Fallout Is Fallout: New Vegas a worthy Fallout game?

[GrafvonMoltke]

 

[Sykar]

 

[Yosharian]

I'm playing a heavily modded FO4 list right now and I'm 40 hours into my playthrough, haven't had a single crash. Like, not a single fucking one. Precombines are the key.

I also disagree that you can't fix Beth's abomination of a UI, you totally can with the right mods.

The one thing that can't be fixed is the multitude of shitty quests in the game. That's where FNV will always have the other nu-Fallout games beaten.

 

[Popiel]

I saw a pretty good analysis somewhere on the net, leddit I think:

...

Ulysses is very much an example of this; he's a mouthpiece for Avellone's frustration with how Fallout 2 made the series start feeling less apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic and embodies his opinion that it should have a "second apocalypse" that resets the setting back to its roots, but because he knows most people love the NCR that opinion is displayed as being utterly psychotic and coming from a mentally-unhinged murderer. Ulysses has serious paranoia and delusions, particularly regarding the Courier and Hopeville, which cloud his judgement quite a bit.

...

I'm not sure as to the extent of your agreement with this reddit post but I think it's a very, very wrong take, unless Avellone himself came out of the woodwork at some point and explained his philosophy in detail.

New Vegas is clearly a story about something, and said something is even better shown through DLCs made by Avellone (Sawyer was a project director for Honest Hearts so I exclude that): it's a story about change, not letting yourself being chained by the past, about looking to the future. I think that it's best and most clearly shown in Old World Blues, which above all else essentially spills it to the player if the player bothers to get a good/full ending. “There is an expression in the Wasteland: old world blues. It refers to those so obsessed with the past they can't see the present, much less the future, for what is is. They stare into the what was, eyes like pilot lights, guttering and spent, as the realities of the world continue on around them.” Ulysses isn't a mouthpiece for Avellone's frustrations with the direction the setting took. Ulysses is a pretentious and overwritten embodiment of this sentiment, of the old world blues, and he's more pathetic for it because he does what he does for petty reasons. You can clearly see this message through the core game but it gets diluted because of the amount of content its spread through, that's why I think the DLCs essentially complete and finish the story of the Courier by underlining this central theme.

 

[Laz Sundays]

Fallout 3 is a mash of Oldout easter eggs, plots and settings. Done bad, the decline award winning bad. The reason why I call it Fallout FPS should be obvious and no amount of VATS and other quasi-bullet time is making it anything other than a FIRST PERSON 3D GAME. It's just easier to call it a FPS despite that it's not representing that particular genre. It is BEHAVING like it.

More importantly: I never said that F3 OR F4 are good, ever. I do not essentially like or play them actively today, that was an observation of a single decision they've done better this time around. FPS combat suits it BETTER, always has, cause it's a goddamn 3D RPG with fucking guns. Aim, shoot, have perks empower it and weapon customization smoothen it out. Any skill system from turn based isometric Fallout has no place here. This should have been obvious.

Regardless of mine or anyone's butthurt over the title it carries, it is a very popular game series now and I'm looking at the things they're doing right or wrong. Made peace with the fact that these exist long while ago. As a tabletopfag, I could be equally mad that crpg(IE) DnD deviated and mutated the original franchise into a bland garbage monstrosity, but who CARES. It's got it's audience. As a part of that audience, I'm very into commenting about what is good or isn't, what works or doesn't and why. Can Bethesda's Fallout 9 in 2036. be a good game? Yes. Can it be a good Fallout too? Ofc. Is it any of that atm?? Naaah.

 

[General Disarray]

..you can't really have character starts determine combat effectiveness in the way that they did in Fo1/Fo2, because the series has been inexplicably made into an FPS, so every character build is proficient at combat regardless of skill point allocation.

This is one of the FO3's main problems, often overlooked. The model just isn't fit for skills and they should've seen it right away. FO4 went full FPS and removed skills completely, and it was the smartest thing they did in a loooong time.

Still, shitty Fallouts regardless. But I'm glad they occasionally learn something.

"smart"? It seem you and I have very different understanding of this word.

FO3, a FPS Fallout, has a skill mechanic from old turn based isometric Fallouts dictate/override player's ability to hit something by cursor aim. Going full FPS in FO4 was a smart move. Natural move, "why did we even try to have skills in 3" move.

We have the same understanding of the word btw, I think you wanted to say different application of it? Which is fine, you don't think what they did was smart whereas I do. So come on then, why do you think it wasn't smart? I want to see an example of why people feel like isometric TB skills are somehow good for FPS

I get what you are saying. But I don't agree to remove skills. What they should have done imo is to go a more advanced Deus Ex 1 model, implement weapon sway and recoil and tie it to the skill. Then the misses would not be that jarring, it would fit the simulation.

