#the dialogue options in this game are really good (for a bethesda game)

[ronqueesha]

"The popular stereotype of the researcher is that of a skeptic and a pessimist. Nothing could be further from the truth! Scientists must be optimists at heart, in order to block out the incessant chorus of those who say "It cannot be done." - Academician Prokhor Zakharov, University Commencement

[mantis-lizbian]

the false dichotomy of "roleplaying and rollplaying"

so i've been thinking about this disconnect that exists among certain people in the broader TTRPG community. the one about what counts as "roleplaying" when you're playing a tabletop roleplaying game, particularly with how there's the implication that when the rules come in and the dice come out, you are, somehow, no longer roleplaying, or that perhaps it's some kind of "lesser form" of roleplaying.

specifically, i was thinking about this through the lens of video games. appropriately enough, even more specifically through the lens of RPG video games.

you see, there's a wide array of RPGs, and they can approach the concept of "roleplaying" in strikingly different ways. for the sake of this discussion, we're going to look at JRPGs, particularly those of the classic Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy sort, and compare them to what's never really gotten a convenient grouping term and so i'm just going to have to go with "western RPGs". it's dreadfully inexact, but it's been used before to refer to this category and at least isn't as inexact as "computer RPGs" (or cRPGs) which is perhaps the other most common term for them. illustrative examples of this sort include Bethesda and BioWare games.

anyone familiar with these two categories will be able to immediately pick out some pretty major differences between the trends found in each one. in a JRPG, you play as a specific, predefined character. while you're often able to pick a name for them yourself, they typically have an official one that any casual player will likely be made aware of. they always have a defined appearance, and outside of a handful of very specific and broadly insignificant moments (usually things like confirming whether or not something was understood), their script is fully defined and set in stone from the start of the game. "builds" are rarely a meaningful thing in these games, and even character class is more often immutable than not.

meanwhile, in a typical western RPG, your character rarely has an official name, even in outside material. they are the Lone Wanderer, the Warden, the Fledgling. they don't tend to have a set appearance (especially as hardware technology made greater customization more feasible) up to and including their gender. you'll typically have a wide variety of options to build your character including classes, skill points, and even what kind of weapons to use. and this is not even to mention the script. not only do you generally have a plethora of dialogue options, but you usually even have some influence over how the story goes - sometimes as simple as whether you're going to be a "good guy" or a "bad guy", sometimes over what order events happen in or whether some of them even happen at all.

now here's the question: which of these approaches is roleplaying? is one "more" or "truer" roleplaying than another? in a JRPG, you're like an actor in Hamlet while in a western RPG, you're like an actor at an improv show, but both actors are still playing a role, and when put in that light hopefully it disrupts any initial belief in the relative "trueness" of one type of roleplaying over the other.

in a similar way, i hope this can help to show how mechanics and rules in TTRPGs aren't an impediment to roleplaying but how we engage with roleplaying in the medium. the rules and dice rolls are like the scripted JRPG (even if the script isn't being written ahead of time), asking us to inhabit the role they are writing for us. like the western RPG, the builds and mechanics are how we express our desires to shape our character into the role we want to play. these are not things to be fought against or wished away, but engaged with and utilized. just as JRPGs and western RPGs have their respective ways to roleplaying, this is how we roleplay in TTRPGs.

[moodcrab]

Skyrim's Thieves Guild Makes No Sense

Oh good, another faction that has fallen on hard times and needs rescuing. Another faction that will treat me like shit for a bit then gradually come to respect me as I do literally all the work. Another faction that will make me leader later this week. If you can't tell, I think the Thieves Guild is the best faction in the game, but coming from me that's like saying I think HPV is the best STD. Like if you gun-to-my-head forced me to pick one. Still makes zero sense though.

Riften absolutely slaps you in the face with The Thieves Guild like a wet fish when you first arrive in town. The guards will refuse you entry on every gate except for one that happens to be directly in front of like ten people who won't shut the fuck up about the Guild. Then Brynjolf stalks you and more or less forces you to join. Technically there are three ways it can go:

You're poor so you should join,

You're rich but you should join anyway,

You refuse to join... but you should join anyway when you change your mind.

Yes, No, Maybe = The exact same outcome, the classic Bethesda dialogue options. How does Brynjolf know how much gold you have? Well you see, "Wealth is [his] business!" despite the fact that the Guild is doing terribly and he lives in a toilet.

If by now you still feel like you have free will in this open world RPG and aren't just a spectator, try failing every task the Guild gives you from the get go and let the absolute absence of consequences wash over you. Fail to plant the necklace on Brand Shei, nah you can join anyway. Slaughter every single debtor who owes protection money, well at least you got the money, eh? Burn all the Goldenglow bee hives to cinders and destroy the business, we'll just put that down to beginner's luck, have another quest because apparently the 20 other guys we've got down here are somehow worse than you.

If open murder is such a massive no no for the Guild then why am I not in a jail cell for my endless "mistakes" by now. In fact, why are most of the quests in this faction dungeons where the no killing rule is suspended? Why have the rule at all?

Anyway, you've somehow progressed to the worst (and usually my last because it really is that bad) quest in the Guild. Dampened Spirits, the quest in which you poison a vat of mead, is the perfect example of bad Bethesda writing: Do something dumb, brag that it's smart:

So Maven and Mallus, who have spent weeks planning this by the way, are going to frame Sabjorn who owns the rival meadery Honingbrew of poisoning the Captain of the Whiterun Guard in order to put Mallus in charge, who would then run it for Maven. Let's ignore the fact that that is totally not how property law works and Mallus, an employee, would definitely not just be given the meadery on the spot, and that you just destroyed all of Maven's honey supply, and just focus on the job; the obvious way to do this would be for Mallus to poison the cup they serve to the Captain, right? Job done.

No you idiot! The obvious plan would be for Sabjorn to hire you, the complete stranger, to kill rats in his cellar that Mallus planted there (instead of getting his employee Mallus to do it or just do it himself), but instead you dump the rat poison into an entire vat of mead, then hope it magically teleports from the vat to the vintage bottle they are serving the Captain. DUH!

When this plan is explained to you, you have to say "Clever." There are literally no other dialogue options. So if you aren't roleplaying as a moron or a Nord this moment is pretty game breaking. It gets more confusing once the job is done however...

You did the "clever" plan and report back to Maven, she tells you to report the info back to the Guild, so you head straight to Mercer, the boss, and he tells you to piss off, he's busy standing at his desk glaring at nothing, so you go to Brynjolf instead, but somehow Brynjolf already knows the info that Maven sent you to tell him before you told him, and apparently so does Mercer who is furious and wants to talk to you, despite the fact he literally just told you he didn't want to talk to you... Mercer tells you to do the Gullum Ei quest and to speak to Brynjolf for more info so you go straight back to Brynjolf who already knows you're off to see Gullum Ei before you even mention him...

Feeling disoriented yet? You've just been tennis balled back and force passing messages between NPCs (and loading screens) who already have ALL the information and know exactly what you are going to say and withhold information you need to know for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Literally, Maven could have sent you to Gullum Ei as soon as you got back and nothing would be different.

So that's an overview of the set up of the guild, a typical quest, and the awkward in between quest interactions, let's talk about the overall storyline. The Guild has fallen on hard times because twenty years ago Mercer betrayed the old boss Gaius and his hot goth GF Karliah and stole the Skeleton Key from the goddess Nocturnal. Nocturnal has given the Guild a curse of bad luck and Karliah has been playing a game of shadows to ruin Mercer. Mercer's grand plan is to rob the Guild vault and complete Gaius' ultimate heist, to retrieve a valuable Falmer artifact.

