I just led Bobbi No-Nose and her pet geek, Mel, through the Boston underground to her coveted strongroom. Now I'm wearing power armor and carrying a minigun... and the guy with a switchblade keeps jumping in between me and bad guys. He's literally making it impossible for me to solve the problems by shielding the enemies from me with his body as he attempts to use his butterknife to defeat the legendary glowing putrid bloated whatever. The situation is so implausible that it renders the word "absurd" insufficient to the task of describing the stupidity at work here. I completely lost all respect for the quest and am incapable of taking it seriously. Instead I found myself just shooting at the enemies... through Mel. Once he goes down at least he's not in my way. And then the guy just jumps right up and continues making stupid and utterly out of place comments about my pip boy when he'd actually be in need of a coroner.

This issue, the basic hostile / non hostile toggle that Bethesda has used to determine AI behavior for... I don't even know how many games: Morrowind, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Skyrim, I'm sure their are others... it's simply insufficient. And it seems to me like it wouldn't take much, a few hard coded behaviors for the NPC's like: give the player a 1 meter radius at all times. If the PC moves toward an NPC and gets within 1 meter the NPC automatically moves to either back up or get out of the way. That would prevent an immense amount of frustration spawning from NPC's trying to occupy the same space as the player. (fneardistance has to exist, please. Any value would be good. 0 is a mistake.) It would also stop them from blocking doorways and narrow paths. Just hard code it. Also, NPC's should be aware of live weapons. A minigun is a terrifying instrument. Any firearm has enough power to force your nervous system to pay attention. Don't believe me? Go to a range and try to ignore the shooting taking place right next to you. Ask yourself if you could accidentally walk in front of those weapons while they're being fired. It'd be like trying to ignore a tiger in the room. You can't do it. NPC's stepping into the line of fire of a live minigun is ridiculous and I'm sure that with even a little effort it could be addressed. But I suppose it's easier to just compensate for stupid AI with essential tags....

>.<