New Vegas review from NMA, too good to be true???

[1eyedking]

There isn't a single example, that's why. I mean I can direct people to my signature whenever they say the Witcher has bad writing, but they're not doing much effort to prove F3:NV's worth.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

But the rest of the game was very intelligent and coherent (and yes, I'm counting New Reno in)

This is the key to understanding 1eyedking

 

[Jasede]

I'd actually enjoy it if someone posted some screens from the better writing. VD's posts on ITS don't show a full, entire conversation, and I think that'd be good to see- a good chance to show off why the writing is so superior to FO 3.

(Keep in mind, I think it is certainly miles above FO 3 in that it is simply nice and (sometimes above) average. They tried. In FO 3, they jizzed on the keys to write.)

But there's certainly some stand-out NPCs and dialogue, so if someone could makes screenshots, it'd maybe actually soothe tempers a bit on both sides.

 

[Haba]

Seriously guys: if you're enjoying the game, it's okay, there's nothing wrong in having fun with mindless entertainment every once in a while, but that's a p. far call from calling it actually good. Don't take yourselves too seriously, enjoy it for what it is, just refrain from making inane statements.

Who gets to decide what is actually good? You?

NV is better than what we've grown to expect. It is not perfect and it is not a game that I will be playing say, 10 years from now on. But that is mainly because my early gaming years were shaped by different games and I've developed refined taste in gaming.

I'm not saying that your arguments are invalid, I am saying that the game provides enough internal coherence to suspend your disbelief most of the time. If you are completely unable to do that, you won't be able to enjoy anything new any more.

It is the size of the flaws we're arguing. And a majority seems to agree that they don't warrant the "shitty game, deleting now" -judgement that you've given.

 

[Mortmal]

I no longer bother anymore. The last time I brought real arguments on the table (actually quoting in-game material, posting picture comparisons, quoting walkthroughs, etc.) all I got was a "NO YOU" response. That day the Codex's reputation died in me; furthermore I think the posts took me about an hour or so to write. So all I do now is just vent my opinion with little reference to why a thing sucks or rocks; in other words: right back at you guys.

But mostly because the stuff I say is self-evident: you say mutants attack brahmin because they are insane, not for the lulz, but why are they insane if not for the lulz? I didn't meet any lulzy-insane mutant in any of the first two Fallout games.

Ghouls going insane is OK, but one thing is them becoming lunatic and the other is them becoming religiously fanatic and wanting to launch themselves into space from a surprisingly working pre-war rocket facility because they believe a glowing ghoul with a mysterious echo in his voice is and a human who mistook his falling hair with radiation (mirrors no longer exist?) is their Messiah. I think my eye twitched just from re-reading what I just wrote.

You say hiring 'Fantastic' is entirely plausible. That it wasn't for the lulz. A serious military faction. Hiring a random guy. Who's obviously a dumbfuck. Because they lack personnel. I mean, I just...why do I fucking even bother? Can't get more apologetic than what has been said already.

Seriously guys: if you're enjoying the game, it's okay, there's nothing wrong in having fun with mindless entertainment every once in a while, but that's a p. far call from calling it actually good. Don't take yourselves too seriously, enjoy it for what it is, just refrain from making inane statements.

Two pages of back and forth about the ghouls launching into space and no one mentions the hubologists? hello?

San Francisco was stupid. But the rest of the game was very intelligent and coherent (and yes, I'm counting New Reno in). This doesn't happen in F3:NV where inanity is practically fucking everywhere. See how I mentioned more than one example?

You still have nothing valid to add, the supermutants getting crazy is explained, stealthboy devices made them insane, god forbid obsidian they flesh out supermutant story. The guy loosing his hair is just mid life crisis at its finest. The dumb scientist , makes senses as well, theres probably hardly any scientist in the wastelands , out of despair they take the first guy that apply and pretend to know stuff. So they are giving a whole high tech facility to a completely unknow and incompetent guy . There has been weirder examples in history, like giving command of the king army to a 16 year old girl.

 

[1eyedking]

Klamath existed due to the residing Gecko trappers.

The Den was there because it provided slaves. Metzger's Slavers existed for very believable reasons.

Modoc had pretty much nothing and thus was on the verge of disappearing.

Vault City had the capacity to create medical supplies from its Vault.

New Reno had raiders, drugs, prostitution, gambling, alcohol and pretty much every other vice humanity has a need of.

