Diecast #129: Fallout 4, Fallout 4, Fallout 4, Fallout 4

By Shamus Posted Monday Nov 16, 2015

Filed under: Diecast 259 comments



Direct link to this episode.

Hosts: Josh, Shamus, Mumbles. Episode edited by Rachel.

Whoops. Rachel left about four minutes of dead air on the tail end of the podcast. In her defense, she edited the show while sick, and her computer crashed and forced her to start over at the halfway point. I figured it was better to let it slide than to wake her up and make her re-encode the whole thing. You understand.

Show notes:

00:00:34: Rise of The Tomb R-HEY EVERYONE FALLOUT 4 IS OUT!

I’d like to temper my commentary on the game a little. Yesterday on Twitter I said:

I think rather than being the “best of both games”, it’s more like we finally got a game that avoids the crippling failures of both. It might sound like I’m splitting hairs, but bear with me. I think this is an important distinction.

Fallout 4 gets pretty schlocky in parts, but it’s not the brain-melting idiocy of Fallout 3. The plot is more engaging than the battle against time-traveling dragons that somehow managed to come off as dull in Skyrim. It’s a little rough around the edges like all Gamebryo games, but it’s not nearly as buggy as New Vegas.

So I shouldn’t have implied this is the best of the bunch. More like it’s the one with the least severe flaws. The whole product seems to be converging on a point of adequacy.

So. Yeah. Don’t run out and buy it because Shamus promised you story better than New Vegas.

00:04:30: Fallout 4 Game Engine tied to framerate.

The video I mentioned:


Link (YouTube)

00:07:44: Rise of the Tomb Raider

Poor Crystal Dynamics. We’ll catch up with them once the game comes out for real.

00:12:50: Fallout 4 again. For basically the rest of the show.


Link (YouTube)

00:32:00: Fallout 4 will probably be the next season of Spoiler Warning.

I know we usually give a game a year, but unless there’s a huge backlash Fallout 4 will happen in just a couple of months.

 


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259 thoughts on “Diecast #129: Fallout 4, Fallout 4, Fallout 4, Fallout 4

  1. Zak McKracken says:

    Poor poor Tomb Raider … wonder if this might be the continuation of somebody being too eager to enter into agreements with hardware vendors. Either the game is so bad that they needed the Microsoft money or someone’s very very bad at these kinds of decisions.

    …or possibly somebody is very good at them, but from a personal perspective exclusively…

    Well, at least they’ll have some time to prepare the PC version :)

    1. James says:

      Yea I’m not sure who at the PR department decided, to launch opposite Fallout 4. sure Tomb Raider is popular but it doesn’t hold a candle to Fallout or really any Bethesda game. this is like launching opposite Call of Duty during its hayday

      Also Launching on Nov 10th was StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void, but atleast that game is an entirely different genre, style and different audience*, as well as being a Blizz game, Blizzard has a very dedicated audience.

      (*there are people who love both, im one of them but you know what i mean)

      1. el_b says:

        they wanted to launch with uncharted 4 but they put it back…then bethesda revealed their release date…the tomb raider guys must have shit themselves.

        1. Zombie says:

          I know XCOM 2 was supposed to come out a week or so after Fallout 4, and then it got delayed till February a little after the Fallout 4 release date was reveled. So Tomb Raider was still gonna be fighting with a few other games regardless, they just picked the worst game they could possibly imagine to launch beside.

          1. Wide And Nerdy says:

            Announcing the triumphant return of Mumbles.

      2. Zak McKracken says:

        If it was just the date … but TR is Xbox exclusive! Given the good reviews the last Tomb Raider got, this one could have had a chance but not if it only appears on the weaker of the current consoles. Don’t know what the spread of xboxes currently is but that’s probably much more than half the potential audience gone, right there.

        …and nobody’s gonna buy and Xbox in order to get the game, not with the alternatives around…

        1. Christopher says:

          Bizarrely, Rise of the Tomb raider apparently launched perfectly functional on xbox 360. I’m considering picking it up, but it doesn’t seem like they fixed they issued I had with the last game, so I dunno.

      3. Muspel says:

        Starcraft 2: LotV is also on a completely different platform (since Tomb Raider isn’t out on PC yet).

    2. Matt K says:

      It really is a huge mess. Especially since it’ll be a year till they launch on the majority of platforms (i.e. PS4 and PC) and by then it’ll be old news. And on PC what’s the point in buy at launch instead of waiting for it to drop in price. I.e. what’s another couple of months for a game that’s been out for over a year at that point. So it seems unlikely they’ll recoup their costs on the bigger release.

      1. el_b says:

        plus they released like 3 versions of tomb raider, so for me its like a fallout game, wait and get the finished gotye version on sale.

  2. Piflik says:

    Not sure if this was mentioned in the Podcast, since I haven’t listened to it yet, but a comment to one of Shamus’ tweets about a certain Midboss.

    I was totaly able to lose him with my stealth build. Still the setup annoyed me. After the conversation I immediately turned around and bolted. One of the Synths followed and was quickly dispatched, but the main threat didn’t follow. My companion then charged and distracted him enough for me to land two sneak attacks with my Laser Sniper (that does double damage on uninjured enemies) while being first on [Hidden], then on [Caution]. The rest of the fight was me then actually having to facetank the rest and kill him with my plasma rifle. I might have been a bit overleveled for this quest, but since I am playing on Survivor difficulty, this battle was frustrating enough as it is. Died more than I dared to count in that fight.

    1. djw says:

      If its the same battle that I think it is, my strategy was to chain use Jet and blast him dead immediately after the conversation ended (also on survivor). He throws grenades at you after he engages his stealth boy, and there is just not enough room in there to dodge them.

      1. Jeff says:

        Can you use VATS to shoot grenades in midair? One of my favorite kills in New Vegas was shooting a grenade right as a raider released it, causing it to blow off his hand.

        1. Rob says:

          There is a perk that makes doing this cause double damage, so you can definitely do it. I haven’t been able to though. I’m using a melee build though, so maybe it unlocks with a gun perk?

    2. Darren says:

      I poked around and found a Fat Man and one mini-nuke in the same building. The encounter lasted about a second.

      I’m really enjoying how much more flexible the game is; people are complaining that it’s very combat heavy, but there’s still a lot of room to maneuver within that framework.

    3. p_Johhnston says:

      Oddly enough I had no difficulty with this fight. I had a laser pistol that had the increased critical hit damage/meter building buff. I got off about ten shots in vats, two of them criticals, before he could get off a shot. finished him off with one shotgun blast.

  3. Daemian Lucifer says:

    it's more like we finally got a game that avoids the crippling failures of both

    As in story failures?Maybe.As in interface,graphics and ai?Heck no.Ui is as terrible as it was in f3 and new vegas,and even worse when it comes to building settlements.Ai is even dumber than before,doing such stuff like standing still while being pummeled to death or jumping off a building because you climbed down the stairs right next to it.Graphics wise,while better than any bethesda game so far,faces are still ugly,especially when talking.And thats not even going into the plethora of bugs that follow every bethesda game,or the complaints console users have about it.

    1. Trix2000 says:

      As much as I don’t like the UI in FO4, it’s no worse than FO3 (and arguably Skyrim’s, but then I actually was fine with that one). And while really annoying at times, it hardly breaks the experience for me.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Actually because of the added building mechanic,the interface in fallout 4 is worse than the one in fallout 3.

        Also,the change in the dialogue system coupled with the stupid ai does make talking to people more difficult than in fallout 3.

        1. I thought it was bad until I realized that you can sort your inventory display by item type whenever you’re in a trade/transfer screen. You can also sort the inventory of whatever you’re trading/transferring WITH. You can also re-name all of your gear (I do this with the ones I want to keep so I remember they’re mine–I’m carrying about 6 different weapons at all times.)

          So, Fallout 4 gets my vote for best Bethesda interface to date. I haven’t had any annoyances with it in quite a while. The settlement building is a bit awkward at first and I wish there was a way to display what your settlers are already assigned to, but other than that, no problems.

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            Sure,you can sort everything by type.Which is not that helpful when your base accumulates zome brazillion items of every type.Just getting to that purified water has become a chore now that I have a bunch of varying meats,vegetables and drugs stashed for later crafting/use.

            1. I do wish they’d built the terminal interface better. I don’t understand why I have to click “Remote Door Access” and then “Unlock Door”. If there’s only one thing to do, it should just DO THAT THING instead of making you click through like 3 screens.

          2. AdamS says:

            This! Also, put an asterisk in front of the name of every item you want to hang on to, so they’ll all be at the top of the inventory.

    2. Ambitious Sloth says:

      It is such a broken UI for the PC. For those that don’t know, here’s the breakdown:

      When talking to a npc, you can’t just select dialog by moving the mouse in the right direction, a la Mass Effect’s dialog wheel. Instead you have to hover over the text to select it and then click. That’s not so bad, until it’s compounded with the fact that your mouse can show up anywhere on screen. Which means that just moving over to select the option can pan the camera enough to exit the conversation. It happens a lot unless you 6 inches away from the npc.

      The Pip Boy is still just terrible. You can’t scroll through your items with the keyboard, which requires mousing over to your inventory and scrolling by using the mouse wheel. Which becomes a pain when you can have literally a hundred pages of items to scroll through. Previously in FO3 and NV you could use WASD to scroll around. In Fallout 4 W/S cycle horizontally through status/inv/data/map/radio. and A/D cycle though those pages subsections. So trying to use those keys will just end up with you looking in the wrong place.

      The worst offender though is the settlement building UI. You can’t cycle through the various buildings/crafting stations without taking your hand off the mouse to use the arrow keys. Having to actually switch input devices to try and find an structure, then switch back to the mouse to move/rotate it, is terrible. Especially if you want to check out what different walls/designs look like, then you’ll be switching back and forth pretty frequently.

      Skyrim, FO3, and NV didn’t have great UI’s, but they were manageable. The UI controls for the PC version of Fallout 4 feel like they were design by a 3 armed alien who sorted it out in 30 minutes and never looked back.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Actually,you can scroll through items in pipboy with the keyboard.By using the arrow keys.So yeah,just as stupid.

        And you can scroll through the building items without letting go of the mouse,by holding shift and using wasd.Which is marginally better,I guess.

        1. Ambitious Sloth says:

          I did not know that. Thank you. It actually does make building things more manageable. Perhaps I can finally get into building my settlement now.

      2. utzel says:

        There’s now a mod to show the whole line you will say, instead of just a two word description. Also allows for selection with number keys 1-4. Haven’t tried it myself though, not a Fallout fan and probably will just watch the SW season. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/11/18/fallout-4-dialogue-option-mod/

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          The 1-4 thing works in the unmodded game as well.

      3. Peter says:

        Daemian Lucifer already mentioned the arrow keys to scroll the inventory. They also work when in conversation, the 4 arrows correspond to the 4 options.

  4. Harry says:

    I think my perception of New Vegas is severely warped compared to everyone else’s, because when it came out I played it for 100+ hours and never encountered a single bug (beyond the very occasional, easily-forgiven physics glitch).

    By contrast, Fallout 4 has already crashed so badly I had to restart my PC. Twice.

    I recognize this is probably just down to luck of the draw on my part, and overall New Vegas *was* buggier for the majority of people. But from my position, with my subjective experiences, New Vegas looks completely unassailable.

    1. Trix2000 says:

      You aren’t alone – I also didn’t have any troubles with NV, though I played it fairly late.

      Haven’t run into anything more severe than Dogmeat deciding to swim in midair for a bit in FO4, so at least so far it’s holding up as well.

    2. Daemian Lucifer says:

      I had the opposite experience.On launch,new vegas was regularly crashing to desktop for me every half an hour or so.Meanwhile,in fallout 4 Ive experienced only two crashes,both times when I was exiting the game,both times easily fixed through the task manager.

      1. I’ve racked up 68 hours of play and I’ve yet to have it crash, not even when I pulled some ridiculously ill-advised screen switching.

        I don’t consider the janky behavior of some of the things in the game to be “bugs”. They’re more like engine limitations. The game gives you a lot of freedom–which means it’s going to behave oddly sometimes.

        Haven’t had a single quest break and become uncompletable. I think the worst thing that’s happened thus far is losing some legendary loot because the mob fell through the terrain.

  5. Daemian Lucifer says:

    @14:30

    No,thats a lazy sf explanation,one done by hacks who dont know any better.Those that do know better actually have robots that act like real life robots:Obeying commands that were given to it.If they go haywire,its either because someone made a mistake,or the situation was unforeseen,or something like that.

    1. Bitterpark says:

      But hey, at least there is one, they don’t just pretend this issue doesn’t warrant one.

      I haven’t played Fallout 4 and know next to nothing about it, but I can’t help but wonder if everyone is so blown away because the story is not the actual worst thing ever concieved and characters actually exist and aren’t totally generic, dumb or generic and totally dumb. Like, it massively exceeded everyone’s expectations just by being above utter trash.

    2. Ledel says:

      I haven’t quite made it far enough along in the game to find out the backstory for the rogue robots, but a thought. Since radiation can affect CPUs in odd ways, the radiation of the wasteland could alter their programming so that they no longer follow their masters blindly.

      There is some lore that I’m uncovering that might also explain why the synths are the way they are. Valentine just told me that his personality and memories are recreated from an actual human being. If this is true, it could cast a light on their want for freedom.

      1. Ayegill says:

        The spoilery stuff explains why synths would want freedom(sorta), but it doesn’t explain why the Institute went with that design in the first place(since it leads to synths running off), when it doesn’t really seem like synths can do anything(mentally) that Mr. Handies can’t.

  6. Daemian Lucifer says:

    I dont have a problem with you doing fallout 4 soon.I mean,you did me3 really quickly as well.In fact,I am really curious about what Josh will do now that you can actually stack criticals.

    As for soma,it may not be a dumb game,but the protagonist is pretty dumb.

    1. Entropy says:

      Yeah, I’m cool with the fallout season after KotOR.. As long as there is a Reginald Cuftbert, with mutton chops, being a jerk, I’ll be there.

      …Does FO4 have the bonnet?

    2. p_Johhnston says:

      I would actually really enjoy a fallout four season after this one. That being said by that point i’ll have probably put over a hundred hours into the game, so it wouldn’t spoil anything for me.

  7. Galad says:

    Wait what..I was very much not into Skyrim, but time-travelling dragons?

    Too bad a about Tom Braider. The last installment of that series was okay, so I might have been interested to see how the story evolves. Oh well, time will tell

    1. Shamus says:

      Spoiler for the plot of Skyrim:

      Alduin was supposedly defeated thousands of years ago by mighty heroes. But no, they actually just passed the buck and used some fancy magic (an Elder Scroll, I think?) to send Alduin forward in time.

      1. Galad says:

        Thanks Shamus! <3

        A-and I wanted to give you an idea on what to do for the Spoiler Warning anniversary, and the best I've got is something silly like 'I am Bread' or 'Goat Simulator'? Or maybe some wacky Crusader "I killed my relatives and my 2 year old daughter is emperor of the North" Kings shenanigans

      2. Ranneko says:

        I have seen that before in some fantasy series. Heck even Sailor Moon uses it as part of its set up, but I don’t think I have ever seen a story which ends with kicking the threat forward for the future to deal with. Not even a short story.

        1. The Rocketeer says:

          Look for it in horror plots. The underpinning of stories where an old, sealed-away evil is finally done in by modern paragons is that the world has gotten better, stronger, and more good since the last advent.

          But the thought that the enemy really is just fundamentally stronger, and can easily kill us while we can only temporarily inconvenience it, is the stuff of horror. Plenty of horror stories end with the threat being sealed/put to sleep temporarily. Though, how temporary that lull is depends on the needs of the sequel.

          Also, the rejection ending added to the end of Mass Effect 3 qualifies. Shepard refuses to accept victory on Star Child’s terms, but the knowledge and hopes of the present are hidden away, and (it is implied) provide a foundation for the fuller, better victory our cycle was denied.

          1. Ranneko says:

            That makes sense, generally I try to avoid horror, I don’t really enjoy it but I can definitely see why it would be more common there.

        2. Abnaxis says:

          Isn’t that basically how Mass Effect 1 ended?

  8. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Id love to join with the BoS in fallout 4.Sadly,they dont exist.There is only the PoS from fallout 3.

    1. Christopher says:

      I’m going to have to disagree here. If you can’t see the evolution of the BoS from 3 to 4 you don’t want to. I thought it was brilliant how they changed them.

      1. James says:

        i so know that there was a “less severe” brotherhood that appeared in Tactics, but i havnt met them in 4 yet so i cant comment on how close the two are, or if they are a lot like Elder “Fire Nap” Lyons.

        1. Grudgeal says:

          The Midwestern/Tactics brotherhood was basically a feudal state, or one based on clientage. Bascially, they go around to their neighbours and vassalize them (voluntarily in-game), offering squads of armed paladins to fend of raiders in return for tribute in the form of recruits and food. If you don’t play nice with neighbours who are under their protection, they have have a ‘one strike and you’re vaporized’ rule.

          If any pre-war tech is found it’s theirs, but they’ll share the benefits with you (so while they won’t tell you how to build, say, a tractor or a generator, they’ll lend you one they’ve built).

          Dunno how FO4 has interpreted them.

    2. Darren says:

      Maybe I haven’t progressed far enough with the faction, but the FO4 BoS seems way closer to the original idea than what was seen in FO3. They’re invading the Commonwealth and basically robbing settlements to support a preemptive war against the Institute for the audacity of developing technology they don’t like. Everything I’ve done with them has involved brutally killing whoever’s in the way of some bit of tech they want. They are pleasingly techno-fascist.

      1. Christopher says:

        I didn’t want to spoil it outright, but yeah, that. If you really think that the BOS are the LG paladins of Fallout 3 then it seems like you haven’t been paying attention.

        1. SyrusRayne says:

          My theory is that the Outcasts won their little civil war. I haven’t seen it spelled out anywhere – though it might be – but it makes sense, even down to the red and black markings on their armor.

  9. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Power armor is weird.For the first time in forever it feels like something really powerful.Yet sadly,everyone and a dog has one.I fought a random raider that was in a power armor and wielding a fatman quite early on.

    1. Bropocalypse says:

      When everyone’s super, no one will be.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Which is a shame because power armor is really good this time around.Heck,I think its even better implemented here than in the original fallout *drink*.

    2. Incunabulum says:

      Yeah, I don’t like that either. No did I like finding a second suit standing in an open area (near a crashed vertibird) only an hour or so out of the Vault.

