With the holiday shopping season gearing up, RPG video game makers are beginning to make promises for the future of their games.  After all, gamers love the immersive worlds that RPGs deliver, and the promise of expansions can be tempting.  Three game makers are promising upcoming content for their games, The Last Remnant, Fable II and Fallout 3.

Square Enix is first up to bat.  The Last Remnant has only been out for about a week on the Xbox 360 and already the developer is promising new content within a month.  In fact, there will be four seperate downloadable content packs in December alone.  On December 1, two packs will be released: Purgatory’s Sins and The Key of Ancient Ruins. Both of these initial packs will be free.  On December 15, the next download, March to War Set, will be released for 150 Microsoft points.  Then on December 22, players will be treated to another free download, Price of Lies.

Lionhead has announced a release date for its Knothole Island Pack DLC for Fable II.  The pack will be released on December 22 for 800 Microsoft points over Xbox Live.  A free update will also come for the game, so that co-op won’t be broken when joining players who have the DLC.

Bethesda has also promised downloads for its Fallout 3.  There will be three downloadable content packs released in early 2009.  Operation: Anchorage will be out in January, with The Pitt following in February and Broken Steel out in March.  No prices have been announced.  For PC users, the game’s official editor will be made available in December, allowing the mod community to develop new material for the game.

Nintendo has announced one Super NES RPG that’s making its way into the Wii’s virtual console. For 900 Wii points, you can download and play Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars.

Super Mario RPG, which was later succeeded by the Paper Mario series, was a joint project between Nintendo and Square (now Square Enix).  It blends the general RPG style of the Final Fantasy series, with the fun and wacky nature of Mario games.

It’s one of my favourite RPGs of all time.  When I was a kid, I played through this game several times.  It’s just plain fun.

No date has been set, as far as I know, but it won’t be too long, I hope.

The use of drugs by characters in Bethesda’s upcoming RPG Fallout 3 has been deemed too realistic, resulting in a ban on sales of the game in that country.

The gameplay of Bethesda’s upcoming installment in the Fallout series relies on the use of “chems”, chemical enhancements that affect the player.  The chems are essentially drugs that affect player’s stats, with both positive and negative effects.

The use of the chemicals is represented through pills, syringes and a pipe.  Morphine can also be heavily used by the player to ignore pain.  The representation of the drugs in the game is far too realistic, according to a statement released by Australian officials:

“In the board’s view these realistic visual representations of drugs and their delivery method bring the ’science-fiction’ drugs in line with ‘real-world’ drugs.”

The board also describes its discomfort with the incentives provided for players who use the in-game drugs.

Australia bans a small handfull of video games every year.  The highest rating available is “MA15+”, meaning that some games that would be rated “M (17+)” or “AO (18+)” in North America are simply banned down under.

Many Australian gamers are calling for a similar 18+ rating to be introduced in Australia to allow the sale of high-profile titles, such as Fallout 3, to adults.  Critics of the ban also point out inconsistencies in the Australian censorship board, namely their willingness to rate Bioshock, which also featured injection of “plasmids” via a syringe.

Fallout 3 has not yet been rated by North American or European censors.

Square Enix first put up a Japanese site, and then a similar North American one, that sent a very clear message.  Now, the news has also been made official (via press release) — Chrono Trigger is coming back.  The game will be released in North America for the Nintendo DS this holiday season.

Like recent reincarnations of old Final Fantasy titles, Chrono Trigger will make use of the Nintendo DS’ improved graphics and touch-screen functionality.  The story, battle system and styles of the game will remain unchanged.

Chrono Trigger sold some 2.5 million copies worldwide, and became a favourite for many fans.  It only makes sense that it should be part of Square Enix’s recent strategy of remaking/re-releasing classic titles.

Fans of the Chrono series were disappointed when Chrono Break, which would have been the fourth installment in the series, was cancelled.  Perhaps renewed interest in the series will prompt a new Chrono game to appear in the next couple of years?

