Wow, it's been a while since I read it, and it still seems pretty fresh.
However, I do have one thing to nit-pick on it, and that's the mentioning of
Fallout 3. Technically, the Van Buren project is dead, though Interplay still holds the IP to it.
Worries that Bethesda Game Studios isn't giving much information about the game should be set aside; that is the way Bethesda works. They only ever made ANY mention of the game at all because, as Interplay is a publicly traded company, law required them to mention this to concur with Interplay's own press release on it. Bethesda themselves are privately-owned, meaning that for anything within their own business entirely, they don't like talking.
This was quite demonstrated with
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion; though they started heavy work as soon as
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind shipped in early 2002, it wasn't until late 2004 that they even acknowledged that development on TES IV was taking place. And even then, information was sparse. It wasn't until early 2006, less than two months before the game went gold, that they started putting out screenshots, information, etc. at a rate that most people are used to seeing from big-name developers.
This has been especially disconcerting to the core fanbase for the
Fallout series, who were previously used to being close and intimate with Black Isle Studios (the developer of
Fallout and
Fallout 2) and with the transfer of rights to the game to Bethesda, these fans are now back at square one, with a largely unfamiliar company that operates in a different manner.
So, for accuracy purposes, I would've labeled that part of the article "
Fallout 3 (
Van Buren project)" to indicate that it's Interplay's original work that will not see the light of day, not FO3 entirely.
How about an article on "The Best (older) Games People Still Play"
I still enjoy playing the original MaxPayne, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Warcraft 3 is fun so is starcraft. Call of Duty and the original roller coaster tycoon!
"Older?" Older than what? :?
😛
When I think of a good Tycoon game made by Chris Sawyer, I think of
Transport Tycoon (1994) not
Roller Coaster Tycoon. I was a bit disappointed that after the runaway success of RCT, He went and completely neglected his original series; TT still remains the most complex and deepest of any capitalist games. Sure, he made a "sequel" many years later, but it wasn't anywhere near as good.
Have you noticed any similarities between Ultima and Oblivion?
Oblivion = Ultima + much better graphics and sound.
Conceptual, the two games are identical.
Ultima is dead, long live Oblivion.
Yes, of all of the game series out there, the one that has been the closest to the
Ultima series has been
The Elder Scrolls, though in most cases,
TES IV: Oblivion and even
TES III: Morrowind aren't terribly close as
TES II: Daggerfall. They fall into the fairly small category I first phrased as "ARPGs" (American Role-Playing Games) as opposed to the JRPG style.
However, of course, don't expect an MMORPG from Bethesda anytime soon. Though there was an interview that supposedly claimed this, the person interviewed himself (Pete Hines, Bethesda's Vice Prez of PR/Marketing) later came into an official discussion on it to state that they had misconstrued what he had said. His actual words were, on the subject, more to the tune of "We've considered it repeatedly, and each time have decided to not make an MMO unless we can find a way to make it unique and good."
In other words, they won't be willing to make another
Everquest/
Guild Wars/
World of Warcraft clone.
Sorry, didn't mean to throw leftovers at you guys. I just thought I'd repost it since we're working on a new installment and wanted to get some more feedback and suggestions and also spark some interest in the series for those that hadn't seen the first two.
No real problem; I don't think I spoke much on the previous article.
At any rate, since I'd gathered that the reason for digging it up was precisely what you said, I wonder what new games you're going to mention. Some that I've thought of:[*:911e8ecf99]
Stars! Supernova Genesis (Mare Crissium, PC, PS2, Xbox, Game Cube) - Back in 1995, a little outfit released a space-strategy sim called
Stars!. Citing a variety of major titles including, most prominently,
Master of Orion and
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, they strived to make an incredibly complete, exhaustive, and intuitive space-strategy game. By the time it came out, entirely turn-based sims were starting to fall out of favor to the growing segment of real-time strategy games such as the
WarCraft series, it still had pleasing gameplay, allowing for an all-aspect 4X game that was as surprisingly simple and easy to control as it was flexible game styles it could produce.
Though the game itself didn't sell incredibly well, it did enough to push demand for a more modern sequel, with all the trappings of a modern game: 3D graphics, console ports, scenario scripting, and support for bigger, wider, and more varied games.
However, trouble did come; development managed to slow with decreasing support for any potential publisher; while console support was intended, it was being designed from the ground-up as a PC game, in a world that was focusing more and more on consoles and ignoring the PC. Eventually, development asphyxiated, with no new announcements coming past 2003. By 2005, their own websites expired. Though suggestions of future work have surfaced of a sequel, for virtually all intents and purposes, the project is dead.
[*:911e8ecf99]
Descent Freespace 3 (Volition Inc., PC) - In 1998, Volition shook the world with their space-flight-sim game,
Descent Freespace: The Great War. While it was hardly a new genre in the face of heavyweights like
Wing Commander and
X-Wing/
TIE Fighter, the unique combination of excellent gameplay, detailed, heavily-scripted missions, a surreal setting, and a gripping single-player campaign and storyline, turned this into an instant hit.
A year later, an upgraded game,
Freespace 2, set the fans of the original on fire. By almost all accounts, it was better in every way, and by its supporters, is accounted to be one of the finest games ever produced.
Eventually, when a sequel was announced, again, fans were thrilled. However, the project didn't seem to move terribly far. With little information announced, and not even a cancellation, Volition, who had moved from Interplay to THQ, seemed to have forgotten their original series. Some have suggested that the poor sales of
Freespace 2, in spite of its stellar reviews, have signified that the genre was a dead-end, and not worth pursuing.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram