#bethesda missed out on some good content!!!

[thebottomfromhell]

hi I absolutely love your writing!!! may I request the upper moons walking in/hearing reader singing a love song that they're so sure is about them, along with their reactions?

not necessary to add, but it'd be funny if reader had that song playing in their head over and over due to how in love they are while in the middle of a meeting with muzan and him going "what the fuck, who is this for, you're pathetic"

thank you so much for your time!

My brain after reading this ask in bethesda game quest format: *skyrim quest initiation drums* Find a song that at least have love included that represents the Uppermoons.

I loved this concept, call me cringe or whatever but if you have never liked a musical song (movie songs included, don't you go on denial. If you liked disney the stfu) or appreciate a good Opera (the LUNGS these people have, try singing in a threater loud enough for everyone to hear you without a mic, I dare you), then you're missing something.

I'm very sorry for the wait, I hope you like this one too. Thank you for the request too, it's something different and I had fun with it.

Uppermoons and GN reader confessing over a song (Musical AU with modern music and spotify/music youtube)

Songs used: [vid with lyrics + translation if needed]

Gyutaro - Your love is my drug (Kesha)

Gyokko - Prisoner (Jeffree Star)

Sekido - Dark red (Steve Lacy)

Karaku - Perro fiel (Shakira ft. Nicky Jam)

Urogi - Balada (Gusttavo Lima)

Aizetsu - Name of love (Bebe Rexha and Martin Garrix)

Nakime - Boyfriend (Dove Cameron)

Akaza - Love story (Indila)

Douma - Shut up and listen (Nicholas Bonnin)

Kokushibou - Tsuki no curse (Reika Okina)

Warnings: My broken taste in music, sexual content mentioned (in song), sexual content implied, slight drug use mentioned (in song), Akaza sings in french and slight angst, yandere behavior (in song),

Gyutaro:

"Maybe I need some rehab. Or maybe just need some sleep. I got a sick obsession. I'm seein' it in my dreams." Holy SHIT you listen Kesha? He listens Kesha too! His sister was the one to introduce him to the artist and, he admits, the songs are very catchy. "What you got, boy, is hard to find! I think about all the time.I'm all strung out, my heart is fried. I just can't get you off my mind" "Your love is my drug" is not really his favorite from her, "blah blah blah" and "cannibal" take that prize by far (no, it's not because it's fun to sing as if he was high, he doesn't sing... at all... no, Daki, he just said he would not-)

"Because your love, your love! Your love is my drug! Your love, your love, your love!" Fuck. He really didn't mean to, he just... did it. You look at him surprised, you didn't even know he was around. Still you laugh a bit with him as he keeps singing as he forces you into his shoulder and back like he does with Daki. "I said your love, your love, your love is my drug! Your love, your love, your love!" He moves slightly, careful not to drop you, he just looks so active and joyful.

You are addicted to this side of him to, this one it barely shows, that side of him that is actually fun to be with, chaotic and messy the same way he is intimate and caring. This is your guy. "But left to my own devices I'm addicted, it's a crisis. My friends think I've gone crazy." He interrupts again. "OH! I like this part! My judgment's getting kinda hazy. My steeze is gonna be affected if I keep it up like a lovesick crackhead." You let him keep singing, until it gets to a part that is important to you, in ehich you get off Gyutaro to cup his face in your hands, making eye contact.

"I don't care what people say. The rush is worth the price I pay. I get so high when you're with me. But crash and crave you when you leave." There, you got it, you see his eyes glow a little as he keeps looking at you, face blushing. He gets it. He always gets it, even when he doesn't want to. "Wow. Ne, just... wow. This song is perfect for you, y'know?" You chuckle a little at that. "How about you? Do you also feel like that?" He looks at the other side a bit embarrased before nodding. "I do, ne. The song is good. Really good." Maybe that is why you spend the rest of the night singing it, along with other songs from Kesha. It was lovely (Also, he nails it at blah blah blah), you wilk repite it again.

Gyokko:

"I got no regrets. And I remember the day that we met. There was no way that I could forget you.So I followed you home. And I waited 'til you were alone." Ok, Gyokko doesn't even own a home, staying at the house of his victims for a week or so doesn't count, even if you have followed him to one or two of them. He was the one to invite you, the behaviors of this song is not yours. If it had to be someone's, it would be Gyokko's. "And I know this seems so wrong. But I'm just a lovesick criminal."

"Oh! I knew you had good taste, but this is amazing!" You never stfu faster than that, closing your mouth the second you heard Gyokko's voice. You turn around and he seems... cheerful. "You can arrest me, baby, I don't wanna leave. Lock me up, throw away the key. I don't care if I'm in trouble deep. I'm addicted to your love." He keeps singing it, moving with the beat. You knew the song was his taste, but you didn't expect this outcome. "I love that song. One of my favorites. And the fact that you love it too! It's magnificent!" Still, if he is aware of the main reason you like the song, he doesn't let it show.

"I'll be your prisoner. I'll be your prisoner tonight." You keep goin, not knowing if it's to pretend nothing happened or if you are just vibing with it, but you both keep going. "I, I, I, I'm under your spell. And I just can't get enough!" You don't talk about it until you finish the song, but... you will, you can sense it. But you can also see Gyokko smiling, enjoying the time with you. "I'm prepared for all the consequences." "Believe me, I have the worst intentions." "I'm prepared for all the consequences! Believe me, believe me!"

You will be fine.

Sekido:

Sekido is NOT going to apologize, he never even thought about it. Sure, he was rude to you and maybe crossed a line or two, but you made him angry first. You also crossed the line this time! He doesn't even remember what you said to each other, but he remember it was bad. Why would he apologize if he is wondering if he even should forgive you. "Something bad is 'bout to happen to me. I don't know it, but I feel it coming. Might be so sad, might leave my nose running. I just hope she don't wanna leave me." He stopped when he heard your voice.

Sekido was never the one to plead, he was never the one to even ask for things. He is by far the most prideful of the clones. But if you were actually to go, to leave- "Don't you give me up, please don't give up. Honey, I belong with you, and only you, baby. Only you, my girl, only you, babe. Only you, darling, only you, babe. Only you, my girl, only you, babe. Only you, darling, only you." Wouldn't he beg like this, so pitiful and needy, because even if he doesn't want to admit it... he loves you. "Y/N."

He interrupts you, making you just realize he is there. "Is this... how you feel. Or am I reading this wrong?" He gets close slowly, but you can't really answer. You also don't want to be the one to apologize first, to admit you need him as much as he needs you without knowing what he is feeling. After some seconds of silence Sekido looks away and starts singing what you just sand, but more like a murmur, if the lips separated less then it would onlu be a hum. "Don't you give me up, please don't give up. Honey, I belong with you, and only you, baby." It sounds sincere. It is.

None of you apologizes, you both just keep... singing and huming. Just staying together, not wanting to leave. At all.

Karaku:

"C'mon, what were you humming, hot-stuff? I heard you just now. I promise not to laugh even if it's a lame virging song." He is teasing you. Of course he is, but he won't leave you alone until you obey. "How about you sing it? Since the song is clearly stuck in your head." How did he actually convince you? Only Karaku knows, but in the end you do as he says. Maybe you wanted this, to take it out of your chest. He has no way you actually think about him everytime you hum this song. Is like conffesing without actually doing so. "Aquí estás. Ya no puedes detenerte. ¿Dónde vas? Si estoy loco por tenerte." He seems to recognize the song, raising an eyebrow while smirking. "¿Cómo lo iba a saber? Que te vería otra vez. Tú me confundes no sé qué hacer...." You stop.

This is embarrasing, you better leav- "Yo lo que quiero es pasarla bien. Yo tengo miedo de que me guste, y me haga enloquecer. Si eso pasa yo seguiré. Contigo aquí como un perro fiel." Oh.... oh. He likes the song, and you don't know why, but that alone raises your confidence. Specially when he grabs your hand to make you spin around, as if dancing, laughing cheerfuly and loudly when you follow the lead. "Yo tengo miedo de que me guste, y me haga enloquecer." "Like that! Keep it up." You do, sometimes he moves as if to dance, mostly keeping himself roamimg around you, interrupting to sing himself or cheer up at times.

"Dicen que tú eres peligrosa. No le hago caso a esas cosas. Dime qué está pasando. Me tienes como un loco, soy un loco enamorado, eh." "Crazy man in love", that parts come from your heart, because you are in love. He puts one hand behind your head and the other in your waist before going the next part. "Quiero saber cuánto me vas a insistir. Y hasta dónde llegarías por mí. Siento mucho la espera. Pero valdrá la pena cuando te esté besando." "When I kiss you", and he just finishes the verse by doing so. And damn if it isn't worth every damn second of yearning. He speaks again after pulling apart, only inches away from your face. "Best love confession ever, hot-stuff. Very nice to use a "romantic" language. Keep coming for me and I'll keep you as mine, got it?"

What else were you meant to do but nod? Damn, you don't have to be a genius to know where the night is going. And you are going to like it.

Urogi:

For context... You were singing, only to stop when Urogi appeared from the sky. Now he has been following you "C'mon, sing again. PLISS? I like that song, I promise. I just want to hear you sing it." It took less than an hour of whining and puppy-eyes to convince you.

"Eu já lavei o meu carro, regulei o som. Já 'tá tudo preparado, vem que o brega é bom. Menina fica a vontade, entre e faça a festa. Me liga mais tarde, vou adorar, vamos nessa" And Urogi interrupts, to your surprise, singing the next part as he flies around you, grabbing your hands in his, exagerating movements as if dancing. "Gata, me liga, mais tarde tem balada! Quero curtir com você na madrugada! Dançar, pular até o Sol raiar! C'MON, IT'S YOUR TURN Y/N!" You follow the song and repear that same fragment before Urogi steals the next part again.

"O tchê tcherere tchê tchê! Tcherere tchê tchê! Tchê, tchê, tchê!" The song barely says anything at all. It's barely has content, but... it fits Urogi. It's more a thing of vibe than of actual words. "Se você me olhar vou querer te pegar. E depois namorar, curtição. Que hoje vai rolar." Really, it's simple, the song could be sintesized in a "let's party and if I catch your eye let's stay together the whole night", but it's cheerful, full of joy, very light... very Urogi. Maybe that is why you like it.

You are unsure if Urogi gets what you are really feeling, but he gets completely the song. And he does want to stay with you and have fun the whole night. It's a win. You will be able to explain things to him later, but for now. "Gusttavo Lima!"

Aizetsu:

"If I told you this was only gonna hurt. If I warned you that the fire's gonna burn. Would you walk in? Would you let me do it first? Do it all in the name of love?" Just after you finish that part you feel a hand on your shoulder, you turn around to see Aizetsu. You blush at the realization he found you singing, though he is blushing too. "Would you mind if I sing with you?" He doesn't explain himself futher as he asks shyly, you can only nod as he takes a breath to continue the song.

"Would you let me lead you even when you're blind? In the darkness, in the middle of the night. In the silence, when there's no one by your side." He looks at you as if waiting you to join, smiling softly as he offers his hand. "Would you call in the name of love?" You take it. "In the name of love, name of love. In the name of love, name of love. In the name of." You basically also hum together the instrumental, in a softer version. You spare glances on each other, deep and adoring.

"When there's madness, when there's poison in your head." It's almost as if you were actually talking. "When the sadness leaves you broken in your bed." You sure get that Aizetsu means it. Every word of it, that is why he wanted to sing with you. "I will hold you in the depths of your despair." "And it's all in the name of love" And so. "I wanna testify." "Scream in the holy light." "You bring me back to life." And it's all in the name of love. That you look at each other, hold your hands, talk. Because you do talk once you both finish.

"I love you a lot. Do you.. it would make me sad if you were not singing for me like I was singing for you.... but I would unders-" you must interrupt him "I was singing for you too." He smiles softly at you. "Can.... can I kiss you? Please?" No, because you kiss him first. What a lovely song, lovely night, and lovely romance.

Nakime:

"I could be a better boyfriend than him, I could do the shit that he never did. Up all night, I won't quit." Not the type of melody Nakime is used to, the opposite, but it's a nice song. "Thinking I'm gonna steal you from him. I could be such a gentleman." You sing with the most care, because you know she is watching, she is hearing, even if you can't see her. This is her castle, after all.

You know what you are doing, the message that you are giving. Nakime loves music, what better way to confess than with a song. And this is a song which just... vibes with her. You have no idea if she has ever heard it before, but it seems it doesn't matter. "I don't need to tell you twice. All the ways he can't suffice. If I could give you some advice. I would leave with me tonight." It doesn't, because she is talented in her art. So she plays the biwa, making a beat for you to follow. "The universe must have divined this, mmm, mmm. Ladies first, baby, I insist."

"I could be a better boyfriend than him. I could do the shit that he never did. Up all night, I won't quit. Thinking I'm gonna steal you from him. I could be such a gentleman." She sings this part with you, using the biwa to also change the settings. It gets a bit dizzy, but you love the display. She is very proud of her power. "Plus all my clothes would fit." She sings that part alone once you are both in the same room.

You look at her, she smiles at you. Seeing you are not going to sing anymore, she speaks. "I liked your song. Let's do this again some time. It's a date." She says, just before leaving you in your home. A date... you are proud of yourself, that's it. The lesbian power of the song did it trick, like you knew it would. You. Won.

Akaza:

Akaza doesn't know why he hasn't shown himself, he just... got lost in the song. It's one he knows, the melody,, the lyrics, the meaning... "Il n'est pas fou. Il l'aime c'est tout. Il la voit partout. Il l'attend debout. Debout une rose à la main. Non, non plus rien ne le retient." It's a lovely song, he can't think other way to describe it that is not deppressing, to be honest, and he doesn't want to think this song as sad, even if his chest aches a bit with it. "Dans sa love story!" "It's a love story", as said before, he knows the lyrics, he knows the meaning, and Akaza likes it. You keep singing for a while before even realizing he is there, but one second you open your eyes and turn around, facing the golden eyes.

"Em... how long have you been standing there?" You ask embarrased, blushing as Akaza also has some red in his cheeks. He doesn't answer your question, just takes some steps forward to grab gently yet firm, somehow desesperate, your hands into his. "Can you please keep singing? Please?" He asks twice, looking away as he whispers the secon pleading. You decide to just keep singing. "Je serai riche. Et je t'offrirai tout mon or. Et si tu t'en fiches. Je t'attendrai sur le port. Et si tu m'ignores...." "And if you ignore me...."

You know, you have seen, that Akaza is mourning, yearning, or something. You don't know, he himself doesn't know, but that nostalgia and melancholy.... sometimes you feel it takes him away from you. That is why you didn't want him to listen you sing about him, to confess. Because you are unsure id he will "Je t'offrirai mon dernier souffle de vie." "Give you the las breath of my life" and yet he keeps singing for you without letting your hands go. "Dans ma love story!"

"Et il y a toi..." Akaza waits for you to continue, tender and adoring eyes, "Et il y a moi." Yes! There is you. There is! And you are hopeful Akaza is there, is here, too."Et personne n'y croit. Mais l'amour fait d'un fou un roi. Et si tu m'ignores.... J'me battrai encore et encore!" "C'est ta love story!" You take that as a confession, and it shows in your blushed face and adoring eyes, he seems to agree in it. "C'est ta love story!" And of course, you join. "C'est l'histoire d'une vie! Love story!" You just look at each other, not bothering with the world, and giving in to tentation. You both kiss.

(And actually have to talk things through AFTER, you know? This is not a musical, as romantic as it was.)

Douma:

"Shut up and listen. Look at my eyes, don't tell me lies. I need you to tell me truth." You started singing on your own, but Douma got in the room, looking curious. He doesn't move besides closing the door besides him, doesn't speak, just... stands ghere, watching you. But part of you feels like he is urging for more. It's hard to tell, because he always urging for more of everything. "You gotta be clear, tell me the details. I gotta know as much as it hurts. I need you to tell me the truth." More violence, food, attention, power, sensations, pain... it's unclear most of the times. It becomes really hard to tell if he actually likes you.

"Bet you like it when I show up in a gown. Let my body work it out, slow your grind. Don't tell me to stop it, just let me on top and. Baby, you want it, yeah." He sings after you repeat the same part, maybe he hust wanted to do that. If it's because he wants to share the song with you or if he is just messing around... Douma himself probably isn't 100% sure. "When you tie me, do it slow, forget the time. Move position, take me south, ease your mind. Don't tell me to stop it, just let me on top and. Baby, you want it, yeah." He goes to grab you, to press his body against you. He understands the lyrics, not being able to recognize emotions doesn't make him stupid or inmune to sex. This is probably how the night will end.

Maybe it's better that way. "Slow it down if you need to, oh. Show me how just to please you. Ooh, work it out in the sheets. Do me and see through, I want to you feel you." Staying safe, showing intimacy in a way Douma can actually understand it, instead of leaving him guessing and wondering how he should feel. How a normal human, even a normal demon, would feel. You wish these things could be explainede with words in a language Douma fully knows. But the language is not the problem, nor is Douma or you.

You spend the night together, limbs tangling both bodies. Douma is content, satified, you too. Even if you feel like there a lot more things to say, but there is hardly a moment or a way to do so....

Kokushibou:

"Tsuki no kaasu tsumetai yume no naka de....." If you ask Kokushibou, music that is not in japanese is not real music. He is stuck in his own ass, always too focused on tradition and hierarchy and how japan is the "raising sun" blah blah blah. Sometimes he gets very annoying like that, to the point loving him does feel like a curse. "Kotoba no nai sekai de. Bokura wa ai wo kataru. Itsuka kimi ni todoku made..." wait a sec- Kokushibou is behind you, isn't he? You turn around and yep, he is. "Kokushibou-san...."

He keeps quiet for a while, like always, until he finally thinks he has something worth saying. "I like that song. Can you keep singing for me?" You really wanted to say no, but you also wanted to sing for him. After all, this song is recorded in your mind just for him. "Tsuki no kaasu. Tsumetai yume no naka kara. Kimi wo tooku tsuresaritakute. Dokomade yukeru. Ai wo shinjite ii basho made." Maybe another person, demon or human, would have joined and singed with you. Kokushibou did not.

"Dokomade yukeru. Ai wo shinjite ii basho made. Yoru no mukou futari dake de." Ypu finished the song for him, barely getting any reaction. This song is really perfect for you both. "Thank you for singing for me." He barely understands, it's not a surprise for you to have to actually explain it. "I did it because that is how I feel about you." Silence again, you are more than used to it. Kokushibou is not a person of intimacy, of sharing feelings, he clearly doesn't know how to answer back, and part of you feels guilty for putting him in the situation of having to. "I see."

He leaves after that, and you know he will evade you for at least a week or two from know own. If you are lucky he will want to talk about it after that and tell you he feels the same. But until then... it's a "Moon's curse in this icy dream."

Bonus:

Muzan: And then Nakime is going to su-

*Song from above starts playing in the background*

Muzan: Excu- *looking around* ..... Who is playing....?

Akaza: Is something wrong, Muzan-sama?

Muzan: Am I the only one hearing this?

Gyutaro: ..... I don't hear anything.

Nakime: Sorry.

Kokushibou: Hmn?

. . .

Y/N humming with the song on their head: Mhmnhmnhmn mhn hmn hmn mhn.

Muzan: SHUT THE FUCK UP, IT'S BEEN 5 HOURS WITH THAT SAME SONG! AT LEAST PUT SOMETHING DIFFERENT! Pathetic creature, who is this even for?!

[cuprohastes]

Starfield!

OK I've been playing the heck out of this and I have some thoughts. Under the cut.

TL:DR - I'm enjoying it a whole lot.

OK, this is a very Bethesda game. I mean you can see the Fallout 4 DNA, and it's distant ancestor, Skyrim.

And there's some classic bugs: Putting your super rare and cool looking space suit on the Armoury Mannekin is great. And if you change the least amount of your ship it will vanish forever.

Not all your very cool, upgraded weapons will stick around. They'll just show up missing. The tutorials on navigation or ship building appear to be 100% missing. The speech challenge is... hilariously crap and badly explained

But... but...

Out of days of play that's pretty much the only issues I've had, apart from 'Oh dear god I'm over encumbered AGAIN?!' Because for some reason, Bethesda thought that an upper limit of 150KG before buffs or perks or suit mods was acceptable. I mean... OK. It probably is, but given most of your income is hauling gently used equipment and other goodies back to your ship and flogging it off for space bottlecaps septims dollars, it can get really annoying that while carrying the equivalent of two adult humans, you can only sprint for a little bit.

Unless you get your robot butler to pick up the load, but say goodbye to stealth play because at the merest hint of Bad Guy activity, it'll sprint into the thick of things yelling about how it's not programmed for combat, DIE SQUISHY HUMAN RARG RARG PUNCH KICK TWIRL... yes dude, please back off so I can fire this proton canon into that bad person's kneecaps.

I mean you can just park it and say 'wait here'. You even get a quest and marker to find it again if you forget.

But it's a very mellow game. Yes it is super easy to make the game spawn a couple of loot dungeons. But have you tried going to Mars where the horrible grimy mine is... staffed by fairly happy and content miners who are not being exploited, and where you can pick up a mission to put up posters so that people will feel happier? OR that fetch quest designed to get you visiting other locations on behalf of the comic book fan? What about the first faction you meet who won a war but who's citizens were so horrified by it that they formed a working peace with their erstwhile opponents, and admit, yeah, the enetire thing was their fault: Let's rebuild and be better people.

They have a museum where they have a display explaining 'We won but when we asked AITA, the answer was Yes.'

And then you can go sit in the park and eat meatloaf. Maybe build your own colony and put up Space Frog, the Frog from Space posters. Start a garden. Get eaten by a Terrormorph

But you want to be a pirate, a smuggler, a Space Cop, A Ranger, a spy, a bounty hunter, a collections agent or a freelance bad-guy murderer? Oh yeah that for SURE is a bunch of things that you are basically offered right away, and that's not even the main plot. These are fun sub plots. This is a way to rack up XP and bank the hilariously small amount of money it takes to re-build your ship into the space Winnebago of your dreams.

How's that work?

OK you have a space winnebago. Cockpit at the front, mobile home in the middle, then a bunch of engines and pew-pew sticks. Porch on the belly and buncha legs to stand on.

You can swap the middle part - Bed n' kitchen, science room, workshop, infirmary, armoury, captains quarters, living quarters, a couple of other options.

Want more? Well... click a second unit on. Or a long version. Or some passages. Hell, make a star destroyer with every type of room and cover it with engines and lasers and storage units.

You just need to be able to train up to get the reactor to power it all. The good news is that you can absolutely hire staff to run all your systems and have ship with a crew, and a companion who'll happily tag along and provide banter. Or solo it all.

And so far there's no Preston Garvey.

[jeweljessec]

Some pros and cons of Fallout 76 I personally feel after playing roughly 60 hours (and counting) in no particular order

Pros:

- the weapons are fun! I love the instrument melee picks and I hope to see more goofy weapons

- not being able to pause changed up my playstyle a bit- it was easy to use Apex as a format of putting aid and weapons to hotkeys, and made me finally use the favorites feature in Fo4, which makes things a little easier

- the map is stunning. I love getting lost in Appalachia’s forests and just… exploring things. There’s still that wonderful environmental storytelling everywhere, made even more quirky with Literal Mothman and the weirdest mutated creatures I’ve ever seen (though to be fair, I’ve only played 4 mostly, and I am making my way through Vegas and 3)

- but seriously. Frogs??? Giant bees?? I love it

- there’s still people alive and kicking, and it’s nice to have random new events and new content

-I love the new options to make tea and interesting new recipes

-having the game be default survival but not Hard scratches the itch I like from having characters have basic needs while not being punishing

-there is an option to attack other players, but I’ve only met nice players so far! There’s also a system to punish aggressive pvp players

- The Survivor Stories I’ve found from dead NPCs have genuinely made me emotional. My heartstrings are being played like a fiddle! In a good way.

-I really liked building in 4 and I’m glad they brought it back!!

-I like the radio host!! She’s sassy and sweet and enjoyable to listen to. I hope they give her many more lines and songs in the future than what she has now. And I hope we get to meet her!!

- the diseases are an interesting bit of worldbuilding and make my character feel more human like everyone else

Cons

- The Scorchbeast. Hhh

- no seriously. You know how in Skyrim how dragons generally scaled with the area difficulty? And you had tools to easily combat them?

- picture that but…. like if a level 50 dragon could just roll up on your level 15 dragonborn at any time. And also brings a horde of Dragur with it

- I Do Not Like The Scorchbeast :(

- the lag…..

-It’s to be determined if Vegas or 76 randomly crashes more, but so far 76 is winning

- especially just…. trying to log in. It doesn’t crash, it just stays in lovely Betheseda Stasis 70% of the time trying to enter the game

- the small loss of loot when you die is barely annoying enough where the feature feels kinda… unnecessary?

- Some items expire over time that aren’t food, like government supply requests, and I don’t know if they ever tell you this.

- paying caps to fast travel isn’t… bad tight now, but I could see it being an issue in the future as costs go up the farther you need to go. Why? Who are the caps being paid to?? At least have some lore reason behind it :(

- 76 isn’t intended to be played as single player and it shows… but man do I miss having companions traveling with me.

- The NPCs aren’t terribly shallow, but also… I’m not super attached to any of them either except for the radio host and maybe the Overseer. I like them! But it just feels like Bethesda put them there exclusively to give something to do with ur fallout buddies for some reason, with not much depth behind it. Bethseda, I like your storytelling too, not just aesthetics

- I hope bundles and stuff return to the Atom shop eventually and aren’t just… gone forever once the timer runs out…

Part 2 eventually maybe? Who knows!

Would I recommend the game overall? If you have a buddy to play with or just like environmental storytelling more than anything else, sure! It’s pretty solid imo, and isn’t nearly as bad as what I heard about it at launch

[thegamecollection]

STARFIELD - REVIEW ROUNDUP!

We have blast off! Or at least, those big name reviewers lucky enough to receive a code ahead of the official launch have!

