‘Fallout’, ‘Skyrim’ publisher teases mystery project
Image: Twitter/@bethesda
Walmart Canada appeared to have jumped the gun on nearly two dozen new games ahead of June’s 2018 Electronic Entertainment Expo.
Pre-order listings were posted, and subsequently withdrawn, for numerous anticipated and unannounced titles, including “Borderlands 3”, “Forza Horizons [sic] 5”, “Gears of War 5” and a new “Splinter Cell” per a screenshot posted by Twitter user Wario64.
Walmart Canada later told Motherboard that the listings were speculative and their publication was in error. Still, “Rage 2” developer Bethesda Softworks poked a little fun.
Tweeting back its own screencap, the official “Rage” account offered “a few notes” on the mockup cover’s font, lack of age rating and artwork, using bright pink text over a screengrab of Walmart Canada’s now removed “Rage 2” product page and daubing it with an equally pink anarchy symbol in reference to the original game’s logo.
The same neon pink theme popped up again in three tweets sent from the Bethesda account: a photograph of the British tower clock Big Ben reading 5:14 in the afternoon; a space rocket inscribed with the number 5-14; and a bird’s eye view of pedestrians at a city crossroads.
It’s not yet clear whether the mysterious images refer to “Rage 2” or another project.
The 2011 action game “Rage” was set on a post-apocalyptic earth ravaged by the effects of an enormous asteroid impact. It was developed by Id Software, a studio best known for its “Doom” franchise of first-person shooters. Both it and Bethesda are part of the same holding company.
Bethesda Softworks has an internal studio network of its own, Bethesda Game Studios, which is associated with the “Fallout” and “The Elder Scrolls” franchises.
That network is understood to have two big projects in development and one of them, referred to as “Starfield”, is thought to be an epic role-playing adventure set in space.
Either way, the “5 14” motif has been interpreted by fans as an indicator that more news is coming on May 14, ahead of Bethesda’s June 10 presentation at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. JB
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