What did New Vegas DO WRONG? / Would isometric New Vegas with finished content be GOAT?

[Alkarl]

It's all subjective, but when it comes to Fallout 3 vs New Vegas, it's more about what New Vegas didn't do where as Fallout 3 gets most of it's shit for what it did do.

If someone asked me how to fix New Vegas, I might come up with a few tweaks, adds, or modifications. But if someone asked me how I would fix Fallout 3, I'd tell them to just abort it and give the "3" to New Vegas.

About the only real, honest criticism I could see a 3-tard bringing against New Vegas would be the contrast in explorable areas. New Vegas favored more barren, open stretches while 3 had (seemingly) layered, multi-tiered, and tightly packed environs. While someone may be inclined to appreciate one over the other, Fallout isn't meant to be a hiking sim, it's supposed to be a post-apocalyptic role-playing game. When there isn't fuck-all in Fallout 3's dense urban jungle worth locating, then what is the point? Don't get me wrong though, Fallout 3 is a great game for when I want to shoot orcs in the face, which is essentially the heart of any good Fallout, amIright?

*sigh

What Bethesda missed in what made Fallout great is epitomized in New Vegas. Fallout was never about V.A.T.S., or cool guns, or robots, or Super Mutants, or any of that. Fallout, like life, is about people and how they often suck. Fallout is about characters and moral ambiguity and weighing the odds of a civil conversation against talking with your guns, or fists, or laser rifle.

 

[Daemongar]

the writing for the legion was shit
"we are what the wasteland needs and we are all evil and slavers and self-righteous and shit"
it would have been easy to make them a survivalist group with some "good" inclinations, or some kind of anarchists who though NCR's mindset of "big government" was what brought for the apocalypse or some shit that made sense, the cookie cutter "evil guys" really cheapened the experience for me...

But... they weren't cookie cutter evil. Caesar saw the flaw in rebuilding the government that brought about the apocalypse in the first place. Was it Caesars government that was responsible for the nuclear war, or the NCR's type of gov?

Either way, he explains it better than myself.

 

[ortucis]

They should've removed the comically overdone Legion and introduced another villain like House. Or hell, something similar to NCR but not overdone "EVIL" like Legion was.

Legion felt like cosplayers who survived the nuke had some retard children.

While we're at it, why can't we control some of the robots and send them to attack NCR and Legion when working for House? As his right-hand, we should've been allowed to unleash armies of those robots onto the wasteland.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Shitty gunplay and lack of many standard shooter features was a massive bummer. Yeah, I get it, it's an RPG, we play it for story and exploration and stuff, but ultimately it's still a shooter at heart and it needs to do the basics right. With unmodded game you can't wait for combat to be over because it's just so underwhelming.

Mini-games were vomit inducing. I don't mind mini-games normally, but in such a massive game it just becomes boring and eventually you want to gauge your eyes out rather than hack another computer.

Radiation is a complete joke. I've had mosquito bites that were more scary.

Gameplay wise there were a lot of problems but I think most pressing ones are fixed by Sawyer's mod.

Underdeveloped factions. NCR is fucking massive and the others...not so much. Makes it really odd because if you piss of NCR you basically lock yourself out of half the game.

UI was designed by Stevie Wonder while on LSD.

Last but not least, fucking Gamebryo. Bugs aside, the game was graphically and technically dated already when it came out, and it shows. Character models, textures, interiors, it all aged very poorly and requires heavy modding.

 

[roll-a-die]

the writing for the legion was shit
"we are what the wasteland needs and we are all evil and slavers and self-righteous and shit"
it would have been easy to make them a survivalist group with some "good" inclinations, or some kind of anarchists who though NCR's mindset of "big government" was what brought for the apocalypse or some shit that made sense, the cookie cutter "evil guys" really cheapened the experience for me...

