Longknife

Sacrificing a better storyline for another storyline that involves a woman's rape is not misogyny, it's bad writing. To make that claim is basically jumping upon the assumption that the sacrifice was made SOLELY for the sake of that scene and that the producers hold Sansa to be nothing more than a tool for shock value rather than a real character all because she's a woman, something you have no evidence for and that multiple other parts of the show provide evidence to the contrary. If you cannot see how you're making a fantastic leap of faith to claim misogyny, then wow. I mean you don't see me screaming misandry because the TV show's adeptation of Stannis is woefully unfair and bias against him whereas Dany has so much god damned plot armor she might as well solo the White Walkers; that's because there's no deep prejudice meaning behind it (though in Stannis' case the producers have actively said they hate the character iirc) and it's just bad writing. You don't look at that terriawful scene with the Greyjoys being run off by a couple of dogs as misogyny just because the leader of the attack was a woman, you view it as terriawful writing. This is a show that has depicted scenes of baby's and children being murdered, has *already* pretty much depicted a woman forced against her will and touched on rape before, has shown countless gruesome deaths and scenes of torture involving men getting their **** chopped off. Now with all due respect, and I do mean this in the kindest way possible, please piss off because this is a thread that's supposed to be about Game of Thrones, but currently it's about the god damned ****ing patriarchy because two members seem really offended by one wayward scene (that's more or less been done twice before) and insist discussing the misogyny of that scene is what this topic was truly created for.

They wed military men so they can sit at home collecting on a fat check of military benefits.

It is highly unlikely that Sanders will win majority of voted delegates or even popular vote. Southern pelt just have most of the population and Clinton's support there seems to be overwhelming. It could go either way, imo. Realize the majority of the voting thusfar has been in the south, so Clinton's lead is more or less partially due to that. As the elections head north, it's not unfounded to picture Bernie gaining on her in delegates. Personally, I'd love to see that. If for nothing else, I'd love to see it as a means of highlighting just how flawed and warped the superdelegate system currently is.

Bernie is gonna lose and that makes me sad. Yes yes, any idiot can look at a map of the United States and figure out that Clinton has been winning the typically Republican States while Bernie is winning basically everything else. He's winning, and I expect him to win the majority of the upcoming states. But look at the numbers. It doesn't matter. If Bernie consistently beats her 60-40, it won't even matter, because the superdelegate padding she has is just absolutely atrocious. The most disgusting part about this is is that we may see an end-game where Bernie has more delegates and Clinton has more Superdelegates, a giant personification of just how dead democracy is in the democratic party. He's gaining on her in delegates, but it's just not enough. While Americans sit there voting and saying they want Bernie just as much as Clinton, the rich ****s in Washington all voice support for Clinton, and apparently for democracy to work, certain people need extra privileged votes that count foran exponential amount greater than the average american. What a ****ing joke.

Bingo. If I knew the guy personally? If I could confirm, for example, that he has more friends, I'd let loose and speak my mind. But I don't know that, and I can't do that to someone who may otherwise be friendless. Thought you were asking why I put spaces at all and I was just gonna say "so it's not all blocky." Then I realized that you're apparently able to notice two lines vs. one and this somehow bothers you. MIGHT YOU BE A TAD BIT OCD, IF I MAY INQUIRE?

