Flashback: Never Changes

Whenever I have to think back to why I love Bethesda, two series come to mind—The Elder Scrolls and Fallout. I’ve talked about both numerous times on the Workshop, namely Skyrim, Oblivion and New Vegas, but I think that it’s time to champion the one that I feels stands out the most from the 7^th generation of gaming: Fallout 3. This is something I had to put a lot of thinking into. I loved Oblivion, and even spent more time on it then I did on Fallout 3, but as I’m about to get into, there’s a strong reason why I gave Fallout 3 the best of the 4 choices.

Most people would expect when comparing Skyrim, New Vegas, Oblivion and Fallout 3 for greatness, you’d end up with an order like the one I just listed. After all, TES is debatably one of the biggest franchises in all of gaming right now, and although Fallout is big, TES is considered Bethesda’s crowning achievement. However, I think that in this case, Fallout 3 reigns supreme, even over one of my all-time favorites, Oblivion, giving my overall ranking system as:

1.      Fallout 3

2.      The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

3.      The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

4.      Fallout: New Vegas

Now comes the hard part of justification. Starting out with why the two older games got the top two slots takes a bit of referencing back. Even though there are some nice improvements in New Vegas from 3, it doesn’t feel the same. I don’t know if this may be because Obsidian was the lead in making the game, and Bethesda was on Fallout 3, but it is a let-down.

 Oblivion, on the other hand is beaten in a large amount of ways by Skyrim; better graphics, better voice-acting, heavily superior combat system, new and improved items, and more. But, there are two things missing from Skyrim that Oblivion did have—a good central story, and huge amounts of charm. Now, I will admit that of the charm of Oblivion comes from the quirks: being able to jump for 5 seconds, wearing the gray cowl around town and taking it off just before guards come up to attack you so they angrily say “How are you today, Citizen?”, the fantastic effects of Skooma and of course, the fantastic voice acting by all of the guards. I played more than 1000+ hours of Oblivion before I got bored on 3 different characters. I played for just over 400 hours on 2 characters of Skyrim before I got bored of it.

So, how did I decide between the two games in the end? I looked at how I felt playing the two of them. Fallout 3 has a fantastic storyline, and the two games have completely different combat systems, magic and medieval weaponry vs. limited guns and ingenuity. I enjoyed the 2-toned system of Fallout 3’s Enclave and Brotherhood more than the huge amount of sprawling quests of Cyrodil. Although there may be more to do in the bigger world of Tamriel, the wastelands of D.C. truly are alive and unforgettable, giving them my top spot. Deciding 3^rd and 4^th wasn’t hard after that, I love Skyrim, just not as much as Oblivion. Obsidian, although not quite as magical as Bethesda still did a good job, and 4^th place is not a bad spot—they were up against impeccable competition.

Bethesda is a powerful producer and idea maker, but I think the next direction they may want to consider moving in, is one step back. The games, although more resourceful, are missing on what made them great in the first place. They took a chance on the “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” idea, and fixed good systems and made them better, but lost something on the way. Fallout 3 is a prime example of a game that wasn’t perfect, but came damn near close to it. We don’t expect games to be 100% perfect and accurate all of the time. Fallout 3 is a game that gets closer to that bar than any other Bethesda game I’ve played.

--Santa

Blargument: The rise of New Ideas, and Games

All right, ladies and gentlemen! I have a new idea, and it’s so stupid, it may actually work. My brother and I play a lot of videogames. But, we do not always agree. So, with a name given to me by a good friend, I will start a new series, occurring every now and then, simple called Blarguments. Inside of these simple little ideas, he and I will duke out ideas, and decide who is most right. Winner gets the satisfaction of knowing he won. I will be marked by Santa: and he will be by R.

Question: What will be the game of the year, 2011?

R: I think it will be Arkham City, and you’re lucky I think that too, otherwise your plan wouldn’t work out quite well.

Santa:  Well, I sure am glad that you think so, but it will be Skyrim.

R: It’s not going to be Skyrim, I can guarantee you. Anything that Skyrim will offer, AC will offer as well.

 Santa: What about the uber character customization?

R:  While it is true that AC will not have customization, you do have Batman and Catwoman who are very diverse characters. You will be able to speak in AC, and will be able to have big, glorious cutscenes which are impossible in Skyrim.

Santa: I was more referring to the ability to completely BUILD everything! You build their face, make their class, and build their skills; you don’t get better than that.

