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26 - Fallout 4: Sandbox Freedom vs RPG Meaning · Mythic Mind Games

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey there, I'm doctor Andrew Snyder, and if you're joining
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: us for the first time, then welcome to our Fallout series.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: So far, I've recorded some chats on Fallout one through
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: three New Vegas, and now this time we'll be talking
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: about Fallout four, and the next week we'll be talking
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: about the Amazon show. Now, these conversations, at least for
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: my part, are pretty off the cuff, drawing on my
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: experience with the franchise. I haven't done a whole lot
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: of preparation for these conversations, so unfortunately, some of my
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: conversation partners most certainly have and that's really helpful.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: As I've mentioned in other episodes, I do intend at
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: some point in twenty twenty six to really do a
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: deep dive analysis of Fallout and philosophy as I play
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: through and think through and do some research into each
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: of the games, and maybe I'll do something of the
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: show too, but especially focusing on the games from one
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: up through four. So make sure that you are subscribed
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: to my channel for updates on when that's happening and
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: what that's going to look like. Make sure that you're
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: also subscribed to the Mythic Mind Games podcast and so
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: if you're listening to the podcast, make sure that you
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: click the link to the YouTube channel and sub over there.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: And if you're watching me on YouTube, then make sure
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: that you subscribe to the Mythic Mind Games podcast on
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: your platform of choice. All right, For now, we are
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: going to talk about Fallout four, and I will tell
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: you in advance that this tends to go in a
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: fairly critical, fairly negative kind of direction. But as we
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: talk about in the conversation, it's very possible to be
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: highly critical of something that you also really appreciate. And
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: I know for me that I put a number of
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: hours into Fallout four. I really enjoy the game, even
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: though we're going to talk about some of its weak points.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: And so just know that this isn't just a hate session.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: It's a respectfully critical conversation. All right, Well, let's go
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: and get to it. I hope that you enjoy it. Hello,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: and welcome to Mythic Mind Games, an extension of the
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Mythic Mind Fellowship, which pursues wisdom in the past between
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: primary and secondary worlds. I'm doctor Angel Snyder, and I'm glad.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: That you're here with the greatest time.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: All right, welcome to mythic mind games as we continue
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: with our Fallout series, this time on to Fallout four.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: But we'll start as we normally do, with the opening
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: remarks experience of the game, where whatever you want to
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: say initially, you know, I will say this is a
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: game that I've put a good number of hours in.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Even though I don't think it's as strong of a
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: game as its predecessors, it wins out in that it's
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: it's the newest game, and so that gives an advantage
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: on gameplaying graphics and that sort of thing. As far
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: as the core game, like the story as a role
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: playing game, New Vegas, I would say is definitely superior,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: and even three for the simple fact that four seems
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: awfully derived of three. We're just reversing some of the
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: plot a little bit. So you know, in three you
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: leave the vault looking for your dad. In four you
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: leave a vault looking for your son. So it's just
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know, it's a little, a little much bit
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: of an echo.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Here in Fallout TV show you leave the vault looking
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: for your dad.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's definitely a theme here that they like to
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: hold on to.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: I think Bethesda is maybe this is the wrong foot
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: to get off onto start. I think Bethesda is creatively bankrupt.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: It, you know it, it does seem that way, it doesn't.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: I don't know. That doesn't bode well for Elder Scholl six.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: But we won't go there.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: We can say that. Yeah, we'll say that for later. Yeah,
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: we'll say later.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: We can grape about that in another context. But but yeah,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: it's so, it's I don't know's it's. I wouldn't say
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: it's like a great game, but I enjoy it. I
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: put in a number of hours. Let's see, let me
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: check steam real fast.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, same thing.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for for not being such a great game, I
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: have played, let's see, two hundred and thirty eight hours
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: into it. So that's that's something.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: Oh I put more time into it than I thought
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: I did.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: What do you have?
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Forty five point two? Okay, I've been telling people. I've
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: been telling people twenty hours, only twenty hours and that
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: no double apparently.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: But what do you have, Jacob?
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: You're both rookie numbers to me. I have over a
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: thousand hours in it. Oh my lord, most spit settlement
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: building though.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: That sounds the one right, that sounds right?
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I do think my skyrimowers are probably somewhere
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: in that vicinity.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: But I was actually making I was making a joke
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: actually with Tyler before getting into the chat, which was
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: I need to find my baby, builds a settlement, settles down,
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: gets married again, helps someone else find their lost kid
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: in Far Harbor, never finds his.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Kid, potentially becomes a raider.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Potentially becomes a raider.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but eventually you find your kid, who is an
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: old man named father, you know, in charge of the institute,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: this pechnologically advanced community that's been kind of the Boogeyman
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: of the Commonwealth, that's been replacing people with sins. And
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: so that's the basic story of the game. I don't
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: know it's fun. Again, I don't think it's a great story.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: I don't think this would necessarily make for great literature,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: even though I enjoy the game. I have fun playing it.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: But that's my opening thoughts. Ian, Do you have anything
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: to contribute as far as opening whatever you want to.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Say, I'll go last got a thousand hours?
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, Jacob, you're you're the veteran here.
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: What do you have, well, anything specific that we wanted
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: to I'm just kind.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Of open remarks. I mean, what what, oh, why why
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: have you put a thousand hours into this? Like what
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: what does this game mean to you? Kind of what? What?
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Whatever you want to say generally personally kind of whatever.
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So the first that's the game that I had
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: a lot of hype for, was Skyrim, but Fallout four
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: was the second one, obviously. I at that point in time,
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: that was when I was going really hardcore on everything
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: that Testa did. So, you know, I'm still playing Elder Strolls,
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: but I was also playing a lot of both Fallout
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: three in New Vegas at the time, and I remember
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: watching some videos, you know, like uh, theory videos about
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: what it could be all about and everything like that.
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: So when it when the reveal came out, I remember
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: I watched the three showcase, you know, the whole the
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: whole thing, not just the Fallout four a portion of it,
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: and I was I don't remember exactly what I was thinking,
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: but as I was watching it, you know, seeing the
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: things like the gear customization systems and then of course
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: the settlement building and all of that, it just seemed
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: like they were trying to create more of a of
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: like a sandbox rather than an RPG, and in a
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: lot of ways. That was really appealing because I feel like,
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: you know, their RPG systems have never been the strongest,
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: at least since Morrow and at least, but you know,
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: it just felt like it was they were trying to
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: take the whole concept of living in another world to
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: a different like, into a different direction. And so yeah,
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: after I had played it, I just it mostly lived
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: up to what I was hoping. It would be just
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: a few things here and there, you know, of course,
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: you know, and no, no game's perfect, obviously, but I
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: really did enjoy it when it came out. And the
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: settlement building I actually found was fun to just like
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: listen to podcasts.
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: Or albums as I would build.
