Videogames I wish were real #27

You know that trope of a character getting isekai'd to another world? Well, in this game that happens to you. You get teleported into another world but you have no idea why you are there because...

YOU. DON'T. SPEAK. THE. LANGUAGE.

The characters speak an entirely made up language. At the start of the game you select what language you (the player) speak, and the modes in which you want to play. The game has several modes both for languages and for story: Easy, Normal, Hard, Extreme and Realistic (the difficulties of both modes are independent, you can pick easy language mode but hard story mode and such)

Language modes:

Easy mode: the language spoken by the characters has a very similar grammar and rules to your native language (the equivalent of a Spanish speaker trying to learn Italian). Characters don't mind repeating stuff several times. An npc points at a tree, says a word and you get several options and need to choose what you think the word they said meant. In this mode, once you learn a word, the translation will be featured under it in any in-game texts.

Normal mode: the grammar and rules of the language spoken by the characters are noticeably different from your native language (the equivalent of an French speaker trying to learn German). Characters will only repeat stuff two times. Instead of choosing what a word means from several options, you need to type your guess. You will still get the translation of a word under it once you learn it, but instead of always being visible, you need to activate the subtitles by pressing a button.

Hard mode: the grammar and rules of the the language spoken by the characters are very different to your native language. Characters don't repeat stuff. No subtitles with translations or menus that ask you to guess what a world means. If you want to remember what something means, you will need to rely entirely on your memory or take notes.

Extreme mode: extremely different grammar and rules, and, on top of that, a different alphabet (the equivalent of an English speaker trying to learn Japanese). Characters don't repeat things. No subtitles with translations or menus that ask you to guess what a world means. You will need to take notes, a lot of notes.

Realistic mode: why is it called realistic? Well, because a world were people only speak one language would be unrealistic, right? So... in this mode, the people speak different languages, and as you travel through the world, you might need to learn more than one language to get by.

Story modes:

Easy mode: you get taken in by a family of farmers in a small village. The family you live with provide you with food and shelter in exchange for a small part of the wages you earn by helping them around the farm or doing errands for the townspeople. Everyone in the village is kind and eager to help you learn their language. As your language skills progress, so does the story.

Normal mode: an innkeeper in a medium sized village offers you work in their inn. Half your wages go to cover your food and room. As the days progress, so does the story, regardless of your progress in learning the language.

Hard mode: you appear in a city and need to fend for yourself since day one, doing whatever is necessary to get by. You will need to pay for your own food and shelter, but finding a job in a foreign world where you don't speak the language won't be easy, so at first you might need to resort to trickery or thievery to survive.

Extreme mode: you will appear in a war torn area and be forced to pick a side in the conflict, but you won't know which one is the good one, if there is any. You can choose to stay there or gather resources to earn enough money to travel to other areas untouched by the war.

Realistic mode: you will appear in a random location, it might be the middle of a forest, a quiet little village, the middle of a battlefield, a pirate ship... In previous story modes your actions and decisions could change the story. The same will happen here, however, the story won't wait for you, and you will be able to reject the call. You might be the prophesied hero destined to stop an evil wizard, but you might find out too late to stop them from conquering half the continent, or you might not feel like risking your life and opt for a quiet existence in a farm.

While the game is supposed to be about the player being transported to a different world where they speak languages different from our own, if you want to, you can select a real language to learn it through the game.

Similar videogames that actually exist: Terra Alia (suggested by anon)

I inbox you the following: I must know what compels you about Link. I trust that he is Good and Excellent, but I simply yearn for an essay on what little niche trait makes you wanna fandom the fuck out of this little guy. 5-10 paragraphs of hyper fixated ramblings preferred, but not required.

ohhh starkid you've given me A GIFT. a GIFT.

So some background first, I think. I've always liked the Zelda games, in the way you play a mainstream game and are like "yeah that was good!" I played Ocarina of Time and Windwaker as a kid. I played Breath of the Wild when it first came out and had a fun time with it. Yeah. Good games! Fun mechanics. Characters seem a little flat, but they aren't why I'm here. What was the story again? Oh, right---yeah, they gave Zelda an actual personality that doesn't start and end with "princess" in the new one! She's a scientist! How neat.

