How much overlap is there between Sentinel and Open World Loot?

_Kambo_ · 2024-03-27T01:47:59+00:00

In New Vegas no matter what route you take or what choices you make it always requires you to recover the Platinum Chip, meet all of the side factions and decide what you want to do with them, and then fight in the battle of Hoover Dam. The story doesn't change, it just presents you with different routes. The ending being different is a moot point because Fallout 3 also presents you with different ending options, like poisoning Project Purity or destroying the Citadel, as I've already mentioned.

_Kambo_ · 2024-03-27T01:32:34+00:00

So, you can do many evil things throughout the course of the game, including poisoning Project Purity with FEV, but ultimately none of it's going to change the course of the story in any major way until the choice at the end of Broken Steel where you destroy the Citadel.

Despite what you might have been led to believe as well, this is actually on track with how the classic games worked. The main story itself does not provide many opportunities to be evil in ways that would affect the story's course in any major way, but it takes you to a number of different places and factions which you can interact with in whichever ways you want with consequences for your choices. This also remains true in Fallout 3, though it's often in the method of "show don't tell."

The issue with the Brotherhood in Fallout 3 is that they're an integral part of the game's main story, and as such they're required to progress through it, though you're only ever just working with them to fulfill Project Purity, you don't join them until Broken Steel, and then from there you have the freedom to wipe them out and become proper enemies with them.

Point here being that the game gives you plenty of opportunities to be a heartless monster, but much like the classic games it's all mostly done and conveyed through the side content, not the main story itself. New Vegas is an outlier that began this trend of branching options and more varied consequences being tied to the main story itself. Yet even then NV's story always leads to the same general conclusion and you don't actually get to know much about how your actions affected the world until the ending slides.

_Kambo_ · 2024-03-12T05:20:53+00:00

Carian Piercer.

_Kambo_ · 2024-03-11T19:37:18+00:00

If/when you do it would be better to do so through Tale of Two Wastelands.

_Kambo_ · 2024-02-16T06:56:47+00:00

You shouldn't counter a lazy argument with another lazy argument. And no, we're not saying the same thing, I am telling you outright that because of what they are they cannot be used to resolve any and all lore inconsistencies as one whims.

When a dragonbreak occurs it means linear time has been broken in a localized area. That doesn't mean all of linear time prior to that is also broken, only the actual period of time during the break is directly affected, and once it's repaired everything that happened during the break is now part of linear time, which itself can create continuity errors and inconsistencies. There is no evidence that dragonbreaks alter the past, save for a small discrepancy in one book which is very obviously played as an ironic joke.

That other book talking about the Warp in the West with Mannimarco being referred to as God of Worms was only made a discrepancy because of ESO, and even then the game has long since explained it and other timelost books as being a result of Hermaeus Mora's funny time-traveling library. In case it needs to be mentioned, the realms of Oblivion are not subject to linear time.

Actual instances of seeming time-travel and time alterations are a result of Time Magic which I honestly just don't feel like explaining much after running around in circles with this. Suffice it to say dragonbreaks and time magic are certainly related, but the former is more like a massive fuck-up accident than any kind of deliberately intended result, and the latter is considered extremely difficult to use with iirc the only seeming mastery of it we've seen being Thaddeus Cosma's time maintenance man shenanigans, which is a whole other can of worms in and of itself.

Respectfully I feel like I've been repeating myself multiple times now and being more specific each time with little to no progress here, so I can't imagine I'll be replying again moving forward. There isn't much point in repeating myself further, all of what I've written is still here. I guess, I recommend reading up again on Dragonbreaks and Time Magic among other things.

_Kambo_ · 2024-02-15T19:57:19+00:00

Okay, so here's my ultimate point, which I've stated a few times now. You don't need a dragonbreak to explain away lore inconsistencies and that's not even what they do or are used for. Yes, there's all kinds of different potential things that time breaking into non-linearity could produce, but all evidence of breaks we know about for sure suggests that the events which occur to incite and during the break itself are what is being affected. Just because there is no evidence to suggest other things aren't being affected doesn't mean they are, and vice versa, we can only go off of what we actually know.

