How Do Fallout’s NPCs Get Home?

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I married a blacksmith orc in Skyrim and his pathing or whatever must've been all fucked up bc he never went to bed. He had a bed in the corner but just made swords and ate bread. Never slept. Had to download a patch in order for my man to get some well-deserved shuteye. This is barely related to the video sorry.

I'm glad you actually went the extra mile to watch them walk places, but this has actually been known and implemented since Morrowind, albeit in much more simple form. However there are a few fun things the engine does that you didn't cover here. At the base core of how characters move in the embryo engine are two system, a dynamic movement mode that can freely move around the (currently loaded) area, and a navigation mesh (usually called nav mesh) for less dynamic but guided movement. Think of the nav mesh as system of invisible roads that cross the entire game map, plus all interior areas, and have been placed by the developers to help the game calculate routes for NPCs to take. That nav mesh usually follows the geography of the area, so it has specific "roads" that follow actual roads and paths. This is what NPCs usually use to move between any given points, both close and distant. They will generally only stop using that when either of two things happen: They follow another actor (usually the player character or their AI tells them to directly interact with another NPC right NOW), or they're in combat. In both those cases they switch to dynamic movement which is basically just trying to take the direct route to the target. However, all of this only happens when the NPC is actually loaded, and thus near the PC. If the NPC is unloaded, but still gets simulated to be moving somewhere, two tricks are applied to reduce the amount of calculations needed: 1: The NPC is now clamped to the nav mesh only and will follow it perfectly. If the player gets close enough to load them in, they will be somewhere on the nav mesh. 2: The nav mesh has a time information applied to it that tells the game how long it takes for a character to travel along those roads. This ensures NPCs don't teleport across the map, but are more realistically pushed along like a train on rail roads. And allows them to be encountered in the wild. The latter is what is used for all NPCs that tell you they're going to meet somewhere with you, and usually the movement across the nav mesh while unloaded is faster than actual movement across the map, for both player and NPCs. Also while an NPC is on the nav mesh while unloaded they're safe from all dangers, as enemies only spawn when the player is near, and thus they don't encounter any threats, unlike if you stick around to watch them walk to their destination. This also means in order for NPCs to die during travel you have to stick around, that's the only way they can naturally die. Though occasionally that's what kills them on accident, as they can become loaded in near raiders that only spawn because you entered the area at the same time, and suddenly they're in the middle of a raider stronghold getting massacred and you're getting a notification that your quest failed. Well done. Edit: The nav mesh is also used to move the player character during fast travel sections, and is what calculates how long the travel will take.

Imagine you're going shopping at your local Winn Dixie, you've just accidentally run your cart into a wall, you're super embarrassed and quickly look around to make sure nobody saw and just as you look behind you, Austin's head pops back behind the end of the aisle and you hear the distant sound of pencil on paper

It's scary to think about NPC's as prisoners. They are trapped in a deadly game and their only options are to... 1) Cease living by entering a door. 2) Run endlessly until they die.

You should make a video about games that have "RUN!" sequences, but don't actually punish you for not immediately leaving the area. Compare how well or how poorly they fake action or background noise.

I’ve never seen Dogmeat’s doggie paddle animation before. Cutest thing in the game.

I had a great moment playing Elder Scrolls where I completely lost track of Martin Septim. After some experimentation, I discovered that if I spawned a Jauffre clone, he would start sprinting in some direction. Using these homing Jauffres, I eventually made it to the a cave I'd been through long ago. And inside with Martin were the dozen Jauffres I had released. So I was able to continue the main questline

The fact she kept saying “This is hopeless” tells me she knew she was eventually going to die no matter how long she ran.

When I was a kid playing this game for the first time, I tried to follow Dad all the way from the garage back to Rivet City instead of just letting time pass and warping there since I didn't know I could do that. He kept aggroing radscorpions from 100 meters away, diverting from his path to charge at them minding their own business in a field somewhere. The best part is, he would always say "didn't want to have to do this" while charging them with nothing but a fucking lead pipe. No gun or nothing. Crazy man

My favorite Creation Engine lore is that the only reason in New Vegas your companions despawn and don't run back home like Fallout 3 is because Boone would just wreak havoc and solo the entire Legion army on his way back to Novac or Lucky 38.