So, where does Starfield land on the Bethesda scoreboard of hits and misses? Let's see...

GamesRadar - 5/5

"Starfield isn't really a game you play to complete, it's more about living whatever sort of life you want in the literal universe Bethesda has created. Whatever you're thinking of doing, you almost certainly can do it, and the scale is almost a release in a way – you'll probably never see or do it all, so just enjoy the moment. There's months, if not years, of discoveries buried away in here, and even after 80 hours I can't wait to see more."

Read the full review here.

GameInformer - 8.5/10

"It took me a long time to fall in love with Starfield, and even after I did, certain aspects didn’t work for me. But the things I didn’t enjoy are vastly outweighed by my enthusiasm for this new, original science fiction universe, the breadth of its adventures, and the appeal of its many interwoven stories. Go in with the expectation that it will take some time to find your footing in such a vast gameplay space, and there’s a universe well worth discovering here."

Read the full review here.

Gamespot - 7/10

"Starfield has its moments, for sure. Its satisfying gunplay makes combat exciting, especially when it's integrated into setpieces within its better, more captivating questlines. And although limited in its conception of space exploration, there's a novelty in poking around the galaxy to see star systems up close and personal, and occasionally finding side content worth chasing. However, it struggles to deliver a cohesive and memorable RPG experience amid the seemingly boundless sea of stars."

Read the full review here.

VideoGamesChronicle (VGC) - 5/5

"Starfield is undoubtedly an experience that players will stick with for years to come. It’s content-rich in a way that’s rare in modern gaming, and exactly the experience that people who’ve been hoovering up different versions of Skyrim for years have wanted. It doesn’t truly reinvent the wheel with its mechanics, but almost everything it does, it does so well, that it’s a truly engrossing experience."

Read the full review here.

IGN - 7/10

"It’s never a great sign when someone recommends a game on the grounds that it gets good after more than a dozen hours, but that’s very much the kind of game Starfield is, and I do recommend it. There are a lot of forces working against it, and the combination of disjointed space travel, nonexistent maps, aggravating inventory management, and a slow rollout of essential abilities very nearly did it in. It was the joys piloting a custom spaceship into and out of all sorts of morally ambiguous situations in a rich sci-fi universe that eventually pulled it out of a nosedive."

Read the full review here.

GAMINGbible - 10/10

"Starfield is without a doubt a monumental release - and not just because it's Bethesda’s first new IP in 25 years. Every now and then, a new game comes along that changes our perception of what the industry is capable of. Starfield is that game. This is beyond what we’ve come to know an open-world to be. Bethesda has created a universe that, despite its vast scale, maintains interest and an impressive attention to detail throughout. The journey you embark on will dazzle you, and I have no doubt that players will be gripped for months, perhaps even years to come."

Read the full review here.

Well, much like the universe, these scores are a mixed bag of fragments that are deemed rare, beautiful and striking to some... Yet turbulent and rocky to others!

Make up your own mind when the game launches on 6th September and pre-order here at The Game Collection!

Godspeed...

-Jack

[alongtidesoflight]

for the mod you are making: would I be able to start a new game in Skyrim without doing anything else so I can play the mod and the mod only? I beat the game but never could get into it as much as I would have technically wanted to, given the lore and everything, because finding the roleplay kind of hollow. Which, again with the lore, I love the lore of the elder scrolls series so getting disappointed by the roleplaying really bugged me.

But from the look of what you are developing, you definitely are making something that looks really great and fleshed out. Especially with the companions and interactions you are showing, as so far the only good companion in the elder scrolls that I have found so far that feels more alive is just Serena. Who is from a DLC.

Would I be able to just head right away to start the mod, or would I have to likely wait until a specific level or any other condition to start?

in theory you can start the mod immediately after you've left helgen or skipped the tutorial there with an alternate start mod. you're not going to miss out on much mod content until you go to whiterun to warn jarl balgruuf about the dragon that has attacked helgen.

there's a small knapsack at the guardian stones that sort of works as a setup for the mod, as in you have to pick one of the tes: iv oblivion classes/professions you want to roleplay as (they unlock some dialogue options and quest shortcuts) and once that's done, you can venture deeper into skyrim (and beyond) and go recruit the companions.

now, you can play their recruitment quests at any time without having progressed through any of skyrim's main/dlc/side quests. the thing is that you're gonna have to do at least some questing in between recruitment and personal quests in order to get their approval up enough for them to confide in you.

the progression looks a little something like:

recruitment -> reach a certain approval threshold - > personal quest 1 -> reach a certain approval threshold -> personal quest 2

independent of that, their romances depend on approval and how much you flirt with them as they open up to you.

right now, i can think of one location that's unlocked with a recruitment quest and you can do a bit of questing there that's unrelated to skyrim's quests, and it'd probably be a good way to net some approval. but without looking right now, i'm not sure if it's enough approval to trigger any of the personal quests.

so yes, you can play some of the quests as soon as you initiate the mod, but there's approval thresholds that keep you from progressing through all of the mod's content immediately.

on top of that you're going to want to progress through skyrim's quests a little (at least until you're declared dragonborn) because it opens up more dialogue branches, at least one personal quest, and unlocks the quest to obtain the player home (and its garrison of unique guards).

the mod's been made with skyrim being very hollow in mind. it's here to enhance and immerse you in the game a little, with the companions commenting on your game progression almost each time you've finished one of the many main or dlc quests in order to make it feel, well, more alive.

so the tl;dr is, you can play some of the mod's content immediately after the mod's been set up, but you'll miss out on a lot of content if you don't want to focus on skyrim's plot and i don't want to make any promises and say you'll be able to get their approval up enough for them to want to let you in on their backstories without you having done at least a bit of questing in bethesda-land.

i'd say at the very least, progress the game until you're declared dragonborn and make sure to talk to the companions after any main quests or dlc quests you do in order to gain more approval. the overall mod (and hopefully game) experience will be better if you do. also, since the companions have history relating to game events, for example the civil war, guilds, daedric princes, and factions, you might stumble into one surprise interaction or another here and there.

if anyone would like me to write up quick approval guides/mod progression tips and tricks and offer that as an additional download when i release the whole thing, like this or comment below. (trust me i know just how frustrating it can be to miss out on content because you didn't get a companion's approval up in time and now the chance to interact with them has come and gone. no shame in wanting to look things up/plan a playthrough in advance.)

[jennyforeigner]

Just finished Pokemon Scarlet. tl;dr not really a fan. I'm just...not really sure what exactly was the breaking point for me? Probably spoilers ahead.

The thing is buggy. We all know it. But like...I grew up emulating PS2 bootlegs at 50% speed, so like, not a deal breaker. Sure It's not as polished as say Legends Arceus which came out about a year ago, so that's not a great look, but isn't Ubisoft or Bethesda bad. The game only crashed on me the once and it didn't cost me any progress. Obviously this is the result of Gamefreak wanting to churn out a new Pokemon game every year, but I don't think there's anything I can say about that that hasn't already been said better.

I caught myself thinking, what is this game about? My gut reaction is this game is basically four separate, unrelated stories and that may be true in the sense that their plots don't really influence each other, but I think dismissing them like misses something. I think they all share themes: they're all about passion, about what we value and what we are willing to do to get it. Victory Road is about love of the self; Starfall Street is about love of one's friends; Path of Legends is about love of one's partner (specifically partner pokemon, not like romantic partner). They each represent variations on this theme to give a rounded view on what passion is allowed to look like.

At least, that's the text. And I usually use text in a very broad sense to refer to really any work of art when considered as a whole, but in this case I mean the literal words on the screen. The characters talk a lot about feeling passionate about things, but I don't feel it when I'm playing. Paldea is not a lush, vibrant world. It is a flat, plain world. The geography doesn't excite me, the music is consistently restrained, and though some of the battles I had were real nail biters (two jump to mind, both against Titans), most of the others I experienced were just curb stomps. All the passion in my game play was brought by me.

There's a dearth of things to do or find in the world. I can go to raid crystal clearly marked on my map, but I quickly learned that most have no value to me outside of farming for exp. candies (which I infrequently used because I spent most of the game at whatever my current level cap was), and the raids themselves are kind of cluttered, janky messes. I can go to main plot points which were...fine, but usually starred five minute spotlight characters who quickly left the game alongside whichever of the three actual main characters was tied to that story line. And that's kind of it? The scattered items were never anything to get excited about. The pokemon themselves had such broad spawn ranges that I never really needed to seek out one.

The game radiates this emptiness. An empty world filled with empty people. And I can have my fun in it, but the game doesn't care. What else can you expect from overworked and underpaid developers. It has all the content one might reasonably expect. But it's just content. It's not passion. There's nothing I can point at in this game and say "the devs were having so much fun when they made this." All the good ideas are so underbaked that it seems they were taken out of the oven the second the dough began to rise. And now that it has cooled down in the basket of public scrutiny, it's all just kind of...deflated.

Nintendo has done open worlds before. Breath of the Wild and Pokemon Legends Arceus come to mind. Both of those games you can feel the passion. (Both of those games also run better, but I digress) Both games are extremely expressive and reveal a lot about the artists behind them. Scarlet and Violet are telling in their own way. This game yearns desperately to feel something. It begs for you to bring some passion so that if only for a moment it can feel like it has elevated itself to art.

Did I enjoy the game? Sure, parts of it. Pokemon has been such a mainstay of my life for so long, I can't imagine a world where I don't find some joy in a Pokemon game. But does Scarlet get the credit for that? I brought my love of Pokemon and found Pokemon that I love. That's me generating art and emotion and meaning on my end. In many ways, I had fine in spite of this game. The fun I had, I could have gotten as easily and more of it from almost any other Pokemon game.

Maybe that's the problem. Maybe it being Pokemon is the problem. I've played some other creature collectors. I loved Monster Sanctuary and Nexomon was okay and Shin Megami Tensei IV had my heart for a while, and I always come back to Persona, and despite myself I like Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth. But not a one of those is Pokemon. Pokemon has always been in my life in a way those other games haven't. I have these expectations for a Pokemon game that I don't bring with me to other games. I have a passion for it I don't feel for other games.

I knew before Scarlet and Violet came out that they would be janky. The promotional materials had dreadful aliasing and a ton of dropped frames. Nintendo advertised the performance issues. I would not say I was riding the hype train. Not since I got burned with X and Y and Sun and Moon. I've known better than to expect the world with AAA games for nigh on a decade now. But it's Pokemon. Pokemon!

I was ready to look for joy where it could be found. I was ready to look hard and look for a while. But that all runs on the assumption that there is joy to be found. I was not prepared to be asked to create my own joy.

Other games run on the idea of making your own fun. Minecraft, Animal Crossing, Trailmakers, The Sims. I am not opposed to being asked to create my own fun. But those games all gave me toys for doing that. ScarVi gives me nothing. It is passionless but constantly reminds me how much fun it is to be passionate. The plot keeps reminding me of the things this game is lacking. There is no fun to be found: you must make your own.

And that's what made the parts I liked stand out. I had been in control of the difficulty curve and stumbled into things harder than they should have been and so me fixing my own mistakes was fun. The game didn't do that. I did that, on accident, because I didn't know another way to do it yet.

Is there fun to be had in ScarVi? Sure. I had some fun. But you can have fun easier in any other game you care to compare it to, so why would any one bother with this one? Who cares? It sure doesn't seem like Gamefreak does.

[copypastejunkpile]

thinking about fallout

so that "next gen" update has hit fo4 and part of it adds enclave stuff! that's neat i suppose, but I don't think it's necessary or particularly good for the game. I feel like doing the obligatory faction shit in every fallout game, bethesda is kneecapping themselves by not allowing themselves to make multiple games set in the same region. hear me out, right; so the sole survivor emerges from vault 111 in 2287. It's pretty fair to assume the military had a considerable presence in the area, especially considering there was a presence at that little suburb's vault. It was probably of special interest to the government that specific vault. So why no enclave? Rather than assume the events of the prior games wiped them out or the writers just decided they wouldn't operate in this area of america, why not try to set up for a prequel game where there was an enclave presence, and someone else rolled through and tipped the dominos that killed them off? you could have certain characters allude to a former militaristic faction being in the area, and when the sole survivor asks if it's the brotherhood, said character would go "no it was some other guys who also claimed to be the military. it was real weird. they got hosed some years back and nobody's come looking though, so they must've been posers." like that would have been cooler right? that would have been cool. prequel content is (arguably) already pretty ok-ly written with fo76, why didn't they try it here? from a dev perspective it would have been great too since you can have it reuse a portion of the already created world, with different things tacked onto it like a mod.

I don't know shit about how development went for the game or if there's some npc that mentions the enclave to be fair, but I feel like it's a missed opportunity to not do this. I feel like it's a lot more compelling conceptually rather than modders writing fanfic that devs then decide to throw in.

--

tangentially I think there's some force in bethesda that either can't write the enclave or doesn't trust anyone to try. the enclave is a pretty primary motivator for base game content in 76, but every subsequent expansion basically fully disregards the faction. the most the faction has gotten is orlando.

[breakingarrows]

A Response to “Live Service Ruined Gaming” by NovemberHotel on YouTube.

