I dont think anybody feels that 13 minutes is a long video for you Tim We'd love more content if you got it in ya

I really like the idea of newspapers, especially for the theme of Arcanum. Even if the content wasn't as complex as you wanted it to be. Like the news station in Bloodlines. I've yet to see a person who didn't express delight at the TV reporting on things that happened earlier in the game, and stuff outside what you're seeing. It seems simple, but it really helps make it feel like there's a world outside your little bubble.

Might be a touchy subject right now but I would love your reaction when you heard of the whole unity fiasco as a developer yourself, would be really cool to hear your opinion and maybe some facts on how companies in this field would work in your time vs now . Thank you man 🖤 you great!

Have you played Kingdom Come: Deliverance? It is a realistic RPG set in medieval times. I think it is one of the best RPGs that came out in the last decade.

love that you’re okay with save scumming! the thing that i think gets left out of the save scumming debate a lot, imo, is that experimenting with different outcomes is often part of the fun of a save-anywhere game! maybe you get a chance to kill an allied NPC, and you don’t want to commit to that decision long-term, but you’re curious to see what happens if you pick the option. try it out, reload, pick the option you wanna commit to. it’s super fun! i think this is also underrated from a choice and consequence design perspective, because it allows people to see that their choices actually have an impact in a way that can be very unclear without replaying in games that don’t allow saving anywhere. i’ve played games long enough that i tend to be skeptical of games that promise choice and consequence. whenever i’m presented with a given choice of seemingly great consequence on a first playthrough, i immediately wonder if it’s an illusory choice. most of the time, i find that it is in subsequent discussions. and that’s fine! but what really blows me away is reloading a previous save, trying the other option, and finding that the game actually backs up its promise. that’s a great joy of gaming for me, and without save scumming, it wouldn’t happen. not that i think games which incorporate saves that are in some way limited into the design are bad! there are definitely advantages to that approach. but the freedom to try multiple approaches and decide on one as “canon” is really valuable to me.

Hey Tim, question for you: are there any people or companies you always wished you could have worked with? What was it that brought them to your attention and instilled that desire?

I am a South African and we were even taught about Vietnam onwards in our History classes in High School. Although our complaints in our country are that we always do Apartheid every year. It can be annoying as it is always the same parts for Apartheid that we learn.

That’s it! This needs to be said, this man is a national treasure! I look forward to his videos every day. Thank you Tim!

Hi Tim! Thank You for your daily uploads, love hearing your stories! Please keep them coming ❤

Food catering question killed me lmao

Your mother always sounds like a true hero. Every time you mention her its always her having your back.

Reuse of some of Pillars of Eternity sound effects in Outer Worlds was a nice throwback.

Would be amazing to hear your recommendations for some of those unheard of great games which lacked adequate marketing.

I love your videos, sometimes they seem so short, but I understand you don't want to sit here for an hour every day. But then, I don't watch them daily. Today I have the pleasure of watching 3 videos in a row! I also agree with that bullet sponge thing. I would rather have it like: On lower difficulty, you go wipe out a bandit camp and the bandit leader is a solid boss, but not too hard. On the hardest difficulty, the leader is the equivalent of a ninja, he still has the same HP and damage, but he is faster, more skilled etc. This kind of challenge thrills me way more than bullet Spongebobs, because you actually have to strategize.

Loving the Rap Hands in the thumbnail Tim!

I think some of the stuff you said about boss encounters and save scumming could make for great shorts on here. Great advice.

if only that History teacher had been more willing, we could have gotten our Vietnam war-era class based RPG

Thank you for answering our questions! What you do is amazing for people who want to know more about the industry! Enjoy your Sunday!

i do really appreciate this format for questions that are worth answering but can't reasonably be made into a full length video, would like to see more in this style in the future

having a tim as real friend is a dream :)

Tim, thank you for sharing your viewpoint. Those of us that treasure Fallout appreciate not only your willingness to talk to the community but your perspective on gaming. I am personally curious as to your viewpoint on the “live service” minefield. Is it better as a developer to have the ability to add content or is it mitigated by the apparent crush by developers to stunt creativity for the almighty dollar? Thank you for what you did and what you continue to do.