Ok. TWENTY YEARS!? How old are these people supposed to be!? Were they tweens when this all went down? It took Karliah this long to figure out fucking with Maven would hurt the Guild? And what exactly is Mercer stealing from the vault after twenty years of bad luck? And why now? Mercer really is striking when the iron is hot with this one! Twenty years to go get something that, by the way, isn't stealing from anyone, by Skyrim standards you're doing a dungeon dive for loot, this isn't a heist, this isn't a thieves guild thing, it's a typical fetch quest. And how come I never get cursed with bad luck when I literally never return the Skeleton Key because it's better than the actual Guild reward? Why does nobody freak out when I return to the Ragged Flagon after Mercer told them all I was dead? NONE OF THIS MAKES SENSE!

[mllemaenad]

Fascinating. Veilguard failed because it didn't have live service elements. It's funny ... replaying Origins has highlighted for me how much of Veilguard I don't like because it feels too much like a multiplayer game.

I've played Fallout 76, and I've enjoyed it to the extent that it lets me play it like a single player game. The more it intrudes on my single player experience, the more dissatisfied I become. That includes obvious things like being constantly bombarded by "events" and ridiculous "season passes" that have nothing to do with my character's experience of being a former vault dweller living in post-apocalyptic Appalachia and everything to do with Bethesda wanting me to buy more Atoms ... but it also includes things that are just baked into the experience.

There are few meaningful choices in the narrative because there are a bunch of other people on the server so the world can't really change. I think it was a good thing that they added NPCs to the world, but their arrival is a narrative point you can't actually experience because, again, there are other people on the server so we can't go back to that. I can't reload an earlier save to try out a different quest option, or even look at a different dialogue choice. I can't mod the game if I want to. And some areas are just a misery to get through, because they're only designed to be fun if you're in a group.

And honestly, 76 isn't too bad: at least it lets me do a lot of things by myself, and there's still a lot of decent lore from NPCs and terminals. I played it because early post-war lore was irresistible, even if I don't really like multiplayer games. But if Fallout 5 was a multiplayer game as well ... I'd probably start losing interest in Fallout games. Fallout 76 is ... fine, but I don't want more of that.

Some of Veilguard probably feels like multiplayer because it was, at one point in its development, designed to be a multiplayer game. Some of it probably feels like multiplayer because the version we ended up getting was simply rushed, so they didn't add features you might expect in a single player RPG. But either way ... it just feels very much like a tedious multiplayer game to me.

The companions are a little thin and underdeveloped – no dialogue trees, some baffling personal quest choices – because they're meant to play second fiddle to the real friends running through the game with you. There are big, complex environments with "epic" boss fights hidden away in corners because the narrative reason they're there is less important than the fun of taking down a dragon with your friends. They've got a million factions that don't really contribute anything to the narrative (what are the Lords of Fortune bringing to the table here?) but would facilitate leaderboards nicely. There's little reactivity in the world and few meaningful choices because there are a bunch of other people on the server.

I'm not saying there was no good at all in Veilguard: there were things I liked, and if nothing else I can cheerfully mine it for meta. But so much of it reminds me of how boring and restrictive I find multiplayer ... and it wasn't even a multiplayer game.

[tunnelsnacks]

A longish list of Fo4 mods that hopefully won't break your game if you're playing on Next Gen (This list is very much catered to my specific play style and my love of the Minutemen and the Railroad, BOS look elsewhere)

I'll add more or edit this list when I find other mods that I like which play nice or if one's on here are incompatible

The Technical Ones:

Extended Dialogue Interface You'll need F4SE For this one though I'm pretty sure you need it for quite a few. The extended dialogue interface does what it says on the tin and removes the short four options you have for responses and gives you exactly what your sole survivor is going to be saying so you don't end up being incredibly racist towards Nick when the option says 'sarcastic'.

HUDFramework is a UI framework that makes it possible for mods to add new UI elements to the HUD (I say don't worry about this one until it's in a requirement for mods you're getting)

Cheat Terminal Yes, yes I know how some people feel about this kind of mod. I've been playing fallout 4 for like 10 years, I don't have fun scouring every corner of Boston's armpit looking for clipboards. This is a holotape cheat menu that lets you add anything in the game to your inventory, SPECIAL points and other bits. It also lets you teleport companions to your location if they get stuck in an elevator, fix some faction quest if they get broken. This one is great for me because in my little make believe world I have my soul survivor is either a Courser or the Kellogg guinea pig and there's options to make you a little more deadly

Workshop Framework For Players: New controls and faster, more stable workshop scripts. For Modders: Add new resource types, override settings, and generally change the way settlements work dynamically. You'll need this bad boy for a few of the mods on this list They'll be in the requirements for them on nexus

Fallout Priority Next-Gen - CPU Performance FPS Optimizer Does what it says on the tin and stops me from ripping my hair out. Improves performance by elevating the CPU Priority of the game process and minimizes input lags and prevents stutters caused by other processes.

Workshop Menu Missing Tabs Fix Sometimes your workshop tabs will just disappear which is really really annoying. This fixes that with a holotape

The Immersion/Gameplay Ones:

Realistic Death Physics - No Animations decreases the amount of force of both melee and ranged attacks (especially crits) to more realistic levels

Lowered Weapons I hate how your character is always pointing their gun foward 100% of the time in first person, this has your character relax their hold on their gun when not firing it

Improved Maps and Visible Roads A much better high contrast world map with roads, topography, and waterline all clearly visible. Optional number grid and regions

Reverb and Ambiance Overhaul Increases the diversity and dynamics of in-game sound, Great on the ears if you're playing with headphones. My one problem with it though is that it's a little too loud for me and the settings keep resetting every time I boot up the game, but that can be fixed by going into your sound settings, and it takes less than 5 seconds

Enhanced Blood Textures Mixed blood look a little more like well... blood

Vivid Fallout all-in-one In many cases they sharpened the games original textures somewhat, made new normal maps and enhanced shadowing.It looks really good and the textures are less V-Ram heavy than the original ones

Skip Kellogg's Memories I hate that Bethesda felt the need to try to make me sympathetic towards that man, and so I skip his memories all together. Wouldn't recommend for a first play through

Raiders Nonaggressive Raiders are now name "Wastelander" and they are no longer immediately hostile. If the player gets to close the Wastlander will warn you, if you continue to get close the Wastelander will draw a weapon, if you continue to move forward from there they will then attack

Gunners Overhaul makes the Gunners friendly to the player at the start of the game. It also makes all containers and useful items in Gunner areas belong to the Gunner faction, which means you have to steal it from them.  It basically makes them the mercenary/militia faction they're implied to be

Extremely Long Lasting Stealth Boy There is different scales for the length but I do the one that extends it to 1 minute

Pip-Boy Flashlight This one is one of my personal favorites, it overhauls the flashlight on your pip-boy as well as on power armour making it look more like an actual flashlight and like the light is coming from your pip-boy. You can customise what kind of light it is too and some of the options are really cool

Settler and Companion Dialogue Overhaul reduces or eliminates repetitive companion dialogue and adds new situation-appropriate dialogue for companions. They'll have more to say and seem more aware of their surroundings. Settlers are aware of your quest progression, and while they still occasionally complain about "my back hurts, my feet hurt…", they display increased awareness of the dangers lurking in the Commonwealth, expressing gratitude for the protection you've provided them

Better Third Rail this one makes the 3rd rail a little more lively in a lore friendly way

Combat zone restored-restored brings back the cut content that made the combat zone more than just another dungeon

Friendly East City Downs restores the content where this isn't just another dungeon

Fiddler's deliver animation retexture ooooh my god I'm obsessed with this one it makes the loading animations for unarguably the best gun in the game beautiful. And if you're wearing your wedding rings still you can see it in the animation and it makes my heart hurt each time

Natural expression fix helps make the expressions the player and emphasis have a little more...normal

Project reality footsteps changes almost all footstep sounds into more realistic ones. Including subtle gear and backpack rattle

Commonwealth encounter adds almost 300 new encounters to the game

The Faction/Companion Ones:

Afiinity Gains This changes the rate of how you gain affinity with companions. I choose the one that halves it because of the way I play, I get deacon's conversations a lot sooner than I feel is in character for him

Companions Infinite Ammo Gives the vanilla companions infinite ammo for all weapons, just like settlers. As long as they have 1 round in inventory they can fire indefinitely

Companions Stealth Distance Companions can sneak is the one I got before this but it's no longer compatible. It prevents your companion from charging up your booty at full speed whenever you enter stealth. Also slightly increases their follow distance. Now also prevents Dogmeat from entering player crosshairs every damn time you stop

Immersive Dogmeat Makes him a little more sneaky and a little more deadly. He'll wait for you to attack before doing anything for the most part. It also removes his level cap

Everyone's Best Friend Speaking of dog meat, this mod let's you take him with you and a companion at your choice like how it was originally intended before the game was launched

Preston Garvey No Radiant Settlement Quests Until you take the Castle, Preston will give you the quests as normal. After you have control of the castle and the radio powered up again, he'll stop giving you new quests every time you speak with him. Now to receive further quests you simply tune into the Minutemen radio station and will receive the alerts from there.

