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Why is Fallout New Vegas considered good?

Faarbaute

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 2, 2017
Messages
787
The most memorable thing about New Vegas for me is the broken quest design involving the powder gangers around Primm(?). I think that is pretty funny.
 

luj1

You're all shills
Vatnik
Joined
Jan 2, 2016
Messages
13,857
Location
Eastern block
Seriously I don't get it.
Graphically, it's puke-inducing.
Gameplay-wise it's worse than any FPS in the genre. It's clunky, poorly-made and extremely badly designed and a complete disgrace for an FPS.
The AI is in shambles, literally.
The Factions are all rushed and expediated, Caesar's Legion(supposedly the beast from the East is a bunch of 30 dudes in football uniforms fighting with bat in an universe with guns??????) is a joke, Boomers faction is a joke, The Khans Faction is a joke. Enclave is a joke. Omerta is a Joke. The Strip, the casino is a place with roughly 10 dudes roaming around in the void.
The DLCs are all bad except Blood Money.
I feel like people like it for what it could have been rather than what it truly is: A shitty FPS with broken dialogues, broken quests, rushed storylines&Factions, A(bsent)I, blurry puke-inducing graphics, as well as an extremely buggy software.
And don't get me started with the open-world, it's a nothingburger, it is filled with nothing, and invisible walls to spice it up.

This thing is hailed as one of the best RPGs, this is madness.
Fallout 2 is hundredfold better than this piece of shit, there is no debate.

agreed 1000%

FNV is a parody of Fallout. just like anything made after Fallout 2 and Tactics
 

Pompey

Educated
Joined
Jan 15, 2021
Messages
52
Location
New English Republic
FNV is a parody of Fallout. just like anything made after Fallout 2 and Tactics
Fallout New Vegas only gets points because it is the best imitation of Fallout for people who get filtered by Isometric and Turn-Based Combat but it is a good starter for people to get into the whole concept of a role-playing game. I am sure there are a whole host of young people who are into RPGs that got their start with Fallout New Vegas. One needs to start somewhere.
 
Joined
Jan 5, 2021
Messages
441
FNV is a parody of Fallout. just like anything made after Fallout 2 and Tactics
Fallout New Vegas only gets points because it is the best imitation of Fallout for people who get filtered by Isometric and Turn-Based Combat but it is a good starter for people to get into the whole concept of a role-playing game. I am sure there are a whole host of young people who are into RPGs that got their start with Fallout New Vegas. One needs to start somewhere.
It doesn't help that the gameplay in Fallout 1 and 2 is atrocious.

For all the horrendous world building of the 3D titles, at least the gameplay is functional and isn't just a bunch of obtuse dice rolls for everything.
 

9ted6

Educated
Joined
Mar 24, 2023
Messages
842
FNV is a parody of Fallout. just like anything made after Fallout 2 and Tactics
Fallout New Vegas only gets points because it is the best imitation of Fallout for people who get filtered by Isometric and Turn-Based Combat but it is a good starter for people to get into the whole concept of a role-playing game. I am sure there are a whole host of young people who are into RPGs that got their start with Fallout New Vegas. One needs to start somewhere.
It doesn't help that the gameplay in Fallout 1 and 2 is atrocious.

For all the horrendous world building of the 3D titles, at least the gameplay is functional and isn't just a bunch of obtuse dice rolls for everything.
It's a shame that Fallout 2 refines the gameplay only to make the story so much stupider, same for 4 compared to 3 and NV.
 
Joined
Jan 5, 2021
Messages
441
FNV is a parody of Fallout. just like anything made after Fallout 2 and Tactics
Fallout New Vegas only gets points because it is the best imitation of Fallout for people who get filtered by Isometric and Turn-Based Combat but it is a good starter for people to get into the whole concept of a role-playing game. I am sure there are a whole host of young people who are into RPGs that got their start with Fallout New Vegas. One needs to start somewhere.
It doesn't help that the gameplay in Fallout 1 and 2 is atrocious.

