Beaushizzle
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
You guys must be married to each other. You bicker like lifelong partners.
Plot Holes of Fallout 4 - Spoilers
- Thread starter SportBrotha
- Start date
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
I don't agree they had to do it.
TES has far more complex lore then anything Mass Effect had ever spewed out, and they manage it just fine by keeping 90% of it in books. In newer games they actually lampshade the whole issue by having NPCs treat you like a fucking dumbass for even asking about basic stuff like the gods.
I specifically recall a moment in Skyrim where you can ask some prophet guy about Talos, and he gives this brief, and hilariously overzealous and wrong, account of Talos... then he tell you that if you want more information that you should read any number of tomes on the subject. He basically just straight up tells you "go read a book dumbass".
The only reason its "needed" in Bioware games is because the whole codex system they have is garbage. You just get an entry, and it automatically gets added into the codex, but the codex doesn't open or anything, so no one has any reason to go read it. And because Bioware never does anything to encourage reading the codex, no one does, so they have to sit around and spoon feed all this information that people shouldn't be talking about in the first place.
TES on the other hand uses actual books, that, if you pick up, open automatically. You aren't forced to read them, you can close them immediately after they open, but the game is made in such a way that it encourages you to read them.
And since Bethesda has trained people to read shit this way, the vast majority of people who play their games already know that
-NPCs = basic information
-Books/notes/terminals = the more detailed explanations
Which is how it would be if you went and asked someone something.
And I've never found any credible way to explain why a person, who has supposedly spent his whole life in this universe, doesn't know even the most basic top level stuff about the races he co-exists with. It would be like setting a game in the modern day, where you play as some 40 year old dude, and that guy has no knowledge of like 9/11, or the Iraq War, and he just goes around asking people about it, and no one seems confused that he is asking about it, and then they give these overly detailed accounts of the major events of the Iraq War like this is a completely normal topic to ask about/give out information about.
It's just so utterly jarring when it happens in RPGs becuase its so obviously 4th wall breaking, and designed specifically for the player, that it erodes how believable the world is.
>Whole conversation was about how tall buildings are/are not standing post war.
>I bring up numerous cases of in-game art that shows tall buildings are still standing, as well as a secondary point of how a new game set in the same area would show those tall buildings still standing becuase that is how it was always shown to be.
>Your response is literally "You sure like talking about things that nobody said other than you," when the whole conversation has been about the very thing I was talking about.
>You quite objectively are now trying to re-frame the argument as something else, and trying to discredit what I said based on that re-framing
>Not a straw man.
Its literally a straw man defined.
Making an actual objective argument based off of in-game facts.
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Irwin John Finster
Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
I read the codex all the time. It's even narrated really well in all three ME games. Honestly, I don't see how you can say "no one has any reason to go read it because the codex doesn't open." What does that even mean? No one opens the computer terminals in Fallout 4 for you either, but you claim Bethesda hid all these great plot gems in random computers rather than fleshing it out in a traditional story as Bioware did.
I read it too, most people who play the game, don't. You wouldn't believe just how many people I've seen make thread about "100 hours in the game, just discovered there is a codex!"
It means the games doesn't open the codex, thus no one has a reason to read it, because it must not be important if you aren't getting told/forced to read it.
Bethesda however has trained people who play their games to open up every terminal because of how TES rubbed books/notes in your face every time you picked one up. The difference is how its presented to the player, and thus, how they respond when seeing it.
Irwin John Finster
Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
If you didn't figure out there was a codex in ME games then you might need to check your eyesight because the word CODEX flashes on the bottom of the screen every time there is a new entry...
Codex systems are an integral part of traditional RPGs. Spamming computer terminals and random journals is not a codex replacement. Codex systems are an encyclopedia of the entire fictional world. They show that the developer took the time to try to create a coherent fictional universe that is interesting and allows for suspension of disbelief.
In contrast, F4 is "not interested in realism because talking zombies LULZ! writers have fun!"
