Decline Fallout 2 is a theme park

[tuluse]

I see what Alex is getting at. New Vegas suffers from uncanny valley with regards to c&c. It lost a lot of the abstractions in earlier games and that makes the artificiality of the situation more apparent.

 

[set]

New Vegas has some very nice ideas, but its weaknesses actually build on each other. For instance, it has a more "sandbox" approach than the original fallouts, with huge maps you can explore, with several opportunities for scavenging and exploring. But that side of the game is completely cut off from the way the main faction quests are structured. The faction quests form a nice branching path, with several optional stuff feeding back into it, but you never get to do things your way. You always need to follow how the quests are structured. Even if you decide to side with no one but yourself, it still amounts to doing the quests given to you by the Yes Man. I mean, having to follow these quests paths is annoying normally, and the tight way you are bound to doing what someone tells you already exacerbates the problem. But when you add that to what is supposed to be a free roaming game, it makes the issue even more visible.

The exploration, element is nice, but it never goes anywhere. I mean, maybe it is silly for a supermarket to still have food and pills hundreds of years after the war, but it is far more silly that those things are completely unnecessary and pretty much useless. The awful inventory interface makes using items a chore, but even worse is the fact that crafting and using items is hardly really important. The faction system in the game tries to connect back to the exploration system, and I remember it mentioned how nice it was that two enemy faction members might spawn hunting down the NPC but end fighting each other instead. That is a nice feature, that is something I would like to see more, but these random encounters are simply the most basic stuff someone could come up with. Fallout 1's encounters may have been completely scripted, they may have never done anything as unexpected, for its programmers, as that, but at least they were interesting!

Anyway, I am just commenting cause I think F:NV does try some really interesting stuff, but it unfortunately falls way short of making that stuff really work.

Ok, I give you a 5/10 troll. Almost got me.

Well, maybe you played with the right mods? I recently replayed New Vegas - and I would constantly go to a crafting bench saying to myself, "Oh boy what can I make?" And then I would retreat with a sigh because even after hoarding an impossible amount of junk everywhere I would still never have the right parts... and even if I ever did acquire all the bits a silly creation might require, it would just be junk - more clutter for my inventory anyway. The only things I was happy to craft were those skill books in OWB.

An overwhelming majority of items in New Vegas that are craftable are either A) grossly inferior to anything you can easily buy or steal B) unusable for your character's build. The most useful thing you can do is craft ammo, but you can't even do that all that much, because it requires an asinine amount of gunpowder and metal and casings and whatever.

And when it boils down to it, you're doing Yes Man's quests no matter what faction you join. I mean, you might destory or spare the Brotherhood, depending on if you go NCR or Mr House but that's your choice in the Yes Man quest anyway. You still end up having to meet all the other factions, plus or minus a specific one for each faction you can back. It's not like siding with the NCR suddenly opens up a whole new plethora of quests or scenarios you've got to deal with. A majority of the effects of your actions are seen in that epilogue, not during the length of the game.

As far as sandbox games using Gamebryo, it's the best one, but New Vegas is basically a big themepark where you get to see most of the attractions in one playthrough - and while those rides might have different outcomes, they rarely interact with other rides.

 

[Alex]

New Vegas has some very nice ideas, but its weaknesses actually build on each other. For instance, it has a more "sandbox" approach than the original fallouts, with huge maps you can explore, with several opportunities for scavenging and exploring. But that side of the game is completely cut off from the way the main faction quests are structured. The faction quests form a nice branching path, with several optional stuff feeding back into it, but you never get to do things your way. You always need to follow how the quests are structured. Even if you decide to side with no one but yourself, it still amounts to doing the quests given to you by the Yes Man. I mean, having to follow these quests paths is annoying normally, and the tight way you are bound to doing what someone tells you already exacerbates the problem. But when you add that to what is supposed to be a free roaming game, it makes the issue even more visible.

Following the Yes Man's plans is not the same thing as coming up with a plan yourself. Whenever you do something in the game that isn't shooting someone or crafting an item or usin an item, it needs o be enabled through quest design. I am not saying I expected New Vegas to do that to any great amounts, but having a whole sandbox layer side to side with this just makes the problem worse. Also, SCO is spot on about different ways of beginning quests.

