#if I were ever asked to write for a popular franchise it would be Fallout

[lordsammichsilas]

The Fallout show got me playing FO4 again. This time around I’m playing default Nate galacanting around with Buzz Lightyear Zaddy (aka Paladin Danse).

I’ve romanced him in the past with my female character and I always thought the lines where they flirt were a bit awkward. It’s really hard to pinpoint why, but it feels a lot more natural with a male character.

I think I support the headcanon that Danse is gay (plus him being closeted and maybe not even realizing it himself would just pair with canon perfectly). I also think he has a super avoidant attachment style.

I also might have to break down and write a fanfic because I’ve always really liked his character and I was so mad FO4 didn’t give him a full character arc. There’s so much to be said about the trauma of having your entire life fall apart and having to start over, but when you’ve spent over a decade of your life caught up in a fanatical organization that doesn’t let you fraternize with the locals (it comes on the loudspeaker often on the Prydwen) that could have been explored.

I think he deserved an arc where he comes to terms with that and begins the process of deradicalizing. I see him as somebody whose rhetoric is out of loyalty to a group he believed cared about him rather than his own hate. Not entirely, anyway.

He totally hate’s super mutants because of what they did to Cutler. That will probably be the one that won’t change much. Once he deals with his own internalized dislike of synths, I don’t see him having an issue with the Gen 3 ones, although he has a hard time bonding with them because coming out of the Brotherhood makes him feel alienated .

I actually don’t think he has much of a problem with ghouls and that’s totally the Brotherhood talking. There’s no personal beef with them like there is super mutants. Even his reactions in game when you have positive interactions with ghouls are inconsistent. Usually he dislikes it, but there are times where he seems fine with it (or at least doesn’t disapprove).

He doesn’t seem like someone who’s unreasonable or dogmatic in and of itself. In fact, it’s funny when you push back against something he says in the dialogue options just the tiniest bit and he’s like “you’re right, how could I have been so blind?” It just seems really funny to me that he would be that even keel and hold such a high rank in such a fanatical organization. It’s almost like he knows deep down a lot of it is bullshit, but lectures you about the rhetoric to convince himself more than anyone.

Looking past the bigoted rhetoric, his biggest character flaw is his loyalty because he clings to something that is demonstrably bad and puts blinders on in order to defend that thing because he is so loyal. He’s still responsible for unlearning that, but I think it also speaks to the predatory nature of the BoS that manipulates vulnerable people. His earliest memories (whether they’re real or not are irrelevant) are of him being an orphan picking scrap in the Capital Wasteland. Of course he’s going to join the Brotherhood of Steel.

Honestly, there’s a lot of parallels between him and Maximus in the show (Maximus is my favorite and must be protected). They were in extremely vulnerable positions in their lives and along comes this organization that gives them a sense of belonging. It’s the reason a lot of people join the military in the first place. It isn’t idealism, but instead pragmatism.

Tl;Dr Danse deserved better.

[kingjasnah]

Is there the full list of brandersons favourite games reposted somewhere?

i dont think so? or not that ive seen. u can literally just sign up for the newsletter on his website but screw it ill just post them for u. it sure was a TRIP scrolling past these to get to the interlude though. undertale is on this list.....im shakign at the thought that adolin was based off ff10 tidus but i cant get it out of my head now

#10: Katamari Damaci

I love things that make me look at the world in a new way. Katamari did this in spades. It is an imaginative, bizarre vision with unique gameplay. It is like nothing else in the world and I love it for all its strangeness and occasional lack of gameplay polish.

I was transfixed the first time I played it, and have looked forward to it being remade and rereleased on multiple different consoles. I love the cute—and somehow creepy at the same time—storyline. It feels like a fever dream more than a game sometimes, and is probably the closest I’ll ever get to understanding what it’s like to do drugs.

#9: Undertale

This is an oddball on this list because I think it’s the only game that is not a franchise from a major studio—but is instead an indie game, which I believe was originally funded on Kickstarter.I loved how this felt like a novel as much as a game. It was one person’s vision; a single story told really well, with a huge amount of personality. The humor was just my kind of wonderful/terrible, and I was instantly enamored with the characters.That probably would have been enough, but it is a nice deconstruction of video games as a medium—and has not one, but multiple innovative gameplay mechanics. Together, the package left me enamored. This is a work of genius that I feel everyone should at least try, even if it ends up not being for them.

#8: Fallout: New Vegas

I have played all of the core Fallout games, and I was one of the (it seems few) who was really excited when it moved from turn-based tactics to first-person shooter. While Fallout 3 was good, it didn’t have the charm of the first two.New Vegas delivered on everything I was hoping to see. The charm was back, the writing sharp, the quests imaginative. The gameplay was engaging and branched in a variety of directions, the gunplay was solid, and the atmosphere immersive. I of course love the first two games in the series—but New Vegas combines everything I like in gaming into one package. (As a note, I own the Outer Worlds, and am looking forward to digging into it. Consider this item on the list a recommendation of other Obsidian games—like Knights of the Old Republic Two—regardless of genre, as I’ve found them universally to be superior to their contemporaries.)

#7 Super Mario World

When I was eleven, I flew (alone, which was very exciting to me) from Nebraska to visit my uncle Devon in Salt Lake City. Before I left, my father gave me $200 and told me to pay for my own meals while on the trip—but of course, my uncle didn’t allow this. At the end of the trip, I tried to give him the money, which he wouldn’t take.I mentioned my dad would take the money back when I got home, but that was okay. Well, my uncle would have none of that, and drove me to the local mall and made me spend it on a Nintendo Entertainment System. (This uncle, you might guess, is an awesome human being.)Since that day of first plugging it in and experiencing Mario for the first time, I was hooked. This is the only platformer on the list, as I don’t love those. But one makes an exception for Mario. There’s just so much polish, so much elegance to the control schemes, that even a guy who prefers an FPS or an RPG like me has to admit these are great games. I picked World as my favorite as it’s the one I’ve gone back to and played the most.

