The Dust Has Settled - Thoughts On Fallout: New Vegas

[DigitalSignalX]

FO:3 and FO:NV were both amazing experiences. It was also the first time I've found myself considerably at odds with an RPS WIT. NV does have better characterization by far, but not *so* far that the flaws of the engine and scripting issues don't get annoying after a while. Mods go a very very long way toward making both games superb, but less so for NV as it has a bit more out of the box having learned from the failures of FO:3. NV's DLC is also worth mentioning because (even with the arguable weapons pack) every single one was a solid value that adds a great deal to he game. That wasn't true for FO:3, Oblivion, or many other AAA dlc's of the same genre.

[Bobtree]

FO3 is the better zany wasteland tourist simulator. Unfortunately it has some awful writing, forgettable characters, and an engine ugly enough to suit its setting. The mechanics and balance are often weak but they're offset by weird craftable weapons and a good random encounter mix. The strongest aspect of all is its pacing, and the map is full of fun things to find and explore.

NV has some great writing and a strong consistent setting, but the world isn't half as much fun to explore, and the engine ugliness virtually ruins what should be a beautiful landscape (see RDR). The mechanics are better overall (faction reputations!), but you're still a world-killer by lv20 or so, the limited AI combat tactics are monotonous, and you end up with an encyclopedic list of aid items that becomes a chore to sort through. Pacing is very sub-par next to FO3: all the main quest missions on the strip so bored me with the walk-talk-fetch cycle that I put it down for two years and only recently went back to finish up the story before playing Skyrim.

FO3 wins for action, adventure, and exploration. NV is much better as a Fallout game and RPG, but weaker overall due to the underdeveloped map and pacing issues. I played both on hard (NV with hardcore), only minor modding, no DLC, and hit every map location in NV and all but 3 in FO3 in 100 hours or so each.

STALKER still takes the cake for many many reasons however, and the smooth movement and consistent look still beats the recent Fallouts by miles. The Bethsoft engine that teleports you in/out of every little area transition is really painful for tactical play and exploration, and the overall clunkiness is a huge immersion killer.

[metalangel]

I got NV on launch. I've recently resumed playing it after becoming incredibly bored by it.

I may have done it to myself. I objected to the game trying to direct me around to Vegas the long way and so used a stealth boy to run past the Deathclaws and thus Vegas was the third location I reached.

I had no money, hardly any equipment, and was level 4 at the most. It was an interesting situation and I was determined to get into the Strip. Once I managed that I suddenly found tons of loose ends resolving themselves rather abruptly, leaving me knee-deep in money and equipment when I had been penniless moments before.

It is in and around Vegas that the creaking engine really shows. The Strip divided into tiny chunks, bustling casinos with half a dozen patrons. Go outside and all locations are huge, boring walled compounds that you wander around the outside looking for the "pedestrian gate". It reminds me in a way of Arcanum, where the level designer's vision exceeds the capability of the engine. The result is sprawling locations that are not interesting to explore. The game world itself is crying out for vehicles. All the talk of the NCR railways (and there are tracks and trains everywhere) but you never see them in use. The NCR is technologically advanced but still nobody has cars? This doesn't even fit with the fiction or indeed the dev's own thoughts on the game world. Even the inventory seems unable to cope with all the different types of ammo and casings. Every casino confiscates my weapons and I am forced to re-assign my hotkeys when I go back outside.

I'm determined to finish it but this seems almost a feeling of "getting it over with" like I started to feel in Dragon Age.

[Yachmenev]

Fallout: New Vegas fails a bit in that many places were a bit bland and boring, and that many of places had to few things to do. There should have been many more large quest lines in the Strip for example, and Black Mountain was a bit of a letdown when you actually got up there.

But because of the quests, the writing, the setting and how the outcomes of the different quests affected the quests led to me and my friend having two completely different experiences while playing it, it still stands as my favorite open world RPG. It is, despite it´s shortcomings, a superb game.

Oh, both games fail at another thing: If the war was 200 years ago, how come everything looks like it happened yesterday? How people keep burned cars and motorcycles on their front lawns? How come no one manages to clean their rooms even the slightest? :)

[Nalano]

The NCR is technologically advanced but still nobody has cars?

Railways predate cars by a lot. Industrial production and infrastructural construction have to tool themselves by quite a bit before one can start pumping out cars for the masses.

How people keep burned cars and motorcycles on their front lawns?

What people? Also, we're still in the desert on the frontier. NCR territory proper is reported to look a lot more civilized.

