*redacted*

[Cassidy]

*redacted*

 

[ghostdog]

I agree with a lot of the above, but nevertheless as a game and an RPG I consider NV to be good at its core. On the whole I found the writing to be good and the gameplay with enough choices and exploration to keep me interested, even if the combat is for the most part luckluster. There's one big problem with it though, and that's the craptacular engine. I played NV for many hours, but at some point I was so disgusted from the engine, that I simply gave up. Even with a plethora of mods, after a while everything looks, moves and plays like crap, at least that's how it seemed to me.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Good review, Cassidy, but it did seem a bit more negative, edgy and KKK-harvesting than your habital.

Surprising you didn't mention the biggest problem of the game: The engine. The engine is shit. It fucks up the game's scope and renders what could've been magnific, pathetic.

One more thing about the Strip: it would look better and have a better atmosphere if it had its own rebuilt architecture instead of reusing abandoned buildings, which is one of the symptoms of trying too hard and failing at it post-apoc inherited from the malign tumor this more benign one spawned from.

I agree, just because it is post-apoc doesn't mean people forgot how to build stuff not made from junk. At least they gave it a explanation, if a weird one. I liked in Fallout 2 how pristine and newly-built Vault City, NCR, Broken Hills and San Francisco China Town were in comparison to shitholes like The Den, Klamath and New Reno. Hell, New Reno looked better than the strip, if only on the best areas.*

Not to mention that by Fallout 2 the series is actually Post-Post Apocalyptic, so the point is not on just "survive the ruins of the world" but "rebuild the world and decide who gets to be boss."

The Strip would've better if it was bigger, but as it was it was too damn small due to the crappy engine.

Don't see what's up with the @Fiends, Cassidy. They were exactly what they seem: A bunch of crazy drugged-up fucks with guns. No more, no less. I do dislike the fact they gave you good karma for killing them (makes it hard to play evil, also nothing good about sef-defense). Not every faction has to be deep and complex, sometimes a gang of drugsters is just a cigar gang of drugster fucks.

but the truth is Van Buren was not perfect, and Caesar's Legion IMO was not one of the best ideas in there, one idea that could have been completely scratched perhaps had Interplay done Fallout 3 instead, and the way it was developed within a less ugly stepchild of a previous canon rape didn't help into making the concept less stupid either.

Caesar's Legion in theory is a quite good faction because it borrows elements from a past society to create a future one.
In practice, it was badly displayed, partly because of Observer's bias and partly because there's not enough and well-placed Legion-stuff to do. Assuming you go the normal route (Goodsprings >>> Primm >>> Mojave Outpost >>> Novac >>> HELIOS >>> McCarran >>> Strip), you got something like ten NCR quests to do, they pay you decently. Legion only shows up in the mid-game to give you a quest, by which time everyone in the NCR loves you and the women want to have your babies. Legion needed IMHO a town or two to flesh them out, so show why a Legion-ruled New Vegas can be a nice, peaceful place to be.

At least you can join them.
Remember Colonel Autumn in Fallout 3? His greatest crime was killing the player's father. That's it. He had just betrayed the retarded AI president who wanted to poison people in a retarded version of the Enclave's plan in Fallout 2. All Autumn wanted was to get Project Purity working, give everyone free water and then rebuild the USA. They were pretty much the only ones with cojones, weaponry and smarts to do it: Rivet City was too small, the BOS splinters could't even defeat a bunch of retarded Super Orcs, the Outcasts wanted everyone to fuck off and Megaton was too pathetic. Sure, there would be some tyranny, some dictatorship, lots of mutants might due, but... that's it. USA returns, some sort of order comes back to the East Coast. Happy end? Not according to the retards designing the game. Worst thing is that you can help the idiot AI but NOT the military officer who had a plan to fix all that mess. They didn't even machete rape! RAAAAERGH!

Also, Caesar's Legion barely appears in Van Bauren, they were going to be big in Fallout 4.

