Skyrim has endless replay value

And for poor gamers who don't just go out and buy new games when they're released, replay value is key.

WHY IS HE REVIEWING A FOUR-YEAR-OLD GAME?

Because, for some reason, "Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" (released Nov. 2011) continues to be relevant, especially for Fallout fans. Bethesda owns both franchises, and owns them well. The similarities between the two are apparent—Skyrim is, loosely, a better-designed Fallout 3, set in medieval times. If Skyrim is this good, imagine what the future will hold. To have improvements on games already this good is unprecedented, and it's an exciting time to be a gamer, and a follower of Bethesda Game Studios.

"Skyrim" is more a world than a series of levels, disconnected game areas, and characters. It's an open world in which you can go anywhere, at any time, emphasizing player freedom and an absence of linearity in a big way. With the sheer size, variety of gameplay options, DLC content available, and myriad quests large and small, Skyrim is, as far as I know, the closest thing to an endless game that exists.

The biggest downsides, to me, are the load times, and the monotony of commerce. The quests can seem monotonous too, with lots of go-fetch versions. But that's really all I can think of for now. The upsides more than outweigh the downsides. And the load times are more a fault of the technology than the game makers—I'll take it to get at that large world on a PS3 console.

My wife and I both have multiple ongoing characters, with different stats, skills and attributes. She hasn't had much time to game lately with Lucy being in school again, but she's onto her 3rd character, which inspired me to start anew as an alchemist and conjurer.

I haven't played everything, but I do have life-long gaming experience. Just last week, I was in my childhood home, peering into the bottom cabinet of an entertainment center containing the Nintendo Entertainment System, various controllers, and games I played as a kid. It all started when I was less than 10 years old. The point of all this is to say that Skyrim is mind-blowing to me when I compare it to my introduction to gaming. For others, maybe not so much. And that's fine. For me, it really works.

Bethesda puts into a game what you want in a game in this day and age: the ability to customize your character, male or female, marry who you want, male or female, any race, and yet have some game characters make racist and sexist remarks, and to have others talk about it. You have both social progression, and a mirror up to what really exists, emphasizing how hard it is to get over that stuff socially. It's a really smart way to go—having a medieval game with more lax sex laws and social customs than our world today.

I don't know what I can say about this game that hasn't been said before. Read this incredibly thorough review by Charles Onyett for IGN.

Coming soon: screenshots and short bios of my four main Skyrim characters. I'm proud of them all, and they all deserve their individual posts. which...is just me... patting myself on the back... Stay tuned!

Stay game!

And someone tell me how I'm going to afford a PS4 by #Nov10!

Fallout 4 trailer analysis: in-game artwork

I just commented the following on a YouTube video by TheNthApple. Thought I'd re-post here.

So at 1:58 in your video here, we see a Power Armor-wearing person rising up from a view inside the Vertibird. And this short piece of the trailer has always interested me—it displays several new art forms which will inhabit this new addition to the Fallout universe.

This... delicious-looking addition.

First you've got the Red Rocket (hilarious name in and of itself, with GTA-like levels of in-game history, e.g. 'Pay-n-Spray,' 'Burger Shot') sign, in a circular logo, screen right, with the word "GASOLINE" above it, and two other words I can't make out. An up

Second, you've got a poster on the lower left with the acronym "GNN," which may be Galaxy News Network, which may be how we experience Three Dog in-game—which MAY indicate that Fallout 4 takes place not too long after FO3, if he's still alive. However—Institute. Cyborgs. They could have prolonged his life somehow. He might be a robot Three Dog.

Third, you've got this awesome, sheik billboard with a "FALLON'S" logo in red, and a (to find this, I literally Googled, 'famous 80s artwork' and it was the first entry) Patrick Nagel-esque woman's face in black and white with a black slash going thru the whole thing. Very hip, very cool.

I hope Fallon's are goddam butchers or torturers or something. Going thru a clothing department store on a Fallout game would be suuuuper cool. Getting outfits?

