With Thanksgiving next week, folks at the office are going to have some extra time to catch up on games. Me, I’ll be doing the same as every year, playing Wii games with my parents (Hi Mom!). Hopefully, I’ll be able to spark some interest in New Super Mario Bros. Wii — since I’m already playing through it.

Let us know what games you’re playing, and if you have a fond memory of playing games of Thanksgiving with family, feel free to share it.

Brent Krische: Console DOOM mod for DOOM II, Dead Space: Extraction, Time Killers, and one of the following three: New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Little Big Planet (PS3), or Super Mario Galaxy. You decide.

Daryl Brigner: New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Dragon Age (PC), and Assassin’s Creed 2 (360). I have a feeling AC2 will take over though.

Shane Liesegang: Assassin’s Creed II. If I can tear myself away from it, maybe some Dragon Age.

Dane Olds, Artist: Demon’s Souls (just started my new game), Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Torchlight, and Ravensword.

Orin Tresnjak: An embarrassment of riches. Forza 3, Assassin’s Creed 2, Gyromancer, LittleBigPlanet PSP, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and surely others I’m forgetting. I may be able to pencil in a nap for some time in January…

Michael Lattanzia: Champions Online, Dragon Age: Origins (PC), Borderlands (PC), and Left 4 Dead 2 (PC)… all on my new Windows 7 install!

Sam Bernstein: Modern Warfare 2 and trying desperately to learn some more Icelandic before next week.

Emil Pagliarulo: Dragon Age (360), Assassin’s Creed II (360), GTA IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony (360), and Modern Warfare 2 (360).

Ryan Salvatore: Hopefully LotRO and TF2. All work and no play makes Ryan something… something…

Matt Killmon: Assassin’s Creed II, World of Warcraft (yeah, got sucked back in).

Craig Lafferty: Games with #2 in their title: Assassins Creed 2, MW2, Left 4 Dead 2. And Gyromancer.

Erik Deitrick: I’m trying out Halo ODST, while Scribblenauts teaches my son to read(I get to hear things from the back seat of the car like, “There’s a cow in the road, I’m going to need a tank, Zeus, and an evil knight.”).

Pete Hines: Modern Warfare 2, Uncharted 2, and Madden 10.

Michael Onufrak QA: Borderlands, AAAAAaaaaaAAAAAAAH! A reckless disregard for gravity , Team Fortress 2, Killing Floor, and Wetrix.

Ray Lederer: Photoshop. Markers. Fool’s Gold. Texas Pete’s Hot Sauce. An hour of BF1942 the other night. Diaper Marathon.

Andrew Langlois: Assassin’s Creed 2, Dragon Age, Scribblenauts, and Torchlight.

Andrew Scharf: Modern Warfare 2, Assassin’s Creed 2, and The Longest Journey.

Tim “Visor” Lamb: Modern Warfare 2.

Matt Ponton: Forza 3, Smackdown vs RAW 2010, and SSF2T.

Aaron Mitschelen, QA: Dragon Age, WoW, Aion, LotRO, Kenka Bancho: Badass Rumble, and Prinny.

Matt Grandstaff: Off to Michigan (Go Blue!) with Scribblenauts and New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

Mark Lampert: Operation Flashpoint 2.

Mark Teare: Red Ring of Death depression spiral.

Before heading out for vacation, I thought I’d squeeze in another “around the web.”

We’ll begin with news on Brink. Splash Damage Senior Game Designer Ed Stern recently discussed Brink in a new interview at Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Here’s a snippet…

RPS: The game is quite bright and exaggerated, however. Colourful, even. It’s going against a trend for photorealism, isn’t it?

Stern: I think we’ll see more of this stuff. Look at TF2 or Borderlands, they have unrealistic characters too. And look at all three next to each other, take a screenshot from each of them and none of them look alike.

Brink is also included in a new list of the Top 10 original video games of 2010. You’ll also find that RAGE made the list at #4. For more on RAGE, check PC Zone’s preview that’s currently up at GamesRadar.

In Fallout news, there’s new DLC reviews up. Here’s a snippet from a new review for Point Lookout at GamingBolt…

“With Point Lookout, Bethesda has given a near-perfect reminder of why we love Fallout 3 so much.  This game is simply a joy to play.  A dirty, morally questionable joy – but a joy nonetheless.  If you’re looking for a chance to jump back into the world of Fallout 3, Point Lookout is a great place to start.”

