Publisher Random House has teased book fans with an excerpt from the upcoming Elder Scrolls novel, The Infernal City. If you're undecided on the book, written by Greg Keyes, then perhaps the opening scene will entice you or put you off. Either way, it's there for the reading, so go right ahead.

As a budding fantasy nut and a fan of Oblivion, I think I'll definitely be picking it up. In fact, I'm really tempted to start playing Oblivion again to jog my memory of the game world, even if I do have a tendency to ruin every character build I try and make. In any case, the book is looking somewhat promising, although it's hard to see how much of a yarn it will spin from just a few pages.

The Infernal City will be available later this month on November 24.

Awesome! When it was announced that an Elder Scrolls book was coming, I was happy. I quite like me a good fantasy novel, and I love the world of Tamriel. It has now been revealed that The Elder Scrolls: The Infernal City is getting a release date of November 24, with Bethesda informing us that you can pre-order now.

The Infernal City is about an evil floating city that has appeared in Tamriel and is raising the dead to slaughter the living. A young girl called Annaig and the Emperor’s son, Prince Attrebus, team up to rescue the land. It's being written by best-selling author Greg Keyes. 

Check out the front cover, which looks rather classy, and let us know if you're buying it. I know I'll definitely be getting this. In fact, Bethesda should totally give it to me so I can review it. Bethesda! Make with the booky books!

Elder Scrolls V is not on Bethesda’s radar. During a Q&A session at Quake Con ’09, Bethesda's Todd Howard told a fan that the studio has “no current plans” for the expected sequel to Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

He didn’t add to the statement, but when a clever fan asked about if Bethesda was planning an Elder Scrolls MMO Howard said [jokingly], “There’s always a chance.”

We’ll go out on a limb here and say that the chances of the oft-rumored MMO being real seem pretty good now considering the studio isn’t bothering with a traditional follow-up. Still, this is a gut-puncher. We were looking forward to rolling in another single-player Elder Scrolls title.

[via Big Download, via Kotaku]

[Update: This is bad information. Read this for clarification.]

Two high-profile games are being bundled together in one package for Xbox 360 and PC, thanks to 2K Games and Bethesda.

Both Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and BioShock will come together to hit retail shelves starting July 7th. The Xbox 360 version will cost $39.99. The bundle will also be released for PC for an even better price: $29.99. Notice the lack of a PS3 version listing? Bethesda told Destructoid that there will be no PS3 version.

Here's the word from Bethesda's Pete Hines:

No PS3. Just PC and 360. Recall that we co-published the PC and 360 versions with 2K, but not the PS3 version. We published that ourselves here and with Ubi in Europe.

So it's a publishing related thing. Makes sense. Anyway, that's $15-20 a piece for two really fantastic games. I think that most of us already have these titles, but for those that don't, what a bargain!

I wonder if Big Daddies can wear horse armor now.

PC gaming service GameTap has just announced a partnership with the folks at Microsoft Games to bring several of their classic PC titles to subscribers of the service.

U.S. and European subscribers will now have access to several of Microsoft's oldies-but-goodies from PC's yesteryear:

• Age of Mythology
• Age of Empires 2
• Rise of Nations
• Freelancer
• Fable: The Lost Chapters
• Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries
• Zoo Tycoon series 

“We’re thrilled to add to the library of great PC games on the new GameTap through this partnership with Microsoft Games,” said Pierre Forest, VP of Content. “These games have proven to be some of the most played games in our catalogues in Europe, and we expect they will have the same success in the US.”

Any GameTappers out there? Will you get down on these new Microsoft additions?

Bethesda Softworks' insanely popular game franchise The Elder Scrolls will join the book club. Del Ray (part of the Random House publishing group) will publish two novels based on the world and lore of The Elder Scrolls games, both written by New York Times best-selling author Greg Keys, who also wrote the best-selling New Jedi Order Star Wars novels.

The first novel, titled The Infernal City, will be published in Fall of 2009. It is set after the most recent Elder Scrolls game, Oblivion, where the people of Tamriel are again facing an uncertain future:

Floating high above the land is a strange and mysterious city that is casting a horrifying shadow – wherever it falls, people die and rise again as undead. It is up to an unlikely duo – a seventeen-year-old girl named Annaig and the Emperor’s young son, Prince Attrebus – to rescue the kingdom from doom. Annaig and Attrebus’ quest will take them through the Elder Scrolls universe and their adventure is sure to add to the series’ already magnificent mythology.