Then Tears of the Kingdom comes out. I've just gotten a Steam Deck for my birthday and wow, turns out you can emulate TOTK already?? I try it out immediately. It's janky, but I love messing with emulators, so I keep going. I certainly don't have the cash to buy TOTK properly.

And in TOTK, for me, it starts with Zelda. It starts with this young woman barely out of her teens being flung into a horrible, frightening situation, and being forced to make an absolutely terrifying choice. And it turns out if you start looking at her more closely, that choice only becomes more and more viscerally upsetting as you incorporate things about her from the previous game.

It got me invested, and I still adore Zelda. I could probably write just as long a deliberation about her. But we're talking about Link.

I read a little bit of BOTW fanfic back when it first came out. It was almost all Sidon/Link stuff, because I liked the ship for a number of reasons, and one evening after another night of mainlining TOTK I decide to go look and see if I can find some that I remembered being good. I did, and they were still mostly good! But there was one in particular, with one line in particular. "You're Always Almost There," by Polyhexian. (On mobile so no link, sorry!)

'One hundred years ago,’ Link signed, 'A Guardian shot me through the chest,’ he grimaced as if in pain from even mentioning it, 'I died with everyone else, and then someone else decided to bring me, and only me, back to life to fix everything, to save everyone. I have to stop the Calamity. I have to save Hyrule. I have to fix the world. I am not a real person. I am everyone’s unfinished business.’

I had read it before. When I read it this time I closed my browser, opened Typora, and started writing. It wasn't more than a random narrative sifting through half collected ideas, and I neither finished nor posted it, but it got me started. A few weeks later I started writing To Be Well, which among other things directly addresses the idea that Link does not think of himself as a "real person"---and that he isn't sure if he wants to.

As I've written him, I've found more and more about him and his setting that fascinates me. Part of this is certainly that Link is intentionally designed as a "placeholder" character (word of God is he was deliberately designed to be androgynous to make it easier for more people to project on him). At first I was really fascinated by his relationship with Zelda, and wanted to look at that through a queerplatonic lens. In doing that I found myself trying to work through some problems of my own, which it turns out is just how I write fanfiction I guess: projecting! Huzzah! I decided to lean into it, and wrote "You do not have to be good," which is a story that takes some liberties with the canon to explore the subject of toxic purity and the toll it takes. Also, the logistics of kissing someone with a beak.

What makes Link compelling to me is ... what do you do, when you aren't allowed to be a person? What do you do when you've been told all your life things are like this and this and this, and that you must behave thusly?  What if you learn it was never true? How do you go from "perfect" to "real"? What does it even mean, being a person? How do you start? Is it even worth it?

I feel like I'm only scratching the surface, haha. I also love Link for whatever the hell he's doing with gender, and I've been having an absolute blast writing him as predominantly communicating via sign language. I'm playing fast and loose with a lot of things that only get half-mentioned in canon, and having a good old time playing in the sandbox of Hyrule. They're huge games and there's a lot of space for me to set up shop!

hi idk if you're a huge kalos fan but how are you feeling about the direct

I haven't watched it yet, but ngl Kalos wasn't my favorite OR my least favorite pokemon game, I was pretty neutral on it overall. My main complaint was how annoying the map was to traverse before you got fly, but aside from that it was fine, introduced some cool pokemon and had a decent plot. Tbh for the next Legends game I would have preferred Jhoto, but eh. It's not a huge deal to me.