But... they weren't cookie cutter evil. Caesar saw the flaw in rebuilding the government that brought about the apocalypse in the first place. Was it Caesars government that was responsible for the nuclear war, or the NCR's type of gov?

Either way, he explains it better than myself.

Caesar != Legion. Caesar's vision for the legion is obviously being taken to an extreme which Caesar isn't fighting against because it's working. This could have been an interesting dichotomy had they noticed their designers drifting from their writers in that regard. But they didn't so the legion comes off flat and 2d.

The core problem with New Vegas storywise is that you have 3 main factions(As far as actual storylines). One is relatively moral from a modern sense, but mired in Bureaucracy, that makes it hard to support them because they are clearly overextended, and also power hungry. And two that are amoral in a modern sense, one that is trapped in a corner desperate to survive by any means necessary but clinging to an old world that can likely never return. And the last that is the most flat of them. One that comes off as little better than the raiders and such around the wastes, with a sense of honor and complexity that is mired in the application of that honor and complexity being restricted to those within the clave or faction.

The gameplay is shit. Some of the quests are shit tier(Rocket launching ghouls, and explosive happy air force base residents, come off as really one note-ish.) But really the problem with Obsidian in general is that they've been trying to do stories since their inception, where the only person you can morally empathize with usually, is the main characters and to a lesser extent party members. In some regards this is a good idea. But without an attachment to the world, the characters themselves and even the main characters begin coming off as one note, and samey. With some exceptions. PoE suffered the worst with this, and the 2 most empathetic characters you get in that game in my opinion and my experience. Are Eder, who has a very low level, quest to find out what happened to his brother. And Durance, who is attached to the plot and landscape of the Dyrwood in so many ways it's not even funny.

 

[Daemongar]

the writing for the legion was shit
"we are what the wasteland needs and we are all evil and slavers and self-righteous and shit"
it would have been easy to make them a survivalist group with some "good" inclinations, or some kind of anarchists who though NCR's mindset of "big government" was what brought for the apocalypse or some shit that made sense, the cookie cutter "evil guys" really cheapened the experience for me...

But... they weren't cookie cutter evil. Caesar saw the flaw in rebuilding the government that brought about the apocalypse in the first place. Was it Caesars government that was responsible for the nuclear war, or the NCR's type of gov?

Either way, he explains it better than myself.

Caesar != Legion. Caesar's vision for the legion is obviously being taken to an extreme which Caesar isn't fighting against because it's working. This could have been an interesting dichotomy had they noticed their designers drifting from their writers in that regard. But they didn't so the legion comes off flat and 2d.

Someone said he's a cookie cutter enemy. I said he wasn't. Are you saying he isn't cookie cutters, but his followers are? Jeez you should check out the army of Mr. House then, those crazy robots have no personality... at all! Except that cowboy guy, I think his name was Herbie.

The core problem with New Vegas storywise is that you have 3 main factions(As far as actual storylines). One is relatively moral from a modern sense, but mired in Bureaucracy, that makes it hard to support them because they are clearly overextended, and also power hungry. And two that are amoral in a modern sense, one that is trapped in a corner desperate to survive by any means necessary but clinging to an old world that can likely never return. And the last that is the most flat of them. One that comes off as little better than the raiders and such around the wastes, with a sense of honor and complexity that is mired in the application of that honor and complexity being restricted to those within the clave or faction.

What's that game with the balanced, interesting factions. You know, where you could choose any one and end the game, or ultimately say to hell with them all. Or watch the world burn? Jeez, I forget the name of it. Obsidian has problems with this shit - you are totally right! But man, that other game did a pretty good job of three or more factions, each with interest, subtlety and nuance. Help me out with the name, tho. I remember feeling a deep sense of attachment to the world, empathizing with my fellow citizen!

 

[roll-a-die]

the writing for the legion was shit
"we are what the wasteland needs and we are all evil and slavers and self-righteous and shit"
it would have been easy to make them a survivalist group with some "good" inclinations, or some kind of anarchists who though NCR's mindset of "big government" was what brought for the apocalypse or some shit that made sense, the cookie cutter "evil guys" really cheapened the experience for me...

