Lore question about telecom technologies and Codsworth

[prinyo]

First I need to say I have played only several hours of FO3 and FONV. I've read texts and watched videos explaining the FO world and before I started FO4 it somewhat made sense. 

Then within the first hour of FO4 I witnessed a scene where a flying intelligent robot has an emotional nervous breakdown while hovering next to a black and white tv. Umm, what?

Then you see the vintage FM radios, the ham radio and so on.

A civilization is able to create advanced AI and to experiment with cryogenic technologies while been completely stuck on the ways of communication.

There are terminals but there is no internet ( or whatever it might be called). 

All communication is analog and unreliable.

Black and white tv... umm, no. Just no.

The black and white screens all over the in-game world are a big thing in and for the game and seem important "immersion" selling point. Some people even play the FO on black and white because "that's the right way". I always found it illogical and in-game world breaking.

From the hours I played FO3 and FONV and from what I read it seems the games want to show us a world, that looks to the player like some kind of a vintage mid-20th century American reality. 

And now - here come cryogenics and Codsworth and nothing makes sense anymore. OK, maybe there is a way to add cryogenics to the world without breaking it too much. But emotional self-aware highly intelligent flying robot? How does it fit in?

And not only with the world. How does this emotional self-aware highly intelligent flying robot even exists with no telecommunication possibilities?  

 

So yeah - Codsworth, how does he fit within the lore? 

[darkconsole]

the same way all the mr handy units do. general atomics made them. he only has a name because his humans were being human lol. http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/General_Atomics_Galleria

 

i get your bit about the tv. and i think the fact the mr handy robots hover with a jet engine is retarded. but blah blah suspension of belief to enjoy the game.

 

side note, have you fought a mr gutsy yet? those damn robots are creepy as fuck when they have no armor left. like a five night at freddies nightmare machine.

[prinyo]

Well, from the point of view of the user enjoying the game it is quite simple. The game doesn't expect you to think and care about stuff - just shoot everything that moves and be happy. 

But there is the question of the lore. It seems a big deal within the modding community - I've seen countless comments and discussions about how a mod fits into the lore of a game. And most of the modders will respect the lore. Sometimes trying to expand it in a way to make their mods work within it. 

 

It seems to me that the presence of Codsworth and the others frees the modders from all this because it voids the lore as such and cancels it.

There is no FO4 lore, so the mods can do whatever they want without the need to defend themselves.

If you want to put Rumpelstiltskin in the game - go ahead. He would be no more out of place than the vanilla additions. And no "lore nazi" can object...

 

Keeping in mind that the inteligency, selfawarenes and emotional sides of  Codsworth make him as advanced as C3-PO for example, I really don't see how he can fit in the FO4 world and lore.

[DocClox]

It seems to me that the presence of Codsworth and the others frees the modders from all this because it voids the lore as such and cancels it.

There is no FO4 lore, so the mods can do whatever they want without the need to defend themselves.

If you want to put Rumpelstiltskin in the game - go ahead. He would be no more out of place than the vanilla additions. And no "lore nazi" can object...

Well, your average "lore nazi" will object anyway. A lot of folks will take the view that the lore is whatever is in the game, and that later lore has the effect of retconning earlier games where contradictions are found. So best of luck with that

 

Keeping in mind that the inteligency, selfawarenes and emotional sides of  Codsworth make him as advanced as C3-PO for example, I really don't see how he can fit in the FO4 world and lore.

Well, as far as I know, the canon explanation of Fallout tech is that they never invented the transistor. So where we had silicon chips, their IT was restricted to vacuum tubes and how small they could make a valve. So their computing generally lags behind ours. On the other hand, they embraced atomic energy wholeheartedly, so a lot of high energy tech is very good indeed.

 

They did have networks. It wasn't so much the Internet but more like the early days of Usenet, when the number of sites was in double digit and most of them military or academic. You can find emails on terminals throughout the game, but the bombs seem to have knocked everything offline and no one has had the combination of time, skill and motive needed to re-establish a commonwealth-wide network.

 

For AI, the lack of transistors probably means we need to assume some other technology at work, like Asimov's positronic brains, perhaps; solid state and nicely atomic sounding, but without the need for semiconductor junctions.

 

In general though, if you want to make a mod, make it how you like. You'll get extra kudos if it seems to fit the setting well, but if you insist on making a mod that creates nanorobot pills that transform the player into a flying unicorn who has magical powers from the Q-Continuum and which is only vulnerable to Red Kryptonite ... well you can probably expect some sarky remarks.

 

At the end of the day though, make the sort of mods you want to play. Some of my favourites over the years have been ones that said up front "this isn't lore friendly, nor is it intended to be" while others have been the ones that took particular care to fit into the setting.

