A couple months back, GameSpy presented their list of the 25 most cinematic moments in gaming history. If you’ll remember, Ron Perlman’s famous “War. War Never Changes” narration from the Fallout intro rank #1 on the list.

This week, GameSpy readers top 10 was released, and once again Perlman’s famous words made the list (this time at #7). Other notables include the now famous StarCraft 2 teaser, and taking the top spot was the Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War into video. Here’s the full list…

Fallout | No Comments »

The folks at Digital Urban have a pretty cool two-part tutorial on how to create models in 3D Max and import them into Oblivion (officially, “Importing SketchUp/3D Max into the Oblivion Engine for Architectual Visualisation,” which sounds much more important and academic-ish).

Part two of the tutorial is now up (Part one can be found here) and shows how they went about converting a model of the Quad at University College London and viewing it in game. Never been to University College, but it looks pretty darn good to me. They provide info on all the tools they used and where you can find trial versions of things like SketchUp and 3DMax so you can give it a try yourself.

Great info for anyone thinking of tinkering with 3D models for Oblivion, and perhaps some tips for the experienced modders out there. Also, check out the related video here…

Community, Modding, Oblivion, The Elder Scrolls | 2 Comments »

Jon over at Gamebanshee shared with us the spell and equipment databases they have have hosted on their site. These databases cover all 5,922 items within Oblivion, Shivering Isles, and all DLC, as well as all 430 spells.

What’s most impressive to me is how comprehensive the search filters are. For searching spells alone, there are eight separate filters to use, as well as the ability to filter the search down to any of the 89 different spell effects. As a relative newbie to the game (thankfully I just got my 360 back), the simplicity of both of these search engines is definitely something I can see using. The filters even let you know what can be found in Oblivion, Shivering Isles, and all the other add ons and plug-ins.

Nicely done!

Community, Oblivion, Shivering Isles, The Elder Scrolls | 2 Comments »

On KFAN Sports Radio’s weekly gaming podcast, Video Games Weekly, the hosts discuss Fallout 3 with Game Informer’s Matt Miller (who as you know, wrote the Fallout 3 feature in GI). The podcast also addresses new releases (The Bigs, The Darkness, and my new favorite Pac Man: Championship Ediditon), as well as other topics about the gaming industry. As the podcast comes from their radio broadcast, the hosts also address questions from the audience.

My favorite moment is their sound bite of one of my favorite (and most hilarious) lines of dialogue from any game ever. Also, it sounds like Matt Miller would have been pretty envious of me, since I got to screen Transformers last night.

Pretty cool show with enjoyable hosts to listen to. Check out the podcast here…

Community, Fallout 3 | No Comments »

The first of a series, Inside the Vault, we have a Q&A with Emil Pagliarulo, the lead designer of Fallout 3. I asked if he would answer some fan questions from the forums, he kindly obliged.

What is your favorite type of game to play (RTS,FPS,RPG etc)

Honestly, I’m the Peter Petrelli of gaming. I absorb whatever games are in close proximity. I don’t discriminate. Here’s what I’m currently playing on PC: “Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened,” ARMA, Neverwinter Nights 2, Lord of the Rings Online, the Avernum IV demo, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. On the Xbox 360, I’m playing Spider-Man 3, Command and Conquer, the Halo 3 beta, Guitar Hero 2, and some Marvel Ultimate Alliance with the new downloadable heroes. On PS2, it’s Guitar Hero 1 and Thrillville with my kids. Zelda and Warioware on the Wii. If I had a PS3, I’d be playing Resistance: Fall of Man.

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At the Office, Fallout, Fallout 3, Inside the Vault, Interview, Oblivion, The Elder Scrolls | 8 Comments »

Don’t worry, it’s not a spin off title we’re working on. The Beamer you’re looking at was designed by lead producer Gavin Carter using the addictive customization tools included with Forza 2. Initally Gavin designed a blue Audi, but decided on the 1997 BMW M3 E36. The design work took about 20 hours of effort, but it looks like all the effort really paid off.

Gavin isn’t the only one designing cars. Tim Lamb created a Vault-Tec Mini Cooper. Feeling a bit competitive after seeing Gavin’ later model, he said he’ll be working on a new design soon. Hopefully something with a little more horsepower.

If you’re out there and have a Forza 2 design that can compete with these, send them to us.

To view more screens of Gavin’s ride, as well as Tim’s Mini, view the rest of the story.

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At the Office, Fallout 3 | 3 Comments »

Welcome to our little blog. We’ve actually been running this thing for a while, but only internally while we got things sorted and got our approvals (Matt’s mom didn’t want to sign the permission slip). This (blog) is something I’ve wanted to do for a while now, but I didn’t have the time to do it on my own with everything else going on (that “Oblivion” thing, for one).

When I hired Matt to help with community stuff, I put this at the top of his list to help me get started, along with IT guy extraordinaire Rob (”the man” who makes our sites, wiki, and this blog work) and Lindsay (aka ShiftyEyedDog), who came up with a design. And, I pulled in Ashley because: a) he’s been doing a lot of work on his own blog (ashleycheng.com), and b) we’ve been friends for a while now so he’ll pretty much go along with something and help as long as it isn’t completely moronic, which is rare.

We hope to use this as a way of better communicating with people who play our games, or want to know what we’re up to, and letting folks know what’s going on with our games, communities, or just games in general.

We already have an outlet for official info on our games, but have been pretty limited on providing info on cool mods that are out, put up a gallery of fan art, do short Q&As with devs from different games, answer questions we get from people in a place where everyone else can see it too, or, I dunno, show off a Fallout 3 paint job someone here did in Forza 2…that kind of thing. Official sites aren’t always a good way to do that sort of thing, and things tend to get lost in our forums fairly quickly. Since gaming is what we do for work and play, hopefully this blog will cover plenty of both.

If you have ideas or suggestions, drop us an email and let us know.

Pete

At the Office, Community | 2 Comments »