Both games do environmental storytelling, but with vastly different goals.

Obsidian approach is very constantly supporting a consistent tone and overarching setting. It is more desolate and feels more desolate because that’s what a lot of these in-between little areas are supposed to be. But the details in each area that are there so tell a story about what the area is like and how it function, they give a history to what you are seeing but it often isn’t over the top and full of little cute mini-stories you can follow. It isn’t bad storytelling, it’s telling a story you’re not into.

The Bethesda approach is often much more varied. Each settlement or location can have all these environmental stories, often will little miniature running plots. The variety extends to tone, and type of story. This does come at the expense of some coherence if you step back and start putting a critical eye to everything as a whole.

They are trying to give players different experiences. FNV a player can travel through a bleak desert, maybe only with hostile encounters as the Jungle Jangle radio plays until they finally hit a settlement and it feels like an actual refuge from the sun and rad scorpions to the player. The desolation builds that. Fallout 3 and especially 4 don’t want the player getting bored, so there is something interesting and different every ten feet to check out.

I suppose it says a lot about me that my Fallout 4 modlist turns the world into an extremely dangerous, ghoul filled place with dark nights, and rad storms. All of which makes travel on the overworld terrifying, and settlements feel extra secure in contrast.

Oh as a consumer I, personally, am not touching this thing with a ten foot pole.

I think the people who do continue to fund this thing are sucked in by the dream of what it could be and have developed a kind of personal ownership of the project in their heads. They are psychologically invested in seeing it succeed and you can’t convince them it’s never going to. And the developers are cynically sucking money out of them like cult leaders.

Well, you’re shifting from a fan POV to a developer POV here.

From the developer POV, it’s not wasted time. They are getting a constant stream of money. As long as they can tread water and make their motion look like progress they have an endless source of income.

Its supporters bounce between “It’s already out!” and “Developing such a huge game takes time.” depending on which stance is more convenient in an argument.

It’s a different kind of beast.

NMS released. They put it in a box and said “This is the finished game”. It was then torn to shreds and the long road of updates was a redemption story for an already released product.

Star Citizen will NEVER be done. It will always exist in some weird development alpha-beta limbo. It’s never going to go on Steam or shelves as a finished product. This allows the developers cover to always say the game is in development as a shield against any and all criticism. From their perspective it’s kind of perfect. Fans throw money at it endlessly and the development never really needs to reach a coherent state of being finished. Why would they ever want to actually release a finished game?

It’s just a small multi-time fee of 500 morbillion dollars, jeez, just pay the redditorino CEO a fair price, you 3rd party bullies.

The real fallout will be seeing what the numbers look like after July 1st. When all the third party users are given the unavoidable choice to switch to the official app or not. If engagement goes down then and stay lower, it’s ogre for Reddit.

They’ll be right. The quality of everything, not the least of which is internet scrolling, that the general public accepts is horrendous.

Somebody else put it best here that Reddit won’t die, it will still be around for all those people. Hopefully the rest of us move on and Reddit becomes “Oh huh? That place is still around?”

Secret Santa was back when Reddit still had a semblance of community, which I realize now means trust. I’d never trust a Reddit secret Santa these days. Heck, I’ve done successful 4chan secret Santas and I’m still not brave enough to want a modern Reddit secret Santa.

The scumbag Steve hat really gives it the age of a fine wine.

Oh, so Star Trek. Not everybody thinks of Voyager when they think about top episodes but for me ‘Living Witness’ is not just the best Voyager episode, but the best Trek episode.

It’s amazingly well acted both with the Doctor in the dramatic lead, and the snippets of the evil Voyager crew being fun. That all supports an episode that has a message that really speaks to me about not turning history into a narrative, especially an agenda pushing narrative. Letting history be learned as honestly as possible rather than using it to gain some cynical personal gain.

I’m kind of in a spur of playing or replaying older games. Replayed Fallout 1 recently and I’m doing a low intelligence build for the first time ever.

Debating playing VTM Bloodlines or the original Deus Ex, because this is a sin- I’ve never played either.