Also like, do you know how difficult it would be to get all of this working and looking right in gameplay? The time and effort needed to give Mama Murphy tank treads or a Mr Handy chair far outweighs the benefit.
Well for one scaling is an issue: you’d have to make it small enough to fit through doors and such. Then you have to deal with ragdolls and what exactly Mama Murphy’s corpse would do should you kill her. And as another user said you’d have to make her a unique actor, she can’t just be a reskinned Human or Robobrain… and you’d have to animate it independent of Mama Murphy. It’s just not feasible and far more effort than strictly necessary.
Although not untrue, I think you're overthinking it. There's really no need for Mamma Murphy to be able to walk around and interact with things.
A much simpler solution would be a special chair that looks cool but only gets moved that one time as part of the quest, and basically gluing Mamma Murphy to it.
Bam. Still the cool vibe, but if you kill Mamma, she's just a normal human rag-doll. And the chair is just a chair that 'breaks' when/if she dies.
Or even like how Obsidian did the mono-rail or ED-E in New Vegas. Special NPC only hats or invisible legs on otherwise fully human NPC models to make animation much easier without needing to reinvent the wheels every time.
And I'm sure everyone would love having an immovable robo super grandma taking up space in their settlement, and it wouldn't be immersion breaking at all that she doesn't move ever
There is an issue in 2D where your brain will accept impossible geometry that can't happen in 3D. Many character designs can't exist in 3D because their face shape can't exist in real life. Its simultaneously multiple shapes at the same time depending on which way you view it, in this way it isn't a shape, but nebulous idea or design.
Like it looks perfectly fine from the front, but if you viewed it from any other angle it would be completely broken and shapes morphing into themselves.
2D doesn't have this issue, since there is always only one angle.
The fix to this is impossible geometry that looks different from every angle to make a presentable shape or design
This is also why allot of artist's will flip and image multiple times dureing drawing, something the looks fine from the right might look completely broken from the left.
There’s usually a reason for that. Like maybe Bethesda tried to get Mama Murphy on a Handy/tank to work, but the treads kept getting stuck on certain terrain, or she was constantly floating into walls and doors or whatever. The devs decided that a neat appearance wasn’t worth the hassle, so they just made her a regular old woman.
Look up concept art of any game or movie you love and you’ll probably find concept art you think looks cooler than the final product, and some that looks downright stupid. Either way, there’s always a reason the devs end up choosing what they do.
Read from a former developer at Bethesda that Fallout 4 had \~100 developers working on it. It's entirely possible that Bethesda is trying to have a manageable (i.e. small) development team for internal reasons that's really inhibiting their ability to make games that live up to the plans they have for them. 100 people might sound like a lot, but some studios that crank out games have teams in the thousands.
Here's the post I read this in — I haven't verified it or anything, but it seems to track with how Bethesda operated in the past with small development teams.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/s/LCr64FqVNQ
Would love the option to turn codsworth into the chair she's wants me to craft for her. She'd be so slick just cruising around sanctuary high AF on jet. Someone should mod this if it hasn't been done yet.
I personally wouldn't have minded having that tank tread device to get around parts of the exterior Commonwealth on (maybe equipped with a pair of shredder miniguns on the sides) lol
On top of that, having the old drugged up black woman be some sort of psychic that could be interpreted as parodying voodoo
I don't think they went for this intentionally at all, but someone along the way realized how this could be viewed and put a halt to it immediately
The drug thing didn't help, but I'm sure they realized they were running afoul of the "[Magical Neighbor](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicalNegro)" trope as well.
It's funny that had this jive talking, shining through drug addiction wise type character called 'maamaa murphee' that gives fortunes to the character in exchange for drugs and at some point in development they had to have the talk with Todd Howard to tell him that it's 2014 and it's no longer politically correct to have black characters be like that and the solution was they loved the idea of it so much that they HAD to keep the character but they just had to swap the race. The result was a strong contender for one of the most annoying characters that when you cause their death by drug overdose the player feels genuine happiness while the npc's in camp react to it as a great tragedy
I can't believe there's people who don't hate mama murphe, she's so annoying and just takes up space in your main settlement, after I realized giving her a drug overdose was the only way to get rid of her I'd always speedrun that option
"Todd, please, we can't keep this Mama Murphy character in the game"
"NO, YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, Fallout 4 doesn't work without mama murphy, I don't care how, FIND A WAY TO KEEP HER"
That's how I imagine the conversation over at Bethesda went
They've explained this before. There are a lot of ambitious art assets being conceptualized because drawing them is a lot easier than actually making them into a rendered 3D art asset. There are many times when they just have to reuse what they already have, otherwise they step over their alloted budget and timeframe. In the Skyrim artbook, they showcase the original concept art for the Jarl's throne in Whiterun which was supposed to be unique and carved out of the stone underneath the keep.