[DexesTTP]

It is hinted several times in the game that there is a technological thing called "personality module" or similar, and that "learning AI" is a known and used part of computer technologies.

Codsworth, much like Curie or the robots at Graygarden are using such learning modules and, coupled with personality modules, can emulate human-like comportements. So, lore-wise, the presence of nearly conscious robots isn't really an unexplained thing.

The absence of internet, or for that matter of well-designed terminals, is mostly due by two things : there is only one known company making computers and they didn't have the need to make things to communicate long-distance via text (except for mostly military or company data/mails/etc).


Now, this is not an "impossible" part of the lore, in the way that it could have happened the same way for us.

Internet and the evolution of personal computers are two closely related things, and it comes from

1- the fact that computer OS sellers were always in competition (Microsoft/IBM then Microsoft/Apple)

2- a bunch of scientists wanted a quick way to share data.

It seems like the antitrust law didn't exist in the Fallout universe, although I can't infirm or confirm it, resulting in a monopoly of the tech sector by General Atomics and RobCo. With RobCo the sole provider of OS pre-war, they didn't have a drive to actually make it user-friendly more than what it was, and excluding special commands (Vault-Tec pip-boy or military terminals) they stayed with the same tech.

Now, AI is another different problem of Computer Science. The way we "create" AI today was mostly discovered by mathematician in the 60s, and we didn't need to apply it to "real" projects until a few years ago, with the analysis of big data by companies such as Google or Facebook. This mostly explains why we begin to have a need for useful AI algorithms but none was made before.
In Fallout, AIs are created to handle the fact that miniaturization didn't seem to happen. Because of that, they didn't have the ability to just "crunch" data with sheer power but needed useful and low-power algorithms (mostly for war and stuff).
It just happens that learning AI, once adapted to the right situation, can be surprisingly low power (see Microsoft's CNTK or Baidu's Warp-CTC). So, they created (or rather General Atomics created) the "learning modules" to solve this power / complexity problem, effectively making AI a reality.

About the other "tech inconsistencies" in the Fallout universe, we have to remember that they harnessed fusion power. This basically means that they have nearly no need nor limits for power and merely need the tech to use this power. A Ion-like engine on a robot, powerful enough to lift it off the ground is still a little unrealistic based off today's standards, but not lore-braking (they could have better ion engines tech than ours).

To conclude, the Fallout lore is like any other game's : there is a lot of "impossible" stuff that with a little imagination/knowledge we can classify as possible, but it is ultimately just a game. Even if Fallout introduces e.g. aliens, we have to make do with it and just write it down as part of the "confirmed" lore.

ps : there is no aliens in the FO universe, right ?

[Guest Mogie56]

1969 our timeline diverted from the Fallout timeline completely. super glue was invented twice, once in 1942 and again in 1951 and released to the public as Super Glue (our timeline). Fallout's  "Wonder Glue" wasn't invented until 2016. there was far less call for anything that wasn't Atomic in the Fallout universe. Comic Books were in nearly every home, in our timeline they were most popular early on. our timeline went with the low end of technology and stays away from the higher end atomic/fusion tech to a great extent. although both timelines are run by big corporations, the difference is their's is mainly military ours is mainly media. so we get a proliferation of handheld devices they get robotics and A.I. everything is disproportionate in the timelines and lore can and has changed at developers will. But in it's basic form (dates and times of important events) it is all in the "Fallout Timeline" but what happens in between those points is up to the developer. Most things make sense if you look at them from the timeline not from the game itself. 

[darkconsole]

"there is no lore"

 

there actually is... just a little. have you found the arcane dagger yet?

[prinyo]

It seems there are two different points - about the lore itself and about how Codsworth fits in the FO4 world. 

 

I agree that Codsworth can not cancel the lore because he is a part of it. And the additions of the lore can modify or cancel what was previously assumed to be part of it. But I don't agree that the creators can do "whatever they wont". That's why not everyone can be a creator.

The lore is a balanced system of facts and relations that govern the reality of the virtual world. It has to make sense to the player, to be consistent and to follow it's own logic. You can throw in some inconsistencies and rely on the system "to take it", or you can throw in some big inconsistencies. In this case you need to either alter some other parts of it in order to accommodate the new things or to provide the player with enough options to do that themselves.

If you simply irresponsibly add big inconsistencies then the system will collapse on itself.  The lore will no longer be a lore but a mumbo-jumbo.

Imagine a house that have collapsed on itself. Technically you can still call it a house but most people will consider it and call it a rubble.

The big inconsistencies cause the lore to collapse on itself, e.g. cancel itself.

Is Codsworth such a big irregularity - it probably depends on any user to decide. For me it is - because of the magnitude of the inconsistency and how important it is in the game (he can be a follower). For others probably not - he is just one of the few thingies that move that you don't need to shoot.