For all the horrendous world building of the 3D titles, at least the gameplay is functional and isn't just a bunch of obtuse dice rolls for everything.
It's a shame that Fallout 2 refines the gameplay only to make the story so much stupider, same for 4 compared to 3 and NV.
Yes. Despite all the fighting on here about which fallout games are good, it's pretty universally agreed that you have to be an absolute brainlet to enjoy Fallout 4
 

Lemming42

Arcane
Joined
Nov 4, 2012
Messages
6,385
Location
The Satellite Of Love
For all the horrendous world building of the 3D titles, at least the gameplay is functional and isn't just a bunch of obtuse dice rolls for everything.
It's not that simple, IMO. Combat in F1/2 is simplistic, but it's always clear what's influencing your hit chance, and putting points into combat skills has an immediate tangible effect. In 3/NV meanwhile, you're playing the worst FPS ever made, where enemies barely react to being hit unless they decide to play one of their melodramatic stagger animations, where people are shrugging off shotgun blasts to the face, and where your weapons inexplicably have greater spread if your skill is lower. The devs include VATS as a crutch in case you just want to make combat go away as soon as it appears (which is every 30 seconds), but there's never any real reason to aim for somewhere other than the head (unlike in 1/2 where crippled limbss are a massive deal, and blows to the head can result in unconsciousness).

Critically, action points actually matter in 1/2 and your effectiveness in combat is determined entirely by them. This does have the unfortunate side effect of making AGI a mandatory investment for almost all characters, but it's better than 3/NV where most SPECIAL stats do almost nothing and AP is just a measure of how much you're allowed to cheat at the game by staying in VATS-induced godmode. Plus, enemy AI in the 3D ones is, somehow, even worse than in 1/2, which is really saying something considering 1/2 enemies can be massacred if you just stand behind a corner.

Otherwise, the 3D ones do do some things better - lockpicking is better handled via the minigame, and lockpicks being a limited resource is a good thing - much better than 1/2's approach of just letting you keep rolling forever until either you win or the lock breaks. Stealth is better than in 1/2 as well, though still utterly unacceptable by the standards of any other 3D action game on the market. But the combat is such a big deal that I honestly would argue that the gameplay in 1/2 is overall better than in the 3D games.
 

Pompey

Educated
Joined
Jan 15, 2021
Messages
52
Location
New English Republic
FNV is a parody of Fallout. just like anything made after Fallout 2 and Tactics
Fallout New Vegas only gets points because it is the best imitation of Fallout for people who get filtered by Isometric and Turn-Based Combat but it is a good starter for people to get into the whole concept of a role-playing game. I am sure there are a whole host of young people who are into RPGs that got their start with Fallout New Vegas. One needs to start somewhere.
It doesn't help that the gameplay in Fallout 1 and 2 is atrocious.

For all the horrendous world building of the 3D titles, at least the gameplay is functional and isn't just a bunch of obtuse dice rolls for everything.
It's a shame that Fallout 2 refines the gameplay only to make the story so much stupider, same for 4 compared to 3 and NV.
I think the flanderization of the Fallout series is a way to remedy the cognitive dissonance of the player and the world. The player is having fun so we must make our game world fun and goofy as well. I also think that game devs are afraid by making the game too serious, or else they will get called pretentious.

Yes. Despite all the fighting on here about which fallout games are good, it's pretty universally agreed that you have to be an absolute brainlet to enjoy Fallout 4

There goes not a day where I can think of better stories that could be told in Fallout 4. I would post a long "Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda" about Fallout 4 but I don't want to derail the thread about me bitching about Fallout 4.
 

Lemming42

Arcane
Joined
Nov 4, 2012
Messages
6,385
Location
The Satellite Of Love
The Goodsprings quest is pretty good, isn't it? It teaches the player about faction reputation in a low-stakes way that primes them for the more important factions (NCR/Legion) later on, it demonstrates that skills will have extensive applications in dialogue, and it offers you a choice to join either side. Joining the Powder Gangers is retarded and you're given no motivation to do it, and the fact that the quest always ends with the janky shootout no matter what you do is unfortunate, but in terms of basic quest design I don't see what's wrong with it as a beginner quest.

Only real issue with it is how dull everyone is - Ringo barely cares about his own life, Cobb is a dumb bastard, Trudy can barely be arsed arguing with you if you tell her to go stand outside with a gun, Easy Pete barely cares about giving you his dynamite, and Sunny seems to be half-asleep. Plus the Courier's methods of persuading people are all laughable ("fight with me" "no" "go on" "alright then"). But dull NPCs and bad player dialogue are problems that echo through the whole game, so in a bizarre way, it's more foreshadowing.
 
Joined
Jan 5, 2021
Messages
441
FNV is a parody of Fallout. just like anything made after Fallout 2 and Tactics
Fallout New Vegas only gets points because it is the best imitation of Fallout for people who get filtered by Isometric and Turn-Based Combat but it is a good starter for people to get into the whole concept of a role-playing game. I am sure there are a whole host of young people who are into RPGs that got their start with Fallout New Vegas. One needs to start somewhere.
It doesn't help that the gameplay in Fallout 1 and 2 is atrocious.

