What is it with people and the immortal dog?

[Battlecross]

One big trouble I have with essential companions is that it makes it harder for me to relate to them, to care about them. If I know they can't die, there is nothing stopping me from using them as just bullet sponges and put them in the front, because I know that's a winning move. Is it that hard for players to have to reload from time to time? It isn't as if modern Fallouts lack the autosave feature...

Where is it said the companions are essential? They said the dog is immortal but not essential. Hell you could likely just send them all away if you wanted and not bring them with you.

Auto save renders them being mortal pointless since just about everyone will simply reload the save.

 

[Moosick]

IIRC the menu for talking with the dog had 'you're a mutt', which calls back to 3's 'you're a mutt' where the protag basically tells dogmeat to piss off.

 

[Battlecross]

I personally don't care, and it's my understanding that you don't have to take the dog as a companion if you don't want to.

A shit excuse. All of the companions are immortal. I'm seeing that said a lot.

Huh? How is what I said an excuse?

It is a a bad excuse to say you don't need to pick the companions up so it isn't a big deal. That is what a lot of the defenders have been saying. I understand that is your opinion, but I am saying I disagree with people that say that. Just not picking the companions up doesn't solve the immortal companion problem. It actually makes it worse because you are locked out of content if you don't want NPC's to be meat shields. Make no mistake. That is what companions are when they can't be killed.

Except I didn't use it as an excuse, I simply stated the facts. That's not an excuse.

 

[PossibleCabbage]

Auto save renders them being mortal pointless since just about everyone will simply reload the save.

I think there are edge cases where the player will be able to survive a combat but no amount of saving and reloading will save your companions. Just because you have better gear, or the AI is dumb, or you're exploiting things about the game that the AI really shouldn't know how to exploit.

So "you have to avoid these combats" is the difference between essential and non-essential companions.

 

[TorontoReign]

I personally don't care, and it's my understanding that you don't have to take the dog as a companion if you don't want to.

A shit excuse. All of the companions are immortal. I'm seeing that said a lot.

Huh? How is what I said an excuse?

It is a a bad excuse to say you don't need to pick the companions up so it isn't a big deal. That is what a lot of the defenders have been saying. I understand that is your opinion, but I am saying I disagree with people that say that. Just not picking the companions up doesn't solve the immortal companion problem. It actually makes it worse because you are locked out of content if you don't want NPC's to be meat shields. Make no mistake. That is what companions are when they can't be killed.

Except I didn't use it as an excuse, I simply stated the facts. That's not an excuse.

You are justifying the immortal companions. Which is an excuse. Besides I'm not directing this at you to argue. I'm directing it at the legions of people who are saying the exact same thing, not only here but all over the web. The companions have been confirmed as essential in another interview with Todd I posted elsewhere. I just don't see why there shouldn't be an option for hardcore mode. If there isn't it almost seems spiteful towards Obsidian. I'm not sure why people are so intent on keeping Bethesda's shitty companions alive anyway.

 

[Walpknut]

What was the deepest Skyrim companion? J'zargo and the Bar brawl lady, and they were pretty one note, just that they were the only companions whose recruiting quest wasn't just paying them 1000 gold. That's the level we are looking forward with FO4.

 

[Marionettetc]

Maybe this Dog is actually the Pariah Dog? Immortal, diseased ridden, jinxed, in Fallout 4... eh?

 

[Oppen]

One big trouble I have with essential companions is that it makes it harder for me to relate to them, to care about them. If I know they can't die, there is nothing stopping me from using them as just bullet sponges and put them in the front, because I know that's a winning move. Is it that hard for players to have to reload from time to time? It isn't as if modern Fallouts lack the autosave feature...

Where is it said the companions are essential? They said the dog is immortal but not essential. Hell you could likely just send them all away if you wanted and not bring them with you.

Auto save renders them being mortal pointless since just about everyone will simply reload the save.

I actually meant essential as in "immortal", not as story-essential.

 

[Oppen]

Actually the pariah dog wasn't immortal, it was just stupidly strong.

 

[Walpknut]

Jesus Christ this dude doesn't even know the terminology the game he is defending actually uses....

 

[PossibleCabbage]

Jesus Christ this dude doesn't even know the terminology the game he is defending actually uses....

To be fair, Bethesda kind of confuses them too in the games. Like the reason "Essential NPCs" exist in games is because you need to have them around for story purposes. This is why you can't kill Yes Man in NV, as you need to actually be able to finish the game somehow in case House is dead and the Legion and the NCR both hate you. But in practice they use it to mean "even if you blow up Megaton, Moira is going to survive because she's got a sidequest and they wouldn't want there to be any quests you can't do because of something you did (or to write a an alternate outcome in case someone is dead.)

 

[TorontoReign]

Jesus Christ this dude doesn't even know the terminology the game he is defending actually uses....

