Fallout Is Fallout: New Vegas a worthy Fallout game?

[Drax]

Even if that one quest is retarded, how hysteric are you that it ruins the game for ya?

 

[pippin]

Ya'll cowards don't even gather all the Sunset Sarsaparilla Blue Star bottle caps.

 

[Orobis]

Ya'll cowards don't even gather all the Sunset Sarsaparilla Blue Star bottle caps.

I got close once. How many is it again? 25? wtf is the reward anyway?

 

[Lemming42]

wtf is the reward anyway?

A conversation with a nightmarish animatronic cowboy and access to a room containing a dead guy with a cool laser pistol.

 

[Orobis]

wtf is the reward anyway?

A conversation with a nightmarish animatronic cowboy and access to a room containing a dead guy with a cool laser pistol.

So not worth it than.

 

[Master]

Even if that one quest is retarded, how hysteric are you that it ruins the game for ya?

I was just messing around man. I like New Vegas!(modded). But to tell the truth stupid stuff like that does kinda ruin it... It ruins my suspension of disbelief.

 

[pippin]

Ya'll cowards don't even gather all the Sunset Sarsaparilla Blue Star bottle caps.

I got close once. How many is it again? 25? wtf is the reward anyway?

50. Got them all on my own. No walkthrough.

The reward is a laser pistol which is the best weapon of its kind in the game iirc.

 

[Drax]

Ya'll cowards don't even gather all the Sunset Sarsaparilla Blue Star bottle caps.

I got close once. How many is it again? 25? wtf is the reward anyway?

50. Got them all on my own. No walkthrough.

The reward is a laser pistol which is the best weapon of its kind in the game iirc.

What a loser, the only tru way to complete the quest is by achieving CHIM.

 

[Master]

The Boomers' arsenal consists largely of explosives, which can't be used because of the resulting ant explosions, the narrow quarters, and risk of damaging the building. They are left with the option of firearms - weapons relatively unfavorable by the Boomers.
They have already tried this, as indicated by the corpses equipped with rifles you find in the ant nest. Instead of sending even more of their population to die, they came to the logical conclusion to try something else.
Hence the already mentioned Sonic Device, which was a work in progress when the Courier entered the picture. And even as a WIP it turned out to be a highly effective solution... And voilà, they didn't have to waste a bunch of lives!
The quest makes sense, you just didn't clear the INT and PER checks required to realize it.

No matter how you twist it, no matter how you turn it i cant bring myself to believe that 50 well armed men and women couldnt deal with this situation. If we were talking about Deathclaws then okay but these are just a couple of tiny ants. True, explosive ants but still, an enemy little above the common rat in the Fallout universe... FFS theyre the starting enemy in the Temple of Trials! No, the quest sucks and you know it friend. Im sorry to say this but you are a LARPer. You pretended that using explosives would hurt the installation, when it wouldnt; you pretended that they couldnt just use guns, when they could; you pretended that the quest makes sense, when it DOESNT. Im sorry but thats how it is.

Hold up. Not only do you think this is worse than talking deathclaws, the hubologists, the monty python bridge encounter and pariah dog, but you actually think it is worse than Little Lamplight and what Bethesda did to Harold?

Its on the same level of stupidity as Little Lamplight, however LL was clearly a failed attempt at ripping off Logans Run. So it at least gets a small bonus point for reminding me of that great movie... The Boomers quest OTOH is just plain bullshit.

As for Harold, hes the only thing that Bethesda got half right. You see the point with Harold is that hes always down on his luck... So when you see him in FO2 you cant but think - cant this guy have a break? Look now he has a fucking tree branch sticking out of his head! A tree branch! Who thought of that one... Its so unexpected and out of the blue that its genuinely funny. So, seeing him turned into a tree in FO3 seemed like a logical conclusion of that FO2 moment of brilliance. Its less funny because they just expanded it from a branch to a tree. Its less imaginative... But i consider it cannon.

 

[Lemming42]

Slightly off-topic but I never understood what was so bad about the talking deathclaws. Fallout establishes that being infected with FEV can lead to heightened intelligence, and much like the humans infected with it, the deathclaws show a wide range of intelligence levels.

This is the hill I'll die on. The talking deathclaws make total internal logical sense, much more than a lot of other things in Fo2.

 

[Modron]

I'm curious about that, would you happen to have a source?

Was an interview with Gareth Davies over at NMA in mid 2004 since they have changed format several times had to use the internet archive to actually get the article: https://web.archive.org/web/20150918234745/http://www.nma-fallout.com/article.php?id=9533. Edit <-- See answer 14

Our illustrious Dark Underlord ran with that signature for quite a few years so that probably burned it into VD's brain.

