Fallout: New Vegas - Fall 2010

Tigerbill wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

I really want that deck of cards for some reason. I don't even play cards very often.

Me too!

Indeed. Would be great for Texas No Limit Holdem night!

Pfft. No way I would let a bunch of poker slobs touch my precious Fallout 3 deck.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Pfft. No way I would let a bunch of poker slobs touch my precious Fallout 3 deck.

Hmm, didn't think of that. Retracted.

You could always put card protectors on them. Still probably best not to let those slobs at them though.

I would put card protectors on them and I would NOT let those slobs touch them. They would ask to see them and I would stab them but I would be careful to stab them in such a way that the blood would spray away from cards, like on the couch or on the cats, but not on the precious. Noooo, not on the preciousss.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

I would put card protectors on them and I would NOT let those slobs touch them. They would ask to see them and I would stab them but I would be careful to stab them in such a way that the blood would spray away from cards, like on the couch or on the cats, but not on the precious. Noooo, not on the preciousss.

Remind me not to ever invite you over for a poker night.

Yeah, Look out BlackSabre, that Quintin Stone has a problem with us Aussies.

The latest 1up podcast brought up a good question-- I wonder if a very low INT score will give you ridiculous Neanderthal dialogue options like in Fallouts 1 and 2. That would be pretty sweet. I was kinda bummed they didn't include that in F3.

I tried to play Fallout 2 the other day with an Intelligence score of 4 and no one would even give me quests. I tried to talk to everyone and it just wouldn't happen. It was funny for a bit, but it would have been even funnier if you could play the whole game that way. I realize you can sort of play the game if you already know where the locations are, what the quests are (you still get XP for completing them even if they never give them to you), and if you abuse mentats to get your Intelligence to a higher level to accept quests, but those aren't really playable options.

If Fallout New Vegas is set up like Fallout 3, the idiot play through would seem a lot more possible. Since nearby locations show up on your map and you can find all the side quests by just randomly wandering around, I think it'd be possible for many of these quests to be doable as a dumb person.

I like that you can somewhat change the type of character that you have in Fallout 3 (and the others), but really since combat plays such a heavy role, you sort of need to build these skills up no matter who you are. I guess it is possible to get a companion to do most of your fighting, but they are somewhat difficult to find in Fallout 3 for much of the game if you don't know where to look. Perhaps hire-able mercenaries to do your fighting would make a speech / intelligence / science character more playable. Or the possibility to repair and use discovered robots as protection which was available in some Fallout 3 PC mods.

Prozac wrote:

Yeah, Look out BlackSabre, that Quintin Stone has a problem with us Aussies.

Only with Aussies trying to get vegemite all over my precioussss Fallout cards!

I'm late, but that's a pretty awesome collector's edition.

Yeah, the thing about Fallout 3 is that once you know how to min/max correctly (CHA is useless, INT and Luck are awesome, etc.) you don't really have any tough choices to make in character creation. By about halfway through the game, your character is godlike at everything. I'm hoping New Vegas has more valid options for different kinds of character builds.

Arcanum is the best game I've seen for the low Int playthrough. Even your character's journal was written with simple language rife with spelling and grammatical errors. Wordy would have a seizure. Unless playing as an Idiot Savant in which case your spoken dialog was dumbed down but your journal was verbose and insightful.

I'm really looking forward to hardcore mode. Fallout 3 lost a lot of interest for me when it stopped feeling like you were scrounging for survival and started feeling like you were the wealthiest, most powerful being in the wasteland. It destroyed the survival fantasy. At one point in one of my play-throughs I dropped every piece of equipment and money I had and started from scratch. But even then, with my level and stats so high it only took me an hour or two before I was a decked out, murder machine again. I'm hoping hardcore mode will prolong that feeling of just barely scraping by, and doing whatever it takes just to survive.

Prozac wrote:

Arcanum is the best game I've seen for the low Int playthrough. Even your character's journal was written with simple language rife with spelling and grammatical errors. Wordy would have a seizure. Unless playing as an Idiot Savant in which case your spoken dialog was dumbed down but your journal was verbose and insightful.

Heh I know someone that played a min int ogre. The journal was absolute hilarity

0kelvin wrote:

I'm really looking forward to hardcore mode. Fallout 3 lost a lot of interest for me when it stopped feeling like you were scrounging for survival and started feeling like you were the wealthiest, most powerful being in the wasteland. It destroyed the survival fantasy.

Ooh, I hadn't heard about this. Now, I'm suddenly interested!

I lost my save file from Fallout 3 when my apartment was burgled and my 360 stolen early last year. I still had the game, but couldn't be bothered to replay what I'd lost. Seems like I ought to just wait for this.

Some more info.

Among the changes listed, the "big weapons" and "small weapons" skills will be merged into one standard "weapon" skill. The explosive weapons (like rocket launchers) will be categorized into "explosives" instead of big weapons. A new orbital laser weapon can be used once per day, and the Bobbleheads are back to boost player stats. Of course, some of the game standards are kept in check, like companion loyalty, the presence of Vaults, and warring factions to align with.