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: And some of the stuff I created in the settlement
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  Speaker 4: system was just ridiculously huge. I created a whole like
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: a whole town on what was it, Spectacle Island, I
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: think is what it was called. I created this massive
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: town with like a huge mansion and everything, and it's
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: really cool. But yeah, in terms of story and RPG systems,
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: I definitely don't think it was the strongest.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Though, Yeah, and I would I largely agree with that,
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  Speaker 1: and I think that's probably a positive way to frame
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: this as more of a sandbox than an RPG, because again,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: as an RPG, as I've already laid on my opening marks,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's that strong as the sandbox game,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: and it is strong. I like the customization. I like
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: how you can mod the weapons and various directions for
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: various purposes, and so yeah, there is a lot to
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: enjoy about it in that sort of context, all right, Ian.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: My experience with the game was, I don't know, it's
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: really funny, Like you know, Jacob talked about having like
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: these very vivid memories of the launch of the game,
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: and you know, the trailer and just kind of like
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: all this stuff, and I'm I'm struggling, actually, I'm struggling
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: to kind of remember what my thoughts were. I remember
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: Todd Howard getting up on the stage showing off the
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: pit bull the uh yeah, the pit boy toy that
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: you could put your iPhone in, which, of course you
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: know which of course you know, it only fit a
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: very specific model of phone. So if you didn't have
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: that model of phone, you were kind of it was
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: a toy that didn't age well. Sadly. Yeah, that's that's uh,
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: that's largely just kind of what I remember as far
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: as marketing goes, I remember when the game came out.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: I think initially, initially I put in about twenty hours
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: and I just and I put it down. I just
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: it was not it was not what I was looking
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: for as a new ves as a new Vegas fan.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: It was not what I was looking for in a
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: Fallout game. I could see. I could see the polish
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: right like they really wanted to. You know, Bethesda's always
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: kind of struggled with their combat systems, so this was
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: definitely the first game where they really attempted to make
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: a passively decent combat system. So I think they more
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: or less succeeded in that goal. Again, like the weapon
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: customization is cool, customizing your power armor suit is cool. Uh,
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: there's there's there's plenty of fun things in there. I could.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: I could see that there was a lot of love
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: and care put into the sandbox. And I think you
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: all hit it the nail on the head. It is like,
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: you know, it's this it seems to be this incredibly
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: fun sandbox. And watching other people play, I could kind
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: of see that for myself. Other people were kind of
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: talking about that, they were kind of saying similar things
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: and I largely just kind of rather than playing the
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: game myself, I just kind of largely followed the discourse,
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: and it was it was pretty divisive. You know, you
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: have the people who think it's the worst thing ever,
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: and then you have the people who think it's great
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: because it's a Bethesta game. I'm in the camp that
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: it seems to be. Hey, you know, this seems to
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: be a fun sandbox game, which is exactly I think
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: what Bethesda was going for, But it's not a terribly
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: good RPG or even necessarily a Fallout game other than
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: maybe like general Fallout vibes, general Bethesda Fallout vibes.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think that's pretty fair, and people
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: do get pre heated about these things and don't really
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: understand that. I mean, it's a fun game, but.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: I think, like I'm trying to I'm trying to think
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: of I'm trying to think if we had the discussion
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: or not about like these heat about in general, about
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: like you know, gamers having just kind of like heated,
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: heated discussions or strong feelings about things or not. You
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: know what I might be thinking about the I might
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: be thinking about the Shivering Aisles discussion, when I when
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: we were talking about the whole thing about the Champion
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: of Siri Dill, you know, you know, kind of mantling
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: Sha go off and becoming the new share go Off.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: And that's basically like Cannon and the story and how
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: that kind of you know, that's it's kind of like, okay,
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: you know, well, you know the character as I wanted
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: him to be, as I envisioned him to be. You know,
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: you know, doesn't you know, doesn't get to be that
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: like I don't. I don't get to live with the virtuous,
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: virtuous night, heavily, happily a a after story, uh, you know,
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: and and I have to be like, you know, the
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: god of madness and chuckle on my throne while what's
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: your name you know tortures people in my name now apparently,
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: and how the and we were we were kind of
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: talking about how like those feelings, you know, I mean,
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: if you if you don't, if you want that, that's fine,
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: but like you know, if you're on the other side
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: of the fence and you're not feeling that so much,
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: you know, the it basically what this all comes down to,
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: I apologize Andrew, is the is the investment, is the
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: investment that we put into into games as as you know,
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: like our time, our energy, our interactivity. In a sense,
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: we are putting a piece of ourselves into into gaming,
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: and I think that's partly where these impassioned arguments on
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: the internet come from. I definitely agree that it's that
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: it can be very extreme, and it can be you know,
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: it can be, it can be absurd, it can be
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: you know whatever. I think there, you know, I I
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: think there is a case to be made, you know,
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: for the arguments critiquing Fallout four. At the same time,
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: I also agree again, you know, we get maybe, you know,
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: maybe we get a little too invested sometimes in unhealthy ways.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that that's that's probably good way framing it. You know,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: as you're talking, I'm thinking about the fact that, yeah,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: we do invest in these games, some people more so
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: than others. But the reason why you know, invest with
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: whatever games draw us in or or even have the
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: potential drawing, is in we have the idea for what
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: a game should be. You know. It's like we're we're
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: aspiring to potentially something real as it you know, like
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: good fiction is real, like in a sense that it
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: it kind of reflects in dramatic level, some aspect of
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: like who we are, the things that we long for,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: and like there is a certain reality to that, and
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: so that that might explain why some people get so heated.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Just like, you know, if I'm reading a novel and
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: I feel like the author did not end the story
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: in the way that they're supposed to, Like, there's something
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: upsetting about that, because like they could have taken us
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: somewhere worth going, but then they didn't, right, And so
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: that could explain some of the heat towards you know,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: video games or you know of of you know, but
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: that's a not providing us with something that they could
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: have maybe something they should have. That being said, I
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: think that framing this as this is a good sandbox
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: game helps to shield it from some of that vitriol
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: that can come at it. And so I think that
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: that framing that the categorization is important here. I think
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: it's a good game. She's not a great RPG.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I remember we, I mean we spent like,
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: you know, two hours talking about New Vegas, and I
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: thought that was a really fun conversation. But like we had,
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: we the vast bulk of that conversation was talking about
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: the moral dilemma of who gets water in New Vegas, right,
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: we you can't have that level of discourse with any
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: quest or any faction in Fallout four at all. But
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: what they did instead was they they decided that they
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: were going to put their overwhelming focus on basically the
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: core of what they wanted the core loop of the
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: game to be, which is exploration. You know, you ex
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: you know you you explore the sandbox, combat, you fight
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: the monsters. Then after you fight the monsters, you get
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: either the stuff and you rinse and repeat. And if
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: you notice every single quest in the game, I mean
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: I was listening, I was I was listening. I was
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: kind of like watching some like people talk about this
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: a really good US a really good series to watch.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: Actually is there's a YouTuber called Joseph Anderson. He likes
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: to go really in depth on games. His videos can
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: be pretty long, though, so again that's that's kind of
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: that's kind of up to the I leave that up
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: to the viewer. But he was actually highlighting this exploration
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: combat gathering loop and kind of like and kind of
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: getting in depth and nitty gritty into the design of
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: just kind of and and saying to the game's credit
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: just how well that aspect of the game is made.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: But it kind of comes but also, as we've been saying,
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: it kind of comes at the expense of everything else,
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: and all of the quests kind of fit within that
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: exploration combat gathering loop.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean basically all the at least all the
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: all the main quest and even a lot of the
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: DLC quests. It all feeds into just the synth dynamic
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: of you know, are we affirming their personhood or are
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: we not affirming their personhood? That's really the central issue
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: of the game, I would say, and so much of
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: that comes.
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: Back to that.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: There is absolutely I think I think there was potential
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: for the whole synth thing when it comes to kind
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: of like, you know, the philosophy of personhood, what makes
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: a person a person? You know, YadA YadA, YadA, and
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: they don't they don't really, they don't really explore it.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: Were you going to say something, Jacob, I'm sorry.
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: I was actually going to address that, you know, the
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: synth the personhood debate, you know, because that that is
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: kind of the core narrative.
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: In the game.
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: But I also it's been a while since I've done
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: the main quest, But I feel like there was also
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: like not really a dynamic, but there were broader implications
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: for each one of the factions. You know, you had
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: the the Minute Men were kind of the not really
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: objectively quote unquote good guides, but were definitely considered to
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: be the the faction that most people probably would get
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: on board with. But then you look at the other
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: factions and they all both all of them have both
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: you know, good points and bad points about the way
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: they're handling the whole you know, sense situation. Uh, the Institute.
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: You know, a lot of people look at them and
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: they're objectively the evil guys and everything like that, and
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: there's no question they do a lot of objectively evil
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: things in the process of their goals. But you also
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: look at the way that they approach the whole idea
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: of sense as a means of reducing danger for you know,
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: for biological people, and you know, taking human the ability
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: to use human tools to whole new levels because you know,
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: for example, you could send off an army of sense
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: to fight instead of risking the lives of your people.
