As we head out for the really, really rainy weekend, I thought I’d share some news coverage from the week.

This afternoon we received some exciting news that Shivering Isles won RPG of the Year over at Gameindustry.com. Pretty cool for a couple reasons. First, in the site’s ten years of doing annual awards, Shivering Isles is the first expansion to win this category. Even better is the fact that the voting came from Gameindustry.com readers. We’re truly honored that our fans came out in large numbers to vote, particularly since it was up against some really great games. Many thanks!

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Awards, FTW, Fallout 3, Oblivion, Shivering Isles, The Elder Scrolls, Todd Howard | 24 Comments »

Not too long ago, I found out that Guinness – those guys that determine the world’s tallest person, longest fingernails, and the most t-shirts ever worn at one time, were coming out with a new book that shares videogame records. While it’s not the first time Guinness has recorded videogame records, it’s their first book devoted completely to games. To help create the book, Guinness worked with Twin Galaxies, who have been recording pinball and videogame records for years.

The book, Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition, just recently went on sale (I got my copy in the mail two days ago), and it even features two pages on the Elder Scrolls series. I won’t spoil the whole book (soon to be a staple in my bathroom library), but here’s a few tidbits I thought I’d share:

• Daggerfall has the largest land-based game area at 63,125 square miles.
• Daggerfall is also listed as having the most NPCs (non-player characters) in any RPG with 750,000.
• The fastest play-through of Morrowind was done by Vladimir “Knu” Semenov at 7 minutes, 30 seconds. Kudos to Freddo for pointing this out a month ago.

Who knows, maybe there’s a record out there waiting for you to break it. My new goal is to beat Brian Sulpher’s record for highest margin of victory over an AI opponent in a basketball videogame. In Tecmo Super NBA Basketball for SNES, he beat the computer by 331 points. If the Pistons could score 186 points in a real-life NBA game, maybe I can pull off my own magic with their virtual counterpart.

Books, Daggerfall, FTW, Morrowind, The Elder Scrolls | 7 Comments »

Last week, we reported that our Team Fortress 2 specialists, Team Bethesda (aka the Vault 101 Dwellers aka [V101]), were putting their undefeated record on the line against EA Mythic. I asked Matthew Ouzounian (aka Matt Headroom) to recap the match and Daryl put together the video you see above…

Salve discipuli et discipulae! M-M-Matt Headroom, faithful m-m-m-mmmmedic and cheerleader for team Bethesda a.k.a. [V101], here to tell you a little story. You may have marked our match of mettle with Mythic in a Team Fortress 2. It is possible to present the pettifog using a plethora of playful phrases or prose, perchance, I was persuaded to portray it…but that’ll do it for the a-a-alliteration. Did we win? Well, you’ll just have to keep reading to f-f-f-find out.

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At the Office, Developers, FTW | 5 Comments »

As many have noticed, we definitely have plenty of folks that take Team Fortress 2 very seriously. In matches against developers from other companies, the Vault 101 Dwellers have amassed a record of 3-0 — beating the likes of Breakaway, Retro and Bioware. Tonight, the boys from Bethesda are aiming their sites on another win, this time against EA Mythic (makers of Dark Age of Camelot). Rumor has it a match against Blizzard…err…Activision Blizzard is being negotiated by Don King…keep an eye out for that.

So will the office team move to 4-0, or will this blog post serve as a jinx? Stay tuned!

Here’s what the Vault 101 Dwellers and everyone else are playing this weekend…

Cory Dornbusch, An Unwashed Villager… err QA Tester: The Witcher, and TF2 - Bethsoft vs. Mythic Friday night…place your bets!

Nate Purkeypile, Uber Pyro: TF2 match against Mythic to hopefully maintain our undefeated streak, Mario Galaxy and sending back my busted Rock Band drums and guitar.

Mike Lattanzia, QA: Hellgate: London (testing out new Blademaster builds), Rock Band, Team Fortress 2, Call of Duty 4 (I finally gave in), Savage 2, Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness (getting close to finishing the main story!), Super Mario Galaxy; way too many games right now, I’m almost glad that Smash Bros was delayed.

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At the Office, Developers, FTW | 8 Comments »

Since starting up a few months back, MTV’s new gaming blog, MTV Multiplayer, has become one of my favorite sites to check daily. Yesterday, the site kicked off a year long venture to find the “Greatest Animal in Video Game History.” To kick off the event, they’ve created a list of potential candidates for the Greatest Horse in Video Game History — a list that already includes the horses of Oblivion. It should be noted that this isn’t a final list, as they’re always looking to hear from the community on what other memorable horses from gaming should be considered.

It should be interesting to keep an eye on this as the year progresses. Hopefully, the winners will square off in an NCAA Tournament-esque bracket. I for one am eagerly awaiting the Best Gorilla vs. Best Marsupial match-up in the Sweet Sixteen.

If you’d like to see your favorite horse come in first, head over to the Multiplayer blog and speak your mind. If you want to start thinking of other animals in Oblivion that deserve to get some props, you might want to check out the updated Oblivion Bestiary — which was written up by Sinder Velvin over at The Imperial Library.

Awards, FTW, Oblivion | No Comments »

As mentioned before, many of our devs take Team Fortress II pretty seriously when playing against other studios. This past week was a big one, as the Vault 101 Dwellers took on the boys from Bioware. Check out our very own Nate Purkeypile’s summary of the victory. It’ll be remembered here at the office as “Mass Beatdown.”

Last night, two titanic forces met in a battle of epic proportions. A prophet foretold of the match ages ago and said that two studios would have a battle to decide once and for all, who was the best RPG studio…well, or who was better at a multiplayer shooter. The day… was a Thursday. The maps would be Dustbowl and 2fort.

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At the Office, Developers, FTW | 12 Comments »

This morning I noticed that over at GamerHelp, they have a feature called “Pinnacle Games: 18 Games That Define Their Genre.” Of these 18 games, Fallout is considered the defining PC RPG game. Here’s a sample of what they said about it:

Most RPG titles have you duking it out as a knight or a mage in a fantasy setting rife with clichéd monsters like dragosn and orcs and trolls, oh my! But not so in Interplay’s Fallout, a breakthrough RPG title that was set in a memorable setting: post-nuclear holocaust Earth. The narrative dirve of the story was nothing new — a ‘chosen one’ ventures forth to save the world — but the presentation was something else: dark, gritty and visceral, the stark landscape of the atomically cleansed landscape was as inhospitable as it was compelling.

In addition to Fallout, there’s some pretty solid choices for other genres: Street Fighter II for fighting games, Ikaruga for the shooting genre, and of course Pete’s probably happy to see that Company of Heroes was their defining RTS game (Pete: I probably would have argued C&C or Warcraft is what got the genre started and established, but COH has changed what they’re about and what they can be).

Awards, FTW, Fallout | 15 Comments »

It’s coming a little late, but we thought we’d give a shout out of “congrats” to the following modders that achieved “Hall of Fame” status over at Planet Elder Scrolls for the month of December.

For more details about each of the mods, check out the links below.

For Morrowind:

Harlequin sword and bow resource by Phijama: Adds 4 katanas, 2 bows and 1 two-handed sword to the game.

Kirel’s Interior Weather by Kirel: Allows you hear the exterior weather from inside buildings.

For Oblivion

Loading Screens Themed Replacer by Trollf: Adds new, unique loading screens for the game.

Qarl’s Harvest by Qarl: Adds new harvesting options and brings apple and orange trees (see above) to Cyrodiil.

Book Placement by Erik Peter: Improves the way you can place books on a shelf.

Congrats!

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

It’s no small thing to enter a contest and beat out thousands upon thousands of entries to be named the winner. So having risen to the top we thought we’d have a brief chat with the grand prize winner of the Fallout 10th Anniversary contest to find out more about Marc-André from Montréal, the guy behind Grim Reaper’s Sprint: 

How long have you been playing games?
Wow, I’d say around 20 years. I got a NES system back when I was in kindergarten and I’ve been playing ever since.

What’s your gaming platform(s) of choice?
Right now I’d say my Xbox360 and my PSP. Whenever I’m at home, I like to play on my PC or my console, but since I move around a lot, I like to keep my PSP with me (and sometimes my DS, but not so much lately).

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10th Anniversary, Contests, FTW, Fallout, Fallout 3 | No Comments »

After plowing through more entries than we ever thought possible, we whittled the list of over 17,000 entries down to the 12 finalists and picked a winner for the Fallout 10th Anniversary Contest. The entry that came out on top was ‘Grim Reaper’s Sprint,’ which restores all your action points whenever you kill an opponent. Congratulations to Marc-André Deslongchamps from Montreal for his winning entry. He selected the PC Grand Prize and takes home a boatload of goodies in addition to getting his Perk in Fallout 3. We’ll have a little interview up with Marc-André today or tomorrow.

But Marc-André wasn’t the only winner, and a lot of folks won some pretty cool stuff for their creative entries, as well as a few lucky folks who were selected at random just for entering the contest: ATI and NVIDIA cards, and an Xbox 360 from Microsoft, keyboards and mice from Logitech, Logitech PS3 controllers, bobbleheads, lunchboxes, etc. If you’re one of the lucky winners, you’ll be hearing from me shortly about your prize(s). Hit the jump for the list of winners and the Perk they submitted.

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10th Anniversary, Contests, FTW, Fallout, Fallout 3 | 17 Comments »