What did New Vegas DO WRONG? / Would isometric New Vegas with finished content be GOAT?

[Sigourn]

A common Bethesdrone complaint is that New Vegas fans are unable to criticize New Vegas. Usually these same Bethesdrones criticize New Vegas in the most blatantly stupid ways ("YOU CAN'T GO NORTH"). I thought it would be time for the Codex to take cards in the matter and say what does it think New Vegas did wrong, why did they do it wrong, and how would you improve on it.

For the purpose of this thread, keep cheap shots at a minimum. Yeah, GameBryo is shit and that's simply what Obsidian had to deal with. Same with the 1st person FPS gameplay. But we want to make New Vegas great again, so it's only fair that we criticize these aspects too. We also know that the Legion is unfinished, so "finish the Legion" is not exactly an original comment. Because of that, explain what the Legion should have been, how would you have expanded on it.

Be as anal as you want with your criticisms, but keep them legitimate and try to offer solutions. I want to know what a forum of RPG connoisseurs have to say about Obsidian's masterpiece.

 

[Starwars]

Fixable by mods but the level progression and higher level cap introduced by the DLCs completely fucked the BALANCE! of the game. The whole "become a superman!" syndrome is in full effect.

A lot of settlements/areas felt pretty bare bones.

Fuck solutions.

 

[Fedora Master]

It uses Gamebryo, which is poop from a butthole.

 

[undecaf]

Didn't repurpose/redesign the quest/enemy compass.
Not enough environmental interactivity; characterbuild based nor otherwise.
It didn't alter VATS enough.
Gunplay (and related character progression) relied too much on damage and too little on accuracy.
Combat itself was too spongy.
Too few practical differences between guns and EW, and melee and HtH, to make a clear distinction.
Too little Legion content.

I'm sure there's something else too.

 

[Jacob]

As far as FPS/RPG hybrid go, it's near perfect. What's to criticize? Don't listen to those idiot reddit fanbois, they're butthurt that their taste is inferior, so they go with the idiot stance of "We are able to accept criticism of our life purpose, so you should too." I say, well, your favorite game is criticized because it's trash.

By the way, food/drink mechanic sucks. So once in a while you need to use one of your useless steak items, so what.

 

[Seari]

dindu nuffin he a good boy

 

[Eriador]

By the way, food/drink mechanic sucks. So once in a while you need to use one of your useless steak items, so what.

I guess this could be a criticism. There's too much food and water easily available around the wasteland, so hardcore mode is not nearly as challenging as it could be. Also, your carrying capacity is pretty high and gets even higher with strength, so you can easily stock up and still carry around 10 different guns.

 

[unfairlight]

Gamebryo.
Unfinished, a lot of cut content, particularly most of the legion (there was supposed to be a legion portion of the map with legion cities)
Cut content that shouldn't have been cut, such as Rotface and his story arc (mods have fixed some of this)
Melee, unarmed are often skillbloat, you CAN make them good, but you can do the same with explosives and guns.
Stimspam isn't punished at all with addiction or something
Shows you skill checks, poor decision because even if your speech option is above the check amount you never have any reason not to do it with few exceptions
Gunplay is piss poor, especially energy.
A lot of the world made no sense, especially Boone's One For My Baby quest. There's 0 reason for him to trust a complete stranger.
That's all I can think of.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

NV dindu nuffin rong.

Obsidian's best game and 2nd best Fallout game ever.

 

[Sigourn]

Since a lot of balance/difficulty criticisms have been posted, may as well point out my own:

- Water heals at an alarming rate, meaning you don't rely on Stimpaks and Healing Powder as often as you should.
- Because radiation is negligible/unexisting in many water sources, there's also no penalty for spamming water sources.
- The game lacks doctors as a consequence of its fast travel-oriented design. There's a grand total of TWO doctors all the way from Goodsprings to the Aerotech Office Park: Doc Mitchell and Doc Ada Strauss. Moreover, Ada Strauss is supposed to be a pretty shit doctor that offers cheaper services, but being treated by her is no different than being treated by a BoS trained doctor.

I think it is interesting to see that New Vegas suffers mostly from the "marketed to morons" syndrome. Many of its flaws are because the game was never meant to be difficult.

 

[Sigourn]

Sigourn, any reason you're so obsessed with Obsidiot's rehash of Faggot 3?

It's the best RPG ever made, nothing more.