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: And then of course you look at the Brotherhood of Steel.
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: You know, they want to pursue technology and prevent another
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: war from happening. I mean, that's always been their goal
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: from the first game basically. And then of course you
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: get the railroad, which you know they're trying to free,
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: you know, free the sense from there, you know, what
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: they see as slavery. But at the same time they're not,
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: They're they're.
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: Kind of naive in some ways too.
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: So I always felt like that each faction, even though
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: it might not have been written super well into the narrative,
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: the subtext felt to me like it was more complic
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: you know, more complicated than just you know, this faction
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: is good, this faction is bad, or you know, making
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: it only about the debate on whether or not since
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: the sensor people or not. But I could be reading
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: a little too much into that, I think, But.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: I do it when I ask when you say that
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: the you said the the minimum Men aren't necessarily like
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: objectively the good guys. I mean, is there anything they
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: do that's not good?
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: Well, I would I wouldn't say morally that they're not
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: objectively the good guys, but like in terms of the
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: way that they operate might not be the most efficient
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: or effective for protecting people or you know, building the
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: settlements and everything like that. They might have more I
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: can't think of what the word would be, but the
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: way they handle things might be a little bit more
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: effective if they did their operations in a different ways.
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: Like I said, morally speaking, I think they're objectively the
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: good guys.
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: So for sure.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And the way that I see it, it seems
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: like the game is definitely even though you could potentially
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: justify any of these factions, it seems like to me
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: that the game is pushing you to say, Okay, the
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: mini men are they're the good guys. And then also
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: I would say that they're pushing you to think that
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: the railroad are the good guys as well. I mean,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: even the way that they're framing it as this is
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: the underground railroad, right, these are the I mean, the
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: anti slave people. And I definitely think the game is
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: pushing you to affirm the personhood of since as the
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: good and moral thing to do, as a lot of
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: games seem to do that operate in this arena. I mean,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: you know, Mass Effect does something very similar where, especially
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: in the third game, that they start to push you
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: to I have to affirm AI's personhood if I want
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: to be a good guy, and like I just I
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: don't like how cut and dry these games tend to
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: make that dynamic, Like you don't usually find people who
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: are arguably good guys saying that, no, they're actually just
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: machines like that. That's almost always the bad guy response
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: to this dilemma. And so that's something that I find
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: I find troubling and I feel like, to I mean
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Ian's point, they just don't really dig into this issue
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: for as much of an issue as it is, they
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: treat it kind of offhanded. Yeah, either of you want to
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: robut that yeah.
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I totally agree with what you're saying about
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: the whole AI debate.
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: You know, well in game AI debate that.
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: Is, that's the way I felt about the way the
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: railroad in particular were, and and the way that.
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: Honestly, I've again a lot of.
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: People look at the Institute as the bad guys on
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: the whole situation. But again, while they've done some really
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: bad stuff and I'm not going to argue that they're
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: good faction or anything, I do think that their perspective
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: on viewing the synths as you know, as technology as
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: tools more than anything is interesting because, like you said,
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: a lot of the times these games will introduce the
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: debate and then make it objective that you have to
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: agree one hundred percent with the person put side of things,
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: which is really debatable in the real world, you know,
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: So it doesn't feel quite as not, I guess genuine
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: it doesn't feel as as immersive when you have the
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: two sides being so hardcore pro or anti AI human
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: AI sentience or what. I don't know what you can
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: describe that as. But yeah, I just I don't like
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: the the lack of nuance in that whole debate in
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: most games.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like you would add a new touch
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: of sophistication to this debate if you take the good
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: guys like the Minutemen and have they don't really talk
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: about sense that much. But you know, if if you
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: have some of them come out and you know, and
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: take the I guess the Institute approach of Yeah, since
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: our machines like they're not people, I think that having
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: at least some people on the objectively good side give
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: that perspective would add a bit more complexity to the debate,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: because I mean, as you said, like, maybe you can
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: justify some of how the Institute views the sins. But
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: end of the day, obviously the institute of the bad
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: guys like that, that's obviously the way that the they're
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: being framed. I mean, in many ways that they strike
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: me as like that in Ice from Lewis's that Headia Strength,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Like these are the scientists that rise above everybody else.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: They rise above the norms, are good and evil. They
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: just do whatever they want. They're killing people, replacing them
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: with sins. They they you know, they just they have
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: to take chnology they have the knowledge. They just do
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: what they want. And so you know obviously that they
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: are the bad guys, even though you know, I might well,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: I don't agree with like what they're doing with those things.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: I agree that with them that since aren't people. But
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: I don't know, Ian, what do you have to say
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: about all this?
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: It's going to be it's going to be difficult to argue,
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: like for me in the sense that I don't have
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: so like you know, unlike the Elder Scrolls, unlike I
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: don't know some other you know, some other game, like
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: you know, New Vegas for example, I haven't put the
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: hours in to the game to kind of see all
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: the nuances. So I I'm I'm not operating with that
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: ethos right coming into the coming into the discussion, and
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: all I so, all I really know is based everything
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: that I have read from the blogs of people who
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: have played the game, or from you know, the you know,
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: the YouTubers who have played the game, and you know
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: again so like you know, I've I've watched folks like
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: again Joseph Anderson, and they go insanely in depth. So I've
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: got a pretty good idea of what all's in the game.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: But like when it comes to the minutia, the particulars,
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: case by case basis, I can't really argue from that position.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: So that makes it really really difficult, especially when talking
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: about the factions based on everything that I have seen. Okay,
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: so with all of all of that in mind, every
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: you know, every you know, everything I said about just
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: kind of like the ethos there, everything that I have
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: seen has not pointed to any particular evidence, and a
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: lot of these folks are saying kind of the same thing,
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: that there is any particular dimension or depth to any
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: of the factions. You know, the Minute Men are just
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: the good guys, the Railroad are the good guys. The
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: Brotherhood of Steel is there they're they're they're they're the
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: you know, they're the the the Techno file hermits.
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: Uh.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: And then you know, the the Institute is uh, the
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: Institute are the bad guys, and everything they do is
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: just you know, really bad. And again, you know, I know,
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: no one here is arguing that they're not you know,
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: that they're not the bad guys, but I was, I
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: was just I was just thinking about how you know,
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: some of these guys were talking about some of these
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: guys that I was you know, watching, or I guess
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: I was listening to it kind of talking. You know,
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: you can explore the Institute and like on on your own,
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: on your own kind of like of your own volition,
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: and you can find all of the absolutely heinous stuff
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: that just like goes on with just their experiments. Again,
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: it's like there's very like, oh, you know, that hideous strength.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: You know, it's just that it just come you know,
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: it's coming up a lot in all of our discussions. Uh,
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: but yeah, it's it's we we like the Institute is
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: very much that hideous strengthening, you know, to to make
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: that a grotesque verb, and it's kind of and it's
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: it's kind of goofy because you can't even you can't
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: even like talk to your son Sean about some of
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: the stuff that goes on there that he may or
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: may not be aware of. That was kind of the
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: impression I was getting, you know, from all of these guys.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: But it's like, you know, there's there's there's definitely, and
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: I agree there's there's not enough nuance when it comes
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: to the machine discussion. I think for the sake of
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: the narrative, right, so for the for the sake of
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: the narrative, however, you know, and to borrow Sean's words
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: in the story, you know, however much a synth may
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: approximate a person, and he will he goes on to say,
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: it's still not a person. So I want to back up.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: I just I want to back up before he gets
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: to his conclusion, however much a synth may approximate a person. Person,
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: we are dealing with a reality where you know, that's
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: the case, you know where the answer where we're running
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: into the Blade Runner problem almost you know, for it
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: for anybody who for anybody who may have watched The
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: Blade Runner and knows the whole replicant thing like the
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: the the kind of like the the machine made men
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: you know, kind of like human clones or whatever that
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: you know, that that are used for slave labor. We're
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: basically like, for all intents and purposes, we're basically in
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: that ballpark. So the fact that these these things can
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: simulate and approximate, you know, human emotions to such a
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: you know, in the context of the story, frighteningly disturbing degree,
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: and you know, inevitably, you know, leads us to the
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: question of ethics, you know, where we can say, okay,
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: you know, even if you know, even if we can
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: definitively say on some level that these machines are not people,
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: there are people enough that we have to seriously entertain
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: like treating them as such. Basically, you know, more or less, Now,
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: none of this, none of this, none of this discussion
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: is in the game at all. Like all of this
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: stuff that we're talking about, all the stuff we're talking about,
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: you know, all of these interesting you know, sci fi
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: ideas and you know, kind of like questions of identity
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: and stuff like that, self awareness, like you know, that's
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: you know, you know, that's that's the classic discourse as
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: old as sci fi as itself, you know, going all
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: the way back to Mary Shirley's Frankenstein and fall Out
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: just Fallout four just it doesn't, you know it, It
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: doesn't deliver on any of this depth to anybody who's listening, watching,
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: hasn't played and might be thinking, oh, you know this,
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: this scynth thing sounds really cool. None of this depth
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: is there in the game, Like I just like, I
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: just want to tell you straight up, none of that
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: depth is there in the game. They kind of they poked,
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: they poked the bear, but it kind of it kind
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: of begins and ends there. I lost. I lost the plot.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: I lost the plot in my head, like there was
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: a point I had a point I was gonna make
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: with all of this, and I at this point I
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: don't even remember what it was. I got lost on
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: the I got lost on the synth thing. I think
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: trying to trying to bring it back. I was very
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: interested by jacobs and observations of the factions, because that
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: was not my takeaway of the factions at all. So
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: I was just I was just very I was just
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: very interested in Jacob's conclusions.
