Though the house that rebooted the Fallout franchise is best known for blasting mutated baddies with Fat Boys and, more recently, their blades-and-bullets-fueled WET, they—with the aid of developer Rebellion— have also been quietly working on a title closer to Tom Clancy territory than post-apocalyptic or pulp-film worlds. Loosely based on the life of real-deal Navy SEAL Richard Marcinko, Rogue Warrior was originally being developed by Zombie Studios until Bethesda turned the reins over to Rebellion, who reworked everything from the story and setting, to the tech and gameplay.

The final product offers a messy mix of cool concepts and unfulfilled potential that'll likely only appeal to Marcinko's most faithful following or shooter fans whose trigger fingers are still itching even after spending countless hours on Modern Warfare 2's front lines.

Loved
Non-fiction Fisher: Richard "Demo Dick" Marcinko is the real world's answer to Sam Fisher; from heading a SEAL Counter-Terrorist Team to forming Red Cell, a government-appointed unit tasked with testing the Navy's vulnerability to terror attacks, this guy makes Jack Bauer look about as bad-ass as a yellow neckerchief-sporting Cub Scout. Rogue Warrior does a decent job of capitalizing on its non-fiction hero, setting its story in an engaging Cold War-era campaign that sees him infiltrating North Korea and the U.S.S.R. in search of weapons of mass destruction. Additionally, Marcinko's character model, complete with grizzled facade, salt-and-pepper beard, and a pony tail evocative of Steven Seagal's memorable '80s mane, is a dead ringer for the real Demo Dick. Amping the authenticity further is voice work provided by Mickey Rourke, fueled almost entirely by F-bombs. From his repeated use of "Happy 4th of July mother-f*cker." to the unfortunate-image-conjuring "This is a total goat-f*ck.", the foul language is absolutely ridiculous. However, given Marcinko's involvement in the project, I can only assume these over-the-top obscenities accurately represent a real part of the man's personality. Additionally, complementing the salty dialog is the occasional clever gem such as "President Reagan sends his regards." uttered by Marcinko as he tosses a Russki off a bridge, effectively immersing players in the era.

Non-stealthy Stealth Kills: One of the title's few signature features is its "Kill Moves", brutal cinematic finishers yielding lots of blood and often the use of a large serrated blade. They're meant to be stealth moves, but being sneaky hardly factors into their use, as you can just charge up to a baddie, jam on the attack button, and enjoy the neck-snapping, jugular-slicing, kidney-stabbing animations. Sure, you could argue the mechanic is broken given how forgiving it is, but I'll be damned if I didn't have a good time pulling off these creative kills without ever triggering the type of too-sensitive stealth mechanics that often sully the genre.

He Shoots, He Scores: As an FPS fan and an admitted Achievement/Trophy-chasing whore, I appreciate Rogue Warrior's shooter-centric point boosters. No cryptic "secret" score-amping goals, here; just straightforward tasks such as nailing a specific amount of head-shots, using every weapon in your arsenal, taking out a cluster of bad guys with a single grenade, and completing an entire mission with only your sidearm. Not terribly creative, but satisfying in a way that'll get trigger-pulling gamers to slightly alter their usual style and even replay some missions to achieve these score-ratcheting tasks.

Hated
Empty Promise: Despite a cool concept, driven by Demo Dick, the Cold War vibe, and brutal finishing kills, Bethesda and Rebellion have sunk this promising property's potential in shoddy design. From its dumb-ass AI and lazy level design, to its wonky cover system and all-over-the-place hit detection, the title feels unpolished in its best moments and just plain broken during its worst. Marcinko's path is peppered with as many bugs as bad guys, yielding multiple immersion-breaking moments that ultimately leave the game doling out frustration and fun in equal doses.

Wait, It's Over?!: Rogue Warrior's blink-and-you'll-miss-it campaign makes Modern Warfare 2's brief solo run seem like a 40-hour epic. This could be partially forgiven had its single-player campaign boasted the same blinding polish as Infinity Ward's aforementioned juggernaut. But with 3-4 hours of lackluster quality, this one feels more like a budget title or retail-wannabe DLC like Watchmen: The End is Nigh or The Warriors: Street Brawl, not a game boasting a $60 asking price.

Multi-player without the "Multi": Rogue Warrior's online arena is like a ghost town that's been deserted even by its resident specters; after several attempts, I wasn't able to find a single opponent to unleash my guns and grenades on. Of course, given the dearth of modes, unpolished mechanics, and stiff competition from the season's superior online offerings, it's little surprise Demo Dick will be spending the holidays alone.

With Sam Fisher and Solid Snake taking the season off, I was hoping Marcinko could fill the stealth-killer void. While his history and forehead-attracting hunting knife pack more than enough potential to support a solid new franchise, his debut vehicle falls way short.