 

[555]

It could have had more low int dialogue options

 

[Kahr]

The quest compass and the game being built around that is easily the biggest flaw.
This completely destroys the idea of a open world game.
Game world being too big and too empty.

 

[Kahr]

There are no hookers in the Atomic Wrangler despite advertising.

 

[Cerulean]

If you follow the level cap up to 50, you end up being a God who can one-shot pretty much anything shy of a Deathclaw, so I go for Logan's Loophole every single time. It also helps that I love to role-play a hopeless addict gunslinger that gulps down all the alcohol and drugs he can get his shaky hands on, so Loophole compliments that nicely.

I know you mentioned it in the OP, but I would have loved more Legion content. I'm kind of surprised some enterprising modders didn't make a DLC area of nothing but Legion cities east of the Colorado. Or, if there is something like that, let me know, because I'd love to do a Legion play-through just once.

 

[Luckmann]

A common Bethesdrone complaint is that New Vegas fans are unable to criticize New Vegas. Usually these same Bethesdrones criticize New Vegas in the most blatantly stupid ways ("YOU CAN'T GO NORTH"). I thought it would be time for the Codex to take cards in the matter and say what does it think New Vegas did wrong, why did they do it wrong, and how would you improve on it.

For the purpose of this thread, keep cheap shots at a minimum. Yeah, GameBryo is shit and that's simply what Obsidian had to deal with. Same with the 1st person FPS gameplay. But we want to make New Vegas great again, so it's only fair that we criticize these aspects too. We also know that the Legion is unfinished, so "finish the Legion" is not exactly an original comment. Because of that, explain what the Legion should have been, how would you have expanded on it.

Be as anal as you want with your criticisms, but keep them legitimate and try to offer solutions. I want to know what a forum of RPG connoisseurs have to say about Obsidian's masterpiece.

I mean, I can probably think of a lot of things New Vegas "did wrong", but they'd mostly be variations of "It's not Fallout 1/2" or "It was unfinished" (I really, really lament the fact that we didn't get to see more of Caesar's Legion and that side of the border; it does make the NCR a lot more of a reasonable choice and it doesn't help with Caesar's Legion's issues regarding being "the bad guys").

Really, most of the issues are created by the engine and the nature of the game itself, at it's core, the restrictions imposed, and Obsidian genuinely did the best that they could with what they had, and despite the fact that it was somewhat unfinished, this is never really obvious, as opposed to the vast majority of Obsidian games prior to New Vegas.

However, I want to lift the "blatantly stupid" criticism of "YOU CAN'T GO NORTH". Well, alright, technically, you can. This is true. However, I do feel that the way you're dissuaded from doing so felt hamfisted. It is very obvious that you're meant to go south and they way of Nipton and that it's basically assumed that you do. It never sat well with me, even if I could theoretically go north.

 

[wyes gull]

Anecdotal, sure, but even with the travel "railroading" (can't go north) that they used to expose the conflict at large near the start of the game, I failed to give much of a shit about the plot as a whole. Revenge isn't as a good a motivation as a whole tribe/vault hanging on your success and the lack of a time limit or much of a sense of urgency further impedes this. And everyone else is just tertiary. You're "whoever" with a second lease of life who at some point in the game is invulnerable enough to do whatever the fuck he or she wants. And when you're invulnerable and don't really have ties to anyone, who cares? I'll just go over there to that random point in the map and dick around for a bit. Maybe try to get a deathclaw to jump on a pile of landmines.

Also, communities never feel like communities in the same way they did in 1/2. There's a distinct lack of size and sense of space/place. It's just a handful of huts with one very obvious issue of "hero needed" specifications. Not a mining town where you can go in and maybe do some caravan work, bet on a fight, maybe bust some criminals or go clear a mine. Random shit that's connected and builds up to something far less obvious, like a town should be.

 

[Quillon]

Maybe Obs should have started the game from the northern end of the map like FO4, then "you can't go north" argument could have some bearing

 

[KateMicucci]

I can't think of anything.

 

[Sigourn]

However, I want to lift the "blatantly stupid" criticism of "YOU CAN'T GO NORTH". Well, alright, technically, you can. This is true. However, I do feel that the way you're dissuaded from doing so felt hamfisted. It is very obvious that you're meant to go south and they way of Nipton and that it's basically assumed that you do. It never sat well with me, even if I could theoretically go north.

