Fallout: New Vegas - Fall 2010

Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:

Or real-world Detroit? They really took a s**t-kicking... Or New Orleans - have they even fully recovered from Katrina, yet...

(they're in the news when it happens, but never hear anything after.)

Yeah, I remember watching The Colony (basically zombie/plague apocalypse reality TV show) where they quite literally just bought a few square miles of the coast to use for their "post disaster" landscape. Realizing that that largely meant that the structures and surrounding area just hadn't been used since Katrina, and that was several years AFTER Katrina was kind of heartbreaking once I realized it.

Pop on top of that, Mike Rowe and the Dirty Jobs crew going down to Louisiana and doing jobs with various cleanup crews a few years after too and how work was STILL being done.

I gave in to Fallout 4 hype by starting up Fallout: New Vegas instead, which has been on my backlog for a while now. I added a couple texture and lighting mods to try to make the game less ugly, though I probably won't go too crazy with the modding.

New Vegas feels like a much slower game than I remember Fallout 3 feeling. The quest chain leads you pretty firmly in the direction it wants you to go, but the locations and characters you meet are fairly low key, with the notable exception of your first encounter with Caesar's Legion in Nipton. I'm finishing up in Novac now, having dealt with the shenanigans at the REPCONN factory, and will be heading northeast to Boulder City next.

I've heard mixed things about the DLC for this game. Is there a good time to start tackling it? Is it an essential part of the story?

The DLC for New Vegas is practically its own story. That said, you could skip it. I found most of the New Vegas DLC to be a pain to play through. Lonesome Road was...alright, but mostly because of the guns that become available afterwards. The rest of it was somewhere between annoying to pure slog.

In general I don't get the love for New Vegas. As a story it is a tighter narrative and the world feels more like "classic" Fallout lore where Bethesda took some obvious liberties. In terms of overall setting and tone, I think Fallout 3 was closer to the original games no matter how much more faithful to the lore Obsidian was.

It's worth a playthrough and, like FO3, I have played through it multiple times. It is a fun game. If you only do the base game that's probably enough. I find the DLC on these games to be something of a mixed bag personally. I'm including FO3 in that statement.

Old World Blues is awesome DLC

I wound up liking New Vegas a whole lot. The pacing of the main quest kind of falls off around the middle third, when it throws a bunch of different objectives at you that you can tackle in any order, but it picks back up once you reach the point of no return and have to choose a faction and stick with it. I appreciated having many more ways through the main quest compared to the fairly linear main quest of F:03. You're still mostly tackling the same basic quests regardless, but having a choice about who to play nice with, who to become enemies with, and who to betray or stay loyal to makes it feel like you have more agency.

On the DLC:

Skip Dead Money. Honest Hearts gives you a large-ish new area to explore that feels very different from anything in the Mojave, which is nice. Old World Blues is amazing if you're into the goofy retro-sci-fi side of Fallout, and I'm a sucker for that stuff. Lonesome Road is fine but pretty self-serious for my tastes; I'd call it eminently skippable, but fine if you get that far and still feel like you want more.

Honest Hearts gave you a new area but notwithstanding one very memorable bit of subtext, I found it unappealing. Lonesome Road so far is basically Bulletspongebob Squarepants. Yes, these two Fallouts can get like that at the higher levels, but it's extreme in Lonesome Road. And there didn't feel to be any narrative worth the time (i.e., slog).

The base games are great. I recommend Point Lookout for FO3. It got bullet-spongy too (near-naked Tribals taking a clip of SMG fire), but the people and things and environment are worth it.

Edit: [spelling]

Thanks for all the feedback. I'll probably avoid the DLC for now, and if I get near the end of the the base game's story and am desperate for more, I'll check them out then.

Whoa! My memory is bad!

I meant Honest Hearts is decent. Yeah, Lonesome Road is a complete slog!

Thanks, Goodjers!

Come see the Lonesome Road: Where Deathclaws rain from the sky.

Rykin wrote:

Come see the Lonesome Road: Where Deathclaws rain from the sky.

That is rough, and so it's where I've stopped.

One thing I always enjoyed about New Vegas was playing with Hardcore mode. It definitely made exploring and surviving in the wasteland more enjoyable IMO. I hope modders can add something similar in Fallout 4.

Survival is one of my main skills, and so far I've barely used it. There don't seem to be a whole lot of crafting campfires around, and I'm never sure if it's a good idea to hold on to survival crafting materials or try to find/buy them when I specifically want them. The survival-based perks seem pretty good, but I feel like maybe it wasn't a good overall choice for a first-time player? Am I wrong? Do you get a home or base later on that lets you dump materials so you're not lugging them around all the time?

EriktheRed wrote:

One thing I always enjoyed about New Vegas was playing with Hardcore mode. It definitely made exploring and surviving in the wasteland more enjoyable IMO. I hope modders can add something similar in Fallout 4.