#7: The Curse of Monkey Island (Monkey Island 3)

I kind of miss the golden age of adventure gaming, and I don’t know that anyone ever got it as right as they did with this game. It is the pinnacle of the genre, in my opinion—no offense to Grim Fandango fans.This game came out right before gaming’s awkward teenage phase where everything moved to 3-d polygons. For a while after, games looked pretty bad, though they could do more because of the swap. But if you want to go see what life was like before that change, play Monkey Island 3. Composed of beautiful art pieces that look like cells from Disney movies, with streamlined controls (the genre had come a long way from “Get yon torch”) and fantastic voice acting, this game still plays really well.This is one of the few games I’ve been able to get my non-gamer wife to play through with me, and it worked really well as a co-op game with the two of us trying to talk through problems. It’s a lovingly crafted time capsule of a previous era of gaming, and if you missed it, it’s really worth trying all these years later. (The first and second games hold up surprisingly well too, as a note, particularly with the redone art that came out a decade or so ago.)Also, again, this one has my kind of humor.

#6: Breath of the Wild

I never thought a Zelda game would unseat A Link to the Past as my favorite Zelda, but Breath of the Wild managed it. It combined the magic of classic gameplay with modern design aesthetic, and I loved this game.There’s not a lot to say about it that others haven’t said before, but I particularly liked how it took the elements of the previous games in the series (giving you specific tools to beat specific challenges) and let you have them all at once. I like how the dungeons became little mini puzzles to beat, instead of (sometimes seemingly endless) slogs to get through. I liked the exploration, the fluidity of the controls, and the use of a non-linear narrative in flashbacks. It’s worth buying a Switch just to play this one and Mario—but in case you want, you can also play Dark Souls on Switch... (That’s foreshadowing.)

#5: Halo 2

Telling stories about Halo Two on stream is what made me think of writing this list.I’m sometimes surprised that this game isn’t talked about as much as I think it should be. Granted, the franchise is very popular—but people tend to love either Reach or games 1 or 3 more than two. Two, however, is the only one I ever wanted to replay—and I’ve done so three or four times at this point. (It’s also the only one I ever beat on Legendary.)It’s made me think on why I love this one, while so many others seem to just consider it one of many in a strong—but in many ways unexceptional—series of games. I think part of this is because I focus primarily on the single-player aspects of a game (which is why there aren’t any MMOs on this list.) Others prefer Halo games with more balanced/polished multiplayer. But I like to game by myself, and don’t really look for a multiplayer experience. (Though this is changing as I game with my sons more and more.)I really like good writing—which I suppose you’d expect. But in games, I specifically prefer writing that enhances the style of game I’m playing. Just dumping a bunch of story on me isn’t enough; it has to be suited to the gameplay and the feel of the game. In that context, I’ve rarely encountered writing as good as Halo 2. From the opening—with the intercutting and juxtaposition of the two narratives—to the quotes barked out by the marines, the writing in this game is great. It stands out starkly against other Halo games, to the point that I wonder what the difference is.Yes, Halo Two is a bombastic hero fantasy about a super soldier stomping aliens. But it has subtle, yet powerful worldbuilding sprinkled all through it—and the music...it does things with the story that I envy. It’s kind of cheating that games and films get to have powerful scores to help with mood.The guns in Two feel so much better than Halo One, and the vehicles drive far better. The only complaint I have is that it’s only half a story—as in, Halo 2 and 3 seem like they were one game broken in two pieces. And while 3 is good (and Reach does something different, which I approve of in general) neither did it for me the way Two did, and continues to do.

#3: Final Fantasy X

You probably knew Final Fantasy was coming. People often ask if the way these games handle magic was an influence upon me. All I can say is that I’ve played them since the first one, and so they’re bound to have had an influence.On one hand, these games are really strange. I mean, I don’t think we gamers stop quite often enough to note how downright bizarre this series gets. Final Fantasy doesn’t always make the most sense—but the games are always ambitious.Ten is my favorite for a couple of reasons. I felt like the worldbuilding was among the strongest, and I really connected with the characters. That’s strange, because this is one of the FF games without an angst-filled teen as the protagonist. Instead, it has a kind of stable happy-go-lucky jock as the protagonist.But that’s what I needed, right then. A game that didn’t give me the same old protagonist, but instead gave me someone new and showed me I could bond to them just as well. Ten was the first with full voice acting, and that jump added a lot for me. It has my favorite music of the series, and all together is what I consider the perfect final fantasy game. (Though admittedly, I find it more and more difficult to get into turn-based battle mechanics as I grow older.)

