The shooting-range hallway is a special, underground hallway that's only used as an emergency escape.

I have to disagree with some of your advice.

If your municipality lets you, install a septic instead of connecting to city sewer. No sewer fee. (Just get it pumped every few years).

You first tell him to minimize maintenance, and then you tell him to opt for something which requires more maintenance and is problem-prone. This makes no sense at all. Of course, some of this depends on location, but in most places I've seen, there's no sewer fee, there's only a water fee. The sewer cost is built in, and handled by the same entity, so there's no advantage in not having sewer service. Sewer service is simple and reliable; most people never have any problems (except maybe clogs, but you'd have those with septic too). Getting a septic tank cleaned is a pain, and worst of all, having a septic system means having a septic field, which can have problems, especially if there's any flooding. Finally, most places probably don't want you to have septic because they want the water back, so it can be processed and put back into the system.

Pick some trees and maybe bushes you like and put them in. Trimming every 1-10 years is easier than cutting the lawn every 3 weeks.

Bushes usually require trimming far more often than that. But avoiding lawns is a good idea if you can do it. Look up "xeriscaping". If you're going to have any lawn, try to keep the grassy area small, and use a manual reel mower to cut it; you'll get better exercise that way and generate no pollution. Use a battery-powered or corded electric weedwacker for edging/trimming. Have more wooded area, and a compost pile for kitchen waste, if you have the acreage.

Include low-voltage wiring for speakers as well as the alarm system.

This isn't 1995; why would you need wiring for speakers? That's what Ethernet, WiFi, and Bluetooth are for. Direct wiring to speakers is mostly obsolete now (it still probably makes sense for a good stereo system, but I'm talking about situations where the speakers are remote, and not really meant for premium sound quality).

Different strokes for different folks. Personally, I don't agree with your list either. I'm not so fixated on vehicles, though I wouldn't mind, especially if they make a massive world to explore, which is one of the things I'd like to see.

But personally, I'm not too interested in teams and companions. I know that's blasphemy to some RPG fans, but I feel like companions typically just end up being something else to worry about. If you let the AI run them, then the AI is always doing something stupid, and they get themselves killed or stuck. If I control them, then it's just like, "Ugh, now you've just added a lot of un-fun work to my game-playing." I don't like grinding to level up, carefully planning my stats for lots of different people, etc. I just want to play through the story and explore the world. But that's me.

Similarly, I'm not super-interested in having very complex combat. Again, I know, blasphemy. I'm already going to spend a couple hundred hours in-game, and I don't really want to add to it by having to reload 50 times because I need to place one of my party members more carefully or give him different instructions. I'm exaggerating, but basically at this point I'm a 'filthy casual'. I have a fair amount of stuff going on in my life, and I don't particularly want to have to "get good" at a game through practice and grinding. I want something I can slip into, play for a while, get some fun gameplay and good stories, and then go back to my life.

However, I would agree that there's something to having things feel challenging. I think that's part of the challenge of game-design, making things feel challenging without simply being difficult. I love the feeling of just barely scraping through a battle, but I don't enjoy reloading because I failed.

Also, I do like the idea of character customization in the sense that you might have a stealthy/smart character, and therefore maybe you're precluded from also being a badass tank. Or you can be a tank, but you might also be dumb and incapable of sneaking. I think one of the things that the original Fallout games did well was to not only allow that kind of character customization, but to have those customization affect which things you were able to do, and how the story unfolded. There might be a mission where you have to fight an enemy, but if your speech/persuasion was really high, you could talk your way out of it. If you're a science genius, maybe you can hack the security system rather than doing a frontal assault.

I remember once completing a Fallout 2 game with almost no combat because I was sneaky, persuasive, and smart. I'd love to see that kind of thing return. Unfortunately, Bethesda doesn't do that kind of thing, so I'm not holding my breath.