I love it when an NPC asks if you want to head to a new location together or just meet up there later. I ALWAYS say let's go together, not just because I want to get all the story content I can out of a game, but because I love imagining I'm inconveniencing them by not letting them fast travel like they would have otherwise.

I love that Austin actually goes and does the stuff I've always wondered about

Im sure some of those NPCs were walking in the wrong direction, realized it, but wouldnt change direction because someone was nearby and could see them...at least i do that. Ill walk around a city block so that people dont see me turn around like a fool that doesnt know where theyre going.

I wonder if DogMeat taking a round about way to get to valut 101, was because he was, at least at first, was trying to get away from you, so that he could get far enough away to 'despawn' maybe its a way to avoid dogmeat and other companions from dying randomly on that route, yk, to get far enough away so that they can just teleport without it being obvious to the player

I've been playing FO3 recently and found my dad at Vault 112. I told him I would meet him at Rivet City instead of going with him. Not even a minute later, I got a notification that "Dad is unconscious" :/ I used a scoped rifle to look for him and found him getting into a fight with a Robobrain. I watched his stick straight body rise from the dead like a vampire out of a coffin and immediately start going fisticuffs with the robot again.

One of my favorite NPC quirks in Skyrim was from my scaly husband. I married Derkeethus who lives in Darkwater Pass and mines in the small mine there. After marrying he moved into my home in Whiterun and I didn't think anything of it. But one time when I was exiting a dungeon between Darkwater Pass and Whiterun I saw someone sprinting by. Ran over to see who it was and low and behold it was Derkeethus. Turns out each day in the morning he'd leave Whiterun to run all the way to Darkwater Pass so he could work the mine.

A couple funny ones from New Vegas: Vulpes Inculta from Nipton: walks east towards Cottonwood Cove. Unfortunately he does so in a straight line, up several cliffs and through Camp Searchlight, which is held by the NCR and filled with ghouls, which will kill him, though it's a close match. Oliver Swanick (the lottery winner): walks south into a lake infested with giant scorpions. He stops and cowers until they kill him. If the player removes the scorpions, he continues into crescent canyon, which is full of giant geckos, who kill him. If they are also removed he will stand around not doing anything. Malcom Holmes (the star bottlecap guy): spawns at Mojave Outpost once you pick up a sapsarilla star bottlecap, navigates to the player in a straight line wherever that takes him, which may take a while as you fast-travel around him. After talking to you he walks back in a straight line again, enters the bar at Mojave Outpost, but never appears inside. Benny fleeing the Tops casino: He only does this in a few very specific conversation paths. A normally unopenable elevator on the ground floor becomes unlocked until he enters it, so if you're fast you can go inside before him. There is an entire extra section of basement, where Benny apparently blasted his way into a sealed section of nearby Vault 21. However, there is no working exit, and overall a very barebones area with only one explosives crate to loot. One that I don't know, but always wondered about is where the Brotherhood patrols that sometimes exit the bunker ~2am go. They only ever leave, never return. They are also hostile, but you can slip by to start the brotherhood questline as early as you want. I think they only appear if you have the interiour of the bunker loaded, so you need to wait in front of the locked door. (I know most of these thanks to Many a True Nerd, who did something similar a few years ago.)

Somebody could write an entire short story set in the Fallout universe about a slave who was freed, only to be doomed to run across the Wasteland for days without sleep in search of shelter, surviving wildlife and multiple ambushes, only to just be shot down by a random dude with a plasma rifle. It would really fit the Fallout universe whatever way they try to portray it, be it sentimental with a message of hopelessness in the post-apocalypse, or with dark humour of just how ridiculous her whole situation was.

11:00 "fuckin f*st" was way funnier to me than it should've been