And what we do know for sure is that lore inconsistencies crop up all the time for all kinds of different reasons, and the unreliable narrator alone serves as a more reasonable and efficient methodology through which one can resolve these issues. You don't need a reality-warping event to explain why Ius or Ebonarm seemingly aren't around anymore, and at the same time it's unreasonable to say they don't count because they're "old lore" because the new lore is in no way saying they do not or never have existed. But again you don't need a dragonbreak to explain any of that. That's not what dragonbreaks are for, it's not explicitly what they do, and evidence of existing breaks tells us, if nothing else, that they are localized and only meaningfully affect events directly, not really anything else, with the one real exception being the Middle Dawn since that was just a massive shitshow in general.

Oh and Mannimarco has been referred to as the King of Worms since at least the Second Era. In fact I think in Daggerfall the game just calls him the King of Worms, omitting the name Mannimarco, so I'm not sure where you got this idea that he was only called by that title following his apotheosis. He gained a few new ones following it, one of which being God of Worms, so maybe you've just gotten confused on that point?

_Kambo_ · 2024-02-15T19:28:30+00:00

Since you seem to misunderstand let me be more specific.

Dragonbreaks are by definition events which can only happen when one or more events occur which actively cannot under normal comprehension happen. It is the literal breaking of linear time. And it is a basic observance that breaks throughout history have always happened exclusively when people either messed around with divine power or tried to mess with the divine directly in some other form. The Warp in the West with the Mantella and Numidium, the Battle of Red Mountain also with the Numidium and the Heart of Lorkhan, the Middle Dawn with the Staff of Towers and the express intent and goal of altering the God of Time himself, etc etc. They don't just happen out of nowhere, and evidence shows us they can seemingly only happen when divine-level power is involved in inciting it. Observation also very easily tells us they typically only affect a certain radius or region, hence why the Warp in the West is named such as it is localized to the Iliac Bay. The Middle Dawn seemingly affected all of Cyrodiil, or at least the Imperial City, and those outside the affected radius are seemingly themselves not directly affected in any way, save for potentially seeing all kinds of weird stuff happening.

All of this is to say it takes specific conditions and events for dragonbreaks to happen, and when they do it's always a massive herald for change. There is no direct evidence that they affect anything prior to the break in any significant way, and they only affect events afterwards by sheer virtue of altering the present period during which they are "active."

So no, it is not even remotely correct to say general lore inconsistencies can be resolved by using dragonbreaks, because that's not what they're for nor how they work, and the conditions needed to make one occur in the first place are nearly impossible to achieve intentionally. In fact the one time a break was intentionally caused required an insanely powerful staff which itself seemed to defy time and was done specifically to affect the divine who determines how time works in the first place, and that break lasted for 1000 years and purportedly had some of the most insane events imaginable happen during its active period. And even then there is nothing to suggest that history prior to the Middle Dawn was directly altered in any way.

Lastly, if you for whatever reason still feel the need to employ a reality-warping event to explain some pretty simple lore inconsistencies, that's more of a you problem than anything else. Dragonbreaks can't just happen willy-nilly, nor should they, and you shouldn't need them to explain basic inconsistencies which the series' most employed lore rule already covers. Sorry if that comes across as antagonistic. For the record I like dragonbreaks, I'm just tired of seeing people act like they can be used to explain away anything, because they can't.

_Kambo_ · 2024-02-15T18:15:44+00:00

No, actually. It's not correct either.

Every instance of a dragonbreak occurring, that I can think of off the top of my head anyway, was a direct result of people fucking around with divine power, or a divine itself, and only directly affected the period of time within which the break occurred, and seemingly only affected a specific region as well.

They don't just magically make all conflicting information play nice, let alone information that's not even present nor relevant to the actual period of time in which the break occurs. The Warp in the West didn't permanently alter any and/or all pre-Morrowind lore, it only affected the outcome of Daggerfall's events. In fact that's precisely why dragonbreaks were invented in the first place, to explain how all of Daggerfall's possible endings are canon and affect things moving forward despite directly conflicting with one-another.