      The *third* one I found was slightly more plausible in that I nicked it from a (for some reason *unguarded*) shed – that could be written off as someone’s not-sufficiently-well-secured salvage.

      I also don’t like that they cheesed out the design by having the underlayer being the same for all suits, but somehow the (interchangeable) *armor* layer being different is sufficient to justify completely different model numbers? There should be three different chassis models (with different speeds and power consumption) – one for the T-45, one for the T51 and T-60, and one for the X-01. And the armor pieces should not be interchangeable between them.

      But what I *really* hate is losing two potential suits because you can’t get a dead NPC out of them for some reason. I mean all you have to do is turn the wheel on the back and the thing opens up – that’s a huuuuuuuuuge weakness IMO, along with the FC that fits neatly into a hole *all the way through the armor*.

      1. Trix2000 says:

        Could be the suits lock from the outside when someone is in them, to prevent obvious issues (though I imagine there must be some special override in case someone is stuck in-suit).

        As for the interchangeable parts, that’s likely just a compromise for gameplay purposes – it’s easier than having to worry about whether the part you just grabbed is compatible or not. It’s not like it has THAT huge of an impact on the setting, anyways.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          But you have to worry about fitting all the other mods.You cannot fit your .45 pistol mod on your .10 pistol mod,even if the mod in question is a grip,or a sight,and looks identical once you fit them.

      2. Ringwraith says:

        Shoot them in the fusion core.
        It’ll pop ’em right back out.

      3. Ledel says:

        According to my brother, you can pickpocket the fusion core and that forcibly ejects the person from the power armor. When I start my second playthrough, I’m going to run a stealth build for this and overhearing as many conversations as I can between NPCs.

      4. p_Johhnston says:

        This. A thousand times this. Every time I kill a raider in power armor I look at the dead body fuming that I can’t steal the suit. I want to collect every suit I possibly can and display them like pretty little statues for people to admire.

    3. Sean Hagen says:

      Thankfully, most raiders with power armour forget their helmet, so I can still snipe them from far away.

      My favourite moment was killing a raider as she rushed to get into her power armour after I took out some of her friends from afar.

  10. Peter H. Coffin says:

    Just scrolling through the video stills, before even downloading the audio, it looks like decapitation cures drug addiction. That sounds remarkably reasonable.

  11. Angelo says:

    About the game not setting up the Deathclaw: if you pay attention to Worst Character Ever Mama Murphy she’ll have a vision of “death and horns” and stuff like that. I rolled my eyes so hard, the “mystic vision” that pitches you against a deathclaw with a power armor not one hour into the game.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      I really dont know why my companions dont like me pumping her full of drugs while she constantly complains about her weak heart.I mean she is asking for it,so we should give it to her.ALL of the drugs.

      1. djw says:

        I’m pumping myself full of drugs too, so its not like I’m singling her out.

    2. Incunabulum says:

      Funnily enough – I ran into this death claw and the synths – without any help. I was exploring the world on my own (level 20 and not even bothered to go into Diamond city or work with the Brotherhood yet) and triggered this encounter solo.

  12. Nick Pitino says:

    Fallout 4 next season?

    Bring it on.

    I’m in a situation where I don’t have a next gen console or a PC good enough to run it so I probably won’t be able to play it for a few months anyway, and it would be nice to actually have the game you’re covering be the game I’m playing just for once.

    1. Ramsus says:

      I too fail at having a computer good enough to run the game. So I would greatly favor you guys doing it next season as I’d rather you guys spoil everything for me than random places on the internet with no context.

  13. somebodys_kid says:

    Fallout 4 next Spoiler Warning? But I’m still playing Witcher 3!

  14. Ayegill says:

    The only male character who can be romanced that you didn’t mention is MacCready, which is frankly too disturbing to even consider.

    Also, the fact that you can romance Danse means that You can romance synths, so why the hell can’t Nick be romanced Bethesda this is total bullshit.

    1. Da Mage says:

      And the true horror about MacCready is that since he is a companion, even now, 5-6 years later….spoiler warning will still not be able to get their revenge on him for lamplight.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Well companions can still get knocked out,so at least thats something.They can just leave him in a ditch somewhere and never revive him.

        1. Ayegill says:

          I’m pretty sure they eventually get up on their own.

          1. Sleeping Dragon says:

            They do after the fight, though I did manage to somehow loose Nick at one point when he fell to barrage of gunfire and explosives as I sprinted through several locations and then fasttravelled and had to resort to console commands to get him back.

            To be fair this happened only once despite the circumstances repeating several times throughout the playthrough.

        2. The Rocketeer says:

          The Skyrim and New Vegas seasons strongly indicate that the worst punishment one can inflict on an NPC is to make them a follower for Reginald “Obvious Reasons” Cuftbert, incineration enthusiast and bad, bad kitty.

          It’s a death sentence… for the lucky ones.

          1. Supahewok says:

            But MacCready likes it when you steal, be a dick to people, and choose violent methods of conflict resolution. He would probably love working with Reginald Cuthbert.

            It’s as if Bethesda created him to specifically be the bane of Spoiler Warning.

            1. The Rocketeer says:

              So he’s on our side, now, basically? Fine. It doesn’t matter that MacCready is an evil prick, it was that he was an evil prick to us. If joining forces allows us to scourge the wasteland, while getting petty, constant revenge through making him carry all the junk, leading him into traps and enemy ambushes, and constant semi-unintentional friendly fire, all the better.

              1. Supahewok says:

                But he’ll *like* it. He won’t suffer as he deserves. It’s literally the best way for Bethesda to spite the Spoiler Warning crew, even if Beth has never even heard of this blog.

              2. Vect says:

                He’s not evil so much as he has a mercenary approach to things (because, y’know, that’s his job). He likes it when you ask for money for jobs and takes stuff for yourself, but he also likes basic human decency.

                Surprisingly, MacCready’s had actual character development. For one, whenever he’s about to swear he stops and corrects (“Oh, those assho-I mean, those idiots…”) himself because he promised his son that he’ll clean up his act. Which is good

      2. Dovius says:

        As made evident by my first reaction of running into him, he is perfectly killable.

        1. Ayegill says:

          Really? I took him out to the glowing sea, dismissed him, and emptied a dozen mags into him, and he just sat down on the ground, only to get up after a while.

          1. Zombie says:

            I think he means when you first run into him, when he’s fighting off all the ghouls and isn’t technically a companion. Theres also a quest later on to kill him for the Brotherhood when they find out he’s a synth

            1. Ayegill says:

              That’s Danse, not MacCready.

              1. Zombie says:

                Ooops. Looked at the wrong thing.

            2. Daemian Lucifer says:

              Wait,what?Is there anyone in this world who is NOT a synth?

              1. Zombie says:

                Well, its kinda a big plot point that The Institute is kidnapping people and replacing them with Synths, creating massive paranoia in the Commonwealth. You’re not a synth, and your companions aren’t synths, out side of two, one of whom starts as a robot.

                1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                  You're not a synth

                  Are you sure about that?Do you get to pass the voight-kampff test at any point in the game?

                  1. Otters34 says:

                    Voight-Kampf is outdated, these days you just tear the face off and check for a metal skull. No metal skull, you’re good, and you mercifully put a fellow human out of their misery. Metal skull, you heroically destroy the infiltrator.

                    1. hborrgg says:

                      If you’ve come across that random encounter where there are two identical settlers and you need to figure out which one is a synth even the voight-kamph test isn’t really necessary. All you need to do is ask “hey, which one of you is the synth” and even if you only have 3 charisma the real synth will raise his hand.

          2. Dovius says:

            Yeah, apologies for getting everyone’s hopes up. Went and checked and he is in fact still alive. No clue why I thought I killed him.

            I think my revenge fantasies might’ve gotten a bit dramatic.

      3. James says:

        *eye twitches involuntarily*

        This must be what Rutskarn meant when he tweeted he met the Jar Jar Binks of F4, i have yet to get there but i have a plan.

        *opens console, clicks on McJackoff, Set.Essential False*

        Proceeds to murder the ever loving shit out of the prick

        1. Wide And Nerdy â„¢ says:

          I never find that satisfying. Its not enough to kill the character, I want the game to know and acknowledge that it happened.

    2. Wide And Nerdy says:

      Well Danse is designed to completely pass for human so it makes sense that that would include the ability to participate in a romance

      That said, I was really hoping Codsworth was an option. I would have gone for that since I’m playing mad scientist in my run through (something the non german non manic voice acting kind of ruins but hey.)

    3. arron says:

      I’ve heard that you can romance one of the medical robots – Curie, and she gets a new synth body.

      1. Zombie says:

        Yeah, that does happen. And it actually makes a ton of sense when they do it, which is kinda shocking.

  15. Da Mage says:

    One of the major gripes people have had with Fallout 4 is the graphical quality….but really, I think the game looks quite good, and Bethesda may have finally got the message to stop chasing cutting edge graphics…..remember kids, chasing realism lead to Oblivion potato heads.

    It’s also interesting to see Fallout 4 just crushing the latest Cod game (which released the same day) in the news circle this week. I wonder what sales comparisons would be like.

    1. Incunabulum says:

      It looks good – but that’s because it has better lighting and more clutter.

      But outside that I’m seeing that a lot of meshes don’t seem to be as detailed as Skyrim – buildings and corridors tend to have really sharp 90 degree exactly bends at corners. There just seem to be fewer polygons in the world meshes – its sort of like if you took Oblivion’s world and slapped 2k textures over everything.