Many Final Fantasy XI players are aware of a rash of account hackings that occurred over the past couple of months. A number of players saw their account passwords suddenly changed after their gaming computers were compromised. Square Enix has been unable to help most of these players, who saw hours of game-work disappear when their characters were stolen.

One 20-year-old has taken it upon himself to seek justice with his local police department, reports a Minnesota newspaper. Geoff Luurs reported the crime, in which 75 million Gil worth of virtual items and coin that belonged to his character were stolen. Although Square Enix prohibits players from participating in real-money trade (RMT) between game items and real currency, the gil is worth about $4,000 U.S. on the FFXI “black market”.

The police, however, refuse to investigate the event. According to them, virtual items have no monetary value whatsoever and no crime has taken place. The response angered law professor Joshua Fairfield of Washington and Lee University:

“What happened here is somebody stole almost USD 4000 and got away cold. This is just a matter of zeros. The first time IBM loses USD 10 million, we’re going to see some police action. The argument that a magic sword isn’t real, that doesn’t make sense to me. You can ask the question, why would somebody buy that? But you can’t say it’s not worth real money.”

Putting aside the fact that swords in Final Fantasy XI aren’t normally magic, Fairfield brings up a good point. Despite the fact that it’s against the rules, RMT is a common thing in FFXI as well as in most other MMO games, some of which allow and even participate in the trade of virtual items for real-world money.

Recent hackings involved exploits on some Final Fantasy XI information sites that were finding back-door entries into players’ computers, but in the case of this player, it’s also suspected that he gave out his information at some point. Luurs named another FFXI player as a former friend and current suspect, raising the question of whether or not he actually gave out his password in the past. This is a somewhat common practice, although it’s also forbidden by Square Enix due to security risks.

So what’s your take? Is this a case of the law being behind the times, or is this FFXI player crying over spilled milk? Having spent hours in Final Fantasy XI myself, I can certainly respect the amount of time and energy it takes to build up a character — there’s certainly a value to what was stolen, even if it’s hard to quantify.

Psychology/self-help writer Cooper Lawrence, who recently appeared on Fox News, has apologized for taken back her criticism of the Xbox 360 game Mass Effect. Lawrence’s appearance on the program was to comment on the game’s alleged nudity and its effect on children. If you’ve read this blog recently, you’re probably familiar with my thoughts on the matter.

In the segment, Lawrence accused the game of objectifying women and depicting full nudity. When asked during the interview whether or not she had even played the game, she answered no. But in an interview with the New York Times, Lawrence explained her situation and took back her remarks:

“I recognise that I misspoke. Before the show I had asked somebody about what they had heard, and they had said it’s like pornography. But it’s not like pornography.”

My comment earlier was that worse content regularly appears in film and on network TV… and it looks like Cooper Lawrence agreed with that, too:

“I’ve seen episodes of Lost that are more sexually explicit.”

Some fans of Mass Effect were angered by the original broadcast and hundreds went to Amazon.com to give negative reviews of Cooper Lawrence’s book. Some of these attacked Lawrence’s character, while others sarcastically pointed out that they don’t need to read the book to know it’s ignorant (referencing how Lawrence commented on Mass Effect without having played or even seen the content she discussed). Amazon deleted most of the reviews that didn’t directly discuss the book, but several remain. It’s unknown whether or not this pressure led her to retract her comments.

Personally, I say good for her for admitting her mistake and putting her neck out there to fix the problem. Hopefully she, and others, will think twice about reviewing content you’ve never seen — or having a knee-jerk reaction to anything Fox News says. Meanwhile, Fox continues to refuse to apologize or clarify its remarks about Mass Effect, as EA continues to request a retraction.

So what’s the deal, Fox? There were actual lies in that segment (not a difference of opinion — lies), and anyone who’s actually played Mass Effect knows it.

Anyways, thanks for helping to set the record straight, Cooper.