Imagine this scenario: You play an MMO, it's full of idiots as expected, and eventually you stop playing. After you stop, you stay in contact with about ~5 people and talk with them regularly and even play other games with them, such as Team Fortress 2. Over time, it can only be inferred that one of these five is....I cannot think of a nicer way to word this, but some kind of social autist. I don't mean that insultingly (except for the hints of that being laced with anger and frustration I guess), I mean I have serious suspicions this guy has some sort of mental issue. Imagine that any time you play TF2, he's there. Like it doesn't matter what he's doing, what he's playing, what his previous engagements are: he's there. He's following you. And not only is he not following you immediately, but after some tests you did where you load up the game and **** around with your inventory for five minutes, he learned to OBSESSIVELY refresh your server game info to see if you're in a game, so he sits there monitoring if you play. To make it extra annoying, his ping is atrocious (250, so a 2.5 second delay) and he's the only person you know that can manage to get worse at a game as they play it more, so while he's eager to be on your team, he's a constant liability. And dear lord, he's gonna make sure you know he's there, because at the start of every match, he will get in front of your face and obsessively melee you. If you turn around or spin in circles, he'll follow, as if he truly thinks you DIDN'T notice him or something. And when he's not being annoying in matches, he's asking for your assistance with some gamemode versus the computer (Mann vs. Machine). And he's asking every day. The moment you log on. And when you do finally help to shut him up, he's gonna make sure that on wave 4 of 6, he goes AFK to make coffee for 20 minutes, thereby leading the squad to kick him, meaning you must leave and start over in order to ensure he finishes. The extent to which he will follow everything you do includes randomly looking up your reddit post history off and on and if you happened to invest some money in buying TF2 paints for €1 so you can resell them for €4-5 later, you'll find that his backpack not only has paints, but has the EXACT amount you bought. Imagine if you could state "_____ reminds me of this character from that show" and then log off, and you get this sinking feeling that he's going to adopt what you just said and change his steam name and profile picture to match that, and sure enough, he did, and you're so used to this that you knew it was gonna happen before it happened. He himself is quiet and one dimensional, only ever speaking up to say the same joke for the 500th time or to say "lol" in response to something or whatever, and hasn't ever done anything to offend, though he's never done anything to showcase much depth of a personality. Yet my god, just the fact that you cannot BREATHE without this person watching your every move, stalking you, following you, or unwittingly being as annoying as possible. I am currently typing this because myself and another friend wanted to try TF2's matchmaking beta tonight. We thought surely he wouldn't follow us because he hates the competitive aspects of TF2; it's not his cup of tea. NOPE. Here's a man with 250 ping to his name and no mic with which to communicate to his team, and he's messaging you asking you to add him to your squad as you face up against experienced players that can achieve more than 1 kill per game. I'm a massive pansy and despite how blunt I am to strangers online, have not been able to tell him "you have the social skills and social awareness of a braindead cactus," so instead of saying "no wtf **** off, like hell I wanna play this mode with you," I'm just....not playing. And I can't exactly cut ties with the guy without awkwardness because well of COURSE he'd follow as much as he could, and he happens to be a part of those 5 people I stayed in touch with, though NONE of them have to put up with this and only see him as a quiet guy and nothing more. What the **** would you do in my shoes?

Or they could double down and do "Two Ghouls, One Fridge". **** that. This time there's an entire ghoul family in a fridge. Yep, you open it up and they poor out like a freaking clown car. Then they all wanna look for the youngest sibling of the family, who has spent 200 years looking for them. Their son is a mirelurk now because reasons.

Look at the brightside you negative nancies: As long as they avoid stuffing another ghoul kid in the fridge, the writing can only improve from the base game!

Kill me.

DLC #1 is Buildable Bots - the Blatant Rip-off Commercialized Version DLC #2 is "this is blatantly a modders resource and we can't be assed to bother giving this any backstory." DLC #3 is "hi I'm an actual DLC with story content. But don't you worry if you were expecting bad storylines, we haven't forgotten about you! The main storyline conflict involves two of our ****tiest factions ever, where you have to decide between robots, religious zealots, or generic townsfolk that probably function as the blatant good guy choice for those of you too chicken**** to make any difficult decisions for once in your damned lives." Also interesting is that it seems stupidly likely that DLC #3 is the result of an executive loving a certain vacation destination (Bar Harbor is apparently the #1 tourist destination in Maine, and having been to Maine myself, the damned state is a common tourist destination for rich northeastern yuppies looking for some solitude) and deciding it needs to be in the game. To be fair, this is more or less what sparked Honest Hearts (cept for the rich yuppy part) and it worked out, though I think part of why it worked is cause Zion is visually so appealing. I question if the location decision for this upcoming DLC is actually wise or well thought-out, or if the logical process behind making Bar Harbor the location is akin to the "hay guiz I saw dis show called underworld n it was good so lets thro away our skyrim vampire lore and maek da vamps be frum underworld cuz i lyk it" inspiration that Dawnguard got in Skyrim.