R:  While it is true that you can build a huge relationship with your own self-made character, Batman is special too. He is so strongly against killing, that he is completely different. You just can’t re-create a Batman. Catwoman is special too. I can’t wait to see the difference between them, and the new representations of weapons.  Batman will go anywhere, breaks laws, and private property but he won’t break his one rule, probably not even in self defense! He’s just that cool of a guy. He’s a dark vigilante who isn’t afraid of anything.  Not even one of my favorite characters, L, is willing to kill to use it to his advantages. Batman is truly uncorruptable.

Santa: You’re more referring to the building of the lore of Batman. But I find this a bit odd. You do have to realize that your guy just doesn’t get the chance in Skyrim, and to refer to Oblivion, will only get a slight back story. But, in return, you make your own. You decide. You are the judge, jury, and prosecution, similar to Bioshock or Fallout: New Vegas, but with more control. Yeah, you got interesting points in AC, but you can’t beat the wide aspects of freedom in Skyrim, you will have to end up doing the story in AC, there are millions of other adventures in Skyrim.

R: Not at all! It’s broken its shackles of Arkham Asylum. It’s a CITY! Think of the Riddler challenges. Took me hours, and I did it legitimately, even after being quite tempted by the internet.

Santa: There will be only one ending to AC; you will get multiple choices in Skyrim. Oh, by the way, how many hours did you put into Oblivion?

R:  With my one true character, which I did do everything on. I spent around 300 hours. But to be fair I spent over 500 hours in the original Bioshock. I’ll do the same with AC, bumping up the difficulty.

Santa: Do you really think you can beat out Skyrim for gameplay hours? If it’s anything like Oblivion, I will be spending around 1000 hours in the game.  I spent a huge amount of time in Oblivion, and while you will have your bigger world in AC, you’re missing the point that there are factions, guilds, dungeons, the main quest line, and, oh yeah, DRAGONS in Skyrim. Dragons man. How can you say no to Dragons? Imagine flying on one!

R: I am not saying no to dragons! But, Batman can fly! Gliding around the city, you’ll be like a dragon. Batman’s superpower, as we all know, is money. And with that, he will of course have to get out all of his millions of gadgets. You have new villains to get! Riddler challenges to do! We have two worthy games that deserve this GOTY award. You got big bad bosses in AC. The Joker. Mr. Freeze. The Penguin. Who do you have?

Santa: Dragons.

R:  Dragons are big-winged creatures that fly around and go pew-pew with fire breath. Oh no! They’re nothing compared to the villains of AC. They’re more classy, and dangerous.

Santa:  I disagree; some dragons will be able to shoot lighting and ice, too. And they will land and scratch you. They can also eat you, if they so desire too. But, the point is me trying to convince you that Skyrim will win over the AC is like telling a Mormon that you don’t want to hear the good news. Can we at least agree that it won’t be BF3 or MW3?

R: Without a doubt. This will be a battle to the death. I love both Rocksteady and Bethesda to death, and I guess only time will tell.

Santa: Thanks for talking to me today, let’s go eat some Enchiladas.

A special thanks to my brother for putting up with my slow typing.  More debates are to come, and there are games to be played, until next time.

Fight With Your Friends, or With NPCs?

So, a while back my brother and I were debating on one of our favorite subjects: Video Games. One of your favorite topics just so happens to be whether or not plot is more important, or multiplayer. I myself usually play multiplayer based games, while he prefers singleplayer based ones with intense storylines. Now, don't get me wrong, I've logged thousands of hours on Oblivion, Fallout 3, Bioshock, etc...  But my favorite games are still Team Fortress 2, League of Legends, Halo: Reach, etc.. And this confuses him. I personally think it's because he can't play multiplayer very well whilst I think I can do fairly well. But, let’s compare the two, as I think that the two can take a cue from each other.

Starting off for the Questline side, we have the ever great Oblivion, I would use Skyrim, but, I still have 1 month to wait. Its October 11th. I can just feel Bethesda taunting me with 31 days. Oblivion, also known as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, is the wondrous work of Bethesda software. You start out making your own character (which can take you a few hours, depending on how you want your character to look. The options for customization are amazing.) You may then choose how you want to go the vast open world. do you want to be a rogue, an archer, a magician? Its like D & D when your friends are being dicks and won’t play with you, so you go and play Oblivion instead. I have legitimately put around 800 hours into Oblivion, and saved over 850 times.

