Diecast #177: Gaming News Hot Takes

By Shamus Posted Monday Nov 21, 2016

Filed under: Diecast 94 comments



Hosts: Josh, Rutskarn, Shamus, Campster, Jin. Episode edited by Rachel.

Show notes:

0:01:58: Telltale’s Guardians of the Galaxy game Rumor

0:04:49: Nintendo Switch Launch Rumors

0:09:32: Nintendo Switch Launch Titles Rumors.

Other source.

0:11:39: EA Transparency Rules

0:17:00: Ubisoft Accused of Insider Trading

0:21:59: Persona 5 English Translation delayed

0:26:01: Nintendo bans Pokemon pirates

0:30:04: Jin’s Fallout Series Experiences

0:55:14: Jin’s Elder Scrolls Experiences

 


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94 thoughts on “Diecast #177: Gaming News Hot Takes

  1. Tizzy says:

    The U.K. pricing story for the Switch that Josh vaguely remembers is probably the one by Laura Kate at
    http://letsplayvideogames.com/2016/11/report-uk-retailer-game-to-price-nintendo-switch-from-199-99/

    1. Echo Tango says:

      Doing some rough figures with a currency-exchanger website, and comparing to the prices in Amazon’s British website, and USA Walmart, that comes out to about…the same price of a PS4 or XBox One? Sounds reasonable, I guess. I’ve only ever owned a DS, but if I was going to buy a console instead of using my laptop for gaming, that’s a price I could live with.

  2. Simon says:

    Hey team, here’s a question for a future mailbox segment (or maybe you answered it in the past, I’ve not gone back through and listened to every episode of the Diecast):

    You draw attention, in the about section, to the fact that Spoiler Warning isn’t your typical Let’s Play video, and that’s sadly true. With that in mind, what are your favourite Let’s Play channels? The ones you looked to as inspiration when first starting SW, and the ones you enjoy and draw influence from now? There are shamefully few which do the SW-style in-depth analysis of both gameplay and story with some good humour which isn’t the (freshman at best and frankly childish at worst) style of joke which, thanks to the runaway success of pewdiepie and his ilk is by far the dominant form of Let’s Play video. And as much as I love SW, there are games which you for various reasons have long since recognised that you can’t or won’t cover, yet many of those games are the exact sort which would benefit from the SW treatment. Are there other channels which you can recommend which come at games from a similarly informed and thoughtful angle to SW?

    Cheers, Simon

    1. tmtvl says:

      They did answer a question similar to this once, but I forget which episode it was. All I remember is that they named at least Mrbtongue and Super Bunny Hop.

      1. Simon says:

        I think I remember what you’re talking about, but that was dream guests – I love both George and Bob, but they don’t really do LPs.

    2. Christopher says:

      From the Dark is the most comprehensive Dark Souls let’s play I have seen. It’s made by a guy who has helped write guides from some of the Souls games, played them all, and knows Dark Souls 1 specifically like the back of his hand. Story, gameplay, the whole package. Joseph Anderson is great for good analysis, but he’s mostly a big gameplay guy, not that much for the story. Also mostly analysis videos and not let’s plays unless I missed something.

      What keeps me watching Spoiler Warning is that it does seem unique among the let’s plays I know of, so it’s hard to recommend something exactly like it. I know much funnier let’s plays(Giant Bomb’s Vinny and Jeff endurance runs of Persona 4 and Deadly Premonition come to mind), and I know more informative analysis videos(Joseph Anderson just kills it), but I don’t know of that many that does a little of column a, a little of column b. Certainly not with four or five hosts.

      1. Simon says:

        Ta, will have to check it out!

    3. Syal says:

      Depends what you mean by in-depth, but I’d recommend ChipCheezum if you haven’t seen his stuff yet. They aim for humor, but he does 100% or near-100% playthroughs which at least lend themselves to informed gameplay/story discussions.

      1. Christopher says:

        Thanks for the recommendation! I’ve watched a little of their Metal Gear Rising Revengeance playthrough now, and that’s good stuff.

        1. IFS says:

          I would second the Chip Cheezum recommendation and add that Voidburger is another really good LPer out there. She’s done a lot of the Silent Hill games, most recently Silent Hill 2 (for which she has subtitled no-spoilers vids alongside videos where she and another LPer talk over the video discussing the game in detail with spoilers, often the latter become mini-podcasts as they have more to say than the video runs for).