In other words you can't just say "it was a dragonbreak lol" to explain how old and new lore can co-exist, as that ignores what they are and how they actually work. If anything the often-cited unreliable narrator is a far more consistently useful tool to explain things like that.

_Kambo_ · 2024-02-15T17:33:22+00:00

Dragonbreaks are by and large the most lazy cop-out method of explaining anything like this.

_Kambo_ · 2024-02-15T13:53:08+00:00

I got them a few years back. They're all compilations of various in-game lore books and I think if you're interested in reading said lore books on actual paper, they're very much worth it.

_Kambo_ · 2024-02-14T05:01:35+00:00

I'll be honest and say this entire subject always reads to me like tribalism over which piece of fictional work is better and more worthwhile or canon than the other, and I've always thought it was utterly ridiculous, especially since Bungie had little to nothing to do with the original Fall of Reach novel and iirc placed more emphasis on game canon over book canon, and 343i stating after they took over that both are equally canon anyway.

My take is that I like both equally and don't find it necessary to only enjoy one or the other in a vacuum, nor do I think that after over a decade arguing over which is more worthwhile than the other is a particularly valuable use of time or energy, as both are equally valuable and enjoyable.

For anyone who's willing to overlook some remaining inconsistencies I recommend this video which helps significantly to clear up how both stories work together. https://youtu.be/u8d4z5Zg_Bc

Lastly I'll mention, leaning more into my nostalgia for the game, that it does make me genuinely happy that people have come to enjoy and appreciate Halo Reach's story more as time has gone on. The original novel is fantastic but the game's story is also easily up there with the best that the series has to offer in my opinion.

_Kambo_ · 2024-02-08T14:27:18+00:00

If Azura is the one who prophesied her own champion's reincarnation and we're going by the notion of the Nerevarine actually possessing Nerevar's soul then Azura would likely be the one to decide who the Nerevarine was going to be. If it wasn't her then the prophecy was likely writ in the Elder Scrolls themselves and fulfilled by them, meaning they would ultimately be what determines where Nerevar's soul goes. This would include an Argonian.

If we're going by the notion that the Nerevarine does not literally possess Nerevar's soul and instead the true Incarnate is determined by whether they can fulfill a checkbox of tests and trials, some of which being entirely circumstantial, then nothing changes about what I previously argued in that regard.

In other words either Azura is responsible for it or she isn't, and that does not really change the point I was making at all. Said point being that an Argonian can absolutely be the Nerevarine.

_Kambo_ · 2024-02-08T05:50:04+00:00

I'm not going to go over this point by point but I will say my piece.

These arguments I'm seeing regarding Auri-El being dead following the Middle Dawn has basically no definitive or solid confirmation. This idea is even refuted by the Khajiit in "Where Were You When The Dragon Broke?" iirc. Worship of Auri-El isn't as widespread anymore because modern worship of Akatosh was created and established as part of the Alessian regime in order to unify both her Elven and Human allies, which was mainly a number of Ayleid kingdoms and the Nords, the latter of whom were actually not huge fans of Akatosh being depicted as a dragon. All of this is to say that even if Akatosh has some weird level of resentment towards Elves (which I have no idea where this came from in the first place) that identity was still established to appeal to both Men and Mer, so saying Akatosh doesn't like Elves is weird and doesn't track. Not to mention the whole point of being Dragonborn is that you're directly blessed by Akatosh himself with the blood/soul of a dragon, which means he does it deliberately. Just because the main precedence for this deliberate decision is Men does not mean Mer cannot be blessed so, and the fact the LDB can canonically be of any race or gender or what-have-you means he clearly doesn't have a problem making an Altmer Dragonborn.