I am a little disappointed with merging big guns and small guns. It is a big trend to streamline/dumbdown RPGs these days because current teenagers are too stupid to play complex games (: but have more disposable income than any other group. It is a trend I don't like much.

Anyway I guess what will matter is the story so I will hope that is strong.

Not sure how to feel about that. On the one hand, having them as different skills forced you to make some decisions about how your character would turn out. On the other hand, the weapons that used Big Guns never thrilled me in the first two Fallouts. They were close up weapons that devoured ammo. Energy weapons was the optimal choice for weapons skills. And there was no mention of merging the energy weapons skill.

Rocket launchers were never used because of their inaccuracy and short range. I used the nuke launcher I think once in Fallout 3 and the missile launcher rarely.

Merging Big Guns and Small Guns is a good idea. I don't think I ever used any heavy weapon other than the Fat Man in F3 to take out a behemoth or two. Near the end of the game(s) Small Guns became useless (unless you had the Gauss Rifle and that only applied to the first two games) as energy weapons became much more powerful. This allows the Small Guns stat to be useful at the end game while the Big Guns stat to be useful at the beginning.

Bethesda did the same thing between Elder Scrolls 3 to 4 and I don't think anyone has said ES4 was a bad game because of it. IIRC there was a similar gnashing of teeth at the time.

Scratched wrote:

Bethesda did the same thing between Elder Scrolls 3 to 4 and I don't think anyone has said ES4 was a bad game because of it. IIRC there was a similar gnashing of teeth at the time.

Well, there was this, which was pretty damn stupid. But for the most part, although there were plenty of things to complain about in Oblivion, the lessening of weapon skills from like 12 to 2 or 3 wasn't one of them. I've been giving this some thought recently, because I just finished Persona 4, and the transition from P3 to P4 saw much the same thing: weapon affinities went from three (slash, pierce, strike) to just one (physical). It helped in some instances, but took away much of the strategy from others, so it's a bit of a mixed bag.

Vector wrote:

Merging Big Guns and Small Guns is a good idea. I don't think I ever used any heavy weapon other than the Fat Man in F3 to take out a behemoth or two. Near the end of the game(s) Small Guns became useless (unless you had the Gauss Rifle and that only applied to the first two games) as energy weapons became much more powerful. This allows the Small Guns stat to be useful at the end game while the Big Guns stat to be useful at the beginning.

The weapon I used on the Behmoth's was the Terrible Shotgun; the only time I used the Fat Man was on an old save where I went into the Citadel and nuked everyone. It was funny watching the main NPC's get back up after a few seconds and hitting them again.

Small guns are not useless at the end of the game. Even the .44 scoped magnum packs a massive punch to guys in power armour. Merging the two doesn't bother me, mainly because I never used big guns. Always used the hand guns, rifles and energy weapons while sneakily putting grenades in people's pants.

Yeah, what about Lincoln's Repeater? The small gun with the big punch.

I was more referring to previous Fallout games. I never got to the end of Fallout 3. I will one day. I was going under the assumption that like the previous games small guns kind of loses its luster.

Small guns didn't entirely lose their luster. The only way to fly as a sniper in Fallout was with a Red Rider BB Gun and critical shots to the eyes.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Small guns didn't entirely lose their luster. The only way to fly as a sniper in Fallout was with a Red Rider BB Gun and critical shots to the eyes.

And in Fallout 2 you had the Gauss Rifle (which NMA still incorrectly lists as an Energy Weapon).

Quintin_Stone wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

Small guns didn't entirely lose their luster. The only way to fly as a sniper in Fallout was with a Red Rider BB Gun and critical shots to the eyes.

And in Fallout 2 you had the Gauss Rifle (which NMA still incorrectly lists as an Energy Weapon).

It's an energy weapon in F3, I think.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Small guns didn't entirely lose their luster. The only way to fly as a sniper in Fallout was with a Red Rider BB Gun and critical shots to the eyes.

I don't think I used the Red Rider. I remember the Jackhammer Shotgun being my favourite weapon for a long time before I moved up to Gauss.

I'm getting a hankering to retry my pistol build/AP build. The Magnum (+ Speed Loader) and Gauss Pistol only used 4 AP. With the Fast Shot trait that was only 3AP per shot (aiming is for suckers) and with One Hander you rarely miss. The strategy was to riddle everyone with bullets. Keep two fully loaded pistols on you at all times and you rarely run out of bullets.

Vector wrote:

It's an energy weapon in F3, I think.

Yeah, for some reason. Maybe the new devs saw it listed incorrectly in the NMA Fallout 2 item database and thought that's how it's supposed to be.

Vector wrote:

I don't think I used the Red Rider. I remember the Jackhammer Shotgun being my favourite weapon for a long time before I moved up to Gauss.

The Red Rider was nice because it dealt a flat rate of damage equally across all body parts. It made the all-important targeted eye shots much more lethal.