      2. Simon says:

        Sounds interesting, I’ll give them a go!

  3. shiroax says:

    Am I the only one who feels Jin could have used a little more introduction there? Like, maybe no joke link on the first appearance?

    1. Ninety-Three says:

      It was a funny joke, but I still have no clue who Jin is.

      1. Shamus says:

        This was by her request. She’s naturally a private person.

        1. Ninety-Three says:

          That explains the joke link, but in the future it would be nice to have some explanation of why a strange new person is on the show. I assume she’s a friend of someone on the Diecast who randomly got invited/asked to be on this week?

          1. Arctem says:

            I’m fairly sure she’s been mentioned before on the Diecast in a way that makes it clear her relationship to the group. If she wants privacy I won’t say how, but I’m pretty sure this “secret” has already been leaked.

          2. Phill says:

            I assume she is Rutskarn’s girlfriend / significant other (although I’ve always heard her name as Jen when he’s talked about her in the past, but they could just be an accent difference between me and Rutskarn). But yeah, the lack of any introduction at all left me wondering if we were all meant to know who she was already.

            I enjoyed her perspective on fallout thought: message for am interesting section of show

            1. Paul Spooner says:

              More importantly, Shamus promised to talk about why Jin was on the show, and then, maybe I missed it? My impression is that she’s Rutskarn’s SO.

              I kind of like the guests just being on the show without introduction. Could you just get some random schmucks to be on the podcast, give them fictitious names, and roll with it?

              1. Benjamin Hilton says:

                Though not expressly stated, I believe the implication was that Shamus finding out she had gone into Fallout 4 cold was the reason she was there.

                1. “…she had gone into Fallout 4 cold…”

                  Rutskarn, stop posting your lame jokes under different names.

            2. Steve C says:

              This raises the real question… Has Rutskarn been saying “Jin” instead of “Jen” all this time?

              1. Humanoid says:

                Rutskarn isn’t a New Zealander, after all.

              2. I think he’s been saying “Jinn” or “Djinn.”

                By that I mean he’s dating a genie. It just makes so much sense, you know?

              3. Daemian Lucifer says:

                Its actually jem.

                1. That’s just truly outrageous.

        2. Wide And Nerdy® says:

          I am a-ok with that. If I were to ever post something on the internet I’d be the same way.

          I’d like to hear more of her thoughts if she continues and finishes Fallout 4. I hope this comment section won’t taint it.

          I’d really like to see more of this. People who aren’t as saturated in the culture as your typical Lets players and podcasters jumping on occasionally to provide a different take. Its like those reaction videos only not fake.

      2. When Shamus said “and Jin” I heard it as “and Gin” and my reaction was “woot, you go Shamus. Raise that glass in your olden days.”

        1. Josh says:

          NO! No no no. Don’t let Shamus into the hard liquor! He doesn’t have an off switch!

  4. Christopher says:

    There have been Pokemon console games besides the Stadiums before. They put out these weird games, Pokemon Colosseum and Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness for the Gamecube. I’ve only played a littl bit of Colosseum, but the concept is some odd post-apocalyptic looking desert place where you play this fierce looking kid who goes around stealing pokemon back from a mean pokemon team that’s corrupted them somehow. So in place of random encounters, you steal enemy trainers’ pokemon. It wasn’t really what I was looking for out of a console Pokemon game. I never expected the way I would have my dream come true was for the handheld ones to reach a point of 3D where they could be ported and look okay.

    1. Arctem says:

      I remember really enjoying Colosseum as a wee tot, but it’s definitely a different experience from the core games. In particular, most Pokemon you’ll only get one or two chances to capture before you don’t see that trainer again. Makes for a far more stressful experience.

      1. Lachlan the Mad says:

        I’m pretty sure that the game always gave you another chance to get the “lost forever” Pokemon, although usually only after you’d finished the main story. The game certainly never mentioned that, I only know it because I read guides and LPs of the game.

        Colosseum and Gale of Darkness were kind of odd because they were basically “Pokemon Stadium but with a story mode”. You could bring Pokemon from the GBA games onto the Cube with a Link Cable and do the same thing as Stadium that way, but they also added that Shadow Pokemon plotline, which was pretty dark’n’edgy by Pokemon standards. I think that Nintendo saw it as being the equivalent of campaign mode in a Battlefield game.