My real issue is that it's a little hard to get excited about it when I know how bad crunch is at Game Freak and that despite saying they were reevaluating their tight release cycle bcs like, ScarVi was borderline unplayable at launch and Arceus got abandoned the second they were done with it despite being the most popular game in years....I just have no faith that this game will be good, or at least it won't be anywhere near as good as it has the potential to be :/

I hope I'm proven wrong tho, and I don't think it's wrong to be excited about the game, something something no ethical consumption and I'd be a major hypocrite if I told people to drop any game company that has bad practices bcs almost all of them do, I just can't get hype. I was really, really hoping Game Freak would slow the hell down and stop making new games for a couple of years, put all of their focus on gen 10 and release that maybe in 2026 or 2027, but nope gotta make that money even if the games we release are falling apart at the seams and our devs are working on two or three projects at once.

And like, given the current trend in decreasing quality I'm genuinely unsure if the game is even going to be functional enough to be worth playing, especially since I figure to hit a 2025 release they probably started working on this right after Arceus came out, and there has simply not been enough time to make this game good. Plus there were a lot of points in ScarVi where I legit just wanted to put the game down and stop playing entirely bcs the graphics and glitches and framerate drops started to make me annoyed and dizzy, and once I was done with the main story I lost like all motivation to keep playing(I like finishing my dex, I did it in Sw/Sh and Let's Go and have almost done it in BDSP and Arceus, but I don't care about ScarVi's dex at all), and I haven't even bought the DLC yet. Tbh I'm probably not even gonna pre-order this, I'm waiting till it's out to decide if I want to buy it or not.

Anyway sorry to be a buzzkill, I don't fault anyone for being excited, I've loved Pokemon for more than half my life, it helped me meet my fiancé, it really means so SO much to me, so I get it, but like....I think I love the series too much to get excited for this. Seeing what Pokemon is turning into is just...painful and sad. I hope y'all enjoy it tho, and who knows, I could be wrong, maybe it will be fantastic and super polished and we can all breathe a sigh of relief bcs they got their shit together! That would be nice.

Edit: I do want to say I'm glad it has been 3 years instead of the usual 2, and I'm VERY glad they didn't announce gen 10, but unless the scope of this game is narrow as fuck and they also don't release until like November-December 2025 AND this team was NOT the same team who worked on ScarVi's DLC that is still not enough time to make a game with the scope they've been establishing as their new baseline. TOTK took SIX years to finish. Elden Ring's DLC was built on top of an existing game and it still took TWO whole years just to make it. Most open-world games take a really, really long time. Adding an extra year is great, but they need to be taking a lot longer than that between games. This is a step in the right direction, but it's not enough to inspire confidence.

Since I can tell you really like Rauru, this won't be something that I think you'll enjoy seeing, but I feel like I have to point it out...

He's basically an imperialist.

Yeah, I said it.

Think about it; this guy has the Hylian equivalent of the world's entire nuclear stockpile, he and his wife each wear one as jewelry, and presumably the two of them have "peacefully" asked each ruler to form an alliance with Hyrule. Is that not mildly creepy? And he doesn't give anyone who isn't a Hylian a Secret Stone until they swear absolute loyalty to him.

I'm not saying I think Rauru is the sort of person who would actually use his stone to wipe out a nation that defies him, because I don't, but just that possibility freaks me out.

And as for his one political interaction with Ganondorf, you've probably heard about the racist implications of the Middle Eastern-coded race being effectively strongarmed into swearing allegiance to the British Empire-coded race.

I'm sorry if this isn't something you wanted to see, but I feel the need to ask around about this.

I'm not entirely sure what your intention with this ask is so if you're trying to get me to get defensive or slip up and give weird poilitical opinions so you can call me out please don't, I'm just trying to have fun playing a game here.

That said I think you're absolutely right.

I've said I like Rauru because I think his character design is asthetically really cool, which it is, and I liked the emotion and drama in that one scene which I assume you've seen the post about. I also think he's great compared to king rhoam from botw who was in many instances playing a similar role, he's nicer to Link in the opening tutorial sections, and he's a much better father figure to Zelda in the memories.

You're completely right about the questionable political and imperialist implications of what goes on in the game though. Like right from the very beginning I was feeling kinda iffy about the whole gods coming down from the sky and ruling over hylians thing with the zonai, my brain was screaming colonialism, and the racial coding of the Hylians vs the Gerudo in loz has always been a problem. Which is something I liked better about BOTW and TOTK where they're the "good guys" (with the exception of Ganondorf) and there are acutally nuanced and important characters from that race, compared to earlier portrayals in games like Ocarina of Time where they're basically just evil thieves.

I haven't got all the memories yet, so I haven't seen everything and I don't know everything about the specific events with Rauru, Sonia, Ganondorf and Zelda and I can't give too many opinions on that.

The memory where all the sages swear undying fealty to Rauru as king is creepy as and I hate it. It felt very cultish and had very questionable implications.

I do like Rauru as a character and a person (so far), but i'm well aware of the problematic system he's a part of and the things he represents.

May I ask, what are the things from Breath of the Wild you disliked?

So, uh. A lot of it. I'll list out my complaints and try not to talk your ear off, but there are some stuff I liked so I'll add those at the end too!

*Cut for people who don't want to read this post*

I hate the memory format of story-telling. The small cutscenes just showcasing a day in Zelda's life didn't do much for the story. I didn't care about anything, because it didn't give me a reason to care. I didn't care that Zelda couldn't unlock her powers, or that her father was paranoid about their reputation, or that Urbosa knew Zelda's mom, (or anything with daruk. sorry man). I know they wanted to focus on exploration, fine, whatever, but there are games that can do both, have an open world, and tell a good story. Examples include TES Oblivion, Xenoblade, and I would say bayo 3 but the story in that game sucked, but it was at least present. It wasn't really until the champion's ballad DLC that i cared a smidge about anyone, and it was Mipha (love u girlie). I literally remember the first time I unlocked the secret memory, I literally said "K, and?" (Then my sister threw a pillow at me lol)

The voice acting, while good, I don't feel like belongs in a zelda game. I don't like the idea of fully voiced zelda games, especially if I can't press A to move onto the next textbox/voice clip, like I can in other games. This is nitpicky, but I can read a lot faster than people can talk

The weapon breaking system. you've heard this one from others I bet, so let me just say im glad that the fusing system in totk, along with making cool shit, repairs weapons.

The lack of big dungeons. Again, sure you've heard this one, and it looks like its coming back in totk fingers crossed

The OST. Some parts of the Ost, like the attack on the divine beast themes, are good. But the ambient sounds in the overworld I hated. I know, i know, they're there for thematic stuff, you're alone and its lonely. cool, they still suck ass though.

... exploration. ok, very unpopular opinion, but I didn't think the exploration in this game was very good. It really got old quickly for me. Because, eventually you realize all you're gonna find of note is a korok or a shrine, maybe a stable or a person getting attacked. The only thing that actually surprised me ever was lurelin village. I've been playing a lot of Skyrim and Oblivion, and the exploration in those games are great, but for a game that really takes the cake in exploration, it's Hollow Knight.

this may sound a bit hypocritical based from your last ask, but like. the lore difference. Were the three goddesses even mentioned at all? I know Hylia was, but what about the big three? My thing is that i don't want like direct things taken from other games, but there is overall lore, like the three goddesses, that i find important to world building.

the whole aesthetic of guardians and shrines and divine beasts and stuff. I think it was just stupid, theres no deeper reason i think they just look kinda stupid

Stuff I did like includes:

one hit obliterator. See, that's a great part, its my favorite part of the game, it gives a good challenge and is really just fun

Shield surfing. Nyoooommm

the different horses!

Random TotK Thoughts #4

I've crossed the 100 hour mark and most of that was spent just wandering around looking for shrines, Koroks and caves, as well as doing various sidequests. I've still barely scratched the Depths and the sky and it's not from lack of wanting to but because I just keep getting sidetracked. I start each play session with some idea of what I want to accomplish and at least 50% of them end without having done that specific thing because I wound up doing something else. It's both awesome and infuriating. xD

But I finally finished a third regional phenomenon last night, so at least I've accomplished something in terms of progressing the game. And I got my 21st heart after finishing the Water Temple, so I'm finally on the second row!

