Fallout: New Vegas: In which I ramble on forever

[Mr.Bookworm]

So, I have a shameful secret to confess: I have never finished New Vegas.

I have no idea why, because I love Fallout in all it's variations, I love Obsidian, bug-riddled mess that they are, and I did, in fact, love New Vegas. I plugged about twenty fun hours into it, put it down for something, and then never went back for some reason.

So anyway, I saw the Ultimate edition the other day when it caught my eye, did the math and bought it, because it's cheaper than buying all of the DLC for my regular copy.

And now I'm 150 hours (the Play Time display is hour.minute.second, right?) in on one single character and all of my free time has disappeared into a sandy hole and I have a bunch of stuff I want to talk about in no particular order and with no regards to thoroughness.

Spoilers follow, obviously:

1) The bugs. Ye gods. I know I said Obsidian was a bug-riddled mess, but this is maybe the buggiest game of theirs I've played and it's gotten way worse since I hit the Strip. I've crashed a couple of dozen times so far and there was at least one case where all of my saves got stuck on the loading screen.

2) Obsidian fucked up in their portrayal of the Legion, assuming that they're supposed to be presented as a somewhat viable alternative to the NCR. Talking to Caesar, it sounds like the Legion is supposed to be the "ends justify the means" faction.

Buuuut they're not. As you learn more about the Legion, it becomes clear that their entire history is just a long string of atrocities. They are pure evil and unless you're the fucking Joker, there is absolutely no reason to support them, doubly so if you're a women, because the Legion is horrifyingly misogynistic.

3) Is it just me, or is Honest Hearts pretty racist? When I was presented with the situation at hand at the beginning of the game, I was expecting some sort of discussion or deconstruction of the elements involved. But, no, it's pretty much just two white Christian dudes leading a group of noble savages against a group of evil savages. You even go a fucking vision quest. It's pretty :raise:.

4) In Honest Hearts, the tale of the Survivalist is fantastic and the most compelling thing in the expansion, I think. They really should have worked it into the main plot, because it provides some really important information on the area and the tribes.

5) I actually liked Graham and his story, but the entire slideshow is all about how mysterious and spooky the legend of the Burned Man was, and then literally two minutes in you get taken to meet Graham. Uuuuh.

6) Vault 3 is pretty interesting, because it's basically a super-dark reprise on the Vault from the first game. Water chip fails, Vault decides to send people out to fix it, EVERYONE DIES.

7) Sniping is awesome in this game, even if it makes everything pretty much easy-mode. Taking out the entirety of Nelson by myself with Ratslayer was really cool.

8) Getting to some places is a gigantic pain in the ass, due to loading screens. McCarran, the Strip, all of those places. When I was doing the quest with Contreras, I was considering whether or not to turn him in, because he's a great merchant, and then I realized I would have to sit through five damn loading screens to reach him, plus all of the time it takes to run across those areas.

9) Hardcore mode swiftly became an entirely tedious micromanagement game, rather than an added layer of challenge. Having to drink water isn't fun, it just means I turn to ED-E and pull out one of the twenty bottles of purified she's toting around. I'm keeping it on for this playthrough, but I'll ditch it next time around.

10) Caps are hilariously easy to get. By the time I hit the strip, I had 24k+. I blew 20k of that on implants and ten hours later I was right back up to that same level, and I haven't even touched the ever-growing stockpile of loot that's accumulating in my motel room.

11) The railroading that goes on in the first half of the game is kind of annoying. You're forced into a rough U-shape by the game and it only starts to open up a bit by the time you hit Novac.

[greed]

1) The bugs. Ye gods. I know I said Obsidian was a bug-riddled mess, but this is maybe the buggiest game of theirs I've played and it's gotten way worse since I hit the Strip. I've crashed a couple of dozen times so far and there was at least one case where all of my saves got stuck on the loading screen.


This seems to be all over the place, some people have tons of problems with it, others have way less. One thing to note is Bethesda did the debugging and QC, so it's actually Bethesda to blame there.


2) Obsidian fucked up in their portrayal of the Legion, assuming that they're supposed to be presented as a somewhat viable alternative to the NCR. Talking to Caesar, it sounds like the Legion is supposed to be the "ends justify the means" faction.