A decent yarn, some cool kills, and a genuinely interesting protagonist are no match for a product that feels unfinished and unpolished. If you're a fan of the man behind the game, or simply can't resist the call of gun-clutching hands and a cross hair centered on your HD display, you'll see the potential in this property and even have some fun stylishly dropping bad guys and F-bombs, while padding your Gamerscore. But even with that limited appeal in mind, I'd recommend not treading in Marcinko's boots until Rogue Warrior begins lining the bottom of bargain bins... which it may be doing already.

Rogue Warrior was developed by Rebellion and published by Bethesda Softworks for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC on December 1. Retails for $$59.99 USD on consoles, $49.99 USD on PC. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played single-player mode to completion on Xbox 360, attempted to test online multiplayer modes, but found no other warriors.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

Here's the score: Bethesda sued Interplay, claiming the Fallout Trilogy bundle it was selling and marketing through digital distribution services was "confusingly similar" to Bethesda's Fallout 3 products going out this year. Bethesda also wants to terminate Interplay's contract to develop the Fallout MMO, a deal signed when Bethesda bought the rights in 2007 - for $5.75 million - from Interplay, the series' original publisher.

But U.S. District Court Judge Deborah K. Chasanow rejected Bethesda's request for an injunction, without giving any reasons, in a ruling first found by Fallout fan Web site Duck and Cover, and reported today by Gamasutra.

Court Denies Bethesda's Motion To Block Interplay Fallout Activity [Gamasutra]

Fallout fan Wikia The Vault believes them to be, writing today that they were acquired from an "anonymous, but reliable source" and that they're a part of Interplay's defense in a lawsuit filed against the developer by Fallout-rights holder Bethesda.

The screens at least appear to be in line with what the Project V13 concept art hinted at, even if the purported in-game stuff looks like a very brown, very bleak place to spend one's online time.

The Vault blogger Ausir also has more PV13 concept art, should you be turned off by the reality of the in-development MMO. Thanks to Dmitriy for the heads up.

According to reports from Kotaku tipsters affected by the save and posters on Bethsoft's official Fallout 3 forums, the problem appears to be limited to folks in Canada (with one from Sweden) who have the PlayStation 3 version of the re-release. Limited though it may appear to be, the inability to play with characters cultivated over dozens or hundreds of hours in the complete Fallout 3 package is understandably frustrating.

Fortunately, Bethesda Software appears to be investigating the issue.

"Wanted to let you know I've been working with folks here at the office to investigate the issues with GOTY in Canada," assures Bethesda's Sr. Community Manager. "When I have more details to share, I'll let you know. Stay tuned."

So, buyer beware, especially if you're from America's hat and have invested heavily in the original version of Fallout 3. Kotaku readers, who's having similar issues? Who's getting along in the wastelands without issue? Let us know in the comments.

Thanks to Wolfsong, Evan and everyone else for the tips.

GOTY saves not working. [Fallout 3 Forums]
Fallout 3 GOTY - Now Available [Bethesda Blog]

But does the heroine deliver enough fun in third-person shooter WET to justify the price, or is the game all flash and little substance?

Loved
Acrobatics: That's really what this game is all about: Flipping, sliding, tumbling, spinning, all while blasting away at bad guys in slow-mo, often with two guns. Rubi's talent for acrobatic gunplay is most often tested in arena-like maps which require players not only to kill off an absurdly large group of enemies, but also block or jam doors that act as spawn points in the game.

It is in these acrobatic moments that the game sings. The controls are deftly tuned and making Rubi do spectacular things is as easy as pushing a button to slide on the ground, another to jump and then aiming her motion with a controller. The rest is nearly automatic.

While you don't have to constantly jump, wall run or slide under and around objects, it would be hard to survive without doing so. That's because when you're doing these acrobatics the game automatically slips into slow motion. It also takes over the aiming for one of your guns, allowing you to focus on aiming the other so you can blast enemies down two at a time.

As the game progresses, the challenge increases drastically, shifting a gamer's attention from scoring lots of points with strung-together attacks to simply surviving the onslaught. And it is always a satisfying challenge.

Weapons and Ammo: Rubi starts the game armed with just two six-shooters and a sword. As she progresses through the game you unlock dual shotguns, dual submachineguns and even an explosive-firing crossbow. All of the weapons serve different purposes, so you'll find yourself switching between them quite a bit on the fly.

While the ammo for the three unlockable weapons is limited, the six-shooter's ammo is not. That's a key to some of the game's success, I think. Because you don't have to worry about ammo conservation while using the six shooter, you can instead focus on doing spectacular moves while spraying the room with unending gunfire.

Style: The game oozes style. From the apt "face-melting, musical debauchery" of the soundtrack to the quirky little retro movie theater ads that run at odd moments between pivotal scenes in the game.

The design choices of WET pushes what could have been a generic title into something with flavor; something that's so enjoyable to watch at times you may lose a life or two doing so.