What I really want to see, first is a huge world that has the feel of reality to it. Bethesda has been getting better at that, so I have some hope. Skyrim was pretty big and detailed. You could wander for a good long time before hitting the edge. But I'd like to see them do more of that. Make more interesting/unique locations, more unique items. More interesting characters. Avoid making it feel like the dungeon/vault is a designed game level with enemies placed at regular intervals and random loot in every corner, and more like a real place where people live.

Try to make the missions feel varied, rather than having a million, "Go in this cave and kill this person" missions or "fetch me 20 of this item" missions. Allow multiple routes to get to the end of the mission, either using stealth or persuasion or technical know-how or combat. Give you options on how to complete the mission, and have those decisions make a difference in the world, and make a difference on how people treat you.

I'd also like to see a crafting system that allows for more than "collect 3 [item A]s and 2 [item B]s to make an [item C]." Let the player change the look of their clothes, armor, and weapons in-game (without modding). Let the player change the functionality or stats of weapons/armor. For example, maybe I can customize a gun to do more damage, but it also does more damage to the gun, which requires more frequent repair. Or maybe I can add layers to armor, changing the look and protection that it offers, but at the cost of making it heavier. But even, you know, let me spray-paint my gun red just to make it unique and mine. Let me etch some kind of design into my armor. Bonus points if different designs, colors, and symbols have an effect on how NPCs perceive you.

I'd also like to see more done with factions and moral choices. In Skyrim, for example, whenever I walked into a dungeon/castle with outlaws or necromancers or whatever, they would automatically attack, and I'd have to kill them. But maybe I want to join them. Maybe I want to be a necromancer. I don't know what that means in the context of Fallout 4 because I don't know what the factions would be, but maybe I can mutate myself into a ghoul or super-mutant. And to combine this with my previous comment about NPCs treating you differently based on how you dress, I've like to see disguises. If I'm dressed like a member of a faction, assuming that the people in that faction don't all know each other, they shouldn't attack me on sight.

And I think you could pull out a common thread in what I'm looking for, in that it's fundamentally not about combat or graphics. I want a big, complex, interesting world, and lots of choices that I can make within it.

I'd argue that the real reason the government wants access is not some coherent conspiracy, but some relatively simple factors: People in the US were in a panic following 9/11.

People were scared. When people are scared, they panic. When they panic, they make stupid, short-sighted decisions. Remember when people in Iowa were taping plastic sheeting over their windows for fear of a chemical/biological attack? Remember how silly that was?

While the general populace were panicking, so were various public officials. They wanted to figure out how to make sure we were protected from terrorist attacks, and it was decided that we should do whatever it takes, even if it violated people's rights, and even if it was immoral. Even if it was stupid and didn't actually help, it didn't matter, because they wanted to do everything that it was possible to do. So they had the TSA searching your bags for nail clippers and liquid soap, and they had the NSA listening to your phone calls.

And yes, for many people behind these decisions, I think that was the motivation. They actually wanted to protect the US from attack, and also knew that they'd be fired (or lose their reelection) if they were seen to be failing to do everything humanly possible to prevent another attack.

In the mean time, lots of businesses made money from the ramped-up security, and those businesses are giving "campaign contributions" to the officials that decide whether to keep those programs. Plus, organizations like the NSA increase in power and prominence, and they'll use their influence to argue against rolling back such programs. There's also pressure from law enforcement, who have been using the intelligence for the prosecution of crimes unrelated to terrorism, and want to keep all the tools they can get. Even though it's a violation of people's rights, it doesn't seem so bad when you've been doing it for a decade. Aside from that, even if officials are in favor of ending these kinds of programs, it's still difficult politically because a lot of uninformed voters are going to see this as being "soft on terrorists".

So all those things add up, and nobody has the political will to end anything. Very few people even have the balls to come out and say that these programs should be ended.

Wait, shouldn't that be "Politicians SHOULD not be prosecuted for lying. After all, it's their primary function."

Just because it's primary doesn't mean it's good ;)

Judging by all the teenagers I've seen with their middle-aged parents at classic rock concerts in recent years, I think your supposition is probably incorrect.