“We’ve been big fans of Greg’s work for a long time, and we’re thrilled he agreed to bring his talents to The Elder Scrolls,” said Pete Hines, vice president of public relations and marketing for Bethesda Softworks. “We see these books as a natural extension of the franchise and think fans will love the stories and characters Greg has created.”

I'm already sold. Who else looks to get their read on?

To celebrate April Fools' Day, Bethesa has announced that for the next week all downloadable content for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is on sale for half price. So that means you can pick up things like "Knights of the Nine" for 400 MS Points or "The Vile Lair" for 75 MS Point. 

But if you want the legendary "Horse Armor" DLC, you're going to have to spread your wallet a little further. In honor of the upcoming third anniversary release of the content (April 3), Bethesda has doubled the price. That's right, now what has become a running joke in the industry as a way not to do DLC will cost you 400 MS Points for the next week. Why? Because it's funny. Oh, and you weren't going to buy it anyhow. (But I wonder how many people actually will?)

With all of the reported issues with the Fallout 3 "The Pitt" DLC, now might be a good time to revisit Cyrodiil. You can grab the content through your console or the online Xbox LIVE Marketplace.

As if you needed any further proof that people are gullible imbeciles who'll buy anything, look no further than Bethesda. The studio recently released its top ten Oblivion downloads and confirmed that it still sells the infamous "Horse Armor" DLC ... daily.

"To this day, 2 years later. Looking at our Xbox Live reports, every day, tens of thousands of people STILL play Oblivion and they purchase thousands and thousands of downloadable content -- again, every day," boasts Bethesda on its blog. "Yes, even Horse Armor continues to sell daily."

The full list according to the developer is as follows:

1. Wizard's Tower
2. Thieves Den
3. Mehrune's Razor 
4. Spell Tomes
5. Vile Lair
6. The Orrery
7. Knights of the Nine
8. Shivering Isles
9. Horse Armor
10. Fighter's Stronghold*

*If we rank by pure downloads and include the free promotions we’ve had, Fighter’s Stronghold becomes #1.

Last week was quite the end of the year blowout debate. I threw my debate traps into the waters, cast out my anchor, and waited for a week to see what kind of things would wash up. A decent amount of fiddler trolls surfaced as expected, but for the most part our usual weekly intelligent debate continued as scheduled.

It wasn't quite as exciting as the whored out daily Discovery Channel documentaries, but I didn't grow a beard, lose an arm or earn a hundred grand, so I guess things even out. That being said, when I returned to the docks with that week's gains, Nintendo did not look pleased. Anyways, I'm off to bang Diane Lane. Here are the results:

• Best Console: 
• Xbox 360 (79 votes) -- Winner!
• PS3 (53 votes)
• Wii (13 votes)

• Worst Console:
• Wii (85 votes) -- Loser!
• PS3 (34 votes)
• Xbox 360 (12 votes) 

The sales don't lie, and Nintendo has plenty to be happy about. However, these numbers don't lie either, and I don't think a "bias community" complaint is enough to write-off these staggering results, so Nintendo also has plenty to be upset about.

This week we return to the odd debate tournaments that were temporarily paused after the end of the Gamecube brackets. We venture into the Xbox round of debates with two games that were both ambitious and more comparable by odd debate standards than usual. The settings were drastically different though, as were their approaches to nonlinear gameplay. What will be the deciding factor for you this week?

Which game do you think is better, and why? Give it some serious thought, get some Xbox friends to share their opinions as well, and check back next week for the winner.

In a conversation with gamesindustry.biz, Bethesda publishing executive Paul Oughton said that a new Elder Scrolls title is likely in 2010 and that the company isn’t particularly interested in Wii development, despite the fact that the they have plans to work on a few “big titles” every year. His remark comes on the heels of the release of Fallout 3, a title that will probably bring Bethesda into the videogame world’s limelight.

From the interview:

At the moment we've got Fallout 3 for this year and potentially there's a new Elder Scrolls title in 2010. At the moment we're not that interested in the Wii. We're going to stick to PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. We'll continue to pursue three or four titles a year and go for big titles.