Deacon outfit change change stop deacon from changing clothes every three seconds. This one's for my own little game play reasons where he gets to a point where he feels like he no longer needs to change his clothes every 5 seconds when he's with Wanderer

Improved Railroad Overhauls the Railroad faction (in a lore friendly way) to more closely resemble the Underground Railroad and put them on the same level relative to the other major factions

Cleaner Railroad HQ Environment This is when I instal a little bit after joining the railroad, it gets rid of all of the trash and random bricks scattered throughout HQ

Railroad redone is an overhaul of HQ Even though the Railroad is a struggling faction in the commonwealth at the start of the game, I still feel that their base of operations in vanilla fallout 4 is extremely underwhelming. This mod fixes that by changing the physical environment. There's now personalized spaces for iconic characters like Desdemona, tinker-tom, deacon and others. The Player character also has their own quarters with a private terminal, bed, and power-armor station. It cleans up all trash -and some bricks and re-navmeshed the cell. And there's a pathway across the waters in the escape tunnel

More railroad exits adds a small little dungeon and two more exits into the inner city through the escape tunnel

Diverse railroad adds new faces to the unnamed NPC associated with the railroad

Railroad redemption This adds more bits to for the railroad associated with settlements, and allure friendly way it makes the railroad feel bigger and outside the scope of just the player

Railroad perks All of the quest reward perks for Railroad quests were cut before the game was released. This mod enables them at the appropriate times in doing Railroad Quests through a scavenger hunt style "quest"

You and what army Have you ever felt like the minutemen were a bit lacking? Perhaps the settlement system feels tedious, extra, or simply lacks real progression for you. Maybe even wondered why the minutemen seem less relevant the more you play? This mod aims to fix that, using your settlements as a base to expand the Minutemen and improve their ability to help the commonwealth. No longer will everything be entirely on the shoulders of one general. I love this one because in my head Preston and I are co-generals

We are the Minutemen The Minutemen are supposed to be the best alternative for rebuilding the Commonwealth because : More settlements = More resources = Better materials = Better fire power and a larger presence in all the Commonwealth. But currently this is not the case, this mod attempts to fix that

We are the men an alias framework gives the Minutemen ranks and lets you find out their names using the Alias Framework.

The Pretty Ones:

Forest Transforms the Commonwealth into a dense and overgrown forest landscape without disabling precombines. It's my favorite nature overhaul. Tree Trim is a 2024 patch for it that improves tree placement and compatibility (but you can open console commands and type 'disable' after selecting one if there's a tree in a place where a tree shouldn't be)

Animated Traffic Lights This makes the traffic lights thought the Commonwealth work again which I think is fun and goes nicely visually wise with the next one on my list

Lighting Series - All In One lights up red rockets, Starlight and other diners neon, bus stops adds, and illuminates billboards in the Commonwealth

Lightweight Lighting The lighting overhaul lighting mod I use, there are others out there higher on the endorsement list, but this is the best I've found for not tanking my fps while still looking fantastic

Interiors Enhanced - Darker Ambient Light and Fog Ambient light power and fog brightness inside all interiors reduced by 60%, without touching any directional light sources whatsoever, keeping lighting 100% true to vanilla except for those dark corners and unlit areas. Subways are actually dark and scary! Not just a filter, actual light data has been altered. 10/10 my fav lighting mod

Enhanced Lights and FX creates more atmospheric and realistic lighting. It overhauls the lights, effects, ambient light and creates a new mood for interiors. If you get a weird teal light at some locations it might be because of this mod

Darker Nights The lighting ones above look really cool with this. I have the lower setting that doesn't make the nights longer but adds just a little more night

The Flora and Fauna Ones:

Glowing Animals Emit Light Makes glowing animal variants emit light, scaled to their size

Fireflies This adds fireflies at night. It gets a little heavy at the start for my taste but there's a holotape that can tweak the settings

Wildlife overhaul less aggressive creatures and companions This mod makes prey cautious but still scared - also stops companions from hunting them down without cause. Additionally randomizes the animals height slightly, and adjusts some stats. Adds aggression radius to most creatures and robots

Squirrels of the Commonwealth there's squirrels now :)

Mutant Menagerie is a real fun one with all new creatures gathered from a wealth of public access sources. These new, lore-friendly creatures come with unique drops and hand-placed spawns. This mod also adds in dozens of dynamic spawns for new, vanilla, and DLC creatures alike! I'm not going to tell you what it's using as a shell but there's a giant hermit crap and the first time I saw one I was genuinely afraid

More Radstags adds more radstags

Commonwealth Chickens and Rabbits adds, you guessed it! Chickens and rabbits

Commonwealth wilderness overhaul adds a ton of hand placed scenes, objects and creatures across the entire commonwealth wilderness

DECAY makes feral ghouls terrifying

The Player and NPC Ones:

Rusty face fix so there's this bug right? Bug changes the colour of your characters and NPC faces and it's really annoying. This mod fixes that

Classic Ghouls Redux Every Ghoul in the vanilla game gets a Fallout 3/NV ghoul look. It gives them that gruesome falling apart look like the older games

FCO - HD Eyes My fav eye mod that just enhances the vanilla eyes. There's the eyes of beauty but I feel like that mod is too over the top and the eyes, while beautiful, don't fit the game

Ponytail Hairstyles This is the hair mod I think fits best with the vanilla textures, also 13 is my favorite

Lore-Friendly Maxson I don't even see his stupid face in my games, I just need to know that he actually looks like a 23 year old before I blow up his stupid blimp. But seriously, there's something more heavy about knowing that you're destroying a ship whose captain is someone who is so so young

Magnolia is not a cartoon makes Magnolia look a little bit more like the fantastic Linda Carter who is her voice actor. Hi Linda!

Shawn goes to bed this one's a spoiler so don't click on it unless you know what happens at the end of the main quest but now your son goes to bed at night

Eli's Armor Compendium Adds a bunch of new lore friendly armors and outfits to the game

Wasteland fashion also adds a bunch of more friendly outfits and armors

Black Metal pip-boy Makes the pip-boys in game black

Player comments and head tracking makes your character speak other then just in dialog scenes. Includes combat taunts, player hello's, responses to NPC's and much, much more including player head tracking

The Settlement Ones:

Transfer Settlement Blueprints This mod is currently not working if you're playing with the next gen. The author's most recent update on the 5th of June says that their hard work's paying off, and they're getting to a point where they're testing the mechanics of it. Basically this mod lets you download other people's settlements that they've made and posted on Nexus to have them be in your game and vice versa. Since this mod is currently out of commission, I won't include any transfer settlement mods in this list but Fiddleflaps has the best one's in my opinion

IDEK's Logistics Station 2 Adds a system to automatically manage supply lines, improve the efficiency of inter-settlement resource sharing, and adds a handful of minor convenience features.