*BTW, I would actually like a FPP Fallout game on Reno. The area has a good mood for that. Imagine traipsing on New Reno, between dark alleys full of junkies and burning barrels, with pimps and prostitutes being bathed on the hellish lights of cassinos where fortune and damnation alike can come from. It would have to be done right, through, with a less overpowered, more grounded feel, a decent engine and big enviroments, etc.

 

[Lorica]

The NCR bias, to pick one of many points, is also attributable to its roots in the original Fallout games. Its expansion and success seem to be canon, as far as canon goes. I'm sure for that reason and to appeal to original Fallout fans more effort was made to flesh them out and make them the obvious sympathetic choice.

I must admit that I've never finished NV (or even gotten very far), despite two attempts, so I abstain from making many final judgements about it. I will note that I think you're being too lenient on combat in Bloodlines. Combat in the latter half was also fairly unavoidable and it was fairly shitty and unbalanced.

 

[Shadenuat]

Try Honest Hearts too, you won't see crazy Avellone shit there like in OWB and it's more down to earth and low level, so no hp bloat scorpions either, at least that's how I remember it. It has more postapoc feel to it.

I agree about Caesar Legion wholeheartedly. You can't expect to destroy cities and threaten player and then fix it by feeding him some load of thesis/antithesis bullshit. It's quests are just variations on NCR quests. Game is heavy NCR centered, as long as you are okay fighting the good fight and helping good bros in uniform, make peace with Brotherhood ect, it feels good. Usually first time you play it's the route you take, or independent route. But the moment you try to get off NCR rails and do something different, you get thrown into a hole, and there's only nothingness, occasionally spiced by very crude and boring variations on basic quests. For hell's sake, there are no Legion companions. That already tells us something.
Legion needed it's own cities, cities to show how people live there, with government, and it's companion to share views on it, and sometimes, Legion should have been morally right, saving wasteland and player from gangs and criminals. As it is now in the game, player is not supposed to feel any pity for the Legion, it is not a moral enemy of NCR. You can't make player want to play for Legion by saying that NCR ohmygod "buys ranches" and there is "corruption". Yeah corruption is what we are thinking about when other faction crucifies people.

I like FNV a lot, I am actually replaying it now, but it's not a game for free spirited characters, it's for goody cowboys who want to get along with everybody, unless you want to run out of quests half through the game.

this mod http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/45557/?
makes Legion troops look a bit less retarded
I like the idea of hand smithed armor, makes a good contrast with brahmin leather armor of NCR.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

The NCR bias, to pick one of many points, is also attributable to its roots in the original Fallout games. Its expansion and success seem to be canon, as far as canon goes. I'm sure for that reason and to appeal to original Fallout fans more effort was made to flesh them out and make them the obvious sympathetic choice.

I must admit that I've never finished NV (or even gotten very far), despite two attempts, so I abstain from making many final judgements about it. I will note that I think you're being too lenient on combat in Bloodlines. Combat in the latter half was also fairly unavoidable and it was fairly shitty and unbalanced.

I hated that Obsidian went too far with NCR sucess, IMHO.
Vault City ending: VC join NCR is cannon. BO-RING!
Redding ending: Redding joins NCR
Even friggin' Klamath joined NCR!

Too much NCR-wank for my tastes, frankly I hope the Mojave war and the incoming famine does the NCR in.

 

[Roguey]

tl;dr but Bloodlines is complete style-over-substance garbage.

 

[Infinitron]

Good review, Cassidy, but it did seem a bit more negative, edgy and KKK-harvesting than your habital.

Not really.

 

[Serious_Business]

tl;dr but Bloodlines is complete style-over-substance garbage.

Yes but what about the dialectic between form and content, my friend

 

[agentorange]

I didn't take the NCRs power as a positive thing. Everything seemed to point to the NCR being power hungry imperialists, only a step away from despotism. They want to create a world as close to the world that ended in WW3 as possible, which really isn't a great direction to be heading in. I've never allied with NCR in any of my NV playthroughs.