Broken Hills traded uranium to power up the stations.

Redding had a gold mine.

NCR had order, ranches (a great nag at American politics, BTW), and sporadic access to a nearby Vault.

None of these towns had religious ghouls who wanted to launch into space. Nor snipers on top of dinosaurs. Nor gigantic metal scrap statues.

-------

F3:NV has...well, I'll leave this one up to you.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

edit: fuck, you people are fast. Moving down so UmReiCaolho will read it

But mostly because the stuff I say is self-evident: you say mutants attack brahmin because they are insane, not for the lulz, but why are they insane if not for the lulz? I didn't meet any lulzy-insane mutant in any of the first two Fallout games.

Maybe they got the idea from this.

 

[Silellak]

Ghouls going insane is OK, but one thing is them becoming lunatic and the other is them becoming religiously fanatic and wanting to launch themselves into space

As someone else pointed out: they are not launching themselves into space. They're using the rockets to travel to another destination on Earth - one that presumably is full of radiation so humans won't be able to bother them.

If you have a high enough Science skill, you can make a course correction so that they land 'XX%' closer to their destination. I'm pretty sure if they were launching themselves randomly into space you couldn't have any impact on where they 'landed.'

I just thought it was an important distinction, especially since everyone seems to enjoy shouting "GHOULS IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE", because adding "in space" to anything makes it inherently retarded.

Nor snipers on top of dinosaurs.

You never explained why this is bad. He clearly has a good view of the area (despite your claim otherwise), and it's a nice, high point that covers the main road passing by the town.

 

[1eyedking]

If they're not going into space why are they wearing space suits? Oh I see, it's because they're insane.

I guess the Codex has found its new get-out-of-jail free card.

*sigh*

 

[Freelance Henchman]

More details about "Fantastic", the HELIOS questgiver NPC.

Spoiler

In reference to "Fantastic", in the same facility there's also another (competent) scientist who is a Follower of the Apocalypse who is keeping a close eye on the idiot and seems to be far more responsible for any good that comes of the facility at all. That guy says Fantastic actually thinks the network monitor console affects the mirrors or something because "that's the biggest console in the room".

The reason that the Follower is there at all is that the HELIOS also can double as a powerful weapon, which nobody at NCR knows about for now, but which sooner or later even Fantastic might stumble over.

The Follower tells you a password you need to get the facility running fully again, but also implores you to disable the weapon and also send power *everywhere*, not just the NCR regions, so that the maximal amount of people benefit.

When you're done fixing the facility you have several choices:
- send power to NCR regions only
- send power to some other regions that may be Legion controlled (?)
- send power everywhere
- send power everywhere in Emergency mode, which I think means the facility will blow up
- Bonus: you can in addition arm the HELIOS laser weapon and wipe out every NCR soldier stationed around the facility

Given that someone competent is around and has a good reason to keep the currently managing idiot in power, I don't think this quest was that lulzy in the end.

EDIT: Also, fixing the facility means some repairing to do, which has at least 2 options I think (Science to restart a repair bot and probably Repair to fix the damage on some cabling yourself)

 

[Darth Roxor]

everyone seems to enjoy shouting "GHOULS IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE"

Reminds me of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScKDOmiQOkQ

 

[Sceptic]

San Francisco was stupid. But the rest of the game was very intelligent and coherent (and yes, I'm counting New Reno in).

Intelligent and coherent? FO2? really?

I mean sure NR is coherent with itself, VC is coherent with itself, SF is coherent with itself... but all of them together? sorry, but no.

And while I liked New Reno's plethora of quests and multiple solutions, I certainly don't find it "great" because it easily boils down to "do the mafias in order", which is what I did (and I wasn't exactly trying even).

And becoming a porn star? intelligent?

Come on. I can understand someone who hated FO2 criticizing NV for being too lulzy, but bashing NV for this then praising FO2 as intelligent and coherent makes no sense.

 

[Shannow]

Two pages of back and forth about the ghouls launching into space and no one mentions the hubologists? hello?

Honestly, if the examples 1eyedking gave are the worst "for the lulz"to be found in NV, then it's about 2 or 3 times less lulzy than FO2. I am not impressed.

1. Seems like 1EK about as far into the game as I am, around 13 hours. There's a lot of potential for more lulz.
2. The problem so far is that I liked most of the lulz in FO2. In NV it's either too low-key or too dumb. The only thing that made me chuckle so far was when I gained the "Lord Death" perk for killing "lotsa different creatures". And that was because it was so ridiculous.