I will preface this by saying that I am not writing this because I outright disagree or want to argue with or think NovemberHotel is wrong or dumb or anything like that. I am writing this because I watched the video a week or so ago and thought it made some good points and brought up some things I didn’t know about, but that I think it could be improved upon and made stronger in certain ways. I also believe that too often the “discourse” is really just people posting their opinions on Twitter or YouTube or whatever platform they choose without ever engaging in actual, real Conversation with other people, so here is my attempt to make a Conversation with this video as the subject.

“Players get a constant influx of content, and developers get a constant influx of money.”

I think the word usage of developers is a little dishonest here when it comes to who receives the majority of money a game makes, especially when comparing different studios and their owners/publishers. In this beginning montage we view gameplay footage from: Sea of Thieves, Overwatch 2, No Man’s Sky, Destiny 2, and Diablo IV. Beginning with the basic fact that, the people who are actually working day to day on these games are being paid a salary or an hourly rate regardless of the game’s monumental success or a significant failure. There might be a bonus based on the game’s launch or long term success, but you better hope it relies on a reachable goal, as we know games will sell well but fail to meet a metacritic average that allows a publisher and/or executive to walk away with all that money. This happened to Obsidian Entertainment and Fallout: New Vegas (a game you will be seeing pop up quite often in this video) in 2010 when Bethesda tied the bonus payment to a Metacritic score that Obsidian missed by just one decimal. Sea of Thieves comes from Rare, a Microsoft owned developer and you know Microsoft is funneling any and all financial success that game earns to its various executives such as Phil Spencer, the friendly common man who takes in more money in one year than you or I will ever see in our entire life. Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV are the latest from the Activision owned Blizzard, a company whose independence from its owner has only deteriorated more and more over time to where the two are pretty much indistinguishable from each other nowadays. I believe it was on a Giant Bomb podcast many years ago that they were discussing how Blizzard now is not the same as Blizzard in, say, 2009. The meaning being that Activison had more control over the direction Blizzard takes whereas beforehand Blizzard was free to continue operating as it had successfully for many years. No Man’s Sky is an independently produced game that has been shopped around to various publishers from Sony to 505 Games to Bandai Namco for its physical releases. Hello Games was infamously screwed over by Sony in their marketing of the game. For some, the amount of responsibility or fault between the two I’m sure will be debated forever. Also, in regards to No Man’s Sky appearances going forward, the game has only ever had a one time buy in with all updates and additions being free. Destiny 2 began life as an Activision product, no matter what independence Bungie attempts to trot out as part of their own pride. I do find that NovemberHotel’s comment about the Mental Health Resources tab on Bungie’s website despite them specifically creating a game that takes advantage of the mental state of players and used behavioral psychologist to help them incentivize people to buy into their game with both time and money is a great example of the bullshit corporate speaking to social issues but it only ever being empty words. For these developers who are owned by larger corporations, we all know Bobby Kotick is the one stuffing his pockets with your cosmetic purchase funds, not the engineer or animator or community manager you are yelling at on Twitter, Reddit, etc.

I do agree with the comment that customers are allowing this to happen more than they are not. This reminds me of the infamous Apex Legends “boycott” for August 2022’s season which ended with Apex having the largest new season playerbase of all time. Reddit is NOT representative of the majority of players. Sadly, yes, enough people are willing to pay and buy into these various live service games and that is why we keep seeing them happen despite the mounting failures.

In regards to live service meaning games now have “second chances” at life after launch I do think it is a double edged sword. I think games media can be too much of a forgiving optimist in terms of always having that saving grace of, “Well it could always get better, we’ll see!” which exempts them somehow from doing any real criticism of the game as it exists now. I know games are fluid with the advent of online consoles and patches but I also do agree that games that launch and are “not good,” do seem to get a pass in terms of, “well it could get better.” I do not agree however with the assertion that good reviews = good sales. Okami, Psychonauts, Bayonetta, and Beyond Good & Evil are some great games that were reviewed well but sold poorly. On the flip end, Homefront, Enter the Matrix, Resident Evil 6, Star Wars Battlefront II (2017), and Aliens: Colonial Marines reviewed poorly but were still commercial successes. Reviews don’t matter when it comes to sales. Also the image that first conjured up my interest in writing up a response was when he shows Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Final Fantasy VII, and Super Mario 64 as masterpieces developers were “forced” to put out due to the lack of post-launch updates. Except, Final Fantasy VII has a infamously bad translation that carried forward to even its release on PSN in 2009. Also, I have the obvious claim that these games are regarded as classics, yes, but don’t act like there aren’t any contemporary games that are regarded as classics upon their day one release: Disco Elysium, Breath of the Wild, and Elden Ring. Let’s not act like every game released in 1996 was a complete and perfect product. I do think it is very telling that he mentions, “But the convenience that comes with patching a game post launch, allows these studios to ship incomplete, buggy, imbalance, and outright broken games with the promise of live service support to address feedback on these issue and fix them later.” He will later go on to feature many clips of Fallout: New Vegas, implicitly as an example of a game done right. Fallout: New Vegas which was infamously criticized for being incomplete, buggy, imbalanced, and outright broken at launch! I was there! You probably were too! Don’t act like Fallout: New Vegas was held as the beacon of how to release a game in 2010 because we know it wasn’t!

I very much agree with live service games being a carrot on the stick in which you are strung along to always come back and buy into their store. I’ve never given into the instinct but I acknowledge it is there that I want to obtain everything that exists for a given game I’m playing, I want to have it “whole” and “complete” but live service games make this impossible on purpose in order to keep you playing and to keep you spending and it is not good for the players. These games being designed to specifically keep you occupied at all times and prey on the FOMO of content is insidious and gross, but again, I lay the blame at the feet of the publishers. I don’t think anyone at Arkane Austin wanted to make Redfall, I think Bethesda, their owner, saw the success of live service games and told Arkane to make one regardless of their own interests. I doubt Gotham Knights was the game WB Games Montréal wanted to make had they the freedom of choice. 

NovmeberHotel’s argument in favor of in-game currency unlocks and progression systems is pretty much the same that my response has been to things such as lootboxes and battle passes. In my argument though it is Halo: Reach in place of Call of Duty: Black Ops, but the results and principles are largely the same. Cosmetics existed within the game and could be added, but were unlocked via in-game challenges or by earning credits by playing which could then be spent on whatever cosmetic you had unlocked and desired at that time. Going from Halo: Reach to Halo 5, I no longer could reliably unlock a cosmetic I wanted, I had to gamble on lootboxes and hope it was included in whatever drop I received. This was a BAD change. I do, however, prefer the additional maps being automatically added in a large portion of online games instead of premium paid add-ons as it reliably keeps the playerbase shared instead of segmented, which can make contemporary matches in Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops difficult because not everyone owns all the maps, so they rarely, if ever, appear in matchmaking today. Also I acknowledge the reduction of overall content but I think this is largely to be blamed on the increased fidelity in games that the audience demands. Battleblock can afford total destruction because it is literally blocks of right angles, whereas Battlefield 2042 has to be the most modern shiny technically impressive graphical engine which therefore loses out on destructibility at the scale previously seen. These games are only getting more expensive to make as we race to the bottom in terms of fidelity with more and more people being required to render the textures at larger and larger resolutions at a consistent framerate. I do agree that modern games appear to revolve around profiting off of FOMO and whale players.

I do bemoan that single player games are now also introducing battle passes and microtransactions, Ubisoft being the primary offender in this regard. I will also always cheer on those who point out how hostile publishers are to modders and fan-created works that improve upon the original game. Modding, piracy, emulation, and all of their ilk are worthy of praise and support and have done more for the medium than pretty much all major publishers combined.

I’m not entirely sure if I believe Live Service is here to stay. I really hate that Sony has twelve live service games in production (whether the disappointing live service adaptation of Marathon remains to be seen) but I do think the amount of failures, specifically financial failures, will be something the decision makers will be taking into account as they continue to pile up. 

[nightingaelic]

nightingaelic's definitive list of Fallout blorbos

(based on this post, thanks for the idea @ceilingcow)

Quick Guide

blorbo: My favorite character, the character I think about the most

scrunkly: My baby, the character that gives me cuteness aggression, friend-shaped

scrimblo bimblo: Underrated, unappreciated favorite

glup shitto: Obscure favorite, character that could pop up in the background for a millisecond and I won't shut up about it for weeks

poor little meow meow: Problematic favorite, unpopular favorite, controversial favorite, maybe even a pathetic favorite

horse plinko: The character I would torment for fun

eeby deeby: The character I would send to superhell

Fallout 3

blorbo: Sarah Lyons

I just want to give this girl a hug. She's so like the Lone Wanderer in that she didn't choose any of this. Dad up and makes a decision that drags you away from whatever future you might have made for yourself and forces you down another path... sound familiar? I doubly dwell on this woman because of Bethesda's baffling decision to kill her off-screen. Give me the messy in-between

scrunkly: Fawkes

I want to hole up in the Arlington Library with this guy and just read. Start a wasteland book club, wander around the Capital Wasteland as a traveling pair of librarians, teach wastelanders to read, lend out books and collect new ones as Aqua Pura starts to make its way outward and ease everyone's lives a little bit. I want Fawkes to find himself in the stories that survive. I want to give him a hug, too.

scrimblo bimblo: Nadine

Maybe this is just me, but there's something wonderful about the Point Lookout DLC focusing on a girl who voluntarily ran off to seek her fortune. Sure, maybe she wound up in some hot water along the way, but I still love her so much. And she got a boat out of the ordeal! Absolute tomboy queen. We need more Nadine content in general, Fallout fanscape

glup shitto: Sydney & Emaline

Hey, remember Sydney? The cute treasure hunter who got stuck in the National Archives while looking for the Declaration of Independence? The one with the missing dad who's sick of men hitting on her and who takes the caps from her contract to go open a weapons shop in Underworld? Remember her girlfriend, Emaline, who helps her kick your ass if you double-cross her? Does anybody remember? PLEASE

poor little meow meow: Clover

I want to put her in therapy. That's it, I just feel bad for her. I want her to work through everything she's seen and come out the other side. I know the world of Fallout sliding back into slavery makes sense, but it's just so painful to see.

horse plinko: Butch DeLoria

Butch spent ages being a dick in Vault 101, I'm not letting him off the hook just because he was nice one time when I saved his mom. I don't want him to bite the dust, I just want him to spend some time living in the cold and the rust and the radiation before he gets his redemption arc.

eeby deeby: Jericho

Justice for Jenny.

Fallout New Vegas

blorbo: Veronica Santangelo

I want the world for this woman. I want her to keep skipping around the Mojave making friends in odd places, looking for fashionable duds and punching anyone who dares intrude on her good day. I want her people to realize the error of their ways and welcome her home, change their whole Codex around, track down Christine and officiate a wedding where Veronica gets to wear the laciest, frilliest, whitest dress she can find and kiss the girl of her dreams. I want this so badly it hurts, and that makes it hurt all the more to know that it just can't happen.

scrunkly: ED-E

Squeeze him, squeeze the friendly orb

scrimblo bimblo: Ulysses

I could honestly drop this man into the "poor little meow meow" category because I know he's got a questionable past of his own, but I just don't see as many fan works and discussions about him as I do about Joshua Graham. Which is a DAMN SHAME, because he is just as ripe for thematic parallels, redemption stories and memes as the Burned Man, I will die on this hill

glup shitto: Roxie

She is NOT just a Rex knock-off, I want so badly to take her back to the Lucky 38 and just give her a room full of cushions to sleep on and all the dog bones in the world to gnaw through, such a good girl

poor little meow meow: Joshua Graham

Is he a Mormon bastard who ruined a shit ton of lives? Yes. Is he professedly repentant but practically unrepentant? Absolutely. Does his entire DLC reek of tropes I'd like to burn and toss into the Grand Canyon? You bet. Do I still want to throw him into circumstances that test his faith, twist his spine and turn him into something worthy of all the horny fan art I keep seeing of him? Please, God, take this man away from me before he rots my brain any further

horse plinko: Vulpes Inculta

Listen, is it too much to ask for all of Vulpes' best-laid plans to be completely wrecked by the courier and friends in the wasteland's most ridiculous comedy of errors? I just want to imagine him having to report to Caesar over and over with his tail between his legs while Caesar gets progressively more and more angry with him. What do you mean, the Omertas were overthrown by their own prostitutes and strippers

eeby deeby: Robert House

It's not that I dislike House as a character, I just hate him as a person. Suck my dick, Elon Howard Hughes Musk

Fallout 4

blorbo: Robert Joseph MacCready

Just look at his hat and his goatee and his eyes and his cheekbones and his dumbass coat with only one sleeve and his everything... stinky rat bastard men, why do I love you so

scrunkly: Dogmeat

Danse, Curie, Hancock, Preston, Piper, everyone, I'M SORRY, he's too cute, certified good boy (TM)

scrimblo bimblo: Isabel Cruz & Kasumi Nakano

This is a toss-up, and also I ship these two. Of all the fics I've never written, my most beloved is a story about Kasumi and Isabel meeting through radio contact and falling in love. I've worked it in here or there in my main fic series, but it's always at the back of my mind.

