rapture. Most of the time they're meant to be functional - surly blue-collar mechanic woman pops up twice for the sole purpose of indirectly telling the player character what to do. The game also starts off badly, with the opening sequence being essentially a warmed-over retread of the climactic Bioshock 1 sequence, and then with the Little Sister who walks up to you and tells you "Eleanor misses you and you should go look for her". Blatant case of tell over show. The worst part of the game, however, is the thematic disconnect. Despite the whinging of so many chuckle****s here and elsewhere, Bioshock 1 was really brilliantly realized - The story of the game was really the story of Andrew Ryan, who created a would-be Objectivist paradise. Every time you picked up a new audio diary, every time you entered a new area, you gained a bit more insight into not only how Rapture collapsed, but the promise of the place, and why people would flock to it. The gameworld reflected the core themes of the game very well. The ruined art-deco style was a nod to Ayn Rand's masturbatory novels. Everything in the game can be bought. The splicers exist as the inevitable end result of Ryan's individualist philosophy. Andrew Ryan himself was about as good a character as you could write if all your characters spoke entirely in monologue. Contrast that with Bioshock 2. The theme are vaguely defined and they don't gel with the gameworld. Sofia Lamb is haphazardly retconned into the setting, and the inversion of politics from Objectivism to Collectivism doesn't even sound good on paper. It seems to have been implemented more out of a spirit of fair play than any coherent ideas of implementation. There's nothing in the game that tells us anything about why Collectivism is untenable or insane, aside from the fact that Lamb won't stop talking about it. The splicers (who again, are more or less living symbols of Ryan's Objectivism) are now part of a cult for some reason. We never get a sense of why Lamb is doing what she's doing. She's not half as interesting as Ryan was. The gameplay IS improved, though. They added just a little more variety and better AI to splicers, which is a nice. However they didn't really add enough - Rapture is really just the same as it was in Bioshock 1, and without the spooky thematic journey (for lack of a better term) it's not a very interesting place to revisit. Maybe if 2K wasn't so intent on quickie sequels to improve their share value (around the time Bioshock 1 came out the only things that kept them from going under were Bioshock and I think GTA4) they could really build upon what made Bioshock 1 such a success. But they didn't. This game was a pretty major dissapointment for me. I give it a C+.

The Vita-Chambers are optional, there's a toggle for them in the options menu.

BOOOOOOOOOO BOOOOOOOOOOO

Sounds like a PR push fairly soonish.

Anybody in the market for a pipboy?

Considering the looooooooooooooong production time, I wouldn't be surprised if they cut the PC version to accelerate it. That's a lot of eliminated QA time.

That's pretty fat for a coincidence, don't you think?

Not strapped immoveably to your forearm like some piece of cyber-bondage gear. It always helps to read your posts in this voice:

If any of y'all likes electronic music, you can listen to me now and every week from 1-3 AM MST at www.kcsufm.com

It's unclear. If you're referring to a PnP system I don't know. But by the sound of it, the guy making the decisions at the top of every department will be a Red Eagle dude, and most of the legwork will be Obsidz. Obsidz influence could be significant, hard to tell at this point.

Also, I think we can safely assume that this will be the first game to use the Onyx engine. We can also assume that this game is actually pretty far along. The first talk of a "fantasy" game headed up by Feargus (on the Codex I think, by Alvin Nelson) was around the time of the Aliens cancellation, maybe even a little before that. On the other hand Onyx still needed time at the point the axe fell on Aliens. Maybe it isn't so far along. However at this point I remain unoptimistic. While Obsidian almost certainly has some creative leeway, the final word does not rest with them. I don't trust it.

I realy hope this is not the deal, else we get some retarded gangrape of the original IP with overhilarious marketing, ridiculous antisecondhand sales features and NPCs asking for your creditcard numbers selling the newest DLC with special nut armor for your hero... Not to mention huge sales!