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March 28, 2024, 04:22:25 PM

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Fancy a playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas?

Started by Barry Admin, March 12, 2019, 03:43:09 PM

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Barry Admin

I never finished this, or any Fallout game, and have wanted to return to it. I'll likely give up halfway through again, especially as I've just started playing Fallout 76. What could go wrong?

It's probably the most highly regarded Fallout game, so who fancies becoming the Courier and playing along with me? I just started a new character, the intro movie is superb, really sets the scene and gets you straight into the story.

Now how will I play? Usually I'm a good boy who never steals or does bad karma stuff.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

I've long wanted to try making a totally pacifist character, completing every mission through charisma, intelligence and stealth. I expect it would be a complete ballache though. You can't reason with those bastard bloody cazadores.

Sadly, I lack the time and will to start another run through the game. It's intimidatingly vast, even without taking the multiple pathways into account.

LanceUppercut

Are you playing hardcore mode?

Very difficult but it makes you plan and think about what items to take and which factions to join, infinitely more enjoyable.

Barry Admin

Yep, I did that in my original run too. My 1st achievement was unlocked 7/7/2011 and my last one ("Outsmarted") was unlocked on 6/8/2011. Then I think my Xbox broke and I lost that level 30 save.

I dunno if I will stick with it, but I want to dip in and out, I just don't have much discipline. It's weird not being able to run, also! I should really stick with it, shouldn't I?

Johnny Textface

I just started a new game of Fall Out 3. First one I played and really enjoyed it.

I don't really have the time to play so will dip in and out when I get chance. I preferred it to New Vegas though, maybe because it was a fresh experience. I too have found the lack sprinting very odd - I even googled it to see which button it was.

Bazooka

I think I played through it three times, but my bulk play through(including DLC) was as a giant pale freak women using only melee and consuming probably around a thousand stimpacks.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: Johnny Textface on March 12, 2019, 09:18:50 PM
I just started a new game of Fall Out 3. First one I played and really enjoyed it... I preferred it to New Vegas though, maybe because it was a fresh experience.
3 doesn't seem to be held in high regard by longtime fans of the series. I can understand the reasons why, but I still remember it fondly. I'm not sure if I prefer it to New Vegas, but I think it's definitely stuck in the memory a bit more. I think it was the first proper (albeit action based) RPG I ever played. I even remember my character with fondness: A sort of wasteland Robin Hood, complete with green armour and stealth enhancing hood. Fawkes the super mutant was my version of Little John.

Kryton

Quote from: Barry Admin on March 12, 2019, 03:43:09 PM
Now how will I play?

Stealthy melee guy, no guns besides anything you can add a silencer to. Maybe hacking/lock picking and similar skills. Basically play as a morally grey type who dislikes killing and would rather sneak through places and avoid being seen/heard?

Thursday

Do a strength build where you just punch the fuck out of everything.

St_Eddie

Why's it always a question of whether Fallout 3 or New Vegas is the best game in the series?  Fallout and Fallout 2 blow them both out of the water.  Everything after that is just The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion/Skyrim with a post-apocalyptic skin.

The first two Fallout games have more depth than Fallout 3 or New Vegas could ever dream of possessing.  They remain the pinnacle of role-playing.  As an example, if you set your intelligence stat to 1, then your character with be mentally disabled, with dialogue to reflect that in every conversation that you have (both from your character and from NPC's reactions to you).  Throughout. The. Entire. Game.  Nothing past the first two games comes close to that level of brilliance.

Thursday

Quote from: St_Eddie on March 12, 2019, 11:38:25 PM
Why's it always a question of whether Fallout 3 or New Vegas is the best game in the series?  Fallout and Fallout 2 blow them both out of the water.  Everything after that is just The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion/Skyrim with a post-apocalyptic skin.


Because people have played them.

Zetetic

Quote from: St_Eddie on March 12, 2019, 11:38:25 PM
Everything after that is just The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion/Skyrim with a post-apocalyptic skin.

Nah.

St_Eddie

Quote from: Thursday on March 13, 2019, 12:21:17 AM
Because people have played them.

People should try playing better games then.

Quote from: Zetetic on March 13, 2019, 12:32:46 AM
Nah.

There's fuck all difference between them, other than superficial stuff.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

I started playing Fallout 1 some time ago, but I just couldn't get to grips with the turn based combat. It's a shame, because I really like what I've heard about the original games.

St_Eddie

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on March 13, 2019, 12:35:55 AM
I started playing Fallout 1 some time ago, but I just couldn't get to grips with the turn based combat. It's a shame, because I really like what I've heard about the original games.

It takes a quite a while to get used to but it's worth preserving with.  They're two of the greatest RPGs ever made and a damn sight more interesting and unique than the 3D iterations.

