10 years ago Fallout was finished and began making its journey into the hands and hearts of RPG fans everywhere. Seems more like a birthday than an anniversary. Perhaps it’s both. I do actually remember the release of Fallout in part because at the time I was working (part-time) at The Adrenaline Vault and Interplay was one of “my companies.”

In other words, I was our main point of contact for them, reviewed and previewed most of their games, etc. (along with 3DO, Interactive Magic, MGM Interactive, 7th Level…I sense a trend here). I don’t think I reviewed it because we had someone at AVault who was focusing on RPGs at the time and I let them review it, since they had primarily played every other RPG that was out at the time. But I did play it and I kept my copy, which sits proudly…somewhere in my office, I think. Sorry, off on a tangent here…where were we?

Fallout. 10 years. We bounced around a lot of ideas on how we could best honor Fallout and its 10th Anniversary/Birthday. We decided that we should do something we’ve never done before for any of our games (that I’m aware of anyway): give fans a chance to create something we’ll use in the game. We talked about it and we thought perhaps the best option was to do something where folks could be creative in a way that is very much Fallout, and not have it be overly complex. We also didn’t want it to be trivial (e.g., “name this person, creature, thing”).

(more…)

10th Anniversary, Bloody Mess cake, Community, Contests, Fallout, Fallout 3, Vault Boy | 9 Comments »

So, folks have talked about the Bloody Mess cake we did, and a number of people asked about it and how we did it and so forth, so I figured I’d go ahead and explain how it came to be.

My wife occasionally watches this show ‘Ace of Cakes’ about a company in Baltimore, Charm City Cakes, that makes really cool cakes. (The show largely centers on Duff, who owns the place and is the head chef and so forth.) So one day I’m watching the show with her and Duff is making a cake for his dad’s birthday and it’s this surprise cake he made him that was a rocket, or a plane, or something…it’s not important.

What is important is he had some kind of fireworks in part of it, which he lit at one point to make it look like it was flying, and that’s when I got the idea to do a Bloody Mess cake. Bloody Mess is one of my favorite things about Fallout. It’s just so meaningless; no gameplay purpose whatsoever. Just more bloody deaths than normal, represented by this icon of a smiling Vault Boy casually blowing another guy away…and it’s captured a fraction of a second after he’s pulled the trigger. It’s just genius on every level.

(more…)

At the Office, Bloody Mess cake, Fallout, Fallout 3, Vault Boy | 3 Comments »

Happy Sunday everyone. Since more of these will probably continue to pop-up I’m just going to add new ones to the bottom of the list as they come in.

Rainier over at Worthplaying dropped me a note to let me know their preview of Fallout 3 is up, which includes five screens and some thoughts on their first look at Fallout 3.

Joystiq also has up their first look, as well as additional details in handy bullet point form, suitable for framing.

Gamespot has a hefty two-page preview up over on their site.

Wenn Sie Deutschen lesen können, hat buffed.de ihre Vorbetrachtung des radioaktiven Niederschlags 3 oben. PC Action will have a cover story on Fallout 3 in their next issue, which is out July 20. Wundervoll!

Kris Graft over at Next-Gen.biz has a lengthy preview up that talks about the game, my alleged sprinkler dance, and a shot of the Bloody Mess cake I had made (I’ll put a separate entry together about that tomorrow).

Hit the jump to see the rest of today’s coverage.

(more…)

Bloody Mess cake, Fallout, Fallout 3, First Look, Sprinkler Dance | 27 Comments »