Rage Mode: WET is essentially broken up into three types of game play: Those enemy-spewing arenas that force gamers to focus on acrobatics as much as gunplay, sections that feel like a platformer with some gunplay, and rage modes.

Every rage mode kicks off with a splash of blood. The music goes psycho, the graphics shift to highly-stylized silhouettes of black, red and white and the action unhooks from its already weak grasp of reality. In essence, Rubi loses it. This turns the sections you typically play through into pulse-pounding, over-the-top moments of exuberant thrill kills.

While by the end of the game I found the arena sections of WET to be the most satisfying, the rage modes were always a welcome diversion.

Ending: Finally a game that doesn't spoil a tight plot with a self-indulgent, rambling ending. WET ends as it plays: Quickly and brutally.

Hated
Wonky Controls: While the acrobatic controls of Rubi in flight and during gameplay work quite well. Controlling her during the sections when you have to maneuver through hazardous objects and leap across sections of maps can be a challenge. It feels like Rubi is never ready to run straight forward and always sort of veers to the left or right, making it hard to hit the right spot on some of these controlled jumps.

Wonky Camera: Again, the camera works mostly fine in the arena, but get Rubi in a confined area and you start running into problems. It probably would have been a good idea to limit gameplay to what WET does best, wide open scenes.

Platforming: The forced platforming sections of WET not only slow down the action, combined with the controls, they really deflate the entire game. It's annoying to survive hand-bruising, intense encounters with crowds of thugs only to miss a simple jump from open doorway to nearby wall.

Worse still, many of these moments don't do a good job of explaining where exactly you're supposed to be moving Rubi, leading to death by confusion. Something that shouldn't be happening in a game like this.

Graphics: While the style of the game is an undeniable attraction for WET, the graphics are not. Even with the deliberate, scratchy film effect it's hard to miss that the characters look hollow, like skin wrapped around air. This is most noticeable in the cut-scenes that still manage to deliver an intriguing plot. It's unfortunate that bad graphics plague the game, because it distracts from an otherwise engaging experience.

One would think that being essentially forced to turn every sequence, every bit of action, every moment of confrontation into something you'd expect to see in Cirque de Solei would get tedious. It should get tedious. Why does Rubi need to slide across the pavement on her knees in slow motion to plug a guy standing with his back to her. Or wall run and flip over a lacksidasical henchmen before gutting him with her sword. She doesn't, but man is it fun. And no, it never gets old.

WET is an oddly satisfying experience. Despite its many flaws, some critical to gameplay, WET delivers a quick run through a fun story that delights in shocking, but doesn't take itself too seriously. It's a little short, a little wonky, but when it delivers, it delivers big.

WET was developed by Artificial Mind and Movement and published by Bethesda for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 on Sept. 15. Retails for $59.99 USD. Played through entire campaign and several challenges on the Playstation 3 version of the game.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

The details of that case come from a complaint filed in the District Court of Maryland earlier this week. That complaint alleges that Interplay did not seek approval for the sale of the Fallout Trilogy bundle, which features the original Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics. Bethesda claims that the title Fallout Trilogy is "confusingly similar" to that of Fallout 3 and takes issue with Interplay's marketing, sale and distribution of other Fallout packages named Fallout Collection and Saga Fallout.

Bethesda also takes issue with Interplay's licensing of Fallout games to digital distribution services Good Old Games (GOG), GameTap and Steam, which Interplay was said never to have sought approval or permission for. Basically, Bethesda takes issue with pretty much everything Interplay seems to be doing with the pre-Fallout 3 releases, believing they cannibalize sales of Fallout 3.

The Fallout 3 developer furthermore wants to officially terminate Interplay's rights to create a massively multiplayer online game with the Fallout license. Bethesda believes that Interplay has breached its trademark licensing agreement by failing to enter into full-scale development of a Fallout MMO.

Bethesda threatened legal action over the Fallout MMO earlier this year, claiming that Interplay was slow to develop such a game and had failed to secure the proper funding for the game code-named "Project V13."

In short, it appears that Bethesda wants Interplay to stop selling the Fallout Trilogy and pay up any profits it made selling the trademark infringing games.

Bethesda purchased the rights to the Fallout property for $5.75 million.

Earlier this week, tipster Dan M. snapped that screen pic of the 22 trophies. Tipster Player X went comparing trophies with someone in his friends list and noticed them, too. They're listed below.

Sit tight, PS3 owners, your wait is almost over. The DLC will release in the same order as it did for Xbox 360, beginning with Operation Anchorage, then the Pitt, Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta. Correction: Broken Steel will be the first expansion, followed by Operation Anchorage, then The Pitt, then Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta.