 

[valcik]

Fallout establishes that being infected with FEV can lead to heightened intelligence ..

How so? According to the holodisk with Vree's autopsy report:
„Intellect is decreased by this strain by 30%.”

Talking deathclaws are explained by experiments with genetical engineering in The Enclave. Talking plants and rats are just out of place, strange fluff introduced by Fallout 2.

 

[Lemming42]

Fallout establishes that being infected with FEV can lead to heightened intelligence ..

How so? According to the holodisk with Vree's autopsy report:
„Intellect is decreased by this strain by 30%.”

Talking deathclaws are explained by experiments with genetical engineering in The Enclave. Talking plants and rats are just out of place, strange fluff introduced by Fallout 2.

Lou had his intelligence boosted by the FEV. I don't recall them ever explaining exactly how that happened, but he's living proof that FEV can boost intelligence rather than decrease it under certain unknown circumstances. And if we take the Fallout Bible/Chris Taylor explanation of Ghouls, that they inhaled airborne FEV or something, that muddies the effects of FEV even further.

Since Fallout 2 hinges around the ridiculous idea that the Enclave have their own modified FEV strain, there's no reason they wouldn't be able to isolate the intelligence-increasing effects to be given to Deathclaws.

Granted, it's silly, but FEV is pretty silly to start with.

Was it genetic engineering? I always thought they were injected with FEV.

 

[Marten Broadcloak]

I'm curious about that, would you happen to have a source?

Was an interview with Gareth Davies over at NMA in mid 2004 since they have changed format several times had to use the internet archive to actually get the article: https://web.archive.org/web/20150918234745/http://www.nma-fallout.com/article.php?id=9533. Edit <-- See answer 14

Our illustrious Dark Underlord ran with that signature for quite a few years so that probably burned it into VD's brain.

Thank you, kind sir.

 

[Sigourn]

From time to time I like to read back on older posts I make. A lot can change in a handful of years, I've noticed.
I don't want this to be a long post, so I'll just get this out of the way first: when I made this thread, contrary to what I thought, what I was actually seeking was validation. "I like New Vegas, so I hope others like it too".

But nowadays, I see my appreciation of the guide was misguided.
Yes, New Vegas did a lot of very interesting things. Yes, the game is better with mods. But no, mods don't really fix the fundamental issues with New Vegas. They can make the combat more challenging, the game more balanced, the economy more rewarding. But these are numbers games, and the issue with New Vegas is that it draws so much from Gamebryo and Fallout 3 that the whole experienced is marred because of it.

Fallout: New Vegas is not a good game. Fallout: New Vegas is a mediocre game. But that doesn't do the game justice. Reality is this: Fallout: New Vegas is the best Fallout game trapped in the worst Fallout game. It's the spirit of classic Fallout, the best of it (the choices, the consequences, the availability of options, the writing, the memorable characters; in many ways outdoing classic Fallout, actually), trapped in the worst of Fallout 3 (the build choices that don't really matter, the awful gunplay and overall gameplay, the NPCs that all look like second cousins of each other, the dogshit graphics, the clunky movement, the awful interface and cluttered itemizations which is even more obviously pointless if you ignore all the "enchantments" present on items, the minigames, the overworld exploration that gets boring on your second or third playthrough as you know what to expect).

A tragedy has befallen all mankind, and its name is GameBryo.

 

[Lemming42]

Yeah pretty much. The biggest failing of New Vegas is that, because of the nature of the game and the inherited mechanics from Fo3, every character is capable of combat, and is expected to partake in it (though you can get through New Vegas, with about 98% completion, without ever firing a shot).

It's a huge problem because in the original games, combat is just one potential method of solving certain problems. Which means it's not available to all characters at all times, and anyone who doesn't specialise in combat skills will likely find themselves absolutely eating shit as soon as the fighting starts, forcing you to go back and try again, finding another route that accomodates your character's skillset. In New Vegas, it's the exact opposite - combat is a guaranteed-to-work fallback position for if your other skills all fail, or for when you just can't be bothered to find another way. In Fallout, unless you were a combat-focused character, you knew that you'd be fucked as soon as bullets started to fly, and so it was in your interest to do everything you could to find alternatives. In New Vegas, you know that as soon as bullets start to fly, you'll inevitably win with VATS spam and injecting 500 stimpaks into yourself, meaning that it seriously undermines a lot of the tension that the game would otherwise have.