Agreed. I've never played FONV without it on hardcore mode. FO3, yes, I played it in its default configuration. Then, when I started it on PC, I specifically went looking for something to make it both more challenging and realistic. The one thing I'll give Honest Hearts is that for the first time in a while I was genuinely concerned for my safety, and on more than one occasion was running crippled and low on ammunition. That's how it should be in the wasteland: desperate. So I'm using the aforementioned The Mantis Imperative primarily for the deadlier combat, and can't wait to hit the story bits. The new creatures also make the wasteland desperate; not only are they tough (but believably so), they can be quick, which by itself makes things tense.

beanman101283 wrote:

Survival is one of my main skills, and so far I've barely used it. There don't seem to be a whole lot of crafting campfires around, and I'm never sure if it's a good idea to hold on to survival crafting materials or try to find/buy them when I specifically want them. The survival-based perks seem pretty good, but I feel like maybe it wasn't a good overall choice for a first-time player? Am I wrong? Do you get a home or base later on that lets you dump materials so you're not lugging them around all the time?

In stark opposition to the verisimilitude I aim for above, when it came to managing stuff I usually just used trash cans or whatever. I hoarded so much stuff I'd dump it something roughly central to where I'd be operating, and then occasionally had to move that, meaning multiple totally packed-down trips. And I don't fast travel. I also used houses and stuff. There's the built-in mail system, where you can shove junk in a mailbox-type contraption and find a matching one elsewhere and--voila--your stuff's there. I never used it; it felt weird to be relying on such a supposedly courier-based system when I was, in fact, THE Courier. I would've loved if they'd shown some other couriers occasionally carrying your stuff around.

Also,

Spoiler:

note that sometimes people steal stuff out of trash cans. LOVED when I found that out, thus the spoiler tag

.

Novac will rent you a room where you can ditch stuff. There was a container type to avoid... but I don't remember what it was.
I killed Vulpes in Nipton while I was around level 5 or 6.

This meant I got daily assassin squads equipping armor that my weapons couldn't pierce, wielding things like plasma grenades, thermic lances, and 10mm smgs while I was plinking around with a varmint rifle. This meant I learned how to cheat so I could keep playing.

Also worth noting on Lonesome Road, it starts giving you some backstory to your character that was not even hinted at in the base game. So, if you're one of those folks who has a backstory in your head for your character, Lonesome Road will likely mess with that (I really did not like that one).

Old World Blues, however, is genius. I loved every second of that... except the new type of scorpions. Those were less fun.

I actually kind of liked Dead Money despite not being very fond of self-contained DLC in general. I liked the Bioshock-type atmosphere and enjoyed the story behind it. Honest Hearts was okay. I'm wavering a bit on Old World Blues. I like the tech and robots part, but I feel like a trapped audience besieged by goofiness with no good way to relieve it other than to push through to the end of the DLC. I think I would enjoy this DLC more if I could go back and forth between it and the main area.

Part of it may be that I have been trying to get through all the DLC at one time when I really just wanted to focus on the main game, but since this is one of those games that has an ending, I feel obligated to get the DLC done beforehand. In Fallout 3, I would have saved the DLC until after completing the main quest and it wouldn't feel so much like an interference as it does in FNV as it wouldn't be competing with my desire to experience the storyline.

I haven't started Lonesome Road, so no opinion on that one. Starting it is depending on if I ever get out of Old World Blues, which won't be for a long while yet due to Fallout 4.

I'm now at Level 18 and mopping up some of the side and unmarked quests. One of these days I'll actually go into New Vegas to keep the main mission rolling.

I love getting to this point in the game. That awesome combo of perks, equipment, and skills where you get options about how to approach encounters and aren't scrambling to find a perch where the giant Rad-Scorpion can't reach you. Where you have to wonder what the gang-member with the lead pipe was thinking before she exploded. "Look! A combat-armor wearing pile of advanced weaponry and ordinance... I should try to hit it until the candy comes out!" I hoard weapons. Even after trying to avoid weapons that share ammo I still have a scrolling list of death-dealing options. Bliss.

VATS + Bloody Mess. So good.

I found Old World Blues to be awesome. It was a really great 50s scifi takeoff.

Old World Blues is great. I loved Dead Money too, although given that it's more or less a survival horror heist, I can definitely see how it's not everyone's cup of tea.

Honest Hearts has some great environments, but the story is severely underwhelming, especially given that it *should* have some great hooks into the main campaign.

I can't remember anything about Lonesome Road.

I'm nearing the end of New Vegas, so I think I am going to wait on the DLC. Overall I liked FO3 better but New Vegas has been a fun ride.