Place Everywhere My beloved, makes building where you want them a lot easier

Scrap Everything And in game version of a console command disable that lets you delete things while you're in build mode. Be very careful with this 'cause if you delete a part of Sanctuary's road I'm not responsible for the 30 minutes you had to reload to

Icebreaker Settlements 400+ new carefully selected lines of settler dialogue to reduce the repetitive sound of the 168 original. All lines in the original actors' voices. Intended to blend in very naturally with the default lines. Settler dialogue lines that insulted the player character were also tweaked

Graygarden Planters Unlocks the ability to craft the planters at Graygarden after you clear the water purifying plant and talk to Supervisor White. Each planter yields the same amount of plants that are visible in the planter

Proper trading stores and animation Changes how trading stand look and settler animations to be the same as the crafting workbenches So now, an armor-smith who sells your armor would be seen like he actually made the armor

Settlers Go Shopping Your stores in your settlement are no longer empty and silent. Settlers occasionally go shopping and start different randomized conversations with the vendors. Or maybe just the vendors asks them about buying something. Invisible Shopping Marker version is available too

Dino's Decorations Gives you the option to craft static clutter, makes settlements feel more lived in

Sanctuary Hills Overhaul is my favorite Sanctuary mod and the one I used for like 7 years straight . It makes it so there were a few plane crashes near sanctuary and previous settlers used the bits of those planes to build walls and homes

Rickety restored Sanctuary bridge fixes the bridge in Sanctuary but in a lore friendly way

Anom's Sanctuary Hills Overhaul makes the houses there somewhere to the ones and the rest of the commonwealth instead of 'houses of the future' It also adds a community centre and a hotel in a lore friendly way

Starlight bus barricade is an overhaul of Starlight Drive, it's very fun but very big

CVC Dead Wasteland Workshop adds 1000s of unique, lore friendly items to build in your settlements and I love it, The candles and other lighting they have or an excellent touch for low/no power settlements

Settlement supplies expanded is another workshop expansion , this one adds about 400 things

[sexhaver]

ive been playing Cassette Beasts for a minute and it never stops being funny to me how flagrant they are about making this "Pokemon but with features you didn't know Pokemon has always needed". off the top of my head:

super effective/NVE hits have added benefits/debuffs beyond just doubling/halving the damage (hitting Electric types with Ground reduces their evasion and speed, hitting Steel types with Poison gives them poison-coated spikes that do contact damage, etc)

legally-distinct-Pokemon will learn new moves while in your party without having to battle, and you can then straight up steal these moves from them and put them on a not-Pokemon you actually care about using, which gives an actual incentive to hunt down and raise otherwise fringe not-mons beyond completing the not-Pokedex

we all played the Pokemon Infinite Fusion fangame right? we know how fusions work? okay so this game has them as temporary per-battle things instead of permanent ones, which is only marginally less cool while being infinitely easier to balance around

attempting to catch something shows you the percentage chance of success so you know whether you just got unlucky or if you should save your Pokeballs-i-mean-blank-cassette-tapes

leveling up is tied to your not-trainer instead of your not-pokemon, so you don't end up in the classic trap where your starter is way overleveled and everything else is underleveled and then you hit a fight your starter can't solo and have to spend an hour grinding to get the weaker not-mons up to par (funnily enough most Pokemon Nuzlocke romhacks have already figured this out and give you infinite rare candies with the only restriction being that you can't level past the next gym leader's ace pokemon, because Pokemon fans have realized that grinding is the worst part of the game way before Game Freak has)

moves, not-Pokeballs, not-PokeCenter visits, and healing items are all bought using entirely separate currencies which stops you from trivially breaking the economy in half

the soundtrack, fittingly, is pretty good! the vocals were a bit much for my taste but there's an option in the settings menu to straight up turn them off (letting the BGM play on its own), which i've never seen in any other game and really appreciate

downsides:

on a game design level, i understand why can i only carry a max of 5 not-Potions and 1 not-Revive at a time - it's to put a limit on how far away from fast travel points i can get by just running away from everything and healing off damage. on a gameplay level, however, this feels pretty bad

the pixel art style is trying to look as much like Pokemon as possible without actually being Pokemon so the overworld sprites look more like beta stuff from Pokemon that they cut for looking too weird. i have yet to find a haircut that doesn't look bad

this is super petty of me but something about the bloom and lighting of the 3d environments combined with pixelated 2d sprites that still cast shadows makes me painfully aware im playing a video game. it's like they were going for the same aesthetic as Octopath Traveler but fell just barely short. i can't think of a better way to articulate this feeling but if you know you know

it does that really obnoxious half-assed style of voice acting where plot-relevant characters will sometimes (maybe every third or fourth textbox) speak the first two or three words of dialogue before trailing off. mashing through textboxes (as one does) means constantly getting jumpscared by "hmm"s and "haha!"s "okay then!"s

i get that they wanted to make the player feel involved in the story, and it has a pretty decent hook so far, but oh my god. the amount of dialogue "choices" that just transparently do not matter. you know how people memed on Fallout 3 and 4's dialogue choices all leading to the same outcome, to the extent that you were basically choosing between "yes" and "yes (rude)"? and you know how Bethesda would at least attempt to justify how both options led to you accepting the quest anyways, even if it was really dumb? Cassette Beasts has streamlined this process even further by making the options in most of their binary decisions so identical that they don't even require different followup dailogue before rejoining into the main conversation thread. a solid 2/3rds of the dialogue options in this game so far feel like checks that you're still awake. i know this is a minor issue because people aren't playing Pokemon-likes for the engaging "choices matter" approach to storytelling, and i did ignore it at first, but it's so pervasive that you really can't ignore it

[lizardsexposed]

there's a rly idk 'weird' feeling that RPGs like fallout: new vegas, mass effect 1, dragon age: origins and to an extent, baulders gate 3 really give me that I don't know how to explain

It's in such stark contrast with the following mass effect and dragon age games, alongside the bethesda games.

I'd hesitantly call it a lack of polish, but I don't mean that in a derogatory sense. I'd maybe call it lack of LED lights.

All of them feature things that are just there, small scale stories, characters with hidden dialogue that takes often excessively long and disinteresting steps to give. There's huge reward there if you take non-conventional (or what the developers perceive as non-conventional) approaches and rather than punishment for it, it's sort of encouraged.

I feel like a lot of 'more modern' and other developers, and bioware as they got larger like to present the cool and interesting stuff as front and centre (which is understandable, you want to show off your good work).

But this accessibility and ease of access, as well as diverting away from more 'hidden' sections of dialogue (likely the associated costs of voice actors and stretching of writers time as games get bigger) really under saturates the experience, especially the replay experience. Sure, you want to get the players to keep playing and capture the casual player. But this really costs the experienced player and makes the game feel less alive and responsive.

Let's be real, no one plays ME1 or dragon age: origins for the 'incredible game play and fantastic combat' they're janky as hell (ME1 somewhat less so after the remaster). But there's a rich host of things to explore, builds to create and unusual dialogue choices to make that keep players returning. For example, just look at the amount of dialogue options in DA:O vs DA:I and build possibilities.

Sure, a lot of the talents and builds in DA:O were just not viable and the bulk of the players will gravitate to premade builds. But sometimes it's just fun to do something ridiculous for the sake of it.

I feel, and this is just a theory. This shift has occurred due to the AAAisation of games. The game needs to sell and only sell once per player. Realistically you don't make money from someone doing their 65th run of dragon age origins where they chose a slightly different response to Alistair. And this led to de-prioritising what I'll call 'vanity' content. With budget costs (and development costs rising) I feel most RPG games have moved away from it, despite the fact said 'vanity' content is really what made the game feel alive in the first place.

Anyway, just some thoughts of mine. Not sure if anyone agrees or has some input.