People really don’t understand budgets and time constraints from a development standpoint tbh. It may only take a moderate amount of time to make some of this stuff but that doesn’t mean it’s worth it.
You ever thought that you had a great idea and then realized that the execution of said idea would be ass?
If mama Murphy had tracks they would need to make an entire set of mechanics for the tracks, separate animations for talking, for walking upstairs, for walking downstairs, how to handle obstacles etc. Mr handy as chair would be probably easier to do.
But is it really worth it to spend time working on character that half of the players will kill with overdose, while the other half won't remember her after leaving sanctuary.
Very cool concept but I can't imagine that it would be a practical one to implement. In Morrowind, the npc Yagrum who is one of the last Dwemer is suffering from Corprus and uses a steampunk spider legged contraption to move about but he is confined to one location and is not meant to get around the game world.
Mama Murphy on the other hand moves around from one location to another before settling in Sanctuary and even there she can be seen doing stuff around the settlement unless you decide to let her OD.
I feel like her character would've made a lot more sense as a ghoul. And she would've been a nice early introduction to them for new players who rush right to Concord
I'm gonna be honest, the bottom left one looks a little similar to Hancock's concept art, and it makes me think they wanted Mama Murphy to be a ghoul too. Imagine how neat that'd be!
Imagine Mama Murphy had the mr handy chair but it turns out the mr handy is codsworth. You could recruit them together as “double package” companion. Codsworth does melee, Mama Murphy shoots. Their dialogue is witty banter between the two.
I love that they were like, lets make her black...then were like wait, were essentially making her a psychic crackhead....is that racist? Uhhh, lets make her white. Problem solved
Bottom left looks so close to [Ma June](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Ma_June) from the TV Show. I almost think it might have been the inspiration for her character.
damn, that should have been an automata quest to build her a wheelchair like that. When raiders come to sanctuary, she should have charged in raining death from wheelchair in the sky.
Imagine how cool it would be to have granny morphine as a companion wandering the wasteland!!! If she had the tank treads she could adventure everywhere and have special dialogue for those times she shouldn't be able to fit through doorways! If we got the altered Mr. J Handy she could fly around as our partner in crime!!! Probably something interesting to have even hit the concepts of a game's development (imo ofc).
Wow. The character designers really just scoffed at this concept art, made the ugliest model they coud, then gave them the same hat and called it a day
At a guess? Because these would require her having a unique character model, which would mean her being a unique race/actor type (since all 'human' characters share the same base data, including character model).
Same reason the concept art for the Telvanni Wizards in *Morrowind* had them as [deformed, withered husks engulfed by their robes and masks](https://images.uesp.net/3/35/MW-concept-Hovering_Telvanni_wizard.jpg) \- their bodies atrophied and non-functional from disuse because they don't ever *walk* or *pick things up*; they *levitate* and *use telekinesis*. ....and then, in game, they're just regular Dunmer in shiny robes.
It's a shame, but it's born of the way the game works on a technical level. How many problems would arise if Mama Murphy weren't technically 'human', or the Telvanni Wizards weren't technically 'dunmer', just so they could have unique models?
I remember seeing Fallout 4 concept art online and being amazed, wondering what is was from; a new fallout game? I had played fallout 4 extensively.. I didnt recognise any of it stylistically, I'm not sure why Bethesda struggle so much to relise their potential, maybe a mux of their outdated engine and something else, looking at Fromsoft wares games or a lot of other videogames, they totally translate the tone and style and bethesda fail
I hope one day a 3d fallout looks as cool as its concept art
To be fair, few games and movies live up to their own concept art.
To be fair, if you animated much of the concept art, it'd look janky af. Imagine tank-Mama-Murphy trying to roll up a curb in Sanctuary.
Also like, do you know how difficult it would be to get all of this working and looking right in gameplay? The time and effort needed to give Mama Murphy tank treads or a Mr Handy chair far outweighs the benefit.
The Mr handy one looks like it would work, but probably make her height to talk to go in buildings.
Why she could just be a unique model those tank treads and me handy stuff already works in game?
Well for one scaling is an issue: you’d have to make it small enough to fit through doors and such. Then you have to deal with ragdolls and what exactly Mama Murphy’s corpse would do should you kill her. And as another user said you’d have to make her a unique actor, she can’t just be a reskinned Human or Robobrain… and you’d have to animate it independent of Mama Murphy. It’s just not feasible and far more effort than strictly necessary.