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: Well, to be fair to you, I think I probably
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: probably was reading into it a little bit more than
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: I probably should have, but but yeah, I think it
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: just comes down to the way I personally approach these
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: kind of games. I tend to I do tend to
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: inject some of my own some of my own worldview
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: and my own personal like role playing storytelling into it.
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: So it could be that I'm getting a little bit
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: of that mixed up. But yeah, I just I always
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: felt like, while they didn't do a great job of
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: showing the complexity of these these ideas in the narrative itself,
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: I feel like it was at least implied in certain
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: areas in terms of the way you could find you know,
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: terminal entries and Hollo tapes and all of those things. Personally,
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: I've always felt like that DESA has done a really
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: good job at subtext through the you know and fall out.
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: It would be the Holo tapes and Elder scrolls, It's
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: the books and just even environmental storytelling. It really does
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: create the opportunity to not necessarily write your own story.
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: I mean, there is some of that, but I just
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: feel like they kind of try to set things up
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: so that you can kind of come to your own
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: conclusions about things. So yeah, again, it could just be
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: that I'm reading reading too heavily into that, but that's
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: just the way I always came to that conclusion about
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: the factions and the whole moral blemma of the whole plot.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: Really so, and to be fair to this game and
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: other games that are it's not an old game, but
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: it's not a new game. That a lot of these
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: issues that they're dealing with have become more real to us.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: I mean each and every year with the growth and technology,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: right that as we move further and further into the
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: realm of you know, AI companions and everything that entails.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: You know, we're moving into this this strange kind of
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: world that's anticipated by the sci fi of when this
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: game came out was like ten years ago. Yeah yeah, yeah, Okay,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: so that's good. Good guess that even in the last decade, like,
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: the reality that they're dealing with has become much more
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: more immediately significant. You know, in in my classes sometimes,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: you know, I'll have students raised the question or even
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: try to take a stand and basically say that AI
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: at least, if not now, that at least in the
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: near future, you know, will get to a point where
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: it it should have some kinds of rights, like say,
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: in our society, which you know, beyond simply as a tool.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: And so these conversations are definitely happening. And I don't
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: even know if Bethesda could have predicted ten years ago
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: like how significantly conversations would become. That doesn't really let
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: them off the hook. But nonetheless, I think that we
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: looking back on it will have some heightened sense of
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: important surrounding this question that maybe wasn't quite as acute
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: even a decade ago, you know. But I will say
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: that maybe even more than the main story. I mean,
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: I feel like some of the expansions or DLCs like
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: like Far Harbor, I think perhaps deals with this more
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: directly at least lets you take more of a defenditive side,
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: as you can decide with you know, people or the
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: sense and outright destroy the you know one a community
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: or the other. And so that that, at least, I
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: don't know, it raises the stakes a little bit. But
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: I don't know where do either of you want to go,
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: whether we continue with this conversation or shift gears and
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: go somewhere else all together.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: I think what I was so, I think one of
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: the directions that I was trying to go in earlier
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: that's kind of come back to me as we were talking.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: Part of the problem with the Institute is that their
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: motivations don't seem to be particularly clear, and maybe Jacob
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: could shed some light on this. A lot of people
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: online kind of say the same thing about the Institute.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: It just kind of seems to be doing everything that
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: it's doing just because, you know, why are they burdering
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: people on the surface and replacing them with synth copies
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: just because? And maybe maybe Jacob could like enlightened, like
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: enlighten us on that. Maybe I don't know, but like
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: the other thing really quick before you answer that question,
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: was it's I guess part of my question part of
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: what I want to know with the Institute and Sense
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: is why sense at all? Like this is kind of
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: one of those things where you know there's more, you know,
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: there's more than one way to skin a cat, right,
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: and what I don't understand so you bring you bring
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: up a good point about like oh, you know using
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: you know, using you know, machines, you know for you know,
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: especially for you know, dangerous or hazardous work or maybe
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: even in warfare or whatever that kind of like you know,
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: you know, it kind of keeps you know, human life
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: away from you know, hazards and such. And what I
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: don't understand is and this is what I don't understand
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: is again why the sense? Why do they need to
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: have the Why do they need to have the self awareness?
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: Why do they need to why do they Why do
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: androids need to dream of electric sheep, you know, to
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: you know, to drop AfOR to drop a reference. Why
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: can't they just use other robots to do these tasks?
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: Just Fallout is filled with robots you know that are
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: not you know, that are that are way less people
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: like uh and if it's you know, if they want
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: to use the sophisticated you know, musculature of like the
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: human body, why not use the synth body, but you know,
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: none of the none of the personhood or personality and
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: just kind of you know, treat it like an empty machine.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: If they want, you know, if they want the articulation
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: of the muscles, the fingers, that just you know, you know,
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: the whatever. It's something, it's something I don't understand why
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: the institute this is just like again, the game does
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: not deal in these questions at all. We are so
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: far like off the cuff of what the story is.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: What it's trying to be you know whatever. I'm just
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: kind of thinking out loud here. Why go through the
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: effort of making like basically like a person, like a
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: like a slave person. That's that's that's something that's something
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: I don't understand. Why do that in the first place.
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I remember that when it came to the
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: early generations of since they were a lot more robotic,
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: they didn't I mean, I don't know if they actually
• 37:55
  Speaker 4: had any conscience or consciousness at all, but they definitely
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: weren't any near the way they are by the time
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: that you're actually playing in the game. In fact, you
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: can see there's a flashback sequence with Kellogg, and you
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: can see some of them being more skeletal rather than
• 38:14
  Speaker 4: human like humanoid well, I guess skeletons. Skeletons are humanoid
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: either way.
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: But anyways, I know.
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: That they at one point before the events of the
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: of the game, the Institute was trying to work with
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: the Commonwealth, like the settlements of the Commonwealth. And because
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: of the secretive nature of this, you know, this cabal
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: of scientists living underground detached from you know, the post
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: apocalyptic wasteland, I think that created some lack of trust
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: or something along those lines, and they kind of had
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: some conflicts and essentially that led to settlements being destroyed
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: in those conflicts and everything like that, and that drove
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: them further underground. But I think the reason, Like I said,
• 38:58
  Speaker 4: it's been a while since I played the main quest,
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: but I believe the reason that they wanted to do
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: the sense was because they wanted to do the the
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: human like, you know, the consciousness of the sense was
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: because then they had some level of autonomy on the
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: surface when they were doing things that the Institute needed.