[danshive]

Three things make me dislike my companions in Starfield✨:

If they want to talk to you about something, they’ll refuse any other dialogue options, including trade and “wait here”. It keeps them from functioning properly from a gameplay perspective, and makes me rush through what should be a meaningful conversation because “SHUT UP I’M OVERENCUMBERED JUST HOLD THESE THINGS” Even if the idea is that they’re insisting on talking about something, it doesn’t make me like them. They’ll do this behind enemy lines, and they’ll often be talking ABOUT ME. It’s like someone refusing to carry something in a life or death situation because they just REALLY want to ask you invasive personal question right the heck now.

They keep picking up useless trash, and won’t shut up about having something for you until you take it. I can recall one occasion when I got credits this way, which was nice, but it’s usually trash, and it’s annoying. It would actually be amazing if they could find things you had marked for crafting and the like, but, like… Sarah literally gave me part of a dead animal. It was a resource, but still, what the heck even.

They can be annoyingly critical of your choices in annoyingly weird, even hypocritical ways. One time, after a faction quest, they unanimously criticized me, and I hadn’t even done something evil. It was a “no right answer” situation, except I guess there was a right answer, because every Constellation companion was in agreement. Couldn’t have had at least one agree with me to give the illusion of there not being a “correct” answer?

That third one, I think we’re stuck with, but you have the power to fix the other two, Bethesda. Please, for the love of good game design, make “trade” and “wait here” options even if you’ve triggered a companion discussion, and please keep companions from being insistent on handing us random trash they found on the ground.

[lucere-aeresta]

Starfield ng+ could be a great meta game system, like in one of travelings to Unity you get greeted not by yourself but someone from TES or Fallout or other Bethesda and/or xbox games and you can just start playing that game from there... if you want to get back you can choose going back to starfield from some menu. And then you get some new options in dialogues bragging you've been to totally different worlds and experience stuff so incredible (but nobody really believe you not even other Starborns lol)

it probably requires game pass but...hey, that's a good business opportunity and Xbox should consider it.

[saturniandragon]

Please answer any or all of the Skyrim ask game questions you want! I want to hear whatever you're willing to tell me!

Oh my god Emily you can't be doing this to me /j

Welp, here goes!

-

Helgen - Who was your first Skyrim character? Do you still make anything with them/play as them now?

My first Skyrim character is actually 2 different characters. If by "first" you mean the first character I made from the character creation, it would be a male Argonian named Adrastea (yes named after my dragonsona). But if by "first" you mean the first character that completed the main quest, it was a male Khajiit named Draqanar.

I talked about this in my inpiration behind my tes ocs post, so do check that out!

Riverwood - Hadvar or Ralof? Why?

Hadvar. Honestly I only chose Hadvar because in my first time playing, at the opening scene in Helgen, I was so overwhelmed by whatever the fuck was happening around me and just chose to follow the first NPC I saw in front of me, which happened to be Hadvar.

Whiterun - Do you tend to do Bleak Falls Barrow before or after meeting with Farengar?

Usually I visit BFB before going to Whiterun, by triggering Lucan Valerius' quest in Riverwood trader. Saves me some time because I don't have to go to Riverwood, go to Whiterun and go back to Riverwood again. Although, from a lore/story standpoint, I think Bethesda intended the players to go to BFB after meeting Farengar. Which I find to be more immersive.

Ivarstead - How do you feel about the Greybeards and Paarthurnax?

Cool chill old men and cool chill old dragon! I could never side with Delphine again after she tells me to kill grandpaarth. Luckily I've found a way to get around that.

I do wish Bethesda did a bit more with them though, like why can't I talk about Miraak with Arngeir or Paarthurnax? I hope there will be some mods to address that. We have voice synthesizer tools now like xVASynth and ElevenLabs, so I'm just waiting for someone to take one for the team and create a mod like that.

Morthal - Do you enjoy exploring dungeons and ruins? Why or why not?

Matter of fact, I do! Especially when it's night time, because 90% of my characters are stealth snipers. I embrace the darkness like a friend. It's even more satisfying when using mods that let me one shot kill enemies via headshots. One of my favorite shootout places is Treva's Watch, there's a stony cliff just across the river that makes perfect sniping position. I love it.

Kynesgrove - What's your favorite non-major city/town/settlement?

I don't know if I have one. Riverwood and Dragon Bridge both are nice, but I don't really feel any particular attachment to them, or any minor settlements. My favorite place has just been Whiterun since the beginning.

Markarth - If you could rewrite one questline in Skyrim, which would it be?

Dragonborn DLC. Initially I didn't have problems with it, but like I mentioned before, there's almost no connection between Miraak's story and the Greybeard's and Paarthurnax's acknowledgement. We could just settle with "Miraak was so terrible that Arngeir and Paarth don't want to talk about him" reasoning, but then so was the Dragonrend shout. And they had dialogue options about it.

Idk, it's just subpar to me after repeated playthroughs. Deep down I feel like Bethesda only made that DLC for the sake of wanting to give Morrowind fans nostalgia.

But I do have to give them credit for one thing, and that is this music:

See I've never played Morrowind before Skyrim. But when this music hits, it made me feel all fuzzy. Like "wow this is very Morrowindy." And it is, because it's original TES3: Morrowind soundtrack. I think it's a powerful moment when a music can convey a message even to those who have no prior experience. Good stuff.

Blackreach - What's your favorite enemy in the game? What's your least favorite? Why?

Favorite enemy actually I think was Harkon in the Dawnguard DLC. Really the game forces you to wield Auriel's Bow to defeat him (well, probably not, but I don't see how you can beat him otherwise, esp without Sunhallowed arrows). I'm already an experienced virtual archer before Dawnguard. Watching him disintegrate to blood red messy dust pile at the end was gratifying.

Least favorite is any dragon priest (Vokun, Krosis, etc). If you've had experience trying to fight dragon priests as an archer, you'll know that their hitbox is absolute dogshit. Arrows have a large tendency to just pass through them without doing damage. I've been scouring the internet trying to find a mod that fixes their hitbox but nothing has turned up yet. Nowadays I use TK Dodge RE to make the fight a bit fairer.

Throat of the World - How do you feel about "Season Unending"?

Oh God, where to start? Imperials and Stormcloaks. These two care more about the defeat of the other, more than the fate of the mortal realm. I hate it. And there's no way to make both sides like your decision either, no matter which options you choose, even the ones that you think are the fairest options.

I tend to side with the Empire. Not that that's saying much, because around 2022 I learned that both sides are equally shitty. Scylla and Charybdis situation, I suppose.

There's only one good Season Unending, this one:

Skuldafn - How do you feel about dragon priests?

Dogshit hitboxes, like I previously said. Nothing more than that.

Sovngarde - How would your Last Dragonborn celebrate after the battle with Alduin, or would they celebrate at all?

I've actually been waiting to answer this one.

My current LDB is a Khajiit named Merri'sa. She's not fighting Alduin because she's following her destiny as Dragonborn. She's fighting Alduin on a personal level; a revenge for burning down her hometown before the events of Skyrim (fanon).

But for her, there's nothing to celebrate. Because she knows that nothing can bring back her memories.

So, she opted for a quiet life in Whiterun, before finally going back home to Cyrodiil.

I'm actually in the process of writing her story from start to finish, which I will upload some day in the future, either on tumblr, AO3, Wattpad, or all of them. I plan to upload the entirety of it at once, instead of chapter by chapter. So keep an eye out!

[boatswainscall]

I tried out Starfield through Gamepass and I am deeply Whelmed by it. Brutally honest thoughts below, though I will admit I did not get very far into the game and as such won't comment on the quality of the story and gameplay beyond that point.

Character Creator

The character creator is honestly really good. Options are not locked behind gender markers and I found it relatively easy to make an androgynous looking character, which is at least my standard for RPG character creators. The game uses sliders like past Bethesda character creators, and features a wide variety of scars, facial markings, tattoos, piercings and makeup to apply.