 

[Yosharian]

There's a lot of talk about the removal of skills in the Beth Fallout games, and that's completely justified, it does suck.

But one thing I realised playing FO4 is that Beth's new system at least made SPECIAL matter more. If I want to be Charismatic, I have to invest in Charisma. I think having a Speech skill is better, don't get me wrong. But there is something quite odd in FNV when you have a Speech 100 character who has a CHA of 1. It's a bit jarring when my CHA 1 guy convinces Lanius to fuck off back to where he came from.

Horizon adds back in a ton of weapon skills and they affect things like hip-fire accuracy and range. Better than having a skill directly affect damage, IMO.

 

[laclongquan]

:feh: Speaking like a player BARELY play Fallout 3 or Fallout New Vegas~

There's no character with stat of 1 unless he intentionally play that way like a master meta-gamer. I mean, he really has to know where to avoid what in order to achieve that stat 1

+++ Implants to add to stats.
+++ a full series of chems and foods that can affect stats all day long (which is what I do all days everyday)
+++ A full series of armors that can affect stats.
+++ Some quests can reward perks, or items that buff stats, or challenge that reward stat buff.

A character that has Speech 100 would be at least level 10, because investing that skill that early mean you are dead meat, and only survive if either being a very good gamer or turn difficulty down to VERY EASY. To get to level 10 you cant help but achieve at least one of said categories, like wearing a clothes, or eating some chems/foods. STAT 1 is not for noobs.

You are intentionally misleading other suckers, if any exist here.

 

[Lemming42]

But one thing I realised playing FO4 is that Beth's new system at least made SPECIAL matter more. If I want to be Charismatic, I have to invest in Charisma. I think having a Speech skill is better, don't get me wrong. But there is something quite odd in FNV when you have a Speech 100 character who has a CHA of 1. It's a bit jarring when my CHA 1 guy convinces Lanius to fuck off back to where he came from.

Charisma was always useless going right back to Fo1. I don't mind the Speech/Charisma distinction though - Speech is your ability to articulate a point persuasively, Charisma is your personal appeal (including physical attractiveness, as its interpreted in Fo2). You can be highly beautiful, confident and magnetic without actually being able to speak clearly, and you can be eloquent and well-spoken while looking like shit and having no kind of warmth or personal appeal. It makes sense in most cases - Lanius cares about the content of what you're saying, not how good-looking you are or how smooth your accent is.

The real issue in Fo1/2/3/NV is that Charisma is almost never used for anything, other than determining party member limit in Fo2 and having a small effect on Speech check success chance in Fo3. I'd argue it's even worse in Fo4 though, since it has the game's equivalent of Speech (eg about four useless charisma checks) enveloped into it which doesn't make sense and also inexplicably plays a role in the extremely half-assed surrender mechanic.

One way I can think to fix it would be to have three kinds of Speech checks - maybe Persuade (just the Speech skill as it is), Intimidate (determined by CHA and STR) and Flirt (determined by CHA). Of course, this opens up a massive raft of new issues, mostly around players getting mad that they invest in only one of these skills and therefore end up failing 2/3 of all "speech" checks, and it also requires far more comprehensive multi-path quest design than Fallout games tend to actually have...

 

[Laz Sundays]

..you can't really have character starts determine combat effectiveness in the way that they did in Fo1/Fo2, because the series has been inexplicably made into an FPS, so every character build is proficient at combat regardless of skill point allocation.

This is one of the FO3's main problems, often overlooked. The model just isn't fit for skills and they should've seen it right away. FO4 went full FPS and removed skills completely, and it was the smartest thing they did in a loooong time.

Still, shitty Fallouts regardless. But I'm glad they occasionally learn something.

"smart"? It seem you and I have very different understanding of this word.

FO3, a FPS Fallout, has a skill mechanic from old turn based isometric Fallouts dictate/override player's ability to hit something by cursor aim. Going full FPS in FO4 was a smart move. Natural move, "why did we even try to have skills in 3" move.

We have the same understanding of the word btw, I think you wanted to say different application of it? Which is fine, you don't think what they did was smart whereas I do. So come on then, why do you think it wasn't smart? I want to see an example of why people feel like isometric TB skills are somehow good for FPS

I get what you are saying. But I don't agree to remove skills. What they should have done imo is to go a more advanced Deus Ex 1 model, implement weapon sway and recoil and tie it to the skill. Then the misses would not be that jarring, it would fit the simulation.

You get that from perks and upgrading the weapon itself. I'm trying to say that nothing is lost here, the idea to keep the skillset from a different TYPE of rpg was wrong, see? Only to look as Fallouty as possible, without thinking things through. And ditching that attempt made F4 become much more fluid. It fails in other fields, but combat got exactly where it needs to be.

 

[Yosharian]

It makes sense in most cases - Lanius cares about the content of what you're saying, not how good-looking you are or how smooth your accent is.