But... they weren't cookie cutter evil. Caesar saw the flaw in rebuilding the government that brought about the apocalypse in the first place. Was it Caesars government that was responsible for the nuclear war, or the NCR's type of gov?

Either way, he explains it better than myself.

Caesar != Legion. Caesar's vision for the legion is obviously being taken to an extreme which Caesar isn't fighting against because it's working. This could have been an interesting dichotomy had they noticed their designers drifting from their writers in that regard. But they didn't so the legion comes off flat and 2d.

Someone said he's a cookie cutter enemy. I said he wasn't. Are you saying he isn't cookie cutters, but his followers are? Jeez you should check out the army of Mr. House then, those crazy robots have no personality... at all! Except that cowboy guy, I think his name was Herbie.

No I was saying they missed a chance to emphasize a dichotomy in their design. And add more dimensionality too it. Because the legion in the lore and as Caesar describes, is very different from the legion in the game. And house's faction is a poor example. As those troops are supposed to be like that. Where the legion came off as another raider faction, just with a larger org chart.

The core problem with New Vegas storywise is that you have 3 main factions(As far as actual storylines). One is relatively moral from a modern sense, but mired in Bureaucracy, that makes it hard to support them because they are clearly overextended, and also power hungry. And two that are amoral in a modern sense, one that is trapped in a corner desperate to survive by any means necessary but clinging to an old world that can likely never return. And the last that is the most flat of them. One that comes off as little better than the raiders and such around the wastes, with a sense of honor and complexity that is mired in the application of that honor and complexity being restricted to those within the clave or faction.

What's that game with the balanced, interesting factions. You know, where you could choose any one and end the game, or ultimately say to hell with them all. Or watch the world burn? Jeez, I forget the name of it. Obsidian has problems with this shit - you are totally right! But man, that other game did a pretty good job of three or more factions, each with interest, subtlety and nuance. Help me out with the name, tho. I remember feeling a deep sense of attachment to the world, empathizing with my fellow citizen!

[/quote]

You seem to assume that my critique is preventing there from being any good with the game.

That's not it at all. Please stop making assuming about words that aren't said. This thread is deliberately provoking criticism by asking what is bad. So I pointed out what is bad. When you have a faction that from a modern perspective is kinda normal, and 2 varying shades of gray as the other options. Then you end up with a game that favors the faction that is normal. Because it's easier to write for. Because it's easier to make it click and connect. That's why there's more NCR quests in the game than any other faction.

Yes, NV has a very unprecedented level of freedom. But it also has the flaws that that freedom brings. No there's no other game I've played that has as many options as far as player choice in how to get through the plot. However, that very nature, opens it up to criticism like this. Where if there is a design drift away from the story, as is the case in the legion. It becomes immediately obvious, and is a flaw.

As I said and am going to elaborate upon now, Caesar's depiction of the legion is built on his own idealism, and features a blindsightedness to its flaws. It shouldn't be taken as the source on what the Legion is and does. The game itself should. And the game itself depicted them as almost another raider faction. I think if they had had time to put a bit more of the lands of the Legion into the game. That it could have turned this around. But, another thing about FONV that is flawed, is that it feels rather rushed at times. Obviously it's a complete game unlike KotOR2. But it suffers from some cut corners and idiosyncracies with how rushed it was.

 

[Daemongar]

You seem to assume that my critique is preventing there from being any good with the game.

That's not it at all. Please stop making assuming about words that aren't said. This thread is deliberately provoking criticism by asking what is bad. So I pointed out what is bad. When you have a faction that from a modern perspective is kinda normal, and 2 varying shades of gray as the other options. Then you end up with a game that favors the faction that is normal. Because it's easier to write for. Because it's easier to make it click and connect. That's why there's more NCR quests in the game than any other faction.

