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Review Fallout: New Vegas Review

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Yeah, the problem is that there is no way to tell where a lot of quests are by their description. I wouldn't even mind as much if they put a map marker but no compass, but so it goes. Still, the game is good.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
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Blackadder said:
The thing I often detect that leads me to believe fanboys are present:

If X mechanic is in a Bethesda game = "LOLOLOLOoOLOLllOL HEY BRO THIS GAME SUCKS!!!"

If the very same mechanic is present in an Obsidian game = "Really, it isn't that bad. I just tend to overlook these things and enjoy the great aspects of the game"

The biggest one so far, to me, has been the quest compass. This mechanic is one of the most destructive things added to a sandbox exploration game...ever. What is the point of an exploration game, when you have a GPS system that points you straight to the quest area? How ridiculous can you get?

Alas, very little was mentioned of it for New Vegas...but Fallout 3 was universally trounced, as was Oblibion for this mechanic. And rightly so. Can anyone explain the differences here?

Fair enough if you don't mind this sort of thing, and you didn't mind it in Fallout 3. Just admit it and move on. However, if you ranted at it in one game, and then forgave it in another...well...what would YOU think?
sigh

Still fighting the good fight?

Anyway, to answer your question, the difference is obvious. When a game is shallow, its design flaws are in your face. When a game has depth, its design flaws are less noticeable.

Example: PST. The game is very linear and the combat is shit. In most games these flaws would have been game-breaking, but the quality and depth of dialogues, the effect of stats - the only game where you had to have high INT, WIS, and CHA, the rarely explored setting made the game a top 10 gem.

Same with pretty much every other Codex favourite game. None of these games is flawless. They all have huge fucking flaws, BUT what they deliver in other areas, usually key role-playing aspects, completely overshadowed these flaws, unlike games that have nothing but fucking flaws.

New Vegas does have the compass, but it's not annoying. Want to know why? Because most quests have multiple solutions and I don't mean "use speech or science".
 
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Flying Spaghetti Monster said:
CraigCWB said:
Xor said:
But skyway says it sucks so they must be wrong.

Yeah, skyway thinks Divinty II is a great action game too. Do I really have to upload video of me walking up to mobs my level and button mashing them to death in seconds while I'm brushing my teeth and watching the news to get through to him how retarded and trivial the "action" in Divinity II is? And I bet he thinks VATS is a cheat and the combat in FO3 is lame, right? At least in FO3 if I walk into a group of 6 raiders my level and start button-mashing I'm prolly not gonna make it out again. Not that combat in FO3 is hard or anything, but it's not stupid-easy either. I bet skyway is one of those people who grinds up to level 12 in Divinty II so that he can go back to the areas he skipped and "totally own" level 2 mobs, while gaining 1 exp (minimum) per kill. And no doubt using "advanced tactics" such as clicking on his magic missile hotkey while pausing the game. Never realizing he could have just walked up to them and button-mashed them to death in 2 seconds while he was also level 2, and gotten 50x the exp. Skyway's a real playa.

I don't know who you are but I don't like you.

And every reviewer is partisan... Objectivity is a myth. I prefer my sources to be open with their baggage so I have more information to go on.

The legendary John Pilger (the guy, who amongst other things, let the world know that a little regime by the name of Pol Pot was conducting one of the great massacres in history - between that and his reporting of the indonesian invasion of East Timor, he's one of the great 'smuggle the hidden camera, bluff your way past the guys with guns and escape the country on a rickety prop-plane with evidence of warcrimes' journos of the past century) made a career and a great (not the mainstream view, but probably the biggest of the alternative views) theory of journalism out of it - i.e. that all journalism is biased, so instead of pretending to sell unbiased news, the journo should make absolutely clear who they are and where they are coming from. Then, if the paper wants to pretend they've got 'balance', they can hire someone from the opposite viewpoint to write their opinion as well.
 
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Flying Spaghetti Monster said:
CraigCWB said:
Xor said:
But skyway says it sucks so they must be wrong.

