Review TNO fellates Fallout: New Vegas

[Brother None]

"best RPG in 3D" is so hilariously wrong I can't even begin to describe it.

Um, it's not as if there is an enormous amount of quality options. It could easily be someone's favorite 3D RPG. Easily.

It could, but favourite and "best" aren't really the same thing, especially not when writing reviews.

But personally, I don't like qualifiers like "best" or "worst" in reviews. Reviews are short-term, quick impressions, and I leave the "omfg best ever" material for the mainstream guys. "Best" and "worst" comparisons are done over a longer period as you've sat down and chewed it over. GameBanshee's Hall of Fame has a 3-year "waiting period" for that reason. I also despise "best of" lists that include primarily titles from the last 5 years for that reason.

Oh fuck no. Fallout 2 should have been: the same flair, but without the loss of focus and a bit less bloat.. Agree with this completely.

I will say it again, IF some group of people (and dear GAWD PLEASE DO THIS!) completely modded all the content of New Vegas into the Fallout 2 engine, it would be my 2nd favorite Fallout game. Period.

Since you added a qualifier that is not present in the article to the statement "this is the sequel Fallout 2 should have been", you do not completely agree. It'd have been easier if you just said so rather than shout at me.

 

[Relay]

Fallout: New Vegas is one of the best RPGs of all time. A masterpiece, although not an unblemished one - the Obsidian trademarks of beta-as-release candidate, consolized interface and badly optimized graphics are there. But so is a cracking story, clever, intricate quest/C&C design, and the wasteland brought back to life in the same blackly jaunty way Fallout did. If you've been after a proper successor to Fallout, or simply something to redeem the genre after several years in the doldrums, look no further. Welcome back, MCA: all is forgiven.

The fact that he doesn't mention the most important parts of Fallout - gameplay variety and character system says it all.

Fallout didn't even have writing and story ffs.

If we divided the codex into factions I'd say the biggest one would be the storyfagtion. People who praise NV as a good Fallout game don't remember what made Fallout great. The writing was to the point, compact, and there wasn't much in the way of talkative npcs. Story ? What story ? Get teh chip, fight teh mutant. None of the things people praise as good in New Vegas were good in Fallout. None. On the other hand, all the things that made Fallout great are clearly absent. The character system, the combat, the attractive setting, the no-nonsense sidequests (none of that one hour long trek across the wastes bullshit ala Return to Sender, what the fuck. The men who were responsible for that abomination should be HANGED!).

I think that to like NV you have to be one of those retards who still dirty their underwear over the thought of a Planescape Torment. They don't want a game, they want a piece of interactive fiction, or visual novel. They make up for their life deficiencies by larping Charisma Boy who's loved by all their buddies inside of their computah. Them people like to make it known how much they love RPG but truth be told, they don't want a real RPG, because they never make the choice to play anything but Charisma Boy. You could remove all other options and they wouldn't even know the game lacks those options as long as you give them their Charisma check.

 

[Brother None]

The writing was to the point, compact, and there wasn't much in the way of talkative npcs.

Not much? True. But there were talkative NPCs, and a lot of options to explore the background and history of NPCs and factions. New Vegas expands on that, but it's hardly new to the franchise.

I don't consider New Vegas the second coming, but the claim that it is completely divest of every single element that made Fallout good is spurious. Like Fallout, it attempts to make your character build choices more relevant to the game world (though it fails at higher levels). Like Fallout, it focuses on a per-faction set of reputation and choice & consequences, while adding over-arching main story choices (an improvement). Like Fallout, it occasionally shines in moments of a wry, darkly humor look at humanity.

It is certainly true that most of New Vegas' weaknesses are in its game design, and most of its strengths are in writing. I don't really see the purpose of trying to separate this into some kind of dichotomic idea of either liking story alone or liking gameplay alone. It's not really that simple.

 

[Relay]

True. But there were talkative NPCs, and a lot of options to explore the background and history of NPCs and factions. New Vegas expands on that, but it's hardly new to the franchise.

I don't remember ANYONE in Fallout 1 having as many things to say as Veronica for example. And she's your follower. Followers in FO1 hardly had anything to say. Important NPC and talking heads certainly didn't speak half as much as a follower in NV.

Fallout had dialogue that had plenty of skill checks but it didn't have talkative bullshit.

