Longknife

I don't mind the Boston Accents in a game set in Boston. I actually wish more movies and games used local accents, but I think I am pretty alone in that regard. That being said I do wonder how I come across people with Irish accents or Russian accents. I mean those accents have to exist, its only been 200 years or so and those accents have been around far longer than that, but how did they make their way here in a world where Travel like that is very, very hard hard to pull off. I don't mind the access but I want a reasonable explanation as to why it's there. Exactly. The Boston ones I can expect and I won't fault a company if they include Boston accents while a linguist says "nah it would evolve like so." (no clue what they'd say) It's something that a developer may or may not have time to research. If they don't, it's understandable, if they do, I admire their passion. But there's Irish, there's Russian, there's Indian, there's everything under the sun. Strangest of all, I do believe Cait's voice actress is Scottish, and instead of having her do a Scottish accent, they asked a Scottish person to do an Irish accent. Wtf? Why? Just let her speak and you'll get an accent one way or another. My best guess as to why this was done is because Irish Americans have this strange degree of pride in their heritage and would appreciate the "cameo" while Scots and others would just be like "hey that's cool I guess." But I digress. I choose to believe that this is how the design decision to include accents went down.

Unboxed a fancy shmancy €81 weapon in TF2. Someone go buy it so I can use your money on stupid stuff: http://steamcommunity.com/market/listings/440/Unusual%20Forest%20Fire%20Flame%20Thrower%20%28Minimal%20Wear%29

What I'm more confused about is the accents. Like whether historical inspirations are considered traditional Fallout or not, you can argue they sort of fit with the idea of history repeating itself, albeit a bit of subtlety with the repeats might be nice. But the accents...?? This is something that, to my knowledge, anyone in FO1 & 2 faked. Then came FO3 and people commented that Tenpenny and Mortiary feel out of place, saying "hey Bethesda, that doesn't make much sense, please don't." Then came New Vegas and Melissa has a New Zealand accent inspired by "taking after her mother," and Sawyer explicitly comments it's something that got through that shouldn't've and to pay it no mind while apologizing for said oversight. So then here's FO4, Bethesda can now look back on commentary made about accents in the past four titles, and what do they conclude they should do based on feedback received on the last four titles? They put accents ****ing everywhere. I mean look to be fair, it's their IP now and they can do what they want. Pete Hines has both stated they don't give a damn about logical continuity in Fallout and that they're looking to make this IP their own, right I get that. But at the same time, you'd THINK they'd show a little more interest in customer feedback. It's no big deal, but sometimes Bethesda does something like this, where they seem to take whatever their fans have requested and do the polar opposite. Baffles me and blows my mind every time.

Because it's Xtreme! XTREME Holidays This is that magical time of the year where Santa rides on down your chimney on a stunt motorcycle before chokeslamming the Grinch and blowing up any overly greedy corporations while taking care to walk away from said explosions slowly while wearing sunglasses.

Touch myself to sweet Xmas porn involving terrible plot lines with Santa and women being naughty girls this year.