glup shitto: Chase

So you're telling me that there is only ONE (1) lady Courser in this game, and she doesn't have some amazing stories about being the only woman in a sea of men with the same face, or some bomb-ass dialogue with X6-88 about why she decided to run, or anything, ANYTHING, good god I want more of her so badly

poor little meow meow: Arthur Maxson

Heir to everything that's left of the Brotherhood, Mary Sue who went from accidentally shooting Sarah Lyons to killing a deathclaw singlehandedly in three years, egotist who decided it was a good idea to fly out to an area where he wasn't wanted, literal messiah figure among some shadowy sections of his order- the Arthur Maxson in my head is infinitely more interesting than the Arthur Maxson in this game, but that's enough to make me write a whole damn AO3 series about the man and fill in the gaps. Who's the real loser here? Still me? Fine

horse plinko: Proctor Quinlan

I just like imagining how this man's life is eternally being interrupted by Brotherhood jocks who don't get why they're being assigned to escort a Scribe instead of going to fight raiders, who keep stealing the latest holotape acquisitions because it's a new song or story to pass around, who give the head of the Order of the Quill so much shit but absolutely dote upon his cat- the possibilities are endless

eeby deeby: Father

Ugh, I take zero responsibility for this nightmare, who raised you

Fallout 76

blorbo: Sofia Daguerre

Commander, let me cuddle you in my CAMP when it's cold and read through the box of comic books I found for you- let me tell you all about the real Mistress of Mystery, all my cramped years I spent in the vault and how lost I felt when the door finally opened, how even if I was lost, I still finally felt free, and how beautiful your face looked in the light of that bunker's glowing mushrooms

scrunkly: Beckett

Yet another stinky rat bastard man, combining the sunglasses of Boone, the dialogue of Deacon, the leather jacket of Butch and the angst of all three. You're so awkward, Beckett, don't ever stop

scrimblo bimblo: Burke & Weasel

Another toss-up, I just love Burke's general presence and Weasel's callous covering for genuine concern about her friends. I want more of both. Also, nonbinary and AAC representation!

glup shitto: The Motherlode

MOMMY

poor little meow meow: Penny Hornwright

I realize that this is me being hypocritical because of how I treated House, and Penny is just another unfeeling industrialist who drove the world to destruction and somehow got away with it, but she's also, just, PROFOUNDLY sad. I can't get over how sad her story is at heart. She lost her father to his own mind before the bombs fell, she lost the love of her life and her child, she lost her beauty and her wealth and any semblance of a world where her name mattered, beyond angry and scared whispers. You DO NOT need to feel sorry for her, but I do. Just a little.

horse plinko: Johnny Weston

How did this man fail so spectacularly upward, how did he wind up on the Vault 79 heist team and think that his pre-war criminal record wouldn't matter, how did Meg actually fall for this jackass, and why aren't there more options to mess with him for the fun of it? I want to steal his tuxedos. I want to dig up old holotapes of his bad acting and screen them for Crater. I want to sic Ra-Ra and Gail on his bunk with a roll of toilet paper and a pack of sidewalk chalk.

eeby deeby: Doctor Edgar Blackburn

Give Keith Szarabajka a better role, next time. Or at least a better-written one.

[ssa-sugar-tits]

The Biggest Surprise

Request: this one (@zizzlekwum , happy birthday!!)

I was wondering if I could get Prentiss x reader where Prentiss comes back from the dead and the reader is just like "you motherfuckers" to Hotch and JJ and just really pissed and standoffish to everyone because reader is not good with feelings but then at the end of the case Prentiss goes to reader with a little present for reader's birthday and then feelings reveal and fluff ensues?

Pairing: Emily Prentiss x Reader

Content warnings: strong language, death mention, guns, hostage, grief, depression, unsub s**cide, angst + fluff

a/n: left the present she gets you open-ended so use your imagination ♡

When you lost Emily, your entire world shattered. Not only did you lose a team member, but you lost a friend. A friend you love-- loved. The weight of the casket was nothing compared to the weight of your heart that day. Her river like tears and cherry blood still burn on your skin. It's been 10 months of true hell without seeing the midnight beauty. Without hearing her caramel smooth voice. Without feeling her butterly wing touch. You've actually been preparing, for the first birthday since you met her where you wouldn't make plans with her. So when Hotch and JJ explain how they lied and betrayed you, it's enough to make you want to rip your own hair out.

"Seven months ago, I made a decision that affected this team. As you all know, Emily had lost a lot of blood after her fight with Doyle. But the doctors were able to stabilize her, and she was airlifted from Boston to Bethesda under covert exfiltration. Her identity was strictly need to know. And she stayed there until she was well enough to travel. She was reassigned to Paris, where she was given several identities, none of which we had access to, for her security."

Your emotions are ripped up and thrown to the ground. The team is quick to react.

"She's alive?"

"But we buried her!"

"If I got issues? Yeah I got issues!"

JJ places a hand on your shoulder, trying to ease you with her motherly love but you push her away and screw your eyes shut.

"Y/N..." She tries again.

"No! You lied to me, you... you let me think she was dead." Your voice breaks and hot, angry tears trail down your face until you feel a hand on your arm. Almost swatting it away, you recognize her voice. Her fucking voice. Even better than you remembered.

"Y/N, it's me," she whispers. "It's Emily."

And goddamn, it is.

- two weeks later -

"Y/N, go with Prentiss to interview the mother." Hotch orders. Oh fuck me, you complain to yourself. No matter how much you missed her glorious presence, Emily lied to you. She left you. You were alone. Alone with the miserable memory of your angel. Alone with your thoughts. How could life be worth living without a goddess such as Emily? You'd thought it many, many times. There were days you couldn't get out of your bed, nights you clasped the sheets trying to get the image of her cold, bloody figure out of your brain.

"Yeah, okay." You don't look at her, only walking out to the SUV. Deafening silence fills the vehicle as neither of you speak.

"Y/N, can we--"

"Don't." Cutting her off, you roll your eyes at a notification on your phone. Same fucking thing.

JJ

hey, y/n. can we talk when the case is over? will's off tonight, we can go for drinks. you have every right to be angry but please give me this chance.

A pit grows in Emily's stomach and a lump in her throat. She doesn't push the matter further, letting you have your way. You pull up to the victim's mother's home and knock on the door.

"Hello?" Emily squints through the fogged window.

"Mrs. Bennett? It's Agents Prentiss and Y/L/N with the FBI, we have a few questions to ask you."

Crash.

In sync, you and Emily reach for your guns and she kicks down the door with her long, swift leg. You can't help but admire the way her pants cling to her thighs. Y/N, what the fuck? She broke you, stop staring at her fucking legs. Walking into the home, a man fitting the description of your unsub holds the mother at gunpoint. She whimpers and pleads, "P-Please help me agents."

"FBI, drop the gun."

"I'm not going to jail!" The vein in his forehead bulges before he takes the gun to his own head and pulls the trigger. His hostage runs to you, screaming and covered in his crimson blood.

"It's okay, I got you." you escort her out of the home. You don't take a second glance at Emily. You can't control what you might do if you look.

Back at the BAU, you fill out your report mindlessly. Detailing the unsub's final actions and working around admitting the lack of cooperation you displayed.

"Y/L/N, in my office."

Obeying Hotch, you stand and make your way to his office.

"Yes, sir?" Hostility spits at him, telling him you feel utterly wronged. He sighs and you can tell from the creases in his face that he feels guilty but you can't bring yourself to care.

"I made the decision for Emily's own good."

"I understand that, sir."

"If you have a problem, take it up with me. JJ was only following my orders and Prentiss was being kept safe."

Rage boils in your chest and your knuckles could burst from the pressure of your fist. You're interrupted by a knock on the door. JJ stands at the doorway along with Emily.

"I could hear you guys and I thought we could talk, Y/N," JJ says quietly, tucking a blonde tress behind her ear.

"Please?" The brunette adds.

You feel sick.

"Y/N?"

Your insides start turning.

"I'm sorry."

"Y/N."

You're not even sure who's speaking anymore but your name is being repeated and thrown around.

"Y/N?"

Your head spins and you exhale harshly, finally snapping at the people around you.

"Shut up, shut up! Just shut the fuck up all of you! You're all shitty people, you fucking lied to me!" You cry. "You let me think Emily was fucking dead. For 10 months I cried and mourned her to the point where it physically hurt. I was dying too guys. And you motherfuckers can't just decide that after tormenting me inside for almost a year, everything's okay. Fuck you."

They all watch-- and let you-- leave, dumbstruck at the outburst.

Groaning with a massive migraine from breaking down the night before, you awaken to texts from your friends.

penelope:

happy birthday, my amazing best friend!! first of many gifts at your door <3

jj:

happy birthday y/n! lots of kisses from me and the boys 😊

spencer:

happy birthday! interestingly enough, a birthday is considered a renewed chance for new beginnings which is, so to speak, the technical way to say: have a good day (and year!)

derek:

happy birthday, pretty thing. don't have too much fun without me ;)

rossi:

happy birthday kiddo. if you change your mind about a party, one phone call is all it takes. i'll make you a grande birthday dish if you so please 🍝

hotch:

happy birthday, y/l/n. enjoy yourself :)

Drained, you scoff in annoyance at your friends pretending everything's alright. But then it dawns upon you that you didn't receive a message from Emily. And despite the emotional torture she put you through, it hurts that she couldn't be bothered to give you any acknowledgement.

"Happy birthday to me," you grumble and force yourself out of bed. Yawning, you make your way to the kitchen and mix some orange juice and vodka. "What a shame I don't have any candles."

Bringing the straw to your lips, you barely get to take a sip of your pitiful concoction when a knock comes to your door. It shocks you to see Emily's snowy skin and cocoa eyes awaiting. Quickly attempting to fix your hair and sweat drenched t-shirt, you give up and open the door for the woman on the other side.

"Please don't slam the door in my face."

"Do you have a good reason I shouldn't?"

"Well I brought you something."

She lifts the gift to your hands and you gasp in pleasant surprise.

"Oh my god, Em thank you!" Shifting uncomfortably, you remember your pride and go back to your intolerable demeanor but it's too late.

"All it took for you to talk to me was a bribe? Wish I'd known that when I came back from the dead." She laughs. Your voice falls low.

"Emily, I'm sorry for the way I've treated you but you don't understand."

Emily has a feeling it's the other way around. You're the one who doesn't understand.

"What don't I understand Y/N?"

You take a step closer to her and place a hand on her supple cheek, cautiously as if asking permission. Emily closes her eyes lightly allowing you to brush a strand of hair from her face.

"I love you, Emily Prentiss."

She flutters her eyes open and lets out a shaky breath.

"I love you too, Y/N. I mourned you just as much as you mourned me."

Your heart stops and you look her in the eyes.

"Kiss me, Em."

Without a second of hesitation, she connects her lips to yours and kisses you passionately, brushing her tongue on your bottom lip. A salty tear slips into the taste of your flesh tasting one another but neither of you let go yet. Resting your head on her forehead, you smile.

"Since you're here, spend my birthday with me?" you whisper.

"Just try and stop me, Y/L/N." She giggles, plopping down on your couch.

Setting aside all the anguish you've sufferered one thing is certain. Emily and her fucking surprises can take you over any day.

[repentantsky]

5 Companies That Have Too Much Hype Around Them

Look, we all love our favorite games with a passion, and to an extent that’s fine, but when that passion becomes obsession and that obsession becomes forgetting our own moral compass for the sake of entertainment, it does feel like it’s gone too far. It’s one thing to love what a company releases, it’s completely another to ignore every problem they’ve ever had. Not all of the companies on this list have done horribly un-ethical things, but they’ve at least been anti-consumer, and the fact that people don’t question that enough has led to them sometimes, making horrible mistakes. I am RepentantSky, I love making lists that trash on things that are popular, and these are 5 companies, that have too much hype around them.

5. Nintendo

Already I can hear people getting angry, and in a way I get it. Nintendo is for many people the place where they either begin to play games, or the place they go to keep on playing them when everything else let’s them down, and of course, they put an end to the flipping video game crash of 1983, and no one else will ever be able to claim that from them. That’s all wonderful, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be critical of them. I’ve talked about a number of things they’ve done wrong before, so let me quickly run down the list of some of their anti-consumer practices. They, charge too much for remasters and ports, they don’t drop prices in games, they used to charge for fixing Joy-Cons and now completely deny it’s a problem for legal reasons, despite everyone pretty much having experienced drift, they haven’t been good at getting stock for their items in at least 20 years, and oh yeah, they sell all the content for a remake for $115 on the 3DS, the system and the fans that helped them get by while the Wii U was massively underperforming, all while handing owners of the, at the time, unproven Switch, free content. Nintendo has a tendency to still think like a toy company, and they even used that idea to present the Nintendo Entertainment System as a toy instead of a console when they first game to the West with it, but they aren’t a toy company, their a gaming company that also sells toys, just like everyone else. I get they’ve done amazing things, I own over 150 physical handheld games from them, and a ton of digital games besides, but when they start charging twice what they are worth for SD cards, while releasing games that absolutely won’t fit on the limited space of the Switch, and they simply don’t care when costumers complain, it’s time to at least question their motives.  