I remember saying it was brave of Bethesda to let Obsidian do it, I totally expected them to school the Toddster. At first I was slightly let down, I think Fallout 3 destroys it from a world design perspective (also heavy locational advantage, Washington!) but in every other area New Vegas completely excels. I'm currently playing Skyrim again, just to see if rose tinted spectacles were warping my view of Fallout 4...nope, one Skyrim hold has more charm and thoughfulness than anything Boston has to offer. Locations I consider to be apples and oranges. There's no denying FO3 makes exploration fun, since wtf I went in the sewers once and found a ghoul named Gallo or Pollo in a party hat guarding a unique flamethrower, and that's the kind of random need finds you expect. New Vegas on the other hand, the locations themselves aren't thrilling, but serve to help make the world feel more immersive, as all the locations make logical sense. You find things about where you'd expect them. Best comparison example is that the Super Duper Market in FO3 makes no ****ing sense whatsoever (it's down the street from Megaton and NONE of the settlers thought to loot it for food and supplies in 200 years? Let alone make it their home instead?) but provides the player with something to explore and have fun with, with plenty of little unique scripts or interactions within the location itself. Meanwhile, New Vegas has a convenience store down the road from the Mojave Outpost with nothing to do in it....but it makes sense! It's down the street from a major settlement, of course it's been picked clean and only has a few items here and there. While not immediately fun itself, I truly appreciate how little locations like this help add realism and immersion to the experience as a collective. The other difference is random encounters, and yes, New Vegas could've used these. I simply don't see a reason NOT to include random encounters, so long as their done correctly. The random encounters in Skyrim for example were bad, as they were TOO involved and too flashy. After your 26th old orc approaches you, it just breaks your immersion. But FO3's didn't repeat, or they were simple enough that they didn't feel odd. If done properly, I'd say every title should have these. I think they expressed a desire to have a similar feature, but we all know how time restrained New Vegas was.

Just yesterday there were two seperate threads all upvoted to front page of the Fallout subreddit from people whose first fallout was Fallout 4. They went back and played New Vegas and then came to post about how staggeringly awesome, detailed and immersive New Vegas is and how it might become their favorite game of all time. I recall saying YEEEEEAAARS ago that I expect New Vegas to haunt Bethesda titles. May sound dickish, but I'm so glad that's turning out to be true. That bar is ****ing set in stone, I don't expect New Vegas to go away until a decent effort is made to AT LEAST be within the same league. Wouldn't count on it just because Bethesda often has a strange idea of difficulty. I mean these are the guys that think you can make a deathclaw fight harder by giving the damned thing 3000+ health but only enough damage to hit you for 20 or so through power armor.

NEPAL REPRESENT

More importantly, FO2's crimes are more "hey developers, you've crossed a line to a level of goofy many of us don't appreciate cause we like realism in our world. Please tone it down." FO4's are "holy **** Bethesda why don't you realize how asenine and retarded this is?" The former is actively striving for a tone of humor and ridiculousness, the latter wants to be taken seriously while managing to be just as ridiculous as those actively trying to be ridiculous. The latter, in my opinion, is of greater cause for concern, because with FO2's dev team you can actively tell them you want them to switch up the style to being back to what it was, whereas with FO4, they seem incapable of properly doing either "style;" the goofy elements and the realistic elements blur into one entity because their writers are that bad, and wouldn't know how to seperate the two even if they actively tried. Yes and no. It varies by case. For the most part, Oblivion and FO3 offered worlds that perhaps stepped on the toes of predecessors (Oblivion has conflicting lore with Morrowind, FO3 conflicts with past fallouts), but they remain internally consistent for the most part. FO4 has issues where it isn't even internally consistent. The ghoul kid makes no sense no matter what, as I think I recall there's another quest confirming ghouls do eat. (they run a farm or something?) It conflicts with it's own ****ing lore, which is quite an accomplishment in the name of bad writing. Curie and the Institute is another one. Curie has managed to cure every known disease in the 200 years she's been isolated. Meanwhile, an entire society of thinking, feeling, reproducing, flourishing human scientists with multiple robots and synths at their disposal has not found the time to cure cancer. Don't worry though, we have synth gorillas. Because reasons. Another example would be that for all the **** it deserves, Kid in the Fridge at least attempts to explain it's "logic," however bad it may be. Megaton is similar. Megaton makes no ****ing sense whatsoever, but it will provide you a really retarded explanation as to why this settlement exists. FO3 is ripe with this, where while the actual logic behind the stories isn't structurally sound whatsoever, the game at least does provide (bad) answers to questions. The only exceptions to this rule I can name are Tenpenny Tower - an oversight I don't find outrageous as it required someone to sit down and think about how nonsensical it would be for rich people to exist in a resource-starved region, why those rich people would relocate to the resource-starved region, or how ridiculous it is for any of them to pay rent so Tenpenny can waste some of their life savings on "safaris" rather than the community collectively overthrowing him for the benefit of everyone's longevity and safety - with the other exception being no community explains where they get food beyond "caravans," which begs the question what on earth these communities can offer in exchange for food. Both of those cases involve a level of detail that Bethesda simply wasn't aiming for or bothered with, so it's not really a case of Bethesda saying "**** it, let's leave a loose end in our game," but rather they were unaware of the Loose End's existence. FO4 again differentiates here, in that the loose ends are so god damned frequent and often center stage, that yes I am led to believe that Todd told his writers "who cares, no one will bother asking that question." Unfortunately for Todd, not all of us are as easily distracted by shiny explosions. The synth gorillas, the Institute's lack of clear goals or motivations, the needlessness of synth attacks and espionage on above communities, why Piper is suspicious of that Mayor, how the USS Constitution got on that building, how the USS consitution got rocket engines to begin with....I could go on and on. This game just actively doesn't give a **** about even bothering to answer you. In short, again the game takes past mistakes a step further, because while Oblivion and FO3 at least had the common courtesy to attempt to bull**** you, FO4 actively insults your intelligence, wishing to pretend the problem doesn't exist and that you won't notice. Even if you wish to argue this is yet another case of Bethesda not being aware of loose ends existing, then this is an ALARMING amount of loose ends to not be aware of. It's an unacceptable amount that would lead most businesses and companies to conclude their writing staff is severely underqualified and needs to be fired with poor recommendations for any future companies these "writers" attempt to work for. Tenpenny tower and food sources in FO3 are just two that were completely glossed over, but FO4 might as well have more plot holes than it does coherent stories.

