#Bethesda writing at its best

[thana-topsy]

A short comic based on the ACTUAL in-game dialogue between Colette and Urag that was so cringe I had to get it out of my brain. Thanks to @kookaburra1701 for pointing it out and cursing me with this.

Featuring Enthir being a menace.

#topsy draws #skyrim fanart #elder scrolls #skyrim #girl not ‘green-skinned’ 😭 #Bethesda writing at its best #orc #Orsimer #Bosmer #Breton #tesblr #college of winterhold #urag gro shub #colette marence #Enthir #skyrim comic

[mutfruit-salad]

read your criticism and have a genuine question about your thoughts on the branding scene. i completely understand how max's branding is inherently tied to a racist history, and it always will be, but i dont feel like the scene itself was written with that bias/intent. thaddeus also gets branded in later episodes and it's implied to happen to every aspirant upon their promotion. at what point in writing are black characters morally barred from specific story points because of their similarities to a history that's not directly related? sort of similar with barb, at what point can black characters not do bad things at all, especially in a story where there are near a dozen non-black characters who do worse things? also considering it's implied (at least, i understood it as) she's sticking to vault-tec to protect her family?

I am not in the best position to comment on this, because I am not black. I will do my best to add what I can, but this is a space for others to chime in.

Barb is interesting because she's essentially become the person who did the most heinous crime in the entire setting- by far and away worse than anything anyone has ever done. There really aren't white characters who did worse things- because all the crimes of Caesar or the Enclave or whoever else pale in comparison to being the one who literally set into motion the total annihilation of all nations on Earth. (This is setting aside her willing participation in the inception of the vault experiments- which is an entirely separate also horrific crime.)

The issue is they've created a setting that is, as presented, colorblind. Race is invisible to the writers, who did not consider it meaningfully while producing the show- as is often the case with white creatives putting characters of color into their stories. Colorblindness does not always produce entirely racist results- and when done with tact and intentionality it can even be revolutionary. Look at the relative inclusivity of star trek as an example, and the radical depiction of Uhura in the original series.

The thing that makes Fallout different from Star Trek however is that it is not depicting its colorblind future with tact and intentionality. This is a show that is intensely concerned with depicting the specific brand of nationalistic American politics of the 1950s and the Cold War- and they've reproduced that system for the show but with a black woman at the head. That's where the issue comes up.

This was a system that had racism baked into it by design. It still does. American Nationalism and corporate violence are built on racism against black people and other minorities. And this show desperately wants to depict these things, but they've decided to put a black woman at the head of them. They're depicting systems that are, by their nature, violently racist- but they've decided to portray them as being run by a black housewife.

Fallout 3 does a similar thing with how it depicts every major slaver as a black person. Eulogy Jones, the slave buyer at Paradise Falls, the head slaver in the Abe Lincoln memorial, Ashur in The Pitt. Hell Mothership Zeta adds in a black woman from the wasteland and even SHE'S revealed to have been a slaver. This is something Bethesda consistently does- depicting ideologies and practices with a deep history of racialized violence- and then showing black people at the head of them, seemingly to try to avoid actually addressing any aspect of racism in their stories outside of hamfisted metaphors like synths and ghouls. (I use Fallout 3 as an example but Fallout 4 does many of these same things.)

Thaddeus does also get branded, and he does also get treated to the same demeaning servanthood as Maximus. The difference, quite frankly, is that Thaddeus is white. There are just some things that are straight up inappropriate to depict happening to black characters without appropriate thoughtfulness and context. Never before this series has the Brotherhood ever done brandings- and yet this show opens with it in the first episode and introduces this brand new jarring concept with the visceral image of a black man being branded by faceless fascist cultists.

It's also important to note that even if they didn't intend the scene as racist, it still is. Like I don't think the scriptwriter sat down and said "oh I'm gonna do a racism" cuz intent just doesn't matter here. The scene was intended as a way of showing the severity of the brotherhood- but it also thoughtlessly reproduces images of historic black violence.

@orange-coloredsky I know you've been talking about this stuff all day, and your initial posts about the antiblack racism in the series were what prompted me to write my thoughts today- which is what this ask is in response to. I was curious if you have any other input with all this.

I'd also be more than happy to have any additional input from people better suited to answer these questions.

#fallout #fallout show #fallout 3

[galoogamelady]

What’s Fallout like? Like I know I can google what kind of game it is but more than that what games would you compare it to? and is it more story-based or gameplay-based?

That's a difficult one to answer and I'm not sure I have the authority to do it lol

But I'll try!

The Fallout fandom is fairly complicated due to the IP being passed around and the lore/values of its storytelling being muddied over the years. That being said I think both old-school and new fans would still agree that the story is the most important element, as they're meant to be role playing games where you make decisions on often heavy matters (especially in the games of the original devs).

Fallout 1 and 2 are turn-based isometric rpg-s from the late 90s. If you like that type of gameplay, they're fantastic games and cult classics. They don't shy away from heavy themes.

Then the IP got sold to Bethesda and their version of Fallout is a FPS/TPS action experience, as seen in Fallout 3 and 4. The combat is fun but even the newest game is shit by shooter standards. If you played an Elder Scrolls game (like Skyrim), they're like that but set in a retro futuristic post apocalypse. A large slice of the fandom has only played these ones and skipped the original turn-based games.

Fallout New Vegas was made by the original team but using Bethesda's engine. Many fans would tell you that out of the modern titles, that's the one with the best writing.

Fallout 4 was a very popular title due to the scrap and build system. As you adventure, you can scavenge all sorts of trash and then build your own little settlements in the wasteland and populate them with settlers. Add mods to that, and the community really did some magic. It made people connect with the world of Fallout on a personal level.

The story in a nutshell: in an alternate timeline, survivors of a devastating nuclear war are trying to rebuild and make the irradiated wasteland of the United States liveable again but every group and faction has a different take on how society should be rebuilt. When the writing is done well, your choices have weight and it's impossible to be fair and please everyone. You get to discover a variety of different factors that lead to the Great War and you have to wager whether humanity is doomed to make the same mistakes all over again. Is there a way to avoid them? What kind of sacrifices does that require? Etc.

A lot of it is supposed to be a critical look at war, 50s Americana and the dangers of nationalism, rampant consumerism, xenophobia, etc.

Hope this helped a little! It's difficult to find two Fallout fans who are on the exact same opinion of all the games. I personally think, the fun part of the games is when you get to carve a little slice out of the wasteland for yourself and your community and the stimulating part is the overarching story and lore.

It's no wonder the original writers made The Outer Worlds too, which I don't consider a legendary game but the similarities are obvious in the themes.

#ive been told the Wasteland series is similar to the og games #i got then but havent had the chance to play them yet #personal #text #Fallout

[tleeaves]

Folks going "WHAT they made a show about the Fallout franchise?? I've been hearing people say Bethesda messed it up, but I haven't watched it myself, so I'm going to trust the word of other people -- some of which also haven't finished watching it" is driving me insane.

Being a hard core fan of something obviously brings with it a lot of passionate feelings when adaptations come into play. Of course, there's going to be people going "but in 8 episodes of the first ever season they made, they didn't explore Theme C or D, didn't introduce factions E and F and G, and because the source company is notorious for its scams, we and everyone else who's a TRUE fan should hate it".

The Amazon Original series Fallout follows the videogame franchise of the same name. It is a labour of love and you can tell by the attention to detail, the writing, the sets, and YES THE THEMES ARGUE WITH THE WALL. It's clearly fan service. I mean, the very characterisation of Lucy is a deadringer for someone playing a Fallout game for the first time. She embodies the innocent player whose expectations drastically change in a game that breaks your heart over and over again. Of course, she's also the vessel through which we explore a lot of themes, but I'll get to that.

There're some folks arguing that the show retcons the games, and I gotta say... for a website practically built on fandom culture, why are we so violently against the idea of someone basing an adaptation on a franchise that so easily lends itself to new and interesting interpretations? But to be frank, a lot of what AO's Fallout is not that new. We have: naive Vault dweller, sexy traumatised ghoul that people who aren't cowards will thirst over, and pathetic guy from a militaristic faction. We also have: total atomic annihilation, and literally in-world references to the games' lore and worldbuilding constantly (the way I was shaking my sister over seeing Grognark the Barbarian, Sugar Bombs, Cram, Stimpaks, and bags of RadAway was ridiculous). Oh, and the Red Rocket?? Best pal Dogmeat? I'm definitely outing myself as specifically a Fallout 4 player, but that's not the point you should be taking away from this.