-I hadn't finished the Fire Temple when I made my last entry, so in summary: really liked the concept, but I think the execution could've been better. Manipulating minecart tracks was a fun and inspired idea; I remember there was a dungeon in one of the Oracle games that had minecarts too, and it was neat seeing it used in 3D. The atmosphere was great. However, it took awhile for me to figure out the map, and navigating the dungeon without the minecarts was confusing. And again with "activate things until boss door opens." They've really run this concept into the ground and I pray it doesn't come back in the next game.

-The leadup to the temple was less fun compared to the Wind and Water Temples. I really liked the giant boss that appeared on Death Mountain, but beating it was a joke. Armor Ghoma was also very easy, if a bit annoying, and Yunobo's ability is useful but nowhere near the level of Tulin's (or Daruk's for that matter). And while the crisis for the Gorons was rather humorous, it loses points for not having the same sense of urgency as the others I've seen. Overall I give this part a B-.

-It made me so happy to see Sidon, aka the world's most handsome shark-man, again. It's also nice that Mipha still has a presence in Zora's domain, since there's now a whole place named for her and several of the Zora mention her by name. It's kind of weird how the Rito and Goron tribes don't even mention their champions.

-I really enjoyed the Zora quest line. I did get briefly stuck when I had to find the cave where Dorephan was hiding, but that was the worst of it. The underground waterworks looked awesome, and then swimming up the massive waterfall to the sky islands was cool. So was the low gravity in that whole part. It was an interesting way to make the dungeon feel "floaty" while not actually having it underwater (and it avoids swimming mechanics as a bonus).

-Even thinking about some past water-themed Zelda dungeons gives me hives (*cough*Great Bay Temple*cough*), so I braced myself for this one. Thankfully, I found it very fun with some cool puzzles, even if it was again "activate these things to access the boss." The floating water orbs were particularly neat, if a bit unruly to utilize. I fused an Opal with a Magic Staff and that made for a very handy "water gun" for cleaning out sludge, kind of like F.L.U.D.D. Would definitely recommend it for anyone who has yet to tackle this area.

-Mucktorok was incredibly annoying, easily my least favorite boss so far. The one good thing is that he's very weak, so once you can actually corner him, he goes down fast. Doubly so if you have a powerful Zora weapon, since you're guaranteed to be wet for most of the fight.

-It's really disappointing that I've had to see nearly the exact same story of the Imprisoning War three times now (and I'm assuming a fourth when I finally get to the Gerudo).

-Getting to see Sidon take the throne afterwards was a nice extra touch. I like the theme of "the next generation taking charge" that permeates this game. Overall, I rank this scenario a B+, my favorite so far. It would've gotten an A if not for the boss fight.

-Remember the days when all of the Zora except the King and Ruto looked identical? That crowd shot at Sidon's coronation really emphasizes the work Nintendo's done over the years in making all of the members of the various (non-Hylian) races of Hyrule look distinct. I feel like this is especially true of the Zora and Rito tribes.

-I got the next two Dragon's Tears as well since my last update. I wish I could say I was shocked over Sonia's murder but it was really obvious she was destined to get "fridged" sooner or later. (And it was shown right there on the carvings in the prologue...) The cutscene itself was disappointing too, because she and Zelda just stood there after the fake Zelda disappeared. If they'd at least have looked around or started to talk about what they were going to do next, it would've made things seem a whole lot less contrived.

-Ganon's evil laugh was glorious though. And oh man...I just LOVE his Demon King design. It combines the coolest elements of Demise's design and it looks amazing. This guy definitely looks the part of an omnipotent evil force.

-I love the way they animated Rauru too as he went from barely contained anger to full-on rage mode. The way his ears vibrate and he bares his teeth before his third eye opens and he lunges...he was totally ready to rip Ganon apart bare-handed right there and then.

