Obsidian Announcement on 6th of December

It seems that the player has some control over the companions level up:

Companion skills will also boost your own skills, so if you have a companion that has a lie skill, it will boost your own lie skill, I think.
If you choose dumb dialogue options, your companions and NPCs will start to treat you like an idiot:

Oh crap, Obsidian stole more stuff from my RPG System! They stole the Shrink Ray... I have been bragging about my shrink ray since I started to make this system. I wonder if Obsidian has spies in NMA.

I'm obviously joking about them stealing my stuff, it's just some hilarious coincidences .

 

Plot twist: @Risewild is actually working for Obsidian and his job is to spy on NMA and TTW team.

 

Where are you getting this?
I've seen lots of (non-combat) skills mentioned so far. Science, Engineering, Medicine, Stealth, Persuasion, Intimidation, Lies/Deception, possibly more.
Gamespot describes it as follows:

The only reference point I have for something like this is the bonusses that were in Oblivion where you got these extra perks automatically at 25, 50, 75, 100.
Although the fact that you can get more perks by taking on flaws makes it sounds like it's more like the perks in Skyrim, where you don't just get them automatically but can pick and choose which skills to put the perks in.

The 6 attributes are probably comparable to the classic D&D ones, but with Perception instead Wisdom, so like AoD: STR, DEX, CON, PER, INT, CHA.

 

In (vanilla) Skyrim skills improve automatically by using them unlike Fallout, you can also raise them by paying for training (10 pts per level?) or by reading books but that's also possible in Fallout to an extend. It has skill trees with various perks that add special bonuses, which are not simply skill bonuses but new abilities as well. However you only get 1 generic perk point per level. As there's no level cap in the game you can get all 250 something perks. Main stats (Health, Stamina, Magicka) are independent and has no effect on skills or on perks. If in this game you can invest pts into your "skills" (instead of main stats/attibutes) and get a perk at every 20 pts increase, it's like a limited version of Skyrim's skill trees with only 5 perks per skill.

Companions increasing inventory size is NOT a good thing, it's downright streamlining aka dumbing down. You don't just need their inventory to carry more, you also need it to give them extra equipment unless the one they currently use fails or somehow gets unequipped or dropped etc. Also you may not want to share your consumables (stimpaks etc) with them. Not having independent inventories is not an improvement, not to mention it's less immersive.

I have not seen or heard anything about the significance of PC's gender, its effect on NPC interactions and so on. Have I missed it?

 

I disagree with you on this. It's about finding that medium point between realism and tedium. Having to dig through multiple inventories is tedious as fuck. I hated having to check through each of my companions in NV, having forgotten which one I'd given a unique weapon to. Losing the realism of companion daycare is AOK by me. Let the realism seep in through natural sounding conversations, choices, and outcomes, not in having to be the Martha Stewart of Packing.

 

That's not a fault of separate inventory system. Companions in these games are dumb, they can't manage their shit and you have to babysit them all the time.

 

All i will say is they blew out Bethesda very very hard. And it was beautiful. 'You don't need to shoot either of them by the way'

 

It's delicious seeing the majority of Bethesda fanboys and gals wake up to the mediocrity. They are none too pleased, pissed even. Bethesda just gave a whole lot of people an urge to support Obsidian and I've even seen some love for Wasteland 3, which is pretty nice.

I think a lot of the so-called fanboys didn't realize how much of an rpg experience Bethesda was willfully winnowing away until Fallout 4/Fallout 76.

 

The Sci-Fi elements in this game have me very excited. I go crazy for stuff like that. This is going on my list. It definitely looks better than FO4, he he.

 

On that perk system discussion, I'll need more news and detailed info on its execution before I can make any judgement calls.

Now I definitely like the sound of that. If a person ever made a bone-headed comment in real life, they will be called out on it rather than taken in stride. So that kind of reactivity is nice.

Well, companion AI will probably retain their stupidity in that aspect in the meantime so I don't fault Obsidian for using this workaround.

Until companion AI are capable of sorting the shit you give them (which I doubt they will in the near future), having them merely increase inventory size is an acceptable compromise.

 

"Dumb" and I assume other different roleplays feel like all the good from ME's Paragon/Renegade without the bad.