I just skipped three pages of no doubt scintillating commentary on Bethesda's shortcomings; I have to say I found Skyrim's dungeon areas to be great fun and satisfying. I have no idea where you guys are coming from... you're complaining about the handy backdoors that save you from having to retrace your steps? I bet people have said it's 'unrealistic', haven't they?

Actually I said it is realistic:

"Course you could justify it by saying if a bandit was going to have a cave hideout, wouldn't it make sense to have an extra exit, or way to the exit? I mean if the Jarl ever got some real balls and sent 10+ guards to clear out a cave being able to escape the cave while the guards are searching through it is a big plus (and a life saver). Over time just about any inhabitable cave would have been given a 'back door' just for this purpose. So for a random unexplored cave having a back door doesn't make a lot of sense, but for an inhabited cave, it makes a lot of sense."

Most of us actually agreed that the doors were good, nothing to fear by reading the past few pages.

Its not the same type of open world as tes/fallout. Reminds me more of red dead redemption with swords more than it does tes. Pretty fantastic game though

Just as in Fallout 1 and 2, and Planescape Torment, and Baldur's Gate, and most every other RPG ever made.

Nice!

If we are going to allow for an exit, we should be able to enter through it if we stumble across it first. Instead of it *always* being locked/bared or impassable.

I personally like the idea of stumbling across the back entrance of a raiders den, and then working my way forward.

There are a couple where you can go in the back way. The back way isn't marked on the map. As far as the others, if it is a secret exit to escape guard and such you wouldn't want them finding it so it will be hidden.

For a random unexplored cave to have more than one entrance makes more since in the real world than for it to have only one.

For a building to have more than one entrance makes since.

For a tomb not so much, but if the tombs in that area are designed to have such a feature than it makes realistic since that all tombs have that feature.

If it's one of the lower tier miscellaneous side quest dungeons, I don't mind the idea of some unlikely chance that we can get thru said "backdoor" to surprise the Grindle, but making it something you can use over and over again to bypass the majority of the game's content is not something any developer would want to be possible. Frankly, I like the ones that are not "barred" but are physically inaccessible due to location and entrance height. Using the Bandit Chief's balcony to leave the cave complex seems quite acceptable to me.

And while we're at it, let's ditch the dozens of essential NPCs.

Sadly, my guess is there are more of these. They should not exist at all.

I believe we may not see any Essential this time around. Skyrim gave us "Protected" NPCs (NPCs can be killed by the player, but not by the game). I have always had a hunch that this might have been introduced at a late stage of the game's development and that they did not have time to sufficiently implement it throughout the game. If I am right, they will have had time to perfect this system for Fallout 4. So I think it is possible that all NPCs in Fallout 4 may be Protected, and that Essential NPCs (except, possibly temporarily for important quests (i.e. Martin in Oblivion)) will now be a thing of the past.

Only if they pull a Morriwind throwback, where you can complete the Main Quest through a backroad route. Or did a New Vegas thing with multiple roads to the endgame. Otherwise, I suspect that all NPCs required for the MQ will be essential, or at least essential until they're no longer necessary.

Of course, that will be a REALLY low number. FO3 had... 4 NPCs who were actually required for the Main Quest to work, James/Dad, Doctor Li, Elder Lyons, and Scribe Rothschild. Fallout New Vegas had one, and only because he either body jumped or got uploaded into a peice of indestructble environment.

I think essentials are more less mandatory if you want to actually have a story in the game. If the player starts killing everyone whose hat they want there would be no way to carry a coherent story through the game. I still liked the way MW did it, by letting you kill them and then just giving you a pop-up message telling you the MQ is screwed. Oddly enough I never have this problem anyway ... but then I don't collect hats either.

Yeah, I'd rather have essential NPCs than pigeonhole Bethesda doing a story with enough backpaths that the characters don't really matter enough to be essential. Morrowind's main quest was basically just a series of unrelated tasks you had to do to get information on the Nerevarine, and then convince everyone you're the Nerevarine; the backpath in that game only really shows how pointless most of the main questline really is. And New Vegas's main quest had no tension, or any reason for me to care; the Mojave never felt like it really needed saving or anything. Although I guess that has little to do with essential NPCs.

Cause the player or char ingame would totally now all of it....