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: Them to do. You know, of course I don't.
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: I don't know if there was ever an answer on
• 39:23
  Speaker 4: why they, like a specific reason why they were replacing
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: the humans. But if I had to venture a guess,
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: and this is just my personal guess, I think it
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: was just them trying to see how how realistic they
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: could get their sense to become for science.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: It's as good an answer as any. It's a good
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: an answer as any honestly, I think, go ahead.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, I assume it's really just a matter of
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: control that they see themselves as as metaphorically rising above
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: despite the fact that they're actually below. But you the
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: rising above the the you know, wastelanders that the people
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: in this kind of gross area that they're trying to
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: isolate themselves away from, and so this is just their
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: domain to manipulate. And so one way of doing that
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: is by you know, replacing people who you know, in
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: their estimation probably aren't even really people, you know, because
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: these are the commeonters, These are the you know, gross
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: people living in radiation. Kind of like going back to
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: to fall Out three, how the president of the Enclave
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: wants to just wipe out anybody who has any radiation
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: in them, any commutation, right, because he doesn't see them
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: really as people. They're just a debris that he used
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: to be swept aside for some new sanitation to rise up.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: And so I see that that's basically what the Institute
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: seems to be doing. That they're trying to sanitize the place.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: And part of how they do that is by just
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: maintaining control. And I mean, this seems like a pretty
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: good way to do that, by just replacing people with
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: sense that look just like the people. And it's you know,
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: it's it's like a you know, any kind of rule
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: sophisticated spy program.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: I suppose it definitely kind of I feel like the
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: whole I guess kind of like one of the sticking
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: points for the synth for me. Also, like in this regard,
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: just like in terms of the story is it doesn't
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: seem to be like the nature of the sense personhood
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: doesn't even seem to be terribly clear, because on the
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: one hand, you have sense that are like, you know,
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: they're obviously you know, they're obviously being oppressed. You know,
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: they're they have the obvious like slave analogy going on
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: with like you know, the with the underground railroad and
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: you know, like you know, so you know, which kind
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: of shows that there is a need and a desire
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: for Sense to get away from the institute and have
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: their freedom. But at the same time, you have sense
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: that are doing the institute's bedding and doing kind of
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: like the you know, the creepy sleeper agent stuff and
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: replacing people, and so it's just like like that's kind
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: of like another thing that doesn't seem to be terribly
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: clear to me is like what's driving bad? Like why
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: are some sense doing the creepy evil shadow stuff. But
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: the other sense are like, you know, no freedom, you know,
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: that's that's it's it just seems kind of weird to me.
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: Well, I believe, if I if I'm not mistaken, I
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: believe all of the crows you see in the game
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: are synthetic crows. It's taking the whole.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: Area, that's incredible.
• 42:37
  Speaker 4: But I do know that they were also experimenting on
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: like I think it was gorillas or something like that,
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: and I don't remember if there was actually a motivation
• 42:46
  Speaker 4: for it, but maybe they're trying to replace the or
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: you know, approximate the loss approximately replace the lost species
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: that went extinct after the war, because you know, I mean,
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: I personally believe that not everybody at the Institute had
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: the evil motivations or even the secular humanist motivations. Some
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: of them probably had just purely, you know, a curiosity
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: for what they could do with the technology at the
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: Institute had and how they can maybe try to somewhat
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: rebuild the world in a way. But again, as with
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: any technology, the people who have the money and the
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: power are inevitably going to abuse it for control and
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: other deferious meeds.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: So yeah, there is at least one character I know
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: in the Institute who is arguing, hey, guys, you know,
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: these these machines are just a little two people like
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: you know, and if you know, he's kind of making
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: the argument, you know, if they if they had you know,
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: if they're having dreams, who are we to say that
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: they don't have a soul? Like there isn't there there
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: is that character that argument. I don't know, Like I
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: don't think he's terribly front and center in the story,
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: like he exists again, like Fallout is, Bethesda is poking
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: the bear, but they're they're not they're not taking the
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: plunge like you know, New Vegas Bite or Cyberpunk twenty
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: seventy seven or you know, or you know, you know again,
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: we've mentioned Mass Effect. Mass Effect has talked about this
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: more than Fallout four has.
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: Right, they're they're poking the bear, but they're not waking
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: it up.
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: They're sneaking past it like you do in the beginning
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: of Skyrip.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: It's it's one of it's yeah, it's it's one of
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: those things that just kind of kind of serves once
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: again coming back around everything, like when it comes to narrative,
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: everything is very shallow and not necessarily well thought out,
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: because that's not where they put all of their energy.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: They put all of their energy in whoa, you know,
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: this is a cool area. I want to go over
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: there and see what I found, you know, Whoa, I
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: found this cool monster and this cool monster had this
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: cool thing. Yeah, and that's you know, that's that's where
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: they That's where they put all of their effort for sure.
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah. There's also a lot of cut content from the game,
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: Like there's a whole there was a whole underwater vault
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: that they had planned, and I guess some of the
• 45:18
  Speaker 4: assets were developed, but then they just ran out of time,
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: which is really unfortunate because you actually there are NPCs
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: in the game that reference things that might be hinting towards.
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: What they were planning on doing.
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: It looked like they might have actually had an idea
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: for a radioactive Kraken or squid or whatever that would
• 45:36
  Speaker 4: be kind of like a boss at the end of
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: that quest, which would be really really cool, but it
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: just never made it into the game.
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: You know, there's a lot of really cool go ahead Andrew.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: No, No, that's not really important, but I just feel like
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: a a sea monster and fallout would probably be terrifying.
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: Right. There's a lot of really cool set pieces in
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: the game too. I mean, like when the Brotherhood come
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: in with the dirigible and the vertebirds, Like, that's a
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: really fantastic set piece. You've got like the robots that
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: want to fly the USS Constitution. You know, that's a
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: you know again like you know, you know, very very
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: like I was very sad to find out just you know,
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: how depressingly shallow that quest was. I mean, no different
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: than any of any of the other ones in the game,
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: but but you it's really just kind of neat, like
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: to have like these robots that kind of like you know,
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: and they you know, they dress up like you know,
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: colonial Americans and then they try to fly the ship
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: and they crashed into the building or uh there was
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: there there was there was another set piece. I can't
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: I can't remember what it was all of a sudden,
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: but like, yeah, all of the potential is there. It
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: is just kind of what I'm saying.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there's a lot of I don't know,
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: fun stuff in the game. I mean, like in the
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: I mean it's kind of funny how in the the
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: Nuka World DLC that there's the under of Nuko World
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: or the creator of Nukakla or something is he's like
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: Frozen Underground much as well Disney is of course, so
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: h yeah, yeah, So I don't know that there's fun
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: stuff in the game.
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: They put a lot of effort into Nuko World. I noticed,
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: like there's just like there's just like so many like
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: bits and bobs and things to play with, you know,
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: outside of putting people on meat cleavers.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, like that's it's fun. I like the
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: idea of Nuko World. What I don't like is that
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: they in order to actually do the quest line correctly,
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: you have to be a villain, like you you have
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: to side with the raiders.
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: Like I don't like that you can like so one
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: of the guys I was watching said that you can
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: go in and just kill everybody.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: You can quest. Yeah.
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but but like you know, it's like you know,
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: you're you're you're you're deleting you know, ninety of the
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: content correct which it's yeah, it's like it's also one
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: of those things that's really funny is and it's one
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: of the things that shows just how tact on the
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: feature is when it's like because I guess one of
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: the feature because one of the things you can do
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: with the Raiders is that you can attack settlements, but
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: you have an NPC that literally checks you every single time.
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: Oh Nope, you can't attack this settlement. You own it
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: and you have a follower there, and it's like, I'm evil,
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: why do we care?