Oh, and here's what I'm also looking forward to—enhanced character modification! Picking up outfits, designing faces, etc. Can I make a Nuka Girl pinup character w/o mods now??? CAN HER LACEY, THIN CLOTHES HAVE A HIGH ARMOR RATING?!?!

With the voiced main character—I think it'll help with player immersion. I've got a feeling Bethesda's going to do this right. Aaaand I think they've been working on this a long time, and it's like Zelda for Nintendo now—with a game this important—and this one is legendary—what a great time to be alive indeed, TheNthApple!—you don't want to cut any corners. Obsidian's lack of attention to the bugs will be a thing of the past—I guarantee it.

Could you imagine Bethesda being sloppy with this one? Do you think they actually want to make money, or lose money?

With the Fallout 4 reveal trailer, Bethesda gives fans exactly what they need—emotional release

Okay, the Fallout 4 trailer. Here it is:

I saw it the morning it was released and just about hit the ceiling with joy. The Ink Spots—good move. Everything I needed to see, to feel. Finally.

Finally.

I can't describe to you the release and emotional high I felt and still feel about this. The new, amazing Fallout title is finally here. I can finally step back into the Wasteland, and this promises to be the biggest and most advanced trip there yet, in a new and immersive depiction of Boston.

I just watched these guys at IGN talk about it and Vince was critiquing parts of the trailer.

When I heard this, I thought, “SACRILEGE! BURN HIM!”

I’ve been waiting for Fallout 4 ever since New Vegas became boring again, for the third time. You know what’s really the worst part of those games? The load times. The between-building load times. I really envy PC players that have decreased load times between environments, because I play on the PS3. Oh, and the freezing gameplay? Don’t get me started.

But anyway, so yeah, I’ve logged way too many hours into Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. They were game-changing, next-level games for the time, stretching the limits of the systems on which they were played, and most importantly, were incredibly immersive. Also, the story is always interesting: you’re in a post-apocalyptic United States, 50 to 200 years, depending on the game, after the bombs fell. Now, what’s different is that the Fallout world’s history splits off from ours sometime in the 1920s or 40s. Science goes in a different direction, we keep the jingoistic patriotism, looks, and music styles of that time period until 2077, when the bombs fell. I believe New Vegas takes place in 2277.

LINK TO FALLOUT WIKI PAGE ABOUT THIS SHITE

My brother showed me Fallout 3 one day, and I had no idea what it was going to be like. Immediately, I’m hooked. You make your own character? I’m in a vault? What the fu—bright light—Wasteland? I Can Go Anywhere? WTF IS THAT THING? Then I played New Vegas. Then I downloaded Fallout and couldn’t get my head around the controls on a MacBookAir without a keyboard or mouse, and I’ve got two kids man, they’re young. I don’t have all the time in the world.

So I never played any of the Fallout games between 1 and 3, and I’m not gonna, really, because motherfucking #Fallout4. #motherfuckingfallout4

Bethesda was so tight-lipped about it the whole time! They let nothing slip! They gave Three Dog (srsly read Erik Todd Dellums's Twitter feed right now) a license to say some cryptic bullshit, and Kotaku found a script, and some guy said Bethesda were scouting the Boston area, and then #Survivor2299 broke my fucking heart, and then Ron Perlman said after the fact on Twitter that it was the hardest secret he’s ever had to keep—it’s all been such a whirlwind!

So that’s why I thought ‘sacrilege, burn him, and there was much rejoicing, yaaay,’ so there, I explained myself. I’m deeply involved in these games. Now, to critique their review of the teaser.

Yes, nine paragraphs in, I give you:

THE REVIEW OF THE REVIEW OF THE FALLOUT 4 TEASER TRAILER THAT ISN’T CALLED A REVIEW BUT THE VEIL IS THIN

Firstly, I think Destin Legarie (@DestinLegarie) and Vince Ingenito (@Vincogneato) represent both standpoints of the diverse universe that is Fallout fans and how they feel about this whole thing, and thusly are good hosts for the review.

