The funniest thing I notice about Bethesda fans these days is that many of them seem literally incapable of playing the original Fallouts. Those games are simply too difficult for them to figure out. And I'm not talking about the challenge of playing the game (although that's often a problem too), I'm talking about the mechanics, interface, and the general way things work.
To be fair, we're talking about AGE GROUPS, here. For kids who grew up on games from the last 10-15 years, shift that actually demands of you your patience and cunning is a very alien concept to them. Fans of the originals are, simply, older on average than fans of the new *cough* stuff.
But I also think it's worth noting that you're just a BIT too harsh, Wolf. There's no sense in letting someone goad you into being rude; just let them be the winner of their own personal dick-measuring contest, and occupy something actually worth your time while they waste theirs. Actually, that should apply to EVERYONE. Care more about yourself, less about others, and the world will magically become a really nice place. But I digress...
Earlier you said this:
Liking what Bethesda peddles as Fallout doesn't necessarily mean you're stupid. You might simply be ignorant. The latter is curable provided you're willing and able to educate yourself. You can't really expect anyone to do that for you, however.
For starters, again, just a BIT too harsh. There's plenty of other reasons, like personal taste. It's the "
Family Guy or
South Park?" scernario. Some people just don't care for sophistication and a well-crafted story and consistency and relatable characters. Some people just want their
Family Guy fix. If they want a hiking simulator with countless amounts of randomly generated useless loot to placate them instead of a challenging game with valuable rewards at the end of every challenge and an engaging story, let them have their fun. I'll prefer my satisfying and rewarding experience with a great narrative, let them have their hiking simulator.
By all means, you have every right to take issue with them confusing one for the other, because they both share the name "
Fallout", but it's not necessarily ENTIRELY because they're ignorant. Perhaps they just prefer that simple whatever. I know *I* can't make sense of it, but I realize it's a matter of taste. Sure, PLENTY are totally ignorant. Just not every one of them, that's all I'm saying.
But what occurred to me, when I read that, was how it's more depressing than we can actually realize, if you think about it. I've said many great things about Jim Sterling over the years, having grown to really appreciate his work, but around the time of this year's E3, I've grown very jaded with his message. This is largely to do with his podcast, The Podquisition, which features himself and 2 other hosts, Laura Kate and Gavin Dunne, where they made increasing numbers of comments that really worried me. When
The Witcher 3 came out, they praised it to high heaven, with Gavin going so far as to say how wonderful the writing is and just how spectacular of a story it is by the writing and characters alone, let along all that being attached to a great game. That made me think, despite NEVER playing any of the previous titles, that I ought to pick up TW3. But then when the FO4 trailer came out, they were all a buzz, talking about their thoughts. They made comments like "it looks SO MUCH like Fallout!" and "FINALLY, they've revealed that in this game, Dogmeat can't die! I'm SO happy!" and most horribly "I liked New Vegas as well. I think the writing was a bit better in New Vegas." BIT better? Gradually the more I listened to them, the more disgusted I was. And these are people (well, at least Jim is) I really looked up to in terms of their outlook on the gaming market. So hearing them obliviously praise the modern Bethesda aesthetic was really disheartening. It wasn't all bad, granted. Jim refused to let up on his stance that a game should NOT be praised for its blank slate compatibility with mods and that while mods are great, they should not excuse a shitty game underlying them. But somehow he missed how directly this applies to Bethesda's work.
These are not ignorant people. Somehow, however, they still made those comments, with enough regularity that it broke my heart to listen to them. Nothing said was NEARLY as upsetting as listening to Movie Bob drone on while standing on his bullshit soap box, but still, hearing people with such respectable opinions saying such complimentary things about FO4, having BEEN to E3 and gotten all the details straight from the horse's mouth, was a sorry smack to the scrote.
Seriously, YAY that Dogmeat cannot die? I was so HAPPY for FONV's Hardcore Mode enabling NPC death. The REASON Dogmeat was so endearing in FO1 was BECAUSE he could die and keeping him alive to the end was such a challenge. Bad enough that they made him "reincarnate" with a silly Perk in FO3, now he REALLY never dies? HOW can anyone think that's a good thing? ~_~
