Fallout New Vegas is the best Obsidian game ever

[Curious_Tongue]

they're 90% the same game when it comes to what you're spending your time doing

You could say a good book and a bad book share 90% of their words with each other.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

They took what works about the basic formula of Bethesda's games and enhanced it through better execution. So in that sense it's a collaboration I suppose, yeah.

They infused the fallout universe into the game. They also infused it with interesting characters, locations and factions.

Stop defending Fallout 3.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

I'll defend the visuals and physical world design of Fallout 3. Plus the sound design and soundtrack. But the amateur writing drags the entire game into the shit category.

 

[Sigourn]

they're 90% the same game when it comes to what you're spending your time doing

You could say a good book and a bad book share 90% of their words with each other.

Yes, but no.
It's impossible to play New Vegas and not think "this reminds me of Fallout 3". While you would struggle to say the same thing about a good and a bad book, unless they share a similar plot (which would more accurate than saying "they share 90% of their words with each other").
This is because the gameplay of New Vegas, though changed from Fallout 3, remains essentially the same.

Tweaks have been made. New mechanics have been added (aim down sights, survival crafting, weapon modding, Hardcore mode, and possibly others I'm forgetting about). But at the end of the day, unless the writing moves your world... it's very possible someone will be left disappointed with New Vegas if they have been disappointed with Fallout 3, and likewise, that someone who enjoyed Fallout 3 will be left disappointed with Fallout: New Vegas. And this is because mechanics and writing don't exist in a vacuum, but in a world: a world that, in New Vegas, feels very sparse, unrewarding and unfulfilling at times.

Are we going to ignore that New Vegas' mechanics boil down to "go around and kill stuff in bad combat, or talk to NPCs and pass pathetically easy skill checks"? It's hard to imagine someone loving New Vegas because of the gameplay and not because of the writing. Meanwhile, Fallout 3 placed a lot more emphasis on combat scenarios to elevate it beyond its awful mechanics (case in point, there are very few locations in New Vegas that lends themselves to fun combat situations).

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Fallout 3 placed a lot more emphasis on combat scenarios to elevate it beyond its awful mechanics

 

[Curious_Tongue]

but in a world: a world that, in New Vegas, feels very sparse, unrewarding and unfulfilling at times.

I never felt that playing New Vegas.

There did seem to focus less on creating an interesting frozen in time world compared to Fallout 3, but that's because they were focused on the making the world a living and evolving one.

 

[Sigourn]

Fallout 3 placed a lot more emphasis on combat scenarios to elevate it beyond its awful mechanics

And New Vegas is even worse and more boring in combat, so that should you tell you something.

I never felt that playing New Vegas.

Well I'm glad for you. Sadly that wasn't the experience of many others, even a lot of those who enjoyed New Vegas or prefer it over Fallout 3. There are so many places that could be cut off from the map entirely and barely nothing would change since they weren't particularly interesting to begin with.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Well, Nevada is full of deserts. You know, like empty places. If you'd place 'interesting things' every 3 steps it would be one big theme park.

 

[Sigourn]

Well, Nevada is full of deserts. You know, like empty places. If you'd place 'interesting things' every 3 steps it would be one big theme park.

This is not an argument, because the question then becomes "why would they set their game in a location full of empty places?".

Fallout and Fallout 2 answer that question with "because we don't have you walking through empty places", thanks to its map system. New Vegas doesn't have that, and the fast travel system means you will skip most combat present in the game, not to mention break the Hardcore mode (as your needs don't scale with fast travel to properly reflect the time it would take you to walk from point A to point B).

 

[DalekFlay]

I'll defend the visuals and physical world design of Fallout 3. Plus the sound design and soundtrack. But the amateur writing drags the entire game into the shit category.

You claim disagreement and then write the same thing I did, just in a different way.

 

[Ol' Willy]

I never had any problems with walking trough some empty spaces in New Vegas. It was even quite unrealistically dense, in my opinion. You guys have real problems with attention span.

 

[Gastrick]

Older is better obviously so Neverwinter Nights 2 was Obsidian's best game.

I'll have to give New Vegas another chance and see proof with my own eyes sometime.

 

[Sigourn]

I never had any problems with walking trough some empty spaces in New Vegas. It was even quite unrealistically dense, in my opinion. You guys have real problems with attention span.

Dunno, man. It gets boring walking for minutes on end with nothing to see and nothing to do. Were I to Let's Play my non-fast travel New Vegas playthrough, it would get boring very quickly. Backtracking through the same old roads around the Vegas area gets tiring a couple of quests in.

 

[Butter]

I never had any problems with walking trough some empty spaces in New Vegas. It was even quite unrealistically dense, in my opinion. You guys have real problems with attention span.

Dunno, man. It gets boring walking for minutes on end with nothing to see and nothing to do. Were I to Let's Play my non-fast travel New Vegas playthrough, it would get boring very quickly. Backtracking through the same old roads around the Vegas area gets tiring a couple of quests in.

So why are you doing a non-fast travel playthrough, retard? Would you do the same thing in Fallout 3? "Woohoo, this is the part where I walk back to my house in Megaton for the 15th time. Oh look, a bombed out house! WOW!"

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I never had any problems with walking trough some empty spaces in New Vegas. It was even quite unrealistically dense, in my opinion. You guys have real problems with attention span.

Dunno, man. It gets boring walking for minutes on end with nothing to see and nothing to do. Were I to Let's Play my non-fast travel New Vegas playthrough, it would get boring very quickly. Backtracking through the same old roads around the Vegas area gets tiring a couple of quests in.

