I cannot for the life of me figure out what they were thinking every time I see him macking on a girl, he comes across with all the subtlety of Beavis and Butt-Head.

Sorry, I hadn’t heard anything about CE3 being done. I knew CE1 was Skyrim, I didn’t realize that FO4 was still considered to be on CE1, it was a pretty big step up, I’m surprised. So CE2 is Starfield, my thought process still stands, which is: I wouldn’t be surprised if they used Starfield as the basis for the Obsidian project, in much the same way as they used FO3 for FONV.

Anyway, it’s not important whether they use CE3 or however it washes out, I’m just actually excited by Obsidian doing a new Fallout. Todd can suck it.

I don’t believe that Obsidian will be using CE3, I believe they will use the same engine as FO4/Starfield. I don’t think they will be tasked with pushing the technology further now any more than they were tasked with it for FONV. They may extend it a bit (like how they added weapon mods in FONV) but their focus will only be on releasing an entertaining title quickly (and I think the whole idea to bring Obsidian in was a great decision on Microsoft’s part). I think the other group will be tasked with moving the engine forward for FO5 and ESVI.

I agree with your assessments of both FO76 and Starfield. I played them both, but only because I got free accounts for both of them, FO76 on Xbox and Starfield I got a month’s worth of free Game Pass and played it via streaming. They’re both terrible. FO4 was also pretty terrible, imo. I’ve enjoyed replaying the Oblivion remaster more than anything they’ve done since Skyrim. So, I’m also not holding my breath for what comes next and you might be 100% right, but I do like the Obsidian angle for this reason, if nothing else: the competition will put Todd’s incompetence on display. Todd’s not the only game in town now, and for the first time in over a decade, he might be feeling some heat.

Edit: if they do use the FO4 engine, I hope they correct every stupid mistake they made in FO4 the way you can do it yourself with mods.

Also what, like, Bethesda is going to somehow make the Creation Engine not a giant pile of shit, with now 15 more years of acculumated technical debt from never doing a full ground up rebuild… ?

We’ve been saying this since Morrowind: Oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim, Fallout NV, Fallout 4 - Gamebryo sucks, what are they going to do to this wheezing trash heap etc etc - and every time they do the same thing: update the graphics and gameplay marginally, introduce new elements (dual wielding magic, radiant quests, settlement building, whatever) release it as the “new” version (outrageously buggy ofc) and largely let the mod community fix it. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that’s probably what FO5 and ESVI will also do, it’s the path of least resistance and nobody will be bringing out their surprised Pikachu faces.

I don’t really care all that much because I like the games, none more than FONV, so I’d be happy for Obsidian to hot rod FO4 into something equally interesting.

To be fair, the article makes it sound like Obsidian is going to be doing with Fallout 4 what they did with Fallout 3/NV - use the existing game engine to create an entirely new game - versus what Bethesda is doing, which is updating the whole system to Fallout 5, which presumably would be sharing some work with ESVI.

One of those things would actually be more difficult than the other, though I’d also suspect that Microsoft’s atitude here is driven by Bethesda’s largesse when it comes to ESVI. It’s been discussed to death but a single non-trailer on your biggest tentpole in 10 years in favor of your boss’ seriously mid space game is certainly a… decision.

• One billionaire uses more water than every home in Los Angeles combined. To grow almonds. 80% of which are for export.
• 10% of all of Arizona’s water goes to grow alfalfa for cows in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

We’re in a drought, sure, but it could be mitigated, if the capitalist class and their lackey politicians actually gave a fuck - but they do not appear to.

Holy shit now I know why John Cena always seemed so familiar!