Thank you for answering the history question, Mr. Cain. Also huge respect for trying to pronounce my name, I know how tough Slavic names and surnames (Serbian in this case) can often be to pronounce. I imagine Šutilović to be quite a tongue twister haha.

Thank you for all the videos! Just found your channel a few days ago after I started my first playthrough of Fallout. I just beat the game today!

A (supposedly) short question, Tim! How did putting out daily videos affect your life? In good/bad/unexpected ways. Any interesting observations? Thank you for doing them

Videos are never too long so far everything he puts on here is really interesting

I hate the whole high difficulty high hit points system. I think Bungie did a good job of getting around that in Halo. Almost every enemy had cosmetic armour that could be broken off after a few shots, then a few well placed shots would finally down the hostile. They had weak points too so you could make armour piercing shots. I wish more devs would look at implementing stages rather than high pools of hit points.

These daily uploads are spoiling us

I think best way to prevent save scumming is to make the fails interesting. Disco Elysium is a good example

I really appreciate that you take the time to read comments and answer questions. I'm sure others have asked, but I'd love to hear your thoughts about the Unity situation. Is it viable for a solo dev to create their own engines now? Or is something like Godot a better option, since it's open source? I'm learning to code, so if it's feasible then I would absolutely want to learn how to make an engine. I know you've made comments in past videos about engines, and based on those I was ready to try Unity, but that seems like a really bad idea now.

Hi Tim, you have talked several times how great durability was implemented on Fallout 3. After hearing about the newspapers on Arcanum, I would like to hear your opinion on Fallout 3's radio, specially Galaxy News Radio.

Hey Tim been loving the videos you've been making and all the insight, if you're able to comment I'd love to hear your thoughts on the many fan made projects of the original fallout games that have been made. From someone who personally grew up with fallout 1 and 2 and later found these to be my new nostalgic home. (bar the replays of the originals every few years) Especially since there is such a vast amount of both singleplayer and even multiplayer versions.

Hey Tim what are your thoughts on Unitys recent plan to charge developers on a per-install basis?

Do you have an opinion on the unity situation with them charging pay per install?

On the subject of bosses, i think a lot of newer RPGs have forgotten the importance of trash mobs. A lot of boss fights end up feeling really grindy even if the boss itself is interesting, because no matter how good the combat is, itll eventually settle into a pattern with any one enemy. Ran into this a bunch in the recent Final Fantasy 16, especially with the final boss, who even had multiple stages! But each stage was still long enough that i found myself doing the regular combat rotation, and it really got tedious.

Love the videos❤❤❤ I would really love for you to talk about all the fallout games. What did you like from each game and what would you have done differently if you were in charge? Also what would you do and where would you take fallout 5?!?

14:15 also thank you for answering my question from a previous video in essentially 5 seconds. Side note that I am hoping with some of the tech Unreal 5 is giving the gaming industry, Bethesda may be able to run it in parallel with existing engines to make graphical and frame rate enhancements without sacrificing the engine they built.

I am cool with asset reuse, I relay liked the old system of a new game then a follow-up using mostly the same assets with a new story. It lets the dev's refine a few systems and kick out a new game fairly fast, I dont see a down side. Save Scumming is fine, most people dont do it & there's no point spoiling the fun of people who do, at times it's relay handy when you want a outcome in the story your making as you play.

Hello Tim. I'm wondering... did you and Leonard discuss any of the criticisms of Outer Worlds recieved when it came out in 2019?, and if any, have you learned anything from those criticisms that you take into Outer Worlds 2 going forward? :) Hope you can answer, just broadly.

What do accessibility features say about a player? Some games revel in difficulty or get attacked for accommodating different audiences, but, how do you feel about players who just want to enjoy the story? When your teams are considering combat/skill trees, does the opportunity to have your cake and eat it too devalue the system you have built? Is there a way to accommodate players with disability whilst keeping the pressure on?.