4. Bethesda

Boy I used to really rip on this company back when I posted lists on Facebook, but I haven’t done it in a while, so let’s do it again. Bethesda has absolutely spent at least the last 10 years lying to people, Todd Howard, has become famous for it, but I think I might have been the only person who wasn’t shocked when Fallout 76 was the disaster that it was. There were so many things wrong with that game, that I don’t even have time to go over every little thing, but lying, you know the thing that will get another company on this list very soon, was a big thing they did with the game. They promised at one point that they weren’t ever going to charge for items in the game that gave in-game benefits, and they did, allowing ammo and other items to be bought with real money for a time, they promised new, specialized servers if you paid for a yearly service that was way too expensive, and that wasn’t true because people found proof of things missing from what would have been a freshly made, private server, and there’s no excuse for that, games in early access do that correctly, and they aren’t, at least supposedly, even finished yet. I wish I could say that’s all they’ve done, but they also bullied an indie developer over their game Prey, a game they may have bullied the original developer for so they could get cheaper, but we’ll never know because they refused to comment on that when asked, they also refused to update their outdated game engine for years, which caused something they spent over a decade fixing, games releasing with glitches, some of them game breaking. Yet somehow, they have such a fan base that those who love their games will claim the glitches are just part of the charm. That kind of fierce loyalty led to Fallout 76, and even though we make jokes about it even now, the horse DLC from way back in the day, was an indication of everything they’ve done, including trying to charge for mods made for free, meant to be consumed for free, twice. Bethesda is a bad company and they do not care. 

3. Activision/Blizzard

You know one of the worst things Nintendo does that I didn’t really mention directly in the first entry, is limit the amount of time a product is available, instead of just letting it be there for consumption as long as it’s selling (that was what the toy company reference was about if it wasn’t clear). However, Activision/Blizzard are the Kings of doing this, as they not only limited things while they were in control of Destiny 2 to the point where you pretty much had to use real money to get everything, and never mind everything else they did to it, because we’d be here all day going through it all, but they also don’t support games as a service titles long enough for dedicated fans. Crash Team Racing Nitro fueled, is a prime example of this. People weren’t done with that game, and when fans thought for even a split second that an update was going to come to fix an issue, their hype (mine to) was so explosive, it was almost like we were getting a new game, but then nothing happened, because they didn’t care. A lot of companies that do yearly release titles as a service have this problem and nothing exemplified that more for Activision, than Skylanders, a series originally made off the back of Spyro, who didn’t even wait for a year to release new games, as technically between October 21st and November 20th of the year the first game came out, they released three of them, and I’m not even kidding. Two of them, were mobile games! You might have thought I was going to go after Call of Duty, for this, but that horse has been beaten to ground, somehow, more than Skylanders was. They also, for whatever reason, released each expansion on different generations console generations, at different months throughout Fall, like somehow the season of Fall, they needed a release every month, if not two, and so off they went. I didn’t even get into Blizzard, but all I need to say is “Blitzchung” and all the memories will likely come flooding back. There’s also the fact that in two separate years, after gaining massive profits, they dropped hundreds of employees, and hired more than they’d let go, but I guess that doesn’t really matter to some of you, because when they did it this year, with so little warning, most employees found out via the news articles about it, but we all made such a little stink this time around, it didn’t create any media buzz, so I guess that doesn’t matter, you’d all rather play flipping World of Warcraft, like better MMO’s don’t exist. 

2. CD Projekt Red

I know this one comes off a little more fresh in the mind, and they technically only lied about one game, but man, what a series of lies it was. Also, let’s be honest, one major game, does not a great developer always make. CDPR’s previous two Witcher games did exactly what the author of the books thought they would, and that was almost nothing in terms of making a serious impact, and the reason is, they are kind of bad. They aren’t the worst games out there, but there is a good reason why The Witcher 1 and 2 haven’t been ported and/or remastered, despite how important they are to the story of Witcher 3, and that’s because they both suck. Cyperpunk 2077, was in a lot of ways, them just going back to being the developer they were before, the BIG ONE happened. They lied about nearly everything in regards to the game, including how the main platforms where consumers were going to buy it, were actually running well. I made those references to Witcher 1 and  2 for a reason, although if I’m being honest, they actually look better than Cyberpunk did on day 0, and that’s completely unacceptable. The budget for CDPR was basically nothing for Witcher 1 and 2 combined to what Cyberpunk got, but they were so focused on the PC versions because PC ran the game better, somehow (like maybe because they didn’t try with consoles) and they missed glitches that were so bad, the game felt like it was still in beta, if not alpha upon release. The fact that they’ve only released eleven games in twenty-three years, and only two of them didn’t have The Witcher on them, should have told us all we need to know, and yet the game, even after returns, which was another massive screw-job that led to Cyberpunk being removed from the PlayStation store, still sold Sixteen million units, all because of hype, and because apparently, some people don’t care if they’re lied to. Do you want to know what the other game they released is besides a Witcher title? It was flipping Saints Row 2, a fun game, but also one that’s too goofy for it’s own good, and yet suddenly makes Cyberpunk’s release, make sense, because it was all a massive joke, and a parody of good, well running, open world games. CDPR needs to seriously do something, anything different, and never release a game in this poor of a state ever again.

1. Ubisoft

I put Ubisoft at number one for a damn good reason, and that reason is, that everyone seems to hate the company, but loves their games, and I don’t know why. They haven’t been the overall worst company on this list, although they are pretty bad, but the major problem they have, and have had for at least a decade is that none of their games have any identity, they are literally all the same game, with different coats of paint. Sure, an occasional gem sneaks through like Assassin’s Creed IV, but all of the rest of their games have the same visual style (although ACII does seem to be the base for which they create their art let’s be honest), the shooting mechanics they have in all the games that have guns, all feel exactly the same, which is something even Call of Duty manages to avoid most years (guess I took a shot at them anyways) and yet somehow, someway, I keep seeing people getting excited for their releases, and it doesn’t make any sense. Sure, they throw a celebrity actor in from time to time, and the artistic style they use does look pretty cool, but everything is always the same with them, every single time, no matter what it is, and they still keep making money. It doesn’t really make sense either, because a lot of developers do make games that are very similar feeling, see the Life is Strange team or much as well all loved them, Telltale Games, but at least those titles told extremely interesting stories, and developed their mechanics at least a little, which is something most companies do just on principal, but not Ubisoft. They throw out a few Tom Clancy games every time they talk about what their releasing, the Trials and AC games are still mostly a yearly experience, and I’ll say it again, their entire list of releases since at least 2013, the year the previous generation kicked off, have pretty much all been the same. It would be nice if they made more games like Child of Light, but despite the fact that their games will likely never be as popular as Call of Duty, they keep churning out same-y shooters hoping that one day, maybe just one day, they’ll create their own CoD, and it’s just not gonna happen. The saddest part of all is that when they announce something different, something fans have wanted for years, we get The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake, which was literally delayed because fans said they wouldn’t buy it unless some actual effort was put into making it, why is this company so popular that it can keep doing this, someone please explain it to me. 

And that’s my list, can you think of any other companies that are too hyped? Let me know in the notes below, hit me up with a follow if you like my content, and give me a reblog, I’d really appreciate it. Have a wonderful life!  

[venusmages]

THAT BEING SAID, heres my list of criticisms for CP2077 so far because i’m not just blindly praising it. under a readmore for a few spoilers, one major character spoiler so if you’re playing don’t read this until youre finished with act 1

this isnt bringing into the account of the criticisms console players are talking about bc im on PC, but i completely agree with frustrated console players about launch being a mess.

the fact that they cut you being able to take jackie with you to go meet with meredith is really frustrating. i wonder if they lost time and it broke something because it was in the gameplay demo from a while back.

on the same vein, t-bugs ‘death’ was so sudden and fast that i didn’t even register it as her supposedly dying until v brings it up later in the level. i thought she had just gotten hurt and booted from the program. if she’s actually dead i’m going to be incredibly disappointed and its going to be one of my few genuine sour notes on the game.

the romances are laughably inserted and shouldn’t have even been part of marketing in my opinion. from my understanding it looks like they’re all sidequests and there’s only like four of them total anyways. dont bother if your v isnt into one of the two options they have and just pretend youre kissin whoever you want lol

takemuras introduction was amazing but i feel like i missed a dialog somewhere that explained why he ended up getting chased by arasaka so fast after the events of act 1. i know his motivation but am a little confused about whats going on.

in the same vein, some optional dialog choices don’t actually feel optional if you don’t want to feel like you’re missing context for whats going on. i don’t mean this in a lore way, i mean this in a basic narrative way. 

i like that v clearly has their own personality that you kinda tweak and manipulate through your own actions, like with geralt in the witcher series. however i completely understand if people were lead to believe they’d be getting COMPLETE FREEDOM and are let down by the reality of V being a slightly less mailable character. as someone who likes witcher and the dragon age and mass effect series i’m okay with my oc having a pre-ordained personality but marketing could easily have misled people to believe otherwise and thats a totally valid complaint.

i love jackie to DEATH and hes one of the most likable videogame characters ever. however i do wonder sometimes if he suffers from ‘bilingual people don’t talk like that’ syndrome. it can get kinda muddy given how translators work in this universe.

in the same vein i think some of the calls for the game being transphobic or misogynist are overblown but i feel like part of it is the game might not be properly relaying that the overly sexual, violent, objectifying advertisements in 2077 is actually part of the lore and not CD trying to be cheeky ala Saints Row. Its a crit on consumerism and how desensitized the populace of the future gets to hatred, violence, and sex that it has to be overblown to the point of ludicracy. it might not translate for someone who hasn’t taken the time to look into the lore or familarize themselves with the vibe of the series before picking up the game. YES it is incredibly gritty and dark, but thats the point. However I think that fact needed to be communicated better because it just won’t be palatable for some people. Its stuff like this that makes me think we really need content warnings ALA fanfic for... all media, really. its a good idea. i could see the ‘fuckable piece of meat’ line being genuinely terrifying for some people and it comes out of nowhere. I like dark media and content but i don’t know if the game properly conveys beforehand that this is a BLEAK. world. BLEAK. 

i also think, unfortunately, its clear the team was crunched and ran out of time for a lot of things they wanted to add into the game. i feel like tying gender to v’s voice was the most elegant solution they had considering all of the voicelines in game. not saying it’s the best solution, but i’m glad they did that rather than tie it to body type or genetalia.

that being said i wish you could have a biotic pussy or dick in this game just bc that would be some cool transhumanism. same in general i wish you could replace limbs or eventually get more cyberware options that changed how you look.

I’m glad they’re gonna fix the epilepsy trigger but I’m also surprised and disappointed no one caught that might be a problem earlier on. I wonder what play testing was like.

Also glad the dev team isnt going to be treated like the new vegas team and they’re getting their bonus regardless of the game’s review score. that’s some stupid bullshit but every publisher does that shit unfortunately.

the fact you cant change your makeup, cybernetics, or hair after the start is dumb and i hope they fix that.

the c key being for crouching AND skipping dialogue is inelegant to say the least. you can fix it in settings for skipping dialogue to be ‘hold c’ but it shouldn’t have been an issue in the first place.

ai definitely wasnt finished and it shows. largely in how theres clearly no AI driving and how cops feel half-implimented.

managing stash is CONFUSING. so is the hacking minigame until you get used to it.

it is a LITTLE apparent that you’re going to go into Cutscene Time because characters tell you to sit somewhere specific. However once you’re in those locked scenes the game is still super immersive and beautiful so it’s not too bad.

i don’t understand why youd buy a car when you have one already and a motorcycle but i’ll still probably shop around for funsies

combat definitely feels floaty but ive played bethesda games and nothing can be as bad as those so its fine for me.

i know there’s more but thats what i have so far. I’m having a great time but those are my Thots.

[electronicdelusionstarlight]

We need to talk about Project AHO

Project AHO is a DLC sized quest mod for Skyrim. It has 6500+ endorsement, and almost 118K unique downloads, and promises to add a hidden Telvanni settlement, 40+ new locations, 20+ fully voiced NPCs, new perks, new weapons, a new house, all dwemer or telvanni themed, and a non linear main quest with more than 12 side quests added in.

It's also, to use a particularly abused word as of late, fucking problematic.

The Mod Page doesn't mention many details about the mod, but it sure loves to point out how complex and varied the NPCs AI is, almost like real people with real moralities and real routines.

Anyway, Due to probably a bug (Mod is not supposed to not start till level 15) and the fact the abandoned prison is close to the place where you can trigger the mod, I barelly started a new Skyrim game and gotten Kaidan as we got out of prison together, before I was REMINDED FORCIBLY just why I couldn't stand this mod in the first place back in 2018.

So, small nitpick first: the game (should) suggest you at level 15 to free your followers before going to Mixwater Mill since they may cause bugs if they are mixed in the mod. This is bad for roleplaying reason since why would you logically decide to go there alone (want to buy some wood for your new house and you want to surprise them, so they wait you home?), but I would get beyond it if the rest of the Mod hadn't been... about that.

