Well, cool (for Roshambo especially)

Wasn't "lucid dream" this cool thing where you died only to be put into virtual reality?
 
EGM: The machine's awfully loud, isn't it?

PM: Hmm...you've got a lot going on there. I mean, I have not noticed it, and you know one of the cores will shut down when you're watching a movie on it, so I have noticed [the noise] once I get into gameplay. When it first cranks up, like a lot of things, the fans get going and off you go, but you've got a lot of power, you've got a lot of heat, and what you're hearing is the drive or the fans maybe—those things have to work. Again, that's another thing that nobody seems to be concerned about.
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...except those that feel it's important enough to mention in an interview. D'oh! Gotta love Microsoft.

Indeed, it's great to see the media grow a pair, and in the last link, it's something to note that GamePro seems to enjoy selling out. The next step from the media - design requirements from the media (and then by proxy the fans) that involves gameplay which doesn't suck ass with fantastic graphics and bump-mapped tits as the main priority. HAHA, good luck, BioWare.

It's a step, my friends. Maybe the CRPG genre will crawl out of it's current stagnant hellhole.

In addition, here's a draft of a letter to the editor, which I need to sort into better order.

The developers kept getting their egos petted and kept thinking that what they were doing was right, because the media kept reprinting what the developer/publisher wants said about the game. Which, including covers and editorial content control in some cases, makes it clear that the publishers are buying biased and favorable coverage. NOT good journalism, and it's good of you to note this is happening. Those that disagree with your statement that people are doing this, without naming names, quite clearly have a guilty conscience.

Here is a good, personal example, since I had the misfortune to cover the game because Interplay simply decided to slap "Fallout" on another sell-out. How badly did Fallout for the X-BOX and the PS2 bomb? Exactly. If the designers had bothered to follow the design of Fallout in some form in the first place, then the whole mess would have been adverted. All of the bought press really didn't do anything for the game. In light of that, the media should have been responsible and represented the fans in a dignified manner. Instead, most lapped up any press release aimed their direction and reprinted each and every one of their lies. 1Up could smell a crappy uninspired mod, which is all F:POS ever was. However, as you can't spell IGNorant without IGN, they lapped it up, Interplay lies and everything. It's great that we can give you credit for learning from the industry media's mistakes, even when the industry itself cannot afford the spine to do so itself. What, then, about the one to take your $50+ for their formulaic crap that had minimal innovation put behind it in the sweatshop working conditions? I think the article that points out how the crappy console games are more inspiration for designers over other, more obvious games, tends to point out a major flaw in the trend-chasing and perpetuating mentality of the publishers.

It is clear they are no longer willing to let a game sell itself on it's own merit with a modest advertising print, instead over-hyping the hell out of something that eventually is less than the average Zelda game, or anything we've come to expect from the industry in the last 5 years. Yes, I'm talking about Beyond Good and Evil, and the hype around it that would take longer to read fully than play through the game itself, making the experience Beyond Awful. It is but one example, yet it seems staple in the industry. No real backstory, no real talent in writing the story or story arcs themselves, no real gameplay depth, no real length or depth to the game justifying the price and hype behind it. It got hyped because it looks nice but otherwise might be another faceless Adventure clone. Is it any wonder that the price dropped shortly after it was released, and the industry went onto the Next Shiny Unsatisfying Thing™? Yes, it seems like most games have little substance in the industry anymore, when they have been given record levels of hype like Fable, over the most miniscule but vapid things. Yes, the developer took three years to make something people could forget about in a week.

To be fair, 1Up does have it's own fair share of mistakes, including calling Fallout "not influential". What, you haven't noticed how BioWare feebly tries to clone off the design, as they have been since 97, and still haven't come anywhere close? In fact, their mangling of the speech trees into the illogical speech loops that leads to bogus answers (KoTOR) is clear indication that they were inspired ever since they ripped off Fallout's speech system for their RTS engine to make Baldur's Gate, and still don't have the talent to do right on their own.

The publishers don't have the spine to publish anything that doesn't recieve the automatic press-release reel from magazines, each reading exactly like previous press and magazine releases for the same crappy cloned game the current carbon copied trend resembles. Therefore, you see a lot of crappy shooters and platform/action games, some reaching into their nth incarnation, and offering little gameplay for $50 a pop. I don't know about the console gamers, but as a PC gamer, I would feel cheated if I had to pay that much for a dozen-map pack, or even what amounts to a minor gameplay mod in some cases, for UT2004 or some other real game. Why don't the consoles have that kind of quality, as the publishers are often wont to try and claim? For that matter, why are the console developers afraid to design their games around two simple, cheap peripherals that could easily be available to any console, a mouse and a keyboard? The PSX had a mouse, and a keyboard wouldn't be that hard nor expensive. VOILA! Now, no console game has to inherently suck due to it's crappy controls and the stereotype that too many console developers are afraid to step out from - if you develop for something other than the standard controller, your game will be doomed. Now we can have accurate aiming and fast turning in console games that doesn't require you to master an analog control to still suck compared to a PC gamer.

We may just yet see innovation again in this industry, instead of the newest formulaic boy band in a box garbage that the publishers are shoveling and paying to hype, that has comprised most of the PC and console publishing for the last 5-7 years. Scratchware used to be our only hope for imagination to not be diminished by the publisher mentality, in particular with the CRPG genre, perhaps more mainstream publishers will take note of this. We can only hope.

On top of this, add in that some developers/publishers actually try to discredit those that disagree with their obvious methods in this, and you have exactly what the Fallout fans have been through in this time through baitings, lies, and outright dishonest sell-outs that the media has lapped up for no obvious reason than it was a pay-off, as the fans obviously didn't agree. The Fallout fans hadn't really been supportive of Feargus, Herve, anyone who doesn't understand the concept "classic CRPG", and their collective questionable ideas in regards to Fallout, yet they try to act as if we don't have anything to be pissed off about, and we're just "being mean" to them for no apparent reason. Now you know why we have been pissed, and will continue to be if Bethesda continues in the Interplay tradition in regards to Fallout.
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EDIT:
Then I also have a bit including the faults with the inherent problems of the publisher not providing an FTP for their own patches, but instead requires that you pay money to a media whore to get a direct download of the patch.

And we already paid $50 for the game.
 
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