For all the horrendous world building of the 3D titles, at least the gameplay is functional and isn't just a bunch of obtuse dice rolls for everything.
It's a shame that Fallout 2 refines the gameplay only to make the story so much stupider, same for 4 compared to 3 and NV.
I think the flanderization of the Fallout series is a way to remedy the cognitive dissonance of the player and the world. The player is having fun so we must make our game world fun and goofy as well. I also think that game devs are afraid by making the game too serious, or else they will get called pretentious.

I doubt it's thought through to that degree. More likely, Bethesda only understands Fallout on a surface level and replicated that understanding into their games accidentally.

The Bethesda games are more then capable of being serious when they want to be. I would argue some of the emotional moments in FO3 hit harder than the ones in FNV, even if the game is overall WAY worse.

It's most likely Bethesda just doesn't care that much and only understands Fallout as "the bottle caps games with the funny joke references". Every piece of original content Bethesda has tried to add to the lore (Brotherhood outcasts, Minutemen, Railroad, etc etc) have all been absolute garbage. I'm kind of glad they only understand Fallout on a surface level, they could do significant damage otherwise (they have already done lots).

Yes. Despite all the fighting on here about which fallout games are good, it's pretty universally agreed that you have to be an absolute brainlet to enjoy Fallout 4

There goes not a day where I can think of better stories that could be told in Fallout 4. I would post a long "Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda" about Fallout 4 but I don't want to derail the thread about me bitching about Fallout 4.

Write it. I always enjoy hearing people bitch about games I loathe.

Doubly so if it's for games I loathe which pretentious wankers have billed as one of the greatest games ever made (not so much for Fallout 4, but definitely true for Fallout 3, as well as other games like Bioshock etc).[/QUOTE]
 

DJOGamer PT

Arcane
Joined
Apr 8, 2015
Messages
7,645
Location
Lusitânia
It has good role-playing mechanics - all skills and stats have meaningful impact on gameplay and allow for distinct playstyles
It has good quest design - fun, engaging, allow for multiples solutions
It has good map design - plenty of loactions to discover (all make sense in placement and context), gatekeeps the player though natural means (meaning despite the difficulty, those challenges can be overcome and there's reward for doing so)
It has good writing - characters, factions and worldbuilding make sense and are compelling

All in all, a good game

Also: RT solo combat >>> TB solo combat
Don't try to deny it, deep down you know it to be true :smug:
 

laclongquan

Arcane
Joined
Jan 10, 2007
Messages
1,870,166
Location
Searching for my kidnapped sister
Talking Deathclaws make sense expanding on the idea of the Deathclaws as a pre-war biological weapon.
The game itself explains that they are an accident, they weren't meant to be this smart and pretty much played dumb until the Enclave released them into Vault 13. Then the Enclave later finds out and eliminates them as a loose end.

Any sources from Fallout 1 about Deathclaws origins? i found info saying that they are:
Deathclaws appear to be mutated Jackson's Chameleons, the horned variety. There are a lot of similarities still present, but an even greater number of differences. The mutation factor is quite high. This species is highly intelligent, about the equivalent of an eight-year-old, with some individuals reaching human normal level. Their learning capacity is very high and they are capable of abstract thought and reasoning.}"
Although they do not have vocal chords, the deathclaws seem to mimic human speech much the same as a parrot does. I have yet to discover the exact mechanism behind this, so I am unable to say more at this time. Socially, they are pack animals with a very rigid code of ethics. They are led by an 'alpha male' who rules with the mutual consent of the pack. They appear to be extremely loyal to the pack as a whole, treating it as a family unit rather than having individual families as humans do.}"
"Deathclaws were originally created to replace humans during close-combat search-and-destroy missions. They were derived from mixed animal stock and then refined by the Master, using genetic manipulation. The resulting creature is almost unbelievably fast and powerful. Deathclaws are well named—they are the toughest animals that you will encounter in the Wastes."
But this is from Fallout 2, like i said they ruined Deathclaws for me, they had to come up with this insane bullshit lore to justify the talking deathclaws thing, i would prefer that they're just 'naturally' mutated monsters, like Radscorpions. But if the Fallout 2 Deathclaw lore was the original intended vision for the first game, then i might be wrong about Fallout 2 ruining them.
In Fallout 1, there's no mention of deathclaw origin. Two situations we met them, the hidden cave involved with the missing caravan quest and the Boneyard warehouse, dont have clues about that.
IN Fallout 2 we know one way to create them is to throw iguana or chameleon into a puddle of FEV to create them, as shown by the magician under Mariposa ruins.
A source of intelligent DC is from Enclave, as mentioned by V13 data as well as Navarro data. I dont remember if it is prewar research to create them or not. But we players can make a guess that if there's no such research, the Enclave can still learn to emulatethat magician to create DC from inducing mutation by FEV.
Based on F2 data, we can retro-guess that the 2 DC situations in F1 is from deathclaws escaping from Master's experiment in Vault L.A, as the two locations are near Vault L.A