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: I always personally role played it as I if I
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: went in with the whole settlement attacks and everything, I
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: kind of went for a double agent approach, you know,
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: kind of like I'm taking them down from the inside
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: but playing along in the meantime. I mean, you know,
• 48:47
  Speaker 4: I mean, it's kind of sad that I have to
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: do that, but you know, it makes it work to
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: an extent if you're not playing a very very good,
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: morally good character.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: But I mean, it is kind of fine if I'm
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: playing like a Brotherhood Steel Commando to just go take
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: them out in clean house. So it's kind of fun.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: But it's again, obviously they're to really do the that
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: experience of the game. They forced you to find some
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: way to justify being a Raider, which can be fine
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: if that's what you're playing, but it's not the hero
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: that most people are probably gonna want to be.
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: It's very obvious that from the get go they wanted to.
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: They had like a particular story in mind, and I
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: would say voicing the player character is kind of like
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: another step in that direction because the moment you voice
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: the player character, well, there's two things that they did,
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: you know. One, they voice the player character, and so
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: therefore you're gonna have voice lines that are delivered with
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: like you know, maybe certain emotions, and therefore like there
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: are intent behind those emotions. There's like, you know, a
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: specific like intent behind what they're saying and how they're
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: saying it. And then the other thing they did that
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: kind of like locks in the player and limits the
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: role playing potential is it's like, okay, they made you
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: a they made you a you know, a family man
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: or you know or maybe you know the woman, you know,
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: because you can you can play the mom or the dad.
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: And it's like, oh, you know, your spouse is killed
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: and now you gotta now you've got to go save
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: your kid. And it's very obvious that that was the
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: story that they wanted to tell, which kind of like,
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: you know it it eliminates options for being you know,
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: maybe like you know, more of like a crazy evil
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: character like a raider. You know, it's obviously they didn't
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: really want to do anything with that, and it just
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: kind of given the given the limitations of the dialogue wheel,
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: and just like how badly the conversation options were gimped
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: where basically where you know, if you look at your
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: four choices, your options are basically you know, yes, I
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: don't want to, but I'll do it, sarcastic yes, and no,
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: which just ends up being yes effective effectively showcasing. You know,
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: they intend the character to you know, act a certain
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: way and do a certain thing and follow this railroad path.
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: That makes me feel like they would have been better
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: off just making the player character a set character and
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: just and just replace dialogue options with cut scenes. It
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: feels like that's almost what they wanted to do, but
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: they couldn't do it because it's a Fallout game and
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: so there there's expectation for a dialogue system, so they
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: put a token system in that doesn't really mean much
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: of anything.
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's that. And then of course, if you look
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: at the fact that they used a dialogue wheel and
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: the timing of the RPG scene at that point in time,
• 51:58
  Speaker 4: you know, the bigger pgs at that point in time
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: were you know, mass effect style games, Dragoning, Dragic Wow,
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: Dragon Age Inquisition. Uh, that had a dialogue wheel. But
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: also you said the set protagonist thing.
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: The Witcher two actually made a lot of money after
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: Skyrim came out, and then Witcher three was coming out
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: right as Fallout four was being released as well. So yeah,
• 52:23
  Speaker 4: I don't know. I think that they they could have
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: probably gotten away with the set protagonist, but I also
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: think that the dialogue wheel was I like dialogue wheels
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: and games, but I like them when they're done right.
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: BioWare does them right where you have you know you
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: have on the left side. There's usually like branching options
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: that you can do for more details, and then you,
• 52:47
  Speaker 4: of course have you actually have some consequence to your
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: you know, what kind of morality you go with with
• 52:53
  Speaker 4: the dialogue. But if there's one feather in Fallout four's dialogue,
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: will cap dialogue's wheels cap is the uh the sarcastic options,
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: while you said they're sarcastic, but yes, you gotta admit
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: some of the dialogue and that was pretty amazing.
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: I don't remember, uh, I don't remember some of these
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: sarcastic options. I remember the I remember one sarcastic option
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: which wasn't even a sarcastic option, and that was if
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: I die, I hope I go to Hell so I
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: can kill you again. Like that's not even sarcastic.
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: No, well, there's there's a video compilation I'll have to
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: share in the discord later. But yeah, there are some
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: really good ones in the game. If you if you
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: choose that option every time, you're like, oh okay.
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: But still not quite two New Vegas levels of dialogue options.
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: No, not at all, or or Fallout one or two
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: like you know, like you know, like philosophical boss battles,
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: not gun boss battle, philosophical boss battles.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I look forward to finally playing through those. What
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: else do we have for a Fallout four?
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: Well, just real quick, going back to NUCA World for
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: a second.
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: One thing.
• 54:13
  Speaker 4: Even though the whole forced Raider path was kind of annoying,
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: I didn't like how the tone in that DEALC felt
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: it had as somebody who has played the Originals, it
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: had some of the the dark more of the dark
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: humor that you see in the Originals in that. And
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: I also liked the fact that they had a little
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: bit of a Lord drop on how the Fallout timeline
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: addresses space travel. The vault for in the space section
• 54:44
  Speaker 4: or whatever was basically implying that Vault Tech wanted to
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: put vaults on like the Moon and you know, take
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: us into the stars. Which for a while, I actually
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: actually speculated that Starfield was going to be Fallout set
• 54:57
  Speaker 4: way in the future after Vault Tech or somebody actually
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: got people out to the stars. But then, of course
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: that never happened. But I just I always thought that
• 55:05
  Speaker 4: was really cool that they really did some board drops
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: and some dialing back to the tones that I saw
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: in the first two games in particular.
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: Sorry, I was a little busy putting an F and
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: chat for Starfield. You know, you know what I actually
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: I actually want to you mentioned Starfield, I actually do. Uh.
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: You reminded me of something. It's actually there. There's a
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: there was a point that Joseph Anderson made, okay, uh,
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: and it was so his overall opinion of the game
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: was kind of what we were saying, which was, you know,
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: it was kind of a poor RPG, it's a poor
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: Fallout game. It's a great sandbox game. I enjoyed playing
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: in that sandbox and he was he was talking about
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: one of the arguments that he was making in his
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: video was that this would have been the great game
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: if it wasn't a Fallout property, And I wonder, it's
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: really funny, so he made that argument, like back in
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, you know this, you know that, the you know,
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: this video was a few years old, and now we
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: are here, you know, in twenty twenty five with the
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: with Starfield and the benefit of that particular hindsight, and like,
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: I'm not here to I'm not here to bash on
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: Starfield merely to comment on the tragedy essentially that it's
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: not doing particularly well for itself and it's an ip
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: that may very well just die in its crib. And
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: the thing that kind of jumped out at me as
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: he was saying that, And I'm kind of thinking about
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: like the future of Bethesda Games and where you know,
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: where you know the d'Or where where do we go
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: from here? Like you know what's in store for Elder
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: Scroll six, what's in store for Fallout six, you know
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: what's in store for Starfield two. Of Starfield two ever happens,
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: and there's kind of this, you know, like with each
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: game that comes out, But the Bethesda is pushing themselves
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: more and more and more to that explore combat, gather,
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: sandbox loop less away from the RPG, less away from
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: the you know, from from the from the skill trees,
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: from the from the dialogue options, you know, whatever they're
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: they're focusing on, you know, the gameplay and scrounging through
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: boxes and stuff like that, which you know, and you
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: know Starfield as you know, from what I can you know,
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: from what I can see for all instance and purposes,
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: it's kind of you know, it's a continuation of that trend.
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: And it seems to me, in light of what Anderson
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: was saying, Oh, this would have been great if it
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: wasn't a Fallout game, I almost wonder how true that
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: argument actually is, because to my mind, it seems like
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: Starfield is more or less you know that game. It's
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: the you know, it's kind of like, you know, you know,
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: a slightly newer, shinier you know, kind of like Fallout
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: four in space. You know, anybody who's played Starfield can like,
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: you know, correct or tweak me on that, and it's
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: you know, it's it's not the Fallout property. It's a
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: new ip and it's not doing very well, which kind
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: of makes me wonder how far away Bethesda can really
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: like stray from its Elder Scrolls and Fallout roots. At
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: this point, they might be tied to those ips if
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: they want their games to do well. Just kind of
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: thinking out loud here.