 

Hence my initial point that when the lore has collapsed on itself you can add any mumbo and any jumbo to the overall chaos :-)

 

Added:
I believe it is easy to underestimate the power the lore has over the modders. A good example is this "taboo" Skyrim mod - http://mod.dysintropi.me/aether-suite-3-1-0-heartbeat-heartbreak/
It adds modern architecture, interior design and lifestyle. It has unlimited potential for LL mods - it has a night club, luxurious hotel rooms, amazing modern designs, swimming pool with lockerrooms... The Skyrim engine is working perfectly fine with it. Yet it is in reality a fringe mod.
It illustrates how capable the game is to run anything and you would think the imagination is the limit. Nope - the lore is the limit. It is one thing to put a butplug up the Dragonborn's ass, another thing turning him/her into a business executive, singer at a night club, university athlete and so on.
But the Skyrim lore is quite solid. Here we have a game (FO4) that has already killed-off it's lore and presumably offers an engine that can run any kind of fantasy and story. I'm curious will the "sex mods" use this opportunity or will limit themselves into simply turning a game that is now "mindless shoot and shoot" into "mindless shoot and fuck".

[prinyo]

I keep seeing the idea that the timeline of FO has branched from ours at some point in the past. This sets the framework that the FO world is governed by the same rules of nature as ours. 

FO4 happens in 2287 and presents us with a civilization experiencing 300 years of stagnation - the music is the same, the weapons are almost the same, the clothing and armor making materials and logic are the same, the architecture is the same, the communications are the same, the transportation is the same, the tools are the same, the design of the tv's is the same, everything is the same.   ("War never changes..." Dude, nothing ever changes in your world)

 All this is a hot ball of paradoxes that destabilizes the lore from every side. I think most players overcome this by simply believing, that the world they play in is our own world in the 1960s. From this point of view everything in the world fits quite nicely. This is good working example on how the lore deals with it's problems by giving the players the options to resolve them themselves.

 

Enter Codsworth = "personality module" = "learning AI". Boom! The lore implodes. However you call it - they are all names for that "black box" kind of technology that the lore is using to kill itself.

Among all this stagnation on every single cultural, day-to-day-life, technological and so on levels, there is a single  magical technological achievement that people use for the novel purposes of dusting their houses, cleaning the floors, washing the dishes and laundering their socks...

Regardless if you believe the lore in full or you think you are playing in the 60s in our world,  Codsworth will turn everything into rubble.

 

The internet or any networks in general. Saying that "there is only one known company making computers and they didn't have the need to make things to communicate long-distance via text (except for mostly military or company data/mails/etc)." is not enough to explain why for example the overseers' terminal has nothing of that sort. Look at that terminal - this is the cutting-edge computer technology people expected at that time.

 

 

There are the magic phrases "atomic technology" and "fusion" that are used to explain everything.

Those two are simply a power source, nothing more. For example - if you want a blue light in your room you need a blue lightbulb, if you want a red light - you need a red lightbulb, if you want smartphone functionality - you need a smartphone. It doesn't matter if the electricity for them is created via coal burning, water stations, atomic powerplants, chemical batteries, solar panels or mysterious fusion reactors. 

 

[DocClox]

Like I say, if you're making the mod, you should do it the way you think it should be done.

 

I promise you that's what everyone else will be doing

[prinyo]

Like I say, if you're making the mod, you should do it the way you think it should be done.

 

I promise you that's what everyone else will be doing

 

I'm not sure if this was for me and what it is related to :-)

[Halstrom]

To me lore has always been modern/futuristic technology but with 50/60's styling

[DexesTTP]

So, yeah. Codsworth is kind of weird for a supposed "technologically lacking" society. However, Fallout isn't technologically lacking or technologically weird. It just uses tech in a way we never did, mostly because we never needed to.

 

So, just for the fun of it I'm going to make a little "quote war" thing. I respect what you think, and you have every right to believe that Codsworth or all the Fallout tech is lore-breaking. I'll just try to explain why I think it can, given the right context, make sense.

 

About the AI :

 

I think most players overcome this by simply believing, that the world they play in is our own world in the 1960s.

Enter Codsworth = "personality module" = "learning AI". Boom! The lore implodes.

The perceptron algorithm dates back to the late 1950s; its first implementation, in custom hardware, was one of the first artificial neural networks to be produced.

- from the Perceptron page

 

As I said, and as weird as it sounds, AI is something we know about for a LONG time. It is only "new" for us because we never needed it.

 

AI is actually classified in different types.

"Decisional" AI is what is used in video games, to make the enemies or NPC move and make all kinds of decisions, but these are hard-coded into the engine and given the same event twice in a row these AI will do the same thing. This is hard to make and require both a decent computing power and a good grasp of what the problem is, because you basically have to "write" a brain for your computer.