Still obsessed with this: The writer missed a great opportunity to at least be somewhat self-aware by naming the quest "Fridge Logic." :D

I live in the most multicultural part of Denmark, smack in the middle of what most would call a "ghetto" - so I have front row to this crime - and see how utterly exaggerated it is on social media and in the news. The thing is however - it's precisely the same as when I lived in a predominately poor white neighborhood, except without the media attention. Most would say it's very marxist of me, but as a result I see it much more as a monetary and socio-economic issue than a racial or cultural one. The news always clings to fear-mongering ****, always has. For me personally the only refugees here are....****ing adorable. The half of them are begging for food and money like you'd expect, but the other half...? They are on their feet and coming to terms with life in Germany, which means most of them have their first iPhone ever. You can pick them out on the streets real easy cause they're the guys walking around taking selfies or filming with like 3+ friends looking at the phone simultaneously.

Lol, mass sexual harassment for fun is a real thing. This is the sort of thing Goebbels would say and everyone would think its demonisation and propaganda. In sweden too: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/01/11/world/europe/ap-eu-sweden-sexual-assaults.html I guess these are going to be written off as far-right propaganda too? ....You...you talking to me? If so I'm very confused, since all I did was translate.

I am no expert, but aren't this gas pistols? They aren't banned here. Ofc it is usually not the smartest idea to wield them in public. Other than that, I'd like to have them all removed from my country simply because of rocket shooting into people. This counts for everyone who does this. There was at least one report about a 27 years old woman who got her leg blown off this time, just because some idiot thought it would be funny to point a crappy czech battery into a group of people. Yeah, and the throwing and shooting of firecrackers on police and firefighters is really low. /Edit: About guns in general- just imagine germans would be carrying guns as well... what do people believe would have happened then? A huge shootout on the streets with real guns instead of firecrackers? Would that be so much better? I doubt. If you understand German, the guy being interviewed is basically explaining that from what he gathers this is one group vs. another group, aka there was a "war" going on in the street where it was one side of the street vs the other. The reporter asks if it's serious, he says it's just for fun. The report is more about how these guys were acting rather wreckless, as of course yeah, launching fireworks at each other and the like isn't exactly the height of public safety. The guns were not mentioned, which I found far too odd for a country where you'd never see a pistol brandished or fired on the street like that, so I did a bit of googling, found this: http://www.kotte-zeller.de/Schreckschusspistolen.htm?websale8=kotte-zeller-shop&ci=009890 These are indeed gas pistols, and that website explicitly advertises them as being a popular item that they tend to sell a lot of during New Years. So in short, the video is some refugees staging a "war" against each other, and the reason it's being reported is because a lot of moms and children found it unnerving while at times their fun got so wild it was a bit of a safety concern (launching fireworks at each other and the like). As for the article, it's the BKA, our office for responding to crime (the police management you could say), basically stating that they're familiar with the "Taharrush Gamea" practice from having heard of it in other countries (less so in Germany) and are going to do everything to ensure it does not become a problem or regular occurance here. What Taharrush Gamea is, is basically when a group of muslim guys sexually harass or rape a woman in public.