I think my favorite part of conspiracy theorists is that they're convinced everyone is a bunch of sheeple that can't figure out the big bad media is lying to them. Instead, the reality is the conspiracy nut websites are lying to them and taking stuff heavily out of context to fit their own narrative. And why? Because people love to feel smarter or a step above the rest of the population, so the very people writing that garbage are probably too consumed with the possibility to connect obscure dots to notice that Occam's Razor takes a giant ****ing dump over everything they wish to connect. Too busy weaving their story that puts themselves on a pedestal for seeing the "truth" to be concerned with actual facts. because reality bites...you claim the peoples are so smart and bright, the real thing is the people believe in authority, the media represent authority, "from authority". You can test this yourself, you can disguise as a police and told anyone to do your bidding, they will do it....you can make it in advance way, just claim to be a scientist and give a bullcrap theory like the flat earth theory you will get fans, and your theory will become a science cult, you will have followers...it is because you are a "scientist" who talk about "science"...only smart people will debunk you. The people are not smart, the peoples are cows... While there are certainly cases where this is true, if there were truly such an intense desire for oil that the US media was ready to commit to theatrics to make it happen, a conspiracy against Saudi Arabia would've been concocted long ago. Instead, Saudi Arabia and the US are BEST FRIENDS FOREVER, with the USA simply acting upon any outrage or misstep by an oil-bearing country as an excuse to go in. Furthermore, if this is all a conspiracy to turn people against muslims, please explain why the flying **** the USA decided "ok last time we went to war with a muslim country, 9/11 happened. This time, let's have two muslims shoot a handful of people. THAT SHOULD SUFFICE." It is because they have tell you a big lie and you buy it, a small lie is suffice to make you believe. Once you believe their big lie, you will just believe their small lies. All they need to do is playing sentiment and put oil into fire. That's what happen to the mob...just accuse someone of something and begin to beat that someone up, all others will join you to beat someone up because they hear that someone is like what you accuse...example, a woman just scream a guy want to molest her and start beating the guy, the guy react and slap her...the people passing by see that and beat that guy because assuming that guy is a bad guy, or the police passed by see that and arrest that guy...without a video or CCTV no one know the guy is innocent...it is because the sentiment have been set, guy cannot beat women and women are weak... The same here... Using your rationale, we should either: A.) Doubt authority figures OR B.) Never trust period. If we were to show skepticism with authority figures, then suddenly we have issues where a qualified scientist is trying to warn people about climate change and everyone's screaming "HE'S LYING!" and wtf now we have someone who has spent years studying something to become educated on the matter and it doesn't matter because we will not allow him to educate us. Society would be stupid. Furthermore, the study you are referencing (conciously or not) involved people being told to shock a test subject at the encouragement of a scientist in an experiment environment. This by no means translates flawlessly over to police and journalists. This is a situation where a person has been invited to an experiment where they're being told to shock someone, they have no clue why this would be needed, thus they trust in the guy conducting the experiment. The police and journalists do not have flawless reputations. No one is blindly trusting them. Just last year, this forum was up in arms about games journalists being caught in lies; it's pretty common knowledge the media can be misleading or can spin things. There is no blind trust here. If we were to never trust ever...? Lol have fun in life. No, we all trust something or someone. Even you. Those websites you've linked. You trust them. Why? Why have you decided to trust them? What is it about those websites that has you assured they can be trusted more than - for example - abcnews or CNN? What is your logical rationale for trusting them? Here, I'll start by telling you my logical rationale for trusting the mainstream media here: my rationale is Occam's Razor. Occam's Razor claims the simplest explanation is often the correct one. So for example if KaineParker called me a giant ass mere moments after I said I hate black people or something, we asked ourselves "gee I wonder why he did that," and one answer was "because he hates racism and that was racist" while another was "Kaine has some anger issues resulting from growing up with an alcoholic father that was known to lose his cool and start beating him senseless the moment Kaine expressed any form of hate," then Occam's Razor would tell the latter explanation to shutup and stop being dumb while stating the simple "because he hates racism" explanation is correct. Occam's Razor is boss like that. And in this case? The two possibilities are: A.) Some muslims shot some people. B.) The CIA spent months orchestrating a plan to concoct a story involving a bunch of people getting shot and dying at the hands of muslims in mere hopes this would somehow encourage the american people to support some war against an oil-housing muslim state. In this plan, they needed to sacrifice many american lives as the victims, and they needed to develop some way to silence any potential eye witness accounts all without anyone noticing it was a conspiracy, and the CIA expressed absolute confidence that it could pull this off despite all the exponential variables in play, such as someone across the street or in some unexpected location filming the damned event, fleeing, and uploading it to youtube where it gets millions of views before being taken down; nope, they expressed no worry or concern about this happening. GEE, I WONDER WHICH ONE IS MORE LIKELY! I do not trust the explanation I trust because of the source, I trust it because all counter-arguments you've proposed are bat**** insane. You are speaking about some grand conspiracy concocted by a shadowy group, and somehow this group manages to be smarter than 99.9% of the population despite the fact that there are intelligent people everywhere, so they're BOUND to be caught by someone when they slip up. And yet you wanna suggest these HIGHLY INTELLIGENT ILLUMINATI-ESQUE FIGURES slipped up by interviewing an eye witness on national TV before they could confirm his account of the events matched what they wished to sell? Get the **** out, that's retarded. So when the news story says "yeah more ISIS dudes shot some people" and all the other possibilities sound crazy, of course I trust the story. What motivation would they have to lie, aside from the one I already denounced as implausible insanity? So you see how I was able to describe my trust in detail? How I was able to aptly sum up why I choose to trust the sources I trust by explaining the rational logic I used to come to that conclusion? Now I want you to do that. Explain to me your rational logic as to why you trust your conspiracy theory sites as sources. Explain to me why it's so difficult to believe that the Muslim religion, which houses 1.6 billion people, is also going to be bound to house some nutjobs and terrible people. Explain to me why it's so difficult to believe that the Muslim religion, which we know for a fact has radical extremist groups under it unfortunately, would have yet another example of one of those radical extremists doing something stupid. No one is blaming the religion at large, but let's not deny what these people truly were.