I forgot how much of a pain in the ass vault 34 is.
My advanced rad suit didn't seem to do squat for me.
Edit: I am now getting pretty close to the bits of the game I don't remember so well. It feels weird doing NCR missions with Veronica in tow... But she is being a real trooper about it.

Spoiler:

Maybe because I am lugging around the vault 22 data, the pulse gun, and am about to backtrack to Helios for the other thingy. No idea how that plays out, and all three bits sounded fun enough to pursue. Except for Vault 34. Holy hell was figuring out that BS hot-spot hunt annoying. I consider myself an All-American hero for sticking with it. /Pip-boy fingergun

Rezzy wrote:

I forgot how much of a pain in the ass vault 34 is.
My advanced rad suit didn't seem to do squat for me.
Edit: I am now getting pretty close to the bits of the game I don't remember so well. It feels weird doing NCR missions with Veronica in tow... But she is being a real trooper about it.

Spoiler:

Maybe because I am lugging around the vault 22 data, the pulse gun, and am about to backtrack to Helios for the other thingy. No idea how that plays out, and all three bits sounded fun enough to pursue. Except for Vault 34. Holy hell was figuring out that BS hot-spot hunt annoying. I consider myself an All-American hero for sticking with it. /Pip-boy fingergun

I don't at all remember going there, but I'd be surprised if I hadn't.

muraii wrote:

I don't at all remember going there, but I'd be surprised if I hadn't.

Spoiler:

The entire area is irradiated, and the layout is basically a maze. There are a couple of flooded sections that are rendered in such a way to give no obvious hint that you can actually dive into them. You then find a password. If you've already explored the area then there is no obvious place to use the password. The secret is that reading the note in your Pipboy will magically make a new option appear on one of the terminals. Just finding the note isn't enough for at least one of them. You have to actually see the password and then the terminal will suddenly have a new option in the list. Between that and the ghouls spawning in at certain thresholds while constantly being irradiated, and trying to find the next little tunnel that is suddenly accessible after having scoured the entire place three or four times made for a long evening last night. To be fair, the reward is kind of worth it. Looting a nicely stocked armory with lots of heavy weapons and a couple of uniques. ("All-American" Marksman Carabine, and a pulse-gun that does EMP damage (Brotherhood quest item)

Good times.

I'm getting in the vague vicinity of Vault 34. Perhaps I'll pass it over for now.

Currently taking the tour of REPCONN headquarters. Seeing Very Hard terminals for the first time, so I'm not sure if I'm underleveled for this place. Presumably, getting slaughtered by monsters will be a good indicator.

I enjoyed Dead Money for the sad story and the atmosphere. Be warned: a lot of people hate the fact that it takes away your inventory when it starts. You don't get your stuff back until you finish and return to the main game.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

I enjoyed Dead Money for the sad story and the atmosphere. Be warned: a lot of people hate the fact that it takes away your inventory when it starts. You don't get your stuff back until you finish and return to the main game.

The only thing I really hated about Dead Money was the damn radios. Such an obnoxious mechanic when so many areas are super dark.

Edit: wow, wrong thread!

Quintin_Stone wrote:

I enjoyed Dead Money for the sad story and the atmosphere. Be warned: a lot of people hate the fact that it takes away your inventory when it starts. You don't get your stuff back until you finish and return to the main game.

I loved that it took away your inventory. That's not something that bothered me at all.

It was all the wandering around through the same areas, the toxic fog that SEEMED like a neat idea but was a pain in the ass when combined with those stupid radios, some of which you could not even find. It was backtracking hell in a game that has not traditionally had a ton of backtracking.

Crazed Java wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

I enjoyed Dead Money for the sad story and the atmosphere. Be warned: a lot of people hate the fact that it takes away your inventory when it starts. You don't get your stuff back until you finish and return to the main game.

I loved that it took away your inventory. That's not something that bothered me at all.

It was all the wandering around through the same areas, the toxic fog that SEEMED like a neat idea but was a pain in the ass when combined with those stupid radios, some of which you could not even find. It was backtracking hell in a game that has not traditionally had a ton of backtracking.

I didn't care about the inventory so long as I got it back later, which I did. I looted *everything* in the Dead Money area. Whenever I got overloaded, I would drop everything next to the fountain in the main square. I would sell all the junk to the vendors for pre-war money and then after getting kicked off of the casino games, traded all my chips for pre-war money. The pre-war money is worth a lot in the main game areas. The worst part for me was the fog and the radios that I couldn't destroy. I also found all the things that go in the machine, so those are now available to me in the main game along with a chest that spawns the chips every so often to use in the machine. Fun!

So how long did it take you guys to get into the story? I really liked the intro but the first area is far less interesting to me than the first area in Fallout 3. Will keep at it a couple more hours but at this point I'm really tempted just to go get 4.