The details, the references, and the new characters -- this show is practically SCREAMING "hey look, we did this for the fans, we hope you love it as much as we do". Who cares that the characters are new, they still hold the essence of ones we used to know! And they're still interesting, so goddamn bloody interesting. Their arcs mean so much to the story, and they're told in a genuinely intriguing way. This isn't just any videogame adaptation, this was gold. This sits near Netflix's Arcane: League of Legends level in videogame adaptation. Both series create new plots out of familiar worlds.

Of course, those who've done the work have already figured out AO's Fallout is not a retcon anyway. But even if it was, that shouldn't take away from the fact that this show is actually good. Not even just good, it's great.

Were some references a little shoe-horned in to the themes by the end of the show, such as with "War never changes"? Yes, I thought so. But I love how even with a new plot and characters, they're actually still exploring the same themes and staying true to the games. I've seen folks argue otherwise, but I truly disagree. The way capitalism poisons our world, represented primarily through The American Dream and the atomic age of the 45-50s that promoted the nuclear family dynamic -- it's there. If you think it's glorifying it by leaning so heavily into in the adaptation, I feel like you're not seeing it from the right angle. It's like saying Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck glorifies the American Dream, when both this book and the Fallout franchise are criticisms of it. If you think about it, the post-apocalyptic world of Fallout is a graveyard to the American Dream. This criticism comes from the plots that are built into every Fallout story that I know of. The Vaults are literally constructed to be their own horror story just by their mere existence, what they stand for, what happens in each of them. The whole entire show is about the preservation of the wrong things leading to fucked up worlds and people. The missions of the Vaults are time and again proven to be fruitless, unethical, plain wrong. Lucy is our brainwashed character who believed in the veritable cult she lived in before she found out the truth.

So then consider the Brotherhood of Steel. I really don't think it exists in the story to glorify the military. We see just how much the Brotherhood has brainwashed people like Max (also, anything ominously named something like "the Brotherhood" should raise eyebrows). Personally, I don't like Max, but I am intrigued by his characterisation. I thought the end of his arc was rushed the way he "came good" basically, but [SPOILERS] having him embraced as a knight in the Brotherhood at the end against his will -- finally getting something he always wanted -- and him grimly accepting it from all that we can tell? Him having that destiny forced upon him now that he's swaying? After he defected? If his storyline is meant to be a tragedy, it wouldn't surprise me, because Fallout is rife with tragedies anyway. And a tragedy would also be a criticism of the military. That's what Max's entire arc is. It goes from the microcosm focusing on the cycle of bullying between soldiers to the macro-environment where Max is being forced to continue a cycle of violence against humanity he doesn't want to anymore because a world driven to extremes forces him to choose it to survive (not to mention what a cult and no family would do to his psyche). Let's not forget what the Brotherhood's rules are: humankind is supreme. Mutants, ghouls, synths, and robots are abominations to be hated and destroyed. If you can't draw the parallels to the real world, you need to retake history and literature classes. The Brotherhood is also about preserving the wrong things, like the Vaults (like the Enclave, really). They just came about through different method. The Enclave is capitalism and twisted greed in a world where money barely exists anymore. The Brotherhood is, well, fascism plain and simple.

Are these the only factions in the Fallout franchise? Hell no. But if you're mad about that -- that they're the main ones explored, apart from the NCR -- I think you're missing the point. These themes, these reminders, are highly relevant in the current climate. In fact, I almost think they always will be relevant unless we undergo drastic change. On the surface-level, Fallout seems like the American ideal complete with guns blazing that guys in their basements jerk off to. Under that surface, is a mind-fuck story about almost the entire opposite: it's a deconstruction of American ideals that are held so closely by some, and the way that key notion of freedom gets twisted, and you're shooting a guy in-game because it's more merciful than what the world had in store for him.

I mean, the ghoul's a fucking cowboy from the wild west character he used to play in Hollywood glam and his wife was one of the people who helped blow up America in the name of capitalism and "peace". There are so many layers of this to explore, I'd need several days to try and keep track and go through it all.

The Amazon Prime show is a testament to the Fallout franchise. The message, the themes? They were not messed up or muddled or anything of the sort, in my opinion.

As for Todd Howard, that Bethesda guy, I'm sure there's perfectly valid reasons to hate him. I mean, I've hated people for a lot less valid reasons, and that's valid. We all got our feelings. But the show is about more than just him. My advice is to keep that in mind when you're judging it.

#fallout series #amazon prime fallout #amazon prime video fallout #amazon fallout #prime fallout #fallout #besthesda #todd howard #fallout spoilers #some light analysis #the american dream #militarism #lucy mclean #maximus fallout #cooper howard #the ghoul #I know they're not planning a skyrim adaptation and that's fine #I prefer it remaining in its videogame medium while I write fanfics #so if they had to adapt any of their games I'm actually glad it was fallout #also please forgive me I wrote this very late at night so there's probably a bunch of mistakes #and I've played fallout for like six years and still don't know anywhere near as much as the hard core fans but I'm also not a newbie

[sometipsygnostalgic]

Steam Awards silliness

So apparently the "Steam Awards", which is a thing you may have seen and been very confused about, were a bit of a mess.

Steam basically wanted a to make their own Game Awards which were a voting-directly democratic process.

Naturally people took advantage of this to DUNK on their most hated game developers, rather than throwing a bone to games they actually like.

So, what happened was:

Red Dead Redemption 2 was ironically voted "Best Long-term Support From A Developer" because of how salty the community is about the game NOT recieving any long-term support.

Starfield was ironically voted for "Most Innovative Gameplay". Actual Starfield fans ALSO voted for Starfield in this and all other categories. And Bethesda happily accepted the award despite it being, yknow, a prank.

Hogwarts Legacy was voted "Best on Deck", despite being almost unplayable on deck. After some investigation I have learnt this is because Hogwarts Legacy fans mass-voted their game in every single category, regardless of its efficacy, because they think it is "overhated because of woke gay culture". Steamdeck happened to be the only one not to have had a mass vote for a different game. After those encounters, I am now adding Hogwarts Legacy onto my very small list of "things I will avoid associating with you over if you are into".

People are not sure if The Last Of Us Part 1 really does have "best soundtrack" or if everyone voted for it ironically. I'd say if it was Last of Us Part 2, it'd be ironic, but honestly it's gotta be Naughty Dog fans.

Valve had to act like every one of these was a serious nomination when writing up the reasons for them winning. They couldn't just say "Red Dead Redemption 2 support SUCKS SO MUCH that players voted for it ironically". They had to say "Despite the game being out for years the devs are still supporting their baby". Which is hilarious.

I found an article by Otaku that does a good job of summing it up:

Things get even weirder when you look at the Steam Awards’ selection of finalists in each category. EA Sports FC 24, a soccer game currently sitting at “Mixed” review status, was in the running for Game of the Year and Best Game You Suck At. A sports game is certainly an odd pick for a year otherwise jam-packed with mega releases. And though Baldur’s Gate 3 took home Outstanding Story Rich Game, it was competing with a game called Love Is All Around? Never heard of it? Don’t worry. We didn’t either, until we looked it up. Love Is All Around is a full-motion-video dating sim game inspired by the devs who “want to date every day but will never step out of the house [into] the real world. Check out the Steam page for the game here. Don’t worry, it’s mostly SFW.

So yeah if you were wondering how Starfield won most innovative game, that's how.

#starfield #steam awards

[jinglyjangly]

Major spoilers

So shady sands got nuked by a random vault dweller because his wife took their kids, and he wanted his kids, and he was mad his wife found a settlement when vault tec was supposed to be the ones settling the surface…he was mad the ncr “did vault Tec’s job before they could” so he blew…the fucking ncr’s main settlement up

I wonder if it’s like “oh yeah he was a protag of his own mind pretty much” kind of jab but even then it leaves a bad taste in my mouth? Because it is insane video game writing and it’s definitely insane bethesda video game writing, but it fucks up a very integral part of two major games

And I hate how much like…yeah the BoS is back to being technocratic and more cult like in the show but it’s also still praised kind of? And the random, and I mean RANDOM, nonbinary BoS member that’s there for like, 20 minutes was just…a waste. A nonbinary person that really does nothing but just be there and hurt themselves to forward the narrative of the cis het protag. Honestly they’re there to piss of the conservative gamers but I’m not conservative and I’m pissed shady sands and the ncr got did dirty like that so in the end every fallout fan is mad

Like…the ncr went from a huge mega power that is basically a country, to being blown up by a dude? And they don’t mention the hoover dam and how maybe they were weakened from the legion/ncr conflict…which would’ve made it believable. Nada. They just say it this guy blew up shady sands so I guess it happened. It’s canon.