#2: Bloodborne

Those who follow my streams, or who read other interviews I’ve done, probably expected this series to be at or near the top. The question wasn’t whether Souls would be here, but which one to pick as my favorite.I went with Bloodborne, though it could have been any of them. (Even Dark Souls 2—which I really like, despite its reputation in the fandom.) I’ve been following FromSoftware’s games since the King’s Field games, and Demon’s Souls was a huge triumph—with the director Hidetaka Miyazaki deserving much of the praise for its design, and Dark Souls (which is really just a more polished version of Demon’s Souls).As I am a fan of cosmic horror, Bloodborne is probably my favorite overall. It really hit the mix of cosmic and gothic horror perfectly. It forced me to change up my gameplay from the other Souls games, and I loved the beautiful visuals.I am a fan of hard games—but I like hard games that are what I consider “fair.” (For example, I don’t love those impossible fan-made Mario levels, or many of the super-crazy “bullet hell”-style games.) Dark Souls is a different kind of hard. Difficult like a stern instructor, expecting you to learn—but giving you the tools to do so. It presents a challenge, rather than being hard just to be hard.If I have a problem with Final Fantasy, it’s that the games sometimes feel like the gameplay is an afterthought to telling the story. But in the Souls games, story and gameplay are intermixed in a way I’d never seen done before. You have to construct the story like an archeologist, using dialogue and lore from descriptions of in-game objects. I find this fascinating; the series tells stories in a way a book never could. I’m always glad when a game series can show off the specific strengths of the medium.In fact, this series would be #1 except for the little fact that I have way too much time on Steam logged playing...

#1: Civilization VI

This series had to take #1 by sheer weight of gameplay time. I discovered the first on a friend’s computer in the dorms my freshman year—and I can still remember the feeling of the birds chirping outside, realizing I’d been playing all night and really should get back to my own dorm room.That still happens, and has happened, with every game in the series. I have a lot of thoughts on this series, many of them granular and too specific for this list. (Like, it’s obvious AI technology isn’t up to the task of playing a game this complex—so could we instead get a roguelike set of modifiers, game modes, etc. to liven up the games, rather than just having a difficulty slider that changes a few simple aspects of the game?)I’ll try not to rant, because I really do love this game series. A lot of people consider IV to be the pinnacle of the series, but after V unstacked units—and VI unstacked cities—there was no way I could ever go back. If for some reason, you’ve never played this grand patriarch of the 4X game genre, it’s about starting with a single stone-age settler who can found a city—then playing through eras of a civilization, growing your empire, to try to eventually get offworld with a space program. (Or, if you prefer, conquering the world.)It’s a load of fun in the way I like to have fun, and I feel like the series has only gotten better over the years. My hat is off to the developers, who keep reinventing the series, rather than making the exact same game over and over.Now, about that request for difficulty modes...

there are runner ups but for the sake of anyone whos on mobile and cant get past a read more (first of all omg im SO sorry) ill refrain. anyway he thought WHAT loz game was the best before botw?

[sweetiecenter]

Fallout, Borderlands, and how a Medium Compliments a Theme.

Fallout, Borderlands, and how the Theme can serve the Medium well, and vice versa. A small essay by me about two of my favorite game series.

2K Games and Bethesda are industry giants. Both of these studios have built their companies on the backs of extremely successful game franchises.

In the case of 2K, they built their franchise around sports, as well as Sid Meier’s RTS, Civilization, as well as delving into many other genres. It wasn’t until 2K started to delve into RPGs like Bioshock, from the creators of System Shock 2, that they started to develop their formula.

For Bethesda, they got their massive start a bit earlier with id software with games like Doom and Wolfenstein, which almost singlehandedly popularized the FPS genre.

Both of these industry giants are responsible for thousands of hours of love and enjoyment, and Bioshock 2 is singlehandedly responsible for growing my love of video games, and their writing.

There are two franchises from these respective companies that are both known for being notable open-world, first person RPGs: Borderlands and Fallout, and both series were published by their respective companies around the same time, with Borderlands 1 entering development in 2005, and Bethesda being commissioned to work on Fallout 3 in 2007, which later turned into Bethesda buying the rights and absorbing Interplay. Fallout 3 was released in 2008 on October 28, with Borderlands coming out almost exactly a year later.

As time has gone on, both companies have paid mutual respect to each other, particularly in regards to these FPSRPG games; Borderlands 2 even has a gun called thre dog in reference to the infamous Three Dog from Fallout 3. The similarities between the themes and playstyle of these games has led to many comparisons, but I would just like to take the time to talk about how each respective game does justice to the themes of their stories and the medium they use.

So what are the themes of these games, really?

The more unique taglines and themes of these games would be “war never changes” and “everyone is the hero of their own story” for Fallout and Borderlands, respectively. The underlying themes that go unspoken (mostly), seem to be anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism.

The anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism arguments are where it gets interesting.

First, let’s look at how both games use American culture and atmosphere to their advantage and to get their point across.

We can all agree that governments are, at their core, made to protect folks, right? That is their stated job. It is in their job description. Especially in America, the idea is that you should never, ever have your rights taken from you. We are surrounded by people who believe in the government, and if not in the government, then in your country itself. Patriotism has its own dedicated holiday! This is why Fallout has such a huge focus on how the government of their universe shifted away from protecting people, and how they have become imperialistic, jingoistic, and xenophobic. Even if you hate the military, the world of Fallout is intended to make you go “shit, at least we aren’t THAT bad”.

And this tone helps to set the theme for the Fallout games. Everywhere you turn, you are completely let down by the people you rely on. Looks are deceptive, and yet they aren’t. The dark and gritty atmosphere of the games are constantly screaming at you that the world has already ended, even as Ron Perlman tells you it is only the beginning. Happy endings are nonexistent in almost every case, with the sole exception of perhaps the Courier... but then, the Courier is the only one with no ties to a Vault. No delusions of grandeur, no expectations.

It should be noted that in the dialogue choices as the Courier, you are the most aware of everything that has happened. Instead of being shocked that someone shot you in the head, you are apathetic at best and mostly want the package back; even if you roleplay your courier as a revenge-driven mailman, they are never surprised. Disappointed? Oh, almost certainly.

The first time I booted up the original Fallout and saw the Overseer start talking, my first thought was:

“This is it. Humanity has degenerated into ridiculous blue cavemen.”