Vince sticks to his guns, representing the less-pleased portion of the Fallout fanbase, but by the end of the video he’s got to admit that he’s excited, and that even if his fears—of the game being nothing more than revamped existing Fallout tropes without innovation—come true, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Wasn’t Skyrim a revamped version of previous Elder Scrolls? Wasn’t Grand Theft Auto V just a revamped verion of GTAIV? Aaah, but here’s the rub—when you compare Fallout 3 to every game in the Fallout series before it, you get a completely different game style. So it’s not fair to say that Fallout 3 is simply a revamped version of what came before, because the previous games were a top-down, almost simulation-style game, whereas with Fallout 3, which I believe was Bethesda’s first shot at a Fallout title, they changed the entire thing to a first- and third-person shooter, set in an open-world /sandbox-style environment. They kept the look, feel, and characters of the previous games, stayed fearsomely devoted to the storyline, and gave it a completely new feel. Somehow, the results were magical. Game-changing.

Fallout 3 changed people’s perceptions of gaming and what a game could be. When Bethesda handed the reigns to Obsidian to create Fallout: New Vegas, it was very cool, probably cooler than Obsidian or Bethesda imagined it would be, but it wasn’t enough. Fallout fans wanted more. Their hungers were not completely sated, although both of those games kept us all waaaaay too busy for waaaaay too long. It’s a testament to their greatness.

It’s not unfair for fans to expect game-changing-ness with Fallout 4, but I don’t think it’s going to happen as obviously as with the transition between Fallout 2 & 3. I think where the innovation is going to be this time will be in the area of load times and transitions between game environments, thereby decreasing annoyance and disconnect from game world immersion. I predict that glitches will be less frequent, that getting stuck in some crack in the game world will be a thing of the past, and that game flow will be increased. I also expect the realism, believability, and overall game immersion to increase with the enhanced graphical capabilities between previous- and next-gen consoles, and with probably something about how NPC sprites move their mouths when they talk. Maybe they’ll hire a greater number voice actors, too.

Oh, and I also expect greater options and ease of character creation and outfitting, and of in-game mechanics. There were flying ships in the trailer. Seems like The Institute and more scientific progress is going to accompany this game, meaning perhaps we’ll be able to pilot vehicles. Power Armor is obviously here to stay—perhaps we’ll be able to customize it? Fast travel and environment exploration will also be streamlined. They might get rid of some features, like finding food and using campfires, for example, or hopefully streamline those, too. There’s got to be lots of detail in these games—little items, pieces of the world, boxes of cereal and old machine parts lying around. You know.

Also, I think they’re going to take you back to the Pre-War period more than they have in previous titles. You had a holographic reproduction with “Operation: Anchorage,” you had a flashback in the spooky building near Tenpenny Tower in Fallout 3, and the nightmare Pre-War illusion that is Tranquility Lane, and New Vegas’ barely-preserved, un-bombed Vegas Strip, but there was never a time where you could take your character walking thru the Pre-War world of the Fallout universe. What made it cool, I think, was the mystery—the clues you would find, on old computer terminals or notes lying around. You had to put the picture together yourself, and Bethesda and Obsidian did great jobs at telling stories thru visuals, or pieces left over, skeletons in funny positions, and then just weird shit, like teddy bears and garden gnomes set up playing cards, and Monty Python references.

But yeah, so the trailer—pretty obvious stuff, I’ll give you that. It’s like, we’ve still got Deathclaws, Centuars, Ghouls, Power Armor, I hope Super Mutants, a dog companion, and the usual tropes. What they did not do was not try to give you specifics—they gave you a broad, emotional landscape. And you know what? It was exactly what Fallout fans needed.

“Here, guys. You've waited long enough,” Bethesda seemed to say. “You wanted this? Oh, you're getting it. This is us delivering. The wait is over, you've been patient, and we thank you, because this shit took us a looooong time.”