Put the questions in the description with timestamps. Then it'll make like chapters and people can find questions in q&a videos without having to watch the whole video.

A non-computer game question - though I suppose it links back to computer games: Have you played the Fallout board game? If not, why not, and if so, good, bad, indifferent?

I finished Fallout for the first time and currently am playing Arcanum for the first time because of these videos. So I want to contribute to the question pool. A triple whammy here for you. You have said that you crammed every feature someone could think of into Arcanum. At what point do you think you should have stopped adding features? What features if any do you feel should have been removed or not added? What features were not completely finished as a result of having so many features? i.e. newspapers

Hype, let's goooo

Hey Tim, Since finding your KZfaq I've wanted to know if you follow the Fallout 1&2 Mod scene? there are a number of total conversions of the original games (Mostly by Russians, but most are translated) Fallout Nevada, Olympus 2207, Fallout:Sonara is one I'm very interested in once the translation is finished. Mutants Rising is another that has been in development for a long time. just wondered what your thoughts are on people making mods of games you've worked on.

Hey tim its me, Josh. Im in the process of reading my absolute tome of Goodman Games version of Temple of Elemental Evil fifth edition and I think it might have references to your game version of Temple. Unfortunately I never played your game (sorry) but I will keep you updated if I have any hard evidence on that since I bet it would be neat if something you made cross pollinated with one of your favourite modules.

I'd be curious to know your thoughts on artificial difficulty in video games. This includes things such as camera and autotargeting shenanigans some players might not even notice, but stick out like a sore thumb to others; become more aggravating than enjoyable; and can snap a player right out of the game. And this seems to be becoming the norm in video games. A good example would be a game that uses lock-on mechanics, but even if autotargeting is turned off, the target lock will nonetheless shift around to different targets than the one that was manually targeted as the player moves around. I've even had the camera whip around a full 90 degrees as the targeting system tried to find something -- anything -- else to lock onto rather than what I had manually targeted. One game I've played surrounds the target with fantasy versions of everything from deer to rats to dragonflies to insure that securing that target lock is next to impossible. Some might argue such developer shenanigans are better than the bullet sponge notion of difficulty, but if I feel the hand of the developer manipulating the experience to that degree, I find immersion in the game world impossible. All I can think of as I play is what the developers are doing. Same with camera tricks of one kind or another. Difficult means challenging and there must be so many other ways for a game to present a challenge (or, as I'd prefer to think of it, to invite players to challenge themselves) than blatantly obvious developer tactics such as these, you'd probably have a hard time listing them all. There are also plenty having nothing to do with combat though you rarely see them anymore, e.g. particularly difficult dialogue checks. Where do you see the idea of difficulty going in the game development community?

Thanks Tim! What are your thoughts on the recent Unity developments? Also, what do you think about Starfield now that its been out for a bit (assuming you have played)?

What are your thoughts on microtransactions and/or season passes? If you would implement one into a game, how would you?

Hi Tim, can you please explain more about how a quest system is created in code? Do you use a database or just classes? There are variables only or entire records? And how do you change the quest states and do branching depending on the various paths provided and chose by the players. Thank you.

If you had to cut down a scope for an RPG, what would be the first things to go? Let's say you have complete control, but you need to get the scope down because it's a small indie team.

Question: what are a few things from game design/development that you think are readily applicable in other fields? For example, I am a new lawyer, what aspects of your experience in game dev would be in mind if you were giving a talk to myself and my associates at work?

Hey Tim! Thanks again for your insights! I was wondering what your thoughts are on speech check mechanics and whether you prefer telling the player if a certain dialogue option is a skill check (like in most modern CRPGs) or not (like in the original Fallout). I feel like both approaches have their drawbacks (e.g. metagaming* in the former case and lack of feedback in the latter, among other things), so it would be great to hear your ideas on how they could be mitigated. * By metagaming I mean that, in most CRPGs, if you have a speech check option in a dialogue, it almost always leads to the best outcome. New Vegas had a notable exception to this with Dean Domino, who'd get pissed if the player tried to use speech skills on him. But he was just one NPC who appears rather late in the game, so this mechanic always felt like an exception rather than something to be wary of while using skills in dialogues.