They just made the ncr seem so small after fnv made it feel so big and menacing in its own way with hundreds of named npcs with stories and it was so gooooood and they made it feel like a shitty dinky settlement comparable to fucking…like…diamond city

Idk it’s like 5am and the final episode just pissed me off. They should’ve just set it in New York or Florida and made up new factions instead of establishing canon endings to the most favored game in the series. Or they could’ve done a prequel to fo4 if they wanted it to tie in the games so bad.

The ghoul also has the best scenes and story but I’m…idk the drugs suppressing the “feral” disease is also a weird thing. It’s new to the tv series and what only in la? What’s it made of that no one else makes? And why the fuck did he have to eat someone. I liked the scene because it was kinda just neat to watch in a way… but it’s like “oh he’s a ghoul so he eats people whoOoOo” They never really…explain…if he like…needs meat or something and idk. I dunno. And cold fusion? Like what. Wha…uh. I fucking hate the idea of power being harnessed from tiny object. It’s just a lame McGuffin they can pass around. I would rather it be like…they’re fighting over a wind farm to harness power and they need like a scientist/engineer to fix it. Something that feels big and really.

Anyway, I’m fine with watching it until I think about it, and then I don’t like the plot. So it feels like fo4 all over again but I’m more mad because I feel like it ruined fnv’s ending. Which sucks. So personally I do not see the show as canon but as like, fan fiction to like…maybe a independent/house/legion ending for fnv when the ncr is super week and some guy just bombs it…because he’s mad at his wife.

Big ooof, a 8/10 until episode 8 and then it’s a fat 2/10…one star for goggins making another badass ghoul in the series and one for the dog

#spoilers #so yeah it’s not that good story wise #maybe I’m a nerd scream at clouds about lore but like #they did it dirty :’(

[nientedenada]

Why the Altmeri Commentary on Talos is Important to Lore Discussion (Even if It Isn't the Thalmor's End Goal) 

Originally posted on r/teslore three years ago. To be clear, important in this context means if you're trying to guess where TES might go in the future. And as the years go by, and we now have an almost complete turn-over of developers at Bethesda, it may be less relevant. Still, the new developers will have all these old ideas to rummage through.

This begins with a split among fans, though I don't think it has to be a nasty split. There is a very strong opinion in /r/teslore that Out-of-Game texts are valid if you want them to be, if you find them interesting enough for your Tamriel. And there's another very strong opinion that only official lore is really valid for theorizing. To be completely honest, we all probably dabble in one or the other at different times. Sometimes we are more creative and speculatory about Tamriel, other times we are arguing out the Lowest Common Denominator of agreed-upon lore. (It's never actually agreed upon, but that's part of the fun.)

But there's a third possibility: examining Out of Game texts for the perspective they can give us on In-game lore. A really good example of how this works would be the document: On the Nords' Totem Religion. It was a design document for Skyrim which was not incorporated into the game directly. However, the document gives a lot of insight into the little we do see in Skyrim of the ancient Nord religion. It is useful in interpreting the game itself.

It's also useful for going forward. When ESO returned to Skyrim this year, we could bet that the devs would be taking a closer look at the local religion, as they had in Elsweyr last year. And we could also guess that they might turn to that unofficial Skyrim design document which best explained the original ideas for the Nord religion. As of a few weeks ago, much of the Totem Religion document's lore has been added to the official lore as in-game books in ESO.

The totem religion document is as uncontroversial example of this process as you can find. Most everyone in lore circles has regarded it as a very useful document. You won't find that agreement about all OOG unofficial writings. But I'd like to make the argument for why the Altmeri Commentary on Talos is worth knowing and discussing even if you don't end up thinking it's true.

So, I'll begin with quoting the whole thing. It's pretty short.

What appears to be an Altmeri commentary on Talos To kill Man is to reach Heaven, from where we came before the Doom Drum's iniquity. When we accomplish this, we can escape the mockery and long shame of the Material Prison. To achieve this goal, we must: 1) Erase the Upstart Talos from the mythic. His presence fortifies the Wheel of the Convention, and binds our souls to this plane. 2) Remove Man not just from the world, but from the Pattern of Possibility, so that the very idea of them can be forgotten and thereby never again repeated. 3) With Talos and the Sons of Talos removed, the Dragon will become ours to unbind. The world of mortals will be over. The Dragon will uncoil his hold on the stagnancy of linear time and move as Free Serpent again, moving through the Aether without measure or burden, spilling time along the innumerable roads we once travelled. And with that we will regain the mantle of the imperishable spirit.

What it doesn't say: Nowhere does it say it's a Thalmor document. Nowhere does it mention the Towers. Those two points are pretty well-known in lore circles, but they come up enough to make it worthwhile to point out.

Second thing to notice: its date.

Submitted by Lady N on Sun, 09/19/2010 - 19:53 Obscure texts Author: Michael Kirkbride Librarian Comment: Many of these are in-character snippets taken from various forum posts.

It doesn't have an exact date; the old forums have been deleted. But we do see that it was re-posted on the Imperial Library on 09/19/2010, the year before Skyrim came out. This important detail is glossed over in a lot of the discussion of its relevance. It is not a document written after Skyrim trying to put a creative spin on some details in-game. It's a document published before Skyrim came out, and hence a window on the discussions that were going on in the development of Skyrim. We need to look at the stuff in Skyrim with the question: Does the Altmeri commentary shed any light on what's going on here?

Well, the fact that the Altmeri Commentary suggests that Talos needs to be erased from the mythic makes it very relevant. Maybe this is not the reason for the Thalmor's Talos ban in the game that eventually was released. But it's evidence that during the development of Skyrim, the reason was being kicked around by someone in discussions with the devs. It's that context that finally informs the two lines in-game that might refer back to the Commentary.

The first and most often quoted is Ancano's boast:

You think I can't destroy you? The power to unmake the world at my fingertips, and you think you can do anything about it?

It's pointed out that he can simply be boasting of his power there, without any reference to a supposed greater plan. And yes, that's true. But remember, we aren't interpreting that line in a vacuum. There was a development-related post that brought up a fanatical Altmer idea of unmaking the world before Skyrim, and it's just a coincidence that a fanatic Thalmor member boasts of having the power to do so in the game? These things have nothing to do with each other?

And then there is the other line from Esbern which I think is even more significant.

I don't suppose they want the world to end any more than we do. Or at least, they'd prefer it to end on their terms.

Esbern's statement does not confirm this is the Thalmor's plan. What it does is confirm that the idea this is the Thalmor's plan exists in-universe. And Esbern is not some random conspiracist; he's a lore-master. Dragons were his hobby but we also know from his dossier that the Thalmor consider him responsible for two of the most damaging operations on Dominion soil. He knows his stuff when it comes to the Thalmor. His opinion may be affected by paranoia, he may not even hold the opinion very strongly (suggested by how he corrects himself there), but he is not some random guy in the pub with a conspiracy theory about the Thalmor. If it's a conspiracy theory, it's an important one in-universe.

So, we have a timeline that suggests the Commentary is important, and two references in the game of Skyrim to the idea presented in the Commentary. The references are independent, coming from ideological enemies, Ancano and Esbern. I'd say that makes a very strong case for the Commentary's ideology existing within the universe.

If this concept exists within the universe, the Commentary is important even if it does not represent the Thalmor's ultimate goal accurately.

But where does one go with that? With Michael Kirkbride's historic and ongoing influence on the TES franchise, elements of the Commentary are quite likely to make it into future games. On the other hand, the Commentary may be a window on an idea in development that was tossed around and ultimately abandoned. Maybe it's not Thalmor belief, really. It could even be Blades propaganda. Maybe Ancano believes in it, but he's actually a fanatic who's out of step with the Thalmor in general. etc. etc. etc.

Acknowledging that an Out-of-Game source is relevant does not mean accepting it as the Truth Bound To Be Revealed by TES VI. TES fandom has had enough of that over-certainty already. I think we've all met someone who takes some random developer's post as The Gospel Truth that cannot be questioned. That's frustrating, for sure. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. It doesn't make sense to ignore it completely in discussions about the Thalmor's ultimate goal. There are enough sources to make it worth looking at, both inside and outside the universe.

This post was about the relevance of the Commentary, but if you're interested in how the Commentary's ideology could function within the Thalmor, I can never recommend enough this old /r/teslore post: Analyzing the Altmeri Commentary on Talos.