And goddam if the reveal trailer above didn’t and still isn't wringing tears out of me right now. We fans have been waiting so long, and staying so dedicated, that at this point it’s more than just a waning hope. We all knew. We knew! Even though they said nothing official, we knew. We knew all the noise we were making wasn’t falling on deaf ears. It’s a way of life. It’s #falloutlyfe.

Pheh. “Fallout 4’s Reveal Trailer May Play it Too Safe.” Pheh, I say. We got the big, 'Here it is.' Now it's time to wait—half a year. We can do this. And we only have until June 14 until #BE3

Thank you, Bethesda. I can’t wait to see you give us more details on June 14!

THANK YOU BETHESDA!!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!

Assassin's Creed's public world is an exhilarating place to play

Cracked.com continues to rule

So I missed the boat on Assassin's Creed. It came out in 2007, while I was probably still being obsessed with the Fallout franchise. And the more I heard about it, the more annoyed I became, thinking that there was no way a game centered on just going out and murdering people would hold my interest. It seemed, by title alone (judging book by cover), to have taken the worst parts of games, and centered on that.

Years passed by. Then I see this video from Cracked. (if you want to skip to the parts concerning AC, skip to 3:05)



Now I haven't played the majority of the games Michael Swaim's talking about, but I have played many of the Prime Games: Super Mario 64, Zelda, Final Fantasy, Fallout, Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto, Halo, Call of Duty, and Portal.

King's Quest, Michael. Yes. Thank you.

Incidentally, I also missed the boat on Batman: Arkham Asylum, Lord of the Rings: Shadow of Mordor, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, 

So I bought Assassin's Creed. Played it for the first time last night. It is indeed a prime game.

The first thing the game teaches you in the opening tutorial, and the first thing you quickly learn to have to work around, is how to move around the people, the NPCs (non-player-characters). If you're running full speed, you'll smack into someone, and hard. It makes a really uncomfortable sound, and you and the NPC go tumbling. Not only can you not interfere with them, you have to follow social custom. If one of the many, many villagers in the opening game environment see you climbing on buildings and running around too fast, they'll comment on it. "What's wrong with him?" And you have a sort of gauge like the GTA star system indicating your "wanted level," but in AC it's more like a "how weird and dangerous you're seeming to the general public and the guards" level.

Right away, I saw that I had been carrying the wrong impression about AC. Ubisoft took what worked about Grand Theft Auto III—and I say GTAIII because that was the first in-public, open-world game I ever played, where you could actually interact with random NPCs, though it usually involved straight up murdering (talking to them became a thing with GTA:SA)—Ubisoft took one big thing that worked for the Grand Theft Auto franchise, and put you in a public space.

That feels cool to me. I like RPGs because going into towns and talking to people makes the game feel more like real life. In AC, they amped that up to 11, and it's what makes the game immediately exhilarating and immersive.

Your PC (player character) is set in a Middle Eastern city during the Crusades. There is a steady stream of NPCs walking through every alley and walkway, and if you don't hold a certain button, you'll end up pushing some of them and causing a ruckus. Social custom plays a big part in how you must interact with the people. You must follow their creed, hence the title. You're also a part of a guild of soldier assassins, and you must also follow their creed. The main character has a lot to learn in this area. At least if I'm playing him. Maybe I didn't have to try to kill that dude? It set off a string of bad stuff.

When the game starts off, there's a sort of disclaimer that says the game was made by a series of developers from differing backgrounds, religious and otherwise. It's a smart way to say, 'This game is going to deal with some sensitive subjects, but we were careful to treat them all respectfully.'

And that's what you get from AC, an experience respectful to culture, history, and the player.

New Rick Alverson movie "Entertainment," starring Gregg Turkington, premiering Sundance 2015

Now this is exciting to me.