I feel there is a true dichotomy here because none of NV strengths were found in FO1. The only things the two games have in common are : super mutants, ghouls, energy weapons, power armor, that is to say, it barely touches FO on a superficial level, just like most fantasy games have to feature elves and orcs, NV features mutants and ghouls but that's about the end of what is Fallouty in NV.

You can feel it when you play Arcanum by Troika that the people who made FO great didn't really have what Obsidian has in mind. Arcanum allowed for a great diplomatic build but it didn't feature massive talkative bullshit on the level of New Vegas or Planescape Torment either. Too bad they broke the game balance because Arcanum had great potential.

 

[Redshirt #42]

Shitty review.

 

[MetalCraze]

Not much? True. But there were talkative NPCs, and a lot of options to explore the background and history of NPCs and factions

There were no talkative NPCs in Fallout 1. Fallout 2 had a lack of them too. Most of the lore and backstory came from diaries scattered around. The only characters that were adding to lore through dialogues were p. much those talking heads.

Your options with an average Fallout NPCs were basically:

"give me quest"
"bye"

and some more afterwards that most of the time were connected to some quests or outcomes.

The major focus of Fallout was on SPECIAL and all kinds of stuff you can do with those skills in quests and not only. That's why it was loved.

Remove SPECIAL from Fallouts and they will be completely forgotten in a few months like it will happen to F3NV when DA2 will come out which will be the best RPG of the century that month.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Remove SPECIAL from Fallouts and they will be completely forgotten in a few months like it will happen to F3NV when DA2 will come out which will be the best RPG of the century that month.

I'm going to take note of every time you say this for when people are still praising NV in two years' time. Except you'll be allowed to like it by then, I guess.

None of the games you reference with this stupid self-meme ever achieved the level of praise from "respected" Codexers (VD, Elwro, Jasede etc) that F:NV has, the majority of the Codex disliked Alpha Protocol even if you really want to convince yourself otherwise. I hated AP and ME, disliked DA, whatever else I need to say to establish myself as a Kool Kid, but I find NV one of the best RPGs in years when you get by the shitty FO3 engine. Not "OH GOD IT'S JUST WHAT FALLOUT 1 SHOULD HAVE BEEN UNNNNNGH AVVALOORN COCK", it's still damn flawed, but I went into it expecting something of quality comparable to AP and was very, very pleasantly surprised. Sorry to break it to you, but sometimes people actually like things you don't.

 

[Relay]

None of the games you reference with this stupid self-meme ever achieved the level of praise from "respected" Codexers (VD, Elwro, Jasede etc) that F:NV has,

Well VD hailed DA as the second coming of christ since Arcanum. So much for some respected l33t codexer, ultimately he doesn't care for anything but irrelevant, cosmetic C&C which is what made him praise DA so much. I consider most C&C irrelevant because you don't get to feel the impact of your "choices" except in the very ending slides. The choices in most cases didn't open new questlines or places, for example the choice between the elves and werewolves it's all about the cosmetic ending slides (and I don't play games for the ending slides) since you WILL have to kill most of the werewolves and do the whole dungeon for the elves before you get to side with them at the last minute. Or the choice between going to the circle tower or killing connor. Doesn't matter, you will have to go to the circle tower anyway. Siding with the templar or the mages ? You will still have to do the same actions from the beginning of the dungeon to the end anyway. How does it matter in terms of gameplay ? it's all boiling down to larping.

New Vegas had that kind of fake C&C because you could do all kind of wrong to all the factions and they'd forgive you once you hit the quest with the platinum chip.

Arcanum probably had more real c&c even though that's not my main thing.

 

[commie]

Explansiuns fur de returds....

I admire your patience to explaining what you obviously meant ..

 

[Shannow]

First, the better writing part. You're comparing just the intros of NV and Fo3. Well, okay. Then you come up with 'there's no more stupid dialogues of fo3!'. Okay, that's pretty cool, but... why should I believe you? Give me an example of this better writing. Report some of the better written dialogues, some of the better written characters, tell me how conversing with the Käser changed your life for the better.

Käser means "cheeser", you're aware of that? *g* The German "Kaiser" is what corresponds to the Legion's pronounciation.
And this is actually your worst point. I didn't find FO3's dialogue that bad. Mediocre with real shit parts as compared to shit all the way. It just had the tendency to be REALLY stupid when it wanted to be intelligent.
I also don't consider NV's dialogue to be "my gods, Joss Whedon could learn from these!", but it's servicable without constant facepalm comments. Do you really expect people/reviewers to quote big slabs of dialogue? What if they take the one good dialogue from one game and the one bad dialogue from another? How would that make you trust them more?