Additional reply in comments: I thought I'd hedged enough on my statement. I won't claim Esbern as an expert on the Thalmor's ontological goals, although he definitely is more knowledgable about the Thalmor than the random guy at the pub. I do think, however, that his statement confirms that some people within the universe think this is the Thalmor's end goal. I see his statement there as he's not certain himself of it.

In the comments of the original post, a user who has since deleted their account posted a very interesting timeline of the development under discussion. I also recommend this discussion with Misticsan about the post and whether fans give the Commentary undue importance in contrast to other sources on the Thalmor.

This was only the beginning of a very involved journey into the weird fandom status of the Altmeri Commentary and the Towers Theory. It's a lengthy saga, and I've put off formatting it for tumblr but I do mean to eventually copy all the teslore posts over here.

#tesblr #teslore #thalmor #Skyrim #niente lore

[beepiesheepie]

It actually pisses me off how if you side with the forsworn in the cidna mine quest, after you escape with them they just stand around in a cave and the quest goes cold.

Its so bullshit, i wanted to join the forsworn, i wanted to do missions for them, i wanted to rampage across skyrim with my brothers slaughtering every stormcloak and imperial we come across, i wanted to overthrow the jarls and give the forsworn their fucking land back

Fuck the stormcloaks

Fuck the empire

Skyrim belongs to the Forsworn

a fucking men

it pisses me off so much how it could've been great, like Madanach is THEIR FUCKING KING. THEIR K I N G. and yet after you free him you never fucking see him again, and all the forsworn in the reach are STILL hostile to you. Like. fucking why. i freed your fucking king. Like I want to do sidequests for them and slaughter the people that took over their land and help them get their land back. It could've been so fucking cool. but no. instead the game HEAVILY IMPLIES that the forsworn are """savages""" that need to be fucking eradicated. like what??? what the fuck??? i dont care that they associate with hagravens and do weird shit with their hearts, the fucking dark elves refuse to worship aedra, ie things that are not daedra, the khajiit have different forms depending on the moons's phases when they were born. IT COULDVE BEEN GREAT

but no. bethesda was lazy at best and racist at worst with their writing for the forsworn. the forsworn did NOT age well.

#skyrim #also i fucking hate the game makes you side with either bootlickers or racists. fuck this. #skyrim is a good game but holy fuck its main quest and the forsworn aged terribly

[commanderquinn]

meta: sam coe - post-campaign analysis

allllrighty i am officially post-campaign so time for first thoughts. since im still collecting my feelings/opinions on the main quest i dont want to go super into that. i wanna wait and consolidate into a deep dive on that one. BUT i am a fic writer with a fixation on socioeconomics, intergenerational trauma, and more specifically the phenomenon of atheists clinging to their religious parents morals because they haven't taken the time to evaluate their biases and the reasons they still hold them

translation: the silver spoon space cowboy is an interesting concept. poory executed in the case of starfield, sadly, but great framework for fandom to chop the head off of and bring to their own individual comfort interpretations.

this meta will include spoilers for the following:

-sam's questline and the npcs involved

-his romance

-cora, the safety storyline around her, and how she's the best part of the space game

-why bethesda was fucking stupid to turn the cowboys into cops when they have the perfect opportunity for not that. i went in hoping for retired/reformed army rangers fed up with war looking to defend their home from fascism given the "han solo simulator" marketing, but all i got was this lousy ass rendition of the texas rangers, which i for SURE did not want

-i WONT be going into detail about the main plot for this post, just fyi. i wanna save that, and sam's relation to it, for its own essay. id still recommend not reading meta's until you finish the game tho

-i miss obsidian's writing. this game made me want to play outer worlds for the 100th time. that will probably come up a lot

this is probably gonna sound more than a bit scattered and off the fucking plot for the first section, but bare with me, im making a point eventually i promise. gotta make sure we're all on the same page first.

now that ive done a majority of his content, it's clear what the intent was for sam and i applaud it. i like it when good hearts in bad systems spot the fundamental flaws and decide to abandon it entirely, or work to change it. i hate perfect characters. i hate characters that have no growth to find. sam is a great character for showing the awesome power of a perspective change. but damn. what a waste when you're talking about a format where a writer is constricted to:

-an exact conversation trigger (bethesda games have always relied on interrupt & player approach, and i didnt notice any variation on game engine front but i wont know until they release the ck so)

-word limit on all responses (yes, you can make long dialogues in engine. but those words still have to be f u n d e d from a dev standpoint. words are not free in video games. capitalism sucks for art.)

-multiple conversation branches that ALL have to circle back to the original topic (they have to follow a set pattern of establishing a subject, then the players possible responses to that subject, the npcs responses to those responses, AND provide a seamless, one dialogue tie-in path to the next branch. it sounds super easy until you're the shmuck writing it, and then it doesnt feel so easy anymore)

-get approximately two personal quests with, what was it, 12 motion scripted scenes? (im watching other peoples pts now so ill try to remember to count, but it was. hmm. lack luster imo. im not saying quantity is vital. im a bioware fanatic, i know the power of quality when its actually delivered. i didnt have any moment like that for sams quests and it was kind of crushing. ill get into it.)

-appeal to a wide enough audience to obtain profit by holding back eXtReMe ViEwS (id like to point out that there is, at this exact moment in time, an active pr campaign (and a few scattered gaming content creators) surrounding starfield talking about how pronouns are politics and should be left out of gaming. over a setting flag in a save file. you literally dont even have to press a button about it. like, you pick your characters body. masc bodys are auto assigned m pronouns. fem bodies are auto assigned f pronouns. you literally dont even have to SEE the button, and it never gets brought up. the only purpose it serves is so the game knows what voice lines to fire. that. is. it.)

im not going to humor the "thats dumb, bethesda makes political games" contribution to the argument.

i get straight people think they're being super helpful and witty on that one, but i think the world would collectively benefit from allies taking just a few extra seconds before standing on that soapbox to maybe consider that calling existence "politics" might be, gee idk, insulting. maybe more than a lil dehumanizing. maybe super easily solved by just NOT giving into their parents obsession with playing devils advocate. i think if maybe allies could shut the fuck up for a minute or two at a time and go look for voices of authority within the communities they're defending instead of trying to talk over them, that'd probably work out better. might help cut out the completely useless middle man their parents taught them to be when they drilled home "you have to respect everyone's opinion"

no the fuck you do not, actually. i, as someone on this earth attempting to be a compassionate person, owe people a chance at understanding. i do not, under any circumstance, owe someone any kind of respect WHATSOEVER if they cannot respect me as a human being. full stop. i dont owe it to them, i dont owe it to their religion, i dont owe it to the government they try to establish. i do not owe respect to people attempting to oppress me. i never have and i never will.

but remember. there is context to be found in the passing of time. yes, you need to tell grandma to stop being racist. no, you do not need to banish grandma to the nursing home if there's still a chance that she's willing to sit and listen. a chance that she'll empathize with social perspectives that the racist society she was raised in never allowed her to have. breathe and give grandma the chance. then send her to the home if she's still racist.

(yes that was an analogy for how i imagine a perspective conversation with jacob would go. i do not have high hopes of that man finding self awareness given. well. who he is as a person.)

now. if you've played through sam's content, you already know why im bringing all of that up, but lets put together a list of all the things that Make Sam Coe Who He Is before we wrap it all up in a pretty bow that hopefully reads a lot less scattered than this "yo society got some trauma actually" lead up ive dumped on you

quick interrupt just for me: i love that im back on tumblr where i dont really have to give all that much of a fuck about making sense. any audience i could find here is equally unhinged so mostly i just have to format it in a way that makes your brain not hurt. sorry if you dont have adhd <3

1: lets talk about cora's hair.

im going to make the race observation because its bothering me from a dev standpoint AND the gamer crowd is already starting to make cuck memes which sucks to see.

i get that this doesnt matter in a colonialism scifi future where a service like enhance exists and we're talking about two rangers that apparently went under cover regularly, but it matters in the context of how sam was handled in a 2020 era commercial, creative environment. im just going to MENTION that cora coe's biological mother (that jab was me not liking her as a person, not me giving a shit that she's white) is paler than pale, and sam does NOT look like some of his earlier promo images. bethesda as a company also has a very long history of making characters arguably tan to avoid this shit.