More after the jump…

In iPhone news, John Carmack has a new interview up at Macworld, where he discusses developing games on the platform. As for their iPhone games, you can find new reviews for DOOM Classic at TouchGen and TouchArcade.

In WET news, Game Industry News have posted their review of the game. Here’s an excerpt:

“Wet centers around the very cool character of Rubi Malone. She’s an assassin and probably a psychopath, but you will fall in love with her as the game progresses. Kudos to developer Artificial Mind & Movement for making her realistic in terms of her looks. Rubi is awesome, but she’s not an artificial babe like, for example, Lara Croft. She’s thin and perfectly toned, but not really gorgeous in a model kind of way.”

For more on WET, you can read a new interview with Creative Director Patrick Foriter at VG247.

Finally, I was just reading the Holiday Issue of PC Gamer and noticed on page 24, Oscuro’s Oblivion Overhaul is featured on page 24 in a feature called Maude’s Mods. Nice shout out!

Thought I’d share this video that’s been making the rounds at our office. Uploaded by YouTube user AndrewJNeis, the video does a great job capturing some memorable moments from the game.

Nice work!

Wanted to let you know that Steam has a promotion going right now for Rogue Warrior. If you pre-purchase the game before December 1st, you’ll save 10% on your purchase. Elsewhere, Gamestop still is offering $10 off your purchase (Xbox 360, PS3, and PC) — if you’re looking to purchase a disc version of the game.

Rogue Warrior will be available on Games for Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on December 1st. For more details on the game, visit the game’s official site.

Today Spike TV announced the nominees for the Video Game Awards 2009 (better known as the VGAs). Among this year’s nominees, Fallout 3 received two nominations in the Best DLC category — for both Point Lookout and Broken Steel. Additionally, Eliza Dushku was nominated in the Best Performance by a Female Lead category for her role as Rubi Malone in WET.

Be sure to check out all of this year’s nominees and vote for your favorites on Spike’s website.

On Tuesday, November 24th, The Infernal City: An Elder Scrolls Novel will be released at bookstores and for digital download. Before the book’s release, Pete sent over questions to the author — New York Times’ bestselling author Greg Keyes.

Check out the interview below…

For those that aren’t familiar with you, can you give us a brief intro on yourself and some of your previous works?
I studied anthropology at Mississippi State and the University of Georgia. I started writing at a young age, but it wasn’t until 1995 that I sold my first novel, The Waterborn. It and its sequel were fantasies that drew on Native American and Central Asian mythologies for inspiration. I next wrote an alternate history fantasy called The Age of Unreason. Set in the eighteenth century, it wondered what the world might have been like if Isaac Newton’s work in alchemy had paid off the way — at one point — he thought it had. My latest series, The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, is an epic fantasy in a somewhat more traditional vein. I’ve also worked on other shared universes; I wrote three books for the television show Babylon Five, and three Star Wars novels.

How did you get started in writing fantasy novels?
I pretty much always wanted to write fantasy and science fiction, but I never imagined it was something I could count on for a living. When I started writing seriously I was working two jobs, putting my wife through her undergraduate degree. One of the jobs was a night job, and I took a typewriter with me. I set a goal of writing a novel a year and pretty much kept to that. The first four didn’t sell, but the fifth — The Waterborn - sold very quickly.

What was it about The Elder Scrolls that interested you?
As a game, the sheer freedom of it, the near seamlessness of the experience. I spent a lot of time just running from place to place, enjoying the scenery. As a setting for stories, the amount of lore, while daunting in some ways, also made for very fertile story-telling ground. I also like the fact that — as in the real world — it’s difficult to sort out fact from fiction and myth from reality in the Elder Scrolls world. There are contradictions and conflicts between traditions, and history is told differently by different peoples. I also enjoy the shades of grey, the lack of polarized good and evil that characterizes the milieu.