"Leaning" AI is different as it "learns" from previous events and try to find its own way to go through the event. Now, there's two ways to program a learning AI. Either learn once and apply every time the same thing (perceptron, markov, Kohonen), or continue to learn all your life (gen algs, K-means, neural networks).

In both options, the bulk of the work is done by the computer, you don't have to do many things for it except finding the right data to give it. It is also really fast to use (if you are doing the right thing with it).

 

The algorithms used in "learning" AI are actually all quite "simple", and are all really old : the Perceptron and K-means are from the late 50s, genetic algorithms and neural networks are from just after WWII, but things like the Markov chains are from as far as 1906.

 

I hope I convinced you that just because AI "feels" new doesn't mean that it is unthinkable people with laundry machines (read : analog switches) as cutting-edge technology coud use it. Because, as weird as it sounds, that's exactly what happened for us.

 

 

And, as a bottom page note, a personality module should be nothing more than a way to focus the algorithm into a specific comportement (like, focusing on friendly relations, or focusing on conflict, etc). It's in the feedback loop and not a "huge" feat, once again, given the right parameters.

 

 

About the lack of internet or good computers :

The internet or any networks in general. Saying that "there is only one known company making computers and they didn't have the need to make things to communicate long-distance via text (except for mostly military or company data/mails/etc)." is not enough to explain why for example the overseers' terminal has nothing of that sort. Look at that terminal - this is the cutting-edge computer technology people expected at that time.

I agree, it is not enough. If the world was really focused on transistor-based technology as a way to achieve greatness, the fact that a single company was working on it wouldn't be enough to explain the lack of progress in this area.

 

Let's go back to the way OS were created in our world. Back then, the cutting-edge technology wasn't supercomputers that took one entire building - it merely took half a room. And the OS was close to what we call today the "console".

 

Then, we have to wait some time to have our first graphical OS (meaning : the late 70s). It was mostly due to one thing : the creation of microcomputers for people to buy. Before that, the closest thing to a computer was some sort of cash machine. Then, as time passed, more and more people was interested in what the thing could do and as the computer's power peaked due to microchips (lots of small transistors), bigger and better things were programmed.

 

Now, the theory about Fallout is that either transistors weren't discovered or transistor miniaturization was never a thing. That means, the power peak necessary for computers to obtain a "real" graphical interface was never attained. So, maybe people just moved on from the "fancy" new computers and just used it as what it could do : store data, maybe print it and transfer it and that's all.

 

That makes the weird technology happen : on one hand, you have some kind of weird machine that can make calculus quickly, but you can't make it both quick and small - you have to choose. On the other hand, your engineers can focus on other technological things, namely using atoms and the fusion power (we'll come back to that).

 

Therefore, PCs and such always stayed kind of like typewriters for the pre-war Fallout people. We don't create new typewriter technology because we don't need it. In some situations (launching missiles/rockets, high-level physics and such) it was useful, but it still needed a full room to exist in. You could have small ones, but it could only store some data and make a printer print, maybe for the nerdiest of all play a small pong-like game. Meanwhile, you had a huge technological advance in other fields : rocket science, robotics, power, exoskeletons, maybe even history, philosophy, you name it. And there also was a war out there against China that people had to worry about.

 

 

 

About Fusion power and the "impossible" technology :

There are the magic phrases "atomic technology" and "fusion" that are used to explain everything.

Those two are simply a power source, nothing more. For example - if you want a blue light in your room you need a blue lightbulb, if you want a red light - you need a red lightbulb. It doesn't matter if the electricity for them is created via coal burning, water stations, atomic powerplants, chemical batteries, solar panels or mysterious fusion reactors.

If you've seen "Iron man" (the first one), you maybe know that Tony Stark didn't create Iron Man before the miniature ARK just because he didn't have the idea. Now, this is also a fictional universe with its own plotholes, but I think it's a good starting point for the logic behind "Fusion power" explaining everything.

 

The reason we don't use exoskeletons in our daily lives is because we can't. We have the technology. We even have some prototypes out there. However, as for prostheses, we (mostly) don't have the batteries to use it reliably, and this is the main reason we seldom see them.

 

The same thing happens for most of the technological stuff we make. This is why your phone doesn't have the power of a computer - I mean, if you remove the cooling system you could fit maybe a Titan in there and you can definitely put an i7 or similar. We just don't have the batteries to do it.

 

In addition to that, our power limit influences our technological advances too. Nowadays, someone who makes a motor consuming two times less power will nearly be more praised than someone who makes a motor going two times faster. That means most companies will invest in power usage for R&D and not necessarily in speed or torque.

 

This is also why we don't make a lot of progress regarding hover technology. We don't have the power to sustain such technologies for long. The recent questions about the EMDrive or even the recent Hoverboard discoveries aren't getting much attention, mostly because people don't wan't them but also because companies aren't interested in the results : even if the EMDrive works it will still be easier and more efficient to use a good ol' rocket to send something into space.

