Dear Bethesda,
Yes, I know I wrote to you two weeks ago and I don’t care if this is coming on too strong
and I don’t care if you answered my questions about poop in an Elder Scrolls Live livestream
and I don’t care if there are buckets in bandit caves, I’m still really worried about
the general health and wellbeing of everyone in Tamriel. They appear to be incredibly unprepared
for any sort of modernization, let alone city life. Is that why huge cities are so sparsely
populated? I just. I just don’t want everyone to get Cholera. Whatever. I’m over it.
OKAY YOU KNOW WHAT? NO, I’M NOT OVER IT. I’M JUST SAYING PERYITE AND NAMIRA COULD
BE COMPLETELY DESTROYED IF PEOPLE JUST LEARNED ABOUT WASHING THEIR HANDS AND NOT POOPING
IN THEIR WATER SUPPLY.
Okay NOW I’m over it. Which is good, because that’s not why I’m writing you, this time.
Unfortunately, it’s about something WAY more serious: your laser weapons in Fallout
4, and why they make nofuckingsense.
Let’s rehash the lore for energy weapons for a sec: laser weapons, like the AER9 laser
rifle, have internal capacitors and wave/particle diverters blah blah blah jargon and are powered
by something--in most cases microfusion cells. They draw energy and use an array of polished
focusing crystals to focus light into a single, concentrated beam. That’s red for some reason.
Whatever. And you know what, I’m going to give you some props, too, because the Laser
flying from the rifle does seem to travel through the air slightly faster than ballistic
weapons, making contact with a distant target in three frames instead of the four it takes
a 10mm pistol. It’s not quite the speed of light, but close enough.
Plasma weapons operate similarly, but instead of releasing concentrated beams of light,
they fire superheated blasts of plasma. What’s plasma? Well, plasma is one of the fundamental
states of matter. What, they didn’t teach you that one in elementary school? They just
told you Solid, Liquid, Gas? What a bunch of assholes. Thanks Obama.
Plasma is formed by heating a gas or subjecting it to an electromagnetic field. Under these
conditions, it either gains or loses electrons, ionizing it, which is just a fancy way of
saying that it gains a magnetic charge. You can see plasma sometimes during thunderstorms
or in those weird glass globe things. Actually, plasma is the most abundant form of matter
in the Universe. Want proof? Just look outside--erm, during day time. That’s right, the sun is
made of plasma. Anyway. Back to Plasma Weapons. This plasma is launched from the weapon using
electromagnets arranged in a series--actually it’s pretty similar to the gauss rifle in
that way.
Both Plasma and Laser weapons draw power, produce energy, and release it without moving
parts. This is particularly important, because it leads me to my biggest fucking sticking
point in the goddamn universe: WHY DO LASER WEAPONS HAVE RECOIL?!
Wait, before we go any further, let’s go over what weapon recoil is, and why it even
exists. In our current age, we use almost exclusively ballistic weapons to kill other
people. The way they work is this: you have a bullet or shell in the barrel of the weapon.
A bullet is made of a projectile in the front, with a propellant of some kind. Usually gunpowder.
Think of it as Murderfuel for the bullet, but it gets burned up REAL fast. Wrapped around
the projectile and the Murderfuel is a casing, and on the back end is primer, which is used
to ignite the Murderfuel when a hammer or something else strikes it. The Murderfuel
basically explodes inside the barrel of the gun. Usually explosions go all directions,
but guns are brilliant in that they constrain the force, forcing it to go in one direction.
It pushes back on the gun, and pushes the projectile forward. You know. Newton’s law
bullshit. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So recoil is caused
by Murderfuel exploding inside the gun and sending deathbullets into an unfortunate raider,
forcibly digging out all his or her childhood memories in an instant. Cool, huh?
BUT WHY THE FUCK DO LASER WEAPONS HAVE RECOIL. IT MAKES NO GODDAMN SENSE. THEY HAVE NO MOVING
PARTS.
And don’t you tell me to calm down, that I’m nitpicking. AIN’T NO NITS HERE. I
know for a fact that you’ve thought about the nature of your energy weapons, Bethesda.
You know how I know? Because when you shoot something--ANYTHING with them, they don’t
transfer any kinetic energy. Go ahead. Try it for yourself. You can go up to a coffee
cup, shoot it with a pistol. Or rifle. Or shotgun. It’ll go blitzing off into the
distance forever. Shoot it with a plasma weapon? Same thing. Because plasma has mass, after
all. Not a lot, but some. But laser weapons? You can shoot at it all day long, and it won’t
move an inch. Why? Because they don’t confer any kinetic energy, because light doesn’t
have any mass.
And if they have no mass, make no physical impact, aren’t projected by ballistic energy,
and the weapons have no moving parts, why the FUCK DO LASER WEAPONS HAVE ANY RECOIL
AT ALL? IT MAKES NO DAMN SENSE. There is no rational explanation for how something that
has no kinetic energy is magically shaking the guna round.
What, is it because of game balance? FUCK YOU.
Okay I went too far, I apologize. I’m just...I’m worked up because you clearly thought about
this a little bit, enough to make it so that laser beams don’t interact with the environment
other than scorching things, creating heat energy, so why did you leave this one hangup?
Lasers in real life do, of course, have a “Newton’s Lawsey” “equal and opposite
effect” thing in real life, of course. It’s not kickback, though. Real, powerful lasers,
the kinds that could possibly be used as weapons, produce one, noticeable bad reaction: heat.
You know, they create heat wherever they land--that’s their main use as a weapon after all, and
just like how a ballistic weapon releases kinetic energy when it hits an enemy and ALSO
releases it into the weapon as it pushes away, so too does a laser weapon create heat AT
THE SOURCE--the gun. Weapons like the ones we see in Fallout should be creating an inordinate
amount of heat inside the weapon as a side effect. So, I dunno, if you were looking for
game balance solutions, you could have gone with, I dunno, heat sinks. Or rate of fire
slowing because of heat buildup. Or your weapon getting slightly less accurate because the
focusing crystals are expanding and creating occlusions.
Look. I’m just...I’m really tired now. All that yelling. I feel a little bad about
it. I just. I just. It makes no goddamn sense.
I love you.
Sincerely, Austin.