In regards to the Nintendo sentiment, Oughton backed up a bit and said that Nintendo has done a decent job at allowing developers to spit out a plethora of mini-games oriented titles. As for the next Elder Scrolls title, Oughton didn’t elaborate. But that doesn’t mean a boy can’t dream of horse armor, high fantasy, and deeply forested areas all over again, does it?

Everybody's favorite snuggable game developer Peter Molyneux is once again speaking his mind while making sure to mention Fable 2. This time, the chatty creator is talking about Bethesda's Oblivion, comparing its 60-70 hours of gameplay to a 20,000 page book.

"Now for me, as a designer, if I hear ’sixty or seventy hours’, then in my mind that is the equivalent of giving me a book that is twenty thousand pages long.

And if I said to you, here’s a fantastic book, go and read that… Are you likely to finish a twenty thousand page book? No.

So in Fable 2, the story lasts thirteen to fourteen hours and by the end of that story what you are like, what you look like and how the world treats you is completely up to you. If you want to be evil or good or kind or cruel, then that’s totally up to you. With Oblivion it was basically all about me killing things."

Peter Molyneux says that "Fable 2 rocks, Oblivion sucks cocks" CONFIRMED!

Actually, Peter did say that Oblivion was a "fantastic achievement," but it's clear that he doesn't have time for such a huge game. It's a fair point to make, since Oblivion, for all its beauty, could be a little overwhelming at times. That said, I almost completely finished the main game save for a final quest (where I got screwed over by the stupid weight limits) so I would suggest that, if a 20,000 page book is good enough, you'll damn well finish it.

Just make sure not every book is that long, and we're fine.

How in the ... oh, right. I knew The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was a glitchy game, but hot damn, this is insane.

Almost every speedrun out there involves some sort of exploit in order to shave off precious seconds of game time (or in this case, hours), and the Oblivion speedrun located above is no exception.

By falling through the map, the speedrunner is able to initiate the game's final quest, completely skipping all of those pesky fetch missions.

While the video has no sound due to its creator being cheap and using demo software, it's still one to sit through.

Majestic's Limbo of the Lost is a PC game with some balls. Not so much because it pushes boundaries or introduces risky new gameplay elements that we've never seen before, but because it has the brazen brass ones to rip off entire sections of 2006's most popular RPG without any shame whatsoever.

The theft was discovered by GamePlasma (site may be down due to being linked like crazy) who provided comparison shots of Oblivion backgrounds and Limbo backgrounds. The results are absolutely stunning and you can find two of the shots right here. Aside from the character, hand and compass, everything in the Limbo screenshot is directly lifted from Bethesda's Oblivion, including the exact same portrait hanging on the wall. It's also likely that the game stole from other titles including Diablo 2, Painkiller, Thief, UTK3, Morrowind and even Silent Hill 4. That's pretty amazing.

If it was just that one hall, maybe Limbo would have gotten away with it. Unlikely, but maybe. However, a whole host of Oblivion scenes have been lifted and stitched into Majestic's version of what could only be called a game development heist. Now that the jig is up, publisher Tri Synergy has ceased distribution of the game, stating it was "just as shocked as everyone else" to find out about the dirty theft. It currently awaits word from the culprits themselves.

I am not so much shocked about Limbo of the Lost stealing whole scenes from another game, but the idea that Majestic felt it could steal from one of the most well-known games of recent years and even hope to get away with it. Remember, when you need to steal something, steal from below to a lesser game. Never steal upwards, you incompetent boobs!

We all know how unbelievably gorgeous Crysis is, but what if the technology used to power the game was applied to something like, I don't know, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion? Would we be able to handle the pure sexiness of it all?

Find out for yourself by watching the video above or by downloading this higher-resolution version that'll fetch greater results. It's been a long time since I've played Oblivion, so perhaps I've let my mind create a mental image of how fantastic it looked to me back then and as a result, didn't see a huge difference between the switch to CryEngine 2.

But after viewing the downloadable video, everything looked leaps and bounds better, not just the foliage like the embed video would have me believe; it also helped that I did a quick Google image search to see how fuzzy my memory really was.

Above all, this video made me realize how badly I want Bethesda to create a new Elder Scrolls with those kinds of graphics.

[Thanks Lemon and Wexx]