Killing the Caesar's Legion soldiers brought me some definite satisfaction, but it quickly knocked my reputation with the faction down to "shunned" and, soon after, "hated". When there was nothing left but severed heads and dismembered eyeballs, I had the opportunity to search the bodies and various tents that made up the camp. What I found most interesting was not the ammunition and other loot that could be had, but the notes that I found and added to my Pip-Boy. Some notes were letters written to loved ones, while others were journal entries that NCR members had been writing just before being surrounded and subsequently killed by the Caesar's Legion. Avellone explained that the notes in Fallout: New Vegas are intended mostly for flavor, though there will obviously be some that yield useful information (such as codes to locked doors). As a fan of little lore-inducing elements like this, it was a welcome sight.
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Once I was finished at the camp, Chris had me check out another save game that they used at a previous press event in order to get a better look at the subtle dialogue changes. The first set of dialogue I was shown had a response with a "[Speech 35]" in front of it, and since the protagonist I was playing had 86 points in every skill, that particular response was a viable option. That same response would have shown up even if my Speech skill had been pathetically low, though choosing it with a score lower than 35 would have resulted in my character spitting out the line incoherently. Ultimately, the recipient wouldn't have been convinced, but the development team felt it was important to take the guessing out of skill allocation and just let players know exactly how many points are required to make a successful attempt. The game's new books that grant a temporary +10 bonus to a specific skill should prove to be pretty valuable, thanks to this mechanic.
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When my time with New Vegas was over, I can honestly say that I was quite impressed. It certainly isn't a revolutionary shift from what we saw in Fallout 3, so if the mechanics in Bethesda's iteration turned you off, Obsidian's entry isn't suddenly going to turn you into a believer. What it should do is address the primary issues many of us had with F3 - the monotonous kill scenes in VATS, the less-than-stellar writing, and the lack of any real difficulty once a decent weapon was obtained (hardcore mode, here I come). The game is already content complete and looking pretty polished, so I don't foresee any reason why we won't be experiencing over 150 hours of post-nuclear entertainment when the game ships on October 19th.
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