Buuuut they're not. As you learn more about the Legion, it becomes clear that their entire history is just a long string of atrocities. They are pure evil and unless you're the fucking Joker, there is absolutely no reason to support them, doubly so if you're a women, because the Legion is horrifyingly misogynistic.


I think you're kinda right here. I think they did want to make them really evil. But I think they went a bit far in making the perception of them innacurate in game. I think there was a conscious design decision to make it so many NPCs didn't have an accurate view of the Legion for various reasons. One thing here is those who know Caesar personally or who are particularly intelligent (like Arcade) have the lowest opinions of the Legion.
Another example is everyone in the Mojave sees them as this unstoppable savage juggernaut whereas Graham unequivocally says it will implode days after Caesar dies.

But somewhere along the way I think they screwed up how they presented this idea that the perception of the Legion in the Mojave is inaccurate, and that many NPCs have flat out wrong opinions on things. So instead of coming off as flat out evil but poorly understood due to the political climate in the area, they come off as something the devs wanted you to consider reasonable.




3) Is it just me, or is Honest Hearts pretty racist? When I was presented with the situation at hand at the beginning of the game, I was expecting some sort of discussion or deconstruction of the elements involved. But, no, it's pretty much just two white Christian dudes leading a group of noble savages against a group of evil savages. You even go a fucking vision quest. It's pretty :raise:.


I pretty much agree. I think they fucked up a fair bit with HH. You're right the Survivalist was amazing though. It's by far the weakest DLC, the other 3 are spectacular though.



11) The railroading that goes on in the first half of the game is kind of annoying. You're forced into a rough U-shape by the game and it only starts to open up a bit by the time you hit Novac.

Yeah they don't, there's plenty of other ways to go they're just harder. The railroading should only really be there the first game once you understand the mechanics taking alternate paths shouldn't be a hassle.

[Magus]

I knew Obsidian had completely lied about the advertising of "grey" morality choices when the first Legionnaires you meet have just finished crucifying an entire village.

I did like that several quests had more than two ways of completing them (I think the one that comes to mind most quickly is the town that needs a sheriff, there's about five viable ways of completing that one) but insofar as trying to move away from the "vicious sociopath or shining angel" choices of Fallout 3 they completely failed.

In fact in comparison to Tenpenny Tower or the Pitt from Fallout 3 I feel New Vegas was probably worse.

EDIT: Also the Ultimate Edition gives you several high powered weapons when you start off, apparently so you can get to New Vegas early on if you want as opposed to having to walk down and around due to the Deathclaws.

[mauve]

Graham unequivocally says it will implode days after Caesar dies. I always found it a little disappointing that you can kill Caesar whenever you want and absolutely nothing happens, for better or worse, as a result of this. I still got chased down by random Legion assassins at the same frequency and none of them mentioned the fact that I killed their leader, NPCs still told me about how evil and invincible Caesar is, Boone liked me slightly more than before but let me know right off the bat that nothing was going to change because of this, I didn't even get a YAY YOU KILLED AN IMPORTANT CHARACTER DID YOU KNOW THAT notice. Hell, I didn't even know I killed him until I went back to loot corpses and one of them had all Caesar's stuff. I didn't think he'd actually chase me out of his tent alongside all his bodyguards, but apparently he did.

Really the funniest part was that after going into Caesar's camp and killing EVERYONE IN HIS ENTIRE ARMY, Boone gave me his "I Forgot To Remember To Forget" mission and started talking about how he TOTALLY EXPECTED TO DIE fighting a handful of low-leveled Legion soldiers attacking Bitter Springs. Dude. Boone. You killed like sixty dudes and all of Caesar's elite bodyguards ten minutes ago. I think you can handle fighting five low-leveled dudes at a time as they walk through a sniper-friendly bottleneck canyon.

I never actually finished the game either; I think I"m on the last main story mission though. I decided to go finish a few companion character sidequests and lost interest at some point. Guess I should get back into it.

[Revising Ocelot]

I completed Fallout 3 + DLC, but New Vegas has been stuck in THE BACKLOG for years now, which would make me a Terrible Person if I wasn't already a Terrible Person, so oh well.
On the plus side, if and when I get around to playing NV it'll probably be before I make a proper attempt at Skyrim. And that will be before Mass Effect 3, which can sit in THE BACKLOG forever as far as I'm concerned thanks to all that backlash. And extortionately priced DLC. At least I got the Skyrim DLC "free" thanks to a Steam payment fart during the summer sale.