    2. Grimwear says:

      Let’s not forget the always amazing pokemon snap! Back in the good old days when you could go to blockbuster and get the pictures put onto tiny stickers. I actually think I still have some somewhere from when I finally unlocked Mew.

  5. Smejki says:

    Interesting. I am also a big dog person, like Jin. But when I saw the dog in F4 trailers my reaction was completely opposite to that of Jin’s because I am allergic to cheap marketing tricks. Be it ‘sexy’ nuns in Hitman or this ‘cute’ dog. At that moment I knew Fallout4 had nothing to offer to me. Unsurprisingly i was right. It had even less to offer to me than F3.

    BTW remember the start of Todd Howard’s talk at F4 E3 reveal? Where they showed dozens of HMI (machine interface) concept arts (ie. the fastest way to produce vast amounts of pictures last-minute-before-omg-we-have-to-go-e3-and-show-fallout4 by simply going through permutations) which he used to start talking about how the Attention to Detailsâ„¢ is vital to Bethesda games? Well have you seen this fucking globe you can find at your starting house? Attention to details my butt.

    1. Tizzy says:

      Took me a minute to see it, but now it hurts. Hey, maybe it’s a new ice age brought on by the nuclear winter: lower sea levels and all that…

      1. Writiosity says:

        Yeah, that’s actually something from the Fallout Bible, the Mediterranean Sea was drained (probably as a result of massive tectonic upheaval thanks to all the bombs). Bethesda just stole it.

        Technically it doesn’t count as canon if it’s in the Bible, and I never count Bethesda’s lore as canon anyway, but still, it’s not actually a screw up.

        edit: see notes section here http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/European_Commonwealth

        Who knows what’s what any more, Bethesda keeps retconning so much shit that it’s hard to keep straight what actually did or did not canonically happen. *sigh*

        1. Parkhorse says:

          There was a real life plan to drain the Med: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEdsQmjLMKs

          1. Joe Informatico says:

            This also happens in Philip K. Dick’s alt-history novel, The Man in the High Castle, almost certainly inspired by Sà¶rgel’s plan.

        2. Smejki says:

          Well the trouble is that some idiot Bethesda graphic artists did a hack job making this texture just going autopilot with their Photoshop Magic Wand Tool when selecting the areas to fill with blue and fallout4 fans interpret it as a lore. Well, nope. Neither were Red Sea , Caspian Sea, Black Sea or Persian Gulf dried out. They have have some similar properties though – in low enough resolution the real world straits create a graphical bottle neck that prevents the Magic Wand Tool from working 100% in one click. Which is obviously what happened here. OMG, they even missed the Great Lakes.

          However the biggest sin here is using ~2010 (pre south sudan) state borders. It is ok to fill blank spots of lore with your own new stuff (like dried out seas). It is not ok to introduce stuff that is catastrophically incompatible with lore. Fallout universe mostly diverged from actual history after WWII. In Fallout universe the USSR never collapsed, Canada was annexed by US (shortly before war so this is allowed to be missing on the maps), Western Europe was united and so on.

          There’s even a mod that fixes all this (I would still dispute many things but it’s a decent job). Hell, the author even took into consideration that drying out Med would change the shape of Black Sea. This is what I call attention to details.

        3. ehlijen says:

          If the Mediterranean was dried out and that’s why the globe is like this, why is Sicily still marked off by its current day borders?

          That globe clearly depicts national borders. So was the Mediterranean dried out and then turned into its own nation? Declared no-one’s land?

          And what about the red sea, black sea and the baltic sea?

      2. LCF says:

        Why, yes, the Fallout 4 universe also happens to have the same borders than IRL 2014. Any other question?
        Yes, Germany reunited in 1990. Yes, this is FYROM. Really, please ask!

  6. Ninety-Three says:

    By the way Shamus, I tried to quote the Jin joke link a couple times and your filter seems to have marked my comment as spam. It wasn’t until I tried editing a post to include the link that it even told me it was marking it as spam, otherwise the behaviour was just “Write post, hit Post Comment, comment does not show up, no ‘awaiting moderation’ notice”.