Ok but that's not how human psychology works

 

[Yosharian]

I'd argue it's even worse in Fo4 though, since it has the game's equivalent of Speech (eg about four useless charisma checks) enveloped into it which doesn't make sense and also inexplicably plays a role in the extremely half-assed surrender mechanic.

Oh yeah no doubt, the CHA perks are pretty much terrible.

It's a little better in Horizon because the CHA 6 perk is really powerful there.

 

[luj1]

From an old Fallout gamer's POV, Fallout 3 is obviously better than Fallout 4 with all its doodaads. At the very least, F3 look like a proper post apocalyptic RPG.

Failderp 3 is irredeemable garbage.

Even so, it's Fallout garbage.

Fallout 4 does not even look Fallout to begin with~

People don't realise that Fallout Tactics looks more like Fallout than 3 or 4

 

[Modron]

People don't realize that Fallout Brotherhood of Steel looks more like Fallout than 3 or 4.

 

[laclongquan]

From an old Fallout gamer's POV, Fallout 3 is obviously better than Fallout 4 with all its doodaads. At the very least, F3 look like a proper post apocalyptic RPG.

Failderp 3 is irredeemable garbage.

Even so, it's Fallout garbage.

Fallout 4 does not even look Fallout to begin with~

People don't realise that Fallout Tactics looks more like Fallout than 3 or 4

Speaking like a heretic around here, I always play Fallout Tactics as a proper fallout game.

FTBOS problem is that its story is not too concrete. It start as BOS story, and if you squint you can think of an idealized Lyon's expedition that gone right every step of the way. The only weakness in that kind of thinking is that Western BOS probabbly can not muster enough resource for a FTBOS expedition. Too much~ ONE zeppelin is about right, instead of several.

In other direction, if you really, really squint, you can think of it as an Enclave migration after Oil Rig and Enclave-NCR war~ From Western Coast to Eastern Coast, and in time to join Project Purity War~ Again, it's too idealized, and require some retcon in term of Enclave thinking.

 

[CHEMS]

Ulysses could be cut from the game and it would be much better for it

THE BEAR AND THE BULL AND THE BEAR AND THE BULL
THE BEAR AND THE BULL AND THE BEAR AND THE BULL
THE BEAR AND THE BULL AND THE BEAR AND THE BULL
THE BEAR AND THE BULL AND THE BEAR AND THE BULL
THE BEAR AND THE BULL AND THE BEAR AND THE BULL
THE BEAR AND THE BULL AND THE BEAR AND THE BULL
THE BEAR AND THE BULL AND THE BEAR AND THE BULL
THE BEAR AND THE BULL AND THE BEAR AND THE BULL
THE BEAR AND THE BULL AND THE BEAR AND THE BULL
THE BEAR AND THE BULL AND THE BEAR AND THE BULL
THE BEAR AND THE BULL AND THE BEAR AND THE BULL
THE BEAR AND THE BULL AND THE BEAR AND THE BULL
THE BEAR AND THE BULL AND THE BEAR AND THE BULL
THE BEAR AND THE BULL AND THE BEAR AND THE BULL
THE BEAR AND THE BULL AND THE BEAR AND THE BULL
THE BEAR AND THE BULL AND THE BEAR AND THE BULL
THE BEAR AND THE BULL AND THE BEAR AND THE BULL
THE BEAR AND THE BULL AND THE BEAR AND THE BULL
THE BEAR AND THE BULL AND THE BEAR AND THE BULL
THE BEAR AND THE BULL AND THE BEAR AND THE BULL
THE BEAR AND THE BULL AND THE BEAR AND THE BULL
THE BEAR AND THE BULL AND THE BEAR AND THE BULL

 

[luj1]

Speaking like a heretic around here, I always play Fallout Tactics as a proper fallout game.

It is a prestigious game

 

[MLMarkland]

Speaking like a heretic around here, I always play Fallout Tactics as a proper fallout game.

It is a prestigious game

Fallout Tactics PC is indeed prestigious

 

[luj1]

Tactics is great imo

- best graphics in the Fallout franchise, like Fallout 2 but sharper, while maintaining the same aesthetic sense (visually its what Fallout 3 should have looked like)
- great atmosphere, tilesets and detailed hand crafted maps. Slightly different feeling from Fallout and more "urban" but very bleak and haunting
- great tactical gameplay, turn based + isometric + party based (pure CRPG format). I rank it right next to ToEE and Dark Sun and KotC in this regard
- Its a pretty long game with serviceable story
- despite being instanced there is a lot of content, tons of weapons, enemies, feats, party members to choose from
- music is of course great, great photographic-style portraits too
- Good UI (better than Fallout 1-2)
- relatively quick progression which I like

 

[Frumentum]

Yeah, but realistically, with those Bethesda engines, this is your choice:

1. Absolute shit RPG combat
2. Fun FPS combat.

The choice is pretty obvious, imho.