I think the design of the Overseer was very intentionally made to be odd, and to showcase that the people have changed. Then you step out into the wasteland. You see the disconnect between the Vaults, the only remnants of pre-war society in the first game, and the rest of the world.

The discovery that the government willingly let all these experiments happen only adds to our disgust as we piece things together, piece by piece. You become jaded and cynical, and in your quest to save everyone, you truly have changed. Sure, the Overseer exiling you because “you’re different” may seem weird and a flimsy excuse to keep the experiment going, but it has a hint of truth to it. You’ve changed. You’re knowledgeable. You can no longer be controlled by the propaganda you had taken as the truth, that all Vault residents had taken as the truth. This disconnect between reality and the Vaults is further explored whenever you reach a new Vault.

Finding out the horrifying truth about what the Vaults were, what they were made for, never gets any easier. The game’s sound design is always made to harken back to something behind you, in some way. The base game’s sound design usually invokes paranoia and fear, while the radios that constantly play music from a bygone era invoke a general feeling of “nothing will ever be the same”.

All in all, Fallout does a fantastic job of setting the basis of its universe. Worldbuilding is a massive part, and their is little to nothing left unknown for a savvy player, should you be willing to listen to exposition. The overall tone is tragic and bleak, in order to juxtapose itself with the pre-war propaganda.

Which brings us to Borderlands.

Borderlands does not ask you as a player to think. It does not ask you to feel. The main focus has never been the story, and yet it is still a beautiful aspect of it, in the way of all the things that go left unsaid. How did the sirens come to be? Who knows. How did all the Eridians die out? Who knows. Why is it so much god damn fun to shoot a vertically challenged man in a gas mask and watch his head explode? Who knows.

Borderlands never gives you enough time to reflect on the overarching theme of the series. Compared to Fallout the game is much more fast-paced and linear, but if you take the time, you can see everything fall apart as the story progresses. You have no choice. Nothing you do ever matters, especially in the face of corporate overlords. All these bandits you’ve been fighting? They were normal people once. Convicts, sure, but they were also taken advantage of, brought to this strange alien planet and used as slave labor. Fresh off of the heels of Fallout, you could ask yourself, “what sick government would do this?” The answer is it isn’t a government. It is a corporation that styles itself as a government.

There lies the sick joke of the Borderlands series. This isn’t some far fetched, awful alternate reality. This is the future, where corporations continue down the same path they are on now - unchecked, allowed to ruin the worlds, contracted by governments - and nobody did a god damn thing. These guns you buy? Produced by Atlas. The clothes you’re wearing? Probably Hyperion fashion. The planets you come from? Owned almost completely by corporations. Atlas has an iron grip on Promethea, and Mister Torgue literally blew up an entire PLANET, even if it is played for laughs.

Just like in Fallout, nobody is on your side - and yet you know this. You embrace futility anyway; you buy Atlas, you buy Hyperion, and you buy Maliwan because at the end of the day, they are more powerful than any Vault Monster you could hope to kill. The bright tones and dark humor of the Borderlands are a direct result of embracing futility. The fun does not lie within facing your oppressors, it lies within killing them over and over. The thing that makes Borderlands so celebrated is its replayability; in Fallout, everything you do is permanent. Borderlands has next to no permanence. No matter how many Hyperion soldiers you kill, you won’t put a dent in them. These corporations span six whole galaxies.

Borderlands doesn’t need to set an atmosphere to make you immerse yourself in the story. We already know corporations are horrible. Jeff Bezos spends his money on space while Amazon employees die of exhaustion.

The horror of these two games directly correspond with each other. Fallout is horrifying because of past deeds, because of what could have come to pass. Borderlands is horrifying because of what still could happen.

Both of these game series have, in many’s opinion, fallen off in recent years, but I personally will always have a special place in my heart for these wonderful games and their storytelling.

Thank you for reading.

[text-to-speech-impediment]

THE VAULT IN OUR STARS

An Opinion Piece on How Bethesda Survives (And How You Can Change Them!)

A/N: I wrote this op-ed for funsies. As you may know, I am known to warm myself at a corporate dumpster fire from time to time, but this one is especially close to my heart. I may replace with an actual edited version but for now, just enjoy it in its raw & unpolished glory. If you’re a Bethesda fan, you’re used to it anyway.

           In the words of Todd Howard, “I read on the internet…that sometimes it doesn’t just work.”

           Indeed, after just over two weeks since its 14 November release date, Bethesda Softworks’ release of survival multiplayer sandbox “Fallout 76” has more than merely failed to impress most of its players. The game has garnered an infamously low average score of only 54% on popular game journalism site, Metacritic. It fares no better on Youtube, with dozens of popular influencers obliterating the high expectations of even the most devoted fans of the Fallout franchise; but this will not be another essay to dishonor the multiple technical, immersion and storytelling woes that plague beleaguered “Fallout 76”. That’s for another essay.

           This criticism is one that many previous public complaints have touched on, flirted with, but seldom fully explored while caught up in the disappointment they had in “Fallout 76.” Specifically, this essay is leveled broadly at Bethesda Softworks LLC, the video game publishing division responsible for “Fallout 76”, as well as ZeniMax Media Inc., the parent organization of Bethesda and many other well-known game developers such as Arkane Studios, id Software and more. The upper management of these companies is removed from all but the finances of their industry; they are abusing both their content creators and consumers to calculated effect, remaining foggy at best on the aim of the products their teams are producing and out of touch with the end user’s interest.

           What more can we say against corporations of this staggering size? Corporations and mergers, time and again, continue to exploit art production and consumption then shrug off the backlash by driving screws into their overworked employees and letting them take the fall with the public. Unless we look at past events, this trend of blame shifting isn’t obvious. It’s hard at the moment to see that Bethesda Softworks’ colossal failure to recreate their previous endearing successes with fans in “Fallout 76” didn’t happen overnight.