Just curious, how many people here actually speak German? I'm sitting here wondering if the people discussing this video and the article actually fully understand the context or not.

I recently read that.... So I knew that Oblivion was the last game created with TES' original staff on board, right? By the time Skyrim came out, not a single writer/developer from Morrowind and earlier was on staff save for obvious examples like Todd. This explains why Skyrim is so willing to take a dump on old lore and just not give a damn, as well as why the tone feels so different. Apparently, at least one guy remained on board for Fallout 3. Most of the older Bethesda devs left after Oblivion was wrapped up, but one guy hung around. That guy was Mark Nelson. Nelson was responsible for both writing and quest design, as one of the leads. This does so ****ing much to explain why...I mean FO3 had it's Bethesda-ness to it, don't get me wrong, but it still felt like it did an ok job of holding onto some Fallout elements, such as choice and consequence, SOME of the tone and writing, and just generally having quests that felt like someone put a lot of time and effort into them. Fast forward to Skyrim and FO4, generic radiant quests are in abundance. The simple explanation is because their quest designers have changed. I already knew their writers had started changing starting with FO3, was not aware their quest designers were aswell. So yeah, the jist of it is the simple truth that the same guys who gave you the hand crafted quests you saw in Oblivion or Fallout 3 are no longer working at Bethesda. Who's in charge of quest design now...? Hell if I know, but whoever it is apparently loves fetch quests and combat.

I for one am looking forward to the DLC announcement so we can see another riveting plotline where the aliems invade again and the synths and humans are forced to sign a peace treaty to unite against them as the Institute mass produces synthetic gorillas and dinosaurs that you can ride into combat against the alien mothership.

