Being a weapon design artist for New Vegas, also an animation artist, using frame-by-frame DVNR (which I am a little disappointed about it by now), Fallout Online has been sold to us. The people here at TF141 Media are all working for this big epic, Fallout Online.
People at TF141 Media working on it:
- Alec Martin (me, of course) (helped with New Vegas and Oblivion)
- Emile Christ (helped with Fallout 3 and New Vegas)
- Darrin Garcia (helped with Fallout 3)
- Vincent Blake (worked on Tactics and New Vegas)
- Nick McCarthy (worked on Oblivion)
- Derek Carter (worked on Tactics and Oblivion)
- Gregg Cross (worked on Fallout 3)
- Pierce Sanders (worked on New Vegas, Oblivion, and Tactics)
- Alice Thompson (worked on New Vegas)
- Finn Smith (worked on Oblivion and Tactics)
- Jamie Cross (worked on Fallout 3)
Now, for those of you who are asking, "What the fuck is TF141 Media?", let me explain. I was with Finn and Emile one day, working as game designers. We had talked about starting our own thing, but we had never really gotten around to it until we heard about Fallout Tactics. We got really interested in this PC-only game, so we gathered up a number of friends and began to work our way up. Eventually, we got a good signing and we helped with production on Fallout Tactics. Pretty soon, Bethesda was working on big games like Fallout 3 and Oblivion, and, sure enough, we had some average parts in those epics.
When we first formed, we decided to call ourselves 'Fallout Media', and we stuck with that for years. However, we eventually got the courage to change the name. After drinking numerous sodas at a local 'My Big Fat Greek', Jamie piped up and mentioned the name 'TF141 Media'. Everybody agreed with that, and we officially changed our logo.
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| Before |
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| After |
I was a little disappointed with the latter, it kind of looked like we took it off the internet and batched it in a minute. My personal favorite is the former, but I think we worked harder on the latter.
Anyways, Interplay's not going to let Bethesda do the game. Instead, the CEO of IP decided to take away their rights, then gave the creation rights to Masthead from Bulgaria. I really hated them beyond belief for this, considering that New Vegas AND Fallout 3 were not only acclaimed, they were engrossing and they were the Fallout games that made headlines. The first two were not that popular, were they?
Nonetheless, the people at Bulgaria were pretty good, and they seemed like they know what they're doing.
This is what we're working on: Fallout Online will be a massively multiplayer online game (MMO), much to the disappointment of the crew here at TF141 Media. I think it would of been a real epic should it of been just an FPS multiplayer game, like MAG for the Playstation 3. After overlooking the DVNR and bugs from the previous games, I'm iffy about making this now, but whatever confidence I have left should show in the game later.
Fallout Online will include a lot of the old weapons. So far, these are the weapons that I know:
- Plasma Rifle
- Alien Blaster
- 10mm Pistol
- Hunting Rifle
- Gauss Rifle
- Assault Rifle
- Chinese Assault Rifle
- .44 Revolver
- Service Rifle (New Vegas?)
- Tesla Cannon
- Gatling Laser
- Minigun
- Cowboy Repeater
As with the last Fallout games, there will be levels. Since we've been progressing from the Lvl. 20 from Fallout 3 (now 30 in New Vegas), we're tossing around ideas for a Lvl. 40 online.
NO PLAYER FIGHTS. If we ARE to make an MMO, there will be thousands of players online. As I've seen in some games, you can't even blink without fights between players, which is either heavily unfair or intensely annoying. We've created a different option: why not just ASK a player if he wants to fight?
Stimpaks will be a little harder to find, as they will mostly show up from a vendor or med packs. So if you need health, you're going to REALLY need to use your head.
Some new weapons:
- Gatling Pistol
- Explosive Rifle
- .32 Repeater
- .44 Battle Gun
- Longsword
(More to come in a later post)
We'll also be adding a few new attachments. Explosive ammunition will be available for most weapons SANS the melee weapons and Rocket-based weapons. Extended Mags from New Vegas will be added.
NEW WEAPON REPORT! You guys get a CROSSBOW!
The crossbow will be a multiple-attachment weapon. Each one has a green camouflage, and will hold a total of 42 arrows before running dry. This is only a possible weapon, we are not sure if it will make the cut. Armor will appear again, this time it will be a lot more difficult to manage. This time, instead of using a similar armor piece to repair the entire thing, you'll need a repair kit, which will include limited tools, and you will have to repair various limbs, as if healing with a stimpack. So be careful when using a repair kit.
Now back to my opinion: I'm more mad at Interplay's decision to make it an MMO, and less so than their decision to force Bethesda to step down. I mean, look at how they improved in New Vegas (mostly).
Poor aiming system in Fallout 3 was mostly fixed
The weapons got an improvement, along with their attachments
You now have the choice to fix up your weapons
Roaming around towns wasn't AS tedious
The enemies weren't as impossible, and the quests weren't as limited
So working with Interplay with Fallout Online is frustrating and depressing. If they're attempting to recreate Fallout with this, then Bethesda's fingerprints should have been included. Bethesda arguably DID recreate Fallout with Fallout 3, despite the random glitches and insane bugs.
I'm starting to worry about where Fallout's headed to in the future. When Online inevitably releases later this decade, I hope that Interplay will learn from their mistakes that will make their way into the game. And, honestly, talk about talent. The first two Fallout games, although good and unique in their own way, were actually ugly considered to what the revised Fallout 3 is today. Considering Fallout 3's addicting RPG gameplay, the MMO idea was a tad ridiculous.
And I really do think Interplay's missing the point of what they're promising. I'm having my fingers crossed (the same thing goes around in the TF141 Media group) that Bulgaria has some really good ideas from the 2008 epic, like including V.A.T.S perhaps, or the classic weapons, or the addition of followers. I'm just praying they won't change everything, or else our work would of been for nothing.
I'm really starting to question the intentions of video games now.
To be continued...
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