• Aiding the Outcasts (silver)
• The Guns of Anchorage (silver)
• Paving the Way (silver)
• Operation Anchorage! (gold)
• Into The Pitt (silver)
• Unsafe Working Conditions (silver)
• Free Labor (gold)
• Mill Worker (silver)
• Death From Above (silver)
• Shock Value (silver)
• Who Dares Wins (gold)
• Devil (bronze)
• True Mortal (bronze)
• Messiah (bronze)
• The Local Flavor (silver)
• Walking With Spirits (silver)
• A Meeting of the Minds (gold)
• Bog Walker (silver)
• Not of This World (silver)
• Among the Stars (silver)
• This Galaxy Ain't Big Enough... (gold)
• Alien Archivist (silver)

The darkness dances in an erratic sizzle of colors from thousands of computer monitors, the pulsing pixels illuminating an electronic shanty town of home-built computers, neon, pillows and people.

This room of humming computers, quietly clicking keyboards, and energized gamers is the throbbing heart of QuakeCon, id Software's annual fan gathering held last week in Grapevine, Texas.

While the free convention, held in a Dallas, Texas-area hotel each year, sheds light on new projects in the works by the famed developers behind Quake, Doom and Return to Wolfenstein, what makes this gathering unique is it's sense of camaraderie. Gamers from across the country, and sometimes around the world, bring their own computers to the event to hook them up in a massive network and game together.

It is, id Software says, three days of Peace, Love and Rockets.

This year the event drew more than 7,000 people to the Dallas-area and included a more than two-hour talk by id developer John Carmack. But QuakeCon hasn't always been so auspicious. The convention grew out of a gathering of gamers in the summer of 1996 that was more pilgrimage than celebration, said id Software president Todd Hollenshead.

"A bunch of guys made a pilgrimage to Dallas to see if they could get (John Carmack) to talk at their LAN party," he said.

The group all gathered at a hotel in Garland, Texas a few miles from id Software. They set up an impromptu tournament and then emailed Carmack asking if he could swing by.

On the last day, Carmack showed up and talked to the group in the hotel's parking lot for about half an hour.

The late night parking lot chat and the days leading up to it have, over the years, blossomed into a gaming party of sorts, with tournaments, music, gaming and Carmack's annual chat.

Although the event has always been held close to id Software's Texas offices, that doesn't stop a group of id developers from moving into the hotel for the show's four days so they can check in as often as they'd like on the 24-hour a day gaming.

"People who come to QuakeCon are genuinely enthused about PCs," Hollenshead said. "They lug their PCs to the hotel just to play for 72 hours."

QuakeCon provides the tables, the chairs, the power and the cabling to hook all of those thousands of computers together, the gamers provide everything else.

"I think this is the largest free event of its kind in North America and the largest bring-your-own-computer in the world," he said.

The lights in the massive gaming room go off Thursday and don't come back on again until Sunday, and some people try to take advantage of every minute of that potential game time.

"There are people who will literally go down there and play until they are done," he said. "We've had instances of people who pass out at their computers.

"People will bring pillows, lay them over the keyboard and go to sleep. We don't encourage that, because it's probably not the best thing."

The computers, many modified into outlandish shapes like small coffins or Transformer Optimus Prime, light up the otherwise darked space.

"It's a cool thing to see - the monitors and the neon," Hollenshead said

While QuakeCon is returning to its roots in some ways, it's also moving forward in others. Earlier this year id Software was purchased by the company that owns developer Bethesda Games.

Last week Bethesda Games attended their first ever QuakeCon, remaining quietly in the background of the show typically dedicated to id. But that is something that could change in the future.

"The potential is that we could have a bigger and more exciting QuakeCon" with Bethesda's help," Hollenshead said.

It makes sense for QuakeCon to try and expand from an id-centric experience to one more broadly dedicated to PC gaming in all of its forms.

The current stable of cutting-edge consoles have eroded the home computer's already failing gamer-base and groups like the PC Gaming Alliance are bringing groups together to try and draw that audience back.

Hollenshead believes that as this generation of consoles age, PC games are regaining their advantage.

"As consoles go into their fifth Christmas the technology advantage of the PC is going to become an important factor," He said. "It's likely over the next couple years that PC gaming will have a a bigger competitive advantage."

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

Not only that, the original design of Fallout 3, by Black Isle, there were no plans to include Dogmeat. But Bethesda ultimately brought him back. It seems bizarre that they could have left out a dog companion, one of the most motionally fulfilling features of the original two games.

The Escapist's latest issue examines canines in gaming, and no such study would be complete without a discussion of Dogmeat, the unwaveringly faithful follower your Lone Wanderer picks up in all three Fallout titles. The game's creators never imagined how attached players would become to the dog, going to hell and back to keep him alive until the end of the game.

Junktown Dog

"Dogmeat was definitely inspired by The Road Warrior," says Cain. "Leonard Boyarsky, the art director ... had that movie running continuously in his office, and I think he remarked on several occasions that having a dog in the game would be really cool. [It's] why we wanted a dog in the first place."