    You’ve written previously about how your spam filter is a terrible mess that operates on moon logic, so I’m not going to ask for it to allow links to the Tekken wiki, but it would be nice if the Post Comment button told you why it was eating your comment.

    1. Steve C says:

      Did you use BBcode instead of html? I was doing that for a while and the spam filter was eating all my posts and I didn’t realize it.

  7. Ringwraith says:

    The Persona 5 delay of nearly another two months seems to be because it did much better than they expected in Japan, so they want to go over it with a fine-tooth comb and extra voice acting to get it right. They have over twelve people working on localising it, which is ridiculously large, as normally you want the fewest possible working on this kind of thing to maintain consistency.

    It’s taking this long and this many people as the game’s script is apparently huge, the largest project they’ve done to date. As the updated Vita-port-with-extras of Persona 4 Golden doubled the script of the original game, but they already had the original of that, whereas 5 is nearly twice the size of Golden’s total script. So it’s nearly quadruple 4’s original size.
    Which is incredibly large, as these are text-heavy 70+hour games.

    Also to add: the Japanese voice track will be free forever, it’s just immediately available at launch.

    So I don’t completely sound like some corporate bot, I’ve been playing another JRPG which had a monster script, Trails in the Sky – Second Chapter. A script so big it only got localised about a year ago and it was originally made in 2006.

    1. Christopher says:

      Could you tell me a little about how all that text manifests in the game? I have heard about TitS’ monstrous localization process, but I never got the impression that the size of the game was that much different from other 70-80 hour JRPGs like Persona 4. Is there just more dialogue? More world states or what I should call it, where characters get new things to say in a hub, like Mass Effect with the Normandy? More choices and alternate paths?

      1. AncientSpark says:

        The easiest way to explains Trails storytelling is that literally every NPC has a story. Okay, maybe not literally, but it’s surprisingly close to every one of them. If you run around talking to all of them, you can get a lot of varied dialogue.

        Also, Trails tends to have a lot of hidden dialogue running around. For example, usually, near-the-end bosses will have some kind of specific character interactions if you bring certain characters along to fight them.

        Then there’s the side quests. Trails is a hugely side-quest driven game and there’s usually some conceit to set the party up to do side-quests as part of their job (for Skies, the Bracer Guild, for Zero/Ao, it’s the SSS, for Cold Steel, it’s the Academy/field studies). And all of these side quests usually have a heavy amount of dialogue, usually pertaining to the aforementioned NPC stories.

        Then there’s also the books. Every game has a set of in-game books that collect that also you can read. They’re not full length books, but there’s a surprisingly large amount of material in each of them. There’s always at least a set of newspapers you can read for events in game, as well.

        1. Christopher says:

          Thanks! Then it all makes sense.

          1. Ringwraith says:

            Yeah, every NPC has something different to say, at least a box or two of dialogue, after every plot progression.
            This is ridiculous and I like just walking around talking to everyone constantly.
            Even the people that are miles out of the way ill have their dialogue changed, it’s kind of silly.
            Then there’s also the dialogue if you imported a save when you did/didn’t do certain things in the previous game. I had one sidequest turn into a sudden boss fight, they can get really elaborate.

            Also of note, Persona games have a load of situational dialogue. 4 has well over 300, maybe even ~400, unique lines of voiced dialogue for a (one of two) support character in battles. And that’s just them, not including other party members who can chime in as well.

  8. tzeneth says:

    This was entertaining and it was nice to hear a person with Jen’s lack of hype built up other than the one trailer. Also, I’m not really excited for the Nintendo Switch. I may have to pick it up for the same reason I picked up a 3ds, the next monster hunter game (I like killing large creatures).

    On a different note that I must say because I’m excited and must scream this from the rooftops: I passed the CA bar exam!

  9. But…Bethesda’s art team didn’t make the Oblivion faces…

  10. @Shamus
    Your byline is “Shamus Young is an old-school OpenGL programmer, author, and composer. He runs this site and if anything is broken you should probably blame him.”

    Shouldn’t that be “Shamus Young is an old-school OpenGL programmer, an author, and an composer. He runs this site and if anything is broken you should probably blame him.” ?

