T w e n t y S i d e d

A few comments on the glitches in this episode:

• Where DID that wild mongrel come from? I’ve seen a lot of glitches in this game and I’ve done this quest many times, but I’ve never seen anything like that. Wild mongrels are not present in any part of this building. You could say it came from outside, but it clearly came from the dead-end nook holding the computer terminal.
• At 2:00, There’s some sort of animation freak-out on nick, while at the same time it seems like the two companions are fighting over the dialog wheel.
• At 7:45, Josh uses VATS to attack a synth. The attack seems to miss, but then we see it actually connected with a different synth that was on the ground. That’s a double fault. VATS hit the wrong foe, and it let us hit someone that wasn’t in view and wasn’t anywhere near the attack. More importantly, I’ve never seen anything like that before.
• The various pathing problems show that this area can barely support a single companion, and having two is just inviting chaos.
• What’s with Nick and Deacon not setting off mines and tripwires? Is that part of a recent patch? I know Deacon has trolled me in the past by blundering into security systems that I was immune to.
• What’s with Deacon not changing outfits? He does this CONSTANTLY in my game.
• What’s with the car that blows up without dealing any damage? Twice.

In conclusion, I think this game might be a little buggy.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

My favorite thing about Deacon is his magical costume change that happens when you look away from him. It’s a fun bit of nonsense and helps dispel the malaise of self-serious middle-school level drama that infects the rest of the story. So OF COURSE the game bugs out and doesn’t show the costume changes during our playthrough.

When I first played this game I saw it as the work of a single idiot, but based on what people have said in the comments, I’m coming around to the idea that this game was written by a dozen different people who had no communication or coordination between them, which is why the only time the game bothers to explain something is when it goes out of its way to contradict itself. The game keeps bringing up topics and then dropping them before anything interesting is said. It’s not that the writer is stupid, it’s that “the writer” is a group of people all going in different directions.

As someone who loves stories about machine intelligence, this is maddening. It’s like being hungry and going to a restaurant where you’re constantly smelling food. Everyone you meet promises that you’re about to be given food, and other people talk like you’ve already been given food. But there is NEVER any food and after a few hours you realize that nobody ever had any intention of feeding you.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Today’s lack of accompanying text commentary is brought to you by the fine people at Josh Uploaded The Episode Late.

Please talk among yourselves. I’m sure you can find something to say about this part of the game.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.