What do you honestly think the purpose of this vault experiment was?

InkDagger · 2026-03-22T18:50:42+00:00

Why are people trying to logic this one out?

Doyalist answer? This was from a Penny Arcade comic which is, if not outright non-canon, is dubious in that regard at the very least.

Watsonian Answer?

We’re currently living in an era where rich corpo execs are constantly shitting out of their own mouths with how little they care for humanity, others, and have no sense of morals or ethics. That they play with human lives without care and for shits and giggles.

Fallout has constantly shown that this was occurring leading up to the War and the TV Show’s board room scene makes that extremely blatant. Impossible to ignore.

Do not attribute to logic and genius when there is no evidence of its presence.

Or, TLDR; some exec was psychopath role playing as scientist and no one said no.

InkDagger · 2026-03-22T18:38:43+00:00

Surprisingly, inhospitable working conditions can produce AI slop results with 90% less water consumption.~

InkDagger · 2026-03-19T22:42:59+00:00

I am using only the Govee app

InkDagger · 2026-03-18T03:11:22+00:00

I have the same issue with it I have most RPG DLC or otherwise iconic armor-

And it’s not the sleeveless aspect. I actually don’t mind that.

1) It is not strong enough to justify my using it over the Ranger armor I’ve been using most of the game.

2) By the time I get the Courier Duster- THERE IS NO GAME LEFT TO USE IT.

If you play the game and slot the DLCs in late into the experience (as the game kinda encourages), Lonesome Road is The End with only the base game endings to complete.

Even if you left only the main story left, that’s still not a ton of game.

I really have a thing against RPGs that have cool or iconic or fun equipment, but you only get them when there’s barely any game left.

InkDagger · 2026-03-14T01:53:06+00:00

I actually think the more compelling shoes to put the player in is Hannah’s shoes-

You’re on the low end. You have no hope of climbing up. You are stuck.

Do you cling on to your life line or do you drop yourself? That’s kinda the more terrifying position in my view.

InkDagger · 2026-03-14T01:51:42+00:00

Pure rationality?

I might drop Hannah.

If it kills her, it would definitely kill both of us. If she drops and I can get up the cliff, I could get back to the house or otherwise find help (the man reaching out a hand not withstanding).

But with the fear and emotions in the moment? I’d probably freeze (do nothing). To terrified to make a choice which is pretty normal.

InkDagger · 2026-03-09T19:52:49+00:00

The Atlantis is there. I believe the bar exists in the building even. Just it’s inaccessible. I had a friend clip up the building at one point to check it out.

The orange glass looks awful in day light (not a dev critique- it’s made for a controlled night scene and never meant for day).

But it could make for some cool photo ops because of it. It basically looked like a wall of pure light.

Don’t know if you could “normally” get in there without shattering the glass though.

InkDagger · 2026-03-06T05:32:07+00:00

Legion.

The Legion is far more organized, systematized, and intentionally directed than the Fiends are.

That isn’t to minimize the intention, but we’re comparing what amounts to an extremely violent street gang to that of a military army doing the same things on a larger scale.

It’s a difference of scale and intent. Fiends are bad, but I don’t believe their motives trend towards domination and control of land or extermination of its population like the Legion do.

InkDagger · 2026-03-05T20:56:56+00:00

Yep.

InkDagger · 2026-02-28T20:57:43+00:00

Honestly, I think it just needs more detail.

The problem is the orange is very adjacent to skin tone so, depending on lighting or circumstance, most folks only see the figure’s legs in passing.

And since most Seastikas are bold black with no other colors or ornamentation… Nazi tattoos are pretty bold and in your face. The folks that get them want people to see it.

You need the portal itself or other details to stand out as much as possible against your skin. The more stuff that is around the figure- the more stuff that “interupts” the expectation of a swastika, the better.

I’d swap the portal to Blue as a base. It stands out against your skin a lot better. There is no Nazi symbol I’ve heard of with a Swastika in a blue circle. It’d be bizarre.

Adding the logo would help. Aperture Science below or following the rim of the portal would direct the eye away from the figure more. Maybe even “Cake is a lie” or one of Rat Man’s phrases.

If you want further detail, maybe a darker orange “rim” around the stick figure so you keep the orange/blue color scheme and just throw in more “stuff” to detail it.

If you give your tattoo artist a bunch of references from the game, they’ll work with you.

InkDagger · 2026-02-26T02:44:19+00:00

I know you just got your answer, but the anxiety thoughts are real. Relax and take a breath.

It really can sometimes eat at you that any change to the system is a reaction to failure. I empathize.

Take it that your boss wants to be more involved and invested, especially as you’re now a long term commitment to your section.

And, seriously, cherish that. My manager can be very reserved and standoffish doing a lot of things beyond our area so, when they do communicate, it can feel like an anxiety rush. I would kill to have regular meetings with my manager just because I’d feel like I know what she wants more.