Then you talk about the factions. According to you, the Legion is not just Bioware evil bunch of folks trying to enslave nations with necromancy. But why is that?

You'll probably meet them first in Nipton where they burn down a village full of double dealing scumbags. They tell you so. I instantly wanted to join them.

Why are the Elvis impersonators 'neatly thought'? It sounds pretty stupid to me, and I won't reconsider unless you tell me why.

They are stupid. There is no redeeming factor. I really don't get how people can run around saying FO2 is too full of lulz and sucks because of it but NV is a monocled tophat full of seriousness.

Why is the NCR not much better than the other factions?

Obsidian attempts to show them as powergrabbing without the willingness or capability to bring law and stability to the conquered regions.

You say the quest design is excellent and almost all quests have multiple solutions. Which quests? What are they about? Give me an example. For all I know, your view on 'multiple solutions' might be Bioware dialogues with 3 options that lead to the same result.

It's not. I don't remember a single instance of 3 options only for flavour. But apart from that this point has similar weaknesses to your dialogue point. How do you know the quest given as an example isn't one of very few of the depicted quality?

Or is the world 'just' vast and completely empty, and you're just a connoisseur of empty deserts?

It's full of stuff. Little of it worth gushing over. And again, does he give the "Ant Nest in the middle of a salt lake" as an example or "the town filled with fleshed out npcs and quests"? If you don't trust the reviewer at all, how can you tell wether he's giving an example that's representative or not?

And more importantly, why is this one of the best RPGs ever?

I have no idea. It's more a chose your own adventure than an RPG anyway. With easy combat and quest compass it quickly becomes lacking in any kind of challenge and you can simply chose how to do the quests.

I get your overall criticism. Examples should be given for almost every point one makes. I just don't agree with the "importance" you seem to attribute them with

 

[JarlFrank]

While I wouldn't call it one of the best RPGs ever, it definitely is one of the best in recent years. Better than Dragon Age which was okay but burdenend by shit encounter design, better than FO3 for all the obvious reasons, (subjectively) better than the Mass Effects cause I never could get into the whole lots-of-cutscenes-with-popamole-inbetween gameplay.

So, I guess I'd just call it "best mainstream RPG since Troika died", but then Skyway would still go all RAEG without giving any counter-examples so whatever. The only thing that was of similar good quality in recent years is Risen.

In b4 HERP DERP UR WRONG GAEM SUKS

 

[Shannow]

"respected" Codexers (VD, Elwro, Jasede etc)

In addition to what Relay said about VD (and in that I agree with him):
VD was more or less thrown out. Has posted less and less on the codex. Has gone fully 2010 recently.
Elwro, pretty cool guy, but not very "out there". Most people probably aren't really aware of him.
Jasede??? You must be fucking joking. It's been 3-4 years since he's written anything worth reading. Since then it's been furry faggotry and sucking VD's cock. And after much drama he hardly posts anymore.

I'm aware you put "respected" in quotation marks, but there are as many "respected" Codexers as there are "altruistic" bankers...

 

[Admiral jimbob]

That was very much the reason for the quotation marks, yeah. Jasede might count more as "loved" or as "the adorable self-loathing furry mascot that every forum needs", though. Those three were just off the top of my head, just meant to illustrate that a lot of older, relatively established members are praising NV to some extent where they haven't had anything good to say about other recent RPGs; it's not just the usual assortment of random fanboys with 50-100 posts who crop up and whine that we're all evil haters and AP is the best game in years.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Käser means "cheeser", you're aware of that? *g*

I know, but I find this to sound much more similar to the way the Legionnaires spell 'caesar' than 'Kaiser'.

Plus, it's funnier that way

I get your overall criticism. Examples should be given for almost every point one makes. I just don't agree with the "importance" you seem to attribute them with

I had a point-by-point VD-style counterreply wall of text written to your post, but then I noticed this line at the end and had to remove it all Well, I guess it's a matter of what you expect from a prestigious review for a prestigious magazine such as ours, but I think that a 'review' should be a collection of points with examples to illustrate why the points are true. Even a single example in every category would have been better than no example at all, as everyone can just say 'stuff rocks/sucks' but that makes you look like a raving fanboy/skyway.