    Otherwise it seems like it states that you are a OpenGL author and a OpenGL composer which is kinda incorrect (i.e. you didn’t author OpenGL) and odd (you didn’t compose OpenGL.

    Now I’m not exactly strong on my native grammar, and the same is true for English for me so I might be wrong here. But when I read the byline I kinda went… Hang on aren’t author and composer separate statements from the OpenGL one?

    Another way to write it could be “Shamus Young is an old-school OpenGL programmer. And also a author, and composer. He runs this site and if anything is broken you should probably blame him.” ?

    1. krellen says:

      Shamus’s way is grammatically correct if potentially confusing. It is common practice in colloquial English to not carry over adjectives in lists like that. (So native speakers would naturally read that as (an OGL Programmer), (author), (composer).)

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Isnt grammar when it comes to commas a bit fluid and the best advice is to just use the least confusing style?

    2. Raygereio says:

      Otherwise it seems like it states that you are a OpenGL author and a OpenGL composer which is kinda incorrect (i.e. you didn't author OpenGL) and odd (you didn't compose OpenGL.

      There’s a comma there, which separates things. You’re not supposed to read it as: “…an old-school OpenGL programmer author…”.
      But as …an old-school OpenGL programmer {beat} author…”.

      1. Syal says:

        Context helps there; an OpenGL author or OpenGL composer would be basically the same as an OpenGL programmer, so it’s more natural to read them as fully unrelated. Something like “videogame programmer, author, and composer” would be more ambiguous.

        The separate links also help.

  11. YEY a new person has appeared!
    Jin for the win!

  12. @Shamus

    I see that the Diecast MP3 file is 128kbit, and the Ogg Vorbis is 96kbit.
    Would you be willing to add Ogg Opus at 64kbit? (I for one would be downloading that instead)

    The Opus codec is pretty mature now http://opus-codec.org/
    And Chrome and Firefox support it natively (and Edge should support it in the near future).
    Media players like Foobar2000 have supported Opus for quite a while now too.

    Todays Diecast was about 62MB for the MP3 (128kbit) and about 47MB for the Vorbis (96kbit). A Opus encoding at 64kbit should be around 31MB (half that of the MP3)

    You might even be able to go down to 48kbit with Opus (todays Diecast would then be about 23MB), but I would not advise going lower, at least not with multiple speakers talking at once.

    For a single speaker a lower bitrate might have acceptable quality for stuff like WebRTC (Web real time chat) which Opus is one of the standard codecs for. https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2016/04/18/webm-vp9-and-opus-support-in-microsoft-edge/

    Edit:

    Would it also be possible to create other feeds?
    The current RSS feed is MP3 only.
    But it should be possible to make a http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?feed=podcastvorbis
    and
    http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?feed=podcastopus

    1. tmtvl says:

      Add an extra vote for opus, with an additional informative link.

    2. Echo Tango says:

      Is this difference big enough to worry about? Even if I was out on my uncle’s farm, on my cell-phone data, < 100 MB is small enough to not care about. Shamus could encode everything with FLAC, and I'd still be able to download the Diecast in a reasonable amount of time. (It'd still be smaller than an episode of Spoiler Warning.)

      1. You mean other than it downloading twice as fast for you!

        How about less bandwidth used to the (Shamus’) server?

        Or how about less bandwidth used by people that are not you?

        I’m lucky to have a no limits/caps connection, but many have data caps.
        At times when a lot of people read/comment on a new article this adds a lot of load on the server, a smaller file means the connection from the browser to the server ends sooner thus freeing up a server connection.

        Almost all that can play ogg Vorbis can play ogg Opus. With a few months worth of stats maybe ogg Vorbis can be dropped if Opus gets more popular.

  13. Kelerak says:

    Can we have a podcast where it’s just Josh, Mumbles, and Jin talking about JRPGs (preferably Shin Megami Tensei)?

    1. Get the sausage out of there, make it a all girls night.

    2. Echo Tango says:

      Only if the JRPGs in question feature a cute pet/alien/thing in the party. :P

      1. Syal says:

        I’m pretty sure that’s all of them. Party mascots are a staple of the genre, right up there with level-ups and angst.

        1. Ringwraith says:

          Unless it’s Shin Megami Tensei, that… often does not.
          Persona is technically a spin off but certainly big enough (by comparative standards) to be its own thing by now.

