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Fallout: New Vegas

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Oh man, I suck at inventory management. This mod will crush me.!

In a way it is a bit of a relief. Two guns with ammo, one set of helmet and armor, some food and drink, and meds. You don't have to think about anything else because there isn't room to think about anything else.

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Just started playing Fallout NV on PC modded up the wazoo. That No Mutants Allowed mod looks quite interesting, I might go ahead and try it!

Starting out in hardcore mode recalls some of the tension of playing Stalker, I've already died a bunch of times and get crippled in almost every encounter. (Doctor's Bags are fucking priceless) I even ended up following a caravan for a bit on the way to Novac in order to benefit from their mercenaries' protection. Which was a really fun systems interaction, I gotta say. However, I do forsee what Upthrust was talking about in later game difficulty curves getting much easier and turn into a more classic Bethesda type game where I can easily destroy everything.

Still, I'm wondering if the character I rolled is going to be able to deal with a super harcore mode very well. I'm a dr. scientist who likes to run around and hit things with large hammers. So being in-your-face comic book hammer dude might not vibe well with a play mode that limits you to more realistic outcomes. I'm guessing a sneaky sniper character would do much better in that situation.

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Is it ok to dredge up a thread this old >.>

<.<

If not I'm sorry! Anyway, I assume that I'm not totally alone in the "I don't have a computer that can play Fallout 4 yet so I'll just have to play all the way through New Vegas instead to scratch my Fallout itch" camp.

 

I LOVE New Vegas. I remember when I was younger and pushing it away with disdain. I thought it was just an overhyped expansion pack for Fallout 3. But it's so much more! I love the mood, the factions, the major characters, the politics, everything about it is just awesome to me. It's the only Skyrim/Fallout style game where I've actually travelled with companions.

 

I just started the Dead Money DLC last night (The Sierra Madre one) and it's really really cool! Although, it makes me wish for a Fallout 4 style system where all the junk I collect could be placed into a hub-chest that I can access from anywhere. In the beginning, a character tells you that you'll need to gather what you can and craft stuff because all your equipment is taken from you - and I was like "Awesome! I've been rolling with the same stale equipment for 20 levels now, I can't wait to go all Naked Snake on this mission!" but within an hour I've fallen into the same old routines...collect useless junk, use the same two weapons over and over....maybe I need to make more of a personal effort?

 

Anyway, I've just gotten to the actual Seirra Madre Casino portion of the mission and I'm still excited. It's just such a new environment - and I'm still really under the thumb of the main villain, which is also a unique experience compared ot the rest of the game. I can't wait to see where it all goes. It feels like they could have made a whole other game out of Dead Money. It's such a neat premise and story that I find myself wondering how cool it would have been if it weren't confined to elderly Fallout 3 style mechanics.
 

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Is it ok to dredge up a thread this old >.>

<.<

If not I'm sorry! Anyway, I assume that I'm not totally alone in the "I don't have a computer that can play Fallout 4 yet so I'll just have to play all the way through New Vegas instead to scratch my Fallout itch" camp.

 

It's totally fine. And I too am holding back on Fallout 4, on the assumption that it'll take about six months to iron out the major bugs and mod the UI into something vaguely usable.

 

 

 

After watching a fascinating Let's Play of it, I have started my own YOLO run of New Vegas, a super-permadeath run with the special restriction of "No healing, like, at all, from anything ever". You're pretty much forced to play a sniper, and in the interest of not just playing a two-hour speedrun, I'm trying to engage with a lot of the sidequests. The resource I prize more than anything else is mines, because they equate to risk-free kills, and even though I've always been good at picking up mines, knowing I'm playing no-healing makes it incredibly stressful to disarm them.

 

Given the goal of "Don't just rush the main quest", I'm not sure how to define winning for this run. Trying to do all the sidequests seems like it will surely result in me dying before I finish, but I can't think of an end-goal other than "Main quest" or "Every sidequest".

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Is it ok to dredge up a thread this old >.>

<.<

If not I'm sorry! Anyway, I assume that I'm not totally alone in the "I don't have a computer that can play Fallout 4 yet so I'll just have to play all the way through New Vegas instead to scratch my Fallout itch" camp.