With Mojave, we can make a reasonable guess that DC flow from Los Angeles as well as Enclave experiment. It's one hundred years from all that, after all, and Mojave is only half the continent away from West Coast.

The situation in F3 is worse than FNV, as East Coast is too far from West Coast compare to Mojave. Thus the source of Deathclaws is very suspect, considering FEV is less popular in East Coast. You dont actually have a ready and plentiful source of FEV, as Vault 87 is depleted of that. So the DC is, probabbly, have another source other than mutation from FEV in V87.
The Enclave source is way late to propose them being primary source. So Where?
 

Lemming42

Arcane
Joined
Nov 4, 2012
Messages
6,385
Location
The Satellite Of Love
I always imagined they were just mutated animals in Fo1, though which animal isn't clear, prior to the iguana suggestion in Fo2. I never understood why Butch and the lady from the gun store talk about the Deathclaw (or "Death Claw") as a legend, but then the Gun Runners a few miles south are just casually saying shit like "hey, can someone come clean up our deathclaw den? the deathclaws are breeding again, lots of deathclaws around this time of year". Caravans go between the Hub and Adytum so surely news must have spread.

As for their weird distribution, radiation is magic in Fallout so maybe it was just one individual female iguana who got mutated in a very specific and unusual way, and grew to lay the first batch of Deathclaw eggs, explaining their rather limited numbers.

That explanation of the Master fine-tuning Deathclaws is bizarre given that the very first Deathclaw you ever meet has just torn apart one of the Master's soldiers.
 

9ted6

Educated
Joined
Mar 24, 2023
Messages
842
FNV is a parody of Fallout. just like anything made after Fallout 2 and Tactics
Fallout New Vegas only gets points because it is the best imitation of Fallout for people who get filtered by Isometric and Turn-Based Combat but it is a good starter for people to get into the whole concept of a role-playing game. I am sure there are a whole host of young people who are into RPGs that got their start with Fallout New Vegas. One needs to start somewhere.
It doesn't help that the gameplay in Fallout 1 and 2 is atrocious.

For all the horrendous world building of the 3D titles, at least the gameplay is functional and isn't just a bunch of obtuse dice rolls for everything.
It's a shame that Fallout 2 refines the gameplay only to make the story so much stupider, same for 4 compared to 3 and NV.
I think the flanderization of the Fallout series is a way to remedy the cognitive dissonance of the player and the world. The player is having fun so we must make our game world fun and goofy as well. I also think that game devs are afraid by making the game too serious, or else they will get called pretentious.
Fallout 1 and base game NV are the only ones that hit the right balance of seriousness and humor. They aren't deathly serious and pretentious but they also aren't goofy parodies of themselves. What sparse humor there is is good and they take themselves seriously without trying too hard.

2 feels like a bad parody of Fallout and 3 and 4 are either serious to the point it's laughable or goofy to the point it's annoying with no in between, 3 leaning more to seriousness and 4 to goofiness but never any balance between the two. 3's DLC besides Zeta sometimes achieves that too and 3 is better overall than 4 without a doubt.

With NV's DLCs HH and DM are consistent with the base game, while OWB is again like a Rick and Morty parody episode and LR presents some of the stupidest writing in the entire series as serious as it possibly can. Both are pretentious and painful to even attempt to get through.
 

Old Hans

Arcane
Joined
Oct 10, 2011
Messages
1,609
as much as I love NV, it had a lot of half assed underdeveloped areas, like Primm, which feels like it was thrown together in 10 minutes
 
Last edited:

9ted6

Educated
Joined
Mar 24, 2023
Messages
842
as much as I love NV, it had a lot of half assed underdeveloped areas, like Primm, which fells like it was thrown together in 10 minutes
Once you're done with Novac it feels like they ran out of time and money.

Besides Vegas itself there's not much left to do and what is there is rushed, like Bitter Springs where there's four tents and you track down the elusive Khan sniper by walking a hundred feet up a hill and he's sitting there in a cave.
 

