What Did We Play Yesterday?

Since a series of desktop crashes has brought me ever-closer to resuming my DAI completionist game, I thought I'd take a moment to grouse about something that's been bugging me.

I'm torn between being glad Bethesda decided to try a few new things with Fallout 4 and being extremely cynical about their motivations. I avoided as much buzz about this game as possible, but the two things I heard the most about were the crafting/building system and the romances.

Modders can (and are) making significant improvements on the former. I think Bethesda felt they only needed to implement the framework and let the rest sort itself out. Whatever, that's their MO apparently, and they can't even be trusted to make a decent inventory system so who cares.

But the romances seem like such a bait-and-switch. I keep forgetting most game romances don't come anywhere close to the content or quality that Bioware provides. I knew Bethesda wouldn't do as good of a job, but they gabbed about it so much I thought they would at least put some effort into it. I cannot believe there are actually Fallout 4 romance guides, as if you'd need any sort of help navigating to that point. People talk about how great it is Fallout 4 allows polyamory. Are we really gonna call this representation when it's the path of least resistance?

As far as I can tell, the romances consist of a few different dialogue lines at the end of the last "idolization" character conversation. (And not overtly romantic ones, either.) That's it. No extra conversations or scenes. It's the absolute bare minimum of content needed to claim the feature.

I might even prefer 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' sequel development. Fallout: More of That is fine. I don't like the feeling that a bunch of guys sat around a table, said, "What cool features would help sell this game to larger demographic?" figured out the minimum effort required to claim those features, and then spent half a year talking it up before release.