[metalangel]

Well, yeah. Those questions were asked of the original games which were only 70 years after the war. Fallout 3's frankly ridiculous "finding unlooted prewar supplies in a shop" pushed it to an extreme.

At the same time, Fallout 3 disguised the engine's shortcomings much more effectively with the ruins of downtown DC. Out in the more open wastelands there were fewer locations, they were smaller externally, and having to hunt around to find the entrance was less jarring.

[Nalano]

Fallout 3's frankly ridiculous "finding unlooted prewar supplies in a shop" pushed it to an extreme.

Finding edible food in a shop 200 years after the fall of civilization defies understanding. Selling scrap metal sounds perfectly fine. Think of all the medieval churches built using the stones of the Coliseum.

Fallout 3 disguised the engine's shortcomings much more effectively with the ruins of downtown DC.

Do you remember the metro?

Because I remember the metro.

Left, right, load screen. Right, left, load screen.

[Yachmenev]

What people? Also, we're still in the desert on the frontier. NCR territory proper is reported to look a lot more civilized.

Just look at the first village you start in Fallout:NW. If you manages to actually build up a village that somehow resembles a functioning community, of course you are going to clean up a bit, aren´t you?

But when you think about it, the best example of these things is how you can find fully functioning computers standing outside the police station in Fallout 3. :)

[Nalano]

Just look at the first village you start in Fallout:NW. If you manages to actually build up a village that somehow resembles a functioning community, of course you are going to clean up a bit, aren´t you?

They cleaned up their homes. It's a bit cluttered, but they've certainly homesteaded. There's only a couple dozen people there. You think they're going to bother themselves with demolishing every ancient trailer and shotgun house because they're abandoned? Dude, people don't do that now.

[Yachmenev]

They cleaned up their homes. It's a bit cluttered, but they've certainly homesteaded. There's only a couple dozen people there. You think they're going to bother themselves with demolishing every ancient trailer and shotgun house because they're abandoned? Dude, people don't do that now.

No, I expect them move burned motorcycles out of the way. :)

[metalangel]

Railways predate cars by a lot. Industrial production and infrastructural construction have to tool themselves by quite a bit before one can start pumping out cars for the masses

I'm not saying everyone should own one. I'm saying there are going to be millions of cars sitting around, which could be cannibalized to assemble thousands of working ones. The Highwayman in Fallout 2 is an example of this: according to the devs, it was unusual but not unheard of in the game world. It was one of the things they wanted to show us more of but couldn't (like the trucks used by the mutant army in the first game). The NCR is rebuilding the old world so it has industrial infrastructure and industry needs to move its products and supplies. This really is just a game engine limitation again. Fallout 2 avoided one hurdle because you never needed to see the car move.

Do you remember the metro?

Because I remember the metro

It made sense in the context of the game, didn't it? A lot more than the arbitrary walls with those stupid "pedestrian crossing" gates in NV. Walking is so irritating I might as well fast travel, and if that's the case what's the point of the world map that I am going to see once on the mandatory trip to unlock each place as a fast travel destination?

[Voon]

Nicely written, man. I remember the first time I played NV. On Hardcore mode, right from the start. I thought I could take on those Radscorpions like in FO3 but, they have harder shells than I thought. I ended up dying in the middle of the night trying to run away from them instead.

As for the game itself, it was a breath of fresh air after spending hours looking at the ugly grey environment of the Capital Wasteland. Reminds me a lot of the earlier Fallouts, lots of green and brown. It quite fixed whatever problems Fallout 3 had, especially repairing weapons and armour. The quests and story felt more interesting than FO3, so are the dialogues. Like Obsidian haven't lost their spark when it comes to making stories and dialogues in Fallout. Didn't I mention that, aesthetically, it even feels like a Fallout game?

About those guys who wanted a STALKER game in Fallout, as much as I love STALKER, i don't really like the idea. To me, Fallout is more of an RPG, less of a survival horror. So, giving it some STALKER-styled survival gameplay felt more aggravating than challenging.

[Dominic Tarason]

My big problem with balance was that it tended to be very easy to run out of ammo and some of the unique equipment was inordinately hard to repair because of compatibility differences

Even using the reduced ammo drops from Project Nevada, I've found myself swimming in bullets by level 17. Stores stock more and more ammo as you rise in level, too.

As for the difficulty repairing things, it's intentional. There's a perk you can get if you have repair 90 or higher that lets you cross-repair using anything from the same weapon class (so you can repair a unique laser rifle with a junk plasma rifle you picked off a corpse), but otherwise you need to rely on the understandably expensive NPCs in some locations that can do extensive repair work for you.