[Aerozord]

I thought New Vegas had the better DLC, old world blues is still my favorite DLC of all time.

Oh and New Vegas has that awesome hidden perk if you eat all the major faction leaders in the game

[MuMu]

I completed Fallout 3 + DLC, but New Vegas has been stuck in THE BACKLOG for years now, which would make me a Terrible Person if I wasn't already a Terrible Person, so oh well.
On the plus side, if and when I get around to playing NV it'll probably be before I make a proper attempt at Skyrim. And that will be before Mass Effect 3, which can sit in THE BACKLOG forever as far as I'm concerned thanks to all that backlash. And extortionately priced DLC. At least I got the Skyrim DLC "free" thanks to a Steam payment fart during the summer sale.

I advise saving New Vegas for the last of those three.

[CABAL49]

The Mothership Zeta Crew mod, makes Mothership Zeta one of my favorite dlcs. But yeah, never properly finished New Vegas myself. I'm done just about everything else in the game though.

[MuMu]

Since we're all talking about quitting games midway, was it because of that syndrome of doing all sidequests to the point where you forgot what the main quest is or don't even care anymore? Cause that happened to me in Skyrim.

[mauve]

Since we're all talking about quitting games midway, was it because of that syndrome of doing all sidequests to the point where you forgot what the main quest is or don't even care anymore? Cause that happened to me in Skyrim.

In terms of Skyrim, yes. I'm at the Odaviing mission in my playthrough, but I don't want to do it because my followers get left behind and I worry I'll forget what we were all doing in terms of sidequests. I've invested so much time into sidequests and I KNOW there's more optional missionsI haven't even discovered yet, so I really don't feel ready to "finish" the game yet. I'm sure I could still go back and do said missions after I beat the official story missions, but then it feels less like a game and more like cleaning up after the party. It's not like I'm working towards a main goal anymore, and Skyrim's so huge a game I am loathe to start a new character from page 1.

New Vegas' situation is similar, if not identical. Unlike SKyrim I actually felt reasonably invested in the main plotline. I cared about what was going on and was interested in seeing what happened next. The problem for me was that I reached the point of no return mission, but decided to go finish my companion missions first. I got through Arcade's, Boone's, Lily's and Rex's and then started getting bored. I got stuck on Cass' mission because I don't have the Sneak/Lockpick skills to get the necessary info from the Silver Rush peacefully and I keep getting killed if I try using force, so I stopped playing and got distracted by new games. Eventually I'll get the urge to play it again and finish it-- That's how it usually goes for me. I still haven't started any of the DLC either.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Kill everything you see, kill everyone you meet, if you cannot kill them install a mod to destroy them with your fists for having the pugnacity of not being killed previously.

Save them all from their hellish existence in a bug ridden world of dust and depravity. BE THEIR DESTROYING ANGEL, FOR WHILE THEIR PAIN IS FLEETING THE BLISSFUL QUIET FREEDOM OF ETERNITY IS FOREVER!

[Aerozord]

So my nephew was trying Fallout 3 the other day. He really had trouble getting used tot he idea of a game where you don't indiscriminately murder every person you see. Resulted in him dying many many times when he started picking a fight in Megaton for no reason.

[Krylo]

I knew Obsidian had completely lied about the advertising of "grey" morality choices when the first Legionnaires you meet have just finished crucifying an entire village.

I wouldn't say COMPLETELY 'cause it's not a binary choice, and the only choice that isn't grey is the legion. The NCR is over large, over bearing, and over ambitious, but are trying to do the right thing. House is greedy and self interested, but is the most capable of running the strip profitably and keeping vegas free and understands enlightened self interest. And the wildcard is, well, it's a wildcard.

The choice between legion and whatever else is boring. The choice of whether or not to betray house/ncr especially with how those correlate to the BoS if you've gotten Veronika and/or started her quest line, is where things get gray, blurry, and interesting.

Also: I thought Dead Money was the weakest DLC, honestly. Just measured in fun. It had great writing and all, but the infinitely respawning bullet sponge swarm enemies that you had to hack up just sucked any enjoyment out of it that I could get, as I just wanted to get DONE with every actual game segment so I could quit dealing with those fucks.

It's not that they were difficult. They were just tedious and boring to kill.