-I would've loved to have seen Rauru actually fire a holy hand grenade for that matter. Can't help but be a little disappointed there. We already know he's going to sacrifice himself to seal Ganon away, so I only hope we get at least one more instance of seeing him do something badass before then.

-I'm probably going to wander around awhile longer before I tackle the desert. I still haven't killed my first Gleeok, so that's on the to-do list, and I want to map out more of the Depths and upgrade my batteries as well. Maybe I'll finish collecting the Dragon's Tears too. We'll see. There's still SO MUCH to do!

I think after finishing the game and then watch my brother beat it on his own, I've got a few thoughts in regards TOTK's story and a few nitpicks, so All Spoilers beneath the cut:

First of all, I feel like the game just kind of wasted a lot of potential gray morality that you could've found in the conflict between the Ganondorf and Rauru. Because, regardless of whether Ganondorf was a good leader to his people or not prior this, the fact that Rauru was looking to unify all lands and ultimately, to have them swear fealty to the Hyrule kingdom, it's all glossed over. From that point of view, at the very least, you can understand Ganondorf's hostility towards Hyrule (and this is where I get pretty mad: he doesn't need to be redeemed or even be justified in his evil, but I would've loved to see Ganondorf be written like a more layered villain. I was very excited to see him, but he just feels a lot like TP's incarnation: he looks cool and does memorable shit, but he doesn't feel like an 'interesting' character outside being a force of evil. He's definitely the most intimidating Ganondorf to date, but even with Matt Mercer's great performance, he comes across as very flat).

Also, how the only living zonai that we ever see before the imprisoning war are Rauru and Mineru, and there's never a clear explanation about what happened to the rest of them. It is assumed they once were living in Hyrule long before their times, so what happened to them to go extinct? There's no hints given on whether it was because of Demise or was it something else. And the fact that there's a lot of new facts that contradict previous lore doesn't make it easier to figure out (which isn't new for a Zelda game, but man you would think that they keep track of their own lore at this point).

Ultimately, I feel like the ending is wrapped up very eagerly with a positive note, with both Zelda and Link recovering what they lost (her humanity and his arm). Though this isn't new for a Zelda game, I felt like it would've been more impactful to have Link lose his arm forever in exchange of bringing Zelda back to her human self.

And to be honest... I am kind of getting a bit tired of having pieces of the story given to me out of order. It wasn't so bad in BOTW, but in TOTK I wish I could've watched these important events in their chronological order, because it's kind of anti-climatic to watch the scene where Zelda meets Sonia and Rauru for the first time and the next one I get is of Ganondorf killing Sonia. so.... yeah, not a fan.

Gameplay-wise, this game is my favorite out of all Zelda games. I loved the amount of freedom that the game gives to you, but after doing 90+ shrines, I think I'm starting to miss the old long dungeons.

(Also, feel free to disregard the following paragraph, that's mostly just me being old and complaining about things that aren't necessarily bad or a real concern for others) And about the open world: I loved exploring the world and doing the little side quests, but you know what I'm not a fan of? The amount of hours I spend doing the exploring. I'm a bit of a completionist and combining that with my reduced my free time has become and all other games I wish to play besides this, an open world this big is not a great thing for me. I think that this is why I don't play Wind Waker as often ad OoT in spite of the former being my favorite: the world is too big and I only have so much free time to dedicate to a videogame in which I could spend 30-20% of that time traversing a map from one objective to another. And WW is a pretty linear game: TOTK is not exactly linear, in fact, I may get a dozen of new distractions while I travel from one objective to another, so that's my problem amplified.

But other than that, TOTK is a great game, and if people wanna call it the best of 2023, it's very well-deserved. But personally, I think I'm a bit disappointed with how some things came out and how this may be the new direction they want to take new Zelda games, if there will be more in the future.

I've been playing Starfield properly for a week now, and some thoughts:

I think the most important thing to say is: I am having fun. I am enjoying playing this game.

But i do worry about the games... legs so to speak. I played Fallout 4 for like... a whole year. By the time i felt like i was running out of base game, the first expansions were dropping.