Tbh combat sucks on the Bethesda engines. Especially if you want to judge by any FPS standard. Janky and unresponsive as shit. Lots of hit reg issues. And the combat animations, especially the kills, are far less rewarding than FO1/2.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

It's not great, but if you use mods to lower hitpoints on all sides, that removes the biggest issue with Bethesda combat as an FPS. FPS combat is not that complicated, so it's not that hard to nail down (compared to say melee sword combat). You point and click, and if hitpoints are low, headshots kill, and Bethesda combat is fairly stationary (none of that silly strafing shit from 90s style FPSs). Good enough.

 

[goregasm]

FO 1, 2, and Tactics are great games overall. Enough said.

Fnv is arguably my favorite "new" RPG of all time, but in my case it NEEDS mods to get there, I usually enjoy autism level bullshit like manual reloading and half spent magazines, JSawyer, etc, I use mods like that and enjoy the game more. I think it's a worthy addition to the Fallout universe overall, even without mods.

Fo3 is essentially dog shit, but dog shit with some memorable moments. Bethesda has a "one step forward, 10 steps back" issue as we all know.

For every fairly interesting moment in FO3, of say discovering the Super Duper mart, or the grade school, the first jaunt to the dc ruins, the sewers, it's ruined by either retarded quests or dialog, or setups to just be "cool" shooting galleries. I.E. raiders with no soul, motivation or anything, their uninspired rehashing and rehabilitation of the BOS or Super Mutants. FO3 has sprinkles of memorable places, but overall it's dogshit. Dogshit story, dogshit motivation, dogshit characterization and world building. It also takes the "zany" shit and cranks it to 11. Not my cup of tea.

FO4 exists just to play Frost.

 

[EtcEtcEtc]

I did play some heavily modded Fallout 4 this year (yay for modlists).
I can certainly agree that compared to Fallout 3, Fallout 4 is a far better game, but also a much worse Fallout.
Which is saying something, because Fallout 3 was previously the worst fallout to date.

Unfortunately Fallout 4 is not a very good modding sandbox either.
A biggest reason being a rather serious bug (with no community fix) wherein assets on occasion are only loaded partially.
Most of the time it's fairly harmless and manifests as characters missing their bodies, or having faces with screwed up normals (aka the Rusty Face bug).
But sometimes it tries to run physics on these meshes, and then promptly crashes. This is particularly bad around Good Neighbour in a heavily modded game, especially if you don't completely strip the bodies as you go on.
The 2nd reason is the UI - It's the worst UI I've ever seen in a AAA game; they somehow made it far worse than vanilla Skyrim's.
And there's also no equivalent to SkyUI to replace it either; there are a few that work in tandem to improve parts (e.g. XDI), or completely sidestep others (e.g. Quick Change Armor).
But there's nothing that really fixes it, especially that godawful pipboy... which they somehow made even worse than fallout 3's!

Someone did finally crack the shitty UI - https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/51813 - he did a bunch of different ones for it.

 

[Old One]

Ulysses could be cut from the game and it would be much better for it

THE BEAR AND THE BULL AND THE BEAR AND THE BULL

It wouldn't be an Obsidian game without at least one overwritten, pretentious, "shades of grey" emo villain who bloviates on and on and on about some meaningless topic with the angst of a dejected teenager.

 

[Hirato]

I did play some heavily modded Fallout 4 this year (yay for modlists).
I can certainly agree that compared to Fallout 3, Fallout 4 is a far better game, but also a much worse Fallout.
Which is saying something, because Fallout 3 was previously the worst fallout to date.

Unfortunately Fallout 4 is not a very good modding sandbox either.
A biggest reason being a rather serious bug (with no community fix) wherein assets on occasion are only loaded partially.
Most of the time it's fairly harmless and manifests as characters missing their bodies, or having faces with screwed up normals (aka the Rusty Face bug).
But sometimes it tries to run physics on these meshes, and then promptly crashes. This is particularly bad around Good Neighbour in a heavily modded game, especially if you don't completely strip the bodies as you go on.
The 2nd reason is the UI - It's the worst UI I've ever seen in a AAA game; they somehow made it far worse than vanilla Skyrim's.
And there's also no equivalent to SkyUI to replace it either; there are a few that work in tandem to improve parts (e.g. XDI), or completely sidestep others (e.g. Quick Change Armor).
But there's nothing that really fixes it, especially that godawful pipboy... which they somehow made even worse than fallout 3's!

Someone did finally crack the shitty UI - https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/51813 - he did a bunch of different ones for it.

The modlist I used did have FallUI present configured.
but as far as I know, it doesn't do anything about that reprehensible pipboy.