Before the weekend starts, I thought I’d point you guys to some interviews that went up this week relating to ZeniMax’s acquisition of id Software.

• John Carmack and Robert Altman at Joystiq
• John Carmack and Pete Hines at Gamasutra
• John Carmack and Robert Altman at IGN
• John Carmack and Pete Hines at 1Up
• John Carmack at Gamespot

In other news, there’s a few new Point Lookout reviews to check out. Find them here:

• GameSpy
• Go! Gaming Giant
• Thunderbolt
• G4TV
• MTV Multiplayer
• Pwn or Die
• Digital Battle
• Big Download
• VG Chartz
• Xbox 360 Achievements
• Gamer Limit

As more coverage hits, we’ll let you know. Have a great weekend!

Around the Web, DLC, Fallout 3, John Carmack, Pete Hines, Point Lookout, Reviews, id Software | 22 Comments »

Entrepreneur has a new feature naming their list of “100 brilliant companies.” The list is comprised of several categories, including videogames, which highlights Bethesda Softworks (and Pete(r).

Check out the whole list on their site, or on newsstands in their June issue.

Lists, Pete Hines, Peter Hines | 3 Comments »

With more than a dozen new reviews for Broken Steel, I thought I’d share some of the latest links. At Gamer 2.0, Joshua Schwartzmann wrote the following:

With a solid new campaign, an improved level cap, dozens of new perks and tons of powerful weapons at your disposal, Broken Steel is hands down some of the best content Fallout 3 has to offer. With two previous add-ons already giving fans plenty to explore, Broken Steel really pushes the boundaries of what you can come to expect from future downloadable additions. This is the most complete and well-rounded addition to Fallout 3 yet, and anyone can expect to spend hours relishing in what it has to offer.

Additional reviews can be found at the following sites:

• 1Up
• Blast Magazine
• Gaming Shogun
• CNET
• Extreme Gamer
• Gamervision
• Game and Player
• GamePro Arcade
• Meristation
• Talking About Games
• Thunderbolt
  
• Worth Playing
• GameZone
• The London Free Press
• Xbox Evolved
  

To read more reviews, head to our reviews page on the Fallout 3 Official Site.

In other news, there’s a new Fallout 3 interview with Pete Hines at OXM (UK). Here’s a snippet where Pete discusses the upcoming novels for The Elder Scrolls:

Bethesda is also doing Oblivion books. Will this be a continuation of the Oblivion story, or will it lead into another game or product?

Pete: It’s not a continuation of Oblivion but it does fit into… so it’s not like “well, Martin sacrificed himself and Tamriel was saved and next day what happened…” It takes place years or some period of time after that.

As we’ve got more news to share, we’ll let you know.

Around the Web, Books, Broken Steel, Fallout 3, Pete Hines, Reviews, The Elder Scrolls | 16 Comments »

If you’re looking for something to listen to before the weekend hits, here’s two new podcasts to check out.

First, OXM Podcast #163 features Todd Howard, who unofficially has had the most guest appearances ever on the podcast. If you want to skip ahead to the parts with Todd, jump to the 22-minute mark.

Meanwhile Pete spent last night discussing Fallout 3 at length on Through the Aftermath.

Enjoy!

Interview, Official Xbox Magazine, Pete Hines, Todd Howard, podcast | 1 Comment »

Here’s a few interesting links from around the web.

Voting for the Golden Joystick Awards 2009 has begun. Fallout 3 is nominated in five categories: Ultimate Game of the Year, PC Game of the Year, PlayStation Game of the Year, Xbox Game of the Year, and Soundtrack of the Year. Additionally, Bethesda is nominated for Publisher of the Year, and Rogue Warrior is nominated in the The One to Watch category.

Speaking of Rogue Warrior, Inc Gamers has a video interview with Senior Producer Sean Griffiths. Elsewhere, Ron Burke at Gaming Trend has new previews up for both Rogue Warrior and WET.

In WET news, a new interview with Patrick Fortier is up at Team Xbox

At SPOnG, there’s a new interview with Pete. Here’s an excerpt of Pete discussing Fallout 3’s new level cap — hitting tomorrow with Broken Steel:

SPOnG: Will there be enough quest experience to be had in Broken Steel for players to level up to 30 without having to grind on pre-DLC quests/enemies?

Pete Hines: No, probably not, and that wasn’t the intention. The intention was to remove the level cap so that if you have Broken Steel, regardless of whether you want to play that quest or not, or you want to start a new game from scratch, you can continue playing beyond level 20. Again, fans wanted to be able to take their characters to higher levels, so we included it. But it is not specific to the length of Broken Steel, at all. It is a very long climb to get from 20 to 30 and you’ll need to do a LOT to get there.

Finally, Pittsburgh City Paper talked about The Pitt with Emil. Read it here.

Around the Web, Awards, Broken Steel, Developers, Emil Pagliarulo, Fallout 3, Interview, Pete Hines, Rogue Warrior, The Pitt, Wet | 18 Comments »

Here’s a few things to be on the lookout for — both online and in print.