 

Now, if we had harnessed Fusion power as the Fallout universe has, if we had tiny little deuterium/tritium batteries to put into cars or armors. All these power problems would go away. You wouldn't hopelessly need "more power" to do something, you'd just do it and use a second core. It gives you the whole road to focus on other things. Ion-based propellant would be common place, as using lots of electricity for a little physical fuel would be better than using just fuel.

 

To stick to your analogy, if making a blue lightbulb shine is 1 Watt and a red lightbulb is 10 KWatts, you'll only make a red lightbulb if you have 9999 blue lightbulb powers to spare. Otherwise, you'll take blue lightbulbs and try to tinker them to make a reddish taint, without ever attaining the redness of the red lightbulb.

 

 

 

Conclusion :

Now, all that is pure speculation. To be honest, I'd be surprised if the people at Bethesda thought about all that and didn't just think "Cool ! Flying talking robots !", letting folks like us make up lore around it.

 

The thing is, the only thing that could really defeat all this kind of lore is if one day they give us full graphical OSes in houses and just tell us "lol we forgot we had them", or some kind of pocket-sized supercomputer. As of now, they didn't make that mistake and hopefully they don't intend to make it.

[Ernest Lemmingway]

To me lore has always been modern technology but with 50's style

 

1964 World's Fair "Future of Tomorrow" style, anyway. Which doesn't explain terminals small enough to fit on desks (it was the 1970s before electronics got that small) or even the video games in FO4 (reminiscent of 1982-1985).

 

According to a YouTube video about Fallout's history, things diverged because the transistor was never invented. Which doesn't make much sense since vacuum tubes are transistors, just big and bulky ones that produce a lot of heat. Not to mention every tech item smaller than a box radio wouldn't exist if transistors were never invented.

 

Fallout was never meant to be anything more than a sarcastic commentary on America during the Cold War going to the logical extreme. There wasn't any real lore produced by Interplay when it created the game. It all comes from where any video game lore comes from: fans and whatever ideas the publisher throws out.

[Guest Mogie56]

All of this really makes no difference to someone bent on hating Fallout 4 for every reason they can possibly think of to counter anything anyone says in favor of Fallout or it's lore or it's lack there of. You can't change a mind that is already made up and there is really no sense in trying.

[prinyo]

All of this really makes no difference to someone bent on hating Fallout 4 for every reason they can possibly think of to counter anything anyone says in favor of Fallout or it's lore or it's lack there of. You can't change a mind that is already made up and there is really no sense in trying.

 

Not sure why someone would be bent on hating something they just spent 40 or 60 euro on. Maybe they are simply disappointed and hope that someone will show them that they are wrong and they can happily enjoy the game they purchased. Or maybe they just want to discuss things they find interesting. Or maybe they live in a democratic country and are used to have a chance at voicing their opinions, especially on things they spent a lot of money on. There can be many reasons for why someone is saying something negative about a game. No person is totally evil :-)

 

Also we should not underestimate the benefits of the "bad press". I, for example, was planning to buy FO4 next year. Then I started reading all the negative comments and watching all the negative videos. And then on Steam - 25% of the reviews are negative and even the positive ones are full with complaints. So I said to my self - I want to get this game and see is it that bad. 

 

And this thread has a specific topic - the dish-washing and floor scrubbing mega-intelligent robot.  And how he and the others like him impact the lore.

If the topic was a general feeling about the game - I for one like the new dialogue system (*blushes*) and some of the others "hated" new features. They make the game feel like an interactive movie. This is a new experience for me and I like it. 

[DocClox]

 

Like I say, if you're making the mod, you should do it the way you think it should be done.

 

I promise you that's what everyone else will be doing

 

I'm not sure if this was for me and what it is related to :-)

 

Well ... I suppose I'm not really sure what you hope to achieve with this thread.

 

On the face of it you seemed to be trying to establish a consensus that Fallout lore was effectively dead and that modders should ignore it completely. I assumed at the time that you intended to make a mod or two and were seeking to shore up your position regarding lore in advance.

 

Subsequent posts however have made me wonder if this isn't an appeal for more respect for Fallout lore or merely a critique of Beth's world design. You also don't seem to be intending to mod so much as trying to establish rules that you'd like others to follow.

 

... but as I say, I'm not sure I understood your position correctly, so my apologies if any of that misrepresents your views (as some of it surely must) and I would welcome any clarification you might provide.

 

For my part, I was simply pointing out that the modding community will undoubtedly do as they have always done, which is to say that each modder will make his or her mods in the way they think best respecting or ignoring the lore to whatever extent the feel is appropriate for the mod in question. I say this because I suspect that trying to establish consensus guidelines for modders will be frustrating at best and divisive at worst while being futile in any event.