          1. Syal says:

            As far as I’m aware they all use the same mythological creatures as party allies, and Jack Frost for one has a plushie.

            Also Kerberos counts. Everyone who still has a face agrees he’s cute.

            1. Ringwraith says:

              As in a constant character rather than a recurring one? Less so.
              Jack Frost is Atlus’ mascot after all, but he’s in every game in some way or another, but usually just there in the roster.

              1. Syal says:

                I’m limited in only getting to the third boss of SMT 2, and playing Persona 4 which absolutely has its own mascot, but I got the impression they worked like Pokemon in the other games where once you had them you had them.

                1. Ringwraith says:

                  You chop and change your roster of demons/personas constantly, as they don’t level up fast enough to keep pace, so you need to keep getting/fusing more.
                  Jack Frost is usually only around the 10-20s? So he’ll get outclassed well before you even hit the mid-game.

                  1. Syal says:

                    Hey, as long as he’s not forcibly removed it totally counts. : ) Nothing says the cute thing has to be useful (looking at you, Final Fantasy 7’s Cait Sith).

                    Plus SMT’s got others too; Pixie, the floating face things, the toilet demon. We could classify the whole summoning system as a mascot harem.

    3. Esther has to edit it, too.

  14. A Telltale Guardians of the Galaxy? Hmm. I’d rather see a Deadpool game (think Borderlands only more weird).

    1. I would assume you mean something other than this?

      1. “action beat ’em up” erm. That is not even close to the type of games that Telltale does.

        Also, imagine Ryan Reynolds voicing Deadpool in a Telltale (or in that style at least) game.

        While Deadpool is a action oriented character, nothing prevents a game from focusing on the merc with a mouth, erm. using his mouth.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          He does use his mouth in that game quite a lot.In fact,at one point he uses his speech bubbles as platforms.

  15. Grimwear says:

    In regards to Ubisoft the thing that annoys me the most is not only did they add Uplay to South Park the Fractured But Whole but they also took it away from Obsidian. Seriously those guys are constantly getting shafted. What’s worse is that they gave the South Park game to their San Fran studio who gave us such classic games as Tetris Ultimate. That super great tetris game that came so broken it was literally unplayable. This studio could not make a game that people have working on shirts. I hate you Ubisoft.

    1. Yeah. Obsidian has had it’s share of bad luck, and less than favorable results or situations. Some of it self-inflicted too (agreeing to too short deadlines, agreeing to metacritic rating clauses).

      Hopefully the guys at the top of Obsidian are tad wiser these days. (I really like the company and the type of storytelling they do).

  16. Christopher says:

    Alright, finished the podcast. Some notes:

    “You came to this conclusion on your own, no hype, no Rutskarn influence?”

    Yeah, after she played New Vegas first and then the really two old ones and only then played the two recent ones by the other people who actually own it. You know, the normal way through the series! I wonder how “This doesn’t feel like a Fallout game” lines up with people who played Fallout 3 first. Did they get to New Vegas and feel it was an improvement in every way or did they go “This doesn’t feel like a Fallout game to me”?

    I liked having Jin on. Come back and talk about Shin Megami Tensei some time! You get a jrpg player on the podcast and somehow we end up with Bethesda talk again, that’s just a waste. There are four seasons of Spoiler Warning all about it.

    Finally, pantyhose dolls are unsettling and I don’t understand why you would tell me about them. Ewww.

    1. Ninety-Three says:

      I wonder how “This doesn't feel like a Fallout game” lines up with people who played Fallout 3 first. Did they get to New Vegas and feel it was an improvement in every way or did they go “This doesn't feel like a Fallout game to me”?

      I played 3 at release, then New Vegas at release, then 1 and 2. New Vegas basically felt like more of 3, neither different nor vastly better. 1 and 2 felt completely unlike either 3 or NV: I liked them fine, but the things I liked about them had zero overlap with the later games.

    2. Daemian Lucifer says:

      I dont think it matters which one of those you start with,but rather what games you like in general.

  17. Viktor says:

    Every time y’all talk about the Oblivion main quest I get annoyed. The one good point it has is that you’re basically just a delivery boy and a bodyguard. You get swept up in these events and keep working for The Blades/Martin because you want the gates closed/want to get paid/don’t want to see the cute prince killed, but you’re not the hero. You’re a useful hand that enables the true hero to do his job. Martin even gets the traditional hero’s journey for his arc. It was the one unique, innovative idea Oblivion had and I wish they’d built from that going forward rather than the bog-standard Skyrim storyline.