      And, on the loading screens, they do that ‘show the in-game model and let you turn it around’ while waiting – and those don’t seem to have the same level of detail as Skyrim’s textures did along with a lot of them having a glossy finish (like the Deathclaw model. The texture doesn’t have the level of detail of a Skyrim dragon model – its mainly all just one color – and its glossy as hell).

      1. Sleeping Dragon says:

        I still liked it, it definitely felt like there was more colour in the world overall and I was actually pretty pleased with what I could get from the face generator.

      2. Sean Hagen says:

        Maybe it’s just been a while since I’ve played Fallout 3 or New Vegas, or it’s the spiffy new graphics card I got — but the textures in this game seem much better. I’ve been pretty amazed several times at the textures on some of the characters.

        It may also be the fact this is the first time I’ve played a 3d Fallout on a PC ( played the previous two on consoles )

  16. Christopher says:

    For the “ethnics in the apocalypse things”, two points.

    One, since the fallout universe is kind of based around the 1950’s, chances are that non-WASP were living in ethnic communities in the less nice parts of cities and towns, or creating ethnic communities away from the major cities. I know it’s kind of handwavey and needs to be said in game but it’s an easy solution that plays into the 50’s themeing

    The reason there’s no chinatowns is because the Chinese citizens of the U.S. were rounded up and put in internment camps during the war. That’s why San Francisco in the first game has so many chinese descended people in it; the actual people of San Francisco got wiped out by the bombs, but the nearby internment camp was outside the blast radius and most of those people survived and moved back into San Francisco.

    1. Jonathan says:

      The Chinatown part of San Fran in Fallout 2 was started by the crew of a Chinese nuclear submarine that survived the war and made landfall nearby.

  17. Daemian Lucifer says:

    What sold fallout 4 for me is Jim Sterling saying that you can bone multiple people with no fuss.So while I may dis the game about plenty of stuff,its still groundbreaking.

    1. Wide And Nerdy says:

      I mean actually bone? Or is this just the implied “Lovers Comfort” mechanic where you get a perk for having your loved one standing next to your bed while you sleep. Because Skyrim did that.

      That said, they do seem more openly ok with it here. Cait even suggests a threesome, which Piper isn’t down for.

      1. Ayegill says:

        Honestly, I’m pretty happy Bethesda isn’t trying their hand at animated sex scenes.

        1. Wide And Nerdy says:

          Oh I agree. Doing it right is probably beyond Bethesda’s engine (I’ve certainly seen modders try). And not worth the effort for pretty much any game studio.

          But they could easily do something to imply its happening. Clothes off, get in bed, fade to black. I even stumbled across a man and woman laying on the same mattress somehow when I visited the Freedom Railroad

          As it stands, my character lays down fully clothed above the bed covers while my “lover” stands next to the bed fully clothed and stares at me all night. Its all very erotic.

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            This is a game where a couple of shacks and half a dozen people count as a settlement,and you are complaining that other aspects of it arent realistically simulated?

            1. Supahewok says:

              He’s complaining that something isn’t being simulated when the fix is really easy. Hell, in New Vegas, if you sleep with the owner of the fight pits, she puts on a night gown and lies down in the same bed as you. It’s been done in this very engine.

              The settlement thing is a problem of scale and maybe of graphics requirements. Not so easy to fix. Presumably.

              1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                You know what else should be easy?To make the pack brahmin not run straight into the fence when there is a huge open door couple steps to their left,right on the road.And yet Ive seen that a bunch of times.Not to mention other ai “quirks” that Ive encountered.So asking more of this ai is a challenge.

                1. jawlz says:

                  To be fair, I’ve seen sheep engage in that exact behavior in real life. Now, two-headed cows aren’t exactly the same as sheep, but….

            2. Trix2000 says:

              At least they have crops this time! #WHATDOTHEYEAT

              1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                Thats true.Even though ultimately useless,its quite nice being able to plant rows of different crops all around.

            3. Wide And Nerdy says:

              Hey Daemian. I just wanted to check in. See how you feel things are going between us.

              1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                Just because I disagree with your opinion does not mean I have something against you.We are cool.

                1. Wide And Nerdy â„¢ says:

                  I was making a Fallout 4 reference.

      2. Vect says:

        A combination of both. When you sleep with a LI nearby, when you wake up they wake up alongside you and say something around the lines of “That was fun” or “How’s your day, honey”. No animated scenes, it’s basically just like sleeping only with some mild differences. You also get the same Lover’s Comfort perk.

        1. SyrusRayne says:

          Also, when you wake up your companion will have taken off any power armor they were wearing when you went to sleep, implying that they weren’t just standing around all night. A nice touch.

    2. Jokerman says:

      It’s weird to me that its not even mentioned, they should at least comment on it (when they know) even if they don’t really care.

  18. Wide And Nerdy says:

    The reason to kill Kellogg isn’t out of character. He shoots your spouse in cold blood completely needlessly. He/She’s coming out of cryosleep and can’t put up much of a fight and Kellogg just shoots your spouse because its Kellogg is too lazy to wrestle a baby away from him/her*. He’s a monster. Its the stupidest thing.

    I hated the bullshit part of the story that they have to throw into every story now where we have to understand why the villain is the way he is, as if that matters one f@#$@ bit. Kellogg is not worth this. Your first impression of him really is the only one you need.

    *I don’t care if your spouse is a trained soldier just like you. You’re both just coming out of cryosleep and Kellogg is a cyborg. He didn’t need to shoot your spouse to steal the baby.

    1. Sleeping Dragon says:

      Urghh, that sequence was absolutely awful. Pretty much non-interactive dump of tried and tired tropes on the foundation of meh writing. If they really, really wanted to do this angle (and imho there was no reason for them to) this is no way this information should be delivered to the player. Considering that far as I can tell there is no way to reference or do anything with this information later it really feels like some sort of aborted idea. That, or Bethesda writers seriously overestimate their ability to play player’s emotions.

    2. Zombie says:

      Well, the guy was a soldier. The girl is/was a lawyer. In the opening part, on the wall next to the front door, there’s a flag and a law degree, and if you click on the law degree as a women, she goes something like “Lot of long, sleepless nights for this, but it was worth it”. So the women isn’t a trained soldier, shes just a lawyer.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Yeah,but consensus is that the main character is a girl(as well as it should be canon in any game with choosable gender),so your spouse is a soldier,and you are a lawyer.

        1. Bubble181 says:

          Why, besides player preference, “should” female be canon in any game where there’s a choice? To “even out” the amount of male-only-protagonist games?

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            Because female characters rule.

            1. Gruhunchously says:

              I stand by this.

            2. Rosseloh says:

              But women in games don’t get cool mutton chops?

          2. Wide And Nerdy says:

            Agreed Bubble. The whole point of choice is to provide choice.

            1. Zombie says:

              Lets be honest though, in Fallout 4 the Female Voice > Male Voice.

              No offense to whoever did the male voice.

              1. Wide And Nerdy says:

                You’re the first person I’ve heard express that sentiment. Everyone else I’ve seen or read, seems to feel they’re on par.

    3. p_Johhnston says:

      Want to know the thing that annoyed me the most about this sequence (besides Kellog killing the husband for no reason)? Why was my character awake? Did they unfreeze everyone just to get at that one pod? Did my pod malfunction? I don’t know if they ever address this, I haven’t finished the game yet, but it really annoyed me.

  19. Dovius says:

    It is entirely possible to jump off of the Prydwen while wearing Power Armour. There’s a vertibird docked to get you to ground level the normal way, but you can just jump off with zero consequences. It’s not even a problem if you somehow manage to land in the bay since Power Armour also allows you to stay underwater indefinitely with the downside of having to trudge everywhere at standard walking speed on the sea floor.

    I think there’s actually a holotape or note somewhere about some Knights holding contests of who can drop the farthest while still able to walk away from the landing.

    1. Piflik says:

      When I went to the airship the first time and got the T-60 armor, I immediately dropped from the nearest deck. Was fun, but I already did something similar earlier, when I found a complete set of T-51 on top of a tower… don’t even know which of the two was the deeper drop…

  20. Hermocrates says:

    I don’t have a PS4 or modern PC, and I don’t plan to get Fallout 4 until it gets a GOTY edition or whatever anyway, so . . .

    Yeah, bring on a Fallout 4 season! Plus, it’ll be fun to have Campster in on a Fallout season this time (and unlike with Mass Effect 3, it’s at least not universally hated by the cast).

    1. Wide And Nerdy â„¢ says:

      Me too. I’m looking forward to this. I would say wait for the DLC but you guys never play all the DLC anyway (I’m still waiting for you all to go back and play Old World Blues and Lonesome Road.)

  21. Wide And Nerdy says:

    You can totally drop out of the airship in Power Armor and live. You can make it to ground level that way. It was one of the first things I did on that ship as a way of ignoring Maxson and that was actually how I discovered the falling capabilities of Power Armor. It was awesome. Power Armor is so much better in this game.

    You can put your teammates in it, those that could plausibly fit. Including Nick Valentine.

    EDIT: Ninjaed by Dovius.

    One thing I noticed is there’s a lot of stuff you can do to get your companions to like you more. Danse likes it every time you put on your power armor. I’m wondering if I can just cheese my way through his relationship meter by putting on my armor over and over again. But I’m not wondering enough to try it.