He also used Final Fantasy 4 as an example of a good PC port. I think that says a lot. I'm thinking this is another case of age difference in the community. That is probably the main divide right there. I have been keeping track of other peoples opinions on NMA and they act as if we have all been sitting on this forum for 15 years doing nothing but complaining about the shift from turn-based "isometric" (not technically isometric but whatever) to FPS.

 

[Crni Vuk]

Jesus Christ this dude doesn't even know the terminology the game he is defending actually uses....

To be fair, Bethesda kind of confuses them too in the games. Like the reason "Essential NPCs" exist in games is because you need to have them around for story purposes. This is why you can't kill Yes Man in NV, as you need to actually be able to finish the game somehow in case House is dead and the Legion and the NCR both hate you. But in practice they use it to mean "even if you blow up Megaton, Moira is going to survive because she's got a sidequest and they wouldn't want there to be any quests you can't do because of something you did (or to write a an alternate outcome in case someone is dead.)

Sure, but in Yes mans case it makes even somewhat sense. A robot can simply clone/upload his programm to other robots. But it is true, it is a bit of a "trick" by Obsidian.


Yes Man, I feel, was anyway only there to give you some option to "finish" the game. Albeit I wish they would have rather done it similar to Deus Ex 2. In Des Ex 2 you could have killed everyone of the major factions and still get some kind of ending. Yes Man had good writing, but felt a bit boring in my opinion. Maybe killing everyone, the Legion, House the NCR could have lead to an ending where simply the people of Vegas rule. Without Yes Man in power. No clue.

Anyway New Vegas contained much less of such situations compared to F3 and they tried to at least explain it or reduce it on a minimum - and you had a chance to kill pretty much anyone who was of importance, like Caesar or the President of the NCR. F3 is so full of immortal NPCs and simply thrown on the game without any sense it's sometimes laugable ... and not in a good way. Which is made worse by the fact that everyone will forget it after 72 hourse when you killed half of the town ... and that is what people call immersion in F3 ...

 

[samturret]

I think it's an indication that immortal NPC's will return.

 

[Moosick]

tbh they should have done the morrowind thing and punished you with a dead, non-completable game. idk, gaming is so far behind every other art form and it's all because of dumbing everything down in the name of making cash, and a slightly later blooming as a medium. Even heavily post-modernist games like The Stanley Parable are decades behind the rest of them.

 

[Battlecross]

I personally don't care, and it's my understanding that you don't have to take the dog as a companion if you don't want to.

A shit excuse. All of the companions are immortal. I'm seeing that said a lot.

Huh? How is what I said an excuse?

It is a a bad excuse to say you don't need to pick the companions up so it isn't a big deal. That is what a lot of the defenders have been saying. I understand that is your opinion, but I am saying I disagree with people that say that. Just not picking the companions up doesn't solve the immortal companion problem. It actually makes it worse because you are locked out of content if you don't want NPC's to be meat shields. Make no mistake. That is what companions are when they can't be killed.

Except I didn't use it as an excuse, I simply stated the facts. That's not an excuse.

You are justifying the immortal companions. Which is an excuse. Besides I'm not directing this at you to argue. I'm directing it at the legions of people who are saying the exact same thing, not only here but all over the web. The companions have been confirmed as essential in another interview with Todd I posted elsewhere. I just don't see why there shouldn't be an option for hardcore mode. If there isn't it almost seems spiteful towards Obsidian. I'm not sure why people are so intent on keeping Bethesda's shitty companions alive anyway.

Yet again, you don't seem to understand what you're talking about. I didn't justify anything, I stated a fact. A fact is not an opinion, ergo it is not justifying anything. This is what I'm talking about.

 

[PossibleCabbage]

tbh they should have done the morrowind thing and punished you with a dead, non-completable game. idk, gaming is so far behind every other art form and it's all because of dumbing everything down in the name of making cash, and a slightly later blooming as a medium. Even heavily post-modernist games like The Stanley Parable are decades behind the rest of them.

I think there's a real design justification for not letting an NPC you can kill fairly early on in the game result in an unwinnable state 20+ hours on, just because people are going to be really mad when they find out 20 hours later that they messed up their game. Probably the best way to do this is to do the "bad ending" thing like Dead Money had with getting sealed in the Vault or allying with Elijah. I suppose a Mass Effect style "critical mission failure, reload?" would also work, but be less interesting.

 

[Moosick]

well morrowind just showed a message telling you that you'd killed a major char, and thus reloading or never completing the game are your options. you can still go around, but the world is now doomed. Not as fun, but at least you have a choice that somewhat resembles every other role playing 'it's your choice' thing these games usually hammer at you

 

[Walpknut]

I think there should've been an option where you yourself take over House's operation without Yes Man, the main character is the only really "essential" character to the story, you would give up your physical form and take over, would've been cool. Go all transhumanist on the ending.

 

[Askorti]

I think there should've been an option where you yourself take over House's operation without Yes Man, the main character is the only really "essential" character to the story, you would give up your physical form and take over, would've been cool. Go all transhumanist on the ending.

People hated this stuff with passion as a Mass Effect 3 ending, so I doubt it would've been fine in FNV.