_Robbie

The big question (two parts, if you don't mind!):

1) Do you think that there is a way/we will discover a way to theoretically "cheat" the speed of light ("warp drives", stable wormholes, etc.) to allow for practical travel of vast distances across the universe?

2) Do you think that, even if we discover a way that it was possible, that we as a species (perhaps in the far-flung future) could ever develop some kind of technology to allow it to actually happen?

Interstellar travel has captured all of our imaginations, but it's hard to imagine how it might be made a reality.

Thanks for the AMA! I've been a big fan of yours for a long time. :)

Playing devil's advocate, I feel like the emotional attachment comes less from how somebody looks in the game, and more the stories you tell with them. I'm sure people just using the mods that let you recruit aliens have a star Viper or Andromedon or something, and can get that connection even though they're not human because of the emergent stories that happen when you use them during gameplay.

I have some questions about a topic that's become infamous in the community over the past few days: Why is the base game not being patched with the significant performance increases that WOTC brings to the table? I'll try my best to represent every viewpoint I've seen in the community. (Disclaimer, I've already preordered WOTC and will be getting it, thanks guys!)

• There is a misconception among any members of the community that I've seen where people think you guys literally re-coded the entire game from the ground up, saving nothing, having to recreate everything from vanilla all over again for WOTC. And that adding the fixes to the base game would require you to literally rebuild the entire game a third time. Could you shed light on this?

• What are the actual technical hurdles behind the decision? Why is it not possible to update the base game to WOTC backend, but without the new content?

• Is there any hope that these performance increases will ever find their way to the base game, further down the line?

• Do you feel that it's right to essentially gate these fixes behind a $40 paywall? Now existing owners will never get the long-awaited performance boost we all hoped for since launch.

These questions might be more negative than you expected and I understand if you don't want to answer them in the pre-WOTC hype, but they're a hot-button issue with the community right now and it will be appreciated if you can find the time to answer any/all of them.

Thanks! :)

EDIT: Thanks for all the upvotes fellas but Firaxis clearly didn't want to answer this. Better luck next time!

Hey Todd, thanks so much for hosting this AMA. Hello from a fellow Marylander!

Firstly, just want to say that I am an enormous fan of Bethesda Game Studios' collective work. Elder Scrolls is my favorite media franchise of all time, and my love for the series has been something of a running gag among my friend group ever since I first played Morrowind. I have proudly been the "Bethesda guy" to all my friends forever, and probably always will be. Your games resonate with me like no other games on the market, and I hope that you'll pass on my most sincere thanks to the dev team for all of the heart that you've all poured into the games you create. I don't often have a chance to interact directly with the people who make the media that I love, and I truly cannot thank BGS enough for the countless hours of joy that I've gotten out of your games and worlds.

Secondly, I am a huge believer in the power of storytelling as a force for good in this world. Stories allow us to escape our world and broaden our horizons even without ever leaving the comfort of our homes. They can teach us lessons and help us to be introspective, to grow and learn. To me, Bethesda's world building has always been the most incredible in gaming and I love the meticulous detail you all put into everything from major lore beats to the tiniest journal found on a dead bandit.

One of my very favorite things about Elder Scrolls (and Fallout!) is that in contrast with other major gaming franchises, each entry is almost a re-imagining or reboot of the franchise -- when a legendary weapon appears in Skyrim, it looks and behaves differently than it did in Morrowind, for instance. The games share continuity in the world, but each game feels almost self-contained as well. My question is.. that style of storytelling, where the games share a single world but each entry re-imagines that world, was that a conscious decision to go in that direction after Morrowind? Did you all have a conversation about it? The way that Oblivion feels different from Morrowind, and Skyrim feels different from Oblivion, did the project grow and evolve naturally in that direction, or was it a conscious effort that each game feel like a fresh perspective on a universe we all know and love?

Thanks again!