You say its not immersive to have exposition dialogue where you can ask about the universe because your character should already know about it. However this too, is a characteristic of traditional RPGs and it adds content to the game as well and I think any fan of traditional RPGs will agree this stuff is important.
The bottom line is, removing features from a game is usually never good, just like removing features from hardware is never good no matter how they spin it. I just read about the Samsung Note 5 not having an removable battery or SD card, and someone argued that "Well that's ok because no one really wants those things anyway!" Which is a dumb statement because it's still removing features from the product, making it more shallow and dumbed-down rather than innovative and better.
In the same sense, removing dialogue where you can ask people about a topic in Fallout 4 on the grounds that "well your player character should already know these things" is simply saying it was a good idea to remove content. No one forces you to ask those questions when they are in RPGs, they are there as OPTIONS, and the removal of an OPTION is not to be confused with the addition of a feature despite what marketers say.
...what was I talking about again? I forget.
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whirlingdervish
Brahmin Cavalry Commander
My response was making mention of the majority of your post which consisted of a rhetorical situation that you made up to talk about, which nobody else cares about and which insults and pidgeonholes most of the membership here as some sort of hivemind who just exists to be negative about perceived changes to Fallout.
It doesn't attempt to redefine any part of the discussion, but to highlight your attempts to derail that discussion with made up nonsense.
There really isn't even a logical reason to redefine an argument when the dictionary and pretty much every other speaker of english in the world supports my assertion. That would be like trying to disrupt a ball game when your team is winning.
I can see why you would intentionally misunderstand this, and harp on this angle.. It lets you beat your chest and pretend you were somehow wronged, so you can act like I have some nefarious agenda to wrong you. This way you can try to smokescreen the fact that you have tried to repeatedly redefine the world "LYING" as something diametrically opposed to what it means and that it really implies "STANDING".
PS: Box art is in-game fact now?
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MercenarySnake
Kept you waiting huh?
Yeah we should be totally positive that they took Fallout cut it open, gutted it, stuffed it with fluff then stitched it back up ready for disappointment.
Funny that h would think we're just one big hivemind just because we don't circle jerk to Fallout 4 and call Toddy boy "Godd Howard".
Funny that h would think we're just one big hivemind just because we don't circle jerk to Fallout 4 and call Toddy boy "Godd Howard".
I have, completely honest, met people who didn't know you could hold down the E button to keep drinking in Fo3/NV, and who didn't know that holding tab causes the pipboy flashlight to come on... they didn't even know there WAS a flashlight. People are retarded.
Codex system are a fairly primitive, and un-immersive, way to give detail about the world. Where exactly is this magical codex that contains all this information? Is it in your character's journal? How does he keep an entire libraries worth of information in a single journal? Does the books he pick up REALLY contain information written like an encyclopedia, even when the title is about a work of fiction? etc. etc.
The point of massive collections of books in TES, or terminals in Fallout, is to give the same information in a more realistic and immersive way. It also helps avoid encyclopedia fatigue that people get from reading the terribly dry, and matter of fact, codex entries most games have. Since its written more like "some dudes notes" then "Fallout World Encyclopedia Book 1 of 10". People complained about the encyclopedia like dialogue and books from Morrowind, which is why they largely got rid of that style in later games.
And I don't really care if such dialogue is traditional of RPGs. If RPGs had a stat that did literally nothing, but they all kept because "tradition", I would still ask it be removed, because keeping something that does nothing is retarded, tradition or not. Traditions, by their nature, are usually superstitious bullshit people keep doing because they are afraid of, and too stubborn to, admit change. Stupid dialogue, your character has no reason to be asking, is bad writing, period. All it being traditional means is that RPGs have a tradition of taking the least immersive way out of doing world building. That was fine back in 1995, when games couldn't really support such a large an expansive series of books/notes/terminals, but this is 2015, almost 2016.