I think my favorite part of conspiracy theorists is that they're convinced everyone is a bunch of sheeple that can't figure out the big bad media is lying to them. Instead, the reality is the conspiracy nut websites are lying to them and taking stuff heavily out of context to fit their own narrative. And why? Because people love to feel smarter or a step above the rest of the population, so the very people writing that garbage are probably too consumed with the possibility to connect obscure dots to notice that Occam's Razor takes a giant ****ing dump over everything they wish to connect. Too busy weaving their story that puts themselves on a pedestal for seeing the "truth" to be concerned with actual facts. While there are certainly cases where this is true, if there were truly such an intense desire for oil that the US media was ready to commit to theatrics to make it happen, a conspiracy against Saudi Arabia would've been concocted long ago. Instead, Saudi Arabia and the US are BEST FRIENDS FOREVER, with the USA simply acting upon any outrage or misstep by an oil-bearing country as an excuse to go in. Furthermore, if this is all a conspiracy to turn people against muslims, please explain why the flying **** the USA decided "ok last time we went to war with a muslim country, 9/11 happened. This time, let's have two muslims shoot a handful of people. THAT SHOULD SUFFICE."

I've seen people comment that although it's a disappointment compared to NV, it's a vast improvement over FO3. I asked myself if there could be anything FO3 does better, and the main thing that popped in my head was choice and consequence. Make no mistake, FO3's writing was pants on head retarded, but it still had consequences to it. Blow up Megaton or save it, and either way, you have drastic consequences. Help Paradise Falls or kill them off, either way there's consequences. Decide what to do with Harold, regardless there's consequences. For all the faults with the story and the logical continuity of some of the choices you faced, the choices were still there and very real. This meant that if you were able to look past all the story hiccups, yes, you could play the game 2-3 times and experience different choices and consequences. Best example of this? Broken Steel. Only a ****ing mental case would suddenly blow up the Brotherhood of Steel for no apparent reason. This would be akin to if I fought a legal battle with a major corporation for years with the support of my family, finally won my case, and then upon winning, I shot my entire family dead. It makes zero ****ing sense from a storytelling perspective to blow up the Brotherhood in FO3. Despite this, your choice has consequences. Even if you do take the stupid evil route and blow them up while struggling to explain why, it does AT LEAST have affects on the game. The Citadel is just plain gone, and you gain access to a gun or two that can't be accessed otherwise. The storylines reinforcing the decisions? Those suck ass. But the weight behind decisions being made...? Those often still manage to be there, amazingly. Strange but true. Another one is weapon balance. The weapon balance in FO3 is by no means award-winning, but there were at least maybe ~8 weapons that qualified as end-game that had varying reasons to use them. In FO4, I get the impression this is Skyrim 2.0 and that if you want to craft a god weapon, you can craft a god weapon. There doesn't seem to be demand for any thought in regards to your gear. There's no "ok I have high luck so I should get a weapon with lots of crit-related boosts and benefits," but rather "let's get more damage cause damage is good," both because the customization is TOO expansive and lacks balance, and because you can make your character a master of every stat. You have no reason to worry about stressing crit damage for your weapon, because the basic damage upgrade is the do-all end-all to upgrade types, OR there is indeed a superior stat to upgrade guns with, but you can easily perk your character to be geared towards that kind of upgrade. Finally, survivability. This one I have no idea on because I'm not familiar with how abundant resources are in FO4, but FO3 did have moments where either stimpacks or ammo types could be rare. This meant you had to scrape by with what you could find. I distinctly recall moments where I'd do great in fights if I had a certain type of ammo for a good weapon I had, but I'd run low on that ammo type and need to rely on another less-impressive weapon for a bit until I came across ammo again. Stimpacks could also be high in demand if you hadn't figured out VATS is broken OP yet. Again, I have no idea if resources are rare in FO4, but if they're not, I'd imagine this could be a missed feature from 3. Aside from that, all the elements seem similar or like upgrades, so I couldn't say why you might like FO3 more. My money's on the lack of choice and consequence as being the biggest detriment to FO4 when compared to FO3, however. You would think so, right? And yet so often, game companies continue onward in this same direction. No idea why. Personally I'd dare not wage bets in either direction. Consumer backlash can potentially wake up any company...but then again, there's been plenty of that in the gaming industry. Hasn't changed ****. Someone was saying Pete Hines made a statement akin to "we're not worried about logical consistency in a world with super mutants and ghouls." Sad, but hey at least there's a straightforward answer regarding their design philosophy. As for epic **** that makes no sense, speaking of my question about the USS Consitution, I thought Vinny's recent upload did a fantastic job of summing up FO4 in a nutshell: Entertaining watch, and I think it inadvertedly highlights some common complaints while showing Vinny still having fun with it. Vertibirds crashing like it's their job, nonsense storylines, repetitive dialog reminiscent of "I work for Belethor at the General Goods Store," strange voice acting (is she supposed to sound drunk?), and lots of explosions like Michael Bay's first video game.

