I don't quite understand, provided that's true... Why would they do that?

Interesting, the dudes who developed Dear Esther, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, and a few others.

Pssh, I fucking wish they based combat on that mod. Skyrim's combat is still a little too basic comparatively.

I use a program called The Hat in which you can add text entries to a list and then randomize their order. When I want to play a game, for instance, I'll throw in 3-5 that I'd be okay with playing, and then let fate decide.

As long as you don't allow yourself to veto the randomization and second guess, I'd say that method works pretty well. If I only have two choices sometimes I flip a coin

A lot of old Iron Maiden will fit that quite well, of course, maybe most infamously, The Trooper.

I didn't know it until I saw some video about it, it sort of sells that premise short, I think the name is... Not awesome

They're very specifically influenced by From Soft's game Bloodborne more than Dark Souls. It's interesting to see them use Pinocchio as an anchor point for the world. The game looks quite polished and as derivative as it seems it looks like it'll be pretty fun.

I think the effort towards changing that starting with Fallout 4 shows, it seems like it's now a priority for them. Their engine has always been their greatest asset in terms of gameplay possibility, world object physics, immersion through radiant AI scheduling, an open and very moddable design, and it's obvious specialization towards open world format (less of a big deal for an engine nowadays).

It's also been one of their greatest weaknesses, with stiff and awkward animation and movement/combat on both NPCs and the player, the inability for crouching to allow you to pass under certain objects, poor pathfinding and scripting on NPCs in combat and for your followers who constantly get lost or hung up on geometry, the radiant AI which through complication of scripting can cause quest NPCs to be in the wrong locations or be missing the correct dialogue.

Ever since the creation engine rebrand I partially lamented that they didn't scrap the engine, but over time I've come to accept that it's not just Bethesda that makes Bethesda games, it's the gamebryo engine. To remake an engine with their unique systems, mechanics, moddable format, and familiar console commands would be an enormous undertaking and I understand why theyve chosen to dig in and modify it further instead and their acceptance of those pros and cons.

I think any true lover of Bethesda games has to understand what they're really good at, and what they're really bad at, and you have to want them to get better, or else that's not love at all.

I found Fallout 4's shooting night and day better than NV and 3's. It's a shame you didn't feel that. It's still definitely RPG shooter territory which is a lot harder to make feel satisfying than a conventional FPS, but the movement still didn't feel very good, certainly.

Moment to moment feel is definitely a strong issue from previous Bethesda titles. I'm confident Starfield will feel better, but how much better is impossible to tell until we can get our hands on it or there can be some common discussion about it after release. The manicured, manufactured movements of pre release gameplay make it very hard to tell how that stuff has changed aside from their claims of redone animations systems.

I suppose I'd call one form of that "household chores"

I'm glad this is how I learned that Ed Sheeran x Pokemon is a real, unironic thing

Noah is one of my favorite games analysts of all time. An excellent, excellent writer.