[MuMu]

It seems like that for most people there's is one DLC they love, one they despise and the other two are so-so.

[Red Mage Black]

I don't have any of the DLC, but goddamn you guys are making me want to play FO3 and New Vegas again. Not sure what made me stop playing them. Maybe because I saw some hidden difficulty that wasn't there and I just wasn't playing it right. Not to mention, I just want 'That Gun'.

[Overcast]

I am willing to say I have played the ever loving hell out of this game, and still do quite a bit. It is one of the grouping of RPG's I cycle through during dry spells of gaming, and I love it quite a bit.

I was one of the chosen few who never in his entire life of owning it ever had a glitch that I didn't cause by modding.
I can say that because I roleplay all my characters my viewpoints are a bit more varied than if I were just playing it straight up as a game.

As far as the Legion is concerned it is sometimes better to view the game from the place of someone who has to live in it, of course Caesar's Legion is a massive conglomerate of raider tribes stripped of their personalities and brought into a uniform fold, lead by a military leader whom may be the only real controlling factor in why it hasn't fallen apart. But with Caesar at the head, and with an heir of equal or greater than knowledge and charisma they have created an empire that while harsh is capable in a survivalist standpoint. And if you are playing someone who is a survivalist in that matter they may see the harsh purity of Caesar's Legion as preferable to the bloated mass that is the NCR or the at times totalitarian concept of House.

And there is never a good reason to trust Yesman.

Is Honest Hearts pretty racist? Probably. But the DLC to me always seemed more about taking a distant but present view of two aspects of the Bible, and so I mostly ignored the tribal cliche's because they were more set-pieces to the overall situation. This was excepted in the case of the Survivalist, which I can understand being separated most of all because it is actually another case of that same racism you are talking about, only being conducted by someone with a more neutral disposition so it seems easier to swallow when he accidentally influences a whole tribe to his way of acting rather than purposefully like the other two mighty white men. Still beautifully done.

I also enjoyed pretty much all the other DLC. Dead Money may have been more forgiving to me compared to Krylo since I was able to trudge through the part with all the annoying enemies fairly quickly, and so I was able to concentrate more on the allies you are given, whom are all great though my favorite is Dog/God. Whom I was not charismatic enough to save that time around and that killed me. Old World Blues is just great, I don't even have to make any measures to defend it because it is just great. It is the closest I think they have gotten to the old school amusement of the Isometric Fallouts since ever. And Lonesome Road was also fantastic, it also gave me a somewhat clearer image of Caesar's Legion by hearing about it from someone whom was part of, destroyed by, but still somewhat loyal to it. Also I wanted that version of ED-E with me forever.

The railroading in and of itself was understandable, mostly from a roleplaying standpoint. Someone just shot me in the face, and didn't actually kill me. I kinda want to deal with that no matter what character I've made, and that path is always down the railroad. Also the Willow mod additional follower is down that path, so even from a gamer standpoint I am always influenced to stumble down that way.

I just dig this game a lot, and I probably will for at least as long as it takes for a new one to come around or Wasteland 2 to finish. We'll see how things turn out.

[CABAL49]

So my nephew was trying Fallout 3 the other day. He really had trouble getting used tot he idea of a game where you don't indiscriminately murder every person you see. Resulted in him dying many many times when he started picking a fight in Megaton for no reason.

My friend was playing Morrowind for the first time, and she didn't get the concept of NPC ownership. As in most games you can just go in and take what you want. I think even still she is level 1 and just spends most of her time running away from everything.

[Satan's Onion]

My friend was playing Morrowind for the first time, and she didn't get the concept of NPC ownership. As in most games you can just go in and take what you want. I think even still she is level 1 and just spends most of her time running away from everything.

I honestly don't know whether to find this kind of thing exasperating or endearing. (Have you tried talking her into the Thieves' Guild? After all, ownership only matters if you get caught :smug: ).

[Sithdarth]

You should teach her the jumping trick. I stole literally almost everything that wasn't nailed down in Seyda Neen by simply picking it up after jumping off the table it was sitting on. Then I went and sold it all in Balmora. Sometimes glitches are fun.

[Mr.Bookworm]

So, I just beat Old World Blues. It was... sort of a mixed bag.

For the positives, the dialogue and writing were fantastic throughout the entire thing. That was amazing. Talking to your brain was, I think, my favorite part.