You can also select your pronouns in a deviously hidden sub menu upon naming your character, which I honestly hope becomes the industry standard across all triple-A titles. You can pick between She/Her, He/Him and They/Them. Which is limited but it's still good. You can also customize your character's physique and walking cycle, which are not locked to masculine/feminine bodies at all.

The one complaint I have is that the textured hairstyles, while better than past Bethesda games, there aren't as many as compared to like, Baldur's Gate 3, which honestly set the new standard that should be upheld across the games industry for its variety and quality of textured hair options.

The perk and character background system also impressed me, if by Bethesda standards. The perks have direct influence on character dialogue and some even have direct and pretty interesting downsides to them.

Opening Story Hook

It's not a surprise to me that they haven't learned their lesson from what, how many RPGs they've made now with insufferably foot-dragging opening sequences that force you to stare into the bottomless dead eyes of the plot that you can't skip in any way every time you start a new character. That everyone has at some point complained about each time, and critics have criticized.

And yet here we are in Starfield, and the opener and plot hook are not only aggressively mid but also incredibly fucking slow paced and overwhelmingly dour in tone. For as much as the game reminded me of the Outer Worlds in several ways, Starfield by comparison is at least in its opening taking itself way too seriously. Which honestly contributed towards me losing patience with it pretty early on.

I wasn't exactly asking for the game to be on the Outer Worlds' level of tongue in cheek right off the bat and god forbid I wasn't asking it to be on a Marvel movie's farcical level of goofiness, but I honestly think it would have benefited from being a little more lighthearted. VASCO, your helper robot and first companion, does have a few lines that made me smile but the rest of the characters didn't really play off him in a fun way to amplify it enough for me.

I will not comment on the quality of the story past you meeting Constellation in New Atlantis, but the inciting incident and main plot hook were both incredibly dull and formulaic and didn't do much to compel me to stick with it. So I ultimately didn't.

Aesthetic and Art Direction

I heard from a friend that some of their acquaintances in a Discord server described Starfield as "Fallout 3-like in the best and worst way possible", and I can't help but agree. But Starfield might honestly have the most dull premise out of all of their games, made even more so by its strong but very... Indistinct aesthetic.

Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 have equally lame plot hooks but they at least have the Fallout aesthetic to prop them up, which is incredibly strong and at least comparatively unique and fun to engage with. Meanwhile Skyrim and Oblivion are just iconic for their own sake due to their presence in a lot of millennial childhoods and teenage years which led to them sinking themselves permanently into the Internet's cultural weave. And their own specific fantasy aesthetics are similarly strong and kind of the general standard for the average gamer for "fantasy video game" at this point, for good and for ill.

And while Starfield similarly has an admittedly wonderful aesthetic and art direction - it's weapons, armour, environmental details and architecture are reminiscent to me of 80's Sci Fi/Futurism with its chunky and clunky design elements. I adore that kind of tech - movies like the original Alien and honestly Fallout 3 were what endeared me to it in the first place as a young teenager - it has the problem where while strong it's art direction is a little... Derivative.

There's not really much I encountered at least within the game's opening hours that truly stand out as something new or as a unique twist on an existing style of sci-fi. That paired with the early game's intensely drab and desaturated colours in its early planets and even the first hub city contribute to how uninspired it felt. There was even a point as I was sneaking through the first dungeon clearing it of Pirates where I briefly felt like I was in a cleaner, less wasteland-ified Fallout 4 one instead. So while it honestly might work for some - I wasn't endeared to its aesthetic as much as I would have liked to.

Combat and Related Mechanics

Okay, now to talk more positively, at least comparatively so. The combat in Starfield right off the bat feels really good. Animations for reloading and firing/swinging weapons are very polished and detailed, and enemy AI while still suffering from Bethesda-isms in some respects does feel at least on par or improved upon Fallout 4's. Guns also sound and handle in a very satisfying manner.

When you are inside of a building you don't have to worry about it, but when on the surface of a planet with a hostile atmosphere you have to be mindful of your Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide levels while in combat. Autorun and Sprint drain your O2 and fill your CO2 really fast while you're in a fight, so you can't just run and gun the way you could in their other games and get away with it. It forces you to be more methodical and slower with taking things down, which I at least enjoyed. When you're out of combat though you only have to watch your O2/CO2 levels when you're sprinting, so don't worry about having to manage it while out exploring unless some wildlife aggros on you.

The perk system is also off the bat the best one they've made, at least by Bethesda standards. When you level up you get perk points, but you can't just automatically spend them on whatever you want. You first have to complete mini challenges tied to those specific perks in order to level them up. Unlocking perks at their base level I don't believe require said challenges, but if you want to improve them in any way you have to work for it. Which compared to past games is a welcome change and definitely makes the game feel more like a RPG.

Other Mechanics

The lockpicking minigame is the best Bethesda has ever made. Which is a low bar to clear but they sure did clear it. It's a lot more cerebral than their previous one where it was just a guessing/patience game. Now it's an actual puzzle to solve, and while it might grow repetitive to some over time I really enjoyed sitting down to figure it out the first time I encountered a locked box.

Ship combat/flight though is something I want to take a second to warn people about. If you have wrist/joint issues, either due to injury or medical reasons and you want to play Starfield on a keyboard, I strongly suggest you rebind the controls for Ship System management to be something that will be more comfortable and safe for you. Because as it exists now while I don't normally have issues with my hands it was causing me pretty severe hand cramps due to the Crab Claw positioning I had to take to manage it effectively, so I can only imagine it would be excruciating by default for someone who has joint issues. It's a major accessibility issue, and again I strongly suggest you rebind the keys to prevent injuring yourself if you have these issues.

Also if you similarly have problems with motion sickness I'd avoid playing Starfield because ship combat and navigation is intensely disorientating and made me nauseous after only two sequenced dogfights with pirates.

Beyond that ship management is... Fine? It's mechanics are interesting in theory but in practice its intensely clunky and frustrating to deal with. I saw someone else post about it but frankly ship combat at least while you're flying solo with nobody else to assist with things is very aggravating to manage and honestly kind of bad.

Performance

I'm not running with a rig that meets all the minimum system requirements, so the game defaulted me to low settings with automatic dynamic resolution scaling (DRS) enabled to prioritize performance over prettiness. But despite that, I found the game actually ran rather well even after bumping things up to medium settings. I didn't encounter any graphical bugs in my time playing beyond some z-fighting textures in a small part of the environment in New Atlantis, which I think was more caused by the graphics settings than being of developer error.

I would still warn that if you don't meet system requirements and decide to play anyway with your own customized settings and DRS enabled, that when things get busy on screen the quality of your resolution will get quite blurry as the game compensates, which may cause eye strain and motion sickness from extended exposure.

Conclusion

I wasn't riding the hype train for this game so I wasn't exactly disappointed by the early game experience I got, but I was let down by how overwhelmingly "Bethesda" in the bad way it was.

If you honestly enjoy the Bethesda game experience of ignoring the main plot and spending hundreds of hours exploring and sidequesting instead, I think that Starfield will hold up just fine for you. But for me at least, I wasn't impressed, and likely won't continue to play it.

[gikairan]

I've been playing Starfield properly for a week now, and some thoughts:

I think the most important thing to say is: I am having fun. I am enjoying playing this game.

But i do worry about the games... legs so to speak. I played Fallout 4 for like... a whole year. By the time i felt like i was running out of base game, the first expansions were dropping.

Starfield is... a different beast. It doesnt have one big, large, handcrafted map. Its got a lot of procedurally generated maps, with random bits and pieces. And so there isn't much exploring. And its the exploring i kinda like with Bethesda? The only other games i've played that have made an open world feel so alive are.... BOTW/ TOTK. Like, open world is a dime a dozen these days, but most of them are empty Ubisoft-likes (what i call "checklist open worlds").