With the moody lighting and dark clothes it seems like this is 'Dark Tim'

i know for you as a game developer it's hard to criticise other games but i would like to see examplex from games when you speak generally, your college Josh Sawyer made a youtube video where he analyses dialog systems in RPGs and he shows screenshots from popular RPGs and evaluate pros/cons on each of them... that is really(!!!) really(!!!) helpful, i could immediately grasp what he means, without the examples just the dry bullet point would have been like farts in the wind, examples are extremely important and visualization of those important too so for example you talked about boss mechanics and difficulties and you talked mostly in general, would have been miles better if you cited boss fights from popular video rpgs that back your general points

@15:14 A LITTLE LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK!! Amen. no need to re-invent the wheel mechanics-wise for every new chapter.

What do you think about new Unity policy?

If you ever do one of these again, here is my question: Do you think we could ever build a stat/skill/attribute system that accurately applies to a human being? I've been wrecking my brain with this idea for a while. For example Intelligence. My guess would be its made up from many many little ways of thinking and how fast you process a certain thing. But then that speed isn't just innate and it depends on experience and whether or not you considered the same thing at some point in the past. That was before I even got to physical attributes and differences in strength between a bricklayer, blacksmith, boxer, strongman, bodybuilder etc.

I remember you said to baked a ton of different things. I was thinking you could make a pretty good cooking tutorial for some of your favorites that you haven't featured in a game manual?

Atleast checkpoints evolved correctly in early 2000s it was common to have checkpoint right before non skippable 3 min cutscene...

Fallout 2, New Vegas & even 76 are all often regarded as better than their predecessors in multiple ways and what they all have in common is the recycled assets they used from them.

Tim, what are your thoughts on the factions of New Vegas, and which faction is your favorite/the one you think is best for the wasteland? What are your thoughts on factions in RPG stories more broadly?

Hi Tim, I want to know the thought process and development when it came to the decisions with Arcanum's unique sound track and the voice actors that were hired for the game.

Hey Tim, I’ve got a question. You’ve talked about a lot of content you had to cut. Is there any cut content from any of your games that you really wish you’d been able to include but couldn’t due to time/budget/ technology issues?

Hi Tim, do you have any thoughts or experiences you'd like to share about DLC in general? We had expansion packs in the 90's and now we have DLC which generally feels smaller but gets made faster etc... Love your channel! :)

Hey Tim, because of Fallout I got into GURPS, it's become my second favorite TTRPG next to Traveller, I don't think I would have ever heard of GURPS if it wasn't for Fallout. I don't know if you answered this already so forgive me in advance if you have but are you at liberty to discuss what cause the deal between Steve Jackson Games and Interplay to breakdown and if you could make a game using GURPS would you? Cheers 🥂 and here's hoping OW2 has a AAA budget, I enjoyed OW despite its limitations. I wanna see what you guys can do on a AAA level.

Surprised to see such nonchalant attitude towards save scumming. Personally I prefer if it is limited, because if it isn't, the temptation to use this unlimited time travel mechanic is too great. I think I would have enjoyed e.g. Baldur's Gate 3 more if I could not save anywhere anytime. Every game should have a "save and exit" feature though, and allow pausing anytime. I liked how Kingdom Come limited save scumming with its saviour schnapps.

I've heard a few game developers like Warren Spector say that they didn't want to make fantasy games anymore because they couldn't tell original stories in that context and I've been wondering if that's really the case. Do fantasy games have to be about saving the world from dragons? is there more room for story telling in fantasy settings or do we have to go to contemporary or sci-fi settings to find new content?

Hi Tim, do you have any insight into the design influences for Fallout's power armor? Looking at it without any background info I see influence from both Star Wars stormtroopers and the power armor from Warhammer 40k, but obviously you would know more.