Agreed. I only played the NCR recently after all the others. I was expecting the game to be finished after the first 5 quests, then it went on for another 8 or so.

Yes, NV has a very unprecedented level of freedom. But it also has the flaws that that freedom brings. No there's no other game I've played that has as many options as far as player choice in how to get through the plot. However, that very nature, opens it up to criticism like this. Where if there is a design drift away from the story, as is the case in the legion. It becomes immediately obvious, and is a flaw.

I reckon.

As I said and am going to elaborate upon now, Caesar's depiction of the legion is built on his own idealism, and features a blindsightedness to its flaws. It shouldn't be taken as the source on what the Legion is and does. The game itself should. And the game itself depicted them as almost another raider faction. I think if they had had time to put a bit more of the lands of the Legion into the game. That it could have turned this around. But, another thing about FONV that is flawed, is that it feels rather rushed at times. Obviously it's a complete game unlike KotOR2. But it suffers from some cut corners and idiosyncracies with how rushed it was.

I agree. No hard feelings. I really like the game and its a guarantee that familiarity breeds contempt. I am not sure you are on target. I think in the game, the Burnt Man and others make reference to Caesars role and what will probably be his legacy. That is, others understand that once Caesars not around, things will fall apart.

 

[Beastro]

I never got the problems with not going North. It's nice to see an organic, in-world obstacle to prevents you from going in a direction that isn't a fucking impassible mountain rangeand increasingly since 2000, a simple invisible wall to be the other, darker side of hand holding, when the hand prevents you from walking away and wandering on your own.

The world building enemy wise was enriched by it too by establishing certain monsters as threats that adds to their feared nature you pick up in conversations

Giant scorpions larger than men are actually a threat now that you'd expect such an enlarged arachnid to be in real life, and just as creepy and scary for it too. Sure they turn into fodder like everything else, but you don't know that going north to begin with. On top of that, making it that way added another legendary enemy to the game that to stands side by side (and often towers over) Deathclaws in their dreaded foreboding. Cazadores would never have left that big an impression upon players had they been restricted to a few minor places. Trying to get through the north by going through them let's you know to to dread their reappearance and that then adds to the realization that they remain pretty much the only credible threat you face for the rest of the game and to snipe them or avoid the fuckers if you don't maximize ranged combat.

To me that goes well with the world building and why the NCR stays away from the Khans even though they're in their rear and a huge annoyance that should be stamped out ASAP, they don't want to lose any more guys to those fucking wasps. That goes well with the foreshadowing any FO vet has going towards the mines knowing Deathclaws are around, and any newbie gets a Cazadore-like brush up with them in case they're ignorant of their reputation as well.

As for Caesar. The way the game works with the Legion being incomplete he's effectively a one conversation bad guy, like Kerghan, you get the gist of his weird take on life, his motivations and then there's not much to do, even if you join him. Kerghan works with that because of all stuff you pick up about him as you go through the game, but dismiss as him being a simply background character only to find him at the very end of the game Caesar.... you don't get much insight into what he's doing and why beyond an intellectualized explanation for it all. No chance to chat with him alone where he can confide that he's personally disgusted by what the Legion does, but it's a sad means to an end because he's fully convinced everything will fall apart and only get worse without this brutal and necessary step, or that he really doubts it himself, but must go through it since there was no future for the NCR the way they were going and the tribes that became the Legion were too consumed with nihilism to be anything but tiny population groups that would eventually butcher each other to extinction, and Mankinds place in the world is too tenuous to have let them go on doing that, even if the Legion/NCR synthesis he imagines turns out to be bullshit, anything is better than what he KNEW was going to happen.

All I can think of with him being incomplete

But... they weren't cookie cutter evil. Caesar saw the flaw in rebuilding the government that brought about the apocalypse in the first place. Was it Caesars government that was responsible for the nuclear war, or the NCR's type of gov?

He was cookie-cutter Fallout evil. Yet another antagonist trying to remake Man in his imagine and free it from it's Fallen state not realizing that cannot happen. The Master tried science, he's using history.

The NCR is the only power consistently trying to carry on forward into the future doing what it can without a grand, overarching ideology to underpin itself that is also not dominated by its ignorance of history to descend into barbarism again. They just want to be themselves, doing what they can making use of what they find good in the fragments of America that survived while not preventing that from allowing them to be their own culture.

To dismiss it all as the previous civilization ruining things, therefore all of it should be consigned to the wastebin of history is to miss the entire point of Fallout, that such a devastating collapse of civilization is simply a part of human nature, you're not going to solve the fundamental causes, all you can do it carry forward doing what you can to repair the world while nothing all those thinking they can remake the world with their wonderful quick fix ideas whose only results are to repeatedly make the world a worse place for them.

 

[LJ40]

1st person FPS

RIP in peace, all you role playing RPG games.

 

[Brayko]

the writing for the legion was shit
"we are what the wasteland needs and we are all evil and slavers and self-righteous and shit"
it would have been easy to make them a survivalist group with some "good" inclinations, or some kind of anarchists who though NCR's mindset of "big government" was what brought for the apocalypse or some shit that made sense, the cookie cutter "evil guys" really cheapened the experience for me...

Yeah. This. It's really the only thing I found wrong with New Vegas. Everything else was solid gold, or maybe gold-plated silver which is good enough for my millennial ass.

 

[Zero Credibility]

What's that game with the balanced, interesting factions. You know, where you could choose any one and end the game, or ultimately say to hell with them all. Or watch the world burn? Jeez, I forget the name of it.

You mean Bloodlines? Truly a great game.

Anyway, nothing really new to add to what was already said but here are some things that annoy me:

themepark feel that comes with too many things crammed into too small open world
food, water and stimpacks everywhere in a game that tries to sell survival as part of the gameplay
silly cosplay evil roman faction, I don't care what Legion territory is said to be like, I care what the game actually shows me
bullet-sponge enemies in FPS gameplay and generally poor gunplay
way too fast and too high character level growth that is then "fixed" with said bullet sponge enemies
some quests in particular are just mindbogglingly stupid, those ghouls and their fucking rocket come to mind, or the idiocy that is the Boomers
the way the game is divided into before and after you get the chip, even resetting all factions so that you don't miss out on an ending

It is a good game overall, but certainly not without flaws.

 

[Bocian]

NV dindu nuffin rong.

Obsidian's best game and 2nd best Fallout game ever.

You spelled 3rd wrong.

 

[Morgoth]

NV dindu nuffin rong.

Obsidian's best game and 2nd best Fallout game ever.

You spelled 3rd wrong.

To clarify:

Fallout 2 > Fallout: NV > Fallout

Butthurt in 3...2...1...

 

[Wayward Son]

This is all making me want to do a heavily modded playthrough of New Vegas.

 

[Daemongar]

But... they weren't cookie cutter evil. Caesar saw the flaw in rebuilding the government that brought about the apocalypse in the first place. Was it Caesars government that was responsible for the nuclear war, or the NCR's type of gov?

He was cookie-cutter Fallout evil. Yet another antagonist trying to remake Man in his imagine and free it from it's Fallen state not realizing that cannot happen. The Master tried science, he's using history.

I forgot the part where Caesar pulled out the vats filled with history books and started dipping people. Any other events happening and your comparison applies to any evil boss in any role playing RPG game ever.

The NCR is the only power consistently trying to carry on forward into the future doing that it can without a grand, overarching ideology to underpin itself that is also no dominated by its ignorance of history to descend into barbarism again. They just want to be themselves, doing what they can making use of what they find good in their fragments of America that survived while not preventing that from allowing them to be their own culture.

Eh, the NCR takes over everything in their way, without option - that about sums up their ideology. For a second, look at the Great Khans as the American Indian for a few seconds, as I pretty much think that's where they were going with the Khans. Then look at the NCRs approach again. Is Caesars approach all that different?

 

[Sigourn]

To clarify:

Fallout 2 > Fallout: NV > Fallout

Butthurt in 3...2...1...

Purely considering the whole package:

FO1 > FO2 > FNV

Assuming Fallout: New Vegas used the classic engine:

FNV >>>>>> FO1 > FO2

 

[laclongquan]

1. It's not hardcore enough. If you add food/drink/sleep in you at least make it hard enough to worth the bother. As it is: 1 hour of sleep for Full Rested, 2 hour for one day of full rested :bah:

2. The travelling merchants are not fully effective. On paper, it should be possible for at least one merchant (plus escort and brahmin) to travel from one a working settlement to another. As it is you can meet one coming, or one leaving, but never a specific one coming then leaving. The cause is that wild land combat is hard. Solution for that should be very tough merchants and escort (higher level with handplaced perks skills?).

3. Legion content is not enough. I want to know about this barbaric tribal confederation.

That's it. even if cherrypick I dont find much to expand.

 

[Santander02]

Having Bethpizdas version of gamebyro as it's engine

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Melee was half-done.

 

[aweigh]

besides the obvious thing of having to be made off the back of FO3's technology, i really can't think of anything notable that F:NV did wrong.

i'm one of those who consider F:NV on par, if not superior in some aspects, to original Fallout 1. (needless to say I consider it superior to FO2, which is inferior to FO1).

 

[Carrion]

Gamebryo, the UI, lackluster Legion, compressed world, poor combat and pieces of out-of-place content have been mentioned several times already, but I think one of the biggest shortcomings of the game is how S.P.E.C.I.A.L. is executed. It should form the core of your character, but in the end it doesn't really affect all that much. In FO and FO2 you could create a character that was incredibly weak, painfully slow, nearly blind or too stupid to even form a coherent sentence, and you could instantly tell the difference between high and low attribute scores. In New Vegas the only notable difference between a Strength score of 10 and 1 is that the former allows you to carry a slightly more outrageous amount of stuff before becoming encumbered. Agility is supposed to affect your moving speed but doesn't, while Perception just gives you an additional superpower in form of the radar system. The attributes do have a small effect on some other things as well, but it's still a perfectly valid choice to go for something ridiculous like a melee character that has Agility as a dump stat. This is one part of FO3 that Obsidian sadly didn't improve all that much.

 

[Scruffy]

Either way, he explains it better than myself.

he's the usual "i know better than anyone else" dictator who rationalizes why he wants to build a "glorious empire"

 

[Grampy_Bone]

I suppose you could say Fallout 1 had a better main villain and endings, while the pop culture references and launch bugs in Fallout 2 held it back...

But how can anyone say Fallout 1 is the superior game? It's so short and easy, it feels like a tech demo more than a game. Fallout 2 had better everything else. Bigger world, bigger towns, better quests, more guns, multiple viable playstyles, more perks, more levels, better progression (you start weaker and end up stronger), MUCH better companions--both in personality and in gameplay terms, and a world that felt a lot more coherent and well-thought out than just capricious and random like Fallout 1.

One thing that always strikes me about Fallout 1 is the generic writing and dialogue. Outside of the talking heads, everything feels like placeholder text. Most convo's in Fallout 1 are structured like this:

1. Give me an info dump about this place
2. Give me the quest for this place
3. Sell me things
4. (Totally random blatantly rude insult)
5. End conversation

Oooh, such choice, much consequence! Every NPC in Klamath is better written than this, and there's nothing quite as wonderful (and completely hidden and optional) as the "conversation" between a low-int Chosen one and Torr.

 

[Master]

Those are not flaws, its just the game not wasting your goddamn time.