But Starfield, by virtue of being a space exploration game, cant quite have that handcrafted touch I know and love from Bethesda. Like, theres only a handful of ways to do a space exploration game and thats: - you limit the exploration to a handful of locations, each with a handcrafted map. But you lose the feeling of the vastness of a galaxy (This is what ME: Andromeda and The Outer Worlds did) - You lose the open world maps, and go with more focused areas. You get a chance to show more planets, but you lose the exploration feeling. (.... This is what the first ME Trilogy did, and theyre not exactly exploration games) - You procedurally generate as much content as possible, and only add handcrafted touches when theres a specific quest. You get the vastness of the galaxy, but it loses many places of actual interest. This is what Starfield has done.

And so... one atmosphere-less planet is kinda the same as another? The colours may change, but largely youre only there because you have a quest there, or you need a specific resource that that planet has in abundance. The places of interest just arent that interesting. And most of them are atmosphere-less planets (Because... thats most planets we've discovered after all)

The game also does take a whiillle to start to open up. I've got over 24 hours of playtime clocked up (though i imagine a good 3-4 hours are just idling on menus as i do things like... cook) and i've largely just travelled between Alpha Centuri and Sol.... I've just made the trip to Akila, i've spent all of 5 minutes in Hope Town, and I have no idea where Neon even is. Theres nothing really between those places, its just fast travelling everywhere. And i'm usually a fast travel abuser, but sometimes the best moments in a Bethesda game are when you slow down and take the scenic route, yaknow? Locations needing fast travelling between them kinda ruins that a bit. And theres generally not 2 settlements on the same planet, despite that probably making a lot of sense (if Jamison is good for human habitation, why is New Atlantis the only settlement we can visit?), so theres not exactly any real random encounters on the ground maps.

My hope that the roleplaying in this game was better than FO4 because they ditched the voice protagonist was in vain. Theres kinda 2 options to continue most conversations, and anything below the first 2 (maybe 3) options are Questions to learn more - but not to move the conversation to the next part of the tree. I havent seen a huge number of skill related dialogue options, except like... medicine? Thats the one ive seen pop up the most.

Performance wise, i've largely not had any issues. Couple of crashes, but thats par for the course with Bethesda. .... But i noticed some obvious frame rate dips in Akila. Like, something in that location the xbox just did not like. But nowhere else. I also paid for a month of game pass ultimate so i could swap between my pc and xbox and see what i liked. ... I havent even tried to play on pc, because i'm happy enough on xbox. That, and the pc keybindings are... uuhh a problem. The game has so many different controls going on that i cant move WASD to any other controls without breaking some other system. Arrow keys are vital somewhere else. IJKL is vital somewhere else.... I'm not playing with WASD, because thats uncomfortable (i'm using the wrong hand for it!). And theres no point in playing on a controller on my pc, lol. I may as well play on the comfy sofa if i want to play with a controller. Will probably mess with my ability to play many mods, but honestly... i'm still uncertain about how much i'll care about the game by the time people start making some real good mods.

IDK man. I'm having fun, i'm enjoying the game. But it probably is a 7/10 game, yaknow? Theres a lot of things holding it back, but those things are also fairly central to the actual vision Bethesda had. Jurys still out on how much blorbo thoughts i can get out of this, mostly because I still dont quite know enough about the world to get a backstory going on. And thats going to be the thing that really makes everything else click. But even then, I could get an okay enough backstory out of The Outer Worlds and that never clicked, because the game just didnt have enough content for me to Really Care.

[toiletcthulhu]

Skyrim has such an inoffensive style of game design that allows it to appeal to a lot of people, but I've known a lot of people who really need solid dialogue or non-violent options who just can't get into the game. Largely, I think Skyrim focuses on aesthetic and combat immersion (although I think combat has been more immersive in previous games, especially magic). The environment and music contribute to a cozy or scary vibe depending on the situation and do heavy lifting for lackluster level design, in my opinion. Whatever character you play, there's most likely an outfit, weapon, spell, and combat style that allow you to validate your perception of your character. Using these forms of expression to watch your character interact with an open world is quite addictive. The dialogue is vague enough that, although you may not be playing for it, it usually isn't bold enough to ruin the immersion of your experience. Basically the dialogue experience of Skyrim is so neutered and bland that it could almost be taken away and just replaced with quest descriptions. This would seem like a temporarily fun arrangement, but still not very substantive to even the most mainstream player, and that's where all the hard work of previous writers comes into play. Elder Scrolls has had a lot of passionate minds putting work into writing in-game libraries, fleshing out the histories of several different empires and peoples from different cultural perspectives, as well as creating an incomprehensibly intricate deity pantheon and creation story. I struggle to remember one part of any of these things that Bethesda improved upon in Skyrim. Pretty much no new lore for the Brotherhood, the Blades, the Dwemer, most of the Daedric princes, the civil war factions are barely fleshed out, hardly any new politics in the Dragonborn expansion or even seeing the ramifications of the Argonian revolt. There's basically a treasure trove of immense and honestly quite interesting knowlegde that compose at the bedrock of interest for desiring to remain in these worlds. It's funny because Fallout 4 was actually TOO ambitious for them, they tried to write their own stuff and rather embarrassingly couldn't write factions in a AAA game with more complexity than a middle schooler. This is why I think 3 and Skyrim are the most succesful of Bethesda's slop. They defile the carcass of good ideas and cover it with a polish of improved gameplay and a simple yet iconic aesthetic style, and so long as they try not to do anything that fundamentally damages the narriative integrity of the world they've had built for them, they're golden. It's ironic because I think this skillset would lend itself very nicely to high quality remakes, something that fans have often asked for. I used to think that it was a stupid request and that I desired freshness, but after seeing what Bethesda has to offer, I can't help but wonder how much cooler things would've been if they never made any new Fallout games and just remade them.

What is it about Skyrim that feels like the peak of Bethesda games

[that-stone-butch]

i agreed with all of your fallout 4 analysis but wanted to add that the dialogue system from NV (and even 3!) is fundamentally trashed in that game. you don't get to actually see the dialogue options! not truly knowing what your character is gonna say (and therefore how someone might react to it) really hamstrings the rpg potential of any conversation you enter :(

yeah fallout 4 really was all about streamlining and making everything flashy. i guess it's to be expected from the makers of skyrim's mechanics. radiant quests, simplified character management, and "cinematic" dialogue that turns the player into another NPC.

you ever play games that are clearly like, primarily tech demos meant to show off what the engine can do? like doom 3 or crysis or like, a good chunk of early console release titles? bethesda's mainline games (fallout 3, skyrim, fallout 4) feel like that, except it's a game meant to exemplify a specific kind of design philosophy rather than engine power.

like skyrim and fallout 4 especially feel like intentional showcases of a really niche form of game design; one that's profoundly shallow and is terrified of challenging the player. one that's choc-full of features intended for e3 hype. it's the mcmansion of game design.

[radmule]

Okay, finally managed to finish first Chapter of Sim Settlements 2! (Atleast... I think? As Concord suddenly became a living and thriving settlement out of nowhere and *for some reason* The Stranger Jake looks... different to me. I cannot pinpoint what exactly it is, if his model got changed for the second chapter [assuming for a compatibility reasons] or whenever I am simply hallucinating, but it really made me pause the game for a second and check him closely in Photo Editor)

-right! One more thing, I also managed to make REshade running together with Photo Mod, so that made me a slightly happier person aswell :) Really love using this tool when playing other Fallouts or TheHunter to tinker around with screenshots. I put my good old friend Filmic Workshop Reshade on top and bang, got myself a huge collection of photos in matter of minutes. (Not as good as most of the game photographers here on Tumblr, but trust me when I say it’s fun!)

Back to the SS2 though - the first chapter was a bit shorter than what I expected, but nonetheless it was quite entertaining experience and I really digged going through it. It’s quest system was very well structured and I apprecieted that the “Find Jake here” quests were done with mind on the player’s level, starting out close to Sanctuary and progressively pushing you to go farther and farther in a very friendly way.

