A train skating game and a very cozy grove: July 15-21 new games and headlines

Hey readers,

There’s some chatter going around about an upcoming “friendslop” game (i.e.: a silly multiplayer game with proximity chat and low graphical specs with lots of hijinx, like Peak). This one is called Dear Passengers, which has you and your friends act as crew members for the “world’s worst airline.” As you can expect, the ragdoll physics that would come with a chaotic airplane game can lead to hilarity. There’s no solid release date yet, but you can bet that I’m keeping an eye on this one.

And despite my lack of experience with the Castlevania series, the new Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse looks like it kicks ass. The search action game, which comes from some of the folks who made Dead Cells, received glowing previews. It’s out on October 15, and it sure looks like it’ll scratch some similar itches as Hollow Knight and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown did for me.

This issue will highlight three indie games that came out last week, but let’s get to our one big story and various other headlines first.

Even with a successful live-action Fallout show, the Fallout video game series has been through a drought of new content, unless you count the live-service updates for Fallout 76. But seemingly out of nowhere, Bethesda Game Studios announced that there’s plenty in the works for the post-apocalypse RPG franchise.

It’s been an open secret that remasters of Fallout 3 and New Vegas were in development, and Bethesda finally confirmed that this is the case. Additionally, a Fallout 5 is in pre-production, and Bethesda verified reports that Obsidian is working on a new Fallout game as well. There’s also a new Fallout 76 expansion coming out next year called Raven Rock, and it’ll serve as a prequel to Fallout 3.

In addition to Fallout, The Elder Scrolls 6 is still cooking, and while we still have no idea when that’ll be out (or when we’ll even have a glimpse of what it looks like), you can likely expect it before Fallout 5.

Strangely, Bethesda boss Todd Howard dropped into Reddit to leave a comment right after the news drop, telling readers that the studio is “constantly listening” and encouraging fans to “keep telling [Bethesda] how to be even better.” He added: “You’d be surprised how many great ideas I get from Reddit. So upvote your favorite and we’ll do it. Maybe.” If Bethesda starts making even weirder moves to pander to the internet, you can track that down to this comment, I suppose.

I wouldn’t blame anyone who finds the timing of this announcement (which is really lacking in concrete details) to be suspect. If you’ve read the last few issues of this newsletter, you’ll know that Microsoft, the parent company of ZeniMax and Bethesda, laid off 1,600 workers in one fell swoop, with 1,600 more people to be laid off within the current fiscal year. Bethesda, ZeniMax Online Studios, and Obsidian in particular were reportedly hit hard by these layoffs. You could speculate that this announcement was Bethesda trying to placate fans in the midst of terrible press.

Unsurprisingly, the union United Videogame Workers-CWA is labeling the announcement as a distraction. “How are they going to make these games when Bethesda and Obsidian collectively laid off hundreds?” reads a social media post from the union. “Don’t fall for it.” Also unsurprisingly are replies to Bethesda’s roadmap announcement on social media praising the company and the current Xbox executive regime led by CEO Asha Sharma.

It’s hard to ignore the cost of the livelihood of hundreds of workers when discussing the news. And even if one were to callously ignore that, it might be difficult to get excited over a few paragraphs from a big gaming company with no visuals, trailers, or dates to back these details up.

That’s it for this week. I’ll be deep into Splatoon Raiders once it releases on Thursday, so I might have some words on that in the next issue.

Stay cool,
Chris Compendio