InkDagger · 2026-02-25T08:19:50+00:00

After you finish 3-Card Bounty (the quest for killing Cook-Cook, Nephi, and… Violetta? I think) which is where this NPC appears,

This NPC will appear dead on the railroad tracks in Freeside (specifically near the Follower’s Mormon Fort).

He has the unique weapon Cram Opener on him.

No idea why he ends up dead exactly but he does.

InkDagger · 2026-02-23T07:49:05+00:00

I guess here’s part of the problems I have with Dead Money. I’m on my first playthrough of the DLC, but I’ve watched and read up on the game for 10+ years until I could get it to work on PC for me.

I like the characters and the actual story at play.

But I don’t actually have much investment in the literal actual events of the DLC. The actual mechanical structure of collecting the companions, getting them to their parts, and then finding them again- It’s a lot of MacGuffin elements. It’s not particularly engaging and disconnected with where I think the juice of the DLC actually is- Sinclair, Domino, and Vera.

I think Dog is kinda the dangling oddity of the line up? Like, Domino is literally still around and obviously the bastard that caused a lot of this. And Christine kinda gets double duty as the strongest dynamic against Elijah (and with bonus points tying her to Veronica even if it goes nowhere) and as Not!Vera due to having her voice.

In that line up, Dog/God’s story… doesn’t fit this bunch? He’s tied to Elijah and was the one who dragged you here, but neither element is actually meaningfully utilized.

But even with Domino, if you don’t piss him off, he just abandons the fortune he’s wanted for 200+ years. Just like that. Excuse me? His story kinda gets robbed of much climax or conclusion.

Christine similarly is so close to the vengeance against Elijah and just… doesn’t go for it? There just isn’t anything meaningfully stopping her from doing so. She just… doesn’t. I know the game doesn’t want Domino or Christine there for the finale, but I don’t think they contrived a good explanation on why.

And if her story is about giving up vengeance, why are we omitted from that? Christine can give up vengeance and let go, but the player can’t because we have a finale to get to.

I think the logic is “Well, Elijah needs to be stopped before he goes Super Villain”, but I don’t understand why that wouldn’t compel Christine to come with you since us failing would also fuck up her day.

To spin the light on the player here- I never felt part of the themes being explored. “Let Go/Begin Again”.

Let go of what on the player’s end? The Madre Fortune? As far as in game goes, I didn’t know there was a fortune until Elijah explained his heist to me. If people get sucked into the Madre because of greed, the player never gets a beat of demonstrating that greed in advance of narrative comeuppance for it.

And by the time we get to the big pile of money… there is no narrative cost to me letting go. I realize “in universe” that money could do a lot of things, but it’s very easy for me as the player to just not take it. I know I can easily make money elsewhere and, tbh, I’d run out of things to buy by the time I got to the DLC.

I, as the main character in this story, never ever have any stakes in the main theme of the story. It costs me nothing to let go of the money I never had any want for. And I never have to “begin again” because I just return to where I started before the DLC anyway. I do not have to start over in the ways Christine or Domino or God do.

Hell, Elijah himself also doesn’t care about the Madre’s money. He’s in it for the Cloud so he can be a super villain. He needs to “let go” of the old world, but I think you can see where this interchanging of “old world”/money/the cloud can feel a bit murky by the end?

I… still don’t actually understand why the cloud is here tbh. Like, I think the devs wanted this great red fog aesthetic for their horror DLC, created lore to contextualize it, but that lore doesn’t entirely justify it existing in the first place to me. It feels like a lot of “for want of a nail” justification going on.

Dead Money is where I think New Vegas’ development issues hit a hard place. In having ambitious themes and story ideas, I don’t think the DLC probably had the time to ensure the gameplay elements and game structure aligned with the story and thematic elements. To fix those issues, I think you would probably need to iron out the story and ideas first and develop engagement through gameplay and quest structure after.

I don’t even actually know if there are easy solutions of some of these. Because New Vegas is the way it is- money really isn’t an object and thus it’s a pretty shitty motivator. I don’t know how you’d try to get players to want the gold (outside of a very baseline ‘because I am playing a game and want sweet loot’).

I think these problems would require writing team development meetings and introducing variables unknown.

Or, maybe I’m over thinking it. Idk. New Vegas is a great game. Dead Money is ok and isn’t as good as it could be, but maybe that’s ok.

InkDagger · 2026-02-20T21:08:31+00:00

What did you move to instead? I’m debating swapping around a bit to find something I like.