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a good point. I think that
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: fall four is only as good as it is because
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: it's Fallout. It benefits from the franchise, That's what I
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: would say. Like it like it infans from the world
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: that they've already established that people already love.
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that I think that's a good way to
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: put it. It like it you know, for you know,
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: for for better, you know, for better and for worse.
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: It benefits from its IP, and that's kind of what
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: makes it successful because I'm starting to think if we
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: had gotten Fallout four and it wasn't called Fallout four,
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: I almost wonder how well it would have done, right.
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: I don't know, Like I like, I like, I like,
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: you know, I like I like, I genuinely don't know,
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: like again, like I think there's like you know that
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: there's you know, there's a game in there that's good
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: enough and decent enough at what it does. And I
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: think calling Fallout for a bad game or like Starfield,
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: a bad game is kind of kind of intellectually dishonest,
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: like if we you know, if if you want to,
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: if you want to talk about like, you know, bad game.
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: There are plenty of bad games out there, like games
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: that are like, you know, bad in the sense that
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: they are unplayable or you know, or you know just
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: like you know, so like so poorly made that you know,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: just you know, you know, nobody who in their right
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: mind would install those things on their like on their machines.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: Like the fact that these games like are you know,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: they're they're functional, they're look they look good. There's a
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: simple they have a simple loop that works, you know,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: whatever is like you know, like you know that is enough,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: you know that in itself is enough to carry a
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: game like sometimes so I don't really believe in like
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: the Fallout four is a bad game argument, per se,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: It's just not the game that you know, I would
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: say Fallout fans, in particular RPG fans necessarily you know,
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: necessarily want if that makes any sense.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I will say that. I I mean
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: I used to really love the game, like I enjoyed.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: I used to put a lot of hours into it
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: for a time, But at this point in my life,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: I want to play games that have something like a
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: literary experience to them, and so the story matters a
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: great deal to me. I want games that make me
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: think about things that are real, that deals in the
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: realm of ideas versus I'm going to sink a bunch
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: of time and it's just gone. I want some return
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: for that time that I'm putting into a game. Otherwise
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: I just kind of feel like I'm wasting my life,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: wasting my time. Not not to say that there's anything
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: wrong with just sort of unplugging for a while and
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: having fun. I'm not saying that's the problem. But for
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: the most part, like you know, at this point in
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: my life, I've got you know, a lot of work,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: I've got family. If I'm going to play a game,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: I wanted to have that kind of return for the
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: time I'm putting into it. And so that's why even
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: though game like Fallout four, even Skyrim, like these are
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: games that I've put a lot of time into, but
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: at this point in life, they kind of fall flat
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: to me because of what you were largely saying that
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: Bethesda has just They've gotten more and more shallow. And
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: so even though four, even though skyrimor games I still
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: enjoy playing, they they don't have the kind of substance
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: that they had in the generation before or even the
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: generation before that. So that's that's kind of I don't know,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: that's where I am. But Jacob, I think I cut
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: you off a little bit. What were we going to say?
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 4: Well, okay, so going back to Starfield for just a minute.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: In some ways, it's continuing that trend of going shallow,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 4: but I feel like it was actually a step back
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: towards the direction that we're that we would prefer. The
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 4: dialogue was definitely a lot more complex. There were more
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 4: speech checks, and you could kind of come up with
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 4: a backstory for your character with the perk system, And
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 4: there was a perk where you could actually I think
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 4: it's called kids stuff or something like that, where basically
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 4: you go back and visit your You can go back
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 4: and visit your parents every so often, you send a
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: little bit of money home to them every so often,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 4: and everything like that, and there would be you could
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 4: sometimes like find them getting ready to go on a
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 4: star cruise and everything like that. It was just I
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 4: feel like Starfield was actually a step back in the
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 4: right direction in some ways. Of course, there were other
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 4: ways that it wasn't.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: But there there was a video you were.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 4: Talking about just Bethesta in general removing the RPG elements,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 4: and there was a video I can't remember who the
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 4: YouTuber was, but it was a really good video about
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: Skyrim and how and comparing it to the previous Elder
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 4: Scrolls games. And in the video he was talking about how,
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 4: in the long run, if you look at the Elder
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 4: Scrolls series, it's not so much about the RPG mechanics
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 4: as it is the freedom, you know, because Bethesta games
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 4: are always you know, live another life in another world
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: and all that, and that that was a point that
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 4: I actually thought was really good, because you know, people
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: do go into Pathesta games because they are quote unquote RPGs,
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 4: and they have a certain set of expectations because they've
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 4: seen things like Mass Effect, like Dragon Age like you know,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 4: even older than that, Balder's Gate, Divinity, all those games,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 4: and so they're expecting a certain type of art, you know,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 4: with the branching dialogue and robust character creation systems, not
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 4: just the visit or the cosmetic side, but also traits
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 4: and skills and all of that, whereas buttesta games really
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 4: especially since Marwin, but even Marwind itself was kind of
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 4: a dumbed down experience compared to Daggerfall. You know, the
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 4: first two games were very hardcore D and D style
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 4: RPGs and everything like that. But then you go, as
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 4: you go on in time, there's a lot more streamlining
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 4: that goes on, and you know, that's for better and worse.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 4: But I think that there are these days, there are
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 4: so many different types of RPG experiences you can get,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 4: Like I mean, you have, of course, of the Western
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 4: RPG style, then you have Japanese RPG style.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: They're very, very different.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 4: But even in the Western RPG scene you have games
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 4: such as The Witcher, where you have a set protagonists,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 4: set kind of character that you're playing. Yeah, you can
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 4: be a little bit more selfish in some cases than others,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 4: or you know, noble in other cases, but generally speaking,
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 4: you are playing kind of a set path that just
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 4: has different outcomes for the quests. And I think that
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 4: there's definitely, you know, a place for both kinds. But
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 4: I also totally agree with the idea that you're not
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 4: really getting there. You don't feel like you're really getting
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 4: a return on investment in a lot of those cases.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 4: You were talking about, how Andrew, you're talking about how
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 4: you know with Fallout fort Skyrave, you put a lot
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 4: of time into those, but you don't feel like you've
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 4: been on a true narrative adventure anymore. I would I
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 4: would have to agree with that, though, Like I do
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 4: think that they could do a.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: Lot better on that aspect.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 4: But this is this part here is just quick, very unrelated.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 4: But if you like that kind of game, you definitely
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 4: need to play Tell Tales Walking Dead games. Those have
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 4: really good narrative storytelling in that like kind of an
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 4: RPG vein, but it's actually not an RPG at all.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: But yeah, I definitely that That's basically all I was
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: gonna say. It's a little long winded, but.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: A no, I think what you said was uh, I
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: think I think what you said was you know, very
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: very good. You know, like so, like I wasn't trying
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: to imply that if the if the if the protagonist
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: is a voice protagonist, therefore you know, you can't have
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: dialogue options at all. You know, maybe maybe maybe maybe
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: that's how that came across, So I want to walk
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: that back a little bit. That wasn't necessarily my intention,
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: but you know, Bethesda certainly didn't like execute it as
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: well as well as like, you know, the Witcher, I
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: would say the Witcher for example, or like the early
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: mass Effect games. But I think that's a I think
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: you raised like a really really good point there, as
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: well as as well as some other points as well,
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: like set like some of those Starfield parks sounded pretty cool.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: Is there anything else that we have to discussed on
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: Fallout four? I don't know that I have much else
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: to throw out there, unless either of you do.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: I mean, there, you know, there's always stuff to talk about.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: You know, I've got you know, I you know, I've
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: got like, you know, I've still got like stuff on
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: my list that like I haven't checked off. But like
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: it's it's not essential, it's not important. It's just like
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: at this point, you know, I would say it's kind
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: of nitty gritty, like for the for the for the
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: purposes of this discussion.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: Well, Jacob, do you have anything else?
