Slowtrain

That's kind of like roleplaying a baker class.

The process of virtually all interactions in video games is transactional. Replace "sex" with any other thing you can cause to happen in a video game and think about how often your interaction with a character continues significantly after you reach the end of a plot/quest chain. The protagonist is often the most active driving force in the game universe (hence the designation), and typically in all relationships the protagonist dominates where the relationship goes. In almost all cases, these relationships are either purely background/informational/chatty or they are part of a quest. Quests are pretty much all transactional. Once both parties have what they want, the protagonist leaves and starts pursuing another quest/plot chain. Remove sex from the equation in AP and you still have a male character effectively running around trying to get people to do what he wants and/or shooting them in the face. The process of "the romance" in games is a minigame just as much as lockpicking or hacking is nowadays, minus the UI. Gamers should be expected to treat it as such. They want to succeed and win.

I very much doubt V:TMB taught anybody anything. A game can't teach life lessons when every other game contradicts it. Insofar as misogyny is concerned, they contribute to and enforce a larger narrative about the nature of gender politics that is pushed implicitly through every media imaginable. Eh. If you are seriously going to go down that road, it seems to me video games are far more misanthropic than misogynistic. But I don't see the intentionality at work to deserve either label. Maybe games can be read as markers to what is swimming around in the cultural subconscious backwaters of all of us. But even that is probably giving games more value than they deserve.

Video games are way too shallow to be misogynistic. They're just simplistic.

+50,000 sales right there.

If by "looking for my Dad", you mean "blowing raiders up with landmines" then no, I enjoyed it as well.

Thief is another classic though.

Sure, I "had" to find my Dad, but I didn't give a crap about him or what happened to him. There's PS:T, where the writers actually worked to earn something. Then there's FO3 where the writers earned nothing and must not have worked very hard.

Creeping through those dark cargo holds on the Van Braun with my half broken pistol containing all of 8 bullets while listening to those monkeys howling in the darkness all around me remains one of my seminal gaming experiences. Subsequent playthrough of SS2 are less scary of course. But that first time through was absolutely nervewracking. Deus Ex is a fab game but SS2 is one of my classics.

I agree with all the changes/improvements that have been listed. COme on Josh, hop to it. This should only take you the next thirty years of your life. Just think, you can retire when you are done.

Arguably, it was a story hinged on the assumption that everyone loves Dad. Nope, not at all. The only assumption is that you want to find him, maybe to kill him for being an Ahole, but even that is a weak assumption. You find him eventually even if you aren't looking for him. (COnt from the mechanics thread) The biggest problem with the story for me wasn't whether I loved Dad or hated Dad. The biggest problem for me was that no attempt was made to make me care one way or the other. My entire interaction with this man who was supposed to be my father was a banal intro/tutorial sequence. And that was it. From that little bit I am supposed to care about finding my father either out of love or hate? I think not. I f you want to engage the player in a character centered story around finding another character, you better make sure there is some emotional involvement otherwise it isn't going to work. For my part, I assume that Beth choose the father line simply because it was an easy Macguffin. They didn't have to do any work, rather just asssume, Of course, you will want to find him he's your father. And then they could drop the story and motivation (Job DONE!) and go make some cars explode. More than anything else (any combat or crafting system or locations or whatever other improvements) I hope Obs can craft an involving story that makes me, the player, want to go find out more about this world or its charcters or one character in particular. I would like to be engaged by the narrative, not either oblivious to it, or cringing at the incompetence of it.

I do agree that if they are going to keep VATS, it needs to be ramped up. Eye shots, groin shots, hit inventory, movement, switch weapons, take cover, go prone. If theyput all that stuff in it would be a lot more fun. As it is now its just a pause button that allows you to click a few times.

MOAR Dark Ages death and plague talk! Plz.

Good lord, man. That's just freaking CRAZY talk.

Most interesting derailment on this board for a while now.

Remeber his Witcher review. One of his all time classics. edit: That review all his classic Painkiller intro voice over at the end. lol I had forgotten about that.

Nope. FOr the most part he doesn't like them. He's pretty straightforward about that.

*head explodes*

Yes. Which is why I said it is not unexpected. Doesn't really bother me either; I was just commenting because there was so much speaking in that clip, that it was pretty noticeable.

Oversized weapons are kinda weird, true, but they go with the territory. No different really, the way oversize guns are often used in games and movies. Size = teh awesome. Or something.

Looks decent enough. The VA is crap, but that's not unexpected. Didn't read the comments.

VATS is boring. You don't do anything; just stand there and click. Ther's no tactics, no dynamics to the gameplay. It's everything that is bad about TB combat, without any of the good parts. The fun part of TB combat is having the time to choose from a variety of possible tactics and options in a way that is impossible in RT. There is none of tht in VATS. Om top of that every shot is a slow motion animation. I have no clue how anybody has the patience to sit through that for the thousands upon thousands of reptitive, drawnout and pointless animations that one will experience with the huge amount of combat in the game. Unless you simply like watching cartoon heads explode in slow motion.

I find VATS dull as currently executed, but definitely with some options and decisions and stuff it could be made more fun. The every shot slo-mo has to be made optional though. That just takes way too long to play out. Far worse than FO 1/2's turtle slow TB combat.

Stabhappy is awesome. That little thing is deadly. It always cracks me up watching super mutant masters fly apart when attacked with that's about the size of one of their toes. The main thing I don't like about the baseball bat is its impact sound. Just very weak. Both the tire iron and the lead pipe sound a lot more um...chunky when they connect. Chunky rocks.

I think mostly speed and accuracy. In RT melee you strike very fast and you never miss. And with each strike that lands there's a critical chance. I don't know how it works in VATS though.