Folks probably don’t know that what got us interested in having you write some Elder Scrolls novels for us was your Thorn and Bone series which Kurt Kuhlman, Bruce Nesmith, and I read and really enjoyed. Talk about how different or similar a process it is to come up with a completely original world like that one vs. working in an existing universe like The Elder Scrolls.
Well, it’s quite different. In Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, I built the world from the ground up — the languages, cultures,  the very laws of nature were all, as it were, under my control. I didn’t do research so much as I did inspirational reading, and I did a lot of that — mostly old Indo-European epics and literature.  For the Elder Scrolls, I had to do research — which meant playing the games, reading the source materials, and communicating with the designers. Because I’m playing in someone else play pen — with their toys — it’s by nature and necessity a much more collaborative process.

Can you talk about your experience working with our developers?
Early on there was a lot of brainstorming, especially with Kurt Kuhlman and Bruce Nesmith. When working in someone else’s universe, the perfect situation is to be able to pick the brains of those who helped develop it, and that was my enviable situation.

Once writing, I had easy access to the developers, which was a huge bonus. Whenever I had a question about something — or a about something I wanted to do — I could send an email and have my answer usually in a matter of hours. We all had the same goal — to produce a good story — and that actually created a lot of flexibility.

For folks that don’t know much about being an author, how long does it take to write something like The Infernal City, from start to finish, and what is that process like?
It depends. In this case, it went slowly, at first, because writing is to a certain extent a function of confidence, of knowing you’re going in the right direction.  Coming up to speed — and getting everyone on the same page — took a while — the better part of a year. As I became more familiar with material and more easy with what I was doing, my writing speed picked up. The second book, as a result, is going more quickly.

The process started with several short outlines, or story ideas, which were winnowed down by the game developers and my editor at Del Rey until we had one everyone thought was pretty good. That then became a much longer, more detailed outline (thirty pages) which was then revised a few times. Then the writing started, with a good deal of back-and-forth in the process, and finally a few rounds of revisions based on everyone’s thoughts and comments to get a final manuscript. That was then set in type, or galleys, which were then proofed a final time by me and others before at last going to press.

Did you visit any fan communities for inspiration, research, etc.?
I did some lurking, sure. The Imperial Library, specifically, was a very useful resource for lore, although I of course double-checked things through the authorities.

What were your main goals for these two books in terms of setting, characters, etc.?
One thing that everyone wanted with these books was for them to be works of fantasy first, and not “gaming” fantasy. What I got from the developers was to imagine that the world of the Elder Scrolls is real, and that the games are one way of approximating that world. Fiction is another way of approaching it. I forget which one of them said it, but one of them pleaded that we “not hear the dice rolling.” So I treat the characters as people, not collections of stats and items, the way I would in any book I write.

Any real Dos or Don’ts you had in mind when writing The Infernal City?
Other than those I’ve already mentioned, nothing specific. I always try to do something a little different, a bit fresh.

Give a description of what The Infernal City is about in your own words.
It’s primarily an adventure, or course. Umbriel, a strange flying city shows up from apparently nowhere, destroying life and then raising it from the dead to create an army of walking corpses. Two of the characters quickly end up in the city, experiencing its strangeness and even beauty as they seek a way to stop it. One of them, a young woman named Annaïg, is conscripted into the “kitchens” which produce food but also function as chemical laboratories. She is in communication with crown prince Attrebus, a hero determined to bring Umbriel down, but very early in the book he faces a crippling realization, which he must overcome. He and a mysterious, haunted Dunmer named Sul set out to rescue Annaïg and destroy the island, but they face pretty stiff challenges on the way.

Could you give us a little background on a couple of the main characters in The Infernal City?
Annaïg is a young woman from Lilmoth, in Black Marsh. Her father is a minor Breton nobleman who once owned estates there, but Black Marsh had been independent of the Empire for decades, and Annaïg is part of a minority of non-Argonians who remain — her father is an advisor to the ruling party. Her best friend, Mere-Glim, is an Argonian, and together they’ve had a series of ill-conceived exploits, but in Umbriel they found themselves far out of their league. Annaïg survives initially because she has knowledge of local plants, animals and minerals that the “cooks” of Umbriel do not.

Attrebus is the crown prince, the stuff of legends, and I’m not going to say much more about him, because a secret surrounds him that I would rather not spoil.

Sul is an older Dunmer who has spent decades trapped in Oblivion. Recently returned to Tamriel, he is driven by hatred of the lord of Umbriel and a deep thirst for revenge for his lost love and the destruction of Morrowind.

