Bethesda Thursdays
GiantBomb took a “quick look” at Dragonborn, the latest DLC for Skyrim. And by “quick”, they evidently mean more than an hour of gameplay footage from the Xbox version of the game. Skyrim is also evidently among the games destined to get Oculus Rift support, so you can now explore Whiterun in…3D. In more 3D than it already is, that is. Yeah.
Speaking of Whiterun, here’s how it would look as the subject of a reality TV show. And this texture mod would probably make it look pretty cool…from a distance, at least.
Oh, and Tom Francis at PC Gamer has just published the final entry in his journal of playing through Skyrim as a pure Illusionist. It ends…interestingly.
Polygon listed Dishonored as their #2 Game of the Year, which is high enough praise. The big news concerning Arkane’s latest from over the last week, however, has swirled around one of its developers. Joe Houston’s comments on violence in video games have been getting a lot of play in the gaming press. His core thesis, that games don’t create — but don’t exactly prevent — real-life violence is essentially correct, as is his emphasis on the fact that the developer’s ultimate responsibility, concerning this issue, is to deliver “games that engage the player with meaningful choices, additional freedom and ultimately greater personal responsibility”.
Dishonored will be made available on Games on Demand next week, and if you pick it up at GameStop you’ll get the Dunwall City Trials DLC for free.
OXM, meanwhile, has published a list of features that they’d like to see in Dishonored 2, which…er…hasn’t even been announced yet. But then, Fallout 4 hasn’t been announced yet either, and that hasn’t stopped FMV from listing off what they’d like to see in that game.
By the way, Bethesda recently re-registered the trademark for a Fallout television show. SPECULATE WILDLY!
And speaking of sequels, it appears that Arkane was briefly working on Half Life 2: Episode 4.
Finally, another OpenMW update has been posted, detailing the latest progress made on the engine.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/01/14/dishonored-designer-joe-houston-on-violence-in-games/
Fantastic. He pretty much sums up the difference between a game forcing you to commit horrible acts and allowing you to. He suggests that games of the latter type place responsibility upon the individual player for their in-game choices, while the former places responsibility upon the game creator for either encouraging or discouraging it. While I knew this intuitively, to have it said so plainly is empowering as a designer.
What’s really interesting is that Houston’s article is so similar to Garriott’s reflections upon the infamous dungeon room of children:
http://skullsinthestars.com/2009/12/04/richard-garriott-on-ultima-v/
Bethesda also said today that they plan on launching all the Skyrim DLC on PS3 next month. PC users still don’t have Dragonborn even though the XBox exclusive period is over.
Skyrim looks amazing, but after being treated like a second-class citizen by Bethesda for years (with Oblivion, FO3. FO:NV and now Skyrim), I won’t give them any more money ever again, even if that means missing out on Dishonored and Skyrim.