 

I LOVE New Vegas. I remember when I was younger and pushing it away with disdain. I thought it was just an overhyped expansion pack for Fallout 3. But it's so much more! I love the mood, the factions, the major characters, the politics, everything about it is just awesome to me. It's the only Skyrim/Fallout style game where I've actually travelled with companions.

 

I just started the Dead Money DLC last night (The Sierra Madre one) and it's really really cool! Although, it makes me wish for a Fallout 4 style system where all the junk I collect could be placed into a hub-chest that I can access from anywhere. In the beginning, a character tells you that you'll need to gather what you can and craft stuff because all your equipment is taken from you - and I was like "Awesome! I've been rolling with the same stale equipment for 20 levels now, I can't wait to go all Naked Snake on this mission!" but within an hour I've fallen into the same old routines...collect useless junk, use the same two weapons over and over....maybe I need to make more of a personal effort?

 

Anyway, I've just gotten to the actual Seirra Madre Casino portion of the mission and I'm still excited. It's just such a new environment - and I'm still really under the thumb of the main villain, which is also a unique experience compared ot the rest of the game. I can't wait to see where it all goes. It feels like they could have made a whole other game out of Dead Money. It's such a neat premise and story that I find myself wondering how cool it would have been if it weren't confined to elderly Fallout 3 style mechanics.

 

 

The DLC for NV are all really strong. Especially Lonesome Road.

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I have consistently failed to get New Vegas to run on my MacBook Pro.  I played it on my Xbox 360 until the disc drive stopped working but never got to the DLC.  Time to build a computer solely to play this game, but I don't know if I can do what Ninety-Three did.

 

One moment I really enjoyed from New Vegas was Cass's Heartache By The Number quest and its two-person assault against the Van Graff gun shop.  We had to sneak into the building across the street, lob grenades at the guards, then hope for the best (and reload often) fighting the Van Graffs inside.  It felt appropriately brutal.  I've been reading a few Fallout 4 diaries and it seems so many groups are hostile all the time.  If everyone is shooting at you from a mile away, you can't recreate the feeling of starting a raid with Cass.

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sigh. i just want to post how much i love FNV. i'm like 10 hours into F4, and i'm enjoying it, but I liked the writing and tone of FNV so much more. The F4 audio diaries are pretty decent though, better than the dialog i've experienced. 

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I just got around to playing through this recently -- not because of Fallout 4, but because I've meant to for a while and a youtube personality I follow just did a LP of it which I wanted to watch without spoiling the game for myself. It's a good game! The world feels a bit sparse, in that even the most populous areas only have like 50 people, but I really like how many options you have to solve quests. Afterwards I went back to play Fallout 1 and was surprised how often you have to resolve situations by fighting, and NV more frequently gives you options in that regard. I love that all of the skills are nearly equally useful, and can be used in multiple ways. In the first two games several of the skills are of questionable utility, though the incredibly taut stat system of the original 2 isn't nearly as tight in New Vegas.

The DLC is mostly pretty good, though I thought Honest Hearts was both boring and vaguely racist and I very quickly tired of Ulysses' monotone blathering. I gather a lot of people hate Dead Money, I think for the same reason a lot of people hated Far Cry 2: Some people just don't like being disempowered. I thought it was great though, and in terms of tone and story it was the best part of the game. Getting attacked by a hologram as it's simultaneously playing back a panicked diary of someone trapped while the missiles are hitting is one of the most clever and poignant uses of audio diary I've seen in a game.

Personally, I'd say Old World Blues > Dead Money >> Lonesome Road >>>>> Honest Hearts

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Honest Hearts is ultimately what made me flame out on my New Vegas playthrough, it just felt dreadfully boring compared to the regular world.  I looked at a FAQ to see how quickly I could just mainline it, but ultimately just decided to call it quits (I was already feeling that a bit before getting to HH, but that just finished it off). 

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I've started to play through this while waiting on F4 to make its way into my library, and so far I'm not all that impressed. The dreary green overlay is gone, but it's replaced by a dreary brown desert that's not so fun to navigate. I find the spiral they try to make you go through irritating. The awful character faces are still a thing. The weapons at the start feel super-ineffective. It's a weird combination of 'go explore' with 'follow the plot' that doesn't work that well for me.

 

I have no idea how much I'd like Fallout 3 if I tried to play it these days, but this...well. The oddest thing to me is that I still somehow don't quit playing it, but it's not very enjoyable from moment to moment.