Many pieces of the Fallout games were inspired by The Road Warrior, from the opening "newsreel" monologues (narrated by Ron Perlman of The City of Lost Children, another inspiration according to Cain) to the games' stylized leather armor and medical braces. One of the most vivid images from Bethesda Game Studios' Fallout 3, the latest installment in the series, is that of the Lone Wanderer with Dogmeat by his side, a mirror image of a scene from Mad Max. Even the breed is the same: Both are Blue Heelers, known for their loyalty, trainability and heterochromia (one blue eye, one brown eye).
image

What isn't derived from The Road Warrior is Dogmeat's name; that likely comes from a scene in the 1975 film A Boy and His Dog where Vic (Don Johnson) refers to his mutt as "Dogmeat."

"A Boy and His Dog inspired Fallout on many levels, from underground communities of survivors to glowing mutants," says Heinig. "My understanding is that (Fallout designer) Scott Bennie settled on the name 'Dogmeat' for the character, and it's likely that he did pick that from the story in question." Good thing, because according to Bennie, Dogmeat's original name was "Dogs**t."

In the original Fallout 3 (aka Van Buren), designed to near-completion by Black Isle, there were no plans to bring Dogmeat back, but fortunately for dog lovers he made it into Bethesda's version as a presumed descendant of the original dog who - according to the developers - perished in a "force field accident." Fallout 3's Dogmeat not only follows and defends you, but will fetch food, ammo and weapons (even boasting the curious but helpful ability to pilfer things from locked containers). When he goes missing, he can often be found waiting patiently outside Vault 101, perhaps inspired by the final scene from A Boy and His Dog where "Dogmeat" waits outside a vault for his owner.

[...]

Dogmeat's unwavering devotion lets players "Pet the Dog," a fiction trope wherein a potentially despised character appears kinder by demonstrating a love for dogs: In Equilibrium, Cleric John Preston slaughters a dozen policemen to save a puppy; Discworld's Lord Vetinari (veterinary?) is an ex-assassin with dogs named Wuffles and Mr. Fusspot; even Richard Nixon had Checkers. In an uncaring wasteland where you can play a total psychopath if you so choose, Dogmeat is a moral compass: Though your needle might swing towards good or evil, his center always holds strong provided you protect him. If you don't, his death becomes a sad reminder of the consequences of reckless slaughter.

For many reasons, Dogmeat is arguably the most successful NPC companion ever, according to Chris Avellone, Level Designer for Fallout 2, creator of the Fallout Bible and Chief Creative Officer of Obsidian Entertainment, developer of Fallout: New Vegas.

"One, he doesn't talk, so the players can project a personality on to him," says Avellone. "Two, he's effective in combat ... and three, he's a dog that stays with you through thick-and-thin. I don't think there's a deeper 'awww' sentiment than people have in their hearts for their pets."

- Michael Fiegel

MTV Multiplayer recently asked Bethesda Softworks' Jeff Gardiner if there were any plans to extend the game's level cap, as was done when Broken Steel took it from 20 to 30. Gardiner was also asked if the game could handle boosting the stats above 10 and/or the skills above 100 without breaking. Short answer, no.

"I know from the outside this seems like a fairly simple proposition, but doing this could unbalance the game in a variety of ways," he told Multiplayer. The game's replay value, he said, is in going through it again as different characters having different experiences.

Gardiner's followup didn't explicitly slam the door on a cap extension later. "We're very happy that people enjoy Fallout 3 so much that they want to keep playing it, and I'm sure we'll look into addressing these concerns in future games," he said.

We've heard never-say-never from Bethesda before, and it's a sound policy. But it sounds like "future games," means "games other than Fallout 3."

Bethesda: Further Level Cap Increases Could Unbalance Fallout 3 [MTV Multiplayer via Joystiq]

The only thing it'll cost you is 148 megabytes of hard drive space, a small price to pay for the game Johnny Wilson of Computer Gaming World once called "Revolutionary!" You'll also need a DOS emulator, something Bethesda kindly offers a link to, and a pair of rose-tinted glasses to play.

Interesting to that the second game in the massive series requires so little hardware horsepower—you'll need a 66 Mhz processor or better—and consumes so little space. I remember Daggerfall being massive, but its install size pales in comparison to the 1 gigabyte required for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and the 4.6 gigabytes needed for Oblivion.

The Elder Scrolls Downloads [ElderScrolls.com - thanks, Andrew!]

Earlier this week the company behind post-apocalyptic video game hit Fallout 3 bought the developers of famed shooter Doom putting two of the most respected talent pools in the industry, id Software and Bethesda Softworks, under one umbrella: ZeniMax Media.

The result, analysts and ZeniMax says, will be studios that can spend more time on the creative process and less cutting deals with outside publishers. It also will mean the blending of the technological prowess and creative artistry of two of the most respected game makers in the industry.