    Also, keep Jin around. She’s a good perspective to have.

    1. Hal says:

      Exactly! Instead of the thousandth iteration of “You are the chosen one,” you’re just an adventurer who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

      Well, sort of. They do hit you with some fate/destiny BS in the beginning with Patrick Stewart.

      1. Shamus says:

        It’s fine if you remove the tired old “chosen one” plot. The trick is that you need to replace it with something else. As in, “Why is my character doing this? What is their stake? Why do other people want them to be involved?”

        Oblivion is an ugly compromise. It hacks in this clumsy dream thing. That explains why King Stewart wants you on the team, but it doesn’t really give you a stake in it. It also doesn’t justify why everyone else wants you on board aside from, “Hey! You seem to be inexplicably powerful do to the savegame system, why don’t YOU do everything?”

        While I’m as tired of old tropes as anyone, a tired old trope is still better than leaving everyone’s motivation blank.

  18. The issue with Fallout 4 is that as soon as you exit the vault you go “Oh, my baby Shaun, where is…..oooh look, loot!”

  19. Fists says:

    So does Jin know that all of these ‘fun’ games Rutskarn has been recommending for her is all just part of some cruel experiment now? Will their relationship survive the ending of Fallout 4?

    I love how everyone else was trying to enjoy the schadenfreude but hold back from telling her that F4 is about to crash and burn horribly every time she mentions it being disappointing.

    1. Echo Tango says:

      You could practically hear everyone repressing their emotions, and pressing on their mute buttons for dear life. It was great. :P

    2. Are you suggesting that Rutskarn is a vault overseer?

  20. My views on the Fallout series is interesting.
    First of all I experience Fallout 3 first, then New Vegas, then Fallout 4.

    I’ve looked at Fallout 1 and 2 and know about them but never played them, I tried Wasteland 2 briefly but I really did not like the way the gameplay mechanics worked.

    I liked the way Fallout 3 started. I felt like I “grew up” in the vault (I thought it was a shame you couldn’t romance the girl, it seemed at first as if there was something potential there).
    Having to leave the vault, explore the (new) world is what I feel is one of the iconic themes of Fallout.
    The search for your father, the water purifyer thing etc. I get that Bethesda wanted to do a “save the world/epic tale) but just surviving in this world felt epic enough.

    Now New Vegas worked better for me, but sadly you did not exit a vault. But you still had the surviving in he wasteland vibe, and you had a revenge plot (and a revenge is best served cold) so you could do your own pacing. The big epic quest does not appear until same ways into the game, slowly building.

    Fallout 4 let you exit a vault (yay), and again it’s about surviving. But the big epic quest rares it’s head again. But then there is the building stuff. The tiny stuff you could do in Skyrim was awesome, this just blew me away. If the next Elder Scrolls let you create you own settlement & castle I’ll be gone for months. And Fallout 5… You just know that with the success of the current one that they’d be stupid not to expand the building stuff for that. Which means many will vanish indoor for half a year once that is released.

    It’s a shame, they could have let the main quest (aka the Shaun story thread) in Fallout 4 ended in like the “first chapter” of the game. and the rest of the game revolve around your choice(s) and the impact of them (and characters reacting to it and you). Basically the fallout left by you (ehehe, I made a pun).

    For example after such a first chapter they could let you become the head of one of the factions, let you run it for a while. And then force you into a conflict with one or more of the others as part of the end-game story. (I know, that’s similar to the New Vegas end, but that kinda works for a Fallout game in my opinion).

    Minor Fallout 4 spoiler: I know they kinda do that in Fallout 4, but they drag the Shaun thing through it all, if that had ended way earlier it would have changed the feel (and direction) of the game to something similar to New Vegas.

    I’d rank the games this way:
    #1 Fallout 4
    #2 Fallout: New Vegas
    #3 Fallout 3
    #4 Fallout 2/Fallout 1 (as I did not play them)

    You might also notice that I’m listing them in reverse order, ranking the more technologically modern one highest. The game engine has improved a lot.
    And I prefer the 1st/3rd person switchable mode over the old retro isometric look.
    Fallout 3 and NW are starting to look really dated now, and they feel dated (to me at least).