First, you've got Alverson, director and writer of "The Comedy," starring Tim Heidecker. I thought "The Comedy" was great. Heidecker's performance was unique, because he's a subversive actor if anything, and because it was his first feature film, to my knowledge, and possibly his first time tackling a role requiring such depth of character. He delivered it. It's a painful film to watch, because it documents a character at the tail end of this personal downward spiral, as he alienates everyone around him. He sees it, he knows it's wrong, but it gives him this pleasure he just can't name, and it's irresistible to him. His rise towards the end of the movie is made that much sweeter. On the other hand, he consistently gets along great with his friends, revealing his redeeming qualities. Alverson's emphasis on the friends' interactions (Eric Wareheim and that LCD Soundsystem dude were really good) gave what would otherwise have been a pretty heavy movie some happy moments.

I'm a big "Tim and Eric" fan. It's great to see both of these fine gentlemen where they are today, because they're made me so happy over the years.

Alverson's "Entertainment" almost seems like an unspoken sequel to "The Comedy," but I think it's going to stand on its own just fine. Because next, you've got one Gregg Turkington, starring in the thing, as the travelling comedian who alienates everyone he meets. Turkington provided the hands-down funniest part of "The Comedy" in a scene with Tim at an outdoor table, he co-stars with Tim on "On Cinema At the Cinema," and most importantly, is Neil Hamburger.

Acchhhhgggeeehhh!!! P-tah. Cough.

Alverson also directed this video for a song by Angel Olson. Quite a beautiful piece. If fits perfectly with the song, and Alverson brings a great performance out of her. His camera work and editing are subliminominal. His defense is impregnable. Fudd morking fissure in a watch.

Lost Odyssey is this Final Fantasy fan's perfect old school JRPG revival

image via Wikipedia

Last October I stumbled upon a video game so good that it quickly became an obsession. The game: "Lost Odyssey," published in 2007 by Microsoft for release solely on the XBox 360.

Even before that, around last summer, I acquired an XBox 360 and around 20 games from my landlord. It all came at a great time, when my older games were gathering dust, and I was resorting to re-playing them—not a bad time, but after a while of it, I was in a gaming funk. Suddenly I was awash in new gaming experiences, and it was really nice. My fun-at-home factor skyrocketed.

I was in for a bit of a disappointment, however, as far as the games were concerned. Chalk it up to differences in gaming taste between my landlord and I, but The "Halo," "Gears of War," "Guitar Hero," and "Saints Row" franchises, though really well-made and worth putting time into, didn't really fit what I was looking for, or what I could play in front of my kids.

Many of them were short on positives—originality, compelling characters, confident narrative, convincing voice acting—and heavy on the negatives—stereotypes, cliches, and over-sexified-female characters who offer nothing to the story (I'm looking at you, "Ninja Gaiden 2").

Now, I like a bit of violence in my games, as I am a big "Street Fighter" and "Mortal Kombat" fan, but most of these newer games feature constant murder  that I just don't have or want the stomach for. Plus, I look at #Gamergate lately and wonder, would this sea of gamers be a little less threatening if they hadn't been fed heaping loads of endlessly-re-spawning murder in their precious video games for the past 20 or 30 years? Could that constant de-sensitization be coming through in how they treat people online, if not in real life?

So I really have to put 'excessive violence' in the 'negatives' category, because I don't want to be the type of person who can just look the other way. "Grand Theft Auto V," though wonderful, has been my most modern game to put me at my limit for gratuitous violence. So the "Gears of War" and "Halo" games are out for me–constant murder going on there, be it alien or human. The "Ninja Gaiden" games are fun too, but OMG the violence is up to 11.

"Soul Caliber 4" can be summed up as: Bouncing Titty Game.

Even shooting endless zombies on "Resident Evil" online, for RE4 thru 6, has gotten old. And those are some incredibly entertaining online experiences. (I still plan on getting RE:Revelations when it becomes cheaper).

You'll see "Lost Odyssey" there on the right. That wasn't part of the original collection; it was part of a group of games in the basement that my landlord had left down there for some reason.

So I'm down there doing laundry one day, and I notice LO on the shelf, collecting dust. I pick it up, see it's an RPG. There's a big "this-game-is-for-demo-purposes-only" sticker on the front that covers up a key piece of information that would have tipped me off to its creator and his history with video games.