 

[True Ukrainian]

There is no peaceful way to pass the dungeon right at the start of Fallout 2. You have to engage in some combat to survive.

 

[Sigourn]

Lemming42 Exactly. In my latest run which I put an end to today (having just reached the Mojave Outpost; that's how bored I was), I was allegedly playing a melee focused character. Yet I could shoot enemies to death with ease. In Fallout, this would have never happened.
I also dislike how Medicine works in New Vegas, because First Aid and Doctor were removed in Fallout 3, and now Medicine simply makes Stimpaks and healing items in general be more powerful.

Overall, I don't see myself returning to New Vegas or Morrowind any time soon (i.e. not in the next couple of years).

 

[Clockwork Knight]

IT'S ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE TO AVOID COMBAT IN FALLOUT 2 and it's not like there can be much tension with a save-and-reload-anytime mechanic to begin with. In NV you just won't have to reload unless you want to.

 

[Lemming42]

There is no peaceful way to pass the dungeon right at the start of Fallout 2. You have to engage in some combat to survive.

You can run past the ants, but I guess you still have to enter combat mode. You can talk the guy down or steal the key off him, though maybe I'm thinking of the restoration patch.

IT'S ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE TO AVOID COMBAT IN FALLOUT 2 and it's not like there can be much tension with a save-and-reload-anytime mechanic to begin with. In NV you just won't have to reload unless you want to.

The save-and-reload anytime thing doesn't totally undermine combat in Fo1/2, though, because (unless everything's set to Wimpy/Easy) there will be some battles you just can't win if your character's skills aren't up to the challenge, no matter how many times you reload. New Vegas doesn't really have any such situations, there really isn't such a thing as an unwinnable encounter, just due to the nature of being a real-time FPS. You can even beat the quarry Deathclaws right out of the starting shack, very easily if you just keep running away while shooting and trapping them on the terrain.

 

[ItsChon]

F:NV is dogshit. Literally a 3D popamole walking simulator that wipes its ass with the original FO games. The fact that 165 Codexer's claim it's a worthy successor goes to show how bottom of the barrel most Codexer's tastes are.

 

[Quillon]

F:NV is dogshit

no you

 

[True Ukrainian]

There is no peaceful way to pass the dungeon right at the start of Fallout 2. You have to engage in some combat to survive.

You can run past the ants, but I guess you still have to enter combat mode. You can talk the guy down or steal the key off him, though maybe I'm thinking of the restoration patch.

IT'S ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE TO AVOID COMBAT IN FALLOUT 2 and it's not like there can be much tension with a save-and-reload-anytime mechanic to begin with. In NV you just won't have to reload unless you want to.

The save-and-reload anytime thing doesn't totally undermine combat in Fo1/2, though, because (unless everything's set to Wimpy/Easy) there will be some battles you just can't win if your character's skills aren't up to the challenge, no matter how many times you reload. New Vegas doesn't really have any such situations, there really isn't such a thing as an unwinnable encounter, just due to the nature of being a real-time FPS. You can even beat the quarry Deathclaws right out of the starting shack, very easily if you just keep running away while shooting and trapping them on the terrain.

It's not just the starting dungeon. There are quests in Fallout 2 where combat is absolutely mandatory. The early quest where you protect cattle herds. Resolving the Dragon and Lo Pan conflict. Retrieving the tanker fob.

 

[Lemming42]

Yeah, definitely. Still have nightmares about the tanker basement. But my point is that the dramatic change to combat mechanics in NV makes combat always a viable and relatively easy solution to any problem, in a way that it never is in the first two games unless you build your character specifically for it.

In fact, half the reason the tanker basement in Fo2 is such a dogshit-terrible piece of game design is that it fucks over characters who aren't built for combat and, up until that point, would have been successfully avoiding it for the vast majority of the game. All of a sudden, your diplomacy or tech-focused character who can't even fire a pistol at something stood a couple meters away is forced to somehow kill a swarm of high-level bullet sponge enemies.

New Vegas' quest design is significantly better than Fo1/2's overall, purely in terms of flexibility and the number of options it offers, but it's all partially undermined by the way combat works. If there was a tanker basement equivalent in New Vegas, it'd still be annoying and an awful piece of design, but any character regardless of their stats would be able to dispatch the enemies relatively easily. Worst case scenario, you could just throw a bunch of plasma grenades, something that was impossible in Fo1/2 unless you'd invested substantially in Throwing.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Oblivion:


Oblivion with Guns:



Oblivion with Guns and Skill Checks: