Speaking to RPS regular Jeremy Peel in a new feature about RPG design, Amazon's Fallout TV show and his time working on Pentiment and Pillars of Eternity, Obsidian's Josh Sawyer has reflected a bit on what Fallout: New Vegas owes to Black Isle and Interplay's very first Fallout from 1997. "A lot of the philosophy that I approached New Vegas with was the philosophy of Fallout 1, or how I interpreted it," Sawyer observed. "Fallout 1 was foundational for me in understanding how role-playing games should be made."
]]>What’s it like to watch a smash hit TV show set in the backyard of a game you’ve made? It’s a question which Fallout: New Vegas project director Josh Sawyer is uniquely qualified to answer.
“The show really does capture the aesthetic of Fallout 4 and 76, while also feeling like it is set on the West Coast,” he says. “If you’re a fan, then you can see where the plot elements have been pulled from in previous entries. And if you’re new to it, thankfully, those plot elements are fairly straightforward. So I think it’s a good show for fans and a good show if you’re new to it, even though there’s a lot of stuff going on. I’m certainly interested to see where they’re going in the second season.”
]]>Bethesda's very own Mr Handy (director and executive producer) Todd Howard has addressed the controversy surrounding the Fallout TV show's treatment of Fallout backstory, reaffirming the canonicity of Obsidian's Fallout: New Vegas and promising that Bethesda and Amazon are being "careful" to maintain consistency between the games and the TV series. Are you new to this latest lore scandal? Watch out for Fallout Season 1 spoilers ahead, then.
]]>Friends, there is trouble a-brewing down the radioactive watering hole. While Amazon's Fallout TV adaptation has launched to pretty positive verdicts, a contingent of Fallout players are up in arms over its portrayal of the Fallout timeline. In particular, it's being claimed that the show has written the events of Obsidian's Fallout: New Vegas out of the canon, despite reassurances from Bethesda Game Studios design director Emil Pagliarulo. Dare you read on? Let me just load up my Junk Jet with piping, hot Fallout Season 1 spoilers...
]]>Head over to the Epic Games Store on April 4th and you'll be able to grab The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition and Thief (2014) for free and to keep forever. Like a thief!
]]>Cheery RPS fanzine PC Gamer have highlighed a heartwarming story of lost media becoming found again. A mod for Matthew Perry career high and/or nuclear apocalypse RPG sidequest Fallout: New Vegas, which was thought lost since some time around 2016, has been found by chance on someone's hard drive. The content of this mod, you ask? It adds a companion who looks like redoubtable nu-metal pioneer Fred Durst. I was trying to come up with a pun to do with "nookie" or that modders will "keep rollin'", but I respect you too much for that (also it's Monday and I'm very tired - give me something to break, am I right?).
]]>Gaming on Mac becomes more of a reality every day, with powerful Apple Silicon processors and the Game Porting Toolkit unlocking surprisingly decent performance in a wide range of modern games and emulated titles alike. We don't normally cover Mac gaming here, but I thought you might want to know that the latest M2 Mac Mini is down to $499 at B&H Photo in the US, a $100 reduction on the base-spec unit that makes it quite a powerful computer for the money.
]]>If 2023 is remembered for one thing, it's that it was a 100% critical success year for the RPG. Role-players across the land have been feasting exceedingly well these past few months, what with the stonking success of Baldur's Gate 3 (and to lesser extents, Starfield and Diablo 4), so we thought it was about time to celebrate your favourite RPGs of all time. Your votes have been counted, your comments have been sorted, and the cream of the RPG crop has been assembled. But which of the many excellent RPGs have risen above all others? Come and find out below as we count down your top 25 favourite RPGs of all time.
]]>One recent Fallout: New Vegas mod adds a murderous psychic tumbleweed called Windy to your party, further cementing the game as the best in the series. ‘Wait a second, that doesn’t make any sense,’ you might be saying about a game where people don’t use bedsheets to sleep. But the mod is only accessible with the Wild Wasteland trait turned on, which allows all manner of silly and unrealistic things to happen in-game.
]]>Every week, the Epic Games Store gives away one free game for everyone. This week that freebie is Fallout: New Vegas - Ultimate Edition, available to keep forever from now until June 1st. So, if you somehow missed Obsidian’s post-apocalyptic postal service sim, now’s the time to get stuck in the wasteland. Just hop over to the Epic Games Store to add the game to your account. The giveaway ends at 4pm BST on June 1st, at which point New Vegas will be replaced with another mysterious free game.
]]>Most JRPG fans on PC probably know Hironobu Sakaguchi as the creator and grandaddy of the Final Fantasy series. After he left Square Enix in 2003, Sakaguchi opened his own studio and worked on turn-based adventures like Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey - games that arguably matched his genre-defining classics - but PC gamers have been largely unable to experience them, until now. Maybe. Sakaguchi recently took part in a Q&A (reported by IGN Japan, translated by VGC) where he expressed the desire to bring his Apple Arcade exclusive Fantasian to PC.
]]>The legal battle between Epic Games and Apple continues as it seems that both are probably willing to cut the proverbial Fortnite baby in half. Earlier this month, the court ruled that Apple must allow third-party payment systems, which was apparently not enough for Epic, who decided to submit an appeal last week. Now, Apple have informed Epic that they will not be allowing Fortnite back into the App Store clubhouse until they've exhausted all their own avenues to appeal. Which means Fortnite could remain off the store for years yet, according to Epic.
]]>Though a judge largely ruled against Epic Games on Friday in their App Store legal battle with Apple sparked by Fortnite in-app purchases on iOS, clearly that wouldn't be the end. It isn't. On Sunday, Epic filed a notice that yes, they're appealing the ruling. At this point they haven't said precisely what they object to and why but, y'know, they want it to go their way.
]]>Epic's court case against Apple reached a conclusion yesterday, at least temporarily, but the judge's ruling didn't only address the big issues of app stores and payment systems. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez also offered an answer to a question raised during the trial: what is a game? Most surprisingly, Gonzalez's definition is pretty great.
]]>iOS app developers must be allowed to direct users towards payment options other than those provided by Apple, a US judge has ruled in the Epic v. Apple case. Apple have 90 days, until December 9th, to comply.
]]>We’ve been doing The Weekspot for the best part of nine months now. In that time, there’s been weeks where either the big releases have dried up, or the news has been lacking a little oomph. But, I think we’ve been able to cobble together a podcast you can enjoy, regardless of the previous seven days in PC video gaming. This week, there was zero cobbling.
]]>A couple of weeks before the Epic vs Apple trial kicked off, Epic added the Itch.io app to the Epic Games Store. It seemed like a move to show how inclusive and happy Epic were to host another storefront on their store, but now Apple have used this as ammunition against them. Last Friday, during the fifth day of the trial, Apple made it sound like the excellent indie-focused store is an evil demon app that sells games "so offensive" they couldn't possibly speak about them in court.
]]>The Epic Games vs Apple antitrust trial has been in full swing this week, bringing up all sorts of confidential info, and showing poor legal people just how confusing the games industry can be. Yesterday, during the fourth day of the trial, Apple found themselves getting caught up in a few contradictions when defining what a game actually is - and it's all because of Roblox.
]]>The Epic Games vs Apple antitrust trial started on Monday, and a bunch of internal documents that the companies probably didn't want to be leaked online have been made public. It's not just Epic and Apple's private info being revealed, however. Confidential emails found amongst the court documents detail Walmart's plans for their cloud gaming service, Project Storm, which they pitched to Epic back in 2019.
]]>The trial between Epic Games and Apple kicked off yesterday, almost seven months after Epic first filed an antitrust lawsuit against their fruity foes. In the lead up to the court case, we've seen plenty of info come out about how the two companies operate. But now, it seems some financial documents have been made public that Epic most likely did not want to be made public. They reveal that the company paid game developers almost $12 million (around £8.6 million) to be able to release their games for free on the Epic Games Store in the first nine months of its life.
