Fallout 4 Announced!

The long wait is over for some Fallout 4 news as an official trailer was released today. After teasing an announcement yesterday and amidst much speculation that news on the franchise would be coming along with this year's E3 Conference, the new trailer is a pleasing mix of old and new.

The trailer begins by establishing this juxtaposition, pulling back from a television screen to show a ruined home decaying in the harsh sunshine of Post-Apocalyptia while flashing back to the time before the bombs went off. The trailer's first actor, a german shepard dog, is juxtaposed with a  support robot which looks like a "Mister Handy" series robot. In this instance, the dog represents the "new" while the robot represents the "old", which serves the ironical portrayal of "past versus present" always so apparent (and so apparently well loved) in the Fallout series.

The Ink Spots are again serenading the series with "It's All Over But The Crying", which plays throughout the trailer. Having already contributed "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" to Fallout 3, this is another beautiful serenade which captures the serenity of the Wasteland. Moreover, drawing Fallout 4 closer to Fallout 3 helps to make the series feel connected beyond merely visual aesthetics. In the past (and, so far, looking forward) the team at Bethesda has done an absolutely outstanding job of putting together a soundtrack that is at once contemporary with their theme as well as incredibly entertaining. I've played Fallout just for to the radio before, and now I'm hopeful that I may again.

As the trailer continues, the flashbacks start to include more than the familiar robots of the past. People appear, as families with children and as civilians rushing to the vaults, while an anonymous radio announcer from the time that the bombs went off mourns the ending of the world as he knows it. This is all a pretty depressing juxtaposition between the dead Wasteland and the living Republic of yesterday. Yet while the bigger issues tell a sad tale, the glimpse of Pre-Apocalyptia is enticing. It's easy enough to imagine Fallout's world is based on the idea of the Cold War getting hot and leave it at that, but the lore and history which the fastidious gamer encounters tells another story. The world of Fallout is actually far less like our own than one assumes. I hope that Fallout 4 will find a way to let the players explore this history.

The folks at Bethesda, and indeed the loyal gamers who play their games, may be tired of the oft quoted "War, war never changes" that accompanies every game in the franchise, but even that (cleverly) only serves to illustrate the truth of the quote. While I do hope for a fair bit of change in the next game, it's nice to see that some things will stay the same.

The player, it appears, will be from Vault 111 and the german shepard from the beginning of the trailer will be his companion. A set of Power Armor is also present and seems to belong to the Vault dweller. While I do not feel opposed to exploring the Wasteland as someone else, the reiteration of certain elements helps draw the series closer together. It's the opposite of what we're experiencing in the Assassin's Creed franchise and while that enables Ubisoft to explore a wider array of narratives and settings, Bethesda has never made me feel limited for places to explore or ways to handle enemies (although, I wouldn't say no to helming a pirate ship--or maybe a pirate airship!?)

All in all, the trailer doesn't provide much more than some pretty visuals and a definitive theme, nostalgia. The narrative and exact setting remain unclear but the developers focus on delivering the uniquely "Fallout" experience is not. I'm looking forward to this reiteration of the series and I can't wait to hear more details!

ESO Launch and First Impressions

The Elder Scrolls Online officially launched on April 4th, but I've been playing since March 31st with 5-day early access. My initial impressions were positive: I saw a great many players roaming Tamriel with their pre-order bonus vanity pets and Imperial Horse mounts. Last minute changes to the starting zones were frustrating to some story-centric players, but as someone who participated in several beta tests I found the opportunity to skip ahead of much of what I had already experienced to be a pleasant surprise. All in all the launch for both the 5-day and the 3-day early access went very smoothly.

With the true launch of the game on April 4th, some new problems came up. While the game itself is far from bug-free, the bigger troubles came from policies and systems external to the game. With the end of the early access periods and the beginning of subscription-based play-time, players were required to use their 30-day pass (included with the game) as a sort of registration key before they were prompted to select a subscription plan. The failure or inability to do either of these things meant being locked out of the game. This frustrated players who wanted to use their 30 days before deciding whether to subscribe for longer, but more egregiously those who had not received their codes were left helpless. In response to this, a grace period for submitting the code was extended through part of Sunday.The problem was that deliveries aren't made on Sundays, so some players were unable to play the game until their codes were delivered on Monday. This is what happened to me and, as someone who paid for the Physical Imperial Edition (the expensive one), it was disappointing to not be treated as a valued customer.

But when I think about judging a game's launch, what is happening in the game is far more important. If I'm delayed a few hours for some server downtime or a day for a delivery to be made, I would still be more frustrated by the game itself not working for me. In that respect, bugs are still popping up in spite of the lengthy beta testing phase and relogging to fix small glitches is disruptive to the experience. If the Elder Scrolls universe was not one which I loved, I would feel more inclined to recommend it to MMO players. As it is now, I would say the game better serves Elder Scrolls fans as the atmosphere is true to the game's predecessors and knowledge of the world-lore adds depth in the world which is otherwise easily skipped over. It might be more effective if ESO served as a bridge for MMO players into the Elder Scrolls universe enabling the Elder Scrolls fandom to grow, but the opposite is true and I see ESO bringing Elder Scrolls fans towards the bewildering landscape that is MMO gaming in this Free-to-Play, Pay-to-Win era.

Speaking as an Elder Scrolls fan, what I want most from ESO is for it to bring on an expansion of the franchise, not just internally through the game's lore, but externally as well as the fandom grows and more people take notice and take an interest in the game.

To that end, I'm already finding amazing things. For example, ShoddyCast, a YouTube channel, has been publishing an Elder Scrolls Lore Series:



And there are a lot more things coming from ESO, like these gamplay walkthroughs from YouTube channel IFreeMZ:



In my opinion, though, one of the best things coming from ESO are these trailers from Bethesda Softworks themselves:


Overall, ESO's launch certainly hasn't been perfect, but they have avoided some of the bigger pitfalls that other games have fallen victim to (like entirely halting digital sales of the game, FFXIV). The game itself is satisfying to Elder Scrolls fans like myself, and as long as we keep talking about it the game's popularity is sure to grow. The game needs to continue to grow as well, in patching up its bugs and glitches and in providing players more and more story to delve into. We are adventurers, after all, and we're going to need a steady supply of mysterious dungeons, caves, and keeps to hold our interest.