Finally, there is Colin, a young recruit in the Penitus Oculatus, which is the Emperor’s espionage/black ops organization. He fiercely wants to do the right thing, but finds his moral compass severely compromised. He’s also thrust into the very dangerous secret politics if the court, perhaps before he is ready to deal with them.

Finally, we have to ask, how’s the second book coming along?  :)
Pretty well - everyone is in trouble.

Thanks for your time Greg.
You’re quite welcome.

This week it’s pretty predictable — you’ll notice that many of us (myself included) are making their way through Modern Warfare 2’s storyline, as well as playing its robust multiplayer modes. Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I saw so many people online playing one game.

It’s not the only game we’re playing — you’ll see that titles like Dragon Age Origins, Borderlands, and Torchlight are also consuming our free time.

Let us know what you’re playing…have a great weekend!

Tim Lamb: Modern Warfare 2.

Dane Olds, Artist: Modern Warfare 2, Demon’s Souls,  and Torchlight.

Mark Teare: Modern Warfare 2, Modern Warfare 2, Modern Warfare 2, and convincing my wife to let me play more Modern Warfare 2.

Jay Woodward: Halo 3: ODST, Brutal Legend, Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony, Dominion: Seaside & other board games.

Jeff Gardiner: Dragon Age and Modern Warfare 2.

Sean Palomino: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (you must play this game), Forza 3, Halo Waypoint, and Rock Band 2.

Andrew Langlois: Dragon Age and Torchlight.

Matt Ponton: Super Street Fighter II Turbo… again, because I’m awesome, and I’ll balance it out with some Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2.

Mike Onufrak QA: Borderlands, Team Fortress 2, Wetrix (Amazing N64 game that no one has heard of apparently), and  I Wanna Be the Guy.

Andrew Scharf: Borderlands, Modern Warfare 2, World of Goo, and Planescape: Torment.

Ashley Cheng: Modern Warfare 2 and Madden 10.

Jen Tonon: Modern Warfare 2, World of Warcraft, Zombie Apocalypse, and tearing up the Journey vocals in hard mode on Rock Band.

Brent Krische: DOOM (XBLA), Console DOOM mod for DOOM 2 (PC), DOOM (PSX), and Space Milkman.

Adam Adamowicz: Fallout 3.

Michael Lattanzia, QA: Dragon Age: Origins (PC), Champions Online (entered some costume contests and got top 10 with two different characters!), Borderlands (PC), Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, and maybe some Brutal Legend or Team Fortress 2.

Ryan Jenkins: Dragon Age, Borderlands, and Torchlight.

Nate Purkeypile: Brutal Legend, Borderlands, Torchlight, Modern Warfare 2, Team Fortress 2 (surprise!), and Dead Space Extraction.

Mark Lampert: Episodes from Liberty City and Operation Flashpoint 2 .

Ray Lederer: Prismacolor markers - warm grey 10% - 80%, Prismacolor pencil – Black, Photoshop, and Decemberists.

Kurt Kuhlmann, Designer: Modern Warfare 2, Risen, Company of Heroes (always), Panzer General, and Rock Band 2.

Nate Ellis: Dragon Age: Origins, Brutal Legend, and Uplink.

Daryl Brigner: Dragon Age: Origins, Borderlands, and Modern Warfare 2 MP.  All on PC.

Craig Lafferty: Modern Warfare 2 MP, Borderlands, Bejeweled Blitz Iphone, and Madden 10.

Mike Dulany: New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Dragon Age, and Modern Warfare 2.

Ryan Salvatore: LotRO, Half-Life 2, and GTA IV.

William Killeen: Dragon Age and Torchlight.

Joel Burgess: An obscene amount of Dragon Age, and probably finishing up Uncharted 2.

Jon Paul Duvall: Modern Warfare 2, Dragon Age, and Borderlands.

Terry Dunn, Jr.: Dragon Age…. Dragon Age… and more Dragon Age.

Matt Grandstaff: New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Modern Warfare 2, Borderlands, World of Warcraft (finally trying it out), Madden NFL 10, and Drop7 (per usual).

This week we have a new modding interview with Sulteric Drums from our forums.

