[Droning train whistle sounds]

What’s that?

[The sound of an engine chugging, whirring as though fueled by the souls of a thousand blood-puking damned]

No. No, no, no, no, no, no. This can’t be happening. This cannot> be happening. Quick, stay behind me, and whatever you do, DON’T LOOK DIRECTLY INTO ITS–

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Skywind is a mod that brings Morrowind into the Skyrim engine. It’s like someone at Bethesda took the Morrowind and Skyrim design documents and riffle shuffled them as a party trick, and then forgot to unshuffle them. Somehow–probably through a montage–those files ended up with modders. A less tired Craig would probably recount that montage, but that show-off wasn’t up late playing Starbound and eating takeaway, so you just get facts and trailers. The last time I reported on Skywind, it was just an empty world. You could run around, but you could not do anything, but more recent updates have begun the task of integrating people, monsters, and quests. Which means it might be worth installing. There’s a wee video to demonstrate some of that work. (more…)

According to international law, I am not allowed to post the video I made playing of myself playing this Skyrim Mod, which changes the fighting music into Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins. Now, I’ll admit there hundreds of reasons and at least three court orders that should prevent me from going anywhere near recording equipment, but I am sad that one of them is “A man in his pants enjoying a game and wants you to share it with the world.” It seems like my happiness, and the happiness others would get from it, should override petty rules and regulations, particularly when it involves Skyrim and the Top Gun soundtrack. (more…)

John Carmack has officially packed his bags and taken a rocket car over to Oculus Rift, now his sole employer until he decides he wants to become the world’s foremost expert on Hyperloops or something. So what better way to celebrate/commiserate than by playing maybe the last game he’ll ever see to completion? Answer: there is no better way. If you are doing anything else, John Carmack will probably never be your friend or spend upwards of five hours giving you breathless life advice. Fortunately, RAGE is free on Steam this weekend. Details below.

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Could it be? Is it even remotely possible? Has a major videogame publisher truly decided to make a sequel to one of its best-selling games? O brave new world, that has such speculation in’t.

Bethesda alternating between Elderses and Falloutses seemed pretty much a given to me, so when talk arose around a URL apparently bought by Bethesda and entitled ‘Survivor 2299‘, a return to the post-apocalypse was far from a surprise. Whether the website really is anything to do with Bethesda remains open to interpretation, but even if it isn’t you should feel free to smack me around the chops with a rainbow trout and call me Charlie McArse if we don’t start hearing official talk of Fallout 4 within the next year. (more…)

Sundays are for boarding up the windows, counting the canned goods and panic buying videogames. Also, for doing things for the first time.

• Every year the Interactive Fiction competition attracts inventive entries in the words-you-play genre. Every year, Emily Short writes smart-words-you-read about the entries she likes, and it’s worth spending a day diving through the round-up of her favourites, before playing the games for yourself.

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H… h… h… hey there, Lichdom. Gee, you sure are pretty. Why, you’re basically what Skyrim would’ve been if Bethesda wasn’t still using a 1000-year-old engine. You maybe want to get coffee some– [trips over an inconveniently placed chair, falls out the door, stumbles into a patch of cacti, trips over a hillside, rolls into an errant band of wild boars, loses terribly on an episode of Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader, crawls broken and defeated back to Lichdom's location] time?

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If someone is keeping a Big List Of Inevitable Things somewhere, they can cross out ‘modders remaking Morrowind in the Skyrim engine’. For it is no longer inevitable, but is in fact, er, evitable? No, that’s not right. Though I guess you could avoid it, but that would make the modders of Skywind very sad indeed, because all their hard work in rebuilding Morrowind is worth looking at. Even if you just coo over the videos below, because cooing over the scenery is pretty much all that’s possible right now. (more…)

The future is looking very bright for Wasteland 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera developer inXile. Very bright indeed. Two wildly successful Kickstarters and one nearly complete, maddeningly exciting game later, Brian Fargo and co have finally found their niche. Or rather, they’ve settled back into the comforting clockwork of an old wheelhouse, an old home. But the road to this point was hardly an easy one. The developer-publisher relationship has always been rather skewed, and inXile’s taken its fair share of licks. Some times have been good (see: The Bard’s Tale), and others, well, others have been Hunted: The Demon’s Forge. The latter, especially, is a sore spot for Fargo, but he’s been burned by various publishing arrangements far more than once. He and I discussed that subject, whether Kickstarter is inXile’s permanent solution to that problem, and tons more after I saw Wasteland 2. It’s all below.>

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Somewhere in the deep, dark, distant future, there exists a world beyond Doom 4. It is a strange and alien place – one in which id has pried the bolts from its lips and… wait, no, it’s never done that. Always “when it’s done.” Always. But still, there are more id games in this far-flung universe, and also I have cool cybernetic laser nostrils. I know, for I have seen it. Briefly, ever so briefly, id creative director Tim Willits took me there. Here’s what he said.

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