I Do Feel Sorry For Bethesda

No matter what happens tonight and what is contained in the Fallout 3 teaser trailer I feel that Bethesda will bear the brunt of the "fan base". At what point in time the fans began to feel like they owned the intellectual property I am not sure. But no matter what Bethesda do there will be some sort of backlash. Even if they managed to perfectly replicate the feel and play of the originals someone will be offended.

There seems to be a lot of resentment within the gaming community towards Bethesda. I think their greatest crime is that they have not produced run of the mill games. They have had the guts to attempt to do things a little bit differently. Level scaling didn't work. I liked it to start with but not to finish with. That doesn't mean that I thought Oblivion was crap. I got over it. Let's face it, there aren't many games which have attempted to be developed on the same scale that Bethesda does. Further to this, as far as I am concerned, gaming is first and foremost a business. Based on this simple fact they are not going about the process of developing a game just for the love of it. It would be nice to live in an idealistic world where this happens, but it doesn't. People seem to depart living in the "real world" and enter some fantasy land (much like the games themselves) when they go off half cocked about a game developer.

Anyway, no matter what Bethesda does with Fallout they are going to cop some schtick from a part of the gaming community. It is going to happen. As far as I am concerned Fallout 3 will be whatever it is that Fallout 3 is. Bethesda will do their best (as, from what I understand, being fans of the franchise) to produce something that is indicative of the game world based on the experience that they have at their disposal. They are not Interplay and this is probably for the best if Bethesda are to survive as a long term business proposition.