Yeah, skyway thinks Divinty II is a great action game too. Do I really have to upload video of me walking up to mobs my level and button mashing them to death in seconds while I'm brushing my teeth and watching the news to get through to him how retarded and trivial the "action" in Divinity II is? And I bet he thinks VATS is a cheat and the combat in FO3 is lame, right? At least in FO3 if I walk into a group of 6 raiders my level and start button-mashing I'm prolly not gonna make it out again. Not that combat in FO3 is hard or anything, but it's not stupid-easy either. I bet skyway is one of those people who grinds up to level 12 in Divinty II so that he can go back to the areas he skipped and "totally own" level 2 mobs, while gaining 1 exp (minimum) per kill. And no doubt using "advanced tactics" such as clicking on his magic missile hotkey while pausing the game. Never realizing he could have just walked up to them and button-mashed them to death in 2 seconds while he was also level 2, and gotten 50x the exp. Skyway's a real playa.

I don't know who you are but I don't like you.

And every reviewer is partisan... Objectivity is a myth. I prefer my sources to be open with their baggage so I have more information to go on.

The legendary John Pilger (the guy, who amongst other things, let the world know that a little regime by the name of Pol Pot was conducting one of the great massacres in history - between that and his reporting of the indonesian invasion of East Timor, he's one of the great 'smuggle the hidden camera, bluff your way past the guys with guns and escape the country on a rickety prop-plane with evidence of warcrimes' journos of the past century) made a career and a great (not the mainstream view, but probably the biggest of the alternative views) theory of journalism out of it - i.e. that all journalism is biased, so instead of pretending to sell unbiased news, the journo should make absolutely clear who they are and where they are coming from. Then, if the paper wants to pretend they've got 'balance', they can hire someone from the opposite viewpoint to write their opinion as well.

Mainstream journos often use 'Pilgerism' as an insult, but it's had a huge influence nonetheless. And nothing makes it look better than when applied to review journalism.
 

Jaesun

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Vault Dweller said:
Anyway, to answer your question, the difference is obvious. When a game is shallow, its design flaws are in your face. When a game has depth, its design flaws are less noticeable.

Example: PST. The game is very linear and the combat is shit. In most games these flaws would have been game-breaking, but the quality and depth of dialogues, the effect of stats - the only game where you had to have high INT, WIS, and CHA, the rarely explored setting made the game a top 10 gem.

Same with pretty much every other Codex favourite game. None of these games is flawless. They all have huge fucking flaws, BUT what they deliver in other areas, usually key role-playing aspects, completely overshadowed these flaws, unlike games that have nothing but fucking flaws.

New Vegas does have the compass, but it's not annoying. Want to know why? Because most quests have multiple solutions and I don't mean "use speech or science".

That is pretty much spot on.
 

DalekFlay

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Flying Spaghetti Monster said:
Yeah, the problem is that there is no way to tell where a lot of quests are by their description. I wouldn't even mind as much if they put a map marker but no compass, but so it goes. Still, the game is good.

Yeah, a map marker but no compass marker would be good. Risen did that and I never felt like I was following along like I do in Fallout 3 and NV. Another option would be to have the quest marker be an option in the menu and to make sure every quest gives you enough info to find the objective, but I am assuming that just sounds like more work to developers.
 

janjetina

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Blackadder said:
The thing I often detect that leads me to believe fanboys are present:

If X mechanic is in a Bethesda game = "LOLOLOLOoOLOLllOL HEY BRO THIS GAME SUCKS!!!"

If the very same mechanic is present in an Obsidian game = "Really, it isn't that bad. I just tend to overlook these things and enjoy the great aspects of the game"

If a Bethesda game had ''great aspects of the game'' (as illustrated by VD's response'') to be enjoyed, the response would be different.

The biggest one so far, to me, has been the quest compass. This mechanic is one of the most destructive things added to a sandbox exploration game...ever. What is the point of an exploration game, when you have a GPS system that points you straight to the quest area? How ridiculous can you get?

Alas, very little was mentioned of it for New Vegas...but Fallout 3 was universally trounced, as was Oblibion for this mechanic. And rightly so. Can anyone explain the differences here?

It has been pointed repeatedly that the quest compass is there and yes, it is still horrible. I wrote (on NMA, I think) that the worst aspect of the quest design is that some quests seemed to be designed around the quest compass, meaning that there was not enough in-game information that would facilitate solving the quest, and you had to rely on the compass or on blind luck.
 