 

I will say that I found several of the story nuggets to be pretty cool, like Boone's story and the Helios power plant (although that ended on a bit of a whimper but maybe there will be consequences down the line).

 

It's such a weird combination of retreads (the fallout 3 skeleton and the oblivion rpg) that don't blend well together at all for me.

 

My final dislike is that there's literally zero driving force for me to go do something. 'Find guy who shot me' does not have the same impact for me as 'find dad' does.

 

For reference, I've made it to Boulder.

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I will say that I found several of the story nuggets to be pretty cool, like Boone's story and the Helios power plant (although that ended on a bit of a whimper but maybe there will be consequences down the line).

 

There won't be (unless you directed the power to the weapons system). I was disappointed by that, touches like Helios and Yes Man made me think the game wouldn't end when it did and instead you'd get to transition into being ruler of the Wasteland, managing various things.

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I've started to play through this while waiting on F4 to make its way into my library, and so far I'm not all that impressed. The dreary green overlay is gone, but it's replaced by a dreary brown desert that's not so fun to navigate. I find the spiral they try to make you go through irritating. The awful character faces are still a thing. The weapons at the start feel super-ineffective. It's a weird combination of 'go explore' with 'follow the plot' that doesn't work that well for me.

 

I have no idea how much I'd like Fallout 3 if I tried to play it these days, but this...well. The oddest thing to me is that I still somehow don't quit playing it, but it's not very enjoyable from moment to moment.

 

I will say that I found several of the story nuggets to be pretty cool, like Boone's story and the Helios power plant (although that ended on a bit of a whimper but maybe there will be consequences down the line).

 

It's such a weird combination of retreads (the fallout 3 skeleton and the oblivion rpg) that don't blend well together at all for me.

 

My final dislike is that there's literally zero driving force for me to go do something. 'Find guy who shot me' does not have the same impact for me as 'find dad' does.

 

For reference, I've made it to Boulder.

 

Having played both recently. Fallout 3 is even worse :)

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It's been a few years, so at this point I mostly remember what really resonated with me. I do remember thinking that HH was weaker in a lot of the mission structure, but I really liked The Burned Man's story, and the sad stories of the various high level Legion (and ex-) people. Also, I thought the park was a scenic change of pace. 

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It's been a few years, so at this point I mostly remember what really resonated with me. I do remember thinking that HH was weaker in a lot of the mission structure, but I really liked The Burned Man's story, and the sad stories of the various high level Legion (and ex-) people. Also, I thought the park was a scenic change of pace. 

I thought Joshua Graham was a cool idea for a character, but that just made it more disappointing that he really doesn't do much interesting in Honest Hearts. The survivalist's logs were neat, though, and the change of scenery was nice, it's just that the actual content was so tedious, preachy and vaguely racist.

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Aye, I finished Dead Money (loved it) and just started Honest Hearts and I agree with a lot of what's being said here - it's kind of boring, weird, and bleh. Like others I'm really enjoying the survivalist's logs though - those are what's keeping me going. The Burned Man is neat too:

 

He was built up as such a legendary badass in the main game that I was really excited to meet him. But when I did, I was sort of taken aback by how much of his story, and the story of New Canaan, is about the survival of Christianity through the apocalypse. So far, from what little I know about him, his journey feels like a spiritual one. I know he wants to destroy the White Legs, but I don't know if I should let him, or convince him to evacuate! I'm really divided - which action is more of a redemption for him? Other people talk about how he literally "burns" with the fires of war - is that his God-given purpose, and will he realize it by protecting the Sorrows and the Dead Horses...or is his redemption to be found in finally turning away from war and evacuating Zion? I got no clue.

 

As always, I find the writing in New Vegas to be really strong. I've heard Old World Blues is a pretty funny one - they got Doctor Venture's VA to voice part of the robot-brain thingy or something right? I'll probably do that one next and Lonesome Road last, since that seems canon. I like how all the DLC are referencing each other so far - everyone mentions Ulysses, or the Big MT, or the Divide, so it keeps me interested in what's ahead.

 

Ninety-Three - is this the video series you watched?

 

 

I watched a little of that and it looked difficult as hell! Good luck to you! It sounds like a very different experience from a "normal" run.

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Ninety-Three - is this the video series you watched?