The deal, though, is likely the sign of the times says Game Changer Research analyst Billy Pidgeon.

"Those stuck between small independent studios and mega publishers are very vulnerable," he said. "A good strategy is to look at where a developer can win."

That means focusing more on niches and, when necessary, buddying up with another niche developer. In the case of id Software and Bethesda, the two are each masters of a certain type of game: first-person shooters and role-playing games respectively.

"It is possible to narrow to a niche and then dominate in that space, so you can compete better," he said. "A lot of people are going to be disappointed that id didn't remain independent, but it's tough to be independent and these mini-consolidations are better than, say, being swallowed up by Ubisoft."

Pidgeon says he thinks this is just the first of what will be more of these mini-consolidations, developers buddying up so they can publish their own games instead of having to pay a chunk of their profits to larger companies to get their games out.

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michel Pachter agrees, saying that he wouldn't be surprised if ZeniMax were to purchase or team up with other leading developers like Gears of War creator Epic Games and Left 4 Dead developers Valve.

"For Valve and Epic to stay independent maybe they ought to roll up together," Pachter said. "If ZeniMax brought in Epic and Valve then suddenly you would have a powerhouse."

The impetus for these consolidations, he says, is that increasingly the larger publishers are less interested in promoting and publishing games that are created and owned by other developers.

"Publishers have abandoned third-party developers and everything is moving in-house," he said.

The desire for the creative talent behind an endeavor to own the product of their work isn't limited to games. In 1919, Charlie Chaplain, Douglass Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith, tired of earning money for big movie studios, consolidated their talents to form their own studio: United Artists.

"Bethesda and id getting together is like United Artists getting together," Pachter said. "They got together because they were tired of being employees. They decided they want to own the IP."

"That's what ZeniMax is doing. Bethesda and id are independent developers and the fact that they are going to stay independent is good."

The idea of ZeniMax buying up or partnering with other talented developers isn't just a theory, it's one of the reasons the company raised $300 million in 2007.

"We continue to have discussions with a variety of third-party developers which make the kind of games we like and has the kind of folks we do business with," said Pete Hines, a spokesman for Bethesda Software. "We've heard from a lot of people from every quarter since this news came out."

That's how the deal with id Software started, as a friendly conversation between ZeniMax CEO Robert Altman and id president Todd Hollenshead.

"They were talking about what we could do together," Hines said. "And the more they talked the more they realized that if we got together the whole would be better than the sum of its parts."

It would also allow id to get away from the biggest problem they have, being a small cog in a much larger publisher's machine.

"Now they get to be a whole part of the process and the know the publisher will be fully behind them," Hines said.

Under the new arrangement id Software will remain mostly untouched and be allowed to do what they do best: Make solid games. But the deal will give id Software the ability to expand their stable of developers, said Hines, who had just returned from a trip to id Software's Texas studio.

Already the company is preparing to ramp up their studio from two development teams to three, he said. That means there's a better chance that they will be able to keep the development of their four key game franchises—Doom, Quake, Rage and Wolfenstein—all in-house and rely less on outside development studios.

There's also quite a bit of excitement around the idea of Carmack, widely known as a skilled programmer, helping Bethesda tackle some of the issues they've run into in game development. That could mean everything from helping Bethesda create iPhone games and Bethesda helping id on downloadable content for their games to the two solving more technical issues together.

"We also hope from a creative standpoint," Hines said, "that [the two studios] can do more together."

Well Played is a weekly opinion column about the big news of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

Where does a sprawling game that's already sprawled across three downloadable expansions set partially in Alaska, Pittsburgh and an Air Force base go in a fourth? To the rocky beaches, creepy swamps and faded boardwalk of a new island called Point Lookout.

With so much content already released that makes the massive Bethesda game more massive, the offering of another $10 expansion is either a tough sell or a necessary fix for those who've been buying everything. Following the bombastic, level-cap-raising, end-revising Broken Steel, however, the next piece of content just can't seem like that big a deal. Good thing it's interesting.

Loved
Creepy Creeps:Point Lookout is no Resident Evil. It's not as scary as the first of those games. But it's got a double-barreled shotgun and plenty of shambling enemies to be shot with it. It's got a boarded up mansion, a propensity to exhaust its visitors' ammo supply, and some great psychological tricks similar to what Bethesda's designers dabbled with in one of the Vaults in the core game. It also has a bunch of new inbred enemies and a lot of people swinging axes in close quarters where your rifle is poor defense. If you like to panic while playing your games, this is the Fallout 3 DLC for you.