ZbojLamignat

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CraigCWB said:
ZbojLamignat said:
Except that it didn't. It had 640x680 as the lowest possible res and supported higher ones.

If anyone needed additional proof that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, there it is :)
We're talking about games released in 2000, you tard. Do I really have to remind you which BG was released in 2000?

Elwro said:
Yes, but iirc the higher resolutions weren't officially supported or sth.

They weren't officially supported, but still worked perfectly on almost every machine.
 

Tycn

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New Vegas does have the compass, but it's not annoying. Want to know why? Because most quests have multiple solutions and I don't mean "use speech or science".
The compass is more annoying in this game precisely because some of the quests are actually decent and would be far more enjoyable without the handholding.
 

Topher

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Tycn said:
New Vegas does have the compass, but it's not annoying. Want to know why? Because most quests have multiple solutions and I don't mean "use speech or science".
The compass is more annoying in this game precisely because some of the quests are actually decent and would be far more enjoyable without the handholding.

I just found it easier to tune out.
 

SuicideBunny

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godsend1989 said:
DalekFlay said:
..like in the main NWN2 campaign.
exactly when ?
they did a shitty job? right at the beginning.
the whole shitty starting village. the incredibly moronic set-up with your foster father, your "friends" and some random low-level village npc being your teacher.. the badly designed starting dungeon and the stupid attack on the starting village with those retarded "ok, i'll help you"|"go die in a corner" choices for characters you had pretty much no connection to as well.

unrestricted character creation where you can make vastly different builds just doesn't work with that kind of static beginning. it sucked when obsidian did it in nwn2 and it sucked even more when bethesda made it even more retarded thanks to the baby shit in fo3.
 

Vault Dweller

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Tycn said:
New Vegas does have the compass, but it's not annoying. Want to know why? Because most quests have multiple solutions and I don't mean "use speech or science".
The compass is more annoying in this game precisely because some of the quests are actually decent and would be far more enjoyable without the handholding.
The compass is a problem only if the quest design sucks (i.e. it's linear and the objective is to arrive to X and kill some baddies there, which is the Bethesda design, basically). When quests have a bit more depth and involve making decisions, the compass doesn't really make any fucking difference.

For example, you're tracking down Benny. You know that he is in the Strip, so the compass pointing toward the Strip doesn't make any difference to you. When you finally get there, which probably would take awhile, you are told that Mr. House wants to see you. Do you go and see him first or do you go and confront Benny? If you see him first, he tells you to talk to Benny's right hand, which gives you a different way to handle things. If you talk to Benny, he suggests (or do you talk him into it? can't remember) to talk in his private suite. Depends on how you handle it, there may or may not be an ambush. When you talk to him you can settle the score or accept his offer. Etc.

How the fuck the quest compass is useful here?
 

Admiral jimbob

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For every quest like that, there's one like the Boomer quest where you have to find the girl the mechanic kid has a crush on. You're given absolutely no directions, unless I missed something, you just have to follow the quest compass to the Crimson Caravan company of all places. To be fair, that's the worst example I've seen yet, but they do happen.
 

Vault Dweller

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True. There is some filler in the game (I find the Boomers and the fuckers ask me to kill some rats in some basement? Seriously? I didn't do the quest and left them alone with their rats), however the game has a shitload of content and it's fairly easy, much easier than in the first two games, find and focus on something you actually want to do.

The number of quests that are actually interesting is very impressive.
 

racofer

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kunfu.gif
 

Mangoose

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I disabled the quest compass using a mod, but I kept the map marker. I figure most of the markers are the same as if the NPC marked it on my map. Some are not of course.
 

DalekFlay

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POOPOO MCBUMFACE said:
For every quest like that, there's one like the Boomer quest where you have to find the girl the mechanic kid has a crush on. You're given absolutely no directions, unless I missed something, you just have to follow the quest compass to the Crimson Caravan company of all places. To be fair, that's the worst example I've seen yet, but they do happen.

Actually I believe he does mention she works for the Crimson Caravan.
 