How did you first get involved with modding for Oblivion?
It all started when I was looking for companion mods. The available companions were good but they weren’t exactly what I was looking for. There was no real interaction with the female companions other than just commands. I missed the glory days of Baldur’s Gate II — Shadows of Amn, when I could romance an NPC and even flirt with them. After reading the tutorials on the Wiki site, I thought it would be easy. I had no idea what I was in for!  I started planning a “Flirt” mod but I soon realized how difficult it would be to hook it into existing companions. I poked around, got permission to use an existing companion (thanks to Jumonji and The Priest) as my base and I took it from there.  Three companions later and here we are.

What attracted you to making Companion mods?
The biggest reason is because a lot of us older players feel abandoned. We liked what BG2 did and the gaming industry simply gave up on it. Many of us were saddened by this. Why not release an appropriately rated add-on to the game? It seems that a huge gap exists in RPGs in the romance department. It was done so well so many years ago, why give up on it when it adds so much to the game? I resolved to change all this.

I wanted company in the game and I guess I wasn’t the only one!  I wanted an intelligent immersive companion. Someone who will follow my orders but will also talk to me once a day. I wanted someone I can flirt with, someone who makes comments behind me as we’re traveling or if I’m stealing something. I wanted immersion and that really means someone to experience things with. These companions tried to satisfy all that.

How does companion modding differ from other modding forms?
Companions are easily the most unappreciated of the mod categories. Companion mods in general could not have been brought to this point without the hard work of Blackie, Simyaz, Jumonji, ThePriest, Rsdnt-Evl, Deepfreeze, Montana and many others that came before me. They did the hardest work, I simply took what was there and gave it life, so to speak. It really is a group effort and some of us do share code when one of us gets stuck. The complexity of the AI is sheer insanity and there are a lot of weird glitches you need to be aware of.  It took well over a year to get  the AI engine truly perfected with a great deal of work by Shavn1985 with Viconia and Deepfreeze with Viconia — Return to the Underdark. In fact, it’s still a work in progress. Once a feature is done or a bug fixed I port it all backwards to the previous companions as time permits.

You do a lot of voice work yourself, was that from necessity? Or something you enjoy?
That was true with Stoker Wolff but not with the others. Saerileth was voiced by the original modder who did Saerileth for Baldur’s Gate II. She gave me permission to use her voice files and to do the port. It is not an exact port but I made it so the player would have the ultimate adoring fan, a very cute woman who is instantly infatuated with the player and isn’t bad in a fight. Viconia Chapter One was voiced by Grey DeLisle, the original voice actress for Viconia DeVir in BG2. It took me months to get permission and just tracking down who to ask took weeks in itself.

I recently released the second part of Viconia DeVir — Return to the Underdark and I found some of the best voice actors ever. This is a quest through The Underdark mod done by Aoikani and his team. That mod is huge and it’s still expanding. Since this new extension of Viconia was all original I had to find a voice actress and Greenwarden stepped up the plate. She did an absolutely amazing job. The first time I got lines back from her I literally fell out of my chair. Others did a lot of work as well;  Old Book and Rav Winston are top notch. They helped me write  the Monty Python and the Amulet of Kings skit, which is stage 57 in Return to the Underdark. They did all the voicing for those two. Rav also voices Viconia’s brother, Valas, and will be voicing Drizz’t Do’Urden in an upcoming mod. WhoGuru did a great job on Lolth and Old Book’s wife does all of my Drow Matrons. PurpleGandalf did a great job as Lolth’s handmaiden. I love the English accent! My wife did the High Priestess of Shar. If you ever watched Hogan’s Heroes you will appreciate it.

I voiced Stoker Wolff myself because it was easier that way and allowed me to place a bit of myself into the game. Stoker Wolff was released after many requests by the ladies to do so and I obliged. It is my real voice.  I also voiced the Drow who appears in that by pitch shifting my voice. As a bit of trivia, I voiced Lolth in Viconia’s first mod as well. I probably could have gotten someone to do it but for the sake of time I did it myself.

My current mod, The Vampire Hunter, is the same crew as Return to the Underdark. Viconia will make a cameo appearance. As usual I will be voicing Stoker again. My wife will voice a Succubus in this mod and we had a lot of fun doing the work. My friend and voice actor Stephen Leazer does many of the Duergar voicing. Since I am a musician and recording “artist” I have my own digital studio that allows me to easily do this kind of work. I do not use a desktop microphone, I use a Sure SM-58 through a PreSonus Firepod.