Voodoo Extreme has a new interview with Fallout 3 Production Director Ashley Cheng. In the interview, Ash discusses his role with the company dating back to his work on The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Here’s a snippet from the interview:

What is the process for determining art direction on any of the games you produce?

The art direction comes from our concept artists, our lead artists on the project (Matt Carofano for Elder Scrolls; Istvan Pely for Fallout 3), and our game director/exec producer, Todd Howard. We go through months and months of concepts, looking for the right tone and look. We tend to create concepts of overall scenes to help dictate the direction before getting into lots of detail.

Hit the link below for more news….

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Around the Web, Developers, G.E.C.K., Magazines, Pete Hines, Todd Howard | 3 Comments »

Here’s a look at some online coverage from the past week…

Up on GamaSutra today, there’s a three-page interview with Pete Hines. Among other things, Pete discusses our partnership with Splash Damage and our DLC philosophy. Here’s a snippet of the latter:

As a developer of open-world games, I imagine there is some degree of creative restriction on what Bethesda can do with DLC, in that discrete content has to be integrated in some logical way. You can’t just add another racetrack to the menu, or whatever. How do you approach that?

Pete Hines: It is a constraint from one standpoint, which is that if you’re going to plug it into the existing world then it has to be adaptable for anybody at any level that we discern, at least for the first two [in Fallout 3]. We don’t discern whether you’re level 1, level 10, level 15, or level 20, so we have to allow for all of that.

But in general, no. We like building our games that way. Having the DLC exist within that world allows us to, once we’re done making all the content for the game and we’ve finished the game from that standpoint and then spent lot of time playing it, look for areas that we’d like to do more of — to do something different than when you’re looking at the whole spectrum of content you’ve provided.

More news after the break….

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Around the Web, DLC, Fallout 3, Fallout in the Real World, Interview, Pete Hines, Pip-Boy 3000, Reviews, The Pitt | 14 Comments »

MI6, an annual conference for videogame marketing, held their awards show last night. With Pete on hand, Fallout 3 captured 13 awards — including nine Gold & Silver Awards in the following categories:

Gold Winners

• Outstanding Promotional Trailer: Fallout 3 Teaser Trailer
• Best Limited Edition or Collector’s Promotion: Fallout 3 Collector’s Edition
• Standout Print Campaign: Fallout 3 DC Metro Takeover
• Best Online Advertising Campaign: Fallout 3 Online Advertising Campaign
• Sharpest Pen Award — Best Copywriting/Print: Fallout 3 Vault Dweller’s Survival Guide
• Sharpest Eye Award — Best Directing: Fallout 3 “E3 Trailer”
• Best Use of Music: Fallout 3 “E3 Trailer”

Silver Winners

• Outstanding Overall Marketing Campaign: Fallout 3
• Outstanding Promotional Trailer: Fallout 3 “E3 Trailer”

Huge shout out to Pete and the rest of the marketing team, AKQA, The Ant Farm, Tangible Media, the developers, and everyone else that helped these ideas come to fruition.

Awards, Fallout 3, Pete Hines, Trailer | 10 Comments »

Here’s another round of web updates.

While at D.I.C.E., Pete took time to do an interview with Game Trailers. You can watch it above.

Additionally, both VG247 and Totally 360 spoke with Jeff about the DLC. Here’s a look at the latter interview:

The effect of entering Oasis or Operation: Anchorage was quite powerful given what a radical change it was from the Capital Wasteland, can we expect something similar here?

Jeff: The Pitt itself is the vision of several developers who grew up in Pittsburgh.  It’s full of unique architecture that has a different color pallet and feel from downtown D.C.  The buildings are decrepit, but still intact.  The Raider area is filled with their usual displays of disemboweled corpses and spray paint.  Perhaps the most striking part of the Pitt is the bridge that leads into it and the ominous black smog that erupts from the still working Steel Mill.

Finally, Pete was interviewed on Sports Byline, a national sports radio station, to discuss Fallout 3 on their Video Game Review segment. You can listen below.

DLC, Fallout 3, Interview, Jeff Gardiner, Pete Hines, The Pitt | 2 Comments »

Hope everyone is having a great weekend. If you’re looking for some news to read, here’s a couple updates we thought you might be interested in.

All this week GameSpy has been counting down their list of the The Top 25 Xbox 360 Games of All Time (So Far!). Earlier in the week, Oblivion hit the list at #13, and last night the list concluded with Fallout 3 being named their #1 Xbox 360 game (so far).

Looking for something to listen to? Last night the latest AVault podcast (#22) went live — featuring an interview with Pete and Emil. Additonally, they’ve got a written interview with Pete here.

Curious about the image at the top of this blog post? You’ll get it if you check out Todd’s presentation from this year’s D.I.C.E. Summit. You can watch it over at IGN.

Wrapping things up, Castle Karstaag from Morrowind has been named one of the most expensive videogame castles over at College OTR. Champagne wishes and caviar dreams!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Around the Web, DICE, DLC, Fallout 3, Interview, Lists, Pete Hines, Todd Howard, Weekend Update, Xbox 360, podcast, video | 4 Comments »