]]>Epic Games have been working to carve out a larger space for themselves in digital distribution of games for multiple years now. They've made exclusivity deals with tons of games, which they plan to do a lot more of, and have been offering free games as an incentive to customers, which they've yet to stop doing either. That all costs money, naturally, and some new court documents from Epic's ongoing legal battle with Apple dig into just how much. Epic committed $444 million to securing exclusive games in 2020, meaning they'll almost certainly be spending even more on this year's deals.
]]>Last week we learned that Apple had subpoenaed Valve to ask for data on games released via Steam, to help them build their case in their pending legal kerfuffle with Epic Games. Valve argued that they shouldn't have to comply, but yesterday a US judge ruled in Apple's favour.
]]>Apple would like Valve to hand over lots of information about how much money they make. Valve would prefer not. This is my two sentence summary of a joint discovery letter filed yesterday, as part of Apple's ongoing legal skirmish with Epic Games over Fortnite and Apple app store fees.
What do Valve have to do with that fight between Apple and Epic? Not much, say Valve.
]]>Whether you prefer wizards, sword-and-board warriors, the irradiated wasteland, vampires, or isometric text-heavy stories, the RPG is the genre that will never let you down. Accross the dizzing number of games available where you can play a role, there's something for everyone - and we've tried to reflect that in our list of the best RPGs on PC. The past couple of years have been great for RPGs, so there are some absolute classics as well as brand spanking new games on this list. And there's more to look forwards to, with rumblings of Dragon Age: Dread Wolf finally on the horizon, and space epic Starfield in our rear view mirror. Whatever else may happen, though, this list will provide you with the 50 best RPGs that you can download and play on PC right now.
]]>Comb your hair, spray that perfume and suit up for a night of high culture, readers - the third edition of the Game Music Festival is underway. Starting last night, you can already tune into a full evening of orchestral rearrangement of scores from Bastion, Transistor, Pyre and Hades, with Larian Studios picking up the mic tonight for a more high-fantasy swing at the concert scene.
]]>While Epic and Apple's legal battle over app stores isn't due in court until next year, one important matter is settled for now: Epic will get the keep the Apple developer accounts which let them update and maintain Unreal Engine on Mac and iOS. Apple had threatened to disable those too, not just the accounts Epic use for Fortnite, until a judge approved Epic's appeal for a temporary restraining order. That's now settled for longer thanks to a preliminary injunction issued on Friday. But the judge also held firm in her decision not to force Apple to let Fortnite back on iThings. Everyone's a winner, everyone's a loser.
]]>Yesterday, Microsoft posted a list of their "10 app store principles", in what reads like one big passive aggressive jab at Apple. They say these principles are designed to "promote choice and ensure fairness" on their Windows Stores (both mobile and desktop), and they include rules about just generally treating app developers fairly.
These are nice and good principles to stick to, yes. But the entire post doesn't seem as though it's really to assure devs, so much as it is to make very clear whose side they're on in the whole Apple vs Epic debacle.
]]>Apple and Epic Games have been at odds over the past month and a half in the early phases of a lawsuit concerning Fortnite's presence on the App Store. Epic has filed an anti-trust lawsuit against Apple concerning their control of the App Store while Apple have returned a countersuit based on Epic breaking the terms of service for the store by adding a secondary payment option inside Fortnite to circumvent the App Store payment system. After a lot of barbs and posturing, they've at last come to agree on at least one thing. Both request that their cases are tried by the court rather than a jury.
]]>The newest casualty in Apple and Epic Games' legal squabble is Fortnite: Save The World. Nah, not the battle royale everyone plays, just the co-op horde game. If you're just catching up, Epic kicked off a big stink with Apple last month with a weird, 1984-inspired propaganda video as they circumvented Apple's cut of App Store sales. It's been all drama since then. Has this really only been going on for four weeks? This is going to be a long, tiresome ride.