This is definitely true. The intended path is going south and there's a definite air of "this isn't right" if you skip the whole southern area of the Mojave.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

-Legion faction isn't finished

-Main plot is fairly humdrum (take over the dam, saw that coming from the intro, derpy robots don't seem that powerful)

-Casinos are all lame

-Vegas is bizarrely split into several tiny sections, doesn't feel like a real town, and is a sad imitation of New Reno from Fallout 2

-Rose of Sharon has a lousy gun compared to every other companion; as a descendant of Cassidy this is a terrible injustice.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

However, I want to lift the "blatantly stupid" criticism of "YOU CAN'T GO NORTH". Well, alright, technically, you can. This is true. However, I do feel that the way you're dissuaded from doing so felt hamfisted. It is very obvious that you're meant to go south and they way of Nipton and that it's basically assumed that you do. It never sat well with me, even if I could theoretically go north.

This is one complaint I definitely don't get. Codexers are always complaining about level-scaled encounters, but the one game that dares to put high level monsters to block player early gets shit on for it?

 

[Luckmann]

-Legion faction isn't finished

-Main plot is fairly humdrum (take over the dam, saw that coming from the intro, derpy robots don't seem that powerful)

Well, yeah, but that last part about the robots, I think it's important to remember that there's supposed to be a full fucking army of them. They're not just heavily armed, but they're literally legion and can be repaired. The long-term effect is extremely debatable, but if you're suggesting that they wouldn't be effective in carving out House's ancap utopia for the foreseeable future, I don't know what to say. The derpy robots might not seem much, but compared to the average NCR jarhead or a run-of-the-mill raider-turned-legionnaire, they are durable and pack quite a punch.

-Casinos are all lame

This is actually 100% true. Replaying Fallout 2 at the moment, and even in a game where extremely little is voiced and eerie background sounds are more prominent than music and cheering and jeering and talking, it's still a lot more "lively" than FONV's casinos.

-Vegas is bizarrely split into several tiny sections, doesn't feel like a real town, and is a sad imitation of New Reno from Fallout 2

It's no bizarre. There's a reason for that, and it's called console shittery. The strip was supposed to be one long continuous stretch into the distance, but consoles couldn't handle it, so the entire approach up to New Vegas had to be butchered. What should've been an iconic walk up to the neon-lit heaven-or-hellscape of New Vegas was shat upon by consolization. It's also why the areas are so fucking empty, despite the fact that it's supposed to be a major area full of people.

Same goes for the casinos, by the way. They were supposed to have a lot more people, but surprise surprise, consoles are shit and the bane of gaming.

-Rose of Sharon has a lousy gun compared to every other companion; as a descendant of Cassidy this is a terrible injustice.

Word.

However, I want to lift the "blatantly stupid" criticism of "YOU CAN'T GO NORTH". Well, alright, technically, you can. This is true. However, I do feel that the way you're dissuaded from doing so felt hamfisted. It is very obvious that you're meant to go south and they way of Nipton and that it's basically assumed that you do. It never sat well with me, even if I could theoretically go north.

This is one complaint I definitely don't get. Codexers are always complaining about level-scaled encounters, but the one game that dares to put high level monsters to block player early gets shit on for it?

It's not that there were high-level monsters, but the way it was done. Level-scaled encounters are shit, but putting a wall of high-level monsters and a sign GO THERE INSTEAD is shitty and ham-fisted. It didn't feel organic or reasonable at all, just artificial and forced. Part of the reason for this was probably that the area was largely devoid of meaning and content OTHER than existing as an awkward early-game blockade.

Just walling it off would've probably have made the flow better, but I suspect that they wanted to make it possible to "go south" and make it back to Goodsprings that way, even though the game is built all around fast-travel anyway.

 

[Kahr]

Do you still need to go to Nipton, Novac and Boulder City when you did go north?
If so the design is bad. You should still be able to get the quest somehow.
The blocking by strong encounters isn't the problem, but the unability to get the main quest.

 

[Freddie]

Also, communities never feel like communities in the same way they did in 1/2. There's a distinct lack of size and sense of space/place. It's just a handful of huts with one very obvious issue of "hero needed" specifications. Not a mining town where you can go in and maybe do some caravan work, bet on a fight, maybe bust some criminals or go clear a mine. Random shit that's connected and builds up to something far less obvious, like a town should be.

Pretty much this. All sort of stuff is in, sort of (like clearing the mine from Deathclaw) but in larger hubs it looks like they hit the wall with engine and console memory limitations.

Other issue might be that designing larger hubs that aren't just confusing and frustrating for players to learn and remember may much more of an issue in 1st person than in isometric view.