On the other hand, playing it wasn't all that fun. It pretty much literally had random fucking encounters, with enemies spawning right on top of you with no option but to fight them.

And fighting them was boring, because they were all bags of HP that only did scratch damage to me. I turned it up to Very Hard after a while, but while that made them do more damage to me, it just made the bag of HP problem even worse.

Although admittedly, I think I might have accidentally tripped into breaking the game, because I beat the Giant Roboscorpion to death in about twenty seconds with a proton axe.

It was apparently supposed to be a hard fight? I dunno.

This seems to be all over the place, some people have tons of problems with it, others have way less. One thing to note is Bethesda did the debugging and QC, so it's actually Bethesda to blame there.

Bethesda, shining beacon of quality and I can't finish this sentence.

Anyway, it's much more excusable here than most places, so it's more annoying than anything.

Another example is everyone in the Mojave sees them as this unstoppable savage juggernaut whereas Graham unequivocally says it will implode days after Caesar dies.Yeah, the Legion is a cult of personality. Lanius might be able to beat everyone in line for a little while, but it'll fall to pieces at some point after Caesar's death.

It's pretty much the single dumbest thing about Caesar. Even if you handwave away all of the other problems with his plan, he's going to be dead really soon, and there's no one around to replace him.

But somewhere along the way I think they screwed up how they presented this idea that the perception of the Legion in the Mojave is inaccurate, and that many NPCs have flat out wrong opinions on things. So instead of coming off as flat out evil but poorly understood due to the political climate in the area, they come off as something the devs wanted you to consider reasonable. I... don't really see this, though.

The main person who tries to make the Legion sound reasonable is Caesar himself. The only named Legion character you have any significant contact with before that is Vulpes, who is a complete bastard, and pretty much everyone else you talk to thinks the Legion is a glorified band of raiders.

Also, all of the interview stuff I've seen indicates that the developers really did see the Legion as a dark grey moral choice.

Anyway, though, I just ripped a child's teddy bear in half in front of her, and the Legion gave me fame for it, soooooooo.

Yeah they don't, there's plenty of other ways to go they're just harder. The railroading should only really be there the first game once you understand the mechanics taking alternate paths shouldn't be a hassle.To the north, deathclaws or cazadores. To the west, the game world ends. To the east, mountains. Oh, except for that one mountain pass.

Guarded by a Deathclaw. ::V:

You're forced south pretty hard at the start of the game.

I knew Obsidian had completely lied about the advertising of "grey" morality choices when the first Legionnaires you meet have just finished crucifying an entire village.

There is a grey moral choice, though. You could make cogent arguments for how helping the NCR, House, or going independent would benefit the Mojave. The game in general is excellent (much better than Fallout 3) at handling that sort of thing, it's just that I feel they misstepped in regards to the Legion.

EDIT: Also the Ultimate Edition gives you several high powered weapons when you start off, apparently so you can get to New Vegas early on if you want as opposed to having to walk down and around due to the Deathclaws.Nope, the Courier's Stash is just all of the pre-order bonuses rolled together. It's overpowered for the early game, but it's not going to let you get past the meat wall.

I always found it a little disappointing that you can kill Caesar whenever you want and absolutely nothing happens, for better or worse, as a result of this. I still got chased down by random Legion assassins at the same frequency and none of them mentioned the fact that I killed their leader, NPCs still told me about how evil and invincible Caesar is, Boone liked me slightly more than before but let me know right off the bat that nothing was going to change because of this, I didn't even get a YAY YOU KILLED AN IMPORTANT CHARACTER DID YOU KNOW THAT notice. Hell, I didn't even know I killed him until I went back to loot corpses and one of them had all Caesar's stuff. I didn't think he'd actually chase me out of his tent alongside all his bodyguards, but apparently he did.

I've had a bunch of random people comment on it and a lot of the Legionnaires I fight say something about it, but it is kind of disappointing that nothing much changes.

What I'm really disappointed about is that you can't bring up meeting Graham to Caesar. Seems like it would be an interesting conversation.

Boone's response was great, though.

Really the funniest part was that after going into Caesar's camp and killing EVERYONE IN HIS ENTIRE ARMY, Boone gave me his "I Forgot To Remember To Forget" missionI got that quest pretty soon after I finished the entire Bitter Springs questline, which had me traveling back and forth between Bitter Springs four or five times, plus that time I left Boone there to hang out for thirty minutes or so.