It is for this reason that I sit on my soapbox today, somehow about to make an analogy of the gaming marketing industry by using Hazel and Gus from good ol’ John Green’s “The Fault in Our Stars.” Never did I imagine I’d see those concepts together, but here I am smashing them together like this is fanfiction(dot)net. Don’t get too excited, though, because none of the wholesome aspects of Hazel and Gus make it into this analogy; no, this essay is all about the essence of what happens when you take a beautiful thing and strip it to the bare bones. Being a gamer in today’s culture of parasitic marketing is roughly akin to being desperately in love with a dying cancer patient. With their pants down and tumors exposed, Bethesda is giving us a rare glimpse into exactly what has made them cancerous: a lack of Vision (not to be confused with Activision.)

You see, Bethesda doesn’t have a vision. If you asked Todd Howard today what Bethesda’s vision was, his response would essentially amount to “get bigger, bigger than we’ve ever seen before,” and you would never be quite sure if he meant to say it would be the games, the bugs, or the pocketbooks that would be getting “bigger.” Bethesda has no vision because they are blinded by what I like to refer to as the survivalist mindset, cancer that has spread through their higher management and public faces so quietly for so long that Bethesda has only just noticed it rearing its ugly head. They have ventured through the past 20 years producing games that fans would merely refrain from harshly criticizing. If only they had seen their culture of undiluted survivalism in time to integrate it into “Fallout 76.”

To see the birth of this cancer that is killing Bethesda, we will travel back in time to 31 October 1998, when “The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard,” along with its related title “An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire,” were both resounding “commercial failures,” according to Stephan Janicki of Computer Gaming World. These two disappointments brought Bethesda to the edge of bankruptcy before ZeniMax Media swooped in and claimed them as a subsidiary in 1999. In the following years, Bethesda Softworks knew they had to succeed, or they were done in the eyes of both their corporate overlords and their fans. This is when the panicky, survivalist mindset set in. Feverishly they worked until, in 2002, they released “The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind,” and Todd Howard was relieved to find that “It just work[ed].” Upon the laurels of Morrowind, Bethesda skipped happily into the sunset, bringing us many more beloved titles like “Fallout 3,” “The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion,” “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim,” “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Legendary Edition,” and “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Special Edition.”

But they never grew out of that survivalist panic. Like cancer, it festered in the background, that burning fear of “commercial failure,” which is a euphemism for rejection by their fans. Bethesda’s near-death experience had scared them. Their aversion to conflict and attempts to please every consumer instead of maintaining a focused design and lore quickly made them the endearing dweeb of game developers, merely slapped on the wrist for repeat performance flaws that would break the fans of other developers. “Cute” bugs in coding dating back several releases, consistently shipping products with technical difficulties unbecoming of a $60 price tag, multiple rerelease announcements and story-writing so poor that it’s common for players to joke about blatantly ignoring the main plot of the game, often for hundreds of hours, in favor of the things Bethesda did capture: exploration, immersion, and lore.

That brings us to the jokes. After Skyrim-related content pervaded their 2017 E3 press conference, it began to dawn on Bethesda’s corporate half that all those Bethesda memes were laughing at them, not with them. Shaken by flashbacks of Tiber Septim’s conquest of Hammerfell in “The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard,” Todd Howard and Bethesda’s upper management knew they couldn’t sit by idly and allow for history to repeat itself. They couldn’t accept hearing rejection from fans, even if it meant directly ignoring their feedback. Tunnel vision set in in the wake of more Skyrim jokes and criticism over their Creation Club microtransactions. The cancer was consuming them and the only way to heal their fracturing friendly persona and silence their critics was to get bigger, bigger than we’ve ever seen before; but at E3 2018, two decades after their initial “commercial failures,” their realization came many years too late and they didn’t snap out of their survivalist mindset in time.

Their bigger-than-we’ve-ever-seen-before came in the form of “Fallout 76”, not an ambitious venture objectively but very ambitious for Bethesda Game Studios Austin Branch, formerly known as BattleCry Studios LLC, who had never coded a project using Creation Engine, which Bethesda has been using exclusively since 2011.

But wait! say the studious fans of Bethesda. If Creation Engine has only existed since 2011, why does “Fallout 76” have bugs dating back as far as Morrowind? Creation is based off a much older engine called Gamebryo (known as NetImmerse until 2003). A much older engine that has successfully supported huge multiplayer games, most notably the critically acclaimed “Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.”

If the core of Bethesda’s Creation Engine is a game engine that can create an enjoyable multiplayer experience, then why can’t “Fallout 76” do the same? Well, spread this funny honey on a biscuit, baby, because the answer is more cancer!

The fact that Bethesda has recurring bugs dating back over multiple releases suggests that, rather than taking time to address technology advancements, Bethesda’s survivalist mindset has grown upon Creation Engine like a tumor, strapping framework on top in half-baked layers, as quickly as possible, reducing the flexibility and independence of asset files into a fragile, unstable, monstrous whole.

I genuinely do not believe that Bethesda Game Studio Austin’s game developers were incompetent or lazy. Since the “Fallout 76” announcement at E3 2018, many have suspected disorganization in Bethesda’s management as they encountered a truly new set of obstacles for the first time. No one knew what “Fallout 76” would become, not the end users and certainly not the management of Bethesda Studios that for years had ignored the desperate need for ease-of-use coding with conservative couplings (files dependent on other files). They threw BGS Austin, a relatively new team that was inexperienced with designing Creation Engine worlds, into a hyped AAA release with an enormous fanbase; and what it became was an unacceptable byproduct of that insidious culture of corporate survivalism. Bethesda officials became so concerned with what the public thought of them that they never thought to check. They fixated on getting bigger than we’ve ever seen before until their creation became confused and codependent. They obfuscated what brought fans to Bethesda in Morrowind and kept them coming back through every hiccup and every rerelease: the fun to be had in exploration, immersion, and lore, but most importantly, the Vision.