Mangoose

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DalekFlay said:
POOPOO MCBUMFACE said:
For every quest like that, there's one like the Boomer quest where you have to find the girl the mechanic kid has a crush on. You're given absolutely no directions, unless I missed something, you just have to follow the quest compass to the Crimson Caravan company of all places. To be fair, that's the worst example I've seen yet, but they do happen.

Actually I believe he does mention she works for the Crimson Caravan.
The problem is that fact doesn't get saved to the quest log, nor is there a log of dialog (is there?).
 

poocolator

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DalekFlay said:
POOPOO MCBUMFACE said:
For every quest like that, there's one like the Boomer quest where you have to find the girl the mechanic kid has a crush on. You're given absolutely no directions, unless I missed something, you just have to follow the quest compass to the Crimson Caravan company of all places. To be fair, that's the worst example I've seen yet, but they do happen.

Actually I believe he does mention she works for the Crimson Caravan.
It is mentioned. But how they know that that collection of tents yonder is even called "Crimson Caravan", considering that they're xenophobes, is beyond me.
 

godsend1989

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It will be nice if the reward for quests that don`t have handholding will be bigger but i don`t like the idea of "absolutely no direction" a small clue is enough for a normal human, that way will force lazy ass brainless retards to think because they will know that the reward is big, besides the mini quests with handholding that any tard can finish. That way, at the end of the game (boss fight or whatever) the one that didn't finish most of the quest will realize that he can`t do shit because he rushed the game, that will be a good penalty.
Nowadays i realized that doesn't matter how weak you are at the end you can still finish it with one hand at your back, lame.
:rage:
 

Gragt

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Elwro said:
Yes, but iirc the higher resolutions weren't officially supported or sth.

The config tool still allowed it, which was nice. You just had to click a box that stated that higher than 800x600 isn't supported and you're on your own in case of problems.
 
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The compass is a problem only if the quest design sucks (i.e. it's linear and the objective is to arrive to X and kill some baddies there, which is the Bethesda design, basically). When quests have a bit more depth and involve making decisions, the compass doesn't really make any fucking difference.

Indeed, the only thing that matters in a CRPG is that the quests have 'depth' and involve making decisions. Nothing else matters. Everything else is perfectly acceptable. A quest compass makes perfect sense in a sandbox exploration game...

On a serious note, people around here talk about game flaws all the time. About Fallout 1 flaws, Arcanum flaws, (insert game) flaws. New Vegas is then put under the microscope; you rush in here all hot under the collar and have a rant off at someone that dared pick on a stupid design decision...tell me, you really don't think that isn't a fanboy trait right there?
 

Vault Dweller

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Blackadder said:
The compass is a problem only if the quest design sucks (i.e. it's linear and the objective is to arrive to X and kill some baddies there, which is the Bethesda design, basically). When quests have a bit more depth and involve making decisions, the compass doesn't really make any fucking difference.

Indeed, the only thing that matters in a CRPG is that the quests have 'depth' and involve making decisions. Nothing else matters. Everything else is perfectly acceptable.
Depth matters. In any shape, size, and form. It could be quests or combat system or story or interactivity (roguelikes) or character development or even the atmosphere.

On a serious note, people around here talk about game flaws all the time. About Fallout 1 flaws, Arcanum flaws, (insert game) flaws. New Vegas is then put under the microscope; you rush in here all hot under the collar...
The flaws do come up in conversations but I don't recall anyone focusing only on the flaws of, say, Fallout, the way you and some other folks are trying to do with New Vegas from day one.

You're not putting NV under a microscope. You are looking for things to bitch about it and when someone addresses your fairly weak arguments, you bitch about your right to bitch. I don't think you're heading into the right direction here. Just sayin'.

...you rush in here all hot under the collar and have a rant off at someone that dared pick on a stupid design decision...
This post was a rant? Reaching for straws now?

tell me, you really don't think that isn't a fanboy trait right there?
Right. My bad. Anyone who has a favorable opinion of a game, which mind you is very well received on this site, is a fanboy. Got it. You, sir, are clearly the last bastion of rational thought.

:thumbsup:
 

Gragt

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Just got NV as a gift, so I'll be able to fight the good fight too :smug:
 

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