Elderly Sumo Prophecy

Baz, a man of your sociopolitical mindset should definitely side with the Legion.

Mister Six

Quote from: St_Eddie on March 13, 2019, 12:35:20 AM
There's fuck all difference between them, other than superficial stuff.

Aye, superficial stuff like the entire SPECIAL character creation system, the different perk/trait systems, the improved ranged combat and shift away from melee, the improved companion interaction, the factions, the branching quests and plotlines and the entire world it's based in.

So yeah, if you ignore all that and focus on the non-superficial, deep stuff like the fact that they use the same engine then they're identical.

As for the first two, they are amazing works in terms of writing, ambition and reactivity - especially Fallout 2, which is insanely detailed - but they're hamstrung by abysmal combat, from the tedious melee to the inability to control companions to the shitty AI that sees your pals riddling you with automatic machine-gun fire if they want to blast someone behind you.

Barry Admin

The character creation is great in New Vegas, and I loved that it gives you yet another chance to change your build after you've finished the tutorial area, and are ready to move on. There are so many perks and options that it does feel overwhelming, but the interview with the doctor is a neat way of navigating it.

Mister Six

It's one of the many reasons I disliked Fallout 4 - in NV (and to a lesser extent 3) you can decide you're a two-fisted brawler or a stealthy sniper or a pacifist conman or a bomb-tossing lunatic and roll with it. The "Courier" concept is nicely ambiguous too. Are you a man on the run, taking the only job that will have you? Are you a manic cannibal who uses the transient job to hunt victims? Are you a starry-eyed wanderer who wants to see the wasteland?

In 4 you have more or less the same base character each time, with no stats and a fixed backstory (soldier or military wife), and definitive characteristics (hetero or bisexual, bereaved, a parent hunting for their child). Really limits how you approach the game and its world.

ToneLa

Huh odd to see this. I spent the weekend modding it to play for the first time in years!

Just missed it, yknow? Hankering for wandering aboot the desert, levelling up. Fallout 4 was a mess to me. Too shootery. Too first person, not enough Falloot

This guide is good. Easy enough, basically get the Nexus mod manager and bang a load of downloads into it

https://medium.com/the-backlog-gog-com-stream-team-blog/make-fallout-new-vegas-so-beautiful-youll-fall-in-love-again-d74239715a30

St_Eddie

Quote from: Mister Six on March 13, 2019, 02:11:05 PM
Aye, superficial stuff like the entire SPECIAL character creation system, the different perk/trait systems, the improved ranged combat and shift away from melee, the improved companion interaction, the factions, the branching quests and plotlines and the entire world it's based in.

So yeah, if you ignore all that and focus on the non-superficial, deep stuff like the fact that they use the same engine then they're identical.

SPECIAL character creation system = Taken from the first two games and in terms of your actual gameplay experience in the 3D games, makes little difference.  It's just the means by which your character levels up.  It's not a game changer in terms of your game experience and doesn't have anywhere near the impact on gameplay that it did in the first two games.

PERKS/TRAITS = I'll grant you this.  Again though, it comes from the first two games, so it hardly elevates the experience above the 2D games in the series.  It does differentiate it from The Elder Scrolls though, I'll give you that one.

IMPROVED RANGED COMBAT = Hahahaha.  Good one.  Oh, you were being serious?

THE FACTIONS = Yeah, I guess.  Not a huge game changer though, is it?  It adds replay value more than anything.

BRANCHING QUESTS AND PLOTLINES = Nah.  You're really reaching with this one.  It's just The Elder Scrolls in essence.  I really don't think that the quests and plotlines are noticably different between the two series.  I'd go as far as to say that they're more or less exactly the same.

Please understand that I was introduced to the Fallout series with Fallout 3.  I didn't even play the first two games until I'd completed New Vegas.  It's only once I'd played the originals that I came to realise just how weak the 3D iterations are by comparison and how similar they are to The Elder Scrolls.  I stand by what I said.

Quote from: Mister Six on March 13, 2019, 02:11:05 PMAs for the first two, they are amazing works in terms of writing, ambition and reactivity - especially Fallout 2, which is insanely detailed - but they're hamstrung by abysmal combat, from the tedious melee to the inability to control companions to the shitty AI that sees your pals riddling you with automatic machine-gun fire if they want to blast someone behind you.

These are valid flaws, I agree.  Fallout 3 and beyond have there own set of equally irritating problems though.  The same problems that are in The Elder Scrolls and not just because they share the same game engine.  Curious, no?

Avril Lavigne

Quote from: ToneLa on March 13, 2019, 03:25:39 PM
Huh odd to see this. I spent the weekend modding it to play for the first time in years!