The fact that the very video you linked exists is proof that there were Americans who found it atrocious that some businesses were denying muslims. If anything, your very own source shows that the US media thinks that most Americans would enjoy watching and being outraged by the mistreatment of muslims by businesses. Your own video, in my opinion, seems to highlight the contrary to what you claim. Furthermore, this footage is from a small town in Texas. This may come as a surprise to you, but rural areas are more likely to experience bigotry and racism, because those people have never actually spoken to -insert racism target here- and thus haven't figured out "oh they're normal people too." Again, the only "bias slant" of this report is that abcnews went out of their way to cherry pick a town where this would reliably happen, and then showed it in a news report, knowing the majority of Americans would disagree with the attitudes showcased here. It baffles me how you can link something like that and take notice of the racist individuals in the video, but the anti-racism narrative of the news report and the fact that the news media of course wants to broadcast news stories people would show an interest in (AKA people enjoy anti-racism messages, not racist ones?)...? That's astounding.

Whelp, that's that everyone. This fool-proof rebuttal to the whole issue just proved there's absolutely nothing to see here. Let's all go back to trading Pokemon cards.

Just because there are some fantastical elements doesn't mean you can throw away logic. My thoughts exactly. My point with that bet was that if you compare the original Fallouts to Bethesda's take, the original Fallouts were more or less logically sound and consistent with what you would expect of actual people in real life and their motives, the ONLY differing factor being "what if the 1950's perception of the future and sciences regarding radiation were true?" That specific aspect is where suspension of disbelief is requested from you, but basic human nature and societal structures? Those are more or less in tact and the games attempt to provide as realistic an imitation as possible of how real life societies and communities are formed and shaped. With Bethesda's take, it's just hardcore Sci-Fi with aliens, androids and all sorts of stuff that either makes no logical sense (why make synths?) or detracts from the motif of the series. (aliens do nothing to contribute to the theme of mankind's struggle with itself) My bet was more or less that the rockets on the USS Constitution would have ZERO explanation for why they're there and at best someone would say "some kooky whackjob scientist attached those years ago and no one knows what happened to him," and that that would be a telltale sign that Bethesda's writing style and interpretation of Fallout as a series absolutely hasn't changed. Were it to have an explanation that actually made some form of rational sense, then it'd be a sign they've improved. Anyways, it's no big deal since I'm familiar enough with the MAIN plot of the game to know that nothing's changed in that regard, so in the grand scope of things, this little sample with the USS Constitution is no longer relevant. It's just something I remembered today and I thought I'd ask if there's a good explanation for it or not. Not like the bet will actually be fulfilled or anything, it's just my natural curiousity that drove me to ask.