]]>Epic Games have successfully scored a temporary restraining order to stop Apple's plan to terminate their developer accounts on Friday, a move that would've stopped them from continuing to support Unreal Engine on Mac and iOS. Apple threatened this after Epic bypassed the App Store's payment systems in Fortnite, and Apple also ejected the battle royale shooter from their walled garden. Epic told the courts that this would harm the many developers who rely on Unreal Engine, and the judge agreed. But Epic didn't get all their wishes, so Apple don't have to let Fortnite back on iOS.
]]>Update: A judge has partially granted Epic's requests, so they should keep their dev accounts for now.
Losing the ability to keep developing Unreal Engine for Mac and iOS could really harm both Epic Games and the developers who rely on them, Microsoft have said in a legal statement supporting Epic. The Unreal lords are trying to get a court to stop Apple from terminating their developer accounts, which is due to happen on Friday unless their lawyers deliver a victory royale. It's one messy consequence of Epic's legal battle against Apple and Google over app store fees, which sure has escalated since starting with Fortnite microtransactions.
]]>In their ongoing attempt to create a public moral cause out of the courtroom battle they started with Apple and Google, Epic Games are holding a Fortnite tournament with some stupid prizes mocking Apple. Play in Sunday's #FreeFortnite Cup and you can earn the apple-headed 'Tart Tycoon' skin, and if you do really well you could even win a new laptop, console, phone, or stupid baseball cap with a parody of the old Apple logo. Nice that Epic are having fun with this while mobile developers who use Unreal Engine are uncertain about the future of their games.
]]>It was too much to hope for that Epic Games and Apple would take their fight quietly to a court room, it seems. After their very dramatic 1984 propaganda spinoff video, Epic are committed to having it out in public. The latest legal maneuver in the proceedings comes from Epic, who have asked the a US district court for northern California to prevent Apple from terminating their developer program account and reinstate Fortnite in the App Store.
]]>Yesterday, Epic Games appeared to intentionally violate Apple and Google app store rules to get Fortnite removed so they could jump-start a protest. Sick of mobile stores taking a 30% cut of microtransactions, they added a payment option bypassing official systems - something both stores forbid. Epic surely knew this, and the fact that they had lawsuits and an embarrassing protest video ready to go sure makes it seems like they suspected Fortnite might get kicked out. Epic do have one of the few products large enough to make a splash so hey, good on 'em for making a stand. I wish they'd done it without trying to weaponise fans.
]]>It's another bright new day in 2020, so I guess it's time to watch three mega corporations throw hissy fits because they aren't happy with the amount of money they're making off each other. Last night, Epic Games filed a lawsuit against Apple for removing Fortnite from the iOS App Store, after Epic broke Apple's payment policy. Then the exact same thing happened with Google and the Android Play Store, so naturally Epic are suing them too.
]]>The latest show to hit Fortnite's Party Island isn't a blow-out concert or Chris Nolan flick. Somehow, it's weirder. Hop in front of Fortnite's big telly right now and you'll find a call to "#FreeFortnite" from the supposed tyranny of tech giant Apple, who today removed the battle royale from the App Store for sidestepping its revenue policies. Now, Epic are taking Apple to court - and they've got an in-game ad campaign to make sure public perception is on their side.
]]>Area F2 may as well be called Area 51 now that Ubisoft have sued Apple, Google, and the developers of the mobile game that looked suspiciously similar to Mr. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege. Area F2's developer Ejoy have now posted a statement confirming the game's closure and it's been delisted from both the Google Play Store and App Store.
]]>Outside of the occasional free weekend, you can't play Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege for free - never mind trying to get it running on your phone. Unfortunately for Ubisoft, it seems that particular space has been filled by an unnervingly similar tactical FPS. This week, the French publishers filed a lawsuit against Google and Apple, demanding Area F2 - an alleged clone of Rainbow Six Siege - be removed from their respective mobile shelves.