As mentioned in my first post about this mod, the writing and voice acting was absolutely superb - seriously, hats down for the team. When I went to Vault 81 for the first time and the blonde-haired guy started talking to me, I chuckled to myself thinking “Damn, Bethesda really decided to make a clearly Vault Boy inspired NPC, huh.” and after a second of thinking that I do not recall him from the vanilla game, I realized that it’s one of the characters from the mod! Like, seriously- that caught me offguard. The writing really matches the... specific, lighthearted writing of Beth, but in a good way, making it feel like the mod’s story indeed connects with the original game and that the characters ain’t out of touch, as what usually happens with most of the FO4 mods.

In terms of the technical side, a.k.a the building mechanics of the mod, I am still... struggling with it, atleast with some parts. Still trying to figure out the leveling system and the icons next to the residental plots, but outside of that, the mod offers a very good explanation of its mechanics, either through the Holotape or the Jake “Tutorial Guy” Evans himself. Though, the Place Everywhere Mod was a genuine lifesaver and cannot imagine working without it, as there were moments where it pushed me to build plots in incredibly high places.  It was nice thing that the plot types were introduced to you bit by bit, not only it was not as overwhelming figuring all the stuff in one time, but it also gave you a sense of accomplishment/progress and personally made me joyous when I realized that I can make Brahmin Caravan spots - heck yeah!

The characters... damn, hard to say who I liked the most. Jake is a genuine sweetheart and made me almost tear up few times, wouldn’t believe I would get so emotional over a NPC :’) From the settlers, Old Paul is of course the most fleshed out of the characters and him and little Cola are always lovely duo to come across in Sanctuary, but I... also really liked Lily? She is quite a nosy character and always seems to comment on things around the settlement, but it was so cool to hear her having an unique dialogue when I switched her job from Farmer to Doctor. She sounded... so much happier, and made me feel like it really matters you give your settlers a job they are gonna like. Ron was the first character during whose dialogue I found out there are a Perk specific dialogue options, as I could bribe him to give me piece of information for free thanks to equipped Black Widow - not only it was a very pleasant surprise that your perks actually matter for once, but it was a really fun dialogue exchange. In hindsight though, it makes me feel bit bad for him that he did not get any caps for it :’) Ah right, Aiden! Really did not expect him to meet him during that specific quest, and when I saw him I was like “Yoooo, that’s the guy I saw fanarts of!”

Really thought he made his first appearance in Chapter 2, so that was another thing that caught me by surprise :’) not much sure what to say about him though, sadly, as there was not alot of his screentime in this part.

So to conclude the whole thing, I really enjoyed the mod and am looking foward playing the continuation! Might take me even longer time thanks to Uni responsibilities and the fact that I feel like Ch2 expects you to progress more in the main story/the game than what I currently did, so a next progress report might be in much wider gap then this time-

[fereldanwench]

okay, so, tl;dr first impressions? it's a standard bethesda game with a little more polish that i also can't help but compare to other games, namely the outer worlds (but with less charm and personality) and mass effect andromeda (but with a lot more to do)

i dont really have anything too spoilery to share, but more thoughts under the cut just in case ppl wanna avoid it entirely

(also tagging @ren3gade & @theharlotofferelden since y'all expressed interest in my experience)

i played for about 3 hours, which included making my character and clearing the first raider outpost thing. i just got to new atlantis, which looks like one of the main city hubs, but i haven't explored it yet. i also haven't recruited anyone for my crew other than the robot you start with

some thoughts:

i don't like it when games make you do a somewhat substantial prologue before you get in the character creator, so docking points for that. it's not too long, but I'm not especially fond of the 'hey you had a head injury, remember who you are?' cc trope. just lemme make my space lady already

the cc menus are clunky despite the otherwise clean-looking interface used. scrolling through, idr, like two dozen presets one at a time that alternate between male and female was annoying (although i did think it was kinda cool that you could select a male preset and then in the following menu change it to the female version of the preset, or vice versa).

customization overall reminded me a lot of vanilla skyrim. not horrible but pretty limited, especially compared to what you could do in FO4, which IMO has the best out-of-the-box cc in a bethesda game

i did really like the wide option of backgrounds/corresponding perks for your character and the optional traits that give you buffs/debuffs, although i think the traits would probably be better suited for a second PT or new game plus situation. a lot of them are dependent on having some lore knowledge to know what affiliations you want, for instance, that didn't mean much to me on a blind run

npc animations and voice acting are fine, but nothing special. there's a lot of the "hey, leave me alone, I'm busy" shit from NPCs if you're just in their vicinity, lmao. i do like the (i guess kind of old-school RPG) approach of having the dialogue scenes focus solely on the character you're talking to

i like the stylization of the environments and lighting--especially in darker areas where you have to use your flashlight, it's very atmospheric. even evokes some space horror vibes; i suspect there will be some creepy stalkery alien type of scenarios down the line

in general, i like the overall aesthetic. does feel like a more polished outer worlds in a lot of ways, which i liked as well, and i like the crisp, retro-futurism look to a lot of the consoles and menus

the outpost type raids/explorations (sci-fi dungeon crawling, basically) are standard bethesda: lots of winding corridors, lots of junk to pick up, lots of consoles to read and safes to pick (i do like the lockpicking mechanic), some good environmental storytelling

the gun combat is a little clunky IMO. it seems like it wants you to do things like use cover and the environment to your advantage, but there's no easy way to duck and peek around crates, walls, etc. it's very playable, but modernizing this a little bit more from previous bethesda titles would have been nice (although i am early in the game--there might be perks here that will make it more fun)

the first major enemy encounter i had did provide the option to use persuasion checks to get out of the situation without violence, but i didn't fully grasp how it worked and i failed it, lmao. but that's the kind of shit that gets me hyped in RPGs--give me something other than guns to solve problems.

the space combat and exploration are interesting, and i think they could be fun, but it was a little overwhelming on my first few experiences. the way the travel and space maps and whatnot work is not very intuitive to me. full opinion pending here

the scanning and mining mechanics reminded me a lot of mass effect andromeda--they're kind of fun at first (mining with the laser gun is pretty satisfying), but i can see myself getting very tired of them, especially if i were to replay the game

i haven't met any characters I'm endeared to, but like i mentioned, i also haven't recruited anyone other than the starter robot, vasco, who reminds me of a robot trying real hard to bring that obsidian-esque robot charm, but it falls kind of flat

if this had come out like 6 months ago, i probably would have been in a better headspace to really let myself get immersed in the world, but there's definitely not enough going on here for me to get pulled away from cyberpunk for long. the characters are usually what really pull me into an RPG, and even though it is fairly early in the game, i feel like in comparable titles (like the outer worlds, any bioware game, cyberpunk, etc) i'd have already met at least one interesting minor NPC that showcased the personality of the world.

but i'm gonna play it some more, at least until phantom liberty comes out, and see what else it has to offer. i do enjoy the exploration and environmental story-telling in bethesda games, and it seems like there's a lot of that here, too.

my husband has also been playing it--i think he probably has around 10 or so hours in it. he's not really a bethesda RPG kinda guy (never played any of the fallouts and didn't like skyrim or oblivion), but he seems to be enjoying it so far. he also said it reminds him visually a lot of the outer worlds, but he does find the scope of it kind of overwhelming, which is usually what puts him off from these types of games

oh, and i haven't had any bugs or performance issues (playing on ultra), but husbando has been having some substantial framerate drops. our rigs are comparable except for displays--i'm on a 1080 monitor, and he's on a 4k TV. i think it might be something with the resolution on his part, but I'm not positive

i forgot i had a free month of game pass i hadn't used yet so in a surprising turn of events I'm gonna give starfield a go

after it downloads

all 140 gigs of it o.O