Oh, what a situation Bethesda finds itself in now! Even though they’ve finally seen a backlash from setting profit margins before considering their team’s capacity, many feel this call-to-god moment has come too late. Losing the reverent trust of large portions of their fanbase, they must either find a way to fix their cancerous, bloated Creation Engine or risk losing their Bethesda aesthetic by developing a costly new engine to proceed. Bethesda knows this, and they desperately hope that no one else does because they also realized that by promising not only a decade-anticipated new “Elder Scrolls” release but a new game franchise as well, they’ve already allocated most of their resources. They can’t go back on their promises now without a complete “commercial failure” from fans already stretched thin by “Fallout 76;” now more than ever they need all hands on deck. There is little time and money left to dedicate to the enormous undertaking of designing a new game engine from scratch, much less the even more arduous task of unscrambling Creation Engine, now so distorted that their employees don’t know how to fix it anymore or they would, just to stop seeing memes about Skyrim and floating Scorched Zombies. It’s hopeless. It’s arguable that they deserve help after insulting fans with the lack of focus and attention for “Fallout 76,” multiple buggy rereleases of a buggy title from 2011, and the general sense of not understanding what made a compelling story. They do not deserve sympathy for the vague unease of having to create your own purpose, a job which Bethesda has shifted to its fans to avoid facing its fears from 20 years of trying to please everyone for their own pride and not in the spirit of their consumers.

Bethesda may not deserve our help, but many still believe that The Elder Scrolls does, that Fallout does. If you’re one of those people, there is something you can do, and it’s to ignore the cries to boycott all Bethesda products “forever.”

Bethesda owns the intellectual property to The Elder Scrolls and Fallout; and while Bethesda is an abusive, frustrated company with—seemingly—a vision of self-destruction, they do still care what you think because of their all-consuming fear of the Redguard. But ZeniMax Media owns them, even the neurotic Todd Howard, and ZeniMax Media has only ever cared about your money. You cannot refuse to agree to buy the game you want Bethesda to make and still expect it to arrive, but you can refuse to pre-order their games and indulge in microtransactions for as long as it takes. The game industry’s security and stock values are heavily dependent on fan loyalty, digital merchandise sales and pre-orders. This money gives them their security blanket in case they create “Fallout 76.” Wrapped in their blankies, the management of Bethesda and ZeniMax Media will keep their narrow vision and continue to use their development teams as bad press sponges unless they experience some genuine fear of “commercial failure.” If consumers reject their vision, they will change their vision for money; because Truth is, the game was rigged from the start.

[satoshi-mochida]

Kadokawa Games is a more familiar brand in Japan than it is in the west, but recently the company has been working tirelessly to bring their popular titles over to the western audience. NIS America was kind enough to give us the opportunity to sit down with Yasuda-san (president of Kadokawa Games and writer for GOD WARS Future Past), Miyaoka-san (director of Metal Max Xeno), and Kouno-san (the very cool and laid back producer for Metal Max Xeno). We hope that all of you will enjoy this interview and feel encouraged to go out and try both GOD WARS Future Past and Metal Max Xeno! Let’s jump in!

GOD WARS The Complete Legend - Launch Trailer (Nintendo Switch)

Interview Session - KADOKAWA Games

Metal Max Xeno - Launch Trailer | PS4 

Honey-Chan [Miyaoka-san]: Where did the name Metal Max Xeno come from, and what inspired you to create the franchise?

Miyaoka-san: When you look up the letter X in the dictionary, there’s only about a page of words that start with X. That’s pretty much it! *laughs* As far as inspiration, a lot of it came from movies like Mad Max and really trying to recreate that world in a gaming format.

Honey-Chan: [Yasuda-san] What inspired the GOD WARS franchise?

Yasuda-san: I grew up in an area of Japan called Shimane-ken, which is much older than that of Kyoto and has a very rich history. This location dates back to the origins of Japan! After traveling around the world and experiencing other cultures, I realized just how fascinating Japanese culture really was, and so, I wanted to explore more of the thousands of years of history and tell that story through my work.

Honey-Chan [Miyaoka-san]: What made you choose tanks as the main travel option in the game? Why not a car or a plane?

Miyaoka-san/Kouno-san: Tanks are just very fearsome and have a lot of firepower. Machine guns are cool but the really big cannons are interesting. Tanks are also man-made and so they’re versatile in their movement, and because you’re doing a lot of monster hunting in the game we came to the conclusion that tanks are the strongest to destroy the monsters.

Honey-Chan [Yasuda-san]: The GOD WARS series is well known for its turn-based tactical approach and in the west, a lot of players are more accustomed to real-time action oriented titles. What was your reason behind choosing that style of gameplay?

Yasuda-san: Historically, there’s been a pretty huge gap ever since the release of Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre, and I wanted to sort of fill that gap by creating a new tactics-based game and continue the legacy of the tactical series. I also really love tactical games and wanted to ensure that gamers of this generation could enjoy the genre as much as I do, adding in the more notable gameplay mechanics that current players are familiar with (buffs, debuffs, etc). My long term goal is to continue polishing and refining the game to help it evolve to the next level and make it a better game overall. In fact, my big dream is to make a RTS tactics RPG and really create a unique experience using various elements!