I like to try and be positive. Bethesda bought this franchise. Why? I believe it was marketing reasons. They wanted a sci-fi series to compliment their fantasy one, and instead of starting a new IP, they wanted an insanely popular IP to kickstart sales. Marketing is the only reason I can name for insisting upon this, as a new IP wouldn't see them in limbo between adhering to FO's lore and blatantly breaking it apart. To that end, it's ****ing disgusting to know a great franchise is going to die (at least spiritually, as even if it remains and is successful, it won't be the Fallout we all know) for nothing more than a marketing gimmick. However...? Fallout New Vegas is the best god damned game I've ever played. And it's an amazing ending to the original series, too. Let's look at the writing on the wall: how do you possibly end Fallout as a series? It's impossible to avoid disappointment really, because Fallout games present this "challenge" of "War never changes." You as the player likely load up the game thinking "I'LL CHANGE IT," and then the game shows you exactly why you won't. I think for a grand finale, people would want to see war actually change once and for all; people love a happy ending. But this cannot be done, because the issue of "war never changes" exists in our own world. If the writers for Fallout figured out how to make war believably and reasonably change in a Fallout game, they'd be candidates for a Nobel Peace Prize in real life too; it's just not happening, and it's ridiculous to expect it from them. The point is I do think the Fallout franchise is doomed to hit a point where it starts becoming difficult to top the last one, simply because topping it demands superior insights to the last Fallout about how we can change war once and for all. Eventually, this will be next to impossible for humble game developers. But New Vegas was ambitious. New Vegas provided you with more control, choice and consequence and dramatic decisions (you can be single-handedly responsible for destroying or saving everything in the known Fallout West Coast universe) than any other Fallout game. If the next Fallout title did the exact same and copied this formula, with the potential to destroy or save everything AGAIN? It'd get old. But how the HELL do you top it? In some ways I think you don't, and I truly wonder if Obsidian made that game thinking "this may be our last Fallout game ever, so let's make it count." I once wrote up a theory about how if you look at Lonesome Road in particular, you can draw some rather interesting (though assuredly unintended) metaphors from it. ED-E? ED-E is the sole representation of Bethesda's Fallout in the entire game. Aside from Wasteland Survival Guide, ED-E is the only character that stems from a Bethesda Fallout game. He spends the DLC and likely much of the game shadowing the Courier, constantly by your side and - in the case of Lonesome Road - neccesary to progress. If you take the Courier to represent Obsidian, then ED-E could represent Fallout, showing how as things stand now, an Obsidian Fallout can not exist without Bethesda being around too, constantly watching over the shoulder to supervise decisions. Likewise, by the end of Lonesome Road, you're given a choice: nuke everything that Black Isle and Obsidian ever built, or spare it. In order to spare it? The representation of Bethesda must be destroyed for this to work. There is no other option. If you want that representation of Bethesda to survive? Then at least a portion of the originals must be destroyed. The two cannot co-exist. As I said, assuredly this is mere coincidence and really more insight into my pessimism regarding future fallouts with Bethesda at the wheel, but you get the idea. :D But I digress... I think New Vegas is the perfect ending to the series. It provides you with the tools to do whatever you want. War Never Changes and the devs can't help you find a way to make it change, but it can leave you with all the tools you need to carve out the future for the Core Region that you desire. In New Vegas' ending, you can either imply Fallout is a cycle, that everything will be nuked to hell and back again and humanity will once again rebuild and become war-torn, or you can imply that perhaps humanity has come just one step closer to remedy'ing the problem by avoiding that cycle, all while letting you choose which style of government you want at the wheel in the aftermath of it all. It would be very easy to sit here and ponder all the "what if" scenarios of if another company bought Fallout, but the truth of the matter is we don't know what we could've gotten. I for one? I'm just grateful we got New Vegas, because if you view FO1, FO2, and FO:NV as their own series independent of Bethesda's Fallouts? Then I think that was the best god damned ending they ever could've given us. And for that? I'm grateful. I'm still trying to put my finger on why Bethesda games do so well. I mean, don't get me wrong, they're fun in their own right. But they're constantly praised as though they're the pinnacle of what RPGs should be, and somehow sell millions of copies, despite their (obvious) faults. They really must have an awesome marketing department that's vastly superior to any of the other RPG developer/publishers. Because their games certainly aren't superior. Marketing. Marketing and sheer size. Part of it is that make no mistake, their marketing department is the best in the business. Bethesda's marketing team is the final boss of the gaming industry, cause I'll be damned if no other company can even hold a candle to what their marketing team does. The other thing is the sheer size of their games. I've experienced something similar with the Sims 3, where I have my disappointment with the game, but likewise can't deny how much potential the game has, thus I periodically pick it back up to try again. We've all bought games before that we've completed in under 10 hours, and then despite enjoyment, we can't help but feel disappointment with how quickly we put it on a shelf, never to be played again. Bethesda offers the opposite of this. The games are so content heavy that they're bound to AT LEAST get 50 hours out of most players, which is something most gamers aren't accustomed to. Now, you or I might be able to look at past Bethesda titles and realize we have over 1,000 in those but can't scratch 150 in their newest title, thus there's a sense of disappointment, but if this is someone's first Bethesda game, they'll marvel at the fact they've quadrupled the enjoyment they get from the average game and swear loyalty to Bethesda. The problem is the games seem designed just to provide content, but not QUALITY content. When you look past the smoke and mirrors, it's all very shallow and incomplete. But this doesn't matter, and the marketing team knows this. That disappointment you feel? It gnaws at you, bites at you, makes you anxious to give the game another shot. You KNOW the game has loads of potential, so you're hesitant to shelve it, telling yourself that perhaps you unknowingly strategically dodged all the best content in the game your first playthrough, so you give it another shot. By the time you're assured enough to conclude the game sucks and the cake is a lie, it's been months and your negative criticisms will not harm Bethesda in any way. And even after you conclude it sucks, you STILL feel disappointment with the wasted potential, wishing the game was just a bit better. Fast forward to the next game or DLC release, and you catch yourself wondering if perhaps this time, they'll get things right. They were so close (and yet so far) last time, right? It's possible they improved, right? Simultaneously you've got Todd Howard on a stage giving a very well rehearsed and orchestrated speech that the marketing team assures will improve sales, and in small interviews he is actively acknowledging the very criticisms you had of the last game, admitting to them, and promising they've been a focal point of their new title. Your hope is renewed, you buy. Lo and behold, it's all the same. It's the 2.0 version of the last game you hated. None of the problems you named were addressed, it's just Todd and Co knew the only people that'd be digging up those interviews enough to care about watching would be the ones experienced with past titles that know the flaws, and even newcomer fans wouldn't grasp the extent of those issues or be scared off if you confessed to them. In short, the games are perfectly designed in size and scope so that no matter how much you genuinely believe one of their titles to be garbage, you will never, EVER doubt their potential. They absolutely 100% ensure that every gamer on the market believes in the potential of Bethesda Game Studios, the result being that even the cynics HOPE for improvement in the next title. The things that dissuaded me from purchasing were very subtle. The E3 footage of the deathclaw battle for example. The rate the player and the deathclaw lost health suggested more bullet sponges and leveled enemies to me, as well as that DR system I've grown to hate. The USS Constitution with rocket engines attached was another. It assured me the game would have more rule-of-cool plotlines that cared nothing for the realism or the lore of the series. Traits are gone? This can only mean the game is casualized and actively avoiding ANY potential for the stupidest gamer imagineable (looking at you, DSP) to pick something they didn't actually want before whining and moaning and throwing the game away because how DARE there be consequences; companions being immortal reinforced this theory, as did no level cap. And finally, the perks. That shiny perk tree was yet another example of presentation being valued over functionality. Just by looking at the perk tree, you could tell there was no room for any skill or cross-SPECIAL requirements when choosing perks, which meant there was less to help make a character feel unique. This was a design decision with presentation in mind, with actually gameplay reprocussions taking a backseat. Seeing that, I was willing to bet everything I owned we'd see more "20% cooler" perks from Skyrim in FO4, and now I sit here wishing someone took me up on that offer and bet against me. Everything for me just pointed to the game being Skyrim 2.0, a game I didn't like, so I opted not to buy and to watch Let's Plays first. So so glad I did. The stories are even more nonsensical than FO3, choice and consequence is dead, "I WORK FOR BELETHOR AT THE GENERAL GOODS STORE" 2.0 is actually a thing since NPCs will obsessively repeat the same dialog lines, perks do not seem to matter worth a ****ing DAMNED (I have yet to encounter a playthrough where I could discern what perks a person had in combat; everyone looks and acts functionally the same, and hell everyone seems drawn towards the exact same perks), rule of cool scenarios such as suicidal mutants that make no damned sense, cartoonish villains, gutted dialog, etc etc etc. My advice? Next time Bethesda releases a title, look past the blinding lights of hype and view everything with the same scrutiny. Really critically review gameplay footage and ask if enemies and the player are taking damage at similar rates to past titles, ask yourself why Bethesda is so hush-hush about the story (Marketing 101 says put your best foot forward and talk about your strengths, ijs), ask if past loved features seem capable of existing amongst newer features presented; just remain critical. And if it looks like the game may have some blemishes? Do not buy. The gaming industry is not going to improve until gamers learn to say no, especially since every three years there's a new generation of naive and ignorant teenagers that haven't experienced enough half-hearted games to know better. Totally random side-note? Amazing video is amazing (no it's not just that face mod, be patient, it gets better):

