Killzig's Kiddie Pool
August 25th, 2001
ITD: 1
Disclaimer: All of Killzig's ranting / raving is not necessarily the opinion of everyone else at DAC, so don't blame us if Killy's writing gets you all hot and bothered. Blame him!
There Is No Spoon (or Fallout 3)
Remember -- even the Mona Lisa's falling apart. Interplay, while not exactly the Mona Lisa, is falling apart. It's been scaled back to basically two divisions; Shiny and Black Isle Studios. The French have taken control and it would seem a wonderful idea to sell the bastard off in it's entirety in hopes of reducing their losses or at the very least squeeze a bit of cash out of it before letting it die.
Enter Icewind Dale 2; the death rattle. The latest effort for Titus tomake Interplay more appealing to investors as well as gamers. IcewindDale by all accounts was mediocre; a nice Diablo knock off to fill thetime between substantial titles with, a generic title that is prettymuch interchangeable with BIS's other Fantasy license, Baldur's Gate. Don't think so? Just ask the folks at PlanetIcewindDale.com. Oh... you mean there is no PlanetIceWindDale? All the Black Isle Fantasy gameshave been lumped into one site? Gee whiz, I wonder why that is.
Why does Interplay think that shoveling out a second helping (more like half of a helping thanks to the accelerated time line it's on) will save their asses? Have they been listening to their customers? The ones shelling out fifty bucks for a game that if they're lucky, will be working after just one patch. The ones screaming for a Fallout 3, for a Fallout free of hairy deathclaws and shallow story lines. If they aren't listening they better damn well be hiding something up their sleeve.
But then again they can't afford that sort of luxury: their stock has been dancing with the 2 dollar mark for the last year. Small development houses are wary of the publisher who has nearly screwed Microforte out of business. The only way they could be hiding something would be if they managed to sell Brian Fargo off for some production cash (an idea we at DaC are all in favor of.) If they haven't managed to get that sort of capital for a decent production timeline, the outlook for a great Fallout game is very bleak.
But what of TORN and the white elephant known as Lithtech, what a great decision by management. How many games have they put out using it so far? None? TORN should have been the first but that never even saw the light of day. It never had a chance. From the start it had a lukewarm response, even though marketing decided it was what "Fallout fans have been asking for since Fallout 2 was released." The term lukewarm is the first word that comes to mind, but it doesn't fit. The reaction from the Fallout community, the ones this game was geared towards, was down right hostile. Feargus had to go so far as to venture to the Terra-Arcanum forums to defend their choice for a project. Does that sound like the reaction you would give to something you've been "waiting for since Fallout 2 was released?" Apparently, Interplay didn't think so either.
They did think however that Redneck Offroad Racing and Star Trek Fleet Commander Orion were titles you would love to own and as a result lost $12 million dollars. Golly, I'd like to shake the hand of the man making decisions there (or give my condolences to hisnext of kin.)
Torn borrowed a little of this, too much of that, and in the end it looked like Diablo with Fallout's character system. Most of the character system, likely, going to waste with combat oriented Diablo style (click-click-click) gameplay. Much in the same way Fallout Tactics did.
Can you name more than 5 skills (not including the gun skills) that were actually useful throughout every section of Fallout Tactics? Sneak? Steal? Anything else? Doctor/First Aid? Come on now, you're stretching a bit, stim packs do the job just as well.
How about Fallout? Are you kidding? Just five? What about my Speech skill, the lockpick skill, the science skill, the outdoorsman skill (after all, time is of the essence when travelling in FO1,) for christ's sake even the bartering skill was useful in several plots. Who can forget bartering for Tandi when your ass-beating skills weren't up to snuff?
The question is... can Black Isle make a game with as versatile a gameplay and as involving a world as Fallout again?
In my opinion, one which is shared by the more fanatical fallout philes, no. Not without many changes in how Interplay makes decisions in both business and game development.
It's time for a shake up.
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