Pixels and Grids

So there is a tasty rumor circulating the interwebs.  Let’s go back to a simpler time: 2006 (cue the wavy flashback  lines).

Interplay is in the middle of fighting bankruptcy, and has decided that the key to survival is selling off its Fallout IP.  Bethesda Softworks, with its Sauron-like eye atop its tower of Oblivion, takes notice of Interplay’s desperate flailings to keep afloat.  In the Interplay offices, an exceptionally strong crying bout is suddendly interrupted by the sounds of trumpets.  The down-trodden developers press their dirty hands and faces against the even dirtier windows like children from a Dicken’s novel.  There, gleaming in the sunlight, march a procession of armored horses, each carrying a person of noble bearing.  A flag they carry catches the breeze, declaring these knights as hailing from BethSoft.

Behind closed doors, a deal is forged, and Interplay relinquishes its rights to all things Fallout; or did they?  Perhaps is was mercy.  Maybe it was mockery.   Some even suggest that it was Bethesda’s pompous self-regard.  Whatever the case, Interplay did hold on to one piece of their once golden son.  The piece they retained was the rights to an MMO.  (cue the wavy lines again)

So now we’re back in the present.  Bethesda has since released Fallout 3.  Like Oblivion, it is a financial and critical success.  Most, however, have forgotten of Interplay’s existence, with even more forgetting that fateful pact all those (3) years ago, thinking that the company had slipped from this mortal coil.  But something is stirring in the halls of the dead.  Interplay had narrowly escaped bankruptcy and is once again trying to return to the realm of development.  Teaming with Masthead Studios, developers of the as-of-yet-released Earthrise MMO, Interplay is planning a new game that has been in development since 2007.  This project is codenamed V13.  For some, the signifigance is immediate.  Fallout, the company’s real bredwinner started there: Vault 13.  While this is nothing more than speculation, what else could it be?  Why rope a company that has recently created a futuristic MMO?  Why not ride the popularity of Fallout’s third (ok, this isn’t really true, but we’re not gonna count Tactics and Brotherhood of Steel) installment?

If this is the case, whether it fails or succeeds, I am happy to see the Fallout IP surviving in this harshest of wildernesses: the world for video game development.