Beauty And The Beach:Games grounded on real world terrain such as Grand Theft Auto and Fallout benefit from art designers who draw from interesting elements of real geography. Forget lava bridges and rainbow roads. There's beauty in bringing a strong art style and the player witnessing it to craggy cliffs that overlooking a shipwreck and the shoals of sand exposed by low tide. A smoky sky, a looming Ferris wheel, a lone lighthouse in the distance, a cave littered with coffins… this is the scenery to make you feel uneasy.

Hated
Strange Pace: It starts hard. It ends easy. There are lots of optional side mission, at least one that was surprisingly simple for a Level 26 hero. An expansion's degree of challenge certainly doesn't need to be set to a steady incline, but when you feel like it's getting good is when it's ending.

This one's the haunted side-trip of the Fallout 3 downloadable expansions. It offers players a more significant change of scenery than any of the DLCs since Operation Anchorage. It breaks no new ground for gameplay, but advances Fallout 3's aesthetics.

Recommended for those seeking uneasy and weird. And, hey, if you play Fallout 3 and already have your hero eating the flesh of the ghouls he kills, then uneasy and weird is just right.

Oh, and it features Mother Brain. See? Weird.

Fallout 3: Point Lookout was developed by Bethesda Softworks and distributed to the Xbox 360 and Windows for download on June 23. It's also announced as coming to the PS3 later. Retails for 800 Microsoft Points ($10 USD). Played the five core quests, one extra, sampled the new weapons, raised my hero from Level 24 to Level 26 over the course of about five hours.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

The estranged game designer, who's no longer with id and currently developing iPhone games, tweeted this: "ZENIMAX??????? Disgusting." He followed that up an hour later with "Fallout 3 bought DOOM. Wow."

Romero is known for coining the term "deathmatch" and the disastrous Daikatana ad campaign. That, and having amazing hair.

Id co-founder John Carmack, id CEO Todd Hollenshead and ZeniMax CEO Robert Altman told Kotaku that the purchase will change none of the principles or principals of id and Bethesda but will allow id to grow like it never has before.

We've contacted Romero to clarify, but have yet to receive a reply.

Update: Hours later, Romero tweeted, "i guess i was shocked and sad to see the id Software of old changed forever today. it's a new day and a new id." Same old Romero, though.

@theromero [Twitter via VG247]

The dairy details how the team set about taking a bunch of phrases scribbled on a napkin, (Swamp, Boardwalk. Mansion Siege. Organ Thieves. Steamboat. Cultists") and turning it into the next adventures in the game.

It's an interesting glimpse into the process of expanding an already popular and detailed world. Also, there are these neat new screenshots:

Deus Ex Mundus, Diabolus Ex Labori [Beth Blog]

Typical of new Steam additions, the updated Bethesda catalog is currently cheap. That means things like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition Deluxe, which packs in the original Oblivion plus nine downloadable content offerings, including the horse armor pack, can be yours for just $19.99 USD. That's something like a zillion hours for every dollar you spend.

The addition of Bethesda's older stuff, Call of Cthulhu and Morrowind, also comes with a batch of new, as the publisher's Rogue Warrior is also listed for pre-purchase.

Thanks to KefkaticFanatic for the heads up.

Bethesda Softworks [Steam]

We're going to get our first taste of the game at this year's E3, but Bethesda's European managing director Sean Brennan has already stoked the hype engines for the unannounced title.

"We're not announcing the name yet, but it's a first-person shooter," Brennan tells GamesIndustry.biz in a new interview. "That's a product that we believe is a genre-breaker, it's a real killer app. From a quality perspective we're pitching that along the same lines as Fallout 3."

Why the secrecy?

"We've kept it under lock and key, there are so many innovative features in there we don't want to reveal them too soon," Brennan explains. "We've spent significant resources developing the title. And that's a great example of our European work."

Splash Damage is best known for its work on Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. While I wouldn't rule out Fallout: Enemy Territory, Bethesda's expansion into a wider range of products—and personal hopes for something new and truly killer app description worthy—would lead me to believe that the developer has something more interesting up its collective sleeve.

Bethesda's Sean Brennan Part One [GamesIndustry.biz]

The event gave those present a look at WET, Rogue Warrior, the latest Fallout 3 downloadable content, and a chance to talk to the publisher and their developer about some of their upcoming games and projects.

While travel was paid for, our coverage was not. Here's a break down of what I wrote from the event:

New Fallout Announced
Fallout 3 Delivers Puppies! on May 5
WET: Guns, Leather, Swords and Acrobatics
Rogue Warrior Carpet F-Bombs With Rourke
Bethesda Teams With Del Rey For Elder Scroll Novels
Despite the Trash Talk, No Taunt Button in Rogue Warrior
Bethesda Says Snog Me Senseless With Mints

But the acrobatic shooter dances, sword slicing, guns blazing, on the razor's edge of sheer spectacle, dangerously close to being a game that is perhaps all about style while offering little substance.

It is certainly too soon to decide if playing fixer Rubi will offer gamers enough to be viewed as mere gimmick, but it's something I couldn't help but wonder while sitting through a demonstration of the game last week.