What was the first mod you created?
Saerileth was the first to be released. I worked out a lot of the bugs in the AI engine with that mod and although it was a painful learning experience, it was well worth it. Saerileth was a very controversial mod back in the BG2 days, as people either loved or hated her and I even had someone threaten me online for porting her.  I thought that was rather amusing! Saerileth is based off of the Corean Elf mod, an incredible race mod. After that came Viconia, then Stoker, then Viconia’s second mod.

Which of your companions are you most fond of?
Viconia DeVir is by far my favorite.  I am trying to convince Greenwarden to revoice the first release of her as I would like to combine what is now Chapter One and Two. Because of the use of the old voice files and the way BG2 worked, what is now Chapter One only has the first line of every conversation voiced and I would like to change that. The new resulting mod would be over 140+ stages long and probably way, way over 1,000 voiced lines of dialog. Viconia was always my favorite companion of all time and it simply had to be done. I still get regular endorsements on Chapter One after all this time and she recently made it to #2 in the other companion category on TesNexus. That really is an honor, I cannot say thanks enough to everyone who shares my love for her character.

Artists often put themselves into their work; do you see yourself in your creations?
Stoker Wolff is essentially me in Oblivion. I always play assassin-type characters and he fit the bill. Stoker originally began as a CM Partner by Sunsi. Leomorg did his Crimson Scar armor. She contacted me long ago about doing a version of him using my AI engine and I obliged. He really fits me perfectly. It was another reason I wanted to voice him. I only wish I had made that mod longer but that goes to the next question.

What are your working on currently?
I am currently working on The Vampire Hunter. This mod is the prequel to the events of Viconia DeVir — Return to the Underdark. The Vampire Hunter goes further into explaining how Viconia got to Tamriel from Faerun, which in turn helps explain the connections to the Underdark and how they occurred.  It also delves into the Crimson Scars and their history. Some time ago I was brought on board for quest development for the Underdark and myself and Aoikani tried to be as lore conscious as possible when doing these. We wanted to make sure there were events that explain why The Underdark came to be connected to Tamriel. This and the Viconia mods are there to help explain it.

Viconia DeVir — Return to the Underdark was born to do exactly that. It made sense to bring Viconia back to where she was born and the mod has some earth shattering consequences for the denizens of the Underdark. Now that I am doing this quest development for the Underdark I’ve rearranged my mods so that they fit into what is now The Underdark Saga. What was Viconia Devir Chapter One — Banished, the original mod, is now part one of TUS.  Return to the Underdark is part three of TUS.

The Vampire Hunter is part two of this tale. It brings Stoker Wolff into a full quest setting and fills in many “behind the scenes” plot points regarding Viconia’s quests. There is a full thread for those who want to romance Stoker and another for the rest who  simply want him as a friend and comrade. Playing the mod either way will be pleasing experience. Stoker’s father was a Crimson Scar and there’s a lot of history there that I felt was unexplored.

As of this writing the mod is about 100 stages in length. In the beginning the player has about a month game time to go through the Oblivion standard quests and any other mods while getting all the background on Stoker, his father, and the Crimson Scars.  During this time the party starts getting attacked several times by vampires. There are also some other things to keep the player busy that give hints as to what is really going on. Stoker eventually realizes what has happened and the party go to visit Viconia. Because this is a prequel some players will know more than Stoker does about what’s going on and it actually gives you a unique perspective.  Towards the middle of the mod it is a rapid descent into the Underdark, into the actual second level of it, the Middle Dark. In one part Aoikani designed a point where the player has to cross a tightrope over a lava field with Duergar on one side and Drow on the other. The Underdark is mind blowing stuff and I am honored to give people a reason to trek through it.  Oh, did I mention there’s a Balrog and dragons? Good stuff. The first time I saw a Beholder in Oblivion I just sat there staring at it in amazement while it kicked my butt.