    1. Andy says:

      Strong dislikes it when you put it on. He hangs out in Sanctuary, where I keep my massive stash of OCD-arranged powerarmor. He’s probably seen me get in and out of armor a few hundred times, I’m waiting for him to go hostile out of hatred (they don’t but…).

    2. Sean Hagen says:

      I actually feel a bit of an adrenaline rush when I drop off something really tall in my power armour. Probably because I’m always in first person, and probably also a bit because the graphics are just better this time around.

  22. Wide And Nerdy says:

    Cait is supposed to have an Irish accent. The voice actress is Scottish but she’s doing that “Oy-rish” so I assume she’s trying to sound Irish.

    To be fair, the Scottish accent is one of the most butchered ones in voice acting. Its that accent you think you can do but can’t. So this could be a scottish actress getting revenge.

    I like your explanation about isolated communities of immigrants reinforcing accents as a way of explaining how the hell we have foreign accents in fallout without ever broaching the question of whether or not anyone has ever gone and checked on the other continents since the war.

    The closest I’ve ever gotten to that was zapping Canada with a death beam from space. Its weird that the Fallout franchise has been to space but never to another continent.

    1. Raygereio says:

      Its weird that the Fallout franchise has been to space but never to another continent.

      Fallout has never been into space. Mothership Zeta was nothing more then a fever dream. On that note, Fallout has also never been to Texas.

      As for Fallout going outside the US: It really shouldn’t. And note that I’m saying this as a non-US dude. Fallout’s setting is heavily based on American concepts and culture. You can certainly have a similar setting set elsewhere in the world, but that wouldn’t be Fallout.
      Much like how for example Metro 2033 is very much post-Soviet/Easter-European in nature. It wouldn’t be the same if it were set in post-apocalyptic Washington, instead of Moskow.

      1. Sean Hagen says:

        Thanks to the fact that in the Fallout universe, the US annexed Canada, I may one day see my hometown as a blasted ruin — Vancouver, BC. I think it’d make a good setting — the mountains and the ocean could serve as a good way to hem the player in. Totally biased about that though.

        Barring that, I would like to see something set in a higher elevation. If it was set in Colrado, we could see what happened to Cheyenne Mountain, and maybe see some snow-adapted mutants. Maybe some Yeti-like Super Mutants?

      2. Wide And Nerdy says:

        Agreed. I wouldn’t actually want to set a Fallout game overseas. You’re right, it would be really hard to do that and have it retain its identity. It would just be neat to see the question answered as to what happened to them.

        Then again if its like it is here, nobody would ever want to mount that kind of journey. It would be such a waste of resources.

      3. Wide And Nerdy â„¢ says:

        If Mothership Zeta is a dream, then half of my run is non canon since I played GOTY edition and did the ship as soon as I felt I could. So my character’s dad never died and we never got that stupid project of his finished.

  23. Andy says:

    I LOVE jumping off the airship. Also, the Brotherhood guys DO airdrop, I’ve seen them cruise in on a Vertibird and jump off from a ways up, thoom.

    … My main character has maybe 16 sets of powerarmor all lined up in neat rows…

    Also, re the settlers in armor – you can also command your followers to use it. Piper in T51 with her newslady hat is hilarious.

  24. Greg says:

    Fallout 4 season? Please do.

    I’m holding off on buying it, because from what I hear it’s basically exactly the same game as 3 and New Vegas, and while I love that gameplay I’ve had enough. Barring an actually awesome story (and your comments on this Diecast seem more like “This is surprisingly not terrible and even a little interesting” than “Wow this is amazing!”), I have no desire to pay $60 for that game again.

  25. Benjamin Hilton says:

    One of my favorite parts of Fallout 3 was the scavenging. I always felt like it gave me a reason for my dungeon diving. In contemporaries like Oblivion, it got to a point where i didn’t know why i was still an adventurer because I had enough money to retire five times over, but Fallout 3 always gave the impression that caps really weren’t as important as the objects and food that people need to survive. It gave me a reason to do what I do. Even New Vegas, while more realistic in terms of society rebuilding, lessened the need I felt to explore and look for supplies.

    1. Trix2000 says:

      FO4’s actually a lot better for this, because literally EVERYTHING is potentially useful to pick up. Pretty much everything can be brought back and broken into parts for weapon mods/crafting/building settlements.

      At first I was picking up literally everything, but pretty quickly you realize that certain things have more useful resources to strip from them and you end up being a lot more judicious about what you pick up… but in effect I think it’s much better that way. Actually seems like reasonable scavenging.

      To add to that, I spend a number of hours in the game before I got to my first shop, and even then I’ve ended up selling surprisingly little (and the cap value of items hasn’t been in mind so much).

      1. Ayegill says:

        Yeah, there aren’t really that many useful things to purchase, except a few good weapons and armor pieces, and you only really need one good weapon with a reasonably common ammo type.

  26. Warclam says:

    I’d love for Fallout 4 to be the next season, but please not Life is Strange. I couldn’t get through the Walking Dead season because I just can’t stand those point-and-dialogue adventure game things, whatever people are actually calling them.

    1. Bitterpark says:

      I don’t have a problem with those games, but I can’t handle the theme of Life is Strange. I feel like I’d find it easier to identify with actual aliens from space than with american highschool kids having school drama.

      It’s funny, I think every other LP channel I follow has done it, which, to me, was a season of “welp, guess there won’t be any new content here for a few months”.

      1. Warclam says:

        That’s so obvious to me that I literally didn’t think of it. I guess there must be people who relate to the high school drama then? That is totally alien to me. There are so many TV shows and comics and movies that feature high school drama, and I just… what the hell?

        High school was fine for me. I hung out in the basement with the other nerds in a nicely lit hallway overlooking (underlooking?) a courtyard, and nobody gave us any grief because nobody cared, because why would they? Either people keep exaggerating everything to ludicrous proportions, or I apparently went to the nicest high school on the planet.

        New Deus Ex or SOMA would be cool, I like those ideas. More Tom Braider once it comes to PC would be excellent, I think I saw somebody mentioning the Nathan Drake series, maybe a revisit to Ass Creed?

        1. jawlz says:

          Sounds like the nicest high school on the planet. I went to a similar high school, but when I was in middle-school and junior-high, all the cliches of [insert teenage drama here] were pretty true to life.

          1. Supahewok says:

            People are shits from Grades 5-8ish (Ages 12-15 I think, for non-Americans). Probably lots of reasons for that; just hitting puberty, you’re in a transitional period from elementary school to high school, you’re rapidly expanding your knowledge about the world. Whatever the causes, it all ends up with all of us being shits to each other. Even those of us who were put down and mocked and were victims were self-centered shits in our own ways.

            But in high school, that seems to go away, at least to a great extent. There’s enough people around that you can stick with your group of buds and nobody will likely care. And then in college you don’t even need to SEE people outside of your group unless you really want to.

            You’ll likely have some form of drama within your group, but that’s gonna vary from group to group.

            At least, that’s how modern non-rural schools in the US work from my perspective.

  27. Decius says:

    Not only do I collect power armor, I build a new power armor workstation for each one. And a garage to put it all in.

    I wasn’t aware that townpeople would wear them if under attack, but that is awesome.

    1. Piflik says:

      I currently have 5 PAs sitting at the Castle, but I need to finally get the perk to build workstations…

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Its surprising how useless and unnecessarily fiddly constructing a settlement is,yet at the same time how satisfying it is to build a giant junk fortress for all your bling.Now all that is required is for them to dish out a dlc that allows you to have blackjack and hookers.

        1. Zombie says:

          I have a terrible feeling I’m going to spend hours after I’m done with the story making Sanctuary more than a few dilapidated houses with some work benches. Right now, its where I drop off all my junk, and spend hours fiddling around with modifying my weapons.

        2. djw says:

          They grow food! And that already makes it WAY better than Fallout 3.

    2. Decius says:

      Not only will settlers grab your power armor, the raiders will too.

      My garage now has several turrets.

  28. chaosed0 says:

    I, like Josh, have a 144hz monitor. I only really noticed problems when I got into my first lockpicking minigame, where the lock spun so fast that it instantly broke the bobby pin. Strangely, changing the video mode to borderless windowed fixed all the framerate issues for me.

  29. Wide And Nerdy says:

    Speaking of Bethesda bugs. Have any of you played Fallout New Vegas on an XBox 360?

    My sis in law likes games so I finally have a family member I can geek out with about gaming. I want to introduce her to the Fallout franchise so we have something to talk about but she has my brother’s old XBox 360 and her two year old laptop with a Core i5 and integrated graphics (I’m guessing FNV doesn’t play well without a proper video card and anyway the screen is cracked so I still want to know about the 360).

    1. Attercap says:

      I got F:NV on the 360 (I get most shooter-y games on console first, then get the GotY version on PC as the mods will be plentiful by then). It has to be installed in order to run without constantly crashing, but once installed it’s pretty stable (for a Bethesda + Obsidian game). Hardcore mode can also increase the likelihood of crashing during long playthroughs, but was fine enough for a plot-focused playthrough.

    2. Jokerman says:

      I actually did not encounter many bugs at all on 360, it would crash on loading screens after long playthroughs though… normally corrupting my last autosave in the process, but if installing it fixes that then yeah, the 360 version runs fine. I had more bugs in skyrim.

      1. Wide And Nerdy â„¢ says:

        Thank you both.