9/16 edit: was asked for source, heres the exact image im referencing, which is still his set image on the starfield wiki to date:

(im going to preemptively warn any white artists building the urge to argue over this: you DO NOT want to die on a hill about lighting for this one, fucking trust me. thats not what this conversation is, and if you dont understand that as a White Artist, you need to sit this one out until you understand the full weight of the conversation and the profound effect of media treating skin color like a rare diversity accessory. bethesda has a very very long history of this. their last major story title, fallout 4, (76 was a money grab made in the other studio and i barely want to call it a game) had a whopping total of two black characters in its main cast, and both of them acted in subservient roles so please. please please please just. stop trying to defend bethesda on this one. its dehumanizing, cowardly, and malicious in this day and age. i promise im not trying to bite anyones head off here, im just Old And Tired when it comes to suburbanites in fandom.)

i think having solomon be canonically black would have been a really important aspect. i think it would have given the opportunity to show white people why its fucked up that they get SO EXCITED to save war mementos (or in the case of starfield a nasa memento) and will go on and on about how vital it is to save that piece of history, but when you bring up memorializing the importance of race as it pertains to human history and cultural history/pride, they suddenly start getting Very Uncomfortable and throw out phrases like "what does it matter we're all human" while standing next to the gun their grandfather smuggled home from the war

there is no brightness slider on pc and i havent gone reshade tweaking so everything is still washed out on my end (dont worry, as an rtx user, imma be makin a rant post on that) b u t. cora coe has a pale as fuck mother and a vaguely tan father with blue eyes and straight hair, meanwhile my precious angel has a darker complexion and curls that look like they're closing in on the 3c range so like. im getting vibes that sammy boy mighta been whitewashed during game dev, and thats about as far into THAT topic as im gonna bother to venture for this post.

2: his dad

were we supposed to have more daddy issues content??? istg it feels like there was the initial map talk and then nothing. im not saying that i cant pull blood from a stone and give you an entire essay on that glimpse of family trauma just from a few lines of dialogue, but still. feels like thats maybe something that should have gotten more detail.

"no forgiveness between me and my old man. it's uh... coe tradition."

oh boy. oh boy oh boy oh boy. what a line to start his personal quest

before we go ANY FURTHER im gonna drop a reference to one of my favorite aaron sorkin scenes of all time. its from the movie he did about the chicago seven, and i think it fits VERY well when having a conversation about how sam is shaped by his father

unfortunately the exact scene i want to show isnt clipped anywhere easy i could find, so here's an article that talks about that scene specifically if you want more context but dont want to watch the whole movie. what we're really focused on is this:

which is a scene where a fictional account of bobby seale, the leader of the black panther party at the time of the chicago 7 trial, said that above quote to a fictional account of tom hayden while they were having a conversation about how the stakes of this trial are life and death for him as a black man, but little more than a family dispute and a dark spot on their records for the (all white) chicago 7.

its a GREAT continuation of sorkin’s fascination around father son conflicts (he covered it a time or two during his writing days as west wings original creator, which is a great political show id strongly rec) and it really really works when used in comparison to those rebellion days sam had that he still flagellates over

sam was a privileged kid without a foundation of emotional support or a safe environment to vent to. he didnt have the words needed to communicate what he was feeling and thinking and experiencing. he didnt have the means to express himself in a way that wasn't immediately criticized by the people in his life. it doesnt take a degree in psych to figure out that sam first ran for the stars to run from his father. and it sounds like that was tradition

from the MOMENT YOU MEET HIM, jacob is full stop "my way or the highway" until you hit him with the good ol bethesda persuasion and his disposition pulls a 180 to hand you the next plot device

sam: "you know why im here."

jacob: "oh? and what's that? you come to your senses? realize where you ought to be for once?"

w o w

i wonder why sam never felt safe in his own home. i wonder why he doesnt feel safe leaving cora there. i wonder why that miserable fucking attitude and guilt has sam convinced that jacob will be the worst possible thing for his curious daughter's self esteem.

yes, grandparents sip a different kind of koolaid when it comes to their grandkids. no, that is not enough to protect that child from that much intergenerational trauma. sam's made a bad choice keeping cora in space, but he's made an EXCELLENT choice keeping her away from jacob.

forget "showing respect" to his son's choices, jacob won't give them the time of day. he brushes off constellation and wont go meet them for himself, he insists that cora being "in her family home" is the only priority (isnt THAT telling) and, as if that wasnt enough to prove he's incapable of empathy, the fact that he outright, direct fucking quote during that first scene with him, says to sam's face

"the only mistake im seeing here is you"

fuck anyone who walked away from that scene of a parent saying that to their own kid and had the response of "i dont understand why sam wont let jacob take care of cora." fuck you, genuinely from the bottom of my heart, if that was your reaction.

i looked for opportunities to get sam to talk about what the rest of those "30 plus years of experience with the man" really looked like after that. the fact that it was used as a plot device without any (from what I COULD FIND in my first pt, if i find any ill edit this) kind of dialogue discussion about that trauma around his father's behavior/mentality and the terrible influence it had is such a waste. chances are!!!!!! id fucking agree with him!!!!!!!!!! SO TELL THEM TO ME BETHESDA!!!!!! give me the chance to storm back into that house with the full story and let that geriatric fuck know why he will not be allowed back into my daughters life (yeah we're gonna be calling cora our daughter on this one bc, again, she's the best thing in the game) until he can learn to be a safe emotional environment for her

and THEN, at the end of the romance, the wrinkly mf drops a "hey can you go over sam's head and make the parenting decisions now" 20 minutes before your vows get exchanged in his living room (WE'RE GONNA TALK ABOUT THAT MESS OF A WEDDING LMAO ITS A LOT but im probably gonna save it for another sam post where i talk more in depth about why packing a complicated romance in that tightly just Dont Work). like wow. wowowowwow. if that doesnt perfectly sum up how he views the dusty's (shhh i really hope that name catches on pls i keep seeing ppl use captain instead its heartbreaking) role in the family now, and confirm how he's always viewed his own son, idk what does

3: lillian "i can abandon my kid and demand she be taken care of in the same breath" hart

i was originally going to go into hella detail on his relationship with his ex but honestly i think im just gonna leave a few paragraphs and not touch on her again bc its bad for my blood pressure.

okay, here's the deal. im biased in the sense that i had a mother with attachment issues and lets just say that his ex is worth about as much to me as a pile of dogshit. it'd be one thing if she had that moment of "oh. sam and cora bond really well and i dont fit" and decided to look at that and evaluate if she wanted to continue trying to be a parent.

but she didnt have a moment of reflection. she didnt talk to a therapist. she didnt have a discussion with sam. she went back to work and decided "oh well, my kid doesnt like me" and then left her daughter with an open wound and no shot at closure. which is just. wow. that's active abandonment. she WALKED OUT of cora's life because she couldn't stomach the idea that she didnt immediately win over her daughter without any effort to connect to her.

then she has the nerve to yell at sam for not doing the best for cora. like bitch, you cant even consistently answer the phone??? what are you on??? she's REPEATEDLY broken cora's heart with false promises, and clearly made no effort to truly atone for that given just HOW angry sam is ALL the times he brings it up.

and she does it all for what????? a beat cop reputation and some shiny medals????? like shut the fuck up with that righteous indignation piglet, you're killing smugglers under someone's made up authority to protect COMMERSE, not creating galactic peace. the idea that THAT SHIT is worth more to her than her own daughter having a mother who's around for all her life milestones is inFURIATING and id fucking deck her if i could.

the fact that there's zero chance to call her out other than one single "thats a pretty awful thing to say" option is a real cop out from bethesda. they realized they put a woman in a position where she could be really, truly yelled at for something like child care, and chickened out on following through with it so they wouldnt take any heat.

thats gross and should piss you the fuck off, by the way. that sure the fuck isnt what equality looks like by any measure. you don't empower women by acting like they're infallible creatures you cant call out for being flawed. and you sure as shit dont empower the next generation of women by forgiving their abusers.

4: cora's safety

which brings us to the big sticky: sam is a disaster and i DONT think that keeping cora on a combat-active spaceship is right. i think she'd be much better off living in constellation hq (aside from the main plot obvsly) with a constant open comm to her dad and the ability to bring her to outposts and secured sights.

the problem with the biomother's abandonment isnt the distance. its the lack of attempt to connect. its the lack of forming a bond. its the fact that she had zero desire to understand her child once she figured out her child didnt "love her the most" when thats literally not a thing. the problem was never the physical space, and it wouldnt have to be in sam's case, either.

he's a dad that's there for cora day in and day out, he just never got the chance to grow out of the panic stage of a parent worried the first fever is going to kill the baby. he didn't have his dad because he had to get out to protect himself, he doesnt have a mom because of how long she's been dead, and lillian checked the fuck out at an early stage apparently. so sam was left to be the nervous wreck trying to keep history from repeating itself. the man's flying blind in the face of all the combined generational trauma of himself, his father, and his ex, all while trying not to fuck up shaping a human life.

you're damn fucking right he keeps cora glued to his side, i legitimately do not think his own ptsd would allow him to do otherwise without someone like the dusty to come and and go "hey dude, maybe its time we read some emotional intelligence and trauma books so we can start getting cora into a stable environment for literally the first time in her life? also im going to teach her gun safety for my own sanity because you keep letting her walk all over you and its scaring the fuck out of me thinking my daughter is going to try to raid a pirate ship at 15 because no one taught you proper boundaries."