Now, I'm a sucker for a good RPG, and after "The Witcher 2" left me underwhelmed (prob should have played "The Witcher" first), I was really hungry for everything an RPG should be: immersive and story-rich, with characters full of depth, epic music, at-least-believable graphics, fun battle sequences, monsters, and a shit ton of magic.

Knowing nothing, I took LO upstairs and gave it a try.

Immediately it looked like a Final Fantasy game. The music, the character designs, the massive-scale, world-shattering shit that was happening right off the bat, and especially the battle system, all contain elements from various FF games, including 1, 4, 6, 7, and 8 (Japanese release #s).

It's pretty similar to the latest FF games too (10 - 13), but that sort of goes without saying. That's the way RPGs are made these days—advanced, evolved. Like Internet 2.0. Gone are the days of small sprites and blocky, clunky worlds.

Already I could see LO improves upon every aspect of Final Fantasy games from which it seems to borrow—nothing is simply a straight transfer, but was streamlined, and with such style!

Needless to say, I was pleased as punch. When I gleaned so much old school JRPG influence from LO, combined with its modern and badass feel, I no longer had to hope this game was going to be something special, it was throwing special at me. LO holds on to what it is and doesn't let go. It doesn't just go halfway in—"Lost Odyssey" captures and owns old-school JRPG style.

And having grown up with old school JRPGs, I am the ideal demographic for this shit.

After 15 minutes of being introductorily wowed and awed, the opening credits began to roll, and who does it credit for the game's music but none other than Nobuo Motherfucking Uematsu. My jaw dropped. Uematsu is a guy whose music I have deeply studied. It fascinates me how much he can do with so little.

So I take to Wikipedia. WTF is this game? This is what I see:

The plot of Lost Odyssey was written by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of the famed Final Fantasy series.

Of course! It was exactly then I became fully enthralled.

It's not often I get a pleasant surprise like this, and it took all the pieces coming together at the right time to make it happen. Knowing nothing going in was essential to my elation at the discovery of the pure gaming magic that LO delivers.

Even the name sounds like Final Fantasy! It's like Sakaguchi was trying to say, 'Hey guys, I know the franchise has gone off the rails—allow me to put it back on track, from the outside.'

So, let's get into specifics.

LO improves upon every aspect of Final Fantasy games from which it borrows—nothing is simply a straight transfer.

The battle system is reminiscent of FF1, in that you input your entire party's commands, and everyone goes at it for a single round. This is repeated until one side wipes out the other. You may remember how infuriating could with FF1, but in LO the mechanics are improved and the flow of battle is smooth.

Interesting to me is how far back in time they had to reach to resurrect that battle system. It's inherently more challenging than the now-standard Active Time Battle (ATB) system, which I first saw in FF4. It was a stroke of genius to take such an old school battle style and make it the main battle system of a modern game. Isn't it cool that old-school elements re-tooled are what make much of this game enjoyable?

LO streamlines character movement and exploration by giving you a 'run' button to make your character haul ass thru those maps. Giving the player a reason to explore, LO peppers the maps with shiny trinkets and treasure chests waiting to be found, rewarding those who investigate every corner of a map. This was another thing I always loved about those old-school JRPGs—finding treasure in the nooks and crannies.

You can change your equipment mid-battle! Win. The game doesn't focus on armor, either. Your characters learn skills and gain HP as they level up, but they never change clothes. New weapons, 'Attack Rings' and accessories are always popping up, and consist of what you'll be spending your hard-earned G on. It simplifies the game, not bothering with armor. I like it.

Without spoiling too much, I'll only say that the characters are wonderful. Without hesitation, I can say that all of them are likable.

Remember Snow from FFXIII? No trace of his dumbassitude within the main party.

Remember the horrendous voice-acting of FFX? Gone. All the voice-acting here is great.

As a side note, the character Seth is the same voice as Twilight Sparkle from "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic."

And all those reasons I listed above for not liking games, including weak female characters, stereotypes, and excessive violence and swearing? Gone. This game has no blood and no cursing, which means I can play it around my kids.

