Do we talk of the same Tamriel here where you can get murdered behind every Tree?

Bears and wolves are not murderers. They're killers. And they are behind EVERY TREE! Especially in Skyrim. And those dern Spiders!

A rolepaying game without killing people? No.That's always a given. Pacifist playthroughs are not really a serious option.

Even in Tamriel, most of the stuff that's always hostile isn't human. With the exception of the Forsworn, most humans encountered in the wild in Skyrim are not immediately hostile. Typically, bandits will warn you off or demand money before attacking.

And yeah, the original fallout games and New Vegas were much more flexible in allowing you to complete most quests in ways other than murder. They're not pacifist games but they support multiple ways of achieving goals. Why is it hard to understand that longtime fans of the series appreciate the ability to choose alternate quest solutions?

This is something I find disappointing as well. (In other areas, but still.) I love what Bethesda makes, but they do seem to produce finished products like many of my students: always the same mistakes, always a bit rushed. They seem never to sit down and just work through the major confusion until they've sorted it for good.

Not sure how familiar you are with the Creation/Construction Kit software, so here's a fatter explanation:

You know, I didn't do that many, but I think there may, in fact be an error in the way the engine is assigning Radiant quests. This was something that happened in Skyrim, as well. (Maybe it was Oblivion...not sure.) I think it was something like -- if you happened to receive and complete a certain radiant quest, it broke the list of possible quests, narrowing them down to just a few of the many that were created, meaning you would see the same 2-3 tasks appear over and over again. It was eventually fixed by the Unofficial Patch team.

I'd put money on it. The loose ends just seem a little too convenient for it not to have been a plan all along.

ESO's quests are 100% kill and find items. unless you're talking about the main quest, but that one is super short (and not very original imo), and the three faction quests are just replicas of one another. did we play the same game?

All this. I still can't believe that FO4 is such a shooting gallery with all the potential it offered. Hire one or two more writers to actually have an action-adventure game, not just an action game. Those old games that offered multiple solutions to most things were so much fun to figure out, instead of just turning your brain off and kill everything in sight.

Your idea of interaction with various Raider gangs is awesome and I hope it'll happen. I also find it strange that they're all just "Raiders". Reading terminals you can find out that there are actually different gangs, but nowhere is that reflected in the appearance, behavior or otherwise. They all look the same and they'll all shoot you on sight, and I think there's only one named Raider group, Forgers. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I dont see any Difference between getting beheaded from a Orc or a Raider. So is the Commonwealth a more Dangerous Place as Tamriel? I think no. Death is in both Games everywhere.

First, they seem to be under strict orders to tag on multiplayer to every game they're producing today. Second, if you wanted the so called best ending in ME3 (which was a single player game until EA management dreamed the microtransaction dream), you had to collect points in multiplayer or via some phone app.

I can't think of anything off the top of my head other than the Harvest Moon type games if you mean RPG-ish. Or, if you mean in general, you've got city-builders up the wazoo, flight sims, games like the Tycoon series (Theme Park Tycoon, Railroad Tycoon, etc.). If you have an Xbox, Viva Pinata was aaawwweeesssooommmeee.

Don't shake your head at indie games. There are really, really great games out there. Minecraft, obviously, but lesser known games like Serpent in the Staglands, Evochron: Mercenaries, Banished, The Banner Saga, and Rimworld have unexpectedly gobbled up large portions of my time.

Fallout 4. Fallout. I know, this is a Fallout 4 forum.

There's plenty of build, build, build as well but I agree with you for the most part.

Why would raiders barter with you when it's much easier to kill you and take all you have? Some raider groups do business with towns and get paid off regularly which is much more understandable as the town can keep providing them with goods if left alive.

I'm sure many, many gamers would like to see this, and I think we probably will get something along this line, as I expressed above.

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As a genral note, though, Beth was never too into the whole "telling a story" thing. They did come up with some pretty amazing plots (the Nerevarine is, hands down, one of the most haunting and incredibly cool characters ever), but it's not like they ever really tried to build a cinematic experience like Dragon Age or Assassin's Creed. Honestly, to do this, much of your own character has to be dictated by the plot structure. Your history, your standing in the world, your general personality, etc. The energy of the game's story relies on all of this being clearly established the way it is when you're passively watching a film.

Bethesda has always been more about creating a gigantic world and saying "go explore!" to the player. Arena through Skyrim, your character was voiceless -- a true anyone. You always start as prisoner escaping from bondage (you were still technically "trapped" in the cave at the beginning of Daggerfall) with a blank slate. Your imagination fills in the rest. The main character in TES is truly "Tamriel".

Fallout 3 and 4 aren't really the same, as these games deal with wholly different issues. I think most gamers will want a "familiar connection" in the game. All of the prior games had one. You had a certain place in the world that was then taken away from you (Vault 13's community in FO1, your village in FO2, your father and community in FO3, and your spouse, son, and home in FO4). I think Beth does an admirable job establishing this stuff, but maybe they subconsciously return to their roots once they get deeper into the design (focusing more on creating amazing environments than connecting those things to a unified "plot").

New Vegas demonstrated this very well with the Nipton situation.

Well, you may represent a whole pile of settlements that could potentially be a source of protection money. And maybe you could help them out by wiping out a rival raider faction. And realistically, if you are in control of a useful traffic route, killing everybody who comes down it isn't as lucrative in the long run as "toll-collecting". If you do that, eventually either a bigger/badder gang that wants to keep that route open will come and wipe you out or people will simply avoid it and your source of income will dry up.

Or maybe they might just realize it isn't that easy to kill you? You'd think you might acquire a reputation after killing hundreds of raiders.

On the respawning thing lets be real here.

If all locations did not respawn or respawned crazy slow the game would get disgustingly boring, cuz really would it be any fun to walk along large portions of the commonwealth and absolutely nothing is alive? Or you go to an area thats tied to a story quest but its already empty because you previously did a run through and thus hold no impact or sense.

Frequent respawning is important despite the disappointment to those who hold realism factors close to them.

The respawning is also needed due to the fact that several factions and sub factions kill each other all the time in the game which would leave very little combat for us if they never came back.

Although, sometimes the respawns are a bit ridiculous.

Every time I head for Ten Pines (which is almost daily due to attacks) I make sure to stop by the Thicket Excavations to take out a slew of bandits and their leader for the loot.

You'd think that they would stop coming back for goodness sake since, every time they do, they get slaughtered.

On the plus side, it is a great source of Mirelurk meat and Legendary Mirelurks with very little effort.

Just sayin'

Even better with Vault 3. You could kill the main guy, do a dialog with him and resolve it peacefully. Also the other side mission in that location could be done with Stealth and no kills. In fact the whole NV game can be done with only one kill, and that is a robot. I miss that aspect. A pacifist play through of that game is much harder than treating each location like it was a shooter map.

An RPG should give choices to how the game plays out, because my role may be the pschyo killer, or it could be the pacifier, or it could be the anitsocial who does not want to get involved in the local drama, but still has a goal to obtain or any of a number of roles.

There's respawning and then there's inventive respawning. If the locations were repopulated by different groups and races with different stories and different loot, that would be one thing, but repeating exactly the same task several times...well, Sisophys can tell you about that.

Agree. See my example. Thicket is getting tedious. It's the same thing over and over and over.

Mass effect 3. You couldn't unlock a war assist without playing the multiplayer.

Hey just like war, raiders never change. They are stupid as always.

I'm like 90% sure you could get the "best" ending without MP as long as you had a ME2 save with the right choices(in ME2). But yeah apart from that, only MP. Pretty [censored] move, but that's EA for you...