Even if he posted one example of excellent quest design or a well-written character (no, not by copying slabs of his dialogue, but by saying what and how he speaks, whether he is ambiguous etc) I could become interested in the game and think "Hey, that's cool, maybe there's more of such cool things in the game, I should check it out!' instead of going 'wait, what/how/who/why? '. Plus, citing examples gives insight to what the reviewer considers good and whether it will correspond to your taste. As I said, he can cite multiple solutions to stuff, but, unfortunately, I lack the divinatory skills to discern if he means Bioware non-linearity of 3 paths leading to the same or 'proper' non-linearity with many outcomes, ways to tackle a quest, closing/opening new paths.

 

[chzr]

Nothing surprises me anymore at the Codex '10.

Good review m8! Best RPG ever 11/10 GOTY11111 xDDDDD

thi-

Joined: 26 Jun 2010

nvm

 

[dr. one]

Why does the second one work better? It forgoes the verbal histrionics,

yeah. your review is chock-full of them though .
more substance next time plz, thx.

oh and Vegas isn´t Obsidian´s first masterpiece, that would be MotB.

 

[Morkar Left]

Fallout: New Vegas is one of the best RPGs of all time. A masterpiece, although not an unblemished one - the Obsidian trademarks of beta-as-release candidate, consolized interface and badly optimized graphics are there. But so is a cracking story, clever, intricate quest/C&C design, and the wasteland brought back to life in the same blackly jaunty way Fallout did. If you've been after a proper successor to Fallout, or simply something to redeem the genre after several years in the doldrums, look no further. Welcome back, MCA: all is forgiven.

The fact that he doesn't mention the most important parts of Fallout - gameplay variety and character system says it all.

Fallout didn't even have writing and story ffs.

If we divided the codex into factions I'd say the biggest one would be the storyfagtion. People who praise NV as a good Fallout game don't remember what made Fallout great. The writing was to the point, compact, and there wasn't much in the way of talkative npcs. Story ? What story ? Get teh chip, fight teh mutant. None of the things people praise as good in New Vegas were good in Fallout. None. On the other hand, all the things that made Fallout great are clearly absent. The character system, the combat, the attractive setting, the no-nonsense sidequests (none of that one hour long trek across the wastes bullshit ala Return to Sender, what the fuck. The men who were responsible for that abomination should be HANGED!).

I think that to like NV you have to be one of those retards who still dirty their underwear over the thought of a Planescape Torment. They don't want a game, they want a piece of interactive fiction, or visual novel. They make up for their life deficiencies by larping Charisma Boy who's loved by all their buddies inside of their computah. Them people like to make it known how much they love RPG but truth be told, they don't want a real RPG, because they never make the choice to play anything but Charisma Boy. You could remove all other options and they wouldn't even know the game lacks those options as long as you give them their Charisma check.

Hey skyway, why don't you just play NV before bitching? It would show you how laughable your arguments are and you could come up with some valid and reasonable criticism to backup your bitching fun.

 

[SimpleComplexity]

Welcome back, MCA: all is forgiven.

So Sawyer is the lead designer and MCA gets all the credits?
Only because he looks better and TNO would like to have gay sex with him?

 

[Silellak]

People who praise NV as a good Fallout game don't remember what made Fallout great.

The major focus of Fallout was on SPECIAL and all kinds of stuff you can do with those skills in quests and not only. That's why it was loved.

ITT: People tell other people why they liked Fallout.

"No, you didn't enjoy Fallout for the setting, atmosphere, and quest design! You enjoyed Fallout for the character system and turn-based combat!"

 

[Relay]

Fallout: New Vegas is one of the best RPGs of all time. A masterpiece, although not an unblemished one - the Obsidian trademarks of beta-as-release candidate, consolized interface and badly optimized graphics are there. But so is a cracking story, clever, intricate quest/C&C design, and the wasteland brought back to life in the same blackly jaunty way Fallout did. If you've been after a proper successor to Fallout, or simply something to redeem the genre after several years in the doldrums, look no further. Welcome back, MCA: all is forgiven.

The fact that he doesn't mention the most important parts of Fallout - gameplay variety and character system says it all.

Fallout didn't even have writing and story ffs.