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 4: Well, I mean I didn't write anything down specifically, but
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 4: uh uh, well, one thing I will just have to
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 4: say that I wish they would have explored more is
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 4: in Fallout four they have, you know, of course a
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 4: few callbacks to.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: What happened at Fallout three.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 4: One of the callbacks was the Dune Which storyline with
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 4: the Dunewich who was a uh done which building or whatever?
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 4: And then in Fallout four was done which bores And
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 4: of course the Dune Which building and fall Out three
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 4: was tied to Point Lookout and that had kind of
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 4: a uh you have I can't remember what the faction
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 4: was called, but it was like a missionary faction that
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 4: was trying to hunt down a cult books and destroy them. Essentially,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 4: they could have done so much more with that in
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 4: fall At four, but they really didn't. You just go
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 4: there and you discover that they're worshiping some love crafty
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 4: in God, which I'm like, is this even surprising?
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: It's Bethesda. They they love their love Craft Eastern Eggs.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: Like I think that's I think that's that's That's all
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: it's going to be, is love is love Craft Eastern Eggs.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: I doubt it'll ever be like a main storyline. Yeah,
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: but like I know, I know exactly what you're talking about.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: Those are always a lot of fun there. There's even like,
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: you know, there's even some deep dives like on you
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: can find online. You know, there there is kind of
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: like a there is kind of like a little like
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: metaplot going on there. It's just not like it's just
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: not front and center, right, And but they.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 4: Did they're hinting at that in Fallout seventy six with
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 4: some recent content with the fishing update, there was like
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: a hint of some sort of underwater lovecraft style, you
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 4: know entity.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: But they haven't. Might you might get your cracking, Yeah.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 4: Maybe maybe, but you know, I don't know if they'll
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 4: ever continue that though, because it was it felt like
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 4: they were going somewhere with it, but then it just
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 4: hasn't gone anywhere since then.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: But who knows.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: I think I think for closing remarks, because you said something,
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: I would be remiss if I didn't point out it
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: is absolutely it is absolutely criminal that in a world
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: where Fallout three's story exists, like the main story, uh
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: like with the water and the Gek and just kind
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: of like the magic geg and and all of that,
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: we got Fallout four where you can effortless lee build
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: a water, you can build as many water pure fires
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: as you want, and this and the whole story of
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: Fallout three was a hell like that was impossible. And
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: here in Fallout four, like, uh, you know, put a
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: water pier fire here, put a water pier fire there.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: You know, what are we doing? It's the Institute for
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: giving it madness? Absolute madness.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently Boston is way more advanced than DC.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: Suck at DC.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: All right, there's our tag line.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: Oh no, what have I done?
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: Well? I mean, I guess that's kind of where we
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: can go ahead and wrap it. I mean, I will
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: say that over all this conversations obviously been taking very
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: negative direction, but that's because I do think it's a
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: drop off. It's it's it's a fun game. I did
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: get the I did upgrade with the anniversary bundle stuck.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: I haven't played it yet with all that, but I
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: like port of seeing what's new there. I enjoy it.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: Over time, I have become a little disenchanted by it, obviously,
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: but that's on that kind of bummer. I mean, I
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: guess we can wrap it up. Let's either you have
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: anything else more positive to.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: Say, Uh, there is go ahead.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 4: I was just gonna say real quick that when it
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 4: came out, it was listed for me personally it was
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 4: my favorite game, but over time it definitely has declined.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 4: Over you know, I've gone back to the older ones
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 4: and have seen the cracks and the paint, so to speak.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 3: But yeah, that's all.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 4: I was gonna say on that.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: I guess I would say to anybody listening, you know,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: uh and I and I really you know, I really
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: want to stress this. I really do mean this. Like,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: you know, you know, if you love, if you love
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: Fallout four, you know that's fine. There's nothing wrong with
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: you loving that game. It being your favorite game, you know,
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: you you know, you you go and have a good
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: time with Fallout four, there is nothing wrong with that. Again,
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: we've talked about how it's very good at the particular
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: thing that it does, and I think it's you know,
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: kind of disingenuous to say that it doesn't that it isn't.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: Uh So that's kind of what Yeah, that's what I
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: would say. I think. Unfortunately, when you want to as
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: Andrew was saying, like, you know, we want to like,
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: we want stories that we can chew on and engage
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: with critically. So unfortunately, when you do want to take
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: things seriously, when you do want to engage with things, critically,
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: and I'm definitely one of those people. Unfortunately, sometimes it
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: is going to take, you know, a negative turn when
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: you are looking for those certain aspects and that game
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: or you know whatever, you know, maybe it's a book
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: or you know whatever it can be found wanting in
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: that area. That's just kind of like the nature of
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: critique sometimes. If for anybody who hasn't heard of it,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: I do want to plug somebody made like a basically
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: like a total conversion mod for Fallout four Fallout London.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: It is effectively a standalone game like its own fully
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: fully written voice acted you know in PCs, its own radio,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: just set in a London, in a post apocalyptic London sandbox.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: You can get the mod for free for Fallout four
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: and it's it's it's an incredible passion project and uh
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: work of love for people who maybe you want more Fallout.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, just to add one little bit to what you're
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 4: saying about people enjoying Fallout four and everything, you know,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 4: I've I've come to learn over my my thirty years
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 4: on this planet that you know, it's completely possible to
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 4: both address issues in something while also really still enjoying it,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 4: you know, like I still yeah, I still love Fallout
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 4: four to death. But at the same time, you know,
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 4: there are definitely clear issues that I can address. I mean,
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 4: even Oblivion, which for a long time I would would
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 4: have considered my favorite game. I don't know if I
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 4: would or not now I'm kind of confused on all that,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 4: but yeah, even for that game, I mean there's there's
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 4: issues the level you know, level scaling was absolutely atrocious
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 4: in the Orital game and everything like that, So you know,
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 4: I mean there's you can you can separate your criticisms
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 4: from your enjoyment.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: That's absolutely absolutely preach say it for the people in
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: the back. You can. You can do both. It is
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: possible to do both.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I think that is very important nuance because again,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: despite everything I've said, I like the game, right, that
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: is important to emphasize that. All Right, well, I I
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: appreciate where we were able to go with this conversation.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: Next week we will be continuing the Fallout series. But
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: with the Fallout series talking about the show. Have you
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: watched the show, Jacob.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 4: Yes, I have actually, and uh I don't have an
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 4: active Amazon subscriptions, so I'm gonna have to get that soon.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 3: But yeah, I love.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: Okay, you loved okay, positive? All right, guys, first sor right,
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: all right, So next time we will talk about the
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: first season the show, and we'll be getting pretty close.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: When does the next season start? Isn't it like next
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: week or something?
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, something like that. I don't remember the date exactly.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, so that's what's gonna happen. All right,
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: we'll go ahead and wrap it there the next time
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: gots me.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: I hope that you enjoyed that, and make sure that
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: you haven't already that you check out all of my
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: Fallout content on Fallout one through three on Fallout New Vegas.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: I've also doing some stuff on the Elder Scrolls. I've
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: spent some time talking about other games as well as
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: my more core stuff dealing with literature and dealing with philosophy,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: especially things like C. S. Lewis, j R. Tolkien and
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: a lot of the things that have inspired them. And
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: pretty soon I'll be laying out at least for the
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: first quarter of twenty twenty six, where I'll be going
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: in these various directions various things that I'm interested in.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: And so again, make sure you're subscribed to my channel
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: over on YouTube. Make sure that you are subscribed to
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: the Mythic Mind Games podcast as well as our other podcast,
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: Mythic Mind and Mythic Mind Movies and Shows where we
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: recently did a Star Wars series, and we'll be doing
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: some more more variety of movies and shows coming up
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: in the new year. All right, well, that is it
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: for now. Next time over here we'll be talking about
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: the fallout on Amazon Prime. But that's it for now.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: Now it's time for me to relax and pop open
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: at Nuka Quantum. Until next time, God speaking, when you're
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: at Brown zero can call out to the fallout back
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: to me