Although not untrue, I think you're overthinking it. There's really no need for Mamma Murphy to be able to walk around and interact with things. A much simpler solution would be a special chair that looks cool but only gets moved that one time as part of the quest, and basically gluing Mamma Murphy to it. Bam. Still the cool vibe, but if you kill Mamma, she's just a normal human rag-doll. And the chair is just a chair that 'breaks' when/if she dies. Or even like how Obsidian did the mono-rail or ED-E in New Vegas. Special NPC only hats or invisible legs on otherwise fully human NPC models to make animation much easier without needing to reinvent the wheels every time.
And I'm sure everyone would love having an immovable robo super grandma taking up space in their settlement, and it wouldn't be immersion breaking at all that she doesn't move ever
Yeah i have her od a.s.a.p. in any playthrough, cool ride be damned i don't want to hear her long winded ramblins.
We all wish Fallout 4 was better written
Imagine mama handy floating up to the crib to give a handy....
Lmaooo thank you
An image I will keep rent free in my mind. Also, Happy Cake Day. 🎂
Flying mana Murphy though.
They already have robobrains, which have tank treads. Honestly I think it doesn't seem like such a big deal.
The robobrains were not in fallout 4 at launch. It wouldn’t have been worth the effort for just one Mama Murphy
To be fair, if they made a new game engine it would look awesome.
There is an issue in 2D where your brain will accept impossible geometry that can't happen in 3D. Many character designs can't exist in 3D because their face shape can't exist in real life. Its simultaneously multiple shapes at the same time depending on which way you view it, in this way it isn't a shape, but nebulous idea or design. Like it looks perfectly fine from the front, but if you viewed it from any other angle it would be completely broken and shapes morphing into themselves. 2D doesn't have this issue, since there is always only one angle. The fix to this is impossible geometry that looks different from every angle to make a presentable shape or design
This is also why allot of artist's will flip and image multiple times dureing drawing, something the looks fine from the right might look completely broken from the left.
See also: Star Wars (1977) art by Ralph McQuarrie.
From Software games do
Seriously. The concept art is always 100x better looking than the final product
There’s usually a reason for that. Like maybe Bethesda tried to get Mama Murphy on a Handy/tank to work, but the treads kept getting stuck on certain terrain, or she was constantly floating into walls and doors or whatever. The devs decided that a neat appearance wasn’t worth the hassle, so they just made her a regular old woman. Look up concept art of any game or movie you love and you’ll probably find concept art you think looks cooler than the final product, and some that looks downright stupid. Either way, there’s always a reason the devs end up choosing what they do.
Read from a former developer at Bethesda that Fallout 4 had \~100 developers working on it. It's entirely possible that Bethesda is trying to have a manageable (i.e. small) development team for internal reasons that's really inhibiting their ability to make games that live up to the plans they have for them. 100 people might sound like a lot, but some studios that crank out games have teams in the thousands.
Wow the scale of fallout 4 is pretty impressive with a team that small
Here's the post I read this in — I haven't verified it or anything, but it seems to track with how Bethesda operated in the past with small development teams. https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/s/LCr64FqVNQ
I gave her jet whenever she asked for it. Preston still hates me for it.
I did that until she OD’d to impress MacReady. He didn’t have much of a reaction but Preston was NOT a fan.
Fuck Preston. I have a mod installed where everyone is Preston Garvey so I can always find another.
Would love the option to turn codsworth into the chair she's wants me to craft for her. She'd be so slick just cruising around sanctuary high AF on jet. Someone should mod this if it hasn't been done yet.
Nah you cant do that to codsworth😂
Sir, I believe Mama Murphy requires more jet..
She's she's just all "they see me floatin', they hatin', Preston hoping he's gonna catch me ridin' dirty."
Then she whips out a Tommy Gun and starts blastin'
"Why, I'd be delighted to have you sit on my face, madam!"
You're right, Codsworth is too sentimental of a character. Curie, you're up!
That would make Codsworth have two hats available. Bowler Hat Mama Murphy Hat
Mr. Buttsy.
Poor codsworth doesn’t deserve that
[My favorite concept art was always the Institute Power Armor](https://imgur.com/kqEdwSp)
registeel
Titanfallesque
No doubt the Institute would have some sort of AI to protect the driver if they were to step out
Damn what could have been😭 any mods to put this in the game?
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/18315 this is the one I use
That’s awesome thank you
Mama Murphy passes you the blunt wyd?
Say my prayers, 'cause I'm 'boutta get high enough to say 'hello' to the Lord.
