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Fallout 3 Back From the Dead
It's not the end of the world for Fallout 3... yet. Bethesda will develop and publish another title in the popular RPG series.

On July 10, Bethesda announced that it will develop and publish Fallout 3, a sequel to the highly popular PC RPG series originally published by Interplay. Bethesda acquired the rights to the franchise, allowing it to make the game and possibly further sequels for PC and consoles.

The announcement came as a surprise to gamers, who had assumed that Fallout 3 would never come out due to the many problems the game had suffered in development. First, Fallout 3 lead designer J.E. Sawyer left developer Black Isle for undisclosed reasons. Then, in December of 2003, Interplay shut down Black Isle for financial reasons, putting the game?s future in serious doubt. In April of this year, Interplay announced that it was still going to make the game, but by then the company?s financial problems were so bad that gamers wondered if Interplay still existed outside of press releases.

Fallout 3 will be developed at the same time as Bethesda?s next Elder Scrolls game, but it most likely will have nothing to do with the canceled Black Isle version of the game.

The first Fallout game was released in 1997, and is still hailed as one of the best PC RPGs ever. A well-received sequel came out a year later. A Fallout spin-off game called Brotherhood of Steel, which was released earlier this year, met with mixed reviews.

Article by Jonathan Carter.

Fallout 3 is one game that just won?t die. Despite incredibly grim odds, the game is back in development, this time in the hands of Bethesda Softworks. Bethesda (developers of the critically acclaimed Elder Scrolls series of RPG?s) has acquired the rights to publish games under the Fallout license from Interplay (the series? original, fiscally-challenged, developer).

While this may cause fans of the series to rejoice, current speculation indicates that Bethesda?s Fallout 3 will not be the same game that was being developed at Interplay. Gamers everywhere are now hoping that Bethesda will be able to recreate the unique humor and style that have made the previous iterations of the Fallout Universe a success. Currently, there is no scheduled release date.

The news comes on the heels of a seemingly-unending series of misfortunes for the title and Interplay. Immediately following the re-opening of Interplay?s corporate offices (which were shut down by the state of California for failure to pay wages and lack of worker?s compensation insurance), Titus (the largest shareholder of the ailing company?s stock) declared bankruptcy.

This, combined with the general climate of impending doom that has surrounded the game, left fans of the series feeling certain that the title would be cancelled. Hopes are now high that Bethesda will be able to pick up where Interplay left off and bring a game worthy of the license to fans.

Article by Seth ?Fingers? Flynn Barkan.

Jul 13, 2004

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