Next, as pictured below, is Reach. The original part to the original trilogy, it shows the events before Halo: Combat Evolved. Naturally, when I first saw this at E3 a few years ago, I just about lost it. As any fan-boy

Can tell you, seeing Reach re-visited was just about a dream come true. Now, Reach does have a plot line, and it is pretty good for the most part, I won't spoil the ending for all of you who may not own the game, but I had tears in my eyes, maybe it was from the 8 hours I has spent playing the campaign straight through on Heroic. Maybe it was the Flaming hot Cheetos that I had mistaken for normal Cheetos that I had started eating right before the last mission. But, Halo is renowned for its classical Matchmaking game. It’s everything I could, except there are no hats, a cue that all game developers could take from Valve, but it did the next best thing. Complete customization over your Spartan, the one to the left is my very own. I will admit that I have fallen out of playing Reach over the past few months, but I still log onto my Xbox every now and then, and make sure I put a couple of games in. You never know when it may come in handy to remember how to use Bumper Jumper. So, what IS more important? In all honesty, I think it was to be one or the other, and I have a good example on how to prove it: Bioshock 2.

Now, Bioshock 2 was a good game, but that's the point: it was just a good game. And I think it had to do with them putting time into multiplayer instead of just focusing on the singleplayer experience. But, if you bought Minerva's Den, you found a quest-line rivaled to the original Bioshock. The game has amazing and fluid gameplay, but it just turned out kind of "meh." And that's why I do truly believe that you need to focus on one or the other, if you got a reputation for having a large plot, focus on the plot. Dead Space II was on 2 discs, just saying. And if you are making a game almost solely for Multiplayer, there should be bigger focus on how that handles. Unless your game is play-tested for 4 years, it won't be perfect. It took Valve 7 years to finish TF2, and they still update it to this day. They didn't even think of adding new weapons, or gametypes, or god forbid if they didn’t hats. This isn't to say you can have both, it is simply to say that I don't expect a game that has a massive world to have a massive multiplayer feature, unless its a MMO. And I don't expect there to be people yelling at me. "DOOD STOP HAXXING, UR A NOOB" when I'm playing in a deep questline based game. Until the day that they finish a complete virtual reality, if I really want both, I can always play Dungeons and Dragons, but, then again, Skyrim is just around the corner...

11-11-11: Soon To Be the Greatest Day Ever

About 3 days ago, I was sitting at my desk, watching EpicMealTime on YouTube, when my friend came over. He asked me if I was following the update feed for the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and I just blankly stared at him.  For whatever reason, I didn't think that Bethesda had put out any information, probably from how they had treated Fallout: New Vegas, leaving me wondering more about the items they DID release rather than did not, but, to my amazement, there was more than just a snippet out. The Elder Scrolls Series is one of the longest running, and well-known, series in Video Game history. From Morrowind (Elder Scrolls III), to Oblivion (Elder Scrolls IV), Bethesda has become well known for their series that has a vast, open world, large character creation features, thousands of quests, and of course, the medieval feel. But now, quite possibly the greatest lore of all times is coming to Skyrim: Dragons

Looking into a new 20 minute demo released by Bethesda on the 12^th, they showed off most of the new mechanics, the highlights being the new duel wielding features. I have to admit, the idea of having an Ebony Long sword in one hand and a fireball spell in the other is just about enough to make pass out. The new fluid motions of game play, (making 3^rd person look like a viable way to play the game now) and Bethesda’s great knack for detail has made for putting icing on sweet rolls to clues on the bottom of keys. The inclusion of Dragon words gives you the power to make thunderstorms with the lightning targeting your foes to breathing fire. Bethesda took the game play mechanics of Bioshock 2, the attention to detail of Crysis, and its great charm from Oblivion and put it into a snowy world.

This new and exciting world fill me with questions, most of them revolving around wanting to have a dragon to ride, and whether or not the guards will tell that they’ve fought Mudcrabs fiercer than me. My biggest worry is that we’ll see a lot of what made Oblivion special, like floating paint brushes, will be gone. But in a world as large as Skyrim is set to be, there should be plenty of occasions where odd things happen. I can only hope that November 11^th comes faster than it feels like, I’ve spent more than 500 hours playing Oblivion, I can’t wait to spend another 500 on Skyrim.