As an aside: I never understood the issues people have with the Hubbologists. Scientologists obviously believe their "religion". Considering all the other stuff you have to believe to "feel immersed" in FO, is it truly so ridiculous that an enclave of scientologists came into power?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

None of these towns had religious ghouls who wanted to launch into space. Nor snipers on top of dinosaurs. Nor gigantic metal scrap statues.

Broken Hills, for example, had supermutant assrape (complete with ball gag), supermutant couple arguing all the time, the ghoul that sends you to retrieve bottlecaps from a well with the help of a midget explorer (and becomes Seymour The Talking Plant's best friend), chess-playing, glasses-wearing scorpion (who is a sore loser), a speech-based perk from shoveling brahmin shit for a while, one ghoul (Marcus, I think) asks you to retrieve a dutch wife for him (and gives her back broken from too much use), etc

edit: wtf, I meant the dutch wife is in Marcus' house

 

[Shannow]

The dumb scientist , makes senses as well, theres probably hardly any scientist in the wastelands , out of despair they take the first guy that apply and pretend to know stuff. So they are giving a whole high tech facility to a completely unknow and incompetent guy . There has been weirder examples in history, like giving command of the king army to a 16 year old girl.

Of course the whole situation was made for the lulz. Wait till you meet Dr. Harding. It gets really "funny" there.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

vs

vs

vs

Which is better and why?


Discuss!!!!

Now this is what a fanboy does. Doesn't say anything, and takes the opportunity while others are busy discussing something to throw a rock into the crowd.

I haven't played a single Obsidian game for more than 15 minutes straight, how can I be a fanboy?

I take it, like every other time you post something, you didn't really have anything to say, did you?

Oh, but I DID have something to say, I just expressed it in a form which requires a minimum of interpretation to understand. Let it break it down for you:

-> Is known for proclaiming absolutely everything to be shit, based on the tiniest, most insignificant and irrelevant aspects of the game. Also known for frequently proclaiming the Codex to be dead - because it no longer contains any well thought out arguments. There is so far no recorded instance of him grasping the rather overwhelming irony of it.

--> Has spent the first 8 pages or so of this thread proclaiming NV to be shit, long before anyone had finished the game, long before anyone had posted anything but impressions of the tutorial, long before we had any sort of coherent picture of the game. As such, juxtaposing him with Skyway is very reasonable indeed.

and

---> has spent the last couple of pages posting infinite variations of "the codex is dead, they now are like consoletards at the Bioware forums" and "all the newfags ruining mah codex, they are just fanboys without any arguments" and "in the oldschool codex this would never stand" and "this game is shit just look at this feature that I don't understand very well and have not seen in action".

There is as of today no indication that they detect any of the still overwhelming irony. Thus, comparing them with Skyway is reasonable.



I am very open to the possibility of this game being shit, given the allegedly poor performance of AP and NWN2. But it is very obvious to even the most casual observers that the owners of the avatars posted above had made up their mind that this game was going to be shit long before it was released, and are now grasping at straws to make it appear so. I will thus refrain from judging until I have a more complete picture.

 

[1eyedking]

Fuck, man, Fallout 2 rocked

Yeah, it had all of that crazy crap in it, but at least it was justified (and funny). The scorpion was overdosed on Mentats, the talking plant was FEV gone completely wrong (and a reference to Hakunin's garden), the whole midget explorer (halfling thief) was a reference to old D&D dungeoneering and looting. You get a bag of full of now useless bottlecaps out of the whole ordeal. The assrape is understandable since you kinda wonder if people in the wasteland were having sex at all (particularly with big mutants, who could by chance also have big...), and all of Broken Hills was as a matter of fact a den of boiling racism. The speech-based perk was a play on words and an easter egg since you had to do it about three times, IIRC.

So no, FO2 was intelligent. F3:NV isn't.

 

[Jasede]

I think you are trolling, but if you are not, let's just say that one man's intelligent is another man's silly, and it goes both ways. Maybe what seems so terribly silly and stupid in NV to you seems intelligent or at least adequate to others, and maybe what you see in FO 2 isn't there in the eyes of others either.

 

[Shannow]

snip

None of which gives a belivable reason as to why NCR put him into the position in the first place.
Being "desparate" and recruiting anybody that screams "here" off of the street for their second most important facility doesn't cut it for me. Especially after meeting Dr. Harding. The whole situation is reminiscent of "the Life of Brian".