As for Deathclaws being nasty - well, duh. They're supposed to be pretty scary even to the Brotherhood, after all. They're the toughest, meanest creatures in the Fallout setting, and are best avoided unless you're got a really good battle-plan. It's great fun to come back to them later with a .50cal and a couple of gun-toting party members in tow and tear them apart, though.

About those guys who wanted a STALKER game in Fallout, as much as I love STALKER, i don't really like the idea. To me, Fallout is more of an RPG, less of a survival horror. So, giving it some STALKER-styled survival gameplay felt more aggravating than challenging.

You should try Project Nevada - it's one of the highest-rated NV mods for a very good reason. It just tweaks the gameplay to be a little more action-oriented, so you've now got sprint and bullet-time abilities that run off your AP bar as well as VATS (and perks/cybernetic upgrades that affect them, too), HP pools are lower in general, and weapons are more powerful. Weapon handling is a ton better as it works via a clear expanding reticule that shows your firing cone for your current stance/speed.

Oh, there's a handy off-hand grenade hotkey, too. Makes thrown weapons much more useful. Oh, and a very neat cyberware system. A couple of doctors in the game used to do cybernetics work, but now they sell cyber-modules that you can get doctors to install. You start out with two cyber slots in your head and chest, and one in each arm and leg, but you can get perks to open up more slots.

It doesn't ever feel like a mod, though. What little new stuff it adds is so seamlessly integrated, it feels like its always been there.

[Althea]

As for the difficulty repairing things, it's intentional. There's a perk you can get if you have repair 90 or higher that lets you cross-repair using anything from the same weapon class (so you can repair a unique laser rifle with a junk plasma rifle you picked off a corpse), but otherwise you need to rely on the understandably expensive NPCs in some locations that can do extensive repair work for you.

Jury Rigging. One of the vital perks of the game.

As for Deathclaws being nasty - well, duh. They're supposed to be pretty scary even to the Brotherhood, after all. They're the toughest, meanest creatures in the Fallout setting, and are best avoided unless you're got a really good battle-plan. It's great fun to come back to them later with a .50cal and a couple of gun-toting party members in tow and tear them apart, though.

I agree they're meant to be tough and hard, but they're disproportionately so relative to most other creatures, which also goes for the Legion Assassins and a few other creatures.

[Drake Sigar]

It's great fun to come back to them later with a .50cal and a couple of gun-toting party members in tow and tear them apart, though.

You can have more than one party member?

[Althea]

You can have more than one party member?

Two. One human, one non-human.

[Dominic Tarason]

Edit: Beaten to the punch

[Drake Sigar]

Ah. For a moment I had fleeting glimpses of a rag-tag squad comprised of mutants, deathclaws, and humans, all led by a leather jacket-wearing psychopath with a high charisma score.

Well we can't have everything...

[ntw]

Ah. For a moment I had fleeting glimpses of a rag-tag squad comprised of mutants, deathclaws, and humans, all led by a leather jacket-wearing psychopath with a high charisma score.

Well we can't have everything...

You just described the Labour party, well - except for the high charisma...

[metalangel]

I agree they're meant to be tough and hard, but they're disproportionately so relative to most other creatures, which also goes for the Legion Assassins and a few other creatures.

Like the three monsters they added in Broken Steel (Feral Ghoul Reaver, Super Mutant Overlord, Albino Radscorpion) they just soak up ammo. It's stupid. I don't care how tough you're meant to be, especially the creatures, plasma will still melt you and bullets will still tear a whole in your flesh and shatter bones.

The original Fallout had something when it made weapons like the laser and especially the plasma rifle absolutely lethal, one-hit kill weapons in the hands of a skilled user. That's the whole point of a weapon like that, and it made sense. Then Fallout 3 gave you access (as in go and pick up) to a sniper rifle and laser pistol within five or so minutes of you leaving Vault 101. It just cheapened the whole thing, same as in Oblivion where eventually every scraggly highwayman and thief you met was wearing priceless glass/dwemer/daedric armour.

Silly Bethesda. I remember in the first Fallout when the SMG and the Wasteland Eagle were effective. I remember getting to the Hub (which felt huge) and going to the weapon dealer and seeing gleaming weapons like the combat shotgun and the sniper rifle, and the huge price tag associated with them, and thinking 'wow, it'll take me forever to afford that and I bet it's awesome'.