Thank you for the warning. Yeah, I can see a couple of them being cool and fun but after that fun goes out the window. I haven't had a *lot* of exposure to NPCs yet, but they are surprisingly well written.

I think the helicopter thing was a breakthrough for me because--well, even with unlimited saves, I don't like games that kill me off for little mistakes. And realizing that this thing had opened up on me with a howitzer when I was in open ground and I was pretty much only bruised.... I mean, I didn't want to take up exploring and randomly poking around as a hobby, but it was sort of tacit permission to put myself in harm's way.

Kind of like in the transit station, when the cop told me to pick up that can. The little pop up said "If you click mouse1, you can throw that." And I blinked, and I said seriously? Are you saying what I think you're saying?