Oh man I want Tim to run my d&d campaign. :D

I can relate to your history class thing a bit. My world history teacher had to drop out and go back to school herself, and then the one who replaced her had some... issues he needed to address. So there's a huge gap in my history education, which I've since filled with KZfaq videos. I have some really good channels I'd like to share if you're interested. I'll reply to this comment with them this evening.

Your thoughts on Alpha Protocol? Most reactive game I have played.

Has anyone asked about that one conspiracy quest in Arcanum? WOULD LOVE to know what were your intention and ideas surrounding that quest considering it ends in a cliff hanger.

@1:00 One should consider history after 1945. One should also consider history before that date.

Newspapers as they are feel great. Removing them or not doing them would made Arcanum a weaker game.

for the asset reuse i think devs should be careful about making things too familiar? in fallout 76 for example, a lot of assets were reused from fallout 4, which isn't a bad thing in itself, it's just that fallout 4 had a very distinctive and well realize art style so it was very obvious when playing 76 when i'd already seen something somewhere else. also fallout 4's loot system made it so you were constantly interacting with the environment, and looting things hundreds of times, so you were really familiar with container assets and such, which were reused for fallout 76. it was just a little too similar for my tastes.

Hey Tim! I know you're an original IP over sequels guy, but if you did have the opportunity to work on any existing game franchise, what would it be and what would you want to do with it?

@3:36 What kind of purpleberry food was promoted?

thankyou Tim

Will outer worlds 2 be AA as well? And how direct is your involvement in the development and design and vision of Outer worlds 2? (Yours and Leonard's both i would like to know about)

What do you think of the Unity engine mess that’s going on and how it’s gonna affect developers?

Hey Tim I’ve been wondering why are so many companions in games seem to have little to no agency ? In most of the rpgs I’ve played they’ve gone along with almost anything I’ve done. Even if they get upset and decide to leave they didn’t try to stop me in anyway.

I will never ever understand the idea of wanting devs to never ever reuse any assets. Of course there are *some* assets that stick out too much (I definitely got taken out of the game in Fallout 4 when I noticed that the armor workbench used the same audio asset as Skyrim's smithing workbench), but in general you can't say that you want less crunch then also say you don't want any asset reuse.

9:50 BG3 has done such a good job with its bosses. Grym at the Adamantine Forge comes to mind when you mention the stage and stages.

hey, just wanted to let you know that your microphone is clipping/getting loud a bit. To fix this you can just lower the gain a little bit until the peaks go under the red line on the db meter in a video editor :)

Hey Tim! I read on resetera that Troika had a Might & Magic pitch around the time that Vampire was released. Are you familiar with the pitch at all? The person responsible for the pitch didn't have access to his documents anymore. Love your videos!

Have you heard of a game callrd Underrail. People seem to associate it a lot with the fallou 1&2 games

I do project management for student projects in a game design course. And i do project management for an in house game that is currently being developed as well (its demo is on steam called Mayu Last of Yaksha, inspired by our indian culture and myth). Do you have any tips and/or advice on how to approach project management? In general or specific.

TBH, most AAA games now are pretty terrible or unfinished and not worth the cost. Don't get me wrong, there are bad AA and Indie games that are also cash grabs, but it seems that they have more love and passion in them.

What's your impression of Morrowind?

Are we asking the questions here or another Platform?

Hi Tim! I think your shirt might be inside out.

You’re up early lol

Is there any bad games out there that had a huge marketing budget??? =p

Shouldn’t scope be quadratic?

Tim, a friend of mine calls all video game Bosses “Leaders.” And thinks I’m the weird one for saying boss. Is she a psychopath?

Haha

yo how late is it for you?

don't think many people are gonna use unity anymore lol

Aw, man,...he never answered my question. 🥺

Man I graduated High School in 2009 and we didn’t even really Learn about anything after WW2. We had a class CALLED “current events” but the teacher was this arrogant pompous jerk and it just turned into him going on about philosophy 101 that would blow the mind of high schoolers but I ALWAYS SAW THROUGH HIM 😒