Just curious: Before release I made a bet with a guy on the Bethesda forums that the USS Constitution atop the bank with rocket engines attached would have no rational explanation, and that that little instance should be our first warning sign to expect more of Bethesda's "rule of cool" writing. This guy said I was wrong, should have faith in Bethesda and that there's sure to be some logical, highly plot-relevant story (side quest or main) as to how it got there and why it got there. I was willing to buy him a copy of FO4 if he was right, whereas I'd want my copy if I was right. Doesn't matter now since I've no way of contacting the guy with no forum access, but I'm curious to know who won this bet.

I've always seen Dawkins be really respectful about this stuff. Personally haven't seen him be inflammatory, but rather I've just seen a guy who loves logic that for whatever reason can't pick up on the fact that this isn't a fight worth having. Maher is a different story. Smug douche who's always speaking with a pretentious mocking tone towards those that disagree. Either way, I've always distanced myself from the Athiest crowd, personally. When I was in pre-school, my mom put me in a Christian pre-school because she thought Christianity taught good morals, so I knew about Jesus from a young age. When we moved to Oklahoma when I was about 6, then suddenly everyone wanted to know if I was a christian. I had no clue what that was, nor why they cared. I encountered a lot of very hostile people who insisted I convert, while justifying how hostile, persistant and rude they were about the issue by saying "it's ok because I'm right and my beliefs are the correct beliefs so in the end I'm saving you and helping you go to heaven." There were only very few kids who weren't Christian in that area, and I was probably the quietest (though I prefer the term "smartest" :D ) about my beliefs. Other kids would get rebellious about it and announce they were athiests while trying to debate the Christians over and over.....while justifying how hostile, persistant and rude they were about the issue by saying "it's ok because I'm right and there is no God." Always confused me how the athiests could never figure out they'd become exactly what they hated.

Wow. If some idiot really did something over ****ing Gamergate politics then holy hell, Out of Touch With Reality of the Year Award winner right there.

How do the enemies feel in this game? I've seen some numbers and they seem quite strange to me. For example, reportedly Deathclaws - when leveled as high as possible - have 1390 HP and do 173 damage a hit. Meanwhile, if the player at least has pimped armor or any form of Power armor, the damage of the deathclaw should be reduced by 60-70% (somewhere in that area). In New Vegas for comparison, the strongest Deathclaws got was 500 HP and 300 damage, if I remember correctly, and without drugs you could only hope to reduce their damage by about 50. 50 damage, not 50%. So they'd hit you for 250 still. I've also seen people state you can get sneak attack damage up to x9 (x8 was the max for a sneak attack headshot crit before), silenced weapons boost damage by 50%, and Better Criticals is up from 1.5x additional crit damage to 3.5x. If those numbers are true, I can't wrap my head around this. EVERY stat went up except for enemy damage. I've heard lots of raiders use explosives and I imagine those hurt, but it seems so odd leaving Deathclaws behind. Am I missing something? The numbers incorrect or...?

As a cripple occassionally in a wheelchair, I'd gladly accept that offer and even bet money if the race happens to take place on a downward slope.

THEN WHY ARE THEY MAKING SYNTHS?!? Sorry, just cannot get over that. Spent so long scouring let's plays giving Bethesda the benefit of the doubt, assuming I'd missed the critical dialog line explaining why the Institute saw fit to invest that much time and effort into building synths rather than looking into things like agriculture, radiation and food production, only to discover that the true answer is "becuz Blaed rannur is KEWL" in typical Bethesda fashion.