That being said, here's the meat of the issue:

If you reach the Mill after level 15, possibly with no follower, a Orc will approach you. Exiting his dialogue will only trigger the end of the scene early, he's essential, and whatever you do, whatever happens, whatever you say to him about his quest, what happens next is unavoidable.

He starts to hype you up with Trinimac and Daggerfall lore, which got me pretty excited at first when I played the mod for the first time, since, again, they only mentioned this being about a Hidden Telvanni settlement built over a Dwemer Ruin in the rift, so I thought the mod was going to be about the Boethia - Triminac Vore and Scat party that gave us the Dunmer and the Orcs, at least tangentially, so I go for the excited, eager to help dialogue route with him as he talks about epic quests and shit, except after we reach the last line, he goes something like "actually, this was all a diversion for having my mates sneak behind you and knock you out."

You are knocked out. No one can help you, you can do nothing to stop it, you can't even fight or talk or teleport your way out of it. It's scripted and it's unavoidable.

Next thing you know, you wake up in a cramped cell in prisoners rags, a mind control amulet at your neck, and 4 other prisoners.

Which is when the slave auction starts.

Project AHO is a mod about slavery. Is a mod about the Last Dragonborn, away from their loved ones, is tricked, ambushed and captured by a secret settlement of Telvanni wizards, before getting sold at a fucking slave auction.

And then, after all is said and done, after you’ve literally getting enslaved by Neloth 2.0, forced to fulfill tasks for him as the game, very pointedly, tries to make you empathize with this FUCKING SLAVERS via side quests (Oh, the daughter of the local hunter wants to travel the world and have adventures, and you can have a nice and friendly pint of beer with the fucking SLAVE CATCHER that captured you, and you meet another slave who didn’t get his tongue cut out, unlike most of the other ones in the bloody place, how nice, how fucking human of them), the game has the fucking AUDACITY to have the fucking leader of the settlement free you (not out of anything, but because your master is doing shady shit on the side and has kicked you out of his mansion after the last task), and then go, after you understandably ask why the FUCK shouldn’t you burn the place to the ground: “Oh, but slavery is such an important and integral part of our culture and economy, we dunmer will never change and will always have slaves so why should you bother, you are free now!”

This mod. In a escapist fucking game such as Skyrim. Is bad. Is REALLY bad.

Even putting aside the obvious lore reasons (Morrowind abolished slavery 200+ years ago under House Hlaalu, and even if they lynched them for it they are STILL not having slavery today), or the whole “Ah, the empire and the thalmor and the stormcloak know about this and they support us behind the scenes, in fact some of them partecipated at the auction you were on, there is a prosperous slave trade all over Tamriel!” bullshit, the whole thing is:

1) IN POOR FUCKING TASTE.

2) SERIOUSLY, WHO THE FUCK WANTS TO PLAY THIS? SLAVE SIMULATOR FOR HALF THE QUEST MOD, GO DO MINDLESS FETCH QUESTS FOR YOU MASTER, YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO DO ANYTHING BY YOURSELF, YOU HAVE TO CLEAN THE CELL OF ANOTHER SLAVE THAT COULDN’T SURVIVE HIS EXPERIMENTS, THIS IS FUCKING BAD.

3) THE FUCKING... MIND CONTROL AMULET ROBBING YOU OF ANY AGENCY? YOU CANNOT KILL NOR ATTACK NOR DO ANYTHING TILL YOU REMOVE IT AND YOU CAN’T REMOVE IT TILL HALF THE GAME SO WHAT WAS PRESENTED AS A “NON LINEAR MAIN QUEST” IS ACTUALLY A RAILROADED BULLSHIT TOWARD A MAJOR CHOICE BETWEEN RAZING THE SETTLEMENT TO THE GROUND WITH A SPACESHIP OR LETTING THE SETTLEMENT BE (YOU KNOW, CLASSIC BETHESDA MORAL DILEMMA, EXCEPT THE SETTLEMENT IS FILLED WITH SLAVERS AND SLAVES)

Which is sad because the aesthetic and some of the shit added to this are pretty cool overall, there is a “Dwemer Chess Board” thing that is missing some pieces that you can collect through the settlement and after you get them all and place them on the board you get a perk on team fighting, which would be a nice thing to have in a mod if it wasn’t for, again, the FUCKING SLAVERY!

Like, fuck, just imagine the slave auction:

Scripted scene, you can’t do anything, you are marched with the other slaves to a stage, the orc guy is the auction master, he sells:

1) The first slave, a vampire, to your future master.

2) Then an argonian young woman (”Plucked fresh from the windhelm docks” they say, and they sell her to some noble dude as his “new handmaiden,” which is SO FUCKING CREEPY ON SO MANY LEVELS LIKE... Even if you put aside the prospect of knowing her from the docks both in and out of universe (There is a potential Argonian spouse at the windhelm docks after all), this is bad? SO SO FUCKING BAD? BY ALL POSSIBLE ANGLES?)

3) Then they can’t sell a 50 year old argonian dude so they go “remove lot number 3 from the auction blog) and they gut him right in front of me??? By then going “he’ll make a good purse” because HOLY FUCK?????

4) Then you get sold in a auction battle between Neloth 2.0 but shittier and the local blacksmith, both locals (this, again, after mentioning that if you get sold to a local they’ll cut your tongue out), and you then get sold to Neloth 2.0 but shittier...

You can’t fucking stop any of this. You can’t do a “destroy the dark brotherhood” questline, you can’t prevent the kidnapping, even if you go out the city, some dumb magic will stop you from revealing its location to the competent authorities, who, again, are actually in cahoots with the slavers, so it’s not like they’d help!

And the mod clearly tries to make you, again, empathize and understand the fucking SLAVERS and their fucking position as SLAVERS like some BULLSHIT because fucking CENTRISM or some shit and REALLY?

So... to end this shit: Project AHO? Is some sort of weird, borderline feticistic mod about dunmers still being slavers and fucking rolling with it. It breaks canon and lore (after presenting itself as a mod that explores and faithfully depicts the lore), has a very railroady main quest after, again, mentioning its non linear path, and, agAIN, TRIES REALLY HARD TO MAKE YOU EMPATHIZE WITH THOSE BASTARDS.

So, I give it a 2 BB8s out of 10 for the dumb star wars reference companion, if you want to play it be fucking warned by its content.

[devotedlyvaliantcheesecake]

Game Review: Fallout 3

It's 200 years after the nuclear apocalypse. Mutated creatures, ghouls (zombies) and raiders roam what's left of D.C. and its suburbs as you scavenge for supplies and look for your missing father.

I played the super long way--I made my way counter-clockwise around the map from Megaton, the first city you encounter, and did literally everything else but the main storyline first. I'm really glad I did this for a few reasons. It felt good to have all those side quests and extra missions checked off and the whole map discovered and be free to focus/wrap up the game nicely. The mutants--the main enemies- were super hard even when I hit the max/level 30; I can't imagine trying DC aka mutant central earlier. And, you--or at least I--get invested in certain characters that end up being unavoidable/story-central deaths. Having so much of the game already experienced, it gave me permission to end the game at that point if I wanted to (as strange as it might sound) without feeling like I'm missing much more.

There were a few things that were annoying about the gameplay. The subway stations--like the dungeons of another Bethesda title Skyrim--were hard to navigate and looked the same after awhile. There was also tons of loot being dropped or laying around, but you're capped at carrying capacity, which makes it really annoying when you're trying to haul all your loot and have to make multiple trips to the merchant. (Partly me being greedy, partly you needing to trade loot for items you *actually* need like health packs until even the upper levels.)

Other than this, the game was jam-packed with great characters (with nuanced and believeable dialogue)--Moira for the win!--and lots to do and see. You can get a German Shepherd mix as a companion; there's a character perk to have him reborn as a puppy if he dies, which I took but also made sure to not use if I could. (If you don't tell him to stay put he'll sometimes charge in and start attacking enemies before you're ready.) 

I would definitely recommend getting the DLC's too. "Operation Anchorage" has your character step into a simulator that recreates the Chinese invasion of Alaska (the precipitating event of the apocalypse). It's a lot of stealth missions--blowing up a tank factory, disabling turret bunkers, rescuing hostages. And, upon finishing, you're given a helmet and body armor that has the best stats of the entire game. I seriously found nothing else that I wanted to trade it for. So try doing that DLC as early as you can.

"Mothership Zeta" will in turn give you the best weapons--you can seriously wreck even the mutants 😈 I also leveled up at least four times with all the grinding. Just be careful to not leave anything unexplored, unopened or behind, because once you leave the incinerator room and later the bottom half of the ship you can't go back. I stored all my loot in the two storage chests in the main engine room/core, one of only three areas you can go back to after finishing the DLC. Again, the limited capacity is annoying for the loot gathering, but with how OP the alien weapons are, you definitely want to take that time to pick them *all* up.

"Into the Pitt" allows you to explore Pittsburgh. You have the choice whether or not to keep in power the overseer of the slave-run mining operation. It's a grey, uncomfortable choice, and to avoid spoilers I can't explain why. I've seen some commentators say they wish this DLC had been made into its own Fallout installment. I do think this is credible; there is definitely a good story that developers could build upon and give proper time to flesh out. It felt like it was promising but over too soon---what took the most time in this DLC was trying to get the achievement of finding all 100 silver bars out in the junkyard. If you do this DLC, wait until you're at max stats, because your stuff is stolen (temporarily) when you get into the city and there's mutated frog-human things after you.

Overall, there's so much great content that you definitely get your money's worth and much more. Don't pass up on this title!

[radramblog]

Top 5 Games, ever...?

This was sort of on my mind, considering the recent GOTY post I made. Come explore the hyperfixations that managed to stick around long enough to be my top 5 list. 

5. Uhhhhhh

So turns out I haven’t figured out what number 5 is yet. I suppose instead I’ve got to split it among the honourable mentions, huh.

Kirby Super Star Ultra is probably the best game from the GBA/DS era of the series and is just a blast to play. It introduced Masked Dedede, and all the banging music and memes that come with it, and probably deserves a spot here just for that.

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth removes all the awkward Flash Stuff from the excellent original, and adds so, so much more content- the game’s final expansion still isn’t out yet as of writing but even now there’s just so much to unlock. While some aspects of the game can be pretty unforgiving, you probably aren’t going to be exposed to the worst of it unless you get into it pretty hardcore, and if you do, you’ll get used to it. It’s a roguelike, after all.

Speaking of roguelikes, FTL: Faster than Light is chaotic yet serene, brutal but fair, and a bunch of other pretentious dichotomies wrapped into a neat little bow. It takes some getting used to the mechanics, but once you get the hang of it, building your little ship up and up in the face of all odds is extremely satisfying. Have fun dying hopefully not too many times.

SPEAKING of permadeath, Realm of the Mad God gets a spot here just out of sheer hours I’ve spent with it. After a messy few years with a not-so-great owner lead me to dropping the game, it seems finally to have recovered and has devs and community that actually freaking care about it, which is nice. Also, it’s free, and the recent transition to unity has the game looking better and playing smoother than 12-year-old me could ever have dreamed of.

Terraria isn’t just 2D Minecraft btw, its actually more of an RPG/Metroidvania thing, you probably know at this point, but its pretty good hey. Still haven’t fully dove into 1.4 but considering I thought Red was done at 1.1 I’m not complaining with what I have played.

 4. Fallout: New Vegas

(...ish??)

I’d argue that between the primitiveness of the original Fallout games (I’ve tried to get into them, but I just can’t) and how…meh… the other Bethesda ones are, New Vegas is the only one in the series to stand up strong. Obsidian’s excellent writing and tweaks to the gameplay of 3 make New Vegas feel like an actual world, rich and characterised, which was something I found lacking in previous open-world RPGs I’d played up until that point (which admittedly might just have been Skyrim). It’s a game that challenges you to make choices that actually matter for more than the mere moments of an altered dialogue tree, both in dialogue and character building, which helps make the game actually replayable. It is also the first game in a long time that really sold the idea of DLC on me, seeing as each of the game’s 4 expansions adds an entire new region of world with its own stories and unique gameplay, tying together with the main plot but standing on their own. I am excluding Gun Runner’s Arsenal from this for obvious reasons, though it isn’t like GRA is a bad DLC or anything- on the contrary, the sheer scope of modifications and munitions makes playing a repair/science-based character incredibly fulfilling- but it just isn’t at the same scope as the other 4 (Courier’s stash barely counts seeing as its just oops! All preorder bonuses).

New Vegas is one of the few games I have actually 100% completed, achievements and all, but I’m still pretty sure there are bits I’ve missed, paths I haven’t taken, characters I haven’t talked to. Despite its inhospitability, the Mojave is always a comfortable place to return to.