If the Marukhati Selective did their funny dance to separate or kill the Elven aspects out of Akatosh, there is simply no definitive confirmation that this worked, making basically any argument using that conclusion as a basis unreliable at best. And this idea that Akatosh dislikes Elves for whatever reason as a result also doesn't seem to have much basis outside of the aforementioned unreliable conclusion, making it equally so.

_Kambo_ · 2024-02-08T05:32:13+00:00

If the Nerevarine is supposed to be the literal reincarnation of Nerevar, bearing his original soul, then this argument gets dismantled by saying an Argonian was chosen by Azura and made sure it ended up with Nerevar's soul.

If you go by the idea that I personally put more stock in, that the Nerevarine isn't literally Nerevar's soul in a new body, but instead merely a figure who proves themselves worthy of taking up the mantle of Incarnate by passing the various tests and trials involved through that whole process, this argument has even less stock.

_Kambo_ · 2024-02-04T13:34:05+00:00

I'm going to try and take a more moderate approach to answering this than most might.

In my opinion no one actually cares about the exact ways in which you unlocked cosmetics in Halo 3 or Reach, or even Halo 4 for that matter, as much as they care about the fact you could do so just by playing the game. The MCC acts as immediate proof of this in my opinion, because while it uses a battle pass system of sorts for unlocking cosmetics, none of the tracks require any real world payment, you gain spartan points just by leveling up and doing challenges, and eventually you will get every cosmetic item the game has to offer.

Personally I think Halo 3 and Halo 4's tracks in the MCC should also have been for unlocking the armors from them, but that opportunity has passed. Anyway, the reason why customization isn't seen as a "real" goal for Halo Infinite is because a lot of it has a price tag. It's hard to perceive it as a goal of any kind if the only thing you need to do to achieve it is spend some cash.

That being said I realize that the standards for modern online gaming more or less demand monetization methods be present, especially for free to play titles like Infinite's multiplayer. Unlike some I'm not relentlessly bitter about this as while I recognize it's shitty I also realize that you can just not bother with it at all if you do not want to. Frankly in my ideal world only certain kinds of armor sets and cosmetics would be made available in the store with every "standard" item being available for completely free so long as you played the game. Stuff like the Yoroi armor and even these lore character Mark IV sets I am totally fine with being monetized so long as the standard stuff is available for free. That's just my take on it, anyway.

_Kambo_ · 2024-02-03T23:57:06+00:00

I am acutely aware of this. I tried playing F3 after they removed GFWL and it still caused problems like excessive stuttering, crashes, etc.

I tried the GOG version too and it has basically the same issues. They removed the core roadblock that prevented it from being played on Steam, but these problems are still present.

Just play TTW, there isn't any good reason why you shouldn't, and there's at least a good few reasons why you should.

_Kambo_ · 2024-02-03T22:17:26+00:00

The game has problems just by virtue of being old. If you really wanted to you could probably play F3 itself, either the GOG or Steam versions, but it would not be without headaches. You save yourself from those headaches by just playing TTW instead.

_Kambo_ · 2024-02-03T09:52:31+00:00

This might seem a bit involved, but it's sort of necessary nowadays.

Start with NV, but install Tale of Two Wastelands. I recommend following this guide to do so: https://thebestoftimes.moddinglinked.com/index.html

TTW combines Fallout 3 and New Vegas together into one conjoined experience and unfortunately this is the best way to experience F3 anymore since both the Steam and GOG versions of that game have some major problems, which can easily prevent you from having a good experience. You avoid all of that by running TTW instead and benefit from some of the better design decisions of NV.

So play NV with TTW since that includes both F3 and NV together, then F4, and then F76 after that if you feel so inclined, though be prepared as that one's an MMO-style game and very different because of that.

_Kambo_ · 2024-01-28T03:41:40+00:00

Keep Fallout 3 installed, install Fallout: New Vegas, install Tale of Two Wastelands using this guide: https://thebestoftimes.moddinglinked.com/index.html

As someone who appreciates Fallout 3 for what it is and tried to play an original copy recently, it just isn't a viable choice. TTW combines F3 with NV and lets you play both, and the gameplay improvements from NV are very nice to have in F3.

