Fallout: New Vegas: In which I ramble on forever

[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]

Originally Posted by 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 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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by CABAL49

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 ).

[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.

Originally Posted by greed

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.

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

Originally Posted by 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.

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.

Originally Posted by Mauve Mage

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" mission

I 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.

Originally Posted by Krylo

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.

Originally Posted by 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'.

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.

Originally Posted by Overcast

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.