If we divided the codex into factions I'd say the biggest one would be the storyfagtion. People who praise NV as a good Fallout game don't remember what made Fallout great. The writing was to the point, compact, and there wasn't much in the way of talkative npcs. Story ? What story ? Get teh chip, fight teh mutant. None of the things people praise as good in New Vegas were good in Fallout. None. On the other hand, all the things that made Fallout great are clearly absent. The character system, the combat, the attractive setting, the no-nonsense sidequests (none of that one hour long trek across the wastes bullshit ala Return to Sender, what the fuck. The men who were responsible for that abomination should be HANGED!).

I think that to like NV you have to be one of those retards who still dirty their underwear over the thought of a Planescape Torment. They don't want a game, they want a piece of interactive fiction, or visual novel. They make up for their life deficiencies by larping Charisma Boy who's loved by all their buddies inside of their computah. Them people like to make it known how much they love RPG but truth be told, they don't want a real RPG, because they never make the choice to play anything but Charisma Boy. You could remove all other options and they wouldn't even know the game lacks those options as long as you give them their Charisma check.

Hey skyway, why don't you just play NV before bitching? It would show you how laughable your arguments are and you could come up with some valid and reasonable criticism to backup your bitching fun.

First I'm not skyway, second I did a full playthrough or I wouldn't know about stupid quests like Return to Sender and how shitty Obsidian is for thinking that it's a good idea to spread a fetch quest all over the map for an hour of walking then making you fast travel back three times to the places you've just visited, then make you..
I have nothing against short, straight to the point, filler fetch quests usually but you are totally doing it wrong if you think I'm not gonna bitch about something that takes an hour of walking across a desert stupid wasteland with three radscorpions and two rats to kill. You and all the people who approve this piece of shit of a non-game are nothing more but a massive concentrated pack of human diarrhea. You stink and your place is not in front of a computer but thrown at a landfill. You're not even worth the gulag.

 

[torpid]

Trying too hard. You're a piece of work brah, taking one quest and bitching about it for ages. And claiming that what made Fallout great was the combat is laughable, as all I remember was hitting and kiting enemies with a spear in the early game, then targeted eye shots for massive damage later on. Oh and retarded companions who had to be kept away from SMGs. The death animations were fun, but Fallout combat has never been particularly interesting. The character system wasn't much better, as there were a slew of useless skills. Quest design and setting were the high points -- two things New Vegas does well, despite the Wild West angle.

 

[Tails]

Really bad review, for many reason which were mentioned. But this:

Welcome back, MCA: all is forgiven.

You realise TNO, that MCA has little to do with New Vegas in the end? It's quiet sad to see that every stupidity for which Bethesda would be criticize to death is suddenly A okey when Chris Avellone enters the stage.

"No, you didn't enjoy Fallout for the setting, atmosphere, and quest design! You enjoyed Fallout for the character system and turn-based combat!"

Yep, and other side is calling anyone who dare criticize NV a Skyway clone.

 

[dr. one]

stupid quests like Return to Sender

i keep seeing this mentioned quite often, but i rather disagree, at least with it being a big deal.
the thing is, Return to Sender and some other similarly laden quests don´t exist in vacuum. Vegas is an exploration-heavy game and these quests are primarily there to accentuate this aspect imo. on the way to the target destination you´re likely to discover other points of interests and sometimes the destination itself may be an important quest hub you haven´t discovered before.
of course, this doesn´t apply when the quest operates with locations you´ve already explored, but in that case, the fetch quest boils down to few fast travel clicks and is over in 10 minutes max.
take the filter portion of BoS´ Still in the Dark fetch feast, for example. if you´ve explored those vaults already, it indeed is an ordinary FedEx business, but it´s also over fast, but if you haven´t, you´re led to locations with shitload of other things to possibly do and experience.
the amount of fetch quests in the game may indeed be a bit overkill, but they´re far from constituting the majority of Vegas´ playtime.

 

[Silellak]

Yep, and other side is calling anyone who dare criticize NV a Skyway clone.

Yeah, it's almost like the truth is somewhere in between! Crazy, I know.

In regards to the 'map spanning fetch quests'...am I the only one who saw those and thought "I'll get to them when I'm in the area"? I saw Return to Sender was going to take me across the entire map and thought "Well, no rush on this one." Same with the Brotherhood quests. They were more an additional reason and reward for exploration than anything else. I can see why they'd piss you off if you're the sort of person who has to do every quest as soon as it's assigned.

 

[dr. one]

I saw Return to Sender was going to take me across the entire map and thought "Well, no rush on this one." Same with the Brotherhood quests. They were more an additional reason and reward for exploration than anything else.

this, too.