Just missed it, yknow? Hankering for wandering aboot the desert, levelling up. Fallout 4 was a mess to me. Too shootery. Too first person, not enough Falloot

This guide is good. Easy enough, basically get the Nexus mod manager and bang a load of downloads into it

https://medium.com/the-backlog-gog-com-stream-team-blog/make-fallout-new-vegas-so-beautiful-youll-fall-in-love-again-d74239715a30

I may have to do this sometime soon as I'd love to try to get into New Vegas properly. Something just didn't click in my first playthrough and I didn't think it was anything special (pardon the pun) in comparison to Fallout 3. Not that I thought it was bad - I put 40 hours into the game after all - but I never finished it and most of the time just kinda felt like I was wandering around aimlessly doing random jobs for people with no real end goal in mind. I swear I irriversibly messed up some major plotlines by making the wrong choices though.

Hey, Punk!

Quote from: St_Eddie on March 12, 2019, 11:38:25 PM
Why's it always a question of whether Fallout 3 or New Vegas is the best game in the series?  Fallout and Fallout 2 blow them both out of the water.  Everything after that is just The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion/Skyrim with a post-apocalyptic skin.

I admit that as a 24 year old avocado latte millennial, it's nothing like what I'm used to. This may sound like a weird question, but any tips for getting into them? I've wanted to play them since I realised what absolute wank Fallout 3 actually is.

Barry Admin

Damn I miss having a computer! Glad I can still play on backwards compatible mode on my Xbox though. I'll load it up again now while Fallout 76 is offline for an update.

Avril, yeah, I'm always like that with these games, I'm thinking I should actually commit to the main quest in NV, this time around.

And as for my build btw, think it's gonna be my usual sort of goody two-shoes stealth sniper because I'm boring and OCD :-( I must miss so much stuff by not nicking things, but it bothers me way too much. Maybe a bit of light theft wouldn't hurt though, I guess.

Barry Admin

I hacked Trudy's computer and looted the safe it unlocked. She's got loads of gear in there - a nice shotgun in particular - but the frowny face telling me I'd "lost karma" was too upsetting. Then Trudy was all happy and pleasant at the bar, no idea if just been rifling through her shit.

But I can't see a karma meter anywhere and it didn't effect my standing with the locals as I wasn't seen. Hmm, lol it legitimately makes me feel bad though, I fucking hate karma systems!!! I'm such a stupid wimp.

Also, Johnny Guitar by Peggy Lee is absolutely incredible. Fucking god tier.

Zetetic

#25
Quote from: St_Eddie on March 13, 2019, 03:28:58 PMI really don't think that the quests and plotlines are noticably different between the two series.  I'd go as far as to say that they're more or less exactly the same.

Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas themselves have radically different main quests for a start (unsurprisingly, really, given that they were written and produced by very different people with very different works behind them).

They have very different structures - 3 is overwhelmingly linear, while NV has at least 3 major branches at the time you reach Vegas itself (and up until that point still copes with very different ways of getting there).

They have very different approaches to the morality of actions within those structures. 3 pretty much forces you down a 'positive karma' route throughout the main quest, before giving you a nonsensical choice between supposedly good and evil.

NV's main quest, in line with the rest of the game, rejects any sort of 'karma' system and is instead interested more in your alignment with others in the world (even if it perhaps struggles to sell the viewpoints of some of them - although perhaps that's just because I simply don't much care for the views of the Legion...).

They have different approaches to problem solving within the main quest. 3 certainly does allow you some resolutions other than responding to violence with violence, but far less often than NV.

And all this is setting aside that 3's main quest makes absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever, while NV's at least seems to attach to different people with diverse motivations trying to achieve things.

(You obviously can think they're both shit, but I think it's difficult to argue that they're shit in the same way.)




And I still like 3 for a bunch of things more than NV. 3 is much closer to Oblivion and Skyrim and that's good for just a poking around a game world and encountering a bunch of small - if sometimes very stupid - stories, even if it's not so good at supporting role-playing a character making their way through various plots.

3 is a lot easier to dip in and out of, and arguably more rewarding in short bursts.

It's interesting now that I write the above that with Fallout 4 Bethesda tried to copy bits of NV's main quest. You end up with a main quest that pushes you into about 4 different factions - it's just that barely any of those factions make much sense on their own, are largely uninteresting, and the conflicts between them are almost completely pointless.

Zetetic

Quote from: Barry Admin on March 13, 2019, 03:51:00 PM
But I can't see a karma meter anywhere and it didn't effect my standing with the locals as I wasn't seen. Hmm, lol it legitimately makes me feel bad though, I fucking hate karma systems!!! I'm such a stupid wimp.