It's a matter of taste really, and the only instance where I would definitely say something needs to be addressed is when you're FORCED into a conversation. Dying because some random guy demanded to talk to you can be really annoying. If they toggled it so that dialog did indeed freeze time if the convo was forced, I think that'd be a worthy compromise. In Skyrim there was a thief that would unload his stolen goods on you, forced conversation. Died so many times to this idiot approaching me mid-fight.

Not to beat a dead horse, but I truly do LOVE that kid in a fridge plot. It's so perfectly bad. It's the type of bad where if you challenged me to write something worse, I don't think I could. It came up in my youtube vid feed again today, so I sat down and made a list of all the things wrong with the quest's plot: Let me know if my list is missing anything. I think I'd brought this up earlier, but this is my #1 reason for why I'm not sure real-time dialog is an improvement. As it stands now, real-time dialog can get you killed or get in the way. Imagine New Vegas if Malcom Holmes did not freeze time when he spoke with you. As it stands he's immersion-breaking because he casually runs up to you while fighting a deathclaw, but he's immersion breaking BECAUSE the alternative is that he makes the player ragequit by locking you in place so he can tell you a bedtime story while a deathclaw rips your face off. Yknow, like this: So yeah, honestly until that's fixed...? I'm not sure real-time dialog is better than frozen. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but I will say the disadvantages of real-time dialog REEEEEAAAALLY stand out when they happen...