Starfield is... a different beast. It doesnt have one big, large, handcrafted map. Its got a lot of procedurally generated maps, with random bits and pieces. And so there isn't much exploring. And its the exploring i kinda like with Bethesda? The only other games i've played that have made an open world feel so alive are.... BOTW/ TOTK. Like, open world is a dime a dozen these days, but most of them are empty Ubisoft-likes (what i call "checklist open worlds").

But Starfield, by virtue of being a space exploration game, cant quite have that handcrafted touch I know and love from Bethesda. Like, theres only a handful of ways to do a space exploration game and thats: - you limit the exploration to a handful of locations, each with a handcrafted map. But you lose the feeling of the vastness of a galaxy (This is what ME: Andromeda and The Outer Worlds did) - You lose the open world maps, and go with more focused areas. You get a chance to show more planets, but you lose the exploration feeling. (.... This is what the first ME Trilogy did, and theyre not exactly exploration games) - You procedurally generate as much content as possible, and only add handcrafted touches when theres a specific quest. You get the vastness of the galaxy, but it loses many places of actual interest. This is what Starfield has done.

And so... one atmosphere-less planet is kinda the same as another? The colours may change, but largely youre only there because you have a quest there, or you need a specific resource that that planet has in abundance. The places of interest just arent that interesting. And most of them are atmosphere-less planets (Because... thats most planets we've discovered after all)

The game also does take a whiillle to start to open up. I've got over 24 hours of playtime clocked up (though i imagine a good 3-4 hours are just idling on menus as i do things like... cook) and i've largely just travelled between Alpha Centuri and Sol.... I've just made the trip to Akila, i've spent all of 5 minutes in Hope Town, and I have no idea where Neon even is. Theres nothing really between those places, its just fast travelling everywhere. And i'm usually a fast travel abuser, but sometimes the best moments in a Bethesda game are when you slow down and take the scenic route, yaknow? Locations needing fast travelling between them kinda ruins that a bit. And theres generally not 2 settlements on the same planet, despite that probably making a lot of sense (if Jamison is good for human habitation, why is New Atlantis the only settlement we can visit?), so theres not exactly any real random encounters on the ground maps.

My hope that the roleplaying in this game was better than FO4 because they ditched the voice protagonist was in vain. Theres kinda 2 options to continue most conversations, and anything below the first 2 (maybe 3) options are Questions to learn more - but not to move the conversation to the next part of the tree. I havent seen a huge number of skill related dialogue options, except like... medicine? Thats the one ive seen pop up the most.

Performance wise, i've largely not had any issues. Couple of crashes, but thats par for the course with Bethesda. .... But i noticed some obvious frame rate dips in Akila. Like, something in that location the xbox just did not like. But nowhere else. I also paid for a month of game pass ultimate so i could swap between my pc and xbox and see what i liked. ... I havent even tried to play on pc, because i'm happy enough on xbox. That, and the pc keybindings are... uuhh a problem. The game has so many different controls going on that i cant move WASD to any other controls without breaking some other system. Arrow keys are vital somewhere else. IJKL is vital somewhere else.... I'm not playing with WASD, because thats uncomfortable (i'm using the wrong hand for it!). And theres no point in playing on a controller on my pc, lol. I may as well play on the comfy sofa if i want to play with a controller. Will probably mess with my ability to play many mods, but honestly... i'm still uncertain about how much i'll care about the game by the time people start making some real good mods.

IDK man. I'm having fun, i'm enjoying the game. But it probably is a 7/10 game, yaknow? Theres a lot of things holding it back, but those things are also fairly central to the actual vision Bethesda had. Jurys still out on how much blorbo thoughts i can get out of this, mostly because I still dont quite know enough about the world to get a backstory going on. And thats going to be the thing that really makes everything else click. But even then, I could get an okay enough backstory out of The Outer Worlds and that never clicked, because the game just didnt have enough content for me to Really Care.