Echoing my post above - mostly New Vegas dumps the karma system. You get the pop-ups but it does very little to change how people respond to you.

More important in New Vegas is the reputation system - different places or factions (Goodsprings, the NCR, etc.) have different views of you, and mostly these are affected far more narrowly that Karma was in 3.

Barry Admin

Quote from: Zetetic on March 13, 2019, 06:04:37 PM
Echoing my post above - mostly New Vegas dumps the karma system. You get the pop-ups but it does very little to change how people respond to you.

More important in New Vegas is the reputation system - different places or factions (Goodsprings, the NCR, etc.) have different views of you, and mostly these are affected far more narrowly that Karma was in 3.

Thanks, I had a look and saw that was the case - there's no karma-based achievement for instance, although there is a companion who will fuck you off if you're too naughty.

And to add what you said above, I'm impressed by the many various ways to tackle the mission in that first introductory area, and the effect it has. For starters, Trudy turned up with no gun to the fight as I had nicked it!

You can also seemingly side with the Powder Gangers against the townsfolk, rather than taking their side and defending Ringo.

Going in guns blazing is a lesson in how the factions work, as it makes the citizens of Goodspring love you, but makes the Powder Gangers want to kill you on sight, which will lock off their quest lines. So I've save scrubbed (I'm truly incorrigible), and will keep a low profile in the fight, so I keep both factions happy.

St_Eddie

Quote from: Hey, Punk! on March 13, 2019, 03:39:08 PM
I admit that as a 24 year old avocado latte millennial, it's nothing like what I'm used to. This may sound like a weird question, but any tips for getting into them? I've wanted to play them since I realised what absolute wank Fallout 3 actually is.

I'd recommend watching a let's play by an experienced player (maybe for the opening sections - the first 30 mins - 1 hour).  That's what I did and once I'd done that, I felt more than ready to jump into the game and experience its glory and experience its glory I did.

Quote from: Zetetic on March 13, 2019, 05:57:44 PM
Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas themselves have radically different main quests for a start (unsurprisingly, really, given that they were written and produced by very different people with very different works behind them).

They have very different structures - 3 is overwhelmingly linear, while NV has at least 3 major branches at the time you reach Vegas itself (and up until that point still copes with very different ways of getting there).

They have very different approaches to the morality of actions within those structures. 3 pretty much forces you down a 'positive karma' route throughout the main quest, before giving you a nonsensical choice between supposedly good and evil.

NV's main quest, in line with the rest of the game, rejects any sort of 'karma' system and is instead interested more in your alignment with others in the world (even if it perhaps struggles to sell the viewpoints of some of them - although perhaps that's just because I simply don't much care for the views of the Legion...).

They have different approaches to problem solving within the main quest. 3 certainly does allow you some resolutions other than responding to violence with violence, but far less often than NV.

And all this is setting aside that 3's main quest makes absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever, while NV's at least seems to attach to different people with diverse motivations trying to achieve things.

(You obviously can think they're both shit, but I think it's difficult to argue that they're shit in the same way.)

I too vastly prefer New Vegas to Fallout 3.  I wasn't saying that those games are the same as each other (although they kind of are, broadly speaking) and I certainly never said that "both are shit".  I don't think that either are "shit".  My point was that the 3D Fallout games are extremely similar to Oblivion and Skyrim at their very core and that the differences are in the details, rather than the overall experience.

Whereas with the 2D Fallout games, they are very much their own beast.  That was my argument.  I prefer my game series to be unique and not essentially the same as another series but with some of the details changed and a different aesthetic.  Fallout and Fallout 2 are unique and offer an unparalleled depth of role-playing.  Fallout 3 and beyond are extremely similar to The Elder Scrolls and extremely dumbed down from the first two Fallout games.  I certainly wasn't claiming that Fallout 3 and beyond are "shit" games, just immensely less interesting and lacking in a personal identity, when compared to The Elder Scrolls (outside of the world building - which was established in Fallout and Fallout 2).

Zetetic

Apologies - I wasn't trying to assign that opinion to you, but clarifying that I can accept the existence of such an opinion.

I wasn't trying to argue that New Vegas is better than 3 (although I think regarding its main quest, it's hard not to simply because of how nonsensical 3's ends up), but that they are very different. But then I do think that, despite being implemented using much the same tools, and sharing many assets, NV and 3 have very distinct identities from each other, let alone other games.

I mean, I also think it's difficult to meaningfully say "It's just like the Elder Scrolls" without thinking about the change that the Elder Scrolls has also gone through. I think that 3 and 4 mirror Oblivion-to-Skyrim - whatever you think of that - but that New Vegas is clearly out of kilter with that direction.