 3. VA-11 Hall-A

(Hey look, my phone background)

Vallhalla is a masterclass in storytelling, atmosphere, and aesthetic. Like all good cyberpunk dystopias, you get themes of class and transhumanism and artificial intelligence, but they aren’t the point of Vallhalla. Through the window and lens of cyberpunk and PC98 nostalgia is focussed a surprisingly human story centred around the protagonist, Jill, which through multiple replays still hits me in the feels just so. Of course, Jill’s story is not the only one being discussed, as every single patron of the bar has their own life going on, and the glimpses we get imply a rich, often interconnected, world. Glitch City is, frankly, a shithole, and it’s not like you don’t get some assholes coming into the bar while you’re working it. The first patron you serve, in fact, is a great example of this- Donovan D. Dawson, essentially a parody of J. Jonah Jameson, is a colossal prick and knows it- but its clear he has his own system of morals and it is mentioned that he’s excellent at his job, much as he gripes about it. He’s rude and more than a little sexist, but frustratingly charismatic and authoritative, and he’s just one of many people who show up throughout the game. Vallhalla is the perfect game to sit down, grab your preferred beverage, and just relax with.

 2. Total Annihilation

(This image is on the steam page for this one, despite blatantly not being from vanilla TA)

I think I actually need to explain this one. Total Annihilation was a game released in 1997 made largely by Chuck Taylor, who would later go on to produce spiritual successor Supreme Commander. It’s an RTS game featuring exclusively robotic units with a fairly chunky aesthetic, allowing the visuals to age better than some, and a fully orchestrated soundtrack by Jeremy Soule, who would later go on to do work on a whole bunch of stuff, most notably Skyrim.

Total Annihilation is an intensely nostalgic game for me, being one of the first games I ever got to play as a kid outside of edutainment stuff, and I’d argue still holds up today (especially with the excellent Escalation mod). What it lacks in story (it’s pretty basic, but functional) it makes up for being miles ahead of its time mechanically, being the first (?) RTS to function in 3 dimensions- heights of things actually matter, hills exist and certain units climb them better than others, shooting down airplanes is difficult without anti-air but possible if you aim *just* right. While appearing pretty similar and having largely analogous units, the two factions of Arm and Core are well fleshed-out in terms of aesthetic and playstyle- Arm preferring fast and cheap equivalents to Core’s slow but powerful- and the unit variety is sufficient that strategies can vary wildly based on the map. Both campaigns as well as those from the game’s expansions are challenging, but satisfying, limiting the units you can produce to force exploration of different playstyles.

Total Annihilation isn’t something I tend to binge play for hours anymore, but I’ll pick it up for a bit every so often, and I don’t see that stopping for a long time (especially due to the recent steam release).

 1. Pokémon Emerald

(At the top, where it belongs)

Yeah, this was inevitable. Pokémon is my favourite series ever; Emerald is my favourite in the series. Go figure.

Emerald, being the final game for the franchise’s days on the Game Boy, reflects everything Game Freak had learned in the first 3 generations of the series’ history. The game’s balance is challenging but fair, never spiking so tough that it is insurmountable but never holding your hand either. The AI opponents are throwing odd combinations of mons and moves at you from every corner, double battles are everywhere but rarely mandatory, and the variety of available mon both before and during the postgame is excellent. The added features on top of Ruby and Sapphire are great- Battle Tents serve to replace 3 of the contest halls (they should have all been under one roof to begin with) and provide a taste of what would later be available in the Battle Frontier. The Frontier is probably the single most expansive and challenging postgame in any Pokémon game, providing the game with a longevity that is sorely needed due to the inaccessibility of Pre-DS multiplayer. The game also manages to tie together the plot of both Ruby and Sapphire into something that feels natural, and provides the series’ first ever actual cutscene, which felt a lot cooler at the time than it sounds now. The return of animated sprites gives the Pokémon a level of life far beyond the static sprites of RSFRLG, and in my eyes wouldn’t feel the same until Black and White several years later. The return of the Pokégear phone in the form of Match Call, as irritating as it is to some, makes the world feel alive in a way that Sinnoh and Kanto probably never will, in addition to making grinding a fair bit less tedious and more beneficial. It is, altogether, probably the perfect Pokémon experience, and in my opinion only one other game comes close (its Platinum).

Oh also, they got rid of the font from Ruby and Sapphire, thank fuck, that shit is atrocious.

[bloody-fists-beating-hearts]

It’s a Fallout76/Bethesda rant

Bethesda just released Fallout 1st, a horseshit pay-to-win subscription system for their absolute cum-bubble of a game, and while it’s getting the flack it deserves there are people already putting on their kneepads so they can gobble down Todd Howards entire turgid cock, and as someone who likes rpg’s way too much this irked me, so have a massive and barely coherent rant i took off the discord because why not.

I want to start off with this:  Every good thing about current fallout comes from the fanbase. The stories people tell, the headcanons, the fanfics, the art, everything fans do for it is made with more love, and more thought, than anything Bethesda’s writing and games design team has done in the last 10 years

Now first of all, I haven’t bought or played 76. People are gonna stop me right there and go ”well you haven’t bought it how would you know its bad!!” yeah, I’ve never eaten dog shit either but I can pretty well guess that I ain’t gonna fucking like it.

I knew the second he said "there are no npcs" with actual enthusiasm that this game was gonna be shit. And if you give me 2 seconds to gloat, I never bought the game and I knew this was gonna happen and I was RIGHT so suck my fat hairy nuts all those fanboys who pre-order things mindlessly just because there's a brand name attached to it. If there is anything you take from this its DO NOT PREORDER. BRAND LOYALTY IS FOR BOOMERS AND BOOTLICKERS. FOR FUCKS SAKE BE SMART WITH YOUR MONEY.

Games like this are fucking 80-90 dollars or more in Australia so I actually have to think about whether this momentary distraction is worth almost an entire days paycheck, and I’m still looking for employment which means I actually haven’t bought shit in a while (side note, anyone wants to commission me for 10 dollars I’ll draw damn near anything. God I need to make rent)

Every executive at Bethesda seems to be playing catch-up to EA's monetisation scheme. Beth has abandoned their model of single-player rpg's in favour of a "games as a service" model. Fallout 76 seems to me like its a weird experiment for just how far they can stretch this and still make money. It actually makes me wonder if they are 

 a) just completely unaware of fanbase response [no idea HOW]

b) are running into financial problems and are doing this out of desperation

 c) todd howard is still mad that obsidian made a better fallout than he ever could and he's doing this out of spite 

  Games as a whole has become much like the movie industry where publishers will throw big buckets of cash around to development teams, and those teams have CEO's and higher ups that throw lavish meet n greets and have nice fancy suits and cars and then treat their development teams like shit, overworking them to the point of exhaustion, because the product has to be on time for release dates that are scheduled to be the most profitable (christmas is a notable one). 

And those products are consistently bland, shitty, shallow experiences. Narrative cum-dumpsters that are purposefully made to toe the line as safely as possible, to be open to as wide as an audience as possible so they can make the most money, and Bethesda is a huge offender. Skyrim was fun, sure, but it was watered down to fuck, it had shitty dialogue, it had bland one-note characters, it had a simplified skill system. It was impossible to lose. Seriously, try and fail a fucking quest in skyrim, other than one or two, it's a hand-holder of an rpg, but it has a huge community of fans that put in monumental effort, for free, because they like the Elder Scrolls, and they like the world bethesda made. 

  Then Bethesda goes "hey, that watered down thing we made got huge! lets release it about 12 more fucking times, with some of the SAME bugs, with the SAME content, with the SAME limitations and Yes, we absolutely expect you to pay for it, again. Then they release the remastered edition which, to their credit, is free to anyone who already bought the legendary edition (on PC), and does actually have updated 64bit capability and some graphical enhancements (that aren't anywhere near what some goober in his basement cooked up in his spare time, but whatever). Then, seeing that Skyrim was so popular, with kids especially, and made money, they turn their sights to fallout 4, a game that was so anticipated that someone made a fake countdown and caused a small meltdown on tumblr/social media when it was revealed to be fake (i was part of that fiasco, i remember the hype, i was there goddamnit)

So Fallout, a franchise that literally has its theme as its FUCKING TAGLINE, an ADULT game that is equal parts crude, gory and humorous. A game that satirises the cold war era of american my-country-tis-of-thee blind loyalty and openly mocks the way war was idealised, and shows that not even the literal end of the world could either stop humanity's lust for blood or its desire for conquest. Games that showed you the growth of the world - from shady sands to the NCR, from the vault dweller to arroyo, shit actually happened in the games, the world didn't just stop turning when the bombs dropped. A game where you you become a porn star for fucks sake, and it's funny. 

So Bethesda sees that, makes something like it (fallout 3) which is good, but a little rough around the edges when you look at it too hard. But the way they suck you into the vault, the way they build a relationship with your dad and your way of life is immersive as fuck, so when you leave the place you actually feel like you're leaving something important, not just finishing the tutorial

then they outsource a Fallout game to obsidian, because hey, we saved your franchise by buying it off you, but if you can make an entire game in one year and get a metacritic score of 85 we'll even throw in a bonus. And fuck me sideways and in the ear, if the obsidian devs didn't work themselves harder than a 4-armed hooker. And they made a game that on release was a clusterfuck of bugs, because they were given an unrealistic time limit and missed the metacritic score by ONE POINT so bethesda goes "nhey heh sucks to suck" and fucks them off the franchise forever. EXCEPT (and I admit I'm biased here) the game is good. The game is actually really good when you remove those bugs, and people start forming attachments to it, and mentioning how bad fallout 3's writing is by extension. 

  So Todd and Co. in his infinite wisdom, decide that the only thing a fallout rpg needs is 50s aesthetic and fuck all else, and he releases a game so watered down it can't even be called an rpg. And its not. There are no skills. There are barely any dialogue checks. Instead of dialogue, Nate/Nora is a flat, samrish individual that is either "yes sir right away sir may i have another", "yes but i'm gonna make an unfunny quip about it" "this option pretends to say no but its gonna give you the quest marker anyway". 

The game drops any pretence of difficulty by giving you a deathclaw, a minigun and some power armour in the first 10 minutes, allowing you to effectively reach late-game power levels with some minor scavenging for ammo or cores. Then the game ropes you into some inter-faction war that realistically you wouldn't give a shit about, because some spud in a cowboy hat fucking deputizes you into a military general because you shot like 4 raiders from a rooftop (with a minigun. in power armour. making you nigh-invulnerable to bullets). You're sad about your son about 3 times the whole game and then you're on your merry way to mowing down humans left right and center without a care in the world. God fallout 4's writing is so stupid it gives me an aneurysm.

 Remember the part about resources wars and america only having the veneer of a strong country while riots, inflation, and resource shortages tore it apart from within? Bethesda doesn't, have an eerily stepford pastel coloured glimpse at a world that was totally fine, nothing wrong here, shame it got nuked oh well moving on

Your spouse? yeah you love them, they're said 2 whole sentences to you then they died, be sad because you totally loved them and it is totally sad that they are dead. Your weird play-dough son shaun, you love him so much, you even tickled him on the chin once, okay he's gone off you go to chase him - woah now, don't chase him too hard we have all these side quests for you to do! What would be the narrative reasoning for a supposedly distraught parent to fuck around boston instead of finding their goddamn child? fuck knows! just go pick up some goddamn wood and get to base building sonny-jim! 

Companions? yeah, they're fun, we gave them a romance questline and it's thus: if you pick enough locks and pass a minor charisma check maccready will be ready and willing to tell you about his sick child, and then he'll ride you like a stallion. Talk to him like, 4 times, and he will be your bosom buddy for life in about 3-5 days if you just pick locks like a fucking madman, because character growth is hard and counting beans is easy.

 Also your son is a part of the faction we were talking about! something about synths, remember that one questline from rivet city that barely anyone actually remembers and was an interesting time waster at best? Well get ready to do that same quest but about! 15! more! times! because we could not think of anything else to write about synthetically produced humans that assume peoples identities other than having them as a hamfisted metaphor for slavery. Why do they take over people's identies? Well because the institute needs them to aasdkfjdh kshshshsh t9oe of course. 

Speaking of hamfisted metaphors, here's the underground railroad, named after the underground railroad that actually mattered, except this time its the same thing but synths. They are so top secret that the only way to find them is to follow the only bright red line in a street that is exclusively green-brown otherwise, and then enter their super secret password, which is "password"

They are then, like every other faction, absolutely willing to trust you, at face value, no questions asked, because have to actually do something or require a skill check might make this hard for people under the age of 12 to play. Then you go do whatever fuckin shit you do, I stopped playing at this point, and then you find out your son is actually 60, you guys have a tearful, 10 sentence reunion, then he diesthe whole reason you were out here in the first place dies, and you react appropriately, which is to say you say his name really sadly, and then go back to mowing down raiders with reckless abandon

And then 76 gets released, bethesda drops all pretense of fallout still being an rpg. You want a story? Fuck you, pay up. Its retro future and thats all that makes falloutSatirizing war mongering? You can nuke things in this game and its totally fine, its actually the goal, because fallout has nukes in it right? Pay us 10 dollars and you get army olive drab spraypaint because hurrgh war is fun and great, wasnt that the tagline from the first game?The more i rant the more angry i am because people put their heart and soul into writing this. The lore and dialogue is actual work that someone researched and loved and felt proud of and now  it's becoming a hilariously meta parody of itself. 

Honestly FUCK bethesda and and fuck todd howard for his pisspoor cash grab. Not even worth calling it a video game anymore