  30. djw says:

    Robots/Synths and Slavery: I disagree with most of what I hear Shamus saying on this topic. It sounds extremely complicated to build a synth that A) passes easily as human and B) is completely and utterly loyal to its creators.

    Point B) might be easy if you just make a regular robot, but if you want it to pass as human then it needs to have opinions that it can express in conversation with other humans. It needs to at least be able to fake emotions. If the emotions are fake, then it needs to have a really good model for predicting how people under the influence of those emotions are likely to react to stimuli. If anger then shoot might be a good predictor for some situations, but what if you just stubbed your toe on a table? How are you supposed to react if somebody says something bad about the institute?

    Maybe they would just build in a “general loyalty” module, or something like that. What is to stop that from being re-purposed for other factions? You need your synth to be flexible enough to react to changing situations, so locking it into one particular loyalty might be really hard.

    My guess is that the institute doesn’t bother much with hard coded loyalty and relies instead on things like bombs built into skulls (or something of that nature). I haven’t played far enough into the game to know if that is a spoiler or not. If you build in proper human emotions you can also threaten to harm somebody that the synth loves to keep them in line.

    Underground Railroad Of COURSE they would call themselves the underground railroad. Anybody who knows anything about American History and takes the notion that synths are slaves worthy of freedom seriously would naturally want to connect their group to a similar group from history. It would be very surprising if they had a different name, to be honest. Now, whether they are justified in appropriating that name is another matter, but the fact that they would call themselves that seems very obvious.

    1. Mheller says:

      “Now, whether they are justified in appropriating that name is another matter”

      Maybe I’m just confused here — and I haven’t listened to the full Diecast yet, so bear with me — but why would they need to justify “appropriating” it, whatever that means? Using parallels with real-world history is a major part of speculative fiction.

      1. djw says:

        The question is whether or not the synths are really like human slaves, or just machines that do what they are programmed to do.

        1. Mheller says:

          Ah, I understand now, thanks.

        2. Zombie says:

          But that’s kinda the moral question being asked in the game isn’t it? The Railroad thinks they’re just as alive as you and me while the BoS sees them as mechanical abominations that need to be destroyed to save humanity.

          The Railroad would see themselves as justified in using the Underground Railroad as their name, since they’re doing exactly what the people in the 1800s were doing. Other grouos might not.

          1. djw says:

            I’m not far enough along in the game to comment on that.

            I probably should have kept my mouth shut on my original post until getting closer to the end as well.

          2. Wide And Nerdy says:

            The answer is easy. Ask the people who made them, tested them, maintain them, and so forth. They know better than anybody.

            I reject the ridiculous conflict here. The Brotherhood’s position shouldn’t even be worth considering. They’re ape-stupid and nuts. Their mission is probably a major contributor to why we’re 200 years out from the war and so many people are still living in ramshackle huts and dilapedated prewar ruins.

            The Railroad is looking at a robot that was designed to pass as human and they’re falling for the ruse.

            To the original comment, here’s how you do it. You keep the robot’s ego separate from its human personality simulator. Essentially when the robot needs to interact with people its rapidly consulting its human personality simulator to see how a person would act in their situation. But its still the ego making the decision to act and it is programmed to follow its directives and be loyal. It has the power to reject the decisions of the human personality simulator when necessary.

            1. djw says:

              To the original comment, here's how you do it. You keep the robot's ego separate from its human personality simulator. Essentially when the robot needs to interact with people its rapidly consulting its human personality simulator to see how a person would act in their situation. But its still the ego making the decision to act and it is programmed to follow its directives and be loyal. It has the power to reject the decisions of the human personality simulator when necessary.

              It still needs some rubric to determine when it is necessary to reject the decisions of the human personality simulator. This implies some sort of judgement on the part of the synth. I doubt that the institute can put together a decision tree that covers all possible situations a field bot will encounter.

              1. Wide And Nerdy says:

                There’s no reason it can’t have that kind of intelligence. The ego doesn’t have to have human feelings to be intelligent. It only needs those feelings to pass as human hence we put them in the simulator. For the ego, you can replace human feelings with a desire to fulfill the requests of its creator.

                Its not foolproof but you wouldn’t have such a problem with runaway synths.

                1. djw says:

                  “Fulfill the desires of its creators” is still a vague directive that would require some means of judging what those desires are in situations where the creators are not there to simply tell it.

                  1. Wide And Nerdy says:

                    You keep insisting that this stuff is too fuzzy for a robot. If they can make a robot with a fully human personality, they can also make an inhuman mind capable of figuring this stuff out without the need for an explicit decision tree. In fact they have those. They’re Coursers.

                    You seem to think the only way it can handle this type of thinking is to be made exactly human and that this inevitably leads to it rebelling. This doesn’t at all have to be the case. In fact it will likely be easier to make an intelligent robot mind than it will be to make one that sufficiently mimics human thinking.

                    And even if you were stuck with making them human, you just make it so that when they think of you, they feel love, when they obey your orders it makes them happy, when they disobey, it makes them feel deep shame and regret along with fear of losing their master. Then give them directives. What humans like is in many ways arbitrary after all.

                    1. djw says:

                      Well, most of my arguments are about what I think we can build in the real world. You are arguing about Fallout 4, which I have not finished yet. We can continue later…

                    2. Wide And Nerdy â„¢ says:

                      I’m half arguing both. We’re talking about a hypothetical scenario here. The intelligences we’ve developed so far are not very human. They can do somethings ridiculously easy compared to humans while other things that we take for granted require tons of programming and raw power for a computer to even halfway approximate. I suspect that if the ego were programmed as a raw intelligence that it would have vastly superior judgment to its human personality simulator which would have to devote so much of its power to simulating human responses.

    2. Daemian Lucifer says:

      R daneel olivaw.That was conceived more than half a century ago.So basically if you write a story these days that has intelligent robots of any kind that dont have some kind of laws of robotics built into them,for reasons other than “purposefully made by a dumb/crazy scientist”,you fail as a science fiction writer.

      1. djw says:

        Just because you can imagine a “law of robotics” does not mean that you can actually program a functional version of it into a real robot.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          Just mass producing untested technology without multiple failsafes?Sure thing!

          Again,bad sf writer.

          1. djw says:

            Bad SF writer would be to copy Asimov. His Robot stories are very good, but they have already been written, and nobody is going to write them better than he did. Its like writing every Fantasy novel as a quest to destroy an evil MacGuffin.

            1. Daemian Lucifer says:

              Not copy,but take ideas from.If you are going to use robots en masse,think of a society where robots are at least as safe as cars.Then think of what would turn those robots into a genuine threat.For example:your robots are safe,dumb servants,but unforeseen by everyone,when they link via wifi,their intelligence grows exponentially,and they start operating outside of their programming.

              1. djw says:

                I’m still not convinced that we will get that right in the real world. Writing about a thing that we might actually do isn’t bad writing, even if the thing really is stupid.

                Just imagine if the corporate idiots in charge of Ubisoft were running a robotics company instead.

                Actually, just imagine what would happen if Ubisoft had the notion that they could improve their DRM with a networked AI.

                1. Wide And Nerdy says:

                  If Ubisoft were to screw up a robot intelligence, they wouldn’t do so in a way that results in a fully actualized human-like robot that has its own hopes and dreams and merits being treated like a person. They’d screw it up by falling comically short.

              2. ? says:

                So, society where robots are in top ten causes of death? ;P

    3. Shamus says:

      “Robots/Synths and Slavery: I disagree with most of what I hear Shamus saying on this topic. It sounds extremely complicated to build a synth that A) passes easily as human and B) is completely and utterly loyal to its creators.”

      Yes. It’s SUPER hard. The point is: Why are they doing it? Why bother giving them emotions? Why make them look like humans? What do you need from these robots that you can’t get from a Mr. Handy? It’s a problem that could be solved a dozen different ways. The Institute keeps making these robots, these robots keep running away, and their running away causes problems. Heck, just make the exact same robots but leave off the skin, and they won’t be able to hide among humans.

      “Maybe they…”

      “My guess is that…”

      You can head-canon it if you want, but a problem this close to the central conflict of the story needs a better framework.

      ” Now, whether they are justified in appropriating that name is another matter.”

      That was exactly our point.

      1. Sean Hagen says:

        From one of the story missions, Nick mentions that he doesn’t remember anything about the Institute, and neither does any other Synth that leaves. It sounds like the Synths are built with a memory module ( or something ) that wipes any trace of the Institute from their memory if they decide to leave. So it’d be like the Brotherhood mind wiping anyone who decides to leave the Brotherhood so they can’t tell anybody about their base or technology.

        1. hborrgg says:

          Alternatively you have cases like Harkness from fallout 3 where the escaped synth wiped his own memory in order to hide better.

      2. djw says:

        My original post came off a bit more confrontational than I intended, so I apologize if it sounded like an attack (less sleep last night than I wanted due to jury duty this morning, and that fried my “does this sound reasonable” circuit).

        I do think that “underground railroad” is the most likely thing for them to call themselves. It would not surprise me if their detractors call them something else.

        I also have reservations about whether or not you can build a machine with sapient levels of intelligence without some sort of emotion-like attribute that guides its decision making.

        The question of whether or not you can build a “purely emotionless inhuman” robot that looks human is one that I am at least willing to cede to the author of whatever story I happen to be reading or playing, at least until we know more about it in the real world.