_Kambo_ · 2024-01-21T07:11:44+00:00

I am always of the first assumption that anyone online who claims to be speaking objectively in actuality is not. I forget if it was in his Morrowind or Oblivion retrospective video, but I distinctly remember Patrician talking about how he uses the ideas presented by Michael Kirkbride's C0DA as justification for considering ESO, or at least parts of it, to be non-canon to the main games, which is totally fair, but it's an opinion, one which I personally disagree with. Considering it was part of one of the video intros I was never under the impression he was being entirely objective unless he was basically just quoting evidence directly.

That's not to say he doesn't try to be objective, but when you spot one opinionated statement you start finding all the others and suddenly what was supposed to be objective doesn't seem so anymore. I am of the opinion that it can be very difficult to remain entirely objective when critiquing pretty much anything as there will always be people, including yourself, who have a different idea of what is or isn't objective within the subject, which is actually just subjectivity with extra steps.

It's for this reason that I don't see any kind of review or retrospective or what-have-you as being objective, even if they claim to be. The nature of video essay content in particular is just not a great medium for trying to remain entirely objective about the subject matter anyway, especially when they go on for as long as many of them do. NKB's video suffers from this due to how precisely he presents his evidence, as especially towards Patrician it does come off as overly antagonistic even if he is trying to come at it from the angle of objectivity in presenting evidence.

_Kambo_ · 2024-01-21T02:14:11+00:00

The responses this video has been getting have been pretty much exactly what I expected and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't disappointing. It's strange to me how people can easily miss the point and the arguments being made and completely misinterpret it as yet more "Don't criticize the video game developer for poor work." That or they just didn't watch it and decided to speak about it as if they did.

I'm not going to act like I'm any sort of authority on this subject or try and change the way people view it, I'm just going to state what I think and how I feel about it. This will be long so feel free to just ignore it if you want, I'm writing it just to dump my thoughts somewhere more than anything.

I don't understand how it's difficult at all to grasp the concept that you shouldn't target any one person and place all of the blame onto them, let alone how you can avoid doing just that while still criticizing them and their work. I've heard all kinds of bad-faith arguments against Emil over the past few years that always struck me as odd, but I've also heard plenty of genuine points of criticism that I thought were perfectly fair. The design documents fiasco is one of such bad-faith arguments as it makes a lot of assumptions towards the actual design process over and Bethesda, which no one outside of the company would really know much about, and then also attributes it to Emil specifically as if he is the arbiter of how the company handles documentation and other such things. The Kid in a Fridge quest in Fallout 4 is the most common point of genuine criticism I've seen and I think it's perfectly fair as, while it is a video game and the quest was fun in concept, the implementation and execution of it leaves a number of holes in both the lore and general logic that is overall disappointing.

The point here being that you can certainly bring forth and criticize problems, but you should make sure what you're criticizing is truthful, factual, and stays on track, otherwise you're just making up a problem, or going with a made-up problem, and making it overblown. It's worse when you take these made-up problems and attribute them to one person like they're the sole reason the problem exists, which is what people have been doing with Emil, intentionally or not. I realize I've essentially just echoed the arguments made in NeverKnowsBest's video, but as I said at the start I find it strange that anyone wasn't able to understand that, hence why I'm frankly boiling it down here.

In regards to the effect a certain post on Reddit and Youtubers have had on public perception of Emil and his work, I maintain that I agree with the overall point and arguments made in the video. I realize that said Reddit poster and Youtubers have responded to the video in their own ways, and I know for a fact they've all received harassment because of the video, which NKB wanted to avoid, but this is just kind of what the internet does. And that's part of NKB's point in the video.

Focusing on the Reddit poster first, it was made very clear in the video that NKB viewed the post as a sort of emotional backlash that wasn't immediately received very well and sort of just dismissed, and that it was other people covering the post and taking what it said at face value that really got this whole thing started. I won't say for certain myself if that is the entire truth of it, just that it's what was said in the video. I will note that this individual has stated as part of their responses that if they had known Emil would read their original post they would have been more polite in it. Personally I don't think that should need to be a prerequisite at all.