    Fallout 4 does have a few GUI issues etc. But overall the engine feels “good”. Now that the last DLC has been released I can only imagine what the modders will be able to do, hey can really let loose and do crazy things with a engine much better than the Fallout 3/NW one.

    1. I can’t agree with Fallout 4 being the best because it’s basically Borderlands 2 and has none of the RPG elements that made New Vegas a gem and Fallout 3 at least tolerable. It is prettier, but it’s lost any real sense of accomplishment since nearly every area will respawn the same enemies and loot containers, insects can drop firearms many times their size, etc. It also poofs enemies into existence like the original Doom 2 when you pick up triggering objects (boo!) or has monster closets. You can’t clear out a place in advance because Bethesda wants the ghoul horde to attack you when and only when you grab the quest item, and not before, because… reasons. Then there’s a lack of character builds, the fact you’re a set character, your dialog has no meaning, etc.

      “I get that Bethesda wanted to do a “save the world/epic tale) but just surviving in this world felt epic enough.”

      For some fun on that front, don’t follow dad to GNR, but go searching for Smith Casey’s garage. I think you can get the location by heading to Rivet City first. Anyway, you’ll be going into areas that are likely a bigger challenge than you’re set up for, and if you do ever hit GNR, you’ll have to fight the super-mutants without the help of the Brotherhood. Even better, if you’ve found Dad, 3 Dog can’t give you his location as a “reward,” so if you go get his dish, you get a key to an otherwise inaccessible cache of loot and weapons.

  21. gravetracer says:

    I’m someone who roots a phone as soon as I take it out of the box, installs Linux on everything I can, and (usually) mods my game consoles. I soft modded my 3DS as soon as exploits (without special hardware) were first released.

    Mostly I wanted NES/SNES/GBA emulators to play titles I already own 5 copies of / are in copyright hell / Nintendo won’t put on the 3DS for some reason. Custom themes are nice too, I’ve designed a couple that a few hundred people have downloaded. Nintendo also charges $2-4 per theme; there’s no official way to use your own images or music.

    I think there are 3 things worth mentioning about the 3DS bans:

    1. The only people who got banned were players who tried to go online with a copy of the game that leaked before launch.

    2. Part of the reason to ban someone from the eShop is because it’s possible for pirates to download games directly from their CDN without needing authentication. There’s other methods of piracy (which are needed to pirate games that don’t have digital releases), but this is supposedly the easiest. Pirates who used this method for Sun/Moon didn’t get banned. I’d imagine the hardware level ban can prevent people from downloading anything from the CDN; otherwise it’s pretty dumb. Most 3DS exploits (the first and the current) require users to be on older firmware. Nintendo requires you to be on the current firmware to go online / on the store. I thought that was really stupid because there were a bunch of times I wanted to purchase a game, but couldn’t unless I gave up my homebrew.

    3. I think I see more people try to sell used Nintendo consoles than Sony/MS, partly because of the frequent, but limited (actually limited, unlike Sony / MS bundles) hardware releases. I could see a lot of people getting screwed over by buying banned 3DSs. I have no clue if Nintendo can or will unban people in this case; I’ve seen emails from Nintendo support saying they will not unban the pirates.

  22. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Fallout 4 having the same character as mass effect makes sense.Both of those are emotionless bricks.

  23. Daemian Lucifer says:

    I find it funny that no one noticed that Rutskarn meant “200” when he said “2”.

  24. Artur CalDazar says:

    It was interesting to hear blind into thoughts on fallout games starting at the better regarded ones. I have not really gone into a Bethesda game properly blind since my first at oblivion, cant unopen the box when it comes to that style.

  25. Dork Angel says:

    I like going into things blind too (for example, once I know I’m definitely going to see a movie I stop watching trailers for it) and had Fallout 4 spoiled one day after release.

    I found myself feeling the same way about the story, in that it was primarily a revenge quest for my murdered wife. Once I killed Kellogg and found out my son was alive (though older than I thought) and seemed to be being looked after I lost interest and got distracted by exploring, making friends and building settlements. The institute is on my to grudge list but not near the top of my to do list…

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