 

Yes. I don't have his nigh-perfect memory of traps and unique weapon spawns, but I've played through the game a few times and have a pretty good memory. The major difference between our playstyles is that he follows the intended quest progression, while I like to make a quick trip to New Vegas (still following the U-bend path, I'm not a maniac) so that I can rob the energy weapons store and use the proceeds to buy the Intelligence implant while still level 2. After that I fast travel back and more or less follow the main route. Also, I get a lot more mileage out of the cowboy repeater.

 

I got a new machine that happens to come with some decent recording software, so I've been recording my sessions, although I don't have any particular plans for the videos. Maybe so that if something really cool happens I'll have video of it.

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Update: Made it to the Strip, cleaned out a couple of vaults, am now tasked with finding out crap about all the tribes/families. I think this may be my quitting point, I'm not even a little bit interested in these people.

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Hi, I also liked Dead Money! Heard a lot of largely negative opinions of it before I played it, but I was pleasantly surprised. Thought it had a better sense of "place" than many locations in the base game.

Old World Blues was my favourite though. Kept me laughing all the way through.

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Thought it had a better sense of "place" than many locations in the base game.

Well said! Yeah, I think its sense of place was what made me love it too. The story and the act of adventuring through the Villa and the Madre felt really tight and well composed. I don't understand the negative reviews either!

 

You might want to at least do the Ultra-Luxe/white glove society one, it's fairly short and pretty entertaining

 

Seconded! The Ultra-Luxe is the best of the casino family quests to me. The Omertas I found uninteresting. Does the Tops have a story beyond chasing Benny?

 

Osmosisch, are you working with Yes Man then? I went that route once and found it to be too much too fast - the world opened up and I suddenly wasn't sure what to do or why. When I restarted:

 

I went to work for Mr. House instead. But when you do that, you can keep Yes Man in your back pocket as well. So you can betray Mr. House at any time and take the reins. He'll still give you missions though, and his clear direction made me feel more comfortable and motivated to go forward. At the same time, I feel more interested in the story because after every big event, I have to weigh in my head if now is the best time to spring my trap.

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I'm really glad to see people enjoying Dead Money! It caught alot of flak when it first came out for taking away your inventory (You'll notice none of the later DLCs do that) and the amount of traps/difficulty in general, but it's easily my favourite too. I really liked being forced to scavenge for supplies and conserve ammo, and the characters are all so well written. The scope of the setting is small enough that there's a fantastic amount of detail to everything and it always ties back to their theme.

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Also the holo-rifle is sweet as fuck. Once it's repaired it basically stays repaired no matter what you do with it, so I just loaded it exclusively with max charge cells and it one-shots pretty much everything that's not a deathclaw.

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Well said! Yeah, I think its sense of place was what made me love it too. The story and the act of adventuring through the Villa and the Madre felt really tight and well composed. I don't understand the negative reviews either!

 

 

Seconded! The Ultra-Luxe is the best of the casino family quests to me. The Omertas I found uninteresting. Does the Tops have a story beyond chasing Benny?

 

Osmosisch, are you working with Yes Man then? I went that route once and found it to be too much too fast - the world opened up and I suddenly wasn't sure what to do or why. When I restarted:

 

I went to work for Mr. House instead. But when you do that, you can keep Yes Man in your back pocket as well. So you can betray Mr. House at any time and take the reins. He'll still give you missions though, and his clear direction made me feel more comfortable and motivated to go forward. At the same time, I feel more interested in the story because after every big event, I have to weigh in my head if now is the best time to spring my trap.

I haven't said yes to anyone yet, I found Yes Man and then talked to Bennie, and now am sort of dreading having to go round everywhere and talk to everyone, I don't know. It doesn't help that I just remembered I had Shadowrun Hong Kong in my backlog which is beating the pants off this game as regards writing and interesting quest choices.

I did the White Glove stuff (good guy version) which I'll admit had interesting options, but still left me kind of cold. I think the biggest problem for me is still the uncomfortable split the game makes between exploration/open world and scripted story stuff. In contrast, I loved Skyrim because there a dungeon was always a sort of miniature short story, that I could explore and experience without having to do tons of dialogue staring at terrible face models. It may be I went into this with the wrong biases/expectations anyway. I'll probably chip away at this a bit more between other games.

Thanks for the discussion and tips :)

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