The exploration, element is nice, but it never goes anywhere. I mean, maybe it is silly for a supermarket to still have food and pills hundreds of years after the war, but it is far more silly that those things are completely unnecessary and pretty much useless. The awful inventory interface makes using items a chore, but even worse is the fact that crafting and using items is hardly really important. The faction system in the game tries to connect back to the exploration system, and I remember it mentioned how nice it was that two enemy faction members might spawn hunting down the NPC but end fighting each other instead. That is a nice feature, that is something I would like to see more, but these random encounters are simply the most basic stuff someone could come up with. Fallout 1's encounters may have been completely scripted, they may have never done anything as unexpected, for its programmers, as that, but at least they were interesting!

Anyway, I am just commenting cause I think F:NV does try some really interesting stuff, but it unfortunately falls way short of making that stuff really work.

Ok, I give you a 5/10 troll. Almost got me.

My point is that the whole crafting aspect is useless because you never really need them. You can bypass it by buying powerful weapons or just avoiding being hit. I mean, I guess you do need to use healing items all the time, buthaving very good, custom equipment and use-ables don't really seem to make a big difference anywhere in the game.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Following the Yes Man's plans is not the same thing as coming up with a plan yourself. Whenever you do something in the game that isn't shooting someone or crafting an item or usin an item, it needs o be enabled through quest design. I am not saying I expected New Vegas to do that to any great amounts, but having a whole sandbox layer side to side with this just makes the problem worse. Also, SCO is spot on about different ways of beginning quests.

Not being able to come up with any plan the player thinks of is just a limitation of cRPGs in general. Not sure why you expect New Vegas to be different.

EDIT: Compared to most RPGs, vegas allows quite a bit of choice. You have 3 major factions to join or a 4th path in which you can decide what you want to do from there.

My point is that the whole crafting aspect is useless because you never really need them. You can bypass it by buying powerful weapons or just avoiding being hit. I mean, I guess you do need to use healing items all the time, buthaving very good, custom equipment and use-ables don't really seem to make a big difference anywhere in the game.

The custom equipment makes a huge difference depending on the weapon. Also, various craft-able items are quite powerful (turbo) or improve the power of your weapons. I think what your gripe is with the difficulty of the game, which I agree is too easy even on Very Hard / Hardcore.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Well, maybe you played with the right mods?

No, Steam is shit.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Planescape could suffer from similar problems

I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but sometimes if felt like everybody and their dog knew you or about you. Guess it made a bit more sense, though, since the main story was about TNO so they focused more on that, but it felt odd at times.

 

[Stompa]

Well, maybe you played with the right mods? I recently replayed New Vegas - and I would constantly go to a crafting bench saying to myself, "Oh boy what can I make?" And then I would retreat with a sigh because even after hoarding an impossible amount of junk everywhere I would still never have the right parts... and even if I ever did acquire all the bits a silly creation might require, it would just be junk - more clutter for my inventory anyway. The only things I was happy to craft were those skill books in OWB.

An overwhelming majority of items in New Vegas that are craftable are either A) grossly inferior to anything you can easily buy or steal B) unusable for your character's build. The most useful thing you can do is craft ammo, but you can't even do that all that much, because it requires an asinine amount of gunpowder and metal and casings and whatever.

But hand-loaded ammo is the most powerful thing in the game, you just have to convert everything you find or buy into your preffered caliber. Arguably consumables crafted with Survival skill are better than any edible thing you can find, but those things are too much of a hassle.

Edit: Also I just remembered Mad Bomber perk enables crafting of low-cost explosives which makes Explosive-focused playthrough way more viable.

 

[Alex]

Following the Yes Man's plans is not the same thing as coming up with a plan yourself. Whenever you do something in the game that isn't shooting someone or crafting an item or usin an item, it needs o be enabled through quest design. I am not saying I expected New Vegas to do that to any great amounts, but having a whole sandbox layer side to side with this just makes the problem worse. Also, SCO is spot on about different ways of beginning quests.

Not being able to come up with any plan the player thinks of is just a limitation of cRPGs in general. Not sure why you expect New Vegas to be different.

I don't. But having a very limited number of possible actions side by side with sandbox exploration makes the limitation stick out like a sore thumb. Further having all quests be more or less based on following plans by some NPC or other makes the PC feel even more like a... well... a courier.

My point is that the whole crafting aspect is useless because you never really need them. You can bypass it by buying powerful weapons or just avoiding being hit. I mean, I guess you do need to use healing items all the time, buthaving very good, custom equipment and use-ables don't really seem to make a big difference anywhere in the game.