Honey-Chan [Miyaoka-san]: The customization feature within Metal Max Xeno was very well made, allowing you to really fine tune your tank to look colorful and stand out. The character customization section was also polished as well. What was the creative process behind adding the feature into the game?

Miyaoka-san: As a hardcore gamer, I really enjoy a lot of games, and so I wanted to add elements into Metal Max Xeno that I liked the most. Whatever elements I enjoyed I took them and tried to make them better for our game. I started out playing Wizardry and from there moved onto other titles gradually, so it’s more or less a combination of all genres that helped to inspire me. I really love Fallout 3! When I played Everquest I thought of it as a more realistic version of Wizardry, but I do sometimes go back to play Wizardry because it means a lot to me.

Honey-Chan [Yasuda-san]: Earlier you talked about coming from a very historical period. A lot of players in the west may not be too familiar with the Japanese cultural references in the game. What was your approach in delivering this content over to the west, knowing the culture differences?

Yasuda-san: Without going into too much detail, ‘Kojiki’ was sort of the motif for the first game since it’s one of Japan’s oldest historical written pieces. One of the biggest hurdles was trying to express the uniqueness of the culture without damaging its cultural significance. Other titles like Shin Megami Tensei have also used the motif for their titles, but I really wanted to emphasize its richness so that everyone can enjoy it whether or not they truly understood it completely. If players could approach it from the perspective of the game being fun and interactive, sort of like how children enjoy anime, they can become more indulged in Japanese culture without feeling too lost.

Honey-Chan [Kouno-san]: The art style in Metal Max Xeno has certainly changed when compared to previous titles in the series, and it looks great. The cel-shaded approach really gave the game more life. Was there any reason why you chose this particular style?

Kouno-san: The biggest reason for the change was due to the hardware upgrade from Nintendo to PlayStation. The series isn’t really known for being high end but we still wanted to create something appealing and stylish for the new platform, since our game overall is quite unique and we want to retain that uniqueness. When I had the chance to work closely with Miyaoko-san I was totally moved by its unique approach, similar to Ken to Mahou’s unique style, and at that moment I knew creating a new style would surely work for Metal Max. Ultimately, that led to the outline style that you see in the game.

One of our character designers, Atsuji Yamamoto, stated that having an outline for the characters really added more appeal and attractiveness in a visual sense. The art style feels very familiar to the Japanese audience and hits the spot.

Honey-Chan [Yasuda-san]: Which platform do you prefer to work on more? Nintendo Switch or PlayStation 4? And second, will we see a sequel for the game?

Yasuda-san: For GOD WARS Future Past we initially thought that the Vita was the main platform and because of that, there were limitations that didn’t allow characters to really have the freedom to move around. As a result it created long loading times and so I had to reconsider the game from a different perspective in terms of gameplay, graphics, and tone it down to work on the Vita platform. With the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 I was able to really fulfil what I truly wanted to do for the game, and so I’m happy with both.

As for the sequel, I’ve already started writing up the next story! This is the first time I’ve mentioned this to the western audience by the way!

Honey-Chan: Lucky! *laughter*

Honey-Chan [Miyaoka-san]: Will we see a sequel in the Metal Max franchise? Will it be Xeno 2? An entirely new name?

Miyaoka-san: Actually, Kouno-san has asked me to start writing up a new scenario for the sequel and it hasn’t been passed onto Yasuda-san yet, so to be quite honest! *laughs* Regarding the name, we’re still not sure what it will turn out to be, so you’ll have to wait and see!

Honey-Chan [Everyone]: Any final words for fans of Kadokawa Games?

Kouno-san: Metal Max Xeno is releasing this month and I’d love to keep working alongside Miyaoka-san to ensure the game improves! Any feedback that fans have I’d love to hear them, so that way we can incorporate it into future titles. I really want fans to experience the new elements and mechanics that Metal Max Xeno has to offer!

[We provided a bit of feedback on the character customization, to which Kouno-san replied, “it’s quite difficult to implement such detail! We really would love to but yeah, it’s very challenging”. “I got, I got it”, said Miyaoka-san] *laughs*

Miyaoka-san: Happy Hunting!

Honey-Chan: Really, that’s it?!

Miyaoka-san: *laughter* With Metal Max Xeno we’ve made a lot of changes to make the gameplay more interesting, so you can simply go on and ignore the story and just, you know, go full blast into… happy hunting! *huge laughter*

Yasuda-san: So GOD WARS is actually made up of three storylines, with the last section bringing the total to 160 hours of gameplay. If you’re able to complete that last portion of the game and see the cutscene, there’s actually a hint to the next sequel! I hope that people will play it to the very end to find out!

Final Thoughts

We’d like to say a huge thank you once again to NIS America and Kadokawa Games, for giving us this wonderful opportunity to sit down and enjoy a wonderful interview and discussion with Kouno-san, Miyaoka-san, and Yasuda-san. We hope to have the same pleasure again in the near future, and to discuss more about new titles coming from Kadokawa Games! Yoroshiku! Be sure to also check out our reviews for both titles!

[fansplaining]

A reader letter from grace_adieu!

In Episode 42, we read a portion of this letter, sent to us by email from @grace-adieu. We wanted to publish the full letter as well, since we didn’t have time to read the whole thing, and she makes many great points that we didn’t cover in the episode!

Hi Flourish and Elizabeth!  

I was recently recommended your podcast by some friends from a community established during the wake of the dearly departed Toast and have basically spent the past week listening to the full back catalogue.  This has had the side effect of making me have all the feelings on fandom, so I apologize in advance for how long winded this is about to be.