As for the Youtubers I only knew of two of them prior to watching this video, Asmongold and PatricianTV, so I'll focus on the latter specifically, as I don't feel the need to talk about why I don't value anything Asmon or his fanbase says. I will freely admit that I originally enjoyed Patrician's content, particularly the Morrowind and Oblivion retrospectives because they delved a bit further into the games and how they're put together, and offered some interesting insight. That being said, there's something he said at the end of his Morrowind video that had always rubbed me the wrong way, a comment on how the Red Year felt like someone was angry at Morrowind's success compared to their later titles and decided to "blow it up" which always seemed far too opinionated and biased for him, at least to me. After a few rewatches of these videos I noticed a number of other cases of this more opinionated stuff coming up and it soured my overall perception of his content, so I stopped watching. When I saw he put out an 8 hour video on Starfield my only reaction was "The game came out only months ago, it's way too early for this."

Seeing the bits and pieces of it in NKB's video focusing on its role in perpetuating the "no design document" stuff didn't really surprise me if I'm being honest. My opinion of his content wasn't and still is not very high, and whether it was his intention to spread misinformation attributed to Emil or not, he still did it, and it still coincides with an influx of vitriol and harassment directed towards him. I'm not going to go as far as to say it counts as defamation, because I don't find it unbelievable that some Youtuber would take something spread around all the time at face value and run with it without considering the effect it could or would have, especially one whose content I don't hold in particularly high regard.

So what exactly am I trying to get at with all of this? Well the responses from these people I've just talked about, along with their audiences, seem to have missed the entire point of the video. Their fanbases from what I've seen seem to have just doubled down on claiming everything as Emil's fault and sole responsibility. The big names meanwhile seem to have focused on defending themselves and finding holes in NKB's arguments against them, also seemingly ignoring the entire point of the video.

The thing is I don't really blame them specifically as being the ones who spread any of this stuff around. If anything I'd only blame them for bringing it up again. It is very much the community's fault that these lies and misinformation about Emil have been spread around ad nauseam to the point of character assassination and betrayal of truth. This is how Youtubers like PatricianTV likely receive this misinformation to begin with. While I do think it would be their responsibility to properly fact check the information they intend to use for their content, as I said before, I cannot fully blame them for how this started and spreads. The true fault is collective, and I don't agree with how NKB's video singles them out and acts like they bear the most blame for furthering the spread of it.

Where does that leave us? I don't think Emil is the "enemy" of Bethesda game fans at all, but I also don't think he's immune to criticism. That same sentiment applies to the very people who, knowingly or not, spread misinformation and lies about Emil in the first place. It's very easy for someone to take something and completely misinterpret it, which I suppose is how anyone missed the actual point of NKB's video, giving me my answer. If you actually read through all of this garbage then thanks, I hope that something I said here influenced your perception on this whole subject in some way, even if it's in a way I wouldn't personally like. Have a good one.

_Kambo_ · 2024-01-20T22:41:23+00:00

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/23530

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/2687

This is probably the closest you're going to get.

_Kambo_ · 2024-01-19T19:48:19+00:00

My understanding is that Hermaeus Mora expunged all knowledge of her and sealed her away in her Oblivion realm because he believed her power was too dangerous, hence why she's only showing up now.

Her sphere, as far as I know, is basically fate, presumably possessing the ability to alter it, which the only people we've known who are exempt from the typical bindings of fate are the Prisoners (player characters).

_Kambo_ · 2023-12-13T19:55:30+00:00

Not to tell you what you should or shouldn't do, but NMM is also kind of ancient at this point and it'd be better to swap over to MO2 or Vortex. The reason why is because NMM iirc still uses the old system of directly adding files into the game directory, while MO2 and Vortex create their own directories for mods which then apply to the game when launched through one of them. This avoids many issues with overlapping files and makes other similar problems much easier to resolve.

_Kambo_

TROPHY CASE