"WET is a really stylized Tarantino-flavored acrobatic shooter," said Patrick Fortier, creative director at developer Artificial Mind & Movement. "The vision was to combine shooting, swordplay and acrobatics into one seamless system and create a game with the kind of energy you would find in Desperado or Killbill.

"The Crazy 88 scene is the kind of energy we're going for in Wet."

The game's main character is Rubi, a fixer that Fortier described as a sort of contemporary take on Clint Eastwood's character in the man with no name.

As in Kill Bill, the female lead is a mysterious character, a women driven by money who gets double crossed and betrayed. The game's style leans on the look and feel of 70s action movies with grainy visuals, a cheesy retro soundtrack and that classic ironic mix of violence and humor.

The game's demonstration opens up on a deal gone bad in San Francisco. Rubi hops through a glass ceiling and begins to clear the room.

The controls, we're told, are relatively simple. You press A to jump, B to slide, the left trigger to wall run and the right trigger to shoot. Time slows down a little while sliding, wall running or in the air, so you want to do that as much as possible to make clearing the rooms, which always seems packed with enemies, easier.

While time is slowed, you use the right thumbstick to aim one of Rubi's guns, the other gun auto aims, making it easier to take down multiple targets at the same time.

"The idea is to make it clear for players that they should do acrobatics because you have a second gun and are doing double damage and you have slow mode," Fortier said "These things make you feel that much more powerful and reward you instantly."

The whole point of the game is to get players to never stop, never slow down, Fortier says. It's about thinking, shooting, slicing on the run.

Players can swing from poles, control the direction of their slides, wall run across people, instead of walls and, most importantly it seems, string together these acrobatic moves to dazzling effect.

"We don't want to interrupt a player's flow of combat," he said. "Players create their own lines as they move through the environment. We don't want players to stand still."

The acrobatic kills all get nicknames, like 360 dive, killer head rush, double dealer or enemy stomp, and all of those moves feed into the scoring system. The style modifier awards points which can be used to unlock new moves or upgrade weapons.

While initially Rubi only has a sword on two pistols, as the game progresses she can unlock dual shotguns, dual machineguns and explosives.

While running through a level, acrobatically killing off wave after wave of enemy looked fun, it also looked like it could get a bit old after awhile. Fortunately, the developers made sure to try and mix things up with a few other modes we were shown.

There are a sort of boss fights, for instance, that feature what the developers termed "exotic gameplay." The one we saw featured Rubi hopping from car to car on a freeway, running along the sides of buses, flipping onto the hood of cars, as she makes her way to an enemy speeding down the road.

It is essentially a glorified dynamic shooting gallery. You don't control the car, and a lot of it is strung together quicktime events, but it looks really cool.

Another fun touch is the game's Rage Mode. These sequences, which are activated automatically about seven or eight times throughout the game, turn the already stylized look of WET into an animated snuff flick… in a good way.

The one we saw kicked off after a splash of blood spattered across Rubi's face, making her snap apparently.

The graphics shift drastically, painting Rubi and her enemies as near silhouettes on a blood-red backdrop.

In the mode Rubi is just short of being invulnerable and inflicts a lot more damage. The game also shifts scoring to reward more heavily for chain kills than number of kills. Each of these Rage modes will have their own quirks we were told.

WET also has some neat little touches. Rubi regains health by swigging from a bottle of whiskey and then throwing it into the air and shooting it. She uses her sword to pry open doors. And the game's load screens look like 70s intermissions complete with cheesy ads and even a melting bit of projection.

The game will also feature something called Rubi Vision, which wasn't shown during the demonstration. It's still being worked on, but we were told that it would label some of the environments, like poles, as interactive. The idea is to make sure players won't have to stop to assess an area and can continue to kill on the run.

WET, which is due out for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 this fall, features an eight to ten hours singleplayer mode and two or three other modes you can unlock. Those modes include difference race, time and gun challenges that take place in unique settings like her home in an airplane graveyard. There will no longer be a multiplayer mode.

WET was initially a Vivendi title, but Activision Blizzard decided to drop the game last summer. And Artificial Mind & Movement bought back the rights to Wet. They later pitched it to Bethesda Softworks which agreed to publish the game.

Retail listings for WET also back up Famitsu's mention (by way of Siliconera) the game's new home, with GameFly listing Bethesda as the game's publisher. While WET's not the typical fare for Bethesda, who are better known for work on The Elder Scrolls series and Fallout 3, we'd think it's a good opportunity for the developer-publisher to expand its slate, while saving an interesting looking shooter at the same time.

See? "Besesuda Sofutowakusu," says the new issue of Famitsu.

We know that Bethesda has been showing off some of its upcoming wares in London this week, but we'll await further confirmation on the matter before calling it anything other than rumor.