Ok, 2 quick questions.
1. Was it ever confirmed if we can actually read magazines/books? I forget.
2. If we can actually read the books, do you gals/guys think we get the perks they offer automatically or will we get a prompt asking if we want to add it?

1. I hope so, books are one of my favorite parts of a Bethesda game. Word from Quakecon vaguely implies a yes, but that's not definitive.

2. I doubt it, skill books you could read in TES never gave you a prompt asking if you wanted the skill point. You just get it from reading the book.

1. Mine too. I hope we can read them in real time to pass in game time.
2. I was just thinking that with particular character types there would be perks that wouldn't jive with your vision for the characters development. Though I suppose that if you were role playing you would only read books that would interest your character, or in the event your particular character is not a reader, not at all.

You can definitely read them but it doesn't mention whether you get a confirmation dialogue or not.

http://bethesda.net/?utm_source=Twitter.com&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=092415-Zur&hootPostID=ed42c6b0210067c7e5652eabe8a7f275#en/events/game/fallout-4s-character-system/2015/09/24/31

Edit: Towards the bottom of the page.

I don't see anything that answers the question of whether or not we can read books in Fallout 4. The article only mentions Skill Magazines, and doesn't mention books once.

The question is whether or not we can read books like we can in Skyrim and Oblivion. I'd love to see the feature migrate over the Fallout Universe.

Ah! Sorry, I misunderstood. Flipping through the the pages of Grognak the Barbarian : In the lair of the Virgin Eater would be cool.

Was it in this section?:
"And on top of all that, you also get separate Perks from the many in-game magazines you can find (there are over 100). Some of these grant an individual Perk, while others up the rank of a Perk associated with that magazine. For example, there’s a 10-issue run of Grognak the Barbarian comics that each give you an additional rank of the Barbarian Perk, which raises the critical damage of melee attacks."
I'm thinking the only "literature" we will get to read (if we are able to do so) are the "skill magazines", as you called them. I'm not sure all of them will be magazines though, some of them were books in F3 and New Vegas. The Big Book of Science comes to mind, and I believe "Tales of a Junktown Jerky Vendor".

Yeah, there's over 100 magazines that you can use but it doesn't mention whether you can actually flip through the pages like you can with books in the TES games.

Drat. I could have sworn that it was confirmed weeks ago that we could. Oh well.

I doubt they've drawn up comic issues for us to read - as much as I would love that.

I just think it would be neat if they had short stories and articles in the books and magazines that illuminated parts of the Old World or Fallout Universe. Funny little 50's Sci-Fi style short stories. Satire-like articles on maintaining the perfect home, or getting that big promotion, etc.

We got some stuff like that on computer terminals in Fallout 3, but I'd like to have a reason to get excited about finding a library and searching for non-ruined books. Besides, you know, selling them.

How many books can you read in skyrim? ...damn even their MMO has books... id be surprised if they gave up on such a trademark.

Just to be a butt and pick on this: I really don't think it's such a big deal to get perks from books that are "irrelevant" to our character's build - to me, I just interpret it as gleaning some knowledge that I may or may not actually use. If you read a trade magazine about audio recording, you'd pick something up about recording that you'll probably never actually use in your day-to-day life. But how many random and useless things do you know about? It's kind of like that: the Barbarian perk doesn't indicate my character's a barbarian, just that they read a lot of Grognak.

Bethesda have had in-game books in all of the Elder Scrolls games since Daggerfall. Each game has been building on that ever since - there's a ton of books. ESO alone added hundreds of new ones.

Ah I see your point, and it actually is a helpful way of looking at it. Thank you.

That's one thing I half-expected when Fallout 3 came out - Bethesda was kind of known for packing all this literature and lore into their games, after all. We did get all of the stuff you can find at the computer terminals, though...

I hope we can read and inspect some of the magazines and books we find this time out, even if it's just brief snippets or something. At the very least maybe we'll get an "inspect" button in our inventory, a la Skyrim, where we can take a closer look at the item model.

I doubt you'll need a confirmation pop-up for the Perks you gain, though. If you're roleplaying a character that has no interest in the perks you'd gain from the Grognak comics (to the extent that you'd specifically be against gaining a perk,) then you're roleplaying a character that would have no interest in reading the comic in the first place... IIRC, Grognak books give you a small boost to critical melee damage or chance - my first character isn't going to be terribly melee-focused, but I won't have a problem with gaining a perk that may not be relevant to me. There's nothing wrong with mitigating some of your weaknesses, even if it's not crucial to your build, after all.

I'd love readable books in a Fallout game but I'm not getting my hopes up.

Thinking about it.... what you got from reading the books in TES was little bits of lore & background. Which we did find, somewhat, in Fallout 3..... but in the notes, terminals, and diaries. Many of the actual books in FO3 don't seem like they'd be very interesting reads (or, alternatively, hard to write an interesting excerpt from). Army training manuals, science books, medical journals, locksmithing magazines..... eh.

(And yeah, I can't see them having commissioned some comic crew to draw up ten issues of Grognak for FO4. Even if they were short issues.)

I don't think it would be boring if they went the satire route. Army Training manuals talking about the "Red Menace" and the proper manner to apply boots to the sides of heads, etc. A Nuka-Cola branded dime novel where love of Nuka-Cola saves the day. Political "anolysis" used ironically where the writer's insist there is no way nuclear missiles could successfully strike the U.S. Science books that "debunk" the belief that radiation causes radical mutations, etc. Written well, these could all be hilarious.

I don't MIND getting information from computer terminals, but it strains belief sometimes that the harddrive on unsecured pre-war computers haven't been wiped or reformatted during repairs, etc.

Hmm, true.

I'll second this! Have your lore served up in the form of comedy! I would love to see this in the game.

The Fallout universe is basically satire anyway. Plus, if there's one thing Bethesda's good at, it's creating "convincing" propaganda... convincing in the sense that, you could actually see how this propaganda would work in the game's setting.

I'd be willing to bet you can read the books. If they can have add hundreds of books to each new Elder Scrolls game, they can totally do the same for Fallout.