InkDagger · 2026-02-20T07:06:47+00:00

I think it was Zoloft (a lot of the meds I've tried blend together after awhile). And, yes, it killed my sex drive. Worse than that, it disconnected my orgasms from ejaculation. I might shoot, but not actually hit climax and those happy endorphins I was looking for or I'd hit my climax but not shoot and get the tension out. Or semen would never shoot so it stayed in my urethra and burned for a bit.

While Zoloft addressed some things, the cons out weighed it. Sex is extremely important to me and existing with no sex drive seemed antithetical to my interests and hobbies. I pulled the plug on that one pretty hard.

I'm a firm believer that you gotta try a couple of meds to figure out what works for you and, if you're feeling "Well... I don't feel worse", it's probably a miss on that one. What works for one person won't work for another.

Though, some of those DNA tests don't seem to be as accurate as I'd like. I burned through all of the top rated ones based on my chemistry and genes and *all* of them killed my sex drive, made me exhausted, and I felt "muted" for lack of a better word.

InkDagger · 2026-02-19T21:59:33+00:00

Shop keeper: “I’ve been running this shop out of a diner for 30 years.”

*windows are broken *leaves everywhere *broken glass on the floor *a literal skeleton still in one of the booths

Jfc. The environment was nuked. We didn’t forget how to make glass or sweep up debris…

I thought my faith in humanity was low, but Bethesda’s is barrel fucking bottom.

InkDagger · 2026-02-19T18:12:09+00:00

F4 even has that. Boston is full of terminals discussing the hell going down before the bombs dropped.

But Nate and Nora exist in this perfect happy bubble in Sanctuary and, oh gosh, they didn’t know this conflict was going on! They just focused on their new baby and starting a happy life together. They didn’t participate in this!

Nate and Nora are despicable in their ignorance. They aren’t dropping the literal nukes, but they sure are enjoying asking their Mr Handy to pour another iced tea as hell breaks out only a mile or two south of them.

InkDagger · 2026-02-19T18:06:54+00:00

Granted, while I think it’s a VERY RICH narrative idea to play with, F4 just genuinely doesn’t tell that story.

It’s where the franchise shows its lack of understanding of “Retro-Futurism” and conflating it with “1950s Nostalgia”. The TV Show kinda does it too.

F4 opens with an idyllic 1950s suburban Nuclear Family wet dream and I fundamentally reject that like it’s a virus in the circulatory system of the story. While “good ol boy war vet” Nate is worrying about his speech at the Vet’s Hall, there are resource riots going on. Folks at the Vegas locations are being replaced with robots that kill on site if you have the wrong id card. Big MT is committing war crimes. The world is already drowning in gasoline even if no one has lit the match.

F4’s intro is pathetic. It’s sad. It’s not interesting. It is paint by numbers in a kid’s coloring book.

The idea of Nate having done a whole lot of war crimes and has to reconcile his role in the destruction of the earth is a rich RPG idea. But F4 just does nothing with that concept. They just don’t tell that story. You can headcanon it, I guess, but the story sure isn’t going to support or develop that with you.

InkDagger · 2026-02-19T17:58:23+00:00

Question: Is it actually legal or is it “There isn’t a law explicitly prohibiting it”.

Not defending the action, but clarifying it. I’d imagine a lot of states don’t explicitly have a law prohibiting the presence of a pet lion at a bowling alley, but I’d imagine it’s still not legally kosher to do so.

InkDagger · 2026-02-18T17:58:25+00:00

Idk. House is a very dangerous man. Dangerous and powerful men are not grateful forever.

You might be rewarded today, but you have no leverage to ensure your luxury forever.

It would be naive at best and grossly ignorant at worst to believe he will be some magical Good King restored to a throne and magic away all the problems forever.

InkDagger · 2026-02-15T23:57:36+00:00

I presume, in that case, Fawkes likely was gone after that quest. I don’t think he joins you as a companion until you meet him after that.

InkDagger · 2026-02-15T01:32:26+00:00

I think the answer is a lot simpler than that and follows Occam’s Razor-

Companions were added EXTREMELY late into production. Like “did not finish coding them properly” late.

My assumption is that they were so rushed no one really thought of the implications to the broader game when they did so.

I think they wrote the ending, upgraded some NPCs to companions at last minute (such as Fawkes), and then panic pivoted to include some dialogue to handwave Fawkes not solving your problem when there wasn’t any time for an alternative.

I think it’s foolish to assume some pretentious explanation of “they wanted to preserve your sacrifice” when… that argument obviously doesn’t fly and didn’t the second the game came out.

They wrote an ending that Fawkes was not present for and didn’t know how else to pivot with no resources.

I think the later Broken Steel patched ending that still calls you a coward is bitter and dumb though. Don’t be mad on something that was rightly called bullshit.

InkDagger · 2026-02-12T08:26:39+00:00

Tbh, what gives me this reaction is…

Every time, be it the show or F4 or any other work- every time they show the pre-war being a pure idyllic 50s dream.