 

Anyway, I hope you now understand what I thought you were saying and what I wanted to say in return.

[prinyo]

 

 

Like I say, if you're making the mod, you should do it the way you think it should be done.

 

I promise you that's what everyone else will be doing

 

I'm not sure if this was for me and what it is related to :-)

 

Well ... I suppose I'm not really sure what you hope to achieve with this thread.

 

On the face of it you seemed to be trying to establish a consensus that Fallout lore was effectively dead and that modders should ignore it completely. I assumed at the time that you intended to make a mod or two and were seeking to shore up your position regarding lore in advance.

 

Subsequent posts however have made me wonder if this isn't an appeal for more respect for Fallout lore or merely a critique of Beth's world design. You also don't seem to be intending to mod so much as trying to establish rules that you'd like others to follow.

 

... but as I say, I'm not sure I understood your position correctly, so my apologies if any of that misrepresents your views (as some of it surely must) and I would welcome any clarification you might provide.

 

For my part, I was simply pointing out that the modding community will undoubtedly do as they have always done, which is to say that each modder will make his or her mods in the way they think best respecting or ignoring the lore to whatever extent the feel is appropriate for the mod in question. I say this because I suspect that trying to establish consensus guidelines for modders will be frustrating at best and divisive at worst while being futile in any event.

 

Anyway, I hope you now understand what I thought you were saying and what I wanted to say in return.

 

 

I completely understand your point and I can assure you I'm not trying to set rules or tell people what to do. I'm an user/player/fan who likes to discuss the game (and the mods) he is playing because it is interesting for him and because he values the discussion form as a way to get new prospective and point of view on the game. In such discussions other people help me see things I would'n have seen by myself and I hope what I say helps them do the same.

 

This is the General Discussion for FO4 forum where I have started this thread with "Lore", "technologies" and "Codsworth" in the subject so anyone who opened it get's exactly this - a discussion about those 3 topics. Nothing more, nothing less. Because it is a discussion and involves different points of views and opinions, everyone can make of it whatever they want.

 

I started this topic specifically because for me it is a "breaking bug" in the game. I'm not a point-and-shoot type of gamer and if I'm going to invest hundreds of hours in a virtual world it needs to have some kind of stability and basic logic. I have 500 hours spent in Skyrim in the past few months because this is a world where I can feel "at home". FO4 has a lot (quite a lot) of arbitrary factors and this one is especially fatal for any "immersion" attempts.

 

I'm trying to explain what are the things that I find problematic because  I hope someone will point out that I'm wrong and will help restore the order :-) If I'm going into details sometimes it is not because I want to persuade everyone that I'm right. It is because I hope I give more options to somebody else to tell me that I'm wrong. This is the "selfish" part of my posts - I hope someone will give me the reason to play the game longer than 20 - 30 hours. And when I play it again in one year with various LL mods installed to not simply turn god mode on. 

 

 

The comments about the modding aspects are purely as an user/player/fan. That's why the discussion forums exist after all :-)

However I don't agree with this : "I was simply pointing out that the modding community will undoubtedly do as they have always done, which is to say that each modder will make his or her mods in the way they think best respecting or ignoring the lore to whatever extent the feel is appropriate for the mod in question.."

Sorry to give an example with Skyrim again, but the large part of the LL mods (and some others) exist in an ecosystem. They rely on each other and work together to form a bigger picture. You can not tell people what to do but they are influenced a lot by the other mods that are already out there. Maybe they find an inspiration in a mod and make their own, maybe they see something they can add, maybe they see other mods as a good base for their ideas. For example a slavery mod - you have the bases covered - there is SL, there are animations created by somebody else, there are the "devious devices", there are outfits created that you can use. You don't need to think about everything and you are not forced to "reinvent the wheel". You can rely on the work of the fellow modders and use your time and energy to build on that creating situations and quests. 

Also the LL mods are quite lore-conformative. Maybe they do things that the lore doesn't specifically mention, but they never do things that the lore would forbid. 

I was simply pointing out that FO4 has (probably) even better technical possibilities and almost none of the lore authority and is perfect for wide variety of mods that can use it as a general virtual reality platform. If people will use this opportunity or not - it is of course completely up to them. One needs to be crazy and extremely arrogant to think they can dictate to people what they should be interested in and what they should spend their free time on. One of the main reasons there are so many good mods is because people have unleashed their creativity in things that are interesting for them. We (the users) can only hope that FO4 will inspire people the same way other games did.

