Among Fallout grognards “being mad about something Fallout related” is perhaps the most popular activity going, so I’m not sure Fandom is wise to give us an easy target.

I feel like if “women and people of color are valued and capable” is what causes a person to be unable to further suspend belief, that should be cause for *significant* self-reflection.

Anything anybody makes or says is some linear combination of two things: the politics that you intend to put in there, and the politics that are smuggled in there from your base assumptions. Both are worth thinking through but the latter is especially perilous since you run the risk of saying or implying something you…

I really can’t see how a multiplayer game set in the Fallout universe isn’t going to completely miss the point of Fallout, even before nukes get into it. But Bethesda bought the franchise to make money, not art, alas.

So one thing I’m kind of confused about is that given how Destiny did not become a money-making machine previously unparalleled in this industry through two iterations, and a lot of the similar “MMO shooter” games also kind of underwhelmed (in at least the public consciousness), and how people have become largely…

I am very happy that I don’t have to play the game with other people, but am concerned with whether or not this will be a pretty hollow experience like Destiny solo play is. Like one of the reasons I’m big into Bioware games is that I would rather go on adventures with Garrus or Varric than with internet randos.

I mean, if Steam is just going to abdicate all responsibility for their platform, I don’t see any reason to see Steam as anything other than a launcher for games I already own.

As a Fallout Grognard, I’m pretty okay with this. I’m not going to play it (I don’t play online games with strangers) but the franchise has shown a remarkable ability to be unaffected by mediocre spinoffs (tactics, shelter, that awful BoS game, etc.) So even if this isn’t very good, people will just ignore it like…

It seems like demanding scrupulous accuracy and realism in a war game, of all things, is just bizarre. Since there are two things I know about war- it is frequently extremely boring and when it isn’t it is dreadfully unpleasant. So it seems like job #1 here is “make your war game not like actual war.”

To this day your Fallout 2 piece is still my favorite bit of games writing I have ever read. I’m sad to see you go, but I’m excited to see where you go next. Best of luck to you in all that comes.

I grew up in the Twin Cities, and no joke, it was not until I went out of state to go to college that I became aware that “Dago” was an ethnic slur. I just never managed to encounter it in any context other than a sandwich (and occasionally a pizza topping.)

Really, it feels like the sorts of “exploitative business practices” we see in video games are just “business practices we see elsewhere”. I mean, how often does the “reduce the amount of stuff in the box while keeping the price the same, then later raise the price while keeping the amount the same” dance happen at…

I do have to wonder if the big difference between EA’s sports titles and EA’s non-sports titles is that the former tend to be bought by people who are not deeply invested in video games and as such don’t have such lofty (perhaps unrealistic) expectations. Like I know a lot of sports-folk and they’re really excited for…

I don’t care about season passes, day 1 DLC, lootboxes, or microtransactions. But I do NOT want to play a Bioware game that requires me to interact with random strangers in order to get through it. I mean, my friends list on Steam and XBL are empty for a reason.

I think it’s because my least favorite part of any game is that introductory period where I develop “fluency” in the game’s systems so I understand what I want to do, how to do it, and can do it without experiencing frustration. This usually takes me like 3-4 hours with a game, unless I was just playing one a lot like…

Are any of these particularly well-suited to making the point that “watching other people play video games is fun”? Personally the extent of “watching other people play video games” I’ve done is watching EVO and the events that lead up to it, and the idea of “watching someone else play a single player video game when…

You know, I kind of like Satoshi Kon’s other two films (Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers) more than Paprika and Perfect Blue, but regardless you should just watch them all. I sort of gave up on anime after Kon died since I couldn’t find anybody else in the medium doing anything as interesting as he was. Hope…

The Protagonist in Fallout 4. If you’re actually interested in letting people play a character of their own devising, please let me just read the protagonist’s lines in the voice in my head. Plus, since you don’t have to pay a voice actor for every line of dialogue, you can have many more of them, so we can avoid the…

Strongly concur on the Mass Effect Trilogy, New Vegas, and Black Flag. I’d also really like to play Saint’s Row 4 on the Switch. New Vegas is my #1 with a bullet, but I half-suspect that Bethesda doesn’t want to really trot that one out because of all the people who strongly prefer it to either of Bethesda Game…

The thing I’ve always wondered is why not make difficulty something that is super-modular. You can give the game a very different feel by, say, turning enemy health down but turning all damage way up. Doesn’t necessarily make the game *easier* but it makes it something that you might like more.