Further, the writing is phenomenal. The characters of the children are not written accurately enough to represent their age group, IMO, and the drama is so heavy-handed you could swim through it like syrupy gelatin, but those are my biggest complaints. The game sure had me crying several times during the heaviest emotional parts, and then had me wow-ing at the epic parts. It's a full package.

Don't pass this game up if you're a Final Fantasy fan.

Bethesda's Todd Howard interviewed last May, talks Fallout 4 IMO

Here is an interview with Bethesda's Todd Howard from Germany. He was there to accept a Lifetime Achievement Award from LARA.



Published June 6, it's a very current and encompassing perspective on where Bethesda now stands, in terms of history, sales, development, and the its future games.

If nothing else, Todd Howard is enthusiastic. I just love this guy. He's weathering this storm of Fallout 4 anticipation like a champ.

On receiving the LARA award: "We're going along and making our games, and something like this comes along, which is ... you know, it's wonderful, you kinda take a step back. But it's not just me, I think it's the whole studio. I kinda represent everybody. It's a privilege of mine to be in charge of a group like that.

I've spent more time with Elder Scrolls than I have anything in my life. 20 years. So they become part of you in a way that is very different [than for the gamers]. And Fallout as well, I've worked on for a very long time. And we're not ready to say, okay, Lifetime Achievement ...."

Interviewer: "You're not ready to call it quits."

TH: "Absolutely not, no. Our best stuff is ahead of us, no doubt. No doubt."

God, this guy is good. You can tell he's interview-trained and -experienced. Lets nothing slip.

So that gives me hope for the next Fallout title. I, like the rest of the fan base, cannot wait. But the best part of the interview is yet to come.

Howard gives a really cool synopsis of Bethesda's history, specifically regarding the making of Fallout 3, their first Fallout game, at 12:10. He recalls how warmly he felt the reception from fans and how rewarding it was, specifically because Bethesda didn't create the game, but "rebooted and added our own flavor to it," Howard said.

Around 2000, Zenimax acquired Bethesda, giving them "a new lease on life," Howard said, because the company had been falling on hard times since 1996. "We went into Morrowind ... there were six of us at the time, we were that small."

Then Howard and the interviewer talk publishing a little bit.

"And since Skyrim, we do it ourselves everywhere."

On 'killing your babies': "We do it often."

Then there's great talk about consoles and PC versions of his games. It begins with the interviewer's question at 19:16, largely having to do with how Howard views the PC from many standpoints.

On Skyrim: "The PC is the best place to play that game."

He says processing power is good because it stimulates graphics, but the real thing that's cool in the new console generation is increased memory.

Asked for an example (20:40) of how this would affect gameplay (and this is where I believe the conversation begins hinting specifically at Fallout 4, mainly based on how Howard begins his answer), Howard uses the example of load time between opening and closing doors between the outside world and taverns or buildings. With increased memory, those things could be loaded when you come close to them, even if they're not on-screen.

This is a really exciting thing to me as a player too. Load time is my least favorite thing about Skyrim and Fallout 3, and it would add a much more realistic feel if this could be eliminated from gameplay.

The reason we have this current surge and emergence of open-world games, IMO, is that it feels much more realistic than any game genre that's come before, and it's still brand new in the entire context of gaming. It's a baby. It's got so much room to grow.

Now, here's the FO4 stuff, it's gotta be, there's no way it's not, it's gotta be!

20:30. This is what the Fallout fans should be excited about. Here's why: though they don't say the word 'Fallout' at any time during the asking of this question or through to the end of the interview, they talk about 'fake announcements.' What was the fake announcement? Survivor 2299, of course.

I totally get why Howard, and the whole Bethesda community, is waiting to say anything. They don't want to 'dribble it out,' Howard says, they want to say, "Boom, here it is," because he remembers how cool that feeling was for him when it happened with other games.

I want that feeling! So you wait, Todd Howard. You wait, Bethesda. You work. Take your time. I want a game that is ready to go, not another New Vegas fiasco.