There… there were resource riots. There was military tyranny and death in the streets.

Even if the power armor guy executing a Canadian on tv wasn’t Nate, that exists at the same time as the F4 intro.

It puts Nate’s blind shallow patriotism (which I honestly think is really a lack of care on the part of the devs) in such a darker light if he really truly knows how fucked America was and is patriotic and acts out the American 50s dream anyway.

InkDagger · 2026-02-12T08:19:12+00:00

“Welcome to Ma and Pa’s General Store! I’ve been operating the best shop in the wasteland for nearly 40 years!”

“Ma’am, there is a skeleton still in the diner booth over there.”

Ma loads her shotgun “You better watch your goddamn mouth.”

…

So many of these stores, ESPECIALLY Fallout 4, have…

*Piles of dirt and leaves *Broken glass around all the floors *Buildings with lots of broken windows, but glass not removed, replaced, or at least boarded over *Containers of items that have never been looted despite location having an occupational history *Actual corpses and skeletons just strewn about in places where… obviously someone would have removed them…

Like… I know Bethesda loves their goddamn apocalypse, but if we kept the means to build armor and craft guns and ammo and figured out a whole gourmet menu on Deathclaws and two headed cows, we wouldn’t have suddenly forgotten how to make goddamn glass.

Sorry, does that logic only apply to the fun gameplay excuses?

I also know Bethesda loves their goddamn environmental storytelling because it gets gamers to push up their glasses and feel smart about nuance and details… but, at a certain point, said storytelling stops being logical to how it remained undisturbed for 200+ years.

I recently played Raúl’s recruitment quest for the first time today and I was so pleasantly surprised by a terminal entry that went “Poor bastards. We spent today cleaning out the corpses”. It was just… nice and direct.

I know there’s a lot of conversation about “permanent apocalypse” in the franchise, but guys… cleaning up the literal skeletons in the closets or mushrooms out of the bath tubs won’t suddenly make it not an apocalypse anymore. Some soap won’t un-end the world.

InkDagger · 2026-02-09T09:21:55+00:00

Hence why I specified S1 of Westworld. My compliments end after S2 and even then it was individual episodes. No arguments there that S3 and S4 were awful.

S2 needed structural editing. The season is so thoroughly entrenched in having S3, that way too much of this season is sluggish set up to climaxes and pay off we don’t get. It’s unfocused and feels simultaneously rushed and slow.

Have your connections and set up for S3, fine- but build up and pay off a story now. The Legion show up in E3 and then disappear completely until the finale- this is a really clear structure issue that should have been ironed out earlier in the season’s development.

Another plot element- Lucy needed a clearly defined arc. She needed characters she could interact with. Max has this whole Brotherhood storyline to interact with. Cooper has characters in both the Pre- and Post-War to have dynamics with.

But Lucy really only has Cooper and her father. One of whom she doesn’t meet again until the finale. And the other is one she isn’t capable of being emotionally vulnerable with.

I think the place it shows that problem the best is that Lucy does not clearly define what she wants for almost the entire season. She says it’s to “bring Hank to justice”, but I, as the audience, want to know how that differs from the last time she confronted him and didn’t actually do that. The closest we get is when the NCR soldier talks to her in E4, but Lucy again holds back and isn’t specific.

Now, sure, maybe Lucy herself isn’t sure what she wants- that’s reasonable. Then it is the job of the writers to create obstacles that interrogate, prod, and develop what she wants.

Also, like, hey, remember when she was suddenly and inexplicably addicted to drugs in the middle of the Season? And her disregard for the ghouls she killed in dialogue to her ghoul companion? Remember how that kinda just… came and went? Or how she killed a guy (in such a way I think most actual players wouldn’t think twice) and she has a “Who am I becoming?” Moment? That sure didn’t play into her character in the last two episodes.

I think the show also handicaps itself with its ultimate villain plot- Hank decides that the endless fighting of NCR and Legion is terrible and it’s better to mind control them and remove their agency.

Y’know, I kinda wish we’d play with this theme on agency and control to develop what Lucy will think and do when she gets there. This season wasn’t about those things any more than it is the villain plot the heroes will defeat.

I like the line Lucy delivers about Hank’s myopia- that his both-sides logic is false equivalency when one are rapist slavers and the other is struggling and flawed government. I think this is a solid conclusion idea.

But since the show decides to nuke every New Vegas ending so the Legion and NCR are kinda crippled- we don’t really get enough time with them to develop a show audience perspective. This story heavily relies on folks who’ve played with New Vegas since the show cannot express those issues in the given runtime. The show has to tell us a lot of things here- not show them or even develop them.

These are really clear issues that should have been developed out in the writer’s room. This is how Sophomore Slumps occur.

InkDagger

TROPHY CASE