The ONLY game I have ever played that used environmental storytelling in a good way that had a lot of impact towards the main story was Dark Souls. That's the only game that really made me appreciate that environmental storytelling can actually work, with it's subtle hints towards the back plot and lore told through all the scenery. Aside from that, the only thing that comes to mind is I appreciate the realistic consistency of New Vegas locations, AKA for example a convenience store down the road from the Mojave Outpost has understandably already been looted quite a bit, whereas an old headquarters with active security robots is understandably still filled with loot. Still, the second example is flavor, not critical. I REALLY appreciate it, don't get me wrong, I'm just trying to put it in perspective that...if New Vegas' main storyline was god awful, then no, the realistic consistency of the world would not save it. Not by a longshot. It's a cherry on top, not part of the main substance, and if the main substance is dog poop, a cherry on top will not save it. It's just a wasted cherry. And that's the case with FO3 and FO4. I enjoy some of the humorous things Bethesda does with locations because you know what, when I'm exploring, yes, I can briefly forget that their storytelling makes no god damn sense and just enjoy the goofy stuff they stuck around the world for the sheer novelty of it, but this does not change that the main narrative and main plot just makes no god damned sense, no matter how many times you try to wrap your head around it. At best, the potential to see something funny in a location just gives me incentive to explore, nothing more. I find a "plunger museum," think ok that's interesting, memorable and unique and I wanna find more wacky stuff like this, but that doesn't suddenly cause Little Lamplight to make any sense. It does NOT distract me enough that I'll be willing to forget giant plot holes in the main story.

Thanks, I'll give it a watch.

I sincerely wonder.... Ok so I'm no fan of the writing in FO4, and quite frankly, I consider it bad. Like, objectively bad. Yes yes, opinions, but yes, I would be quick to say people that enjoy the writing haven't asked enough questions or haven't encountered good writing before. Point is I just cannot fathom viewing the writing as good. I have to wonder: lackluster writing is not uncommon in the video games industry. Do you guys think this is a result of companies ALWAYS prioritizing coders and programmers over writers and thinking one of their programmers will suffice as a writer (aka being cheap), do you think this is actually their best effort at writing, or do companies actually think gamers can't process more complex and well-thought out stories or something? Sometimes I just feel like the video games industry will NOT stop pandering to gamers and treating them like children, even when it's clear this is not welcomed or wanted. I really really wish I could sit down with any major company and hear the why of it, because as I said this is a pattern with the industry and there has to be a reason for it. This has just been on my mind because I'm watching a favorite streamer do his playthrough, and in one scene, I both saw a potential plot hole AND a situation where they felt an NPC needed to spell something out for you. AKA, they showed a villain acting more human and less moustache-twirling evil, and then an NPC blatantly says "GUESS HE WAS HUMAN TOO AND HAD HIS GOOD SIDES, HOW DOES THIS MAKE YOU FEEL," as if they were worried that was too complex for us to understand unless they walked us through it and spelled it out for us. On a side note, can anyone do me a favor? This is sort of off-topic but I don't know where else to post it. Ages ago, someone on the Bethesda forums (Tagaziel, if my memory is amazing) sat down and used evidence from New Vegas to calculate out how much House planned to charge the NCR for electricity after winning the Hoover Dam battle. The amount that came out was nothing short of absolutely absurd. It was an amount that would easily bankrupt the NCR and kill it if they wanted any large or modest amount of power from Hoover Dam. It was so large that we didn't know what to make of it, and many of us wondered if it was an oversight; yknow, like someone didn't think to sit down, look at all the numbers they'd provided us with and crunch them together to see how much House would be charging. It was equally possible House truly wished to starve out the NCR of it's money and resources, thus forcing them to fall apart, thereby expanding his own sphere of influence when people come running to the resource-filled oasis that is New Vegas. Well, recently asked Sawyer on his blog and he was kind enough to answer. Was suprised to see this, cause yeah it more or less confirms House has every intention to starve out the NCR's economy and win over as much of their resources as possible. I mean, he practically is going to war with them, albeit economically. Someone mind posting that to Bethesda's New Vegas forums? I would but I'm banned because warnings expiring is obviously a silly outdated practice. I only ask cause I know some of those guys would be really interested in hearing about this. I'd appreciate it and I'm sure some of them would too. Sorry for bringing up something technically off-topic like this too, but just didn't know any better way to bring it up. Also my tumblr name has nothing to do with an outrageous ego and everything to do with thinking North Korea is Best Korea. Just sayin'.