So why are you doing a non-fast travel playthrough, retard? Would you do the same thing in Fallout 3? "Woohoo, this is the part where I walk back to my house in Megaton for the 15th time. Oh look, a bombed out house! WOW!"

He makes a good argument against sandbox RPGs in general, it's an inherent issue with sandbox games where you have to balance between themepark and empty world.
I personally don't find empty worlds very interesting, and themepark design ends up feeling ridiculous to the point where the game would be far better off not being a sandbox at all.

I disagree with FNV being like this, however. It's one of the few that seemed to strike a decent balance.

 

[Butter]

He makes a good argument, it's an inherent issue with sandbox games where you have to balance between themepark and empty world.
I personally don't find empty worlds very interesting, and themepark design ends up feeling ridiculous to the point where the game would be far better off not being a sandbox at all.

An open world sandbox should have empty spaces between the points of interest for pacing purposes, but it's immaterial when they offer a fast travel option and Sigourn inexplicably refuses to use it.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

He makes a good argument, it's an inherent issue with sandbox games where you have to balance between themepark and empty world.
I personally don't find empty worlds very interesting, and themepark design ends up feeling ridiculous to the point where the game would be far better off not being a sandbox at all.

An open world sandbox should have empty spaces between the points of interest for pacing purposes, but it's immaterial when they offer a fast travel option and Sigourn inexplicably refuses to use it.

Yes, but how does the game benefit from being a sandbox? Especially when it has fast travel?
How is this superior to the original Fallout world design?

 

[Butter]

He makes a good argument, it's an inherent issue with sandbox games where you have to balance between themepark and empty world.
I personally don't find empty worlds very interesting, and themepark design ends up feeling ridiculous to the point where the game would be far better off not being a sandbox at all.

An open world sandbox should have empty spaces between the points of interest for pacing purposes, but it's immaterial when they offer a fast travel option and Sigourn inexplicably refuses to use it.

Yes, but how does the game benefit from being a sandbox? Especially when it has fast travel?
How is this superior to the original Fallout world design?

I don't think it is superior. New Vegas would've been a better game if it looked and played like Fallout 2.

 

[Gordian Nutt]

This is very female argument - "the end result doesn't matter, how much effort I put into this is what matter!"

I do not understand the point you are trying to make.

My point was a lot of Bethesda work for Fallout 3 - programming, art, design - was used to a significant amount in New Vegas and NV would not have been possible without that groundwork.

 

[Gordian Nutt]

Well, Nevada is full of deserts. You know, like empty places. If you'd place 'interesting things' every 3 steps it would be one big theme park.

It is not a real world simulator. Even if Nevada is filled with deserts New Vegas needs to be an interesting open world exploration game first, then realistic next but very low priority in my opinion.

I am fine with a game trying to capture the feel of deserts but doing so at the cost of gameplay is not a good idea.

Someone cited Fallout 1 and 2 map as letting you ignore the empty spaces but I would argue it was the game resources that prevented a full world map which the Troika founders changed in Arcanum so you could walk across the world IIRC

 

[Butter]

Someone cited Fallout 1 and 2 map as letting you ignore the empty spaces but I would argue it was the game resources that prevented a full world map which the Troika founders changed in Arcanum so you could walk across the world IIRC

And yet nobody walks across Arcanum ignoring the fast travel. Because that would be ridiculous.

 

[Sigourn]

So why are you doing a non-fast travel playthrough, retard?

Because if you have played the fucking game, you would know that fast travelling:

• Renders the Hardcore mode survival needs pointless.
• Removes most of the combat from the game.

It doesn't help New Vegas' case that the quest structure is so poorly thought out you are basically forced to fast travel if you don't want to go mad from all the backtracking.

You then talk about "empty spaces being necessary for pacing purposes"... what? Neither Fallout or Fallout 2 had completely empty spaces, because they weren't needed: the world map design was VERY friendly on the player's time, and provided them with random encounters to boot. Are you actually saying that wasting the player's time is something to be encouraged, really? You reach the right conclusion (classic Fallout was better), but you don't realize how New Vegas having a mostly empty map that is not worth walking through a second time (once you have unlocked the appropiate map markers) is a massive flaw that you can't dismiss with "just fast travel bro".

Your Arcanum comment is retarded by the way: being able to travel from town to town without using fast travel is something no one ever expected people to do (there's a reason it's so blatantly "there"), whereas Obsidian did put some thought into what the space between locations looked like. And, you know, walking around the map doesn't take you days.

 

[Butter]

So why are you doing a non-fast travel playthrough, retard?

Because if you have played the fucking game, you would know that fast travelling:

• Renders the Hardcore mode survival needs pointless.
• Removes most of the combat from the game.

It doesn't help New Vegas' case that the quest structure is so poorly thought out you are basically forced to fast travel if you don't want to go mad from all the backtracking.

The survival needs are trivially easy to manage even if you use a mod to speed them up. The only combat that you avoid with fast travel is the hit squads, since you can't fast travel to a location you haven't yet visited, and most of the encounters only happen one time.

 

[Sigourn]

The survival needs are trivially easy to manage even if you use a mod to speed them up.

Yet another reason why New Vegas is, mechanically speaking, a pretty bad game.

The only combat that you avoid with fast travel is the hit squads, since you can't fast travel to a location you haven't yet visited, and most of the encounters only happen one time.

Encounters do respawn, but I admit there are very few in vanilla New Vegas and hardly any reason to redo them as the amount and size is negligible. Regarding hit squads, that's really a major or minor issue depending on how one feels about them. I personally like to feel like my character is meant to be hunted down by the NCR or Legion, and fast travelling pretty much negates that.

 

[luj1]

SWKotOR ez