Also, options only have value when the option has a reason to exist. Options for the sake of options is bad game design, period, just like having anything for the sake of itself is bad game design. Having a million dialogue options, most of which have no reason to exist, doesn't make your game good, complex, or deep, it just means you spent a lot of time writing shit that has no reason to be in the game, at least in that form, to try to hide the fact you don't actually have as many options as you are trying to make people believe you do. Options only mean anything when the options have a reason to be, that makes sense within the context of the game world, otherwise you are just making shit up, and wasting time that could be spent on other things that actually do add to the game world in a significant way.
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whirlingdervish
Brahmin Cavalry Commander
Yes of course, those games from 1995 couldn't support a lot of text.
Do you even read the stuff you write?
Do you even read the stuff you write?
whirlingdervish
Brahmin Cavalry Commander
It is exactly what you were saying, although you will now try to backtrack.
Unless you are just saying words for the sake of saying words, that post is implying some sort of issue with having lots of text in a game from 1995, when most games had lots of text.. You were effectively rehashing the old and nonsensical "oh it was a limitation of old games, but now in 2015 blah blah blah". This is what "couldn't really support" means, unless you have some bizarro world definition of the word support as well.
It's just not a thing. Old games didn't have tiny amounts of text, and if they had it would not have been due to limitations of the medium or of the time. Fallout and Fallout 2 had text descriptions for almost every thing you could look at in the game world.
There has never been a technical difficulty with having text in computer games, and the earliest ones consisted of nothing but text.
Edit to clarify:
In your post you are saying that the writing/dialogue is X because of this mythical lack of support in pre-1995 games for large amounts of text or notes or whatever as a method of informing the player, and the problem with this is not X.
The problem is that you are basing your argument about X on something that just doesn't exist.
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Uhh no, the post was implying what it said, that the game couldn't support an expansive series of books/notes/terminals. Which is an issue of objects, not the text in said objects.
Old RPGs took many corner cutting measures because how limited disk space and processing power were back then. Which is why most NPCs are just generic reused sprites, why theres all of about 3 wall textures, and two ground textures, why nearly everything is a static object that doesn't move in any real way, why most armors are just one piece suits, why NPCs that have lootable armor don't change to reflect you taking their armor off, etc. etc.
Everything was done to reduce how much shit had to be processed, and how much unique data was on the disk. Older games didn't have to space to fill the games with the 470+ unique books Skyrim has, so they just jammed everything into a codex.
You can stop trying to act like you're some badass, by inserting your delusional and made up implications of what I said, now.
whirlingdervish
Brahmin Cavalry Commander
And there you go doubling down on this nonsense.
There is no technical limitation to adding more text, and there never has been. A hard coded limitation on the number of objects? What objects?
Even if the text was stored in an array and located by integer values, you'd have 32767 individual records that could be identified with ease far surpassing those 500 books from skyrim.
Every game does not have it's text stored as little images with paper looking backgrounds to distract you from the fact that the "book" consists of 3 pages. Even if it did, compression allows pre-rendered graphics to take up very little space, and game resolutions back in 1995 were not such that these would even be large images to display in fullscreen.
Text is probably the least disk space intensive method to deliver content. If it was written beforehand, and stored as a string instead of a silly graphic, there is no processing overhead to delivering text other than simply reading it from a file and sending it to the renderer to be displayed onscreen.
Do you realize you are making up nonsense which anyone with even a rudimentary background in computer programming and a history of gaming before the year 2000 can see to be 100% incorrect?
And there you go making up shit again.
1. I never said there was a technical limitation to adding more text.
2. I never said there was a hardcoded limit to the number of thing you could add.
And everything after that was arguments to points I never made.
Seriously, can you go ONE reply without making shit up?
whirlingdervish
Brahmin Cavalry Commander
Apparently you think SUPPORT means something else too.
Fancy that.
Trying to obfuscate the issue by talking about sprites and graphics instead of text isn't going to distract anyone from your claim that now in 2015 we can have lots of text in our games that we couldn't get in 1995 due to "reasons".
It's no wonder that nobody else wants to have a discussion with you. You don't even share the same language the rest of us are using.
Fancy that.
Trying to obfuscate the issue by talking about sprites and graphics instead of text isn't going to distract anyone from your claim that now in 2015 we can have lots of text in our games that we couldn't get in 1995 due to "reasons".
It's no wonder that nobody else wants to have a discussion with you. You don't even share the same language the rest of us are using.
That was never my claim, no matter how much you try to spin it as such.
Funny coming from the guy who hasn't gone one reply without basing his argument on things never stated or implied.
Its a wonder I even bothered this long when even those idiots on 4chan would have called you out for trolling by now.
whirlingdervish
Brahmin Cavalry Commander
No spin required.
Maybe you should tell us about all those non-fish creatures that have Gills while you are trying to think up a way that your 'it was so hard to put text in 1995 games' claim makes sense.
This wouldn't be the first time you obviously implied one thing and then claimed otherwise right after when someone called you on it, and then either ignored the responding party or tried to blow a bunch of smoke to hide the discussion under a new page.
It's also no wonder to anyone else that you keep responding. You are here for the sole purpose of being a yet another dissenting troll/nitwit, and you aren't fooling anyone.
omegaspruz
First time out of the vault
The bottom line, is that the pre-1995 games didnt have the capacity to try and recreate a realistic world. While you could add text and object it would always come down into some form of codex, which isnt how real life is. We do not have a codex unless we use wikipedia(duh!).
What Bethesda did, and what is now possible, was litter the game world with object which can be interacted and the information is read straight from them and ONLY from them. Also in TES case the information is often conflicting, written and spoken. This is how would get information in real life. I have no problem with codex or the Bethesda method, but Its a bit pointless to argue that what Bethesda did with the way you get lore would have worked the same in pre-1995 games. Ultimately its not about the amount of text, BUT the way this text is presented.
I also want to add that perhaps, for the sake of argument, the codex in Mass Effect is on his omni-tool and its like extra net but whatever. Personally didnt detract from my enjoyment of the game.
What Bethesda did, and what is now possible, was litter the game world with object which can be interacted and the information is read straight from them and ONLY from them. Also in TES case the information is often conflicting, written and spoken. This is how would get information in real life. I have no problem with codex or the Bethesda method, but Its a bit pointless to argue that what Bethesda did with the way you get lore would have worked the same in pre-1995 games. Ultimately its not about the amount of text, BUT the way this text is presented.
I also want to add that perhaps, for the sake of argument, the codex in Mass Effect is on his omni-tool and its like extra net but whatever. Personally didnt detract from my enjoyment of the game.
Wow, someone who apparently reads what people actually write.
Hmm, I never thought of the omni-tool angle.
whirlingdervish
Brahmin Cavalry Commander
The bottom line is that this claim is not true.
Capacity and Support are both words that imply technical limitation, even though Someguy likes to pretend that this is not about technical limitation, even while phrasing it in terms of one through most of his argument.
There was no technical limitation to the existence of large amounts of text in a game back then, and having large amounts of text in a game does not ALWAYS come down to some form of codex, and it is not always delivered in the form of a little book that must be an object.
Even making lots of objects in a game, was not a technical limitation that made it impossible to have lots of text information, only one that limits the number of objects in the active game space. Once you break up the "big open world" into little chunks, you don't have to keep track of Book #243 that doesn't currently reside in that space, so memory limits can be avoided.
Having every single movable thing in the world need it's own little memory address has no direct effect on how you deliver information to the player via text, unless ofc you have to be able to drop a little paper note on the ground and have it still be there for no reason whatsoever for the rest of the game and have it be accounted for in every area of the game forever at a global level (which is not needed and just plain stupid programming)
The technical limitation was on the total number of worthless junk items that add nothing to the game, not on some form of text/info delivery mechanic. I can think of 3 ways off the top of my head to deliver this information to people without making stupid 3 page books that serve no purpose being actual objects in the game world and possibly running into this limitation.
Everything in Fallout could be inspected with the little magnifying glass to give you a text description of it. That's not a codex.