And just to see what you guys are all talking about:
to me:
"lulzy" = clearly attempting to be funny, independent from success or quality.
"silly" = anything that makes little to no sense. Only relevant if "lulzy" failed to be funny.

 

[1eyedking]

I think you are trolling, but if you are not, let's just say that one man's intelligent is another man's silly, and it goes both ways. Maybe what seems so terribly silly and stupid in NV to you seems intelligent or at least adequate to others, and maybe what you see in FO 2 isn't there in the eyes of others either.

Yes, clearly Family Guy's constant non sequiturs are superior to the Simpson's crazy but insightful humor

 

[Sceptic]

As an aside: I never understood the issues people have with the Hubbologists.

My issue isn't so much with the hubbologists as with all the lulz in FO2, really. I loved FO, and one of the big points for me was the very subtle humor* in what's an otherwise serious and very, very atmospheric game. FO2 dropped the atmosphere and replaced it with a series of stupid stuff (see CK's post for a nice compendium, and that's only Broken Hills). I didn't really find any of this stuff funny... but that's alright, it's not the end of the world, and I don't bash FO2 is WORST GAME EVAR because of the overabundance of lulz; I just don't like it as much as FO.

Now the reason I specifically brought up the hubbologists is that 1ek had been going on and on and on in every single post about omg ghouls in space crazy ghouls in space for the lulz this is so stupid I mean GHOULS IN SPACE FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU ... FO2 had crazy humans in space... and that's better because?

I could go on in more detail about how you help the hubbologists... FOR THE LULZ (since they kill themselves)... or you don't help... ALSO FOR THE LULZ! (since they kill themselves). See where I'm going with this?

Now "I liked most of the lulz in FO2. In NV it's either too low-key or too dumb." is an opinion I can accept, and one that I can neither confirm nor deny as I haven't played NV (though I can disagree with the first part). But that was your argument, not 1ek's. He's specifically made out FO2 to be NOT lulzy, but "intelligent and coherent" instead, and that, to me, makes no sense.

Ninja: I mean, just look at his post on top of this page. Assrap with ballgags is now intelligent humor. I rest my case.

*the special encounters were stupid, but I saw 2 of them and each for about 3 seconds, so I don't really count them.

 

[HanoverF]

Fuck, man, Fallout 2 rocked

Yeah, it had all of that crazy crap in it, but at least it was justified (and funny). The scorpion was overdosed on Mentats, the talking plant was FEV gone completely wrong (and a reference to Hakunin's garden), the whole midget explorer (halfling thief) was a reference to old D&D dungeoneering and looting. You get a bag of full of now useless bottlecaps out of the whole ordeal. The assrape is understandable since you kinda wonder if people in the wasteland were having sex at all (particularly with big mutants, who could by chance also have big...), and all of Broken Hills was as a matter of fact a den of boiling racism. The speech-based perk was a play on words and an easter egg since you had to do it about three times, IIRC.

So no, FO2 was intelligent. F3:NV isn't.

Translation: I played FO2 when I was 12 and it wuz awesome so STFU!

 

[Jasede]

I think you are trolling, but if you are not, let's just say that one man's intelligent is another man's silly, and it goes both ways. Maybe what seems so terribly silly and stupid in NV to you seems intelligent or at least adequate to others, and maybe what you see in FO 2 isn't there in the eyes of others either.

Yes, clearly Family Guy's constant non sequiturs are superior to the Simpson's crazy but insightful humor

But that's making one of the two The Simpsons and the other Family Guy. But guess what, to me, Fallout 2 is Family Guy (going by your comparison). And few things other than time and stumbling into too much more silly things would change that.

I'd really never describe anything in FO 2 as "crazy but insightful". To me it was all just a big mess of "Wouldn't it be cool, if...?".

Don't get me started on Scientologists Versus Chinese Kung Fu Masters.

 

[1eyedking]

FO2 is lulzy. It's got tons of silly crap. But it's done tastefully, as in it make sense in itself (as I explained in every example CK threw), conveys an insightful message, and is actually humorous.

Translation: I played FO2 when I was 12 and it wuz awesome so STFU!

And you're just butthurt because you didn't have the intelligence to pick the halfling D&D thief reference.

 

[Sceptic]

Assraping... with a ballgag... tasteful... conveys... insightful... message...