[NAKEDGIJOE]

"I'm trying to explain what are the things that I find problematic because  I hope someone will point out that I'm wrong and will help restore the order :-) If I'm going into details sometimes it is not because I want to persuade everyone that I'm right. It is because I hope I give more options to somebody else to tell me that I'm wrong. This is the "selfish" part of my posts - I hope someone will give me the reason to play the game longer than 20 - 30 hours. And when I play it again in one year with various LL mods installed to not simply turn god mode on."  - Prinyo

 

Your right, it is wrong and yes there is not reason to play more than 32.7hrs.   No Need for you to make mods for it either.

 

It's not our job to give you a reason to play the game, your the one that purchased it, if you are having issue with lore, then make your own decision.  As for myself, and lore in FO 4 ...  yes  my robot flies, why , how, because I wanted one that flies and I had the money so they build it, I don't have the internet...  nope sure don't   why , how...  didn't want it, didn't need it, it was never built.    My sarcastic point here is  in the real world if there is a demand great enough, someone or some company (if possible) will fill that want or need...   what technology exist at the time of FO 4 is whatever Bethesda  says it is.    Your statement  "The lore is a balanced system of facts and relations that govern the reality of the virtual world."     Who do you think dictates facts and relations in fall out 4 , just because they have black and white TV does not  mean they could not have flying robots.... why would it?  We in real life have flown to the Moon but we still cut people open to do surgery, one advance does not mean everything advances.   We have talked to people on the moon but yet our internet speed is still limited.

 

Your statement  "

A civilization is able to create advanced AI and to experiment with cryogenic technologies while been completely stuck on the ways of communication.

There are terminals but there is no internet ( or whatever it might be called). 

All communication is analog and unreliable.

Black and white tv... umm, no. Just no."

 

Makes no sense to me...  advance AI robot but Black and white TV  umm NO !   Why not, maybe the people were not in to color TV, why do you assume if you have Robot's you must have color TV?  And internet   ... neither of which is required to build my flying robot.

 

Just my thoughts, please continue with your thoughts and enjoy the game  (or not).

 

p.s  @ Mogie56  love your sig...  posting it now on Gopher's web site.

[prinyo]

"I'm trying to explain what are the things that I find problematic because  I hope someone will point out that I'm wrong and will help restore the order :-) If I'm going into details sometimes it is not because I want to persuade everyone that I'm right. It is because I hope I give more options to somebody else to tell me that I'm wrong. This is the "selfish" part of my posts - I hope someone will give me the reason to play the game longer than 20 - 30 hours. And when I play it again in one year with various LL mods installed to not simply turn god mode on."  - Prinyo

 

Your right, it is wrong and yes there is not reason to play more than 32.7hrs.   No Need for you to make mods for it either.

 

 

Well, DocClox thinks I have ulterior motives and Mogie56 thinks I'm badmouthing the game. Hence the part of the post you put in red after taking it out of the context :-) Everything it says is that I'm trying to make sense of the FO4 and not simply dismissing it.

[DocClox]

 

"I'm trying to explain what are the things that I find problematic because  I hope someone will point out that I'm wrong and will help restore the order :-) If I'm going into details sometimes it is not because I want to persuade everyone that I'm right. It is because I hope I give more options to somebody else to tell me that I'm wrong. This is the "selfish" part of my posts - I hope someone will give me the reason to play the game longer than 20 - 30 hours. And when I play it again in one year with various LL mods installed to not simply turn god mode on."  - Prinyo

 

Your right, it is wrong and yes there is not reason to play more than 32.7hrs.   No Need for you to make mods for it either.

 

Well, DocClox thinks I have ulterior motives and Mogie56 thinks I'm badmouthing the game. Hence the part of the post you put in red after taking it out of the context :-) Everything it says is that I'm trying to make sense of the FO4 and not simply dismissing it.

 

I'm just trying to find out what you want to achieve here. I'm not accusing you of ulterior motives - I'm trying to find out what your non-ulterior motive is.

 

Look: you keep talking about us (the users) and them (the modders) as if modders were some lofty, remote figures, aloof from humanity and holding the destiny of lesser mortals in the palms of their hands. The thing about that is that this is a modder community: You have at least three active modders posting on this thread.

 

You have our attention. Why not try talking to us rather than about us?

[prinyo]

What i want is written in every post I made in this thread. I'm curious what people think about Codsworth and his place in the FO4 world and lore. And the consequences of this - for the lore, for the modding, for the player. Hence a thread named "Lore question about telecom technologies and Codsworth" in the "Fallout 4 General Discussion" forum. 

I don't "want" anything specific that's why I did not make a "mod request" thread. Is it really so hard to believe that I simply want to discuss things that are interesting to me in a place where I expect to find other people that are interested in the same things? 

 

Here is this picture:

 

 

There are 4 possible reactions to it:

1. Interesting. I wonder what happened there.

2. It is a fake.

3. Trees.. So what.. Why are you showing it?

4. (in a modding site) You mean that all the trees should be made small or should be made big?

(it is a "random pic" from Minecraft but it nicely explains everything)

 

This thread is the reaction under point 1. 

[DocClox]

What i want is written in every post I made in this thread. I'm curious what people think about Codsworth and his place in the FO4 world and lore. And the consequences of this - for the lore, for the modding, for the player. Hence a thread named "Lore question about telecom technologies and Codsworth" in the "Fallout 4 General Discussion" forum. 

I don't "want" anything specific that's why I did not make a "mod request" thread. Is it really so hard to believe that I simply want to discuss things that are interesting to me in a place where I expect to find other people that are interested in the same things?

That's fine and I really am not trying to attack you. I'm just trying to understand the point you're making. I'm guessing that English isn't your first language and I'm trying to make allowances for that. But I have to say, your posts tend to be rambling and could often be more coherent. And if all you wanted to talk about is Coddsworth and Fallout tech, then you wander off topic on a regular basis.

 

"Is it really so hard to believe that I simply want to discuss things that are interesting to me". Well no. I just want to be clear what those things are. I mean when you write something like this: 

 

But there is the question of the lore. It seems a big deal within the modding community - I've seen countless comments and discussions about how a mod fits into the lore of a game. And most of the modders will respect the lore. Sometimes trying to expand it in a way to make their mods work within it. 

 

It seems to me that the presence of Codsworth and the others frees the modders from all this because it voids the lore as such and cancels it.

There is no FO4 lore, so the mods can do whatever they want without the need to defend themselves.

If you want to put Rumpelstiltskin in the game - go ahead. He would be no more out of place than the vanilla additions. And no "lore nazi" can object...

It seems you have a concern about how modders will react to the lore as presented in the game. Since you can't change what's in the game, that led me to wonder if you wanted to affect modder's attitudes to the game. I mean given that we're apparently such a flighty, easily led bunch and prone to run off and commit un-lore-ful acts at the slightest excuse.

 

 

Hence my initial point that when the lore has collapsed on itself you can add any mumbo and any jumbo to the overall chaos :-)

 

Added:

I believe it is easy to underestimate the power the lore has over the modders. A good example is this "taboo" Skyrim mod - http://mod.dysintropi.me/aether-suite-3-1-0-heartbeat-heartbreak/

It adds modern architecture, interior design and lifestyle. It has unlimited potential for LL mods - it has a night club, luxurious hotel rooms, amazing modern designs, swimming pool with lockerrooms... The Skyrim engine is working perfectly fine with it. Yet it is in reality a fringe mod.

 

Again, apparently we're all going to do terrible things because given the existence of Coddsworth in the game we just won't be able to help ourselves, poor weak-willed creatures that we are.

 

However I don't agree with this : "I was simply pointing out that the modding community will undoubtedly do as they have always done, which is to say that each modder will make his or her mods in the way they think best respecting or ignoring the lore to whatever extent the feel is appropriate for the mod in question.."

Sorry to give an example with Skyrim again, but the large part of the LL mods (and some others) exist in an ecosystem. They rely on each other and work together to form a bigger picture. You can not tell people what to do but they are influenced a lot by the other mods that are already out there.

So I tell you that we're most likely going to do what we think works best, and you tell me I'm wrong because, again, we're all so easily influenced?

 

Can you not see why I might be a little bit confused as to the message you're trying to convey? I know you're concerned about in Coddsworth and lore of the game and I've already said everything I have to say on that topic. It's just that you also keep telling me how my creative process work. And since I don't see a direct connection there, I've been trying to ask you why, which you seem to interpret as an attack.

 

So: I understand your concerns about Coddsworth and AI in the game. I don't particularly share them, but you're certainly entitled to vent your feelings here. I do think your apparent worries about the quality of forthcoming F4 mods is probably unfounded. People will do as they've always done and accept or ignore the lore as they see fit. If it helps any, the majority of people I've talked to on LL want their work to fit into the setting, so I don't think the existence in-game of over-emotional AIs is going to bring about some apocalypse of out-of-lore modding ... unless you think that any mod featuring AI is intrinsically lore-breaking, in which case you may be out of luck in a few cases.

 

And I really do think that's everything I have to say on this subject.

[prinyo]

I can see that something I said has offended you and I would apologize if I knew what it is. But I also feel that "anything I say is wrong" so better not as already there are lots of things that I seem to have said but I actually haven't. So I'm going to assume my bad English is the reason why people see in my ramblings things I didn't actually (mean to) say.

[DocClox]

It's just that, figuratively speaking, you're standing in a room full of modders and not only talking about us as though we weren't here, but patiently explaining why we can't be trusted to make sensible decisions about what is and isn't lore friendly. It just comes across as rude, you know?

 

Never mind. Clearly you didn't intend any offence, and I'm certainly not looking for a fight. Let's leave it at that. Peace.