Old Hans

Arcane
Joined
Oct 10, 2011
Messages
1,609
as much as I love NV, it had a lot of half assed underdeveloped areas, like Primm, which fells like it was thrown together in 10 minutes
Once you're done with Novac it feels like they ran out of time and money.

Besides Vegas itself there's not much left to do and what is there is rushed, like Bitter Springs where there's four tents and you track down the elusive Khan sniper by walking a few hundred feet up a hill and he's sitting there in a cave.
the team meeting probably went something like "if we add any more tents the Xbox will crash"
 

Silverfish

Arbiter
Joined
Dec 4, 2019
Messages
3,449
FO 1 is actually measured and stylish, its like Dr Strangelove in videogame form

NV is cowboys and explosions

slim-pickens-riding-the-bomb.gif
 

9ted6

Educated
Joined
Mar 24, 2023
Messages
842
Old but still relevant.

https://vargass.medium.com/fallout-new-vegas-is-a-fundamentally-bad-game-db167fa41f3c

Fallout: New Vegas is a Fundamentally Flawed Game​


doesn’t help that the game has this seedy right-libertarian vibe
I can't think of another game besides FNV where one large section of its community is political leftists circle jerking for it being the most hardcore politically leftist game ever made while another politically left section of its community hates it because it's either libertarian or hardcore politically rightist propaganda.

I've seen that reaction for Fallout in general. Political leftists who say it's a far left series but can only give ambiguous reasons why or political leftists who in a purity spiral say it's far right and their reasoning is it's not left enough. I remember when the FO4 trailer got a bunch of them upset because there was one second of the main guy wearing a dress played for laughs.
 
Joined
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Messages
441
I can't think of another game besides FNV where one large section of its community is political leftists circle jerking for it being the most hardcore politically leftist game ever made while another politically left section of its community hates it because it's either libertarian or hardcore politically rightist propaganda.

I've seen that reaction for Fallout in general. Political leftists who say it's a far left series but can only give ambiguous reasons why or political leftists who in a purity spiral say it's far right and their reasoning is it's not far left enough.

This isn't just happening in gaming. I have seen so many movies and shows where people consider them "powerful left wing shows" because they have women in positions of power or lots of black characters, but then you watch it and all the female characters are stupid, the white people continue to get ahead and outsmart the black protagonists despite being incompetent, and generally the politics goes full circle to the point where it becomes a conservative show about stupid and entitled women fighting (and failing) against smarter male opponents until they eventually win in the end through sheer luck or happenstance. It's ironic how leftists constantly whine about how women are considered bossy by society, but so many shows repeatedly show their female protagonists (obviously written by some purple-haired feminist) as an irrational bitch with no ability to be logical and no way to actually accomplish anything worthwhile on their own without some magical plot device dropping out of the sky and giving them some undeserved power, which they then proceed to squander.

It makes sense. Hollywood writers are so bad at their jobs that they can't write anything new, so they tell the same old stories but slap a bunch of left-wing politics on top, which ends up clashing with traditional storytelling. You need your main character to succeed, but they can't succeed too easily, so they need to suffer. Meanwhile the villain needs to keep succeeding over them right until the end. In a standard story this builds tension and stakes. But when you make the protagonist black and the antagonist white purely for political reasons without thinking about it any deeper, you end up making black people look stupid repeatedly as the protagonist repeatedly fails. Worse, because the writers are hack frauds, they can't write meaningful consequences into their stories, so it just ends up looking like the main character is stupid and only succeeds at the end by sheer luck.

Judging from what I have seen from my circle of friends, what determines if a show is a "good, acceptable, progressive show" or "evil conservative propaganda made by nazis" is entirely based on whether or not someone involved with the production committed some sin, either they got metoo'd, or donated to the Republican party, or did some other unacceptable thing. The content of the show is never considered, because I think even the most braindead liberal knows how inaccurate that would be as a metric.

As for New Vegas, it's main political argumentation seems to stem around the failure of democracy. That's an issue pretty much everyone across the political spectrum agrees with to some degree, so of course it's going to have people arguing that it supports their side even if it contradicts the other people saying it supports a different side. New Vegas is a game that's cleverly written enough to point out genuine flaws with things (like democracy) while not taking an overtly left or right wing political stance. Even the legion, which by all accounts is generally a reprehensible faction, has an ideology that is coherent and multiple characters who are genuinely outspoken about it's advantages for the wasteland. Being balanced is a good way to convince everyone that you're talking to them specifically.
 

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