5: his morals

its been 30+ years and his father wont let go of arguing and micromanaging long enough to try to understand his son. lillian is a workaholic who believes her only inherit value is what she can provide to an organization that views living, breathing human beings as occasionally expendable while screaming about its pursuit of freedom and equality.

sam coe is a man who got told what he was supposed to be his entire life, tripped into drugs and crime in an angry, sheltered act of rebellion, and walked away from it all with a very skewed, very flawed interpretation of morality as a result.

lillian and his father are the clear moral compasses in his life. like yeah, sure, he'll talk about how cora is his driving force until he's blue in the face. and he's not lying!!! he's not even technically wrong. she is his active motivation day in and day out. but she is not his Morality. she hasn't developed enough as a person to be able to be that kind of beacon. she's a kid rushing herself through childhood because she thinks that will make her better and no one in her life recognizes it enough to stop it. she shouldnt have to be the moral guide for someone who's supposed to be guiding her

sam cant let go of the ranger envy. he couldnt stomach being around it, but he cant look at that discomfort long enough to identify why. he can walk into a bank and plain as day go "ah, don't you hate the smell of capitalism," but he can't bring himself to blink the stars out of his eyes long enough to ask why the rangers are so willing to put smugglers to death without trial. sam has enough awareness to identify the system is flawed, but he doesnt have the guts to really stare that down

he'll make cracks about walter having too much money and influence, but he wont actually mention how he and his wife are the root cause of an extraordinary amount of pain and suffering and perfectly avoidable manslaughter as a result of their business. i get that constellation runs as a dont as dont tell organization, but if sam's going to give me shit about nabbing a paper weight from a guy's desk, i think we should talk about how he doesnt display anger for walter's business practices.

sam coe, at his heart, is a dreamer who doesn't want to look too close at things. he was taught that some things just Are, and looking for too many answers will find you trouble. he's got the spirit of an explorer dampened by a lifetime spent under cops.

you can hear it in his voice whenever he talks about how proud he is of cora for being a goddamn prodigy. you can hear the wonder and the excitement there. you can hear the curious kid in him that probably got pushed out of the way while he was trying to shape himself into a Proper Coe

i think sam coe is a dreamer who was forcibly taught to fear learning as a child, and thats the real tragedy of him.

so let's start to tie our bow here.

sam is a man who, in a way that only a privillaged kid can, stumbled into neon's life of drugs and smuggling and self harm through destructive behavior with both eyes firmly shut.

he didn't fall into drugs after a lifetime of being submersed in the culture of it. he didnt take them because he grew up surrounded by people that just knew that's all life was ever going to hold. he didnt get into smuggling because he was starving. he didnt take on his first "criminal act" because there was a life and death battle going on somewhere in his life.

this man was drowning in guilt and shame centered around not "being a proper coe" by the time he was free of his father's control, by all accounts. you can hear how much self hatred he has over the memory of that time in his life. look, im not going to say that age and recovery doesnt come with regret, but he talks about it like degeneracy and something to be guilted about rather than just... living life. like so what you did some drugs?? so what you did a capitalism no no?????

corporations arent people. you shouldnt steal from them because itll put YOU at risk, but under no circumstance should anyone hold onto any guilt for stealing from them. money is fake and capitalism murders people every hour of the day. fuck the system, its fucking rigged, look out for you and yours while capitalism is stealing your natural resources and making private homesteading prosecutable (translation: in our actual, real life here, the government can throw you in jail for building a house without a permit. go look up at the sky and think about the moral journey humanity had to take to get us to that point, and then come talk to me about how i shouldnt encourage people to steal from corporations)

anyways back to the video game, as far as the "what if he was unknowingly smuggling something like organs or weapons" argument, there's no desire for me to defend it, tbh. i dont view crime as a personality brand the way cops do. someone being convicted of a crime doesnt make me see them as lesser, it makes me see them as a person who did a bad thing. i do bad shit all the time. we all do. we're human. sometimes there's an excuse for the behavior, and sometimes there isnt. that's not the end of the world. you own up to your actions, you apologize, and you put in the effort to make amends that fit the situation. end of story. the obvious exception to that being when someone you have victimized tells you to fuck off because they dont want your further involvement.

yes. yes there are people in the world that are genuine monsters that spend their time and energy looking for ways to do the cruelest shit imaginable to their fellow human beings. but those are fucking outliers, so no, im not going to let a conversation about morality be derailed by a fraction of a percent of the population

but people (like the rangers) who aren't ready to look at the whole picture of context, who would rather hyper focus on the unbending rule of the land, don't see that. they see a "type" of person once a crime has been committed rather than "a person who found themselves in this scenario"

sam was raised by cops. he fundamentally does not understand how biased his own view is. he'll sometimes make a vague mention of crime being a necessity, but you can hear how many strings are attached there just from the way he talks about it. he truly views crime as a black and white subject with exceptionally few slivers of grey to be found. you can hear the "law and order is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom" in his voice whenever he talks about how the rangers are "good people" he just "didnt fit anymore" and it's heartbreaking

he'd be so much better off if he would take a moment to reevaluate his priorities and look a lot closer at that guilt he carries and why he carries it. i think it would even help him better connect with cora in the long run. it would for sure give him a better handle on why letting his daughter take on college courses this early in her life isnt something to brag about. its a bad sign that she's pushing herself to Be Something in the exact same way he used to. he just doesn't recognize it because her way is "healthy" by society's fucked up view of child prodigies

tl;dr

i don't need to fix sam coe. he's stubborn, traumatized, and sheltered, not broken.

give that man good enough head and i'm absolutely sure he could be talked into reading some -clutches pearls- marxist literature

#starfield #sam coe #cora coe #meta #lillian hart negative #jacob coe negative #fuck hart and fuck jacob they're both cops without empathy and they can get fucking bent thanks for coming to my ted talk

[lesbianralzarek]

One of my fav things in Fo76 and a bit in 4 was the implications in lore and logs that it wasn't any country's government that launched the nukes

but infact Vault-Tec.

Supposedly there was talk about deescalating between the Chinese & American governments but VT saw that this would annihilate any use for Vaults if that be the case and put on heavy pressure on what would become the enclave

so used and influenced and got the bombs dropped to ensure theor product was used and create a captive consumer base and get tomolay pretend godkings

which if true is the best writing Bethesda games have added to the overall franchise and is keeping with the original theme

that answer actually came originally from the script for a 1998 fallout movie that never got finished! i think that its the best answer that they could give if they had to say who started it (important to note that while vt launched the first nuke, every armed country followed suit immediately after), but i still prefer leaving it ambiguous. regardless, its nice to hear that someone on the fo76 team really cared enough to dig deep into the lore. "a corporation profiting off of war and suffering did humanity in" is the best take if, gun to my fucking head, i had to choose one

[agentnico]

Fallout - season 1 (2024) review

The evolution of the phrase “okey dokey” throughout this show says so much for the good old fashioned writing of this season.

Plot: Over 200 years after a nuclear apocalypse devastates America, a violent raid by bandits on an underground fallout shelter forces one of its residents to set out into a barren wasteland filled with radiation, mutated monsters, and a lawless society of those who remained on the surface.

For a very long while in the cinephile and gaming community there has been this shared agreement over the video game adaptation curse. Video games have been plagued with adaptations that end up being met with terrible reception due to a combination of bad writing and poor visuals that don’t live up to the original game. To this day this fact arguably still continues with the likes of Resident Evil and Uncharted. And look, I love Hiroyuki Sanada as much as the next person, but that Mortal Kombat flick from a few years back was not great either. That being said, in recent years there has also been a trend of genuinely successful attempts that have translated surprisingly well. Detective Pikachu banked a lot on Ryan Reynolds sarcastic persona and the Pokémon creatures were utilised well; Netflix’s The Witcher has done pretty well for itself, well until now when they’ve swapped their lead actor for one of the cheaper Hemsworth brothers; Super Mario Bros. Movie and the Sonic flicks I’m not a fan of myself, but evidently from the box office numbers and audience reactions they seemed to have hit the right spot in the fans’ hearts. Then there’s The Last of Us. The original game won people over for its heart-wrenching human drama against the backdrop of a zombie apocalypse, and the TV show has done a perfect job of capturing that. Every episode has recreated the game down to the last detail, and even when things are changed, the spirit of the source material is still kept alive. All of that makes it a rare adaptation that succeeds in giving people a new version of the original game and then some, giving it plenty to offer for old and new fans alike.

