Daily News Spin — June 28, 2001 (Thursday)

Black Isle on Fallout 3

Duck and Cover has an interview with Feargus Urquhart, director of Interplay's Black Isle Studio. He talks a bit about Fallout 3, which hasn't been announced yet.

Actually we are looking to continue the same plot style in a Fallout 3 that was in Fallout 1 and Fallout 2. I believe that very linear games serve action based games very well. This is because the action is what is drawing the player through, not the story. If the story then gets in the way of the action, people can get confused. In a game like Fallout 3, where the story takes a more central role we want the player to immerse themselves in the world. This means getting them to travel around at their own pace (in some ways). The one thing I do want to make sure though is that people do know where they need to go to next to continue the story if that is what they want. I think sometimes people can get lost in the "non-linearity" of things and lose their way. When that happens, people get frustrated at the game and don't end up finishing it.

As for completing the same task or quest in different ways - that is something that is very uniquely Fallout, and is something that we will continue to implement when it makes sense for a particular task or quest.

Lara the lesbian?

Lara the lesbian? Annanova's got a story based on an interview with Angelina Jolie where the actress speculates a bit, imagining that the heroine doesn't have much time for men.

She likes imagining girls getting turned on when watching her play the heroine.

And:

Jolie told German magazine Amica that although she liked the idea of girls fancying her, she could not live without her husband Billy Bob Thornton.

Or her brother, apparently.

Golden nuggets

Some news of games going gold.

Final Fantasy X is complete, according to this Eurogamer story.

Mechcommander 2 is gold, according to a post made by one of the developers to a fansite.

Finally, The Corporate Machine, as published by Take 2, is now gold and will be released in July.

Sony cutting price of PS2 in Japan

The New York Times has posted a Reuters story about Sony's decision to reprice the PS2 in its domestic market.

Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) said the price of PlayStation 2 will be shaved to $281.7 from the current 39,800 yen starting from Friday.

The article contains a fair amount of information. Near the end there's this staggering little disclosure.

Last year, 17,040 software titles for PlayStation 1 and PS2 were released. This year, Sony expects the same number of titles to come out.

Geez, and we thought that there were too many PC games released last year.

3am

There are some new Final Fantasy movie trailers showing off character animation.

Voodoo Extreme is reporting that Gamespot Spain has revealed that a Hannibal Lector game is in the works. Arxel Tribe is developing it and their website has the announcement. "UNIVERSAL STUDIOS and ARXEL TRIBE are proud to announce that HANNIBAL will now become a 3D hero in a video game that will be released by end of 2002." Funny choice for a hero. We suppose he only eats people who really deserve it.

There's already a patch out for the Diablo 2 expansion. It updates the game up to v1.08.

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