We saw a Cybertruck in the wild when we were coming back from a funeral. It bore a kind of gentle symmetry, because Elon Musk will be buried beneath one figuratively and possibly literally because of how the gas pedal can slide off and get stuck under a manifold, locking the pedal into its highest level of push-downedness. It's fine, though - the thirty-eight hundred or so cybertrucks out in the wild are being brought in to have the footplate pop-riveted in, like they were shoeing a horse.
We don't mind the Tass around here. He's figured out a lane for himself as online media has been forced into a strange and degenerate space, and so we gotta feel his flavor at least a little bit and we don't mind the occasional SEO fucksmanship. There's a lot of news about how the Fallout show has people going back through the games, and his most recent communique suggests that there should be a new Fallout game. Sooner, rather than later. Is that another zesty outsider perspective from notorious firebrand Paul Tassi? It is - but in this case, I'm likely to agree.
I think we were probably on the same wavelength as early as last July:
We obviously need to be clear-eyed about corporate power. But it's also given us a world where Microsoft can give Obsidian the use of the Fallout license with an email.
— Tycho Brahe (@TychoBrahe) July 11, 2023
Bethesda essentially operates two beloved service games - Fallout 76 and Elder Scrolls Online - that almost never get covered for some reason. It has to be hard to come in and make money for the company every day while other people made Starfield at the same time.
I don't even think Bethesda can be trusted to do Today's Fallout in the way it should be done. I get way more excited by a Dishonored or a Deathloop or a Doom or the inexplicably rad Hi-Fi Rush than I get about the idea of them taking too long to make another bad game. It really has to be said: Starfield… well, I was initially going to say that it burned up in orbit. I feel like that's a little on the nose. So, I'll just say that one of the things Starfield indicates is that they don't actually understand what people liked about their games. I think that's about as serious a problem as they can have.
This just literally has to stop. It's too stupid - it's beyond that which stupid can contain as a meaning-bearing vessel, the idiocy is sloshing up over the side. The word from the top at Microsoft is that - and we can theorize about why this might have happened - but they need to operate the business according to business principles. There's gonna be times where "Xbox Games" should become everybody's games. Minecraft is the exemplar, but Sea of Thieves makes perfect sense. It even makes sense in reverse - there's no reason for Helldivers 2 to be a "Playstation Game" when all that means is that fewer people enter the monetization funnel for the live service offering. Right? Right.
Well, part of this has to be recognizing the incredible opportunity of owning… everything they already own. They should have teams of people in hardsuits spelunking down into every weird brand they bought on accident, recognizing every legendary personage who already works there. People in labcoats should be analyzing the core samples they haul up on pristine tables, their secrets exposed by strange beams and lights. I don't think this role exists yet, because outside of Embracer - y'know, pour one out - an opportunity like this might never have existed. This is all to say that Obsidian made what is generally considered to be the best Fallout game in eighteen months, on an engine they weren't familiar with. That Bethesda should be able to say where things go from here isn't just out of alignment with reality. It's fucking dumb.
(CW)TB out.