 

[Mastermind]

One more thing about the Strip: it would look better and have a better atmosphere if it had its own rebuilt architecture instead of reusing abandoned buildings, which is one of the symptoms of trying too hard and failing at it post-apoc inherited from the malign tumor this more benign one spawned from.

They're not reusing abandoned buildings, Mr. House saved Vegas from getting obliterated in the nuke exchange. They probably have that feeling because they're reusing assets due to time/money constraints.

 

[jagged-jimmy]

Well, comparing FNV to the Fallouts will get you pretty sad and negative.
Main problems of the game are shit combat, bloat of xp and tagged skill checks of 4 difficulties. And yea - DLCs are all pretty boring.

 

[Xeon]

What Mastermind said, Mr. House saved Las Vegas from nuclear missiles and he would have succeeded but the chip was late and he couldn't save Las Vegas completely he spent a long time trying to restore it little by little while at the same time focusing on searching for the chip to restore power to his robots and be more efficient.

New Vegas was supposed to be bigger but the engine couldn't handle it so they separated it and they cut content because of time I guess.

Legion was underdeveloped because of Bethesda rushing Obsidian. All of the DLCs are terrible, I enjoyed Dead Money and Old World Blues the first time but thats it. I really can't be bothered to do them again.

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

Legion wasn't fleshed out properly enough to give another POV to its "ruthless, but efficient" dark grey schtick, but really, the game boils down to NCR/Mr. House/Yes Man Tribunal (with Legion as the extreme WECDS trololo) of seemingly smaller, but significant ambiguities and how everyone percieves it differently. One of the game's highlights, if you ask me. I.e. Mr. House IMO is the embodiment of a near perfect leader the way he's presented, but I'm sure a lot of people would strongly disagree with me.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Ceasar's Legion would probably be attractive if the game would allow the player to rape.

 

[Kattze]

Ceasar's Legion would probably be attractive if the game would allow the player to rape.

Loverslab has all the answers to that.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Ceasar's Legion would probably be attractive if the game would allow the player to rape.

Loverslab has all the answers to that.

Behead Crucify those who insult Caesar!

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

Not anything good to say about gameplay.

[...]

I'm sure some predictable fanboy will disagree, but even Bloodlines has better gameplay than this game

Bloodlines offered a lot more variety in combat between character types and the game doled out (somewhat) exciting new abilities as your character progressed. Many encounters were unique, if gamey (the boss battles), and as one played on enemies would gain abilities that made them feel different, albeit ever so slightly, than the stuff you were killing early on. Or at the very least, there would be significantly more vampiric mooks.

And while level design was pretty subpar, at least many were designed with stealth in mind (even if it was popamole air vents or vertical routes the AI couldn't handle), whereas stealth in New Vegas often feels like Ming-Xiao's place; stealth can work, but it feels forced.

Anyway, I have some sperging about New Vegas gameplay that was supposed to go in another thread, but I can't seem to find that thread so I'll drop it here in sperg spoiler tags.

Spoiler

--The combat was pretty awful. Gamebryo does not a good shooter make. Clunky animations, slow/boring character movement (no bunnyhopping/rocketjumping), weapons that lack oomph, and an engine that struggles with large groups of enemies or other such setpieces make for pretty boring shooter gameplay. Add in Obsidian's unimaginative enemy/encounter design and....well, the results aren't pretty. Not to mention anything besides bare bones shooter playschemes (like run backwards+shoot, strafe+shoot, or melee) broke the game; enemies still cannot into climbing or dealing with snipers. It doesn't give the player a lot of stuff to learn/master, which is bad for a game that can go upwards of 30+ hours, a significant portion of it combat. Gothic/Risen/Souls (among other good action RPGs) actually had a lot of depth and nuance for the player to discover throughout their time in combat, whereas equivalanet mechanical depth, waiting to be plumped, is absent from New Vegas; the game doesn't even retain the "advanced technique" of activating VATS just before an explosion/AoE attack in order to benefit from increased defense. Not saying that was particularly interesting...just that at least it was an example of a little trick you picked up during the course of Fallout 3's shitty excuse for gameplay.