The custom equipment makes a huge difference depending on the weapon. Also, various craft-able items are quite powerful (turbo) or improve the power of your weapons. I think what your gripe is with the difficulty of the game, which I agree is too easy even on Very Hard / Hardcore.

Yeah, maybe. What I mean is that custom equipment hardly opens up any option you wouldn't be able to pursue otherwise.

 

[Lancehead]

Obsidian put a heavily scripted narrative into a sandbox environment with the only real sandbox mechanics being the faction reputations which while being solid were pretty shallow. Not surprisingly the result is a disjointed experience.

 

[set]

New Vegas certainly suffers from design constraints. It is a FPS set in the post apocalyptic wasteland. I did OWB at level 15~ on my last playthrough - those damn snake-coyotes would OHKO me 90% of the time, fuckin' things - but even if they hadn't OHKO'd me, they wouldn't have been that interesting of an enemy. All they do is smack you with head ("bite") and poison you. There's no particular strategy to killing them.

Likewise, ranged enemies in the game rarely take any sort of cover, they just run at you with a melee weapon drawn (similar to a dumb coyote) or fire at you and strafe randomly. The end result is... gear has really no effect. A pistol vs a shotgun just means what distance you'll have to be to kill them with effecient ammo use. Heavy armor vs no armor only matters against enemies that would either OHKO you (like a Deathclaw) or they won't - and you just spam stimpacks if they can't OHKO you.

You could give the enemies better AI, but that doesn't change the fact most of the enemies in New Vegas don't have any special abilities or tactics that make item use meaningful (well, to be fair, Deathclaws towards the end of the game have so much health it's simply better to use heavy weapons, armor-piercing rounds, or a crazy melee weapon, over something standard/mundane). You could try to give enemies whacky forms of attack to try and make equipment important - I did find myself meleeing roboscorpions as a gun user - but the base game is supposed to be a post apocalyptic wasteland, it's hard to justify your enemies having guns with crazy trajectories or projectile-types (though they probably should have tried and done that).

 

[DragoFireheart]

I don't. But having a very limited number of possible actions side by side with sandbox exploration makes the limitation stick out like a sore thumb. Further having all quests be more or less based on following plans by some NPC or other makes the PC feel even more like a... well... a courier.

Well, you ARE a courier quite literally. The three major factions have their own plans.

Various factions endings are impacted by your choices and inter-faction relations depend on your choices (ex: The Kings helping NCR get slaughtered by House if you help House win, but if they don't help NCR House keeps them around.) Even in the factions, you have many ways of resolving the quests in violent/non-violent ways that alter the ending.

Yes Man does allow you a great deal of freedom in what you want to do. You can save vegas by making alliances. You can destroy it and slaughter everything. You can literally say "fuck it" and kill every single NPC you come across other than Yes Man (since Obsidian wanted you to finish the game). Find me another game where you can kill all but one NPC and still finish the game in a non-game over fashion.

inb4DLCsDontCount

The fact that you being a Courier is a theme constantly played on throughout the game and the DLCs (especially Lonesome Road). I guess if that bothers you, you don't like that theme of being a Courier, which is fine. However, I find that it fits the theme of the game since you are essentially the King Maker and being a Courier that "delivers" the decisive decision is a fine theme.

Yeah, maybe. What I mean is that custom equipment hardly opens up any option you wouldn't be able to pursue otherwise.

The custom equipment/items open up many options that you can't pursue otherwise. It would likely have a larger impact if the game was more difficult.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Obsidian put a heavily scripted narrative into a sandbox environment with the only real sandbox mechanics being the faction reputations which while being solid were pretty shallow. Not surprisingly the result is a disjointed experience.

What part about the factions did you find shallow?

Skyrim factions are shallow. New Vegas faction system is easily one of the most dynamic faction system I've seen ever. Hell, they're more dynamic and interesting than Morrowind factions.

 

[Alex]

Planescape could suffer from similar problems

I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but sometimes if felt like everybody and their dog knew you or about you. Guess it made a bit more sense, though, since the main story was about TNO so they focused more on that, but it felt odd at times.

I think Torment worked in large part because everything you do, interact with and discover builds up to the theme of deciding who you want to be, what nature you want your incarnation to have. That is something that exists entirely in the imagination of the player, not really tracked by the game, though.

DragoFireheart

Well, I actually put in the courier thing as a small joke, but I didn't really imagine someone might actually want to play a the role of a courier in the story, even if it is a courier that decides the fate of New Vegas. I guess that, if that is what you want to play, it kinda makes sense.