Now it seems that positive trend continues, furthermore underlining that the video game adaptation curse is now a myth. Well maybe, as that upcoming Borderlands movie is a looking suspiciously clunky but we’ll see how that one turns out. As for presently, Prime Video has shocked us all by giving us a truly fantastic show in Fallout. And I say shocked as the last time Prime Video adapted a famous property was The Rings of Power series and they butchered that one hard! I mean I’m sorry, but making an entire over-bloated season about the mystery of who is Sauron, and at the end the reveal is he’s some teen-Twilight-era dude and we’re supposed to all gasp in awe?? Look, I get that it’s not Prime Video themselves to be blamed, but the show runners and writers, but naturally Prime has left a sour taste in my palette. HOWEVER - Fallout is actually genuinely a good time!

I’ve never really played any of the Fallout games. Never appealed to me, and I have always found it difficult to get into any Bethesda games. My fiancée however tried Fallout 4 half a year ago and apparently gave up as she found it too confusing and she got stuck at a monster boss fight early on. I do hope she wasn’t stuck fighting one of those tiny little bugs, surely not. That would be embarrassing. So I went into this show without being a fan of the games, though I was aware of its post-apocalyptic backdrop. One of the best things about Fallout the TV show is that it’s very accessible whether or not you’ve played the games. Yes, fans of the games will notice a lot of fun stuff from the source material, but even if you’re a total newcomer, you can watch and follow along without any issues.

The story revolves around three main characters 200 years after a nuclear war basically destroyed everything, driving some survivors into underground bunkers called Vaults. Ella Purnell (that’s right, one of Miss Peregrine’s peculiar children!) plays Lucy MacLean, a Vault Dweller who, through unfortunate circumstances, leaves the relative safety of Vault 33 and travels to the surface on a life or death mission. She’s joined by Maximus (Aaron Clifton Moten) a squire in the secretive Brotherhood Of Steel - Power Armor-wearing knights who roam the land looking for lost technology. Maximus is almost as green as Lucy, venturing out on a quest he’s not very well prepared to tackle. Finally, rounding out the main trio, we have Walton Goggins as The Ghoul, a gunslinging bounty hunter and mutant who’s managed to live for well over 200 years. We learn more about his past as celebrity Cooper Howard through a number of flashbacks. Naturally more characters pop up along the way. I just want to urge anyone sitting on the fence to give this series a shot. It’s great fun, with plenty of humour, action and mystery and its creators clearly put a lot of effort into making it true to the game universe, while also being inventive with their storytelling.

It’s also really gory. You get to see a lot of human flesh out on display (heck, there are even zombies in this thing!) and it’s all visually looked really well done. Again with Bezos’ Amazon budget, like The Rings of Power show, Fallout looks like an expensive series. It just so happens that unlike Rings of Power this one happens to also have good writing, characters and narrative. There’s some impressive world-building, with every shot filled with various details that I’m sure will please the game fans. The story is really engaging, and I loved getting into the politics of this world and how companies like Vault Tec have more to them that meets the eye.

The primary element that works for Fallout is that’s its easy. As in it’s really enjoyable and straightforward and makes for a solid binge watch. Walton Goggins is superb as the Ghoul. Johnny Pemberton as Thaddeus, a squire for the Knights, was a great use of using a comedic actor and making them play things straight by simply trying to survive in this world, so that when the funny lines did come up they hit strong. Oh, and did I mention that Agent Dale Cooper himself, my boy Kyle MacLachlan is in this show?? Honestly, Fallout is a great time! Amazon, I still haven’t forgiven you for Lord of the Rings, but this is a good attempt for an apology.

Overall score: 7/10

#fallout #bethesda #prime video #fallout show #fallout series #fallout season 1 #ella purnell #walton goggins #aaron moten #kyle maclachlan #sarita choudhury #moises arias #matt berry #leslie uggams #johnny pemberton #geneva robertson dworet #graham wagner #2024 #streaming #vault tec #fallout review #fallout season 1 review #action #post apocalyptic #science fiction #war #adventure #drama #video game adaptation

[robin-hood-for-freedom]

I dont know why Bethesda thinks they can reproduce the 'redemption' that Cyberpunk 2077 had with Starfield.

Cyberpunk did have a shitload of glitches and highly clunky, unintuitive interfaces on its release. But it also had an interesting, well designed world to explore and some of the best writing I think I've ever seen in a video game. It also benefited from the Edgerunner's anime sparking renewed interest in the game/franchise.

Starfield has...literally none of that.

[slocumjoe]

Strong for character bingo

I have a few thoughts on Strong and none of them are in his, or his writers', favor. So here it is.

The Strong Rant.

This was done over a sleepy morning and has no real structure to it, so forgive me for the rambling

This is a Deep Cut but remember back in Fallout 1 and 2 where the mutants were...another people? Another kind of person trying to survive the wastes. They had their own thoughts, dreams, opinions of themselves and others. Remember Marcus? Remember the town that was founded on the site where a Brotherhood soldier and a mutant gave up fighting because they didn't see the point anymore?

Super Mutants were a creation of the Master to try and save humanity but turning it into something stronger. They were a mark of people, one person, thinking that they alone had the right to decide what was best for everyone else. But the Mutants themselves also had their own ideas of what was best. They made friends, had family, tried to move on and just get through life like everyone else.

And in Fucking 3, Bethesda made them orcs. Not even good orcs.

A good orcish people, in my opinion, put family and community above all else. They value being close together and to nature, living simply and not worrying about frivolous shit like politics or money. They are perfectly happy with their village and their farming, and they can slaughter anyone who dares interrupt anyway. Pacifists; they chose peace because they are capable of incredible war.

This is not Bethesda's Fallout orcs.

Stupid, bloodthirsty, almost animal in nature. There is nothing else to describe Bethesda Mutants as but adaptation failures. I have a lot more problems with how Bethesda went with their Fallout, but the Mutants are, like, at the top of that list. They're lazy. They exist because there's nothing else noteworthy to shoot at in 3. It's pathetic.

Now, I didn't finish 3, but I know the Mutants came from one of the Vaults. That is a piss-poor excuse for why you brought over a group localized in the far west to the far, far east, but y'know what? That could work as an excuse for why these Mutants suck. The Vault made them wrong, fucked up the process. I'll bite, there. I still don't like it, but the text smoothes itself out.

BUT THEN THEY DID IT AGAIN IN FUCKING 4.

The Master, one of the BEST VILLAINS in video game history—his master plan, the plot of the first game in this series, is now background information in TWO DIFFERENT UNDERGROUND BUNKERS as filler exposition to justify you being able to kill Mutants in the east.

What the fuck, Todd.

The Institute, the synths, everything about 4's plot is awful writing. It could have been good, but they'd have to actually do something with the, let's be honest, first draft. And that would take work. Bethesda is great at coming up with ideas, and interesting topics, and greater at leaving them to fawn over something irrelevant. Synths, the concept, the themes? Incredible, let's base half the story around finding Kellogg, and the other half finding Shaun. And then things end, like, two hours later.

But the fucking Mutants.

Why can't there just be Mutants from the capital who wandered over? The Brotherhood wandered over. But nope. We have to explain why I can't walk through three blocks in Cambridge without Shrek running at me with a bomb. And again, why are they Orcs? Because the Institute fucked up.

So, Fallout 4 has another issue; and its an obsession with representation. Another rant, again. But it's not interested in the wasteland, the Commonwealth; its interested in the history of America. We have a ghoul named John Hancock. There are Minutemen. There's a newspaper called Publick Occurances. The plot shoehorns in a literal Railroad. It wants to do that, and everything else is a box to tick off. We get 1 ghoul. 1 actual synth. 1 companion for each faction. 1 Super Mutant. One more box ticked off.

Now we're actually to Strong.

Strong is an orc. He's a bad orc, and his personality is so contradictory, he's not even a character.

Here are some things Strong likes.