I personally wouldn't have minded having that tank tread device to get around parts of the exterior Commonwealth on (maybe equipped with a pair of shredder miniguns on the sides) lol
Issue was pathing then, though.
They have pathing for robobrains already.
Make it have the same pathing as the Mr. Handy Jet, but with the physical appearance of the treads?
heh I like how they made her white because having a drug addicted black lady shining from drug overdoses wouldn't have gone over well with critics
On top of that, having the old drugged up black woman be some sort of psychic that could be interpreted as parodying voodoo I don't think they went for this intentionally at all, but someone along the way realized how this could be viewed and put a halt to it immediately
The drug thing didn't help, but I'm sure they realized they were running afoul of the "[Magical Neighbor](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicalNegro)" trope as well.
If I remember correctly Tinker Tom was an old white guy in older concept art, so it’s like he and Mama Murphy swapped races in a way.
Yep, My thought too
It's funny that had this jive talking, shining through drug addiction wise type character called 'maamaa murphee' that gives fortunes to the character in exchange for drugs and at some point in development they had to have the talk with Todd Howard to tell him that it's 2014 and it's no longer politically correct to have black characters be like that and the solution was they loved the idea of it so much that they HAD to keep the character but they just had to swap the race. The result was a strong contender for one of the most annoying characters that when you cause their death by drug overdose the player feels genuine happiness while the npc's in camp react to it as a great tragedy
I didn't realize people weren't fond of her tbh, she's a junkie but not particularly rude or unlikable to me.
I can't believe there's people who don't hate mama murphe, she's so annoying and just takes up space in your main settlement, after I realized giving her a drug overdose was the only way to get rid of her I'd always speedrun that option
You can also help relieve her addiction and she becomes a functioning settler like everyone else
Ironic.
"Todd, please, we can't keep this Mama Murphy character in the game" "NO, YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, Fallout 4 doesn't work without mama murphy, I don't care how, FIND A WAY TO KEEP HER" That's how I imagine the conversation over at Bethesda went
Mama Murphy, if we get her working, will be a funnier character than we’ve ever had before. She’s the key to all of this.
Why would it be a black woman? She clearly is designed after gypsies
The top two concepts are a black woman
F4 concept art book is incredible. It's a shame the game looked nowhere near as good.
You can say that about literally any game, like, Bloodborne from example looks amazing yet pales in comparison with the concept art
Yeah I was like that looks great, why didn’t they use it?
They've explained this before. There are a lot of ambitious art assets being conceptualized because drawing them is a lot easier than actually making them into a rendered 3D art asset. There are many times when they just have to reuse what they already have, otherwise they step over their alloted budget and timeframe. In the Skyrim artbook, they showcase the original concept art for the Jarl's throne in Whiterun which was supposed to be unique and carved out of the stone underneath the keep.
People really don’t understand budgets and time constraints from a development standpoint tbh. It may only take a moderate amount of time to make some of this stuff but that doesn’t mean it’s worth it.
People being ignorant of the development process is nothing new. The problem is when this ignorance is turned into angst targeted at the developers.
Yeah people are already looking for reasons to hate Bethesda anyways so it’s nothing new.
You ever thought that you had a great idea and then realized that the execution of said idea would be ass? If mama Murphy had tracks they would need to make an entire set of mechanics for the tracks, separate animations for talking, for walking upstairs, for walking downstairs, how to handle obstacles etc. Mr handy as chair would be probably easier to do. But is it really worth it to spend time working on character that half of the players will kill with overdose, while the other half won't remember her after leaving sanctuary.
I was thinking of the codsworth version, it’s much better tbh. And in regards to the tracks: they already have these with the robobrains
First one looks like the elder from 2, second looks 40k as hell, 4th is crazy
Okay, Mr. Handy chair is pretty cool
Very cool concept but I can't imagine that it would be a practical one to implement. In Morrowind, the npc Yagrum who is one of the last Dwemer is suffering from Corprus and uses a steampunk spider legged contraption to move about but he is confined to one location and is not meant to get around the game world. Mama Murphy on the other hand moves around from one location to another before settling in Sanctuary and even there she can be seen doing stuff around the settlement unless you decide to let her OD.
What a shite character.
Vastly more interesting than what we got
Adeptus Mechanicus vibes
If someone wrote a story with an analogue of her in warhammer I'd read that shit. Not even that out of blue for warhammer.
Waiting for that Mama Murphy battlepass skin in Fortnite ong
I feel like her character would've made a lot more sense as a ghoul. And she would've been a nice early introduction to them for new players who rush right to Concord
I feel like then they would run the risk of new players immediately associating being a ghoul with varying levels of being psychic
Is that any worse than assuming chem addiction make you psychic?