        1. Christopher says:

          I thought the name was “the freedom trail”

          1. Zombie says:

            To get to the Railroad, you have to follow the Freedom Trail (Which is a real thing, by the way).

            The Freedom Trail I mean, not following it to get to the Railroad.

      3. Ayegill says:

        One of the purposes of human-like synths is to infiltrate the communities on the surface, although their reasons for doing that are never explained (and you never seem to get an option to ask Shaun about it, which really pissed me off).

        1. Decius says:

          Spoiler on the name of the person that you never get to ask about it.

          1. Ayegill says:

            Yeah, my bad. That should’ve been hidden. It’s too late to edit now.

        2. Wide And Nerdy says:

          Yes. This part not only isn’t explained, it doesn’t really match what we know about the Institute.

          Sure there is some benefit to having humanoid robots but given all the trouble they give the Institute, they’re a wasted effort. Why make a wrench when its just going to get a nose ring and run off with your spanner only to return with a group of power tool rights protestors to demand the liberation of your table saw?

          If they still need infiltration units, the answer is easy. Make Mr Handys, Protectrons and so forth. People like them. They’re used to having them around and they’ll as openly around them as they would around furniture.

          1. Ayegill says:

            Well, robots that can’t pass for humans do have limitations, for instance, It’s revealed at one point(not sure what triggers it) that the mayor of Diamond City is a synth. That kind of infiltration certainly wouldn’t be possible with a Mr. Handy, although it still leaves the question of why)

            1. Wide And Nerdy â„¢ says:

              I know about that one which makes less sense. They supposedly gave up on doing that sort of thing and the director said they were focusing all of their efforts on their own home and building it out.

  31. Jeff R says:

    How is it that the didn’t use “Crawl out through the Fallout” before this game, anyhow? Rights-holders change hand since the last generation to someone with a more reasonable price?

    I was sort of expecting a classic Uncharted (probably 2 or 3) between the two RPG seasons, since you have PS4 capability and the remasters came out at about the right time, but Fallout will be more than fine…

    1. tmtvl says:

      Fallout 4 is a shooter with RPG elements, not an actual RPG.

      E.G: You can’t choose a backstory for your character, you only get a max of 4 dialogue options, the combat system revolves around shooting dudes,…

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        So its like the original deus ex?Yet the original deus ex is considered to be an rpg and not a shooter with rpg elements.

        Fallout 4 is an actual rpg,whether you like the game or not.Its more combat oriented than some other rpgs,and more sparse in its options,true.But at the same time its also less combat oriented than some other rpgs,and more verbose in its dialogue as well.

        1. somebody says:

          I think it feels like an open world with RPG elements.
          I think this is the best way to summarize 4.

  32. tzeneth says:

    I’m fine with a Fallout 4 season coming soon. I’ve already done my marathon of the game and will probably play it even more before you finish your KOTOR spoiler warning. I do have to ask though, is there a reason you aren’t considering doing Witcher 3?

    1. Supahewok says:

      They’ve said before it’s too damn long. They like to keep SP seasons to 20-25 hours max; since they go through a little more than an hour a week, that means a 25 hour season could take half a year.

      They’ve estimated that a Witcher 3 playthrough would be twice as long. So no go.

      1. tzeneth says:

        That makes sense. And since you can somewhat rush the main story for FO4 in less than 20 hours, it shouldn’t take them too long theoretically, unless they go for a more full play through. My only complaint I just realized is that Josh won’t be able to torture the other members by pulling another Honest Hearts and playing DLC no one wants him to play. Actually, does anyone know when the DLC will be released because they may miss it for good discussion.

        Then again, Shamus the shamus can do his investigations himself and write on it. Hey, he could possibly do an over novel length analysis of the developments between Fallout 3, New Vegas (even though it was a different company, something must have been learned?), and Fallout 4.

        1. Supahewok says:

          Nothing definite has been announced, but you bring up a good point: both of the Fallout SP Seasons included 2 DLC’s. And the others still had some small amount of commentary. It would be a shame to start an SP season without the “full” game out in the wild, as it were. Although, the New Vegas playthrough was started before 3/4ths of the DLC was released; Honest Hearts and Old World Blues were released as the season was ongoing, and Lonesome Road came out after. So it’s not exactly unprecedented.

          Still, I find that things should have time to settle before serious commentary is considered. The internet LOVED Skyrim for around 6 months after its initial release, then all of a sudden everybody stopped and said “this is all rather shallow, isn’t it?” Give things time to breath, rather than jump into the playthrough with still star-struck eyes. I’m more interested in what the cast will think 6-8 months from now, rather than 2.

          They should do Life Is Strange in between KotoR and FO4. (And not JUST because I haven’t played it and have no interest in doing so)

          1. somebody says:

            they hated Honest Hearts or something? I thought the DLC was the weakest of the bunch, but I’ll admit it had good moments.

  33. Nimas says:

    Thank you Rachel for including 4’33” at the end of the podcast, it created a lovely juxtaposition with Shamus’ own music, and hopefully introduced many new people to John Cage seminal work.

    :D

    1. tzeneth says:

      I didn’t pay attention to the actual length of the ending silence but if she did, she should be careful. John Cage is kind of a dick with the supposed copyright of his song and has sued people before…

      1. Nimas says:

        It was more then 4’33”, but perhaps that was her remixed take on it :D

  34. BlackFox says:

    AS A CURRENT RESIDENT OF BOSTON LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT HOW ALL THE GEOGRAPHY IS WRONG IN FALLOUT 4

    1. hborrgg says:

      I mean, they cleaned it up quite a bit but other than that I thought it was pretty close.

      1. Alexander The 1st says:

        My immediate guess is that the cleaning up of it is what makes it all wrong.

        Now granted, that’s about roads, but the roads almost certainly were that way because of the geography.

        One does not *simply* clean up the Boston geography.

      2. BlackFox says:

        It’s definitely not terrible. Most things are in the right direction from Park Street Station, and Park Street Station is even in the right place. What I find a bit silly is that everything is so condensed – given the size of Boston proper on the world map, Lexington is right around Alewife Station, Concord is in Arlington Heights, Fenway is somewhere in the middle of Brookline on Rt 9 apparently, and so on. The silliest thing I’ve found so far is that there is a Somerville Place in what appears to be Needham.

        One thing they did that I thought was particularly cool was that they kept the train stations the way they would have been in the 50’s or early 60’s, around when the timeline would have diverged. The light rail system was called the MTA back then, the logo is correct, the names of the stations are correct (aside from the ones where they removed or truncated company names – New England Medical Center is now just Medical Center Station, for instance, and while I haven’t been up into Cambridge yet, I’m pretty sure Harvard Station is now called College Square).

        As an aside, it’s pretty entertaining how no one ever knows where the Institute could possibly be when clearly it’s on the Red Line, you guys, it’s been there since 1912, it says MIT right there in the station name.

  35. hborrgg says:

    Oh, so the “Underground Railroad” is appropriation but “Caeser’s Legion” isn’t? for shame, Shamus

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Oh yeah,and having a black guy named three dog,which is clearly a native american name is not racist,but using robots for slave labor is?For double shame,Shamus.

    2. Benjamin Hilton says:

      I think his point isn’t that it is an appropriation, but what it is an appropriation of. I.e. no one alive will really be offended by the use of Caesar’s legion, but using a term related to, Historically speaking, fairly recent atrocities from which the wounds still haven’t healed, is always something to be done with care.

      1. Alexander The 1st says:

        On the other hand, this is 210 years after the bombs fell, right?

        Nobody in the game is alive to be offended by its use of appropriation, and the people who are building the in-game Underground Railroad want to make that connection on purpose.

        I mean, to take into consideration, what do you think are the chances that the same type of remarks the anti-Underground Railroad characters make about “Well, they’re *just* robots” in Fallout 4 would sound similar to slavers back in the day?

        They’re using the name *specifically* to bring up that aspect of the past up into the conversations about the robots.

        As for Bethesda, it allows them to bring up that moral question without pulling a Bioshock Infinite, and specifically leaving the aspect about who is right out of it to bring about the experience of how that sort of divided question comes up – without causing a Legion Loyalty Quest-style issue where there’s Paragon and Renegade points assigned to it (At least, I’m assuming both sides of that questline have quests that allow for both positive and negative karma, to avoid making a statement about “This is what we consider to be the right way to answer this question.”)

        1. Benjamin Hilton says:

          I understand all that, the only problem being, wile none of the characters could be offended, the players can. Hence: “done with care”

          1. Wide And Nerdy says:

            I get where you’re coming from but at the same time this is a series that at this point is known for drawing a lot on American history to inspire its schlocky scifi. It only makes sense to me that they’d tap this eventually, especially since the synths are cast as a human rights issue.

  36. JackTheStripper says:

    My problem with the Synths is that their technology makes no sense in the world. I mean, the transistor was never invented and everything runs on nuclear power and vacuum tubes, but they were able to make an energy efficient, fully articulated, and on top of that, super smart robot? Come on! Every single part about them is centuries ahead of the current technology, and they were able to mass produce them as well? I’m sorry, but they don’t fit in the lore. Synths can’t be aren’t real in Fallout.

    It goes against Fallout 3 as well. John Henry Eden was this super advanced AI that required a massive computer dedicated only to cognitive functions, with no ambulatory capabilities. And now you’re telling me that The Institute made hundreds if not thousands of synths that each beat John Henry Eden (and even the AIs in New Vegas’ Old World Blues) on every aspect, on top of having a much more advanced body that can pass off as human (that requires little power, doesn’t produce noticeable sound or waste or anything that would reveal it’s not a human body).