Building settlements

Helping settlers, saving kidnapped settlers

Being tough to Travis and encouraging him to toughen up

Giving Sheffield soda

The coding fucked up here, because the 'disliked that' pops up, but Strong likes helping Billy the ghoul kid, even says he should be with his people

Helping Preston and being nice to him

Telling Desdemona you're against slavery

Telling Ricky Dalton saving synths is noble

Making Darla turn on Skinny by girlbossing her up

Helping the people during the U.S.S constitution quest

Buying from Erikson

So, looking at this, Strong values helping people,, community, taking care of your own. Like...the good Orc I described. And Strong wants to find the milk of human kindness. Does he know what kindness is? Does he want to learn how to be kind, because he thinks that is what the Super Mutants lack? Humans build cities, have families, advance in their world. The Super Mutants are raiders, cannibals. Does Strong realize that kindness and community are what rebuilds a society?

But here's where Strong gets fucky.

He also likes;

Killing Desdemona??

Being mean to Blake Abernathy??

Choosing violence where he should, really, dislike it, like threatening Madison Li?

Asking for more caps, when he also dislikes it?

KILLING SETTLERS???

Okay, so he changes his mind randomly. He'll be nice to Preston, but mean to Blake. He likes Desdemona and the railroad, but also...killing them. He dislikes it when Sole is rude, or uses Charisma for more money, but...doesn't. What?

Gets weirder with his dislikes.

Stealing and pickpocketing. Okay, that's a moral standing. He thinks it's wrong. But...he likes cannibalism. You can eat people, but don't take their stuff.

Asking for more money??

Being nice to Magnolia. Why?

Healing Dogmeat. Why? He likes helping Danny??

Helping the Vault Tec rep, when really he should like it, because that's building a community...which he likes...because he likes settlement stuff...

Siding with the railroad. Goes against liking Desdemona and helping synths.

Rescuing synths in RR quests. Which is it, buddy?

Talking to Erikson

Killing Phyllis Dally for being a synth...again, what is his opinion here

Giving Moe Cronin baseball stuff. Why? What's the point?

My problem with Strong is that I can't figure out who he's for. Danse has his people, Preston his, Cait hers...who, when picking up Fallout 4 for the first time, finds Strong, sticks with him for the whole game, and is able to max affinity with him naturally?

When I first played, I gravitated to Hancock and maxed him out without a guide, or even quickloading until I got whatever option he liked.

But Strong...if you like synths, you might think he does too. If you help synths, he ends up disliking it. If you help settlers, he likes it. If you kill them, he loves it. If you steal, he dislikes it. If you cannibalize people, he likes it. If you ask for caps, he dislikes it. If you ask for caps, he likes it. He is fucking everywhere.

Is he a immoral companion? I don't know, he likes Preston, and helping settlements, and being kind to kind people. But he also likes killing Virgil, bullying Blake and Wiseman at the slog, and again, eating people.

Look at Strong and his affinity checks and tell me what his values are, what kind of person he is. Does he value community, or every man for himself? Does he hate theft and materialism, or does he like caps? Does he want Sole to treat people accordingly, or does he want them to be mean to everyone, except Preston for some reason? Does he like Preston, or does he like killing settlers? Does he like killing settlers, or building towns for them and saving them? What the fuck does Strong do?

Hancock values community, dislikes authority, is a party-guy, and while he wants Sole to be kind, doesn't want them to stand for someone else being an asshole. Nick wants them to be the bigger man, and not butt heads just to butt, even if he likes them snarking occasionally. Strong apparently flips a coin and goes from there.

I can't stand in-game Strong because he serves no purpose. He has no perspective to share, no ideals or hard stances, no backstory, nothing. He doesn't represent his group, at least, not well. He doesn't develop at all and find that Milk. He doesn't even have a preferred faction to end with, he just wants the Railroad dead for no reason. He voices siding with the Institute, but he also hates the Institute in his voice lines, so what the fuck?

I just...I'm not willing to do the mental gymnastics to like Strong, or even justify him. If I have to do math to figure out a character, that character is not finished or properly realized. Like, X6 got shafted, too, but I don't need to talk myself through what X6 values. He's a more professional mercenary who dislikes anything that isn't the Institute. Done. But there's more there if I wanted to dig deeper and fully psychoanalyze him.

Strong is Strong. He hates and likes everything at once and good like figuring out which is which without a guide. Stick to cannibalism but don't steal. Sure. Thats a moral compass, I guess.

#fo4 #fallout 4 #i never write strong because there is no way to write him out of character imo #so he doesnt have a character to write #he might call sole weak. he might hug them. he might throw meat at them. maybe he has an epiphany.

[blazehedgehog]

Sand Land Demo Impressions

So I played that there Sand Land demo. And it's... kind of bad? It's complicated.

Imagine if Bethesda put out a demo for Skyrim and it was, like, this tiny sliver of Whiterun, and they specifically put invisible walls up around all the towns and villages, you weren't allowed to talk to NPCs, and you weren't given any quests (and can't start any), so all you were really allowed to do was roam around and do a couple of draugr caves. And not even good ones, either, but just generic draugr caves full of the same generic boring loot that's in all of them.

That's basically what the Sand Land demo is. It's almost more of a vibes piece because there's literally nothing you can do except fight roaming bandits, scorpions, and panthers. There's hints of progression. Beelzebub will call out rock formations and say "we could get up there if we could jump higher", indicating you can come back with an upgrade that lets you get a secret item, but it's not in this demo. Similarly, you run into a radio tower you can repair if you have the right materials, but having spent over two hours in the demo sniffing out every rock, dead tree, and patch of dirt, I can safely say those materials are not available.

If they were hoping to make a good impression, they did not, because I genuinely don't know what you actually do in this game in terms of missions. Sure, yes, I know what combat feels like, but to go back to the Skyrim comparison: would you solely judge the value of Skyrim on how good its combat feels?

At the very least, I can tell you this is yet another Bandai-Namco game where the English dub seems to have been the lowest priority thing on the game development ladder. Phrasing is stilted and overly literal, actors struggle to make the best of bad writing -- if you've ever played something like Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2, you know exactly what to expect. And it's a shame, too, because you hear these guys talk a LOT. There's clearly a timer going off every 2-3 minutes 90 seconds to prompt General Rao, Beelzebub and Thief to chat amongst themselves, and even just in the demo I was reaching for the mute button to shut these guys up. It's the same chatter over, and over, and over, and while I assume the full version will have a larger pool of dialog to pull from, it probably will never be large enough.

#Sand Land #Akira Toriyama #Bandai Namco #Beelzebub #Dragon Ball Xenoverse #dub #Youtube

[lilly-the-sad]

So I live for elder scrolls love fallout and am probably the biggest Bethesda apologist you'll evereet but I was genuinely sacred to play starfield because of what people where saying about it and I gotta say I saw it on sale and thought what the hell, and well honestly I've put more then 200 hours Into it in 2ish weeks on 2 characters and I gotta say I love its shipbuilding and combat and the zero and low grab combat is pretty great the starborn power feels like better implemented shouts and I think it's got some of Bethesda's better writing especially for characters I think it also helps that the main quest doesn't feel needlessly large scale yeah it's a multiverse story but it's also like about the characters experiencing it then the scenario itself wich I think is neat also best compniona since new Vegas maybe not as good as new Vegas but closer then it's been in a while also I do really like how they refined the settlement building and gear customization of fallout 4 to feel more streamlined and fair while still being both rewarding and optional or in short I really like dit

#starfield #skyrim #fallout new vegas #bethesda #honestly its my current hyperfixatiom

[lyanndelune]

I know people shit on Fallout 4 for its writing all the time or say "yeah, it's a good game but not a good Fallout game" or "it's not a real RPG" but honestly, I think it's the best one yet and it's my favorite game ever (so far)

Hear me out.

Yes, the overall plot isn't as good as New Vegas and I wish they did the endings more similar to how they were done in Far Harbor but you gotta admit, the companions are perfect and that's what makes the game for me. Yea, Boone and Arcade are cool and all but the companions in Fallout 4 successfully manage to make me think of them as if they're real people in a way other games just don't do for me. Their stories are incredible and the voice acting is flawless and they way I always travel with them and they chime in with their opinions and interact with one another, it really makes me think of them as friends. They just feel more real than the ones from Fallout 3 or New Vegas, ya know? (Don't get me wrong, I still like them)

I guess the point of this ramble is just how much I appreciate Bethesda actually putting in effort with the companions even if it feels like they half-assed the actual plot at times, that's what makes it so repayable to me. I just really hope future Bethesda games take note and expand on the direction they went in with 4s companions.

Though, MacCready will always be my favorite. I just love him so much. Dream husband, right there ❤️

#fallout 4 #fallout #maccready #fo4 companions #LyannDeLune