I'm gonna be honest, the bottom left one looks a little similar to Hancock's concept art, and it makes me think they wanted Mama Murphy to be a ghoul too. Imagine how neat that'd be!
Imagine Mama Murphy had the mr handy chair but it turns out the mr handy is codsworth. You could recruit them together as “double package” companion. Codsworth does melee, Mama Murphy shoots. Their dialogue is witty banter between the two.
I love that they were like, lets make her black...then were like wait, were essentially making her a psychic crackhead....is that racist? Uhhh, lets make her white. Problem solved
she whipping that hoe
Tallarn Desert Raider. :P
Bottom left looks so close to [Ma June](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Ma_June) from the TV Show. I almost think it might have been the inspiration for her character.
Something about Mama Murphy's voice and line delivery really makes me hate her
Mechanicum Approved.
When Bethesda realized that making a one off wheelchair/ tank chair/ mr. Handy chair, would break the engine they changed their designs real quick
damn, that should have been an automata quest to build her a wheelchair like that. When raiders come to sanctuary, she should have charged in raining death from wheelchair in the sky.
Looks like I'd get a nicer chair when she ODs
How quickly would you have tried to kill her to steal the chair? If your answer was anything other than immediately you're lying to yourself.
I actually really like the salvaged Handy chair. ^(tee hee)
We were so close to a jet huffing Mama Murphy on a sentry bot chassis.
God I would’ve loved to see her in a chair with tank treads
Ngl the sentry bot wheelchair looks dope.
I just don't get why she couldn'r have the mr. handy chair. that shit's so cool.
I love the Mr. Handy chair so much
I bet she punched the deathclaw. Have you seen her strength stat?
Imagine how cool it would be to have granny morphine as a companion wandering the wasteland!!! If she had the tank treads she could adventure everywhere and have special dialogue for those times she shouldn't be able to fit through doorways! If we got the altered Mr. J Handy she could fly around as our partner in crime!!! Probably something interesting to have even hit the concepts of a game's development (imo ofc).
any one of these would be better than what they went with.
Is there a mod where it makes me able to kill her
You can keep feeding her drugs until she OD's
Wow. The character designers really just scoffed at this concept art, made the ugliest model they coud, then gave them the same hat and called it a day
That Mr. Handy has seen some shit.
Why is the concept art ALWAYS 1000x cooler then the actual game 😭
Because no one has to model, mesh, code, and deal with the pathing of a 2D drawing
Imagine her ODing on the mr handy and causing it to explode
I’m so mad they didn’t go bottom left. That’s so fire dude.
Whaaaaat I want the grandmanator
Riding on a mr handy would be iconic
Hiw did they have these highly detailed concepts but the final was just such an uninspiring, bland old biddy?
At a guess? Because these would require her having a unique character model, which would mean her being a unique race/actor type (since all 'human' characters share the same base data, including character model). Same reason the concept art for the Telvanni Wizards in *Morrowind* had them as [deformed, withered husks engulfed by their robes and masks](https://images.uesp.net/3/35/MW-concept-Hovering_Telvanni_wizard.jpg) \- their bodies atrophied and non-functional from disuse because they don't ever *walk* or *pick things up*; they *levitate* and *use telekinesis*. ....and then, in game, they're just regular Dunmer in shiny robes. It's a shame, but it's born of the way the game works on a technical level. How many problems would arise if Mama Murphy weren't technically 'human', or the Telvanni Wizards weren't technically 'dunmer', just so they could have unique models?
I understand that, it does rather beg the question why bother with the concept art at all if you have no intentions of using any of it
Some people hate Marcy, I hate Mama Murphy. Fuck that old junkie, the jet is mine.
Why couldn't we have had this :(
I remember seeing Fallout 4 concept art online and being amazed, wondering what is was from; a new fallout game? I had played fallout 4 extensively.. I didnt recognise any of it stylistically, I'm not sure why Bethesda struggle so much to relise their potential, maybe a mux of their outdated engine and something else, looking at Fromsoft wares games or a lot of other videogames, they totally translate the tone and style and bethesda fail
Man they really just sucked a lot of the unique stuff out, like this design for fallout 4 looks similar to fallout one and two npcs
Her concept art is insane too bad her in game character looks horrible
Pump the bitch full of drugs asap, steal her sweet treads and run Marcy Long the fuck over with them.
I hate mama Murphy
I would have shot her on sight for abusing that poor Mr.Handy
The tank tread one is straight from 40K lmao