Was pretty funny.

The choice between legion and whatever else is boring. The choice of whether or not to betray house/ncr especially with how those correlate to the BoS if you've gotten Veronika and/or started her quest line, is where things get gray, blurry, and interesting.

I'm really disappointed that the only option with the Brotherhood is killing them all, if you're not going with the NCR (or even if you are, it's easy to trip into doing something that locks you out of that path).

Seems pretty weird, with all of the choices the game gives you.

I don't have any of the DLC, but goddamn you guys are making me want to play FO3 and New Vegas again. Not sure what made me stop playing them. Maybe because I saw some hidden difficulty that wasn't there and I just wasn't playing it right. Not to mention, I just want 'That Gun'.

I'm kind of disappointed with That Gun. It looks cool and I love the reload animation, but it seems really weak compared to everything.

Cheap, though.

But with Caesar at the head, and with an heir of equal or greater than knowledge and charisma they have created an empire that while harsh is capable in a survivalist standpoint. And if you are playing someone who is a survivalist in that matter they may see the harsh purity of Caesar's Legion as preferable to the bloated mass that is the NCR or the at times totalitarian concept of House.

Caesar's Legion is going to fall to pieces, because it's an army, and Caesar thinks that by having them invade the NCR he can magically transform a bunch of militant assholes into a society, because that's what he wants.

Caesar's Legion would be much more convincing in Fallout 1, where everything is fucked and there's no sort of functioning civilization.

Is Honest Hearts pretty racist? Probably. But the DLC to me always seemed more about taking a distant but present view of two aspects of the Bible, and so I mostly ignored the tribal cliche's because they were more set-pieces to the overall situation. This was excepted in the case of the Survivalist, which I can understand being separated most of all because it is actually another case of that same racism you are talking about, only being conducted by someone with a more neutral disposition so it seems easier to swallow when he accidentally influences a whole tribe to his way of acting rather than purposefully like the other two mighty white men. Still beautifully done.Eh, the Survivalist doesn't really fall into that trap, because the "tribe" he watches over is just a bunch of scared little kids (I assume they escaped from the Big MT after playing OWB, but I'm not sure).

All of the noble/magic savage bullshit is just kind of weird and gross, because it seems entirely superfluous to the actual plot.

[Krylo]

To the north, deathclaws or cazadores. To the west, the game world ends. To the east, mountains. Oh, except for that one mountain pass.

Guarded by a Deathclaw. ::V:

You're forced south pretty hard at the start of the game.It's easy to avoid the deathclaws heading north. Cazadores not so much, but cazadores are actually really really easy to kill with a 9mm once you get good at the game.

Just shoot the wings. They cripple incredibly easy, and a cazadore with crippled wings is completely harmless. It just pathetically limps across the ground at you. I don't think they can even get their stingers at you at that point, but I don't really remember.

Anyway, point is, I did actually head straight north on one character. Walked into Vegas. And then cleaned out every casino before confronting Benny. Completely skipped every part of the story that's to the south/east.



I'm really disappointed that the only option with the Brotherhood is killing them all, if you're not going with the NCR (or even if you are, it's easy to trip into doing something that locks you out of that path).

Seems pretty weird, with all of the choices the game gives you.Well you can tell Yes Man no and not do it on Wildcard, as well. Though he calls you an idiot for it. But, yeah, the Brotherhood are a big reason that I usually end up wild carding. I don't really like the Brotherhood but Veronika's my bro, and I'm not going to murder everyone she knows for someone else.

[mauve]

You can tell Yes Man no That's what I did too. I'm pretty sure I managed to make friends with every faction that Yes Man told me to get rid of: The Great Khans and Boomers are my buddies now, and the Brotherhood... doesn't actively want me dead? I haven't done many of their missions because I found their base to be very confusing the first time I visited, plus they constantly send me into obscure and labyrinthian vaults with multiple exits and easy-to-miss items.

But yeah, Veronica is awesome and I should play with her more. Her only issue is that she enjoys jumping directly in front of my bullets so she can punch the guy I'm aiming at.