Another tangent: do you guys prefer real time dialog or paused dialog? As it stands now it seems more like a trade-off rather than the straight improvement you might expect at first. Great example I know of is there's a thief in a random encounter in Skyrim who will run up to you telling you to hold something for him, and then another guy will come chasing. BOTH will force dialog with you, so if you happen to be fighting a dragon or something, you might actually die because these two will force you into a conversation you cannot simply exit. For those who haven't played Skyrim or FO4, imagine that Blue Star Bottlecap NPC Malcolm Holmes in New Vegas approaching you during a fight (like he often does) except he DOESN'T pause time just before that Radscorpion attacks you. Another downside is that yes, sometimes you do get interrupted during an important snippet of dialog and sometimes NPCs don't repeat it when you re-engage them. I know I've seen both of these problems still present in FO4, wish I could remember which videos exactly though to link them as examples. The trade-off is of course that it can feel more natural with the world still moving, time still ticking and usually you can peace out at any given moment without much issue, though again ot always. Worth it or no? Just felt it was worth bringing up cause this is a feature I initially appreciated in Skyrim but then kind of had second thoughts about. Paused dialog kinda makes sure things happen in an "organized" fashion and that no important events begin in the backround while you're talking, but surely they could tweaked real-time dialog enough to avoid any issues? I mean as funny as this possibility is, it can also be infuriating for a dead-is-dead playstyle:

Guys did you hear Hilary has a vagina

At this point i'm not even sure why they bothered with it at all. May sound weird but perhaps it was their attempt to cater towards those of us that want dialog? Like say they did an E3 presentation with no dialog options, and instead it's just a confirm button you hit to acknowledge you haven't fallen asleep yet mid-convo. I'm pretty sure everyone cringed hard when they saw the dialog options as-is and I seem to distinctly remember that one of the quietest moments of the presentation (aka no cheers or applause) was when the dialog was shown. I think there would've been a far larger backlash if there just blatantly weren't any dialog options whatsoever. Tie this in with the fact that....well look, Bethesda clearly isn't a fan of dialog. Their track record would suggest this with Skyrim's speech skill being basically worthless alongside, if you recall, a rather not-so-covert little stumble by Pete Hines when he stated he likes that FO4 lets him easily skip dialog and walk away so he doesn't have to listen to boring conversations while saying "only Rockstar makes convos good" or something along those lines. Bethesda does not exactly seem to be very excited about writing dialog or storylines for their games, they seem more interested in world building and action. I do think we need to realize that every company does indeed have every intention of making money. Nothing to loathe or praise as it comes with goods and bads (see the video about how a more popular Fallout franchise means more spin-offs like New Vegas), just a reality to acknowledge and accept. On the issue of RPG vs. FPS? I would genuinely believe this is what Bethesda is interested in making. Not my cup of tea, but I mean hey they'll make what interests them and that's how it should be; let them do their thing, more power to them and I can respect that and buy games that cater to my tastes instead, no hard feelings. On the subject of writing and dialog...? Look, go thumb through some of the interviews Todd Howard has done in the past few years. He seems VERY self-aware of the criticism and makes remarks about how story and character development "are the future" and how he knows those are weak points of theirs. I genuinely question if there's any real intention of fixing these at this point, or if Todd isn't conciously saying this stuff knowing it'll throw a bone to the people who fear these elements are neglected too much and encourage them to buy the game all the same. I'm not badmouthing Bethesda for this btw, mind you. I would expect ANY company to do this, so just wanna clarify I don't mean "BETHESDA R EBIL DEY LIE" or something; nah, I merely wish to clarify that PR, marketing, and selling the game are indeed cornerstones of game development from the company's perspective on things. And overall? At this point I do genuinely have to question if the dialog wasn't included as it stands now as a way to sell the game. AKA, I do think it's plausible that Bethesda themselves were genuinely interested in simply assigning the main character preset lines that he ALWAYS spoke ala Far Cry or the like, but some asswipe in a marketing department determined the game might take a hit in sales if a change that drastic were made, thus the half-hearted dialog system we have now. Is that what happened? Hell if I know and hell if anyone knows, but at this point I would definitely say it's on the table as a possibility.

I'm thankful I'm not dead yet, thankful I've lasted this long and thankful I at least had some rice to eat today.

This is one of the most perplexing things to me. Anything I've heard about game design always reinforces that time is valuable and you gotta determine which features are must haves and which features are superfluous. I would imagine recorded dialog is time consuming both to record and probably adds quite a bit of disk space to the game, yet they voiced the character and - more confusing to me personally - bothered with that feature where Codsworth will say the player's name even though anyone not on the name list gets left out and anyone traveling with someone other than Codsworth won't really appreciate it.