]]>It's been an eventful decade for PC games, and it would be hard for you to summarise everything that's happened in the medium across the past ten years. Hard for you, but a day's work for us. Below you'll find our picks for the 50 greatest games released on PC across the past decade.
]]>Of all the chat clients and apps and sites I use across my professional and personal lives, Steam is the only one that hasn't been on my pocket telephone because, well, the Steam mobile app is pretty bleh. Reader dear, fret no more about missing Dota invitations or confusing late-night messages from people you used to play a game with but can't remember which one: Steam Chat has a shiny new dedicated mobile app. Available now on Android and Apple technoslabs, it's, like, the new Steam client chat but in your pocket.
]]>Apple have rejected the iOS version of Valve's Steam Link app, the doodad which lets people play their Steam games on pocket telephones and digislates, after initially approving it. Valve have appealed the rejection and been shot down, so this is probably the end unless Apple have a change of heart. If you've been hoping to park in bed playing Slay The Spire on your iPad, hard luck. The app is still available on Android doodads, mind.
]]>I must confess, since finishing Siege of Dragonspear the other week, I've not actually fired up any RPGs. It's not for want of them to play. I'm particularly looking forward to finally trying Final Fantasy IX, which I missed back in the day, and Beamdog's recently announced interquel, Planescape Torment: The Nameless One And A Half. (It's very similar to the original, only now whenever someone asks "What can change the nature of a man?" a furious little goblin pops onto the screen to yell "#notallmen!")
The problem has simply been timing - not having a nice satisfying chunk of time to really settle down for an epic experience. So instead, I thought I'd take a look at a few speed-runs, and see how fifty hours suddenly becomes a minute and a half... provided you don't include the hundreds of hours to get to that point. Here's a few of them I dug up to make your completion times look like crap, from RPGs old and new.
]]>The so-called 'Electronic Arts' company has reported very strong sales as it announced preliminary financial results for its first fiscal quarter. And "digital games and services" are outstripping "brick and mortar sales", with Apple iOS titles like The Simpsons: Tapped Out making a crapload of money for EA. Well if you are a games company trying to sell bricks and mortar to people then obviously the Apple products are going to sell better, silly. Can we have more Bullfrog games you amateurs.
]]>This "Macintosh Personal Computer" thing is never going to catch on, but folks like Valve and now GOG insist on humoring owners of these unnaturally pristine elf machines, so here we are. During its much-ballyhooed news-a-thon, GOG drew back the curtain on a new version of its service tailored to Macs, which brings with it 50 games (eight of which you receive free just for signing up) and some rather tempting deals. Speaking of, there's this insane 32-game pay-what-you-want Interplay special leading the charge in celebration of GOG's fourth anniversary. The tearful sort-of-family reunion would not, however, be complete without Geralt's permafrost tundra of a glare brightening up the room, so CD Projekt Red took the stage to demonstrate its Witcher 2 mod toolset. I'd say "imagine the possibilities," but imaginations are for people who don't have extremely impressive time-lapse videos. Check it out after the break.
]]>Not-PC alert! Not-PC alert! But I will make it about the PC: this I swear to you. Apple have, in another one of those creepily well-rehearsed press conferences that makes half of Twitter mistake a profit-driven mega-corporation announcing its latest way to earn a crapton of cash for some sort of love festival, announced that they're bringing the iPhone App Store onto their Macs. What this means is that hundreds of thousands of people are about to start buying and playing games on their computers again. Just, y'know, not our personal computers.
]]>Is the iPhone 3G actually the portable PC? I know far too many people who’ve said ‘that’s it, I’m getting an iPhone’ come yesterday's announcement of genuinely affordable new model, so I get the feeling it’s about to become a frighteningly ubiquitous device. Not iPod ubiquitous, probably, but, well, Nokia must be bricking it. What really interests me about it is that the new version is accompanied by long-awaited support for third-party applications - including games.
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