    Again, Synths like they portrayed them here don’t fit in the world.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      And pipboys can?Also all the laser and plasma weaponry.And the power armor and vertibirds.And fusion cars.And mister handy,protectrons,etc.

      The technology of fallout was always wonky like that,which is its charm.

    2. Ayegill says:

      The institute has been developing this technology for 200 years (drink), I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch.

      1. JackTheStripper says:

        I just remembered the Harkness quest in Fallout 3 so I went to a wiki and read the different documents and dialogue from that quest. Everything from The Institute and Synths was pulled directly from there, word for word (except that they were called Androids, not Synths; and that they called it The Railroad, not the Underground Railroad).

        I retract everything I said earlier as not fitting the F3’s lore, since they clearly had it since then. That said, I still think it doesn’t fit everything else very well and agree with Shamus’ point that there’s no reason to make Synths. I mean, the technology required to make the Synths would be just as useful in transportation, medicine, weaponry, etcetera. But you’re using them only on Synths? Seems like a huge waste. I don’t know if there’s a huge reveal later on though, I haven’t finished the game.

        1. djw says:

          If the synths are immune to radiation then they might be useful for projects to reclaim irradiated territories.

          1. Alexander The 1st says:

            In fact, this may be the one major push towards getting autonomous synths – when we develop robots ourselves to try and deal with, say, Fukushima, we deliberately try and force the robots to be able to handle losing contact with their handler due to radiation interference – which could explain how they got themselves into the AI aspect of it, and the radiation damage is why they try to make them look like humans – wanting to be able to assess the damage dealt to them.

    3. Wide And Nerdy â„¢ says:

      With optical computing in the near future, I don’t think we’re centuries away from the tech you’re talking about.

  37. hborrgg says:

    Oh yeah, that mission with the rocket. I kept dying that fight and I eventually got it into my head that it was an endless fight and I was supposed to murder Danse. So I retreated and hit the rocket button, however just then Danse finished killing the last of the synths. So as the rocket was spooling up, he ran back to safety with me and praised me for my quick thinking.

    Also, the best companion is the lone wanderer perk.

    1. djw says:

      I pressed the rocket button out of curiosity on my first time through that fight. I did not realize that it would fire a rocket, since I wasn’t paying attention (I just saw a button, and of course I pressed it) The rocket didn’t kill him anyway, he just took a kneel and claimed his armor protected him (he also complimented my quick thinking, if only he knew why I really pushed the button).

      1. p_Johhnston says:

        I also did this. With the added benefit of being killed repeatedly by said rocket before I figured out what was going on.

  38. Dragmire says:

    I am fully on board with a Fallout 4 Spoiler Warning ASAP!

    I am binging on Bethesda Spoiler Warning seasons right now so I’m really in the mood for more!

  39. Dragmire says:

    Couple questions:

    Are there still summer bonnets?

    How long did it take Mumbles to become a cannibal?

    1. Zombie says:

      Cannibalism is a rank 8 endurance perk, so theoretically you can get it right out the gate.

      I have no idea when Mumbles got it.

      1. Ayegill says:

        We have to assume the game registered Mumbles’ steam profile and added it at level 1.

  40. Sougo says:

    I would like to add to the crowd that I would like a Fallout 4 season as soon as possible. One of my favourite thing to do is to play the game while listening to you guys’ commentary in the background.

    One thing I would like to ask Shamus is how do you feel about the removal of skill points and weapon degradation in FO4? Consider you’re a fan of Repair in New Vegas, do you feel frustration when carrying 10 of the same gun with no use for them?

  41. MichaelGC says:

    -Rachel feeling better
    -An FO4 season
    -An LiS season

    All of these things occurring soon? Sounds good to me. If you’re struggling for an anniversary episode then I could happily just watch the final two minutes of this on repeat times ten. That may be just me, though! :D

  42. Jamas Enright says:

    One thing I would say against an F4 season immediately… what about the DLC that Josh uses to troll the crew with?
    Or legitimately, decent DLC you want to wait for / comment on.

  43. ToastyVirus says:

    Shamus just wanted to point out that for some reason spoilers are showing up without highlighting in my mobile browser (Safari). Do you have any solution for this?

  44. Sunshine says:

    Hacking: there’s already Fallout 4 mods on the Nexus. One of them removes all the wrong answers if you don’t like that minigame. (Also, another replaces the “xp gain” sound with the one from Fallout 1.)

  45. Mr Compassionate says:

    Yay Mumbles! We missed you.

  46. Ledel says:

    So, Bethesda actually realized their flaw in the hacking minigame where if you fail the attempt, you are only locked out for 10 seconds. So there is no need for the quicksave/quickload method. Since I’m playing on PS4 and not on PC I appreciate this because of how the load-times can sometimes take up to 2 minutes for me to get back into the game. Yes, it’s a pain, but it’s no longer the 1 failure = computer locked forever, it finally feels equal to the lockpicking.

    My problem with it is that the highest level hacks/lockpicks are put behind lvl 20-something doors. I wanted to max those out before anything else (and I usually max those skills out first in FO3 and New Vegas), if for no reason other than not having to backtrack to cleared out dungeons just for one door/computer/safe.

    1. Ayegill says:

      In general, the level-locking in the skill system kind of prevents you from specializing, which I dislike. I think there’s a mod that disables it already on the nexus, so I’m gonna do that for my next playthrough.

    2. Attercap says:

      If you fail do you still get XP on a succeeded retry? Not that hacking grants much XP, but I thought that was the “punishment” this time around.

      1. Ledel says:

        I’ve actually given up on the XP and take the keys and passwords wherever I find them. It’s not worth the backtracking if it is required for that door/computer.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          Blasphemy!

  47. What really tits mah grits about inventory management in Bethsoft games is that Bethsoft had already fixed the problem back in Daggerfall with the ability to buy a wagon and instantly transfer ya shit onto it…and then they fucking removed it! To quote John Mulaney: Why would you do this?

  48. Ledel says:

    I’m ok with FO4 being the next season, but that’s mainly because this is one of the few games I saved up to be able to buy at launch. Most of the time I have to wait about a year or so for the price to drop because I can’t afford the $60 price tag for games.

    I just wouldn’t want this to become a trend for you guys because one of my favorite parts of SW is the real retrospective you guys are able to provide on the games. In Arkham Asylum, some of my favorite commentary was when you guys were talking about how the series has evolved over the years, and how the studio succeeded and failed with different aspects of the gameplay. It will be interesting how this changes for the FO4 season.

  49. Ledel says:

    For the romance options in the game, (I’m playing female and only have found a few of the companions) I think I’m going to go for Piper. I started out really disliking her character, with her using you just to get in the gates, and with her seeming like a rabble rouser claiming people are synths. Yet, as I traveled with her and learned more of her backstory, I’ve come to sympathize with her reasons and have grown to like the character. I also laugh at her reactions to my flirting attempts. My only regret is that they left black widow, but took out the lesbian perk.

    1. tmtvl says:

      F3 didn’t have Cherchez La Femme, F:NV did, because Obsidian is better at everything than Bethesda.

  50. Christopher says:

    About the Spoiler Warning question: It doesn’t matter to me at all if you do a playthrough of the game just after it’s been released. That’s how things are these days. I want to see Life is Strange first though, personally. I have played through that myself, so I wouldn’t be spoiled, and I am more informed and able to comment.

  51. Deven says:

    totally want to see you play fallout 4

  52. Humanoid says:

    I usually wait at least a few months before buying Bethesda games – Skyrim I bought around March/April of 2012 and Fallout 3 probably nearly a year after release. But I had a $100 eBay voucher I needed to use this month so hey, my copy is in the mail, feel free to start the season anytime. This weekend, even. :D

    Alternatively if a gap season is the plan, how about a Fallout stream?

  53. tmtvl says:

    Seems like I’m the only person in the audience to hate the game so much I got a steam refund. Maybe the SW season will convince me to buy it again, but I highly doubt it.

    Anyone remember ME2 forcing you to be a Cerberus sheepdog? That’s how I felt from the very start of F4. The interface didn’t help any either.

  54. Trym V. O. Tegler says:

    I loved your other two fallouty seasons, so I am looking forward to this one as well. I am a bit concerned that you will miss out on some good DLC like Old World Blues for Fallout: New Vegas, but it should be a good season either way

    When you were talking about the fight with breakfast cereal man, I was a bit surprised that you could talk to him, because in my game he just told his synths to murder me as I stepped into the room. I thought this was a bit clever because he just told you to lay down your weapons so that you can talk, then he goes for a pre-emptive attack which fit his mercenary and practical personality in my mind. This didn't prevent him from dying to the fat man, power armor combo however.
    But apparently you were supposed to talk to him first, oh well doesn't seem like I missed much.

  55. Sacae says:

    I had no problems on my xbone copy.

  56. wswordsmen says:

    I would personally push for some one-week games in between KotOR and Fallout 4, if only to make sure it is far enough from launch to allow everyone to cool on the game. It is okay as the next season, but I would say it shouldn’t be before February.

  57. Garrett says:

    The ending scene is disappointing. Its basically just War… War never changes. Also the Cabot house side quest is terrible and is out of place. I have to say though one of the best parts of the game is Kellogg’s past.

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