For some context, I was first introduced to fandom at about 12 in the early 2000s via Harry Potter fic on ff.net.  Somewhat bizarrely, I was introduced to it by my dad, who had seen an article about fanfiction in our local paper and wanted to be supportive of his daughter’s nerdery.  The article was very positive and focused on how cool it was that teenage girls were writing stories for fun, so it is less weird than the current mainstream idea that all fic=porn would make it seem, even though I did end up spending an embarrassingly large portion of my adolescence reading angsty Snape/Hermione fic (I take solace in the fact that that even at my angstiest, I was at least never a fan of Pawn to Queen).

As an adult, however, my primary fandoms tend to be video game fandoms (Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Fallout, Life is Strange, Dishonored) and my engagement with them has been overall quite similar to my engagement with my non-video game fandoms (Harry Potter, MCU, Hannibal).  As a result, I was puzzled by the “Games and Fandom” episode’s framing of video game fandom as being separate from transformational fandom.  While the stereotypical video game fan is certainly thought of as male and involved in affirmational fandom (if they are involved with the work beyond the level of consumption/enjoyment at all), there is a sizable portion of video game fandom that does not align with either of those stereotypes.  Additionally, there is a significant amount of fanfic written for video game fandoms (AO3 has ~41k Dragon Age fics, which is several thousand more than the number of Doctor Who fics on that site). As a result, rather than comparing female/transformational fandom as a whole to male/affirmational video game fandom, I would say there there is a pretty distinctive split within the video game fandom between female/transformational and male/affirmational modes of engagement.

The two most obvious differences I see between transformative video game fandom and other transformative fandoms are the decreased focus on rooting for ships to become canon and the increased focus on OCs, both of which seem to stem from the fact that the most popular video game fandoms tend to be for games with branching narratives and customizable protagonists.  Being able to make your own player character and control their choices throughout the game (or at the very least, control who they romance) means that, unlike movies/tv/books etc., there is no one true canon, but a wide range of possible canons.  Thus, while people have plenty of opinions about which romances are the best written or the most emotionally satisfying, there is no motivation to push one ship as being “ the canon ship” since, in general, the existence of other canonical ships poses no threat to the status of an individual’s OTP.  I can’t imagine there ever being a Harry/Hermione vs Ron/Hermione style ship war in the Dragon Age fandom for example.

In a similar vein, I think that the structure of RPGs has led to the video game fandom being more interested in the creation of OCs.  While some people choose to essentially replicate themselves in the world of the game, it is common for people to take it as an opportunity to create entirely new characters.  As a result you don’t see the same kind of stigma around OCs that you do in other fandoms (no one assumes that fic featuring an OC is going to be an awkward author self insert because almost all of the fic for the fandom features an OC) and you frequently encounter people who intensely develop their OCs lives/backstories via fic/fanart/short headcanons etc.  You also see fans interacting with other fan’s OCs by submitting tumblr asks, creating fanart, and sometimes including them as side characters in their own fics.    

This next paragraph is a bit of an aside, but basically to see if I was talking out of my ass about the idea of there being a gender based split within the fandom in terms of modes of engagement, I looked at the video game franchises with the highest number of fics on AO3 and found that of the top 5 franchises (Dragon Age, Final Fantasy, Mass Effect, Fallout and Overwatch) only Final Fantasy featured primarily male protagonists/player characters.  The rest either had customizable protagonists (Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Fallout) or had roughly similar numbers of male and female playable characters (Overwatch currently has 9 women and 10 men, not counting genderless robot characters or the male gorilla).  Furthermore, when you compare games that are similar in many aspects, but differ in terms of whether or not you can play as a woman, the difference in the level of transformative fandom engagement can be quite stark.  For example, Dragon Age: Inquisition and The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt are both incredibly popular, critically acclaimed games that came out in the past couple years.  Both are action RPGs set in a version of fantasy medieval Europe with a heavy focus on magic, romance subplots and player choice.  However, while DAI has a customizable protagonist, thus allowing you to play as a woman, TW3 has a set, male protagonist.  Correspondingly, DAI has ~21k fics while TW3 has only 273 (and while I don’t have sales numbers, there is absolutely no way that DAI is 100 times more popular than TW3.  If anything, TW3 is more popular).  Working off of the assumption that women are more likely to play games when they can play as a woman, it seems that the idea of a split based on gender has some basis?

I also was really interested in your discussions about the definition of fandom, especially the idea that a lot of people view “being a fan” and “being in fandom” as more or less the same thing.  To me, being a fan just means that you enjoy the original work, while being in fandom requires a level of further engagement.  I also don’t think that being in a fandom necessarily means that you are a fan of the original work.  While I have trouble seeing someone engaging in affirmational fandom without being a fan, I definitely enjoy transformative works for fandoms where I do not like the source material.  For example, I can’t stand the Star Wars movies, but love jedistormpilot fics.  Additionally, I entered the Harry Potter fandom as a fan of the original work, but as time went on, grew to dislike the books/movies while still loving the fandom.  I know you talked about this a little when you mentioned having read Teen Wolf fic without having ever watched the show, but I think transformative fandom’s ability to take aspects of a work I dislike and build it into something I love is really special.  

Sorry if this is a bit disjointed, I just really wanted to get my thoughts out.  I love the podcast, and while I don’t always agree with what is said, the discussion never fails to be engaging and informative.  I also wanted to thank you for doing such a great job on the Race and Fandom episodes.  I was initially a bit apprehensive about listening to them because I’m used to otherwise intelligent and sensitive white people having a big ol’ blind spot when it comes to race, so the fact that they featured so many really wonderful guests of color (seriously, I just want to listen to Rukmini Pande talk about fandom forever) meant a lot to me as a fan of color.

Looking forward to future episodes!