About equipment and use-ables opening options, I never found anything in the game I couldn't do easily enough with standard equipment, which is the source of my complaint. The game is big enough I may have missed it though, but it still felt, to me at any rate, a bit tackled on.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Find me another game where you can kill all but one NPC and still finish the game in a non-game over fashion.

Gothic 3, man.
In theory, at least.

 

[tuluse]

Find me another game where you can kill all but one NPC and still finish the game in a non-game over fashion.

Don't Fallout 1, 2, Arcanum, and Morrowind all meet this requirement?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Morrowind and Fallout 1 don't.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Fallout 1 doesn't fit "kill all but one NPC"?

 

[Onholyservicebound]

This thread is a fucking theme park.

I like Roguey's posts, heavy use of quotes and sources make them more than just baseless ass speak, posts are generally brief and efficient, as well I rarely see her resort to petty ad hominem. Roguey , Would recommend you steer away from having opinions on games you haven't played, and be less heavy handed in some troll attempts.

I also think Roguey is guilty of sometimes playing a caricature of herself. People who do that tend to be more memorable, but at the same time can come off as one dimensional. For better or worse Roguey was the first name I knew on the dex.


That is my review of Roguey, overall:
Disclaimer:all feminine pronouns used solely for the sake of convenience.

 

[circ]

I'd post a picture of a guy taking three fists up his ass, but I think you get the point.

 

[Irenaeus]

I rarely see her resort to petty ad hominem.

You must be new here.

 

[Lancehead]

Obsidian put a heavily scripted narrative into a sandbox environment with the only real sandbox mechanics being the faction reputations which while being solid were pretty shallow. Not surprisingly the result is a disjointed experience.

What part about the factions did you find shallow?

Skyrim factions are shallow. New Vegas faction system is easily one of the most dynamic faction system I've seen ever. Hell, they're more dynamic and interesting than Morrowind factions.

For starters, there's only one universal reputation per faction. This meant you were generally either friends with a faction or a foe. Uninteresting to say the least. What would be better is if there were location reputations and npc reputations. Such a system can make the player interaction with factions mechanically complex.

But just putting in those reputations would only make the game a mess because of the way quests are designed, which leads to Alex's original point. While the game does give the player many options in completing quests, you're mostly choosing from the options given by the game rather than making your own solutions as would be expected in a sandbox game. Why carefully spin a complex web when you can let the player be Spider-Man?

Find me another game where you can kill all but one NPC and still finish the game in a non-game over fashion.

Gothic 3, man.
In theory, at least.

In practice, too.
Gothic 3 lets you kill all and still finish.

 

[Onholyservicebound]

Enough with the gay shit. I love Roguey too but come on.

Key word being "white".

Anyway, can you 2013ers stop sucking so fucking much? Jesus goddamn christ, man. Enough. Go home already. Sit on a puddle of AIDS or something.

Agree, 2013 has been the worst year EVER when it comes to newfags to the KKKodex. Standards have been dropped, it seems.

It's the kickstarter hype, most of the new members don't give a shit about you, your forum, or your outdated games, they're just here to get news and hype about W2, PoE and the other kickstarters. In reality they probably only even tolerate this decaying corpse and the maggots that dwell in it because their casual friends yawn when they tell them about the latest Wasteland 2 update. On the bright side, if the kickstarters fail hard then I imagine a lot of them will leave, if they do well however, expect them to come back in greater numbers than before.

Spoiler

I realize that may sounds like I'm talking from experience but that definitely isn't the case, .

 

[fastjack]

I completely agree with bro Alex.

This.

 

[Horus]

Find me another game where you can kill all but one NPC and still finish the game in a non-game over fashion.

Wasteland 1, Fallout 1-2(You can kill everyone including the overseer but you'll have to wait for the ending), Way of Samurai series and probably many more games that was not designed for modern popamolers kids that doesn't want to feel like they lose the game for their mistakes.

 

[DragoFireheart]

lol @ listing other fallout games as counter examples.

Fallout 1: Overseer, but you have to wait. Sorta lame.

Fallout 2: No one from the village can be killed at any point IIRC.

Morrowind: I believe you can slaughter everyone and still use Keening/Sunder without Wraithguard.

Gothic 3: Don't know, haven't played it.

Arcanum: If you kill everyone doesn't that prevent you from crossing the mountains?


My point is the number of games that give this much freedom is small. Not even Torment gives that freedom.