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 .

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]

Originally Posted by Mr.Bookworm

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 .

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]

Originally Posted by Revolving 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.

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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.