And it doesn't really model a growth in character skill well either; a Gunsd00d with 50 skill still plays mostly the same as a Gunsd00d with 100...one is just a bit more effective. Contrast to something like Gothic/Risen where weapon skill grants increased capabilities in the form of new moves/skills that expand the way a character plays. Or the Souls series, where raising your attributes opens up new weapons/movesets; a STR 14 guy wielding a Claymore two-handed is very different from a STR 36 guy one-handing a Black Knight Halberd in terms of capability and playstyle. Your options, and combat depth, expand greatly in a good action RPG as you advance...and enemies capabilities scale up as well. In New Vegas (or any Bethesda-like) you do the same shit at level 30 as at level 1....only with bigger numbers!

--The "Fallout-like" gameplay does not interact well with a Bethesda style sandbox. Large amounts of mutually exclusive content paths don't play well in an expansive sandbox, especially one where different characters will often have markedly similar gameplay experiences for a significant percentage of time played. To put things another way, there are high "switching costs" to rolling a new character; you'll have to retread a lot of common content. And given that a lot of New Vegas content is slow hiking or terrible combat...the costs can be high indeed.

And the ways quests are designed in a Fallout-like plays poorly within the sandbox framework. A glut of content full of delicious experience points, along with skill-wear and magazines, allows player avatars to transcend the boundaries of "character" and ascend to the hallowed heights of Ninja Cartographer, invalidating a lot of the "role-playing" elements and the general feeling of having a defined character.

But, as the Obsidian/Sawyer apologists will likely argue, one can merely tweak the numbers to perfection. Introduce a level cap, remove stat-wear/magazines, and greatly curb experience rewards. Presto! Problem solved.

Except those tweaks come with problems as well. While a minor quibble, players will likely be experiencing a lot of content in between being able to level up, and may bemoan the slow character development. Reduced experience growth would also punish players who wanted to stick to the "main" questlines, or not explore any of the numerous "dungeons".

The biggest problem is that players, in the course of exploring, will often find content with which they are unable to meaningfully interact, forced to come back at a later time. It's one thing to explore around in an open-world game and find a locked area you cannot open or a difficult foe of which there is no hope in vanquishing; both (in a good game) give the promise of fun and interesting content at a later date. With New Vegas, you get to go back and click on a skill check. Such a thrill, I can hardly contain my excitement. And that's basically what really makes the union of Fallout and Sandbox more unstable than a high-profile, celebrity marriage; they simply don't mesh. It would seem as though a brisk pace and relatively guided flow between areas/area-clusters is as essential to the success of a Fallout-like as skill/stat-checks, multiple paths, and

As Benny said in the intro, "The game was rigged from the start". He could be saying that to Obsidian as easily as the Courier; the pre-condtions of New Vegas (Gamebryo, palatable to the Dewritos set) all but barred them from making a success amongst the hardcore. And with an asshole publisher extroidinaire like Bethesda...well, it wasn't going to be the mainstream hit Obsidian needed to build a solid brand

Companions

Boone and Cass were okay, and Arcade was decent, but the biggest flaw I percieved in the companions was how you'd have to either travel with them exclusively in order to see much of their content, or metagame hard. It's not as bad as KOTOR2 and having to game influence to access companion content, but still annoying. Obsidian really shouldn't make one oftheir high points (character writing) require metagamey bullshit or necessitate spoiling yourself in order to reliably access it.

plot

I've got to echo a lot of your sentiments, as well as those expressed by others in the thread. Here's some more copypasta. Sperg tags...ACTIVATE!

Spoiler

While I did find the Mojave to be, overall, well-crafted, the main plot line had some issues. Number one among them was the fact that two out of the three major factions were handled poorly.

--House, for such a vaunted genius, is terribly easy to kill, and his master plan relies on one Courier doing a bunch of hits (which they might vehemently disagree with) for him. And his vision wasn't very well developed either; he's just another guy with an overinflated ego who thinks he knows better. I think they would have been better off making him pretend to offer the service of his Securitrons to whatever faction the Courier wants, but end up using them to mostly further his own interests (unless a perceptive/investigative Courier does something about it).

--The Legion, in addition to being pants-on-head-retarded RomeLARPers, were given absolutely nothing (in game) to ingratiate the player towards their cause. Most people first encounter them in a grisly scenario in which they've brutally put down an entire settlement, and then warn the player not to cross them. Typical mustache-twirling. Later encounters showcase cannibalism, underhanded tactics in warfare, retarded Luddism, and their indulgence in the institution of chattel slavery. What's not to love? But hey, one remark by Cass says that in Legion lands the trains run on time the roads are safer. Which is great and all, except tons of characters who come off as wise/learned are pretty much in agreement that once Old Man Caesar croaks, the Legion will fall apart in disarray...effectively undercutting the whole idea of the Legion (a robust, lawful society to unite the people of the Wastes). They were a goofy idea taken too far and implemented with zero tact; not something you would really say of a major focus of a game that wants to call itself well-written.

And let's not forget about all the minor stupidity strewn throughout the game; stuff that, seemingly, receives a pass solely because it was penned by Obsidian as opposed to Bethesda. Things like the White Gloves, the Brights, the Boomers, the Freeside Arena, Utobitha, the Kings...there's too much wacky/zany shit in the Mojave. And even worse, many of these factions take a big role in the main plot and/or are written in a light that asks you to take them seriously.

the ending

Numerous and detailed endings slides were certainly a positive in my view, but the actual ending sequence was abysmal. Possibly one of the worst I've ever played in a game. Good job by Obsidian playing right into one of Gamebryo's critical weaknesses: large setpieces with many actors.[/S]

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Loverslab has all the answers to that.

Do they make it have bad consequences if the player isn't under the Legion's protection, though?

 

[agentorange]

Not really sure what you people wanted from the factions. Fallout has always been about the lack of any "right" side. Going back to Fallout: The Masters plan is in a way noble, as he seeks to eliminate race strife by creating a single race of super beings immune to the after affects of the nuclear war, but of course this involves mutating people against their will and destroying any who don't agree with his plan (not to mention his plan ends up having a terrible scientific flaw); The Brotherhood of Steel are fanatically protective of the technology they horde and maintain, unwilling to share it even it allows the wasteland citizens to have a better chance of defending themselves. Then in Fallout 2 you have the Vault City with its affluent, well protected citizens only being able to live off the backs of slaves and the total alienation of outsiders; NCRs hereditary presidency and shady expansionist tactics; the Enclave's genocidal attempt to reestablish the United States. There's never been any wholly respectable faction in any Fallout game, it's always been down to the personal opinion of the player as to who they ally with.

Saying that House had an over-inflated ego...guess what, every leader has an over-inflated ego, that's how they end up as leaders. The reason he could have been an ideal leader was because he was content with what he owned, New Vegas, was already wealthy, and approached politics from an intellectual and scientific angle; as opposed to the NCRs Aaron Kimball who was elected due to his performance in a war, and who takes the defeat at Hoover Dam personally, jeopardizing the economy of the NCR in a bid for power. As for the NCR vs. Caesar's Legion; they are almost the same entity, it's just that one of them admits to cruelly enslaving populaces and enforcing harsh laws to protect its citizens, whereas the other one hides under the shroud of democracy and false choice.

 

[Lorica]

It's not about lack of right, it's about lack of retarded.

 

[agentorange]

Well I'm seeing plenty of retard right here.

 

[Lorica]

 

[agentorange]

 

[Black_Willow]

Well I'm seeing plenty of retard right here.

Stop writing on a glossy-screen laptop and the retard will disappear.