I was talking to my sister about NV this morning; like me, she got to the final story mission and then quit. My sister is following House for her playthough on the sole basis that she liked his pencil mustache. I'd make fun of her for that, but I originally went Wildcard just so I'd be able to hear more Yes Man passive-aggressive dialogue. THIS IS HOW WE MAKE WORLD-ALTERING DECISIONS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! On the bases of mustaches, dialogue, and the potential for Arcade to get a good story ending!

[Overcast]

Caesar's Legion is going to fall to pieces, because it's an army, and Caesar thinks that by having them invade the NCR he can magically transform a bunch of militant assholes into a society, because that's what he wants.

Caesar's Legion would be much more convincing in Fallout 1, where everything is fucked and there's no sort of functioning civilization.


Caesar's Legion is a human hive. It is a mass of people who are indoctrinated into a way of life which is meant to value the nation and its leader above all things, especially their very own lives. The heart of this concept is incredibly military, because every man is expected to not only give up their life for this, but to do so with skill and capacity. Every woman is expected to serve in support both in the minor economic fashion, and the military service fashion. All are to consider themselves slaves no matter how high you become in the matter, all equally below the authority of Caesar, and all equally willing to give themselves up for the greater good.

It is highly dependent on having a leader, a queen, whom is able to maintain this kind of society by understanding the precepts and doling out the authority properly. Caesar as a man is incredibly good for this because he built this society on this concept, and he is a smart man that knows how to use a society of unwavering slaves in order to make in 30 years a civilization organized enough that it can challenge the 100 years of the NCR. Oddly enough even Lanius could run this society if he had the right advisory at his side, as can be seen when you are able to dissuade him from expanding in the final confrontation at Hoover Dam. He is savage, but is no less a member of the Legion as anyone else and would give everything for the sake of the greater good.

Still it is more than likely going to fail without Caesar around. But I would argue that this kind of military centric society makes more sense in this game simply because it is a rapid expansion of territory under a charismatic leader in a short period of time in a unbalanced world where there is almost no status quo. In Fallout 1 people were barely picking up the pieces, in Fallout 2 people were just starting to come together, this is effectively Fallout 3 it is when those societies that erupted from after the end inevitably come to clash.

And honestly not that much time has really passed. As I said its only been like 100 years since the NCR started.

They get the dark grey treatment from the developers because they are an encroaching demise on individuality, tearing a child's bear in half is good because it causes her to steel herself for the reality of the world instead of placing her confidence on an object. The Legion abhors consumerism and all that shit.

And fighting them was boring, because they were all bags of HP that only did scratch damage to me. I turned it up to Very Hard after a while, but while that made them do more damage to me, it just made the bag of HP problem even worse.

Heh, I always seem to get past this kind of badness only because I have sneak attacks. Nobody ever seems to have that much health when you smash them in the face with massive damage.

Eh, the Survivalist doesn't really fall into that trap, because the "tribe" he watches over is just a bunch of scared little kids (I assume they escaped from the Big MT after playing OWB, but I'm not sure).

All of the noble/magic savage bullshit is just kind of weird and gross, because it seems entirely superfluous to the actual plot.

Still didn't really pay that much attention to the magical savages part of Honest Hearts in my head, mostly just because I was too concentrated on the ideological differences between the two personalities at the front and how I felt in comparison to them. The stuff was superfluous, and I was too enraptured by the other junk. xB

But yeah, Veronica is awesome and I should play with her more. Her only issue is that she enjoys jumping directly in front of my bullets so she can punch the guy I'm aiming at.

I typically never have companions because they make sneaking incredibly annoying and most of the time I play sneaky characters. Even Boone is odd at times since he will just haphazardly kill somebody I didn't even see yet at like several miles away and I wasn't sneaking and come on man stop it. For some reason the Dead Money followers were much better about this, might be because one was a mute.

Without companions though I typically go House because he just makes being a minion fun.

Anyway, point is, I did actually head straight north on one character. Walked into Vegas. And then cleaned out every casino before confronting Benny. Completely skipped every part of the story that's to the south/east.

I was able to walk through the meat wall with my meathead character(max STR and max END, fist specialist, smart as a brick) I remember getting love and hate and punching my way through a Cazadore nest. It wasn't easy, but totally possible.

And I know that Yes Man never ACTUALLY stabs you in the back, but every single time I play through the Wild Card I know I am simply attaching a massive nuke to my foot that far in the future is going to explode.