When you’re not modding, how do you like to spend your time?
I’m a Principal Software QA Engineer so I take my mod support very seriously. I started out programming in Assembly language and eventually made my way into QA and have been doing that ever since with a focus on automated testing, both GUI and API level (I love C#!). I have a small farm in central Massachusetts. I am married now fifteen years and have a twelve year old son. I play drums in the metal band Sulteric and write a great deal of the lyrics as well. We are releasing our first CD this fall and have a promoter that is looking to get us into Europe.  I enjoy ATVing, gardening, target shooting, camping, and playing Oblivion, the best RPG on the planet! I most enjoy keeping my six acres of woods Elven. People have said it looks like the Black Forest but that was before the killer ice storm of 12/11/2008. I have a lot of work to do to get it back in shape. Considering everything I have going on it’s amazing I even have time to mod!

Are there any new Sulteric Companions planned in the future?
The fourth part of the Trilogy will feature Viconia as a playable companion and have a highly complex quest featuring Drizz’t Do’Urden.  It will also more importantly feature a post-Lolth Underdark, something that is truly ground breaking in so many ways. Old Book and I have yet to write the full story but we have an outline. This one is going to be my most complex to date by miles. There is so much to work with and I am going to try and contact RA Salvatore to get his blessing on it. He lives two towns away from me.  This is currently on hold for a period of time while I help the Middle Earth Role Playing team out with some quest development.  It was a real honor being selected for this. Thanks for giving companions some spotlight! Here’s some links to check out…

• Trailer for Viconia Chapter Two — Return to the Underdark (featuring music by Sulteric):
• Video for Monty Python and the Amulet of Kings
• Website for my mods and my band

Thanks to Sulteric for the interview. If you know of someone in the community that you’d like to see interviewed, feel free to leave a comment here.

Time for another web update…

This week 1Up has a new roundtable discussion near and dear to Bethesda Game Studios — it’s a discussion on The Future of Single-Player RPGs. The roundtable includes Bill Roper (Cryptic Studios), Alan Miranda (Ossian Studios), Marcin Iwinski (CD Projeckt) and Feargus Urquhart, the CEO of Obsidian Entertainment (the guys working on Fallout: New Vegas). The feature has several references to Fallout 3 and can be read here.

More news after the break…

Elsewhere, the staff 411 Mania share their Top Open World Games in a new feature — with a few editors ranking Fallout 3 and Oblivion to their top 5 lists.

Over at GameThirst, there’s a feature on the Top 1o most outstanding devs this generation. They rank Bethesda #6 on their list. Of course the list infers that we developed WET internally — the credit there should go to the folks at A2M.

Thought I’d share this link I found via Twitter. Titled How Morrowind helped me survive my first semester of college, author Chris McKenna shares his passion for Morrowind, and how he actually drew comparisons between college life and the game’s world. Here’s an excerpt.

I step out of the car and into the warm, humid air. Right away I’m confronted with a barrage of new and interesting sights, sounds, and smells. In the distance I can see a building. I walk towards it, open up its large, heavy doors, and descend a flight of granite steps to the dark basement below. There I’m greeted by a man who asks me for my name, my place of origin, my room number and my birthsign…

“Oh my God,” I think to myself. “This is Morrowind.”

Obviously, it wasn’t Morrowind. Not really. It was my college orientation, and although the resident assistants didn’t really ask for my birthsign, the rest of the ordeal was eerily similar.”

Read the rest here.

There’s new impressions up for Rogue Warrior after this year’s Eurogamer Expo. Check out previews at Critical Gamer and Loot-Ninja.

Recently we shared news that Fallout 3 won Ultimate Game of the Year at the Golden Joystick Awards — a staple of the UK gaming community for now 27 years. I recently learned the Golden Joysticks are making their way down under. Voting for The First Australian Golden Joystick Awards are underway, with Fallout 3 nominated in two categories — PlayStation Game of the Year and Xbox Game of the Year.

Finally, Got Game has posted their review of Fallout 3 Game of the Year Edition — awarding the game a perfect score. You can find the review here.

Okay, so there’s not a Modern Pipboy 1 to discuss, but I thought I’d be clever — since everyone and their grandmother is talking about Modern Warfare 2 today (congrats Infinity Ward). In fact, the team just took a peek at the game within our theater.

Anyways, I thought I’d share this Pipboy mod from AlexScorpion I spotted at Fallout 3 Files (a relatively new FileFront page). When I saw it, it actually reminded me of something out of Modern Warfare.

Download the mod here.