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Aizo · Sep 17, 2017

I always wanted to like NV. I loved 3 for the exploration, random events, perks, and side quests.

Sadly, I didn't enjoy my time with NV. I am totally willing to give it another shot to play side quests I missed or play the DLC, but my first time through the story was not a joy. This was years ago, but due to my flip flopping around the factions, I felt that I kinda broke the game logic. Things came together by the end for me in a manner that didn't make sense. Probably due to my love for trying to break games. I kept choosing odd choices I found to be interesting.

Probably the thing that bothered me the most was that, despite all the quests, the world felt very dull and dead to me. I once had a 7 min segment (I kept an eye on the clock, and the number stuck with me after saying it to my friends so many times) walking through the desert to a mission where I encountered zero enemies, NPCs, or events of any kind. The setting for most of the areas just wasn't interesting.

I really wanted to love it, but my experience was not ideal.

Shengar · Sep 17, 2017

DocSeuss said:
People refusing to acknowledge that Bethesda are one of the best developers on the planet, ignoring all the amazing bits of game design that go into making their games so wildly successful... it's hard not to see those people as grumpy assholes who can never be happy about anything. New Vegas feels like a game that gets a lot of love for what it could have been, rather than for what it is, which is a dissatisfying shooter with awful world design and a boring story.

Sorry this line reeks so much of fanboyism that I can't help but laugh and hurt my sick self in the process. Perhaps, they were one of the best during the heyday of Morrowind, but today? Their designs are hilarious bad, their story atrocious, and their post launch support basically left to the modding community to provide it for them (which they try to shamelessly try to facilitate an underpaid outsourcing via the Creation Club). Or maybe you mistook game like DOOM (2016), Wolfenstein: The New Order, or Dishonored as their creation. No they are not as Bethesda only act as publisher and proceed to slap straight conversion price for their game on developing world Steam Market front.

One thing that I hate about New Vegas wanking is how it will always managed to pull out the worst out of Bethesda blind fans out in the open. Maybe it just hyperbole that you said best developers on the planet when their last game is just a rehash of an older one with questionable designs decisions that already dissected either on YouTube and blogpost alike to point of makes you think "how could anyone like this game with such blind faith?"

Oh yeah, blind faith, that must be it.

carlsojo said:
Deep analysis gets called trolling now?

It's a flawed deep analysis where DoccSeuss assume certain part of design must according to his way of definition and ideal. It is judged under those standard, not by how well the designs are executed in the game (because if he does, the sentence best developers on the planet wouldn't existed in his post.

Some of his analysis is alright but it is clear that his arguments were mainly driven by his dislikeness of New Vegas wanking that it made himself looks dishonest in the process.

N21 · Sep 17, 2017

All I know is, even though I love B Softworks, they kind of screwed Obsidian over with not allowing them to have an end-game.

Van Bur3n · Sep 17, 2017

It seems being a game designer doesn't equate to knowing good design, as apparent in this thread.

Afrocious · Sep 17, 2017

I thought this would be about KOTOR 2

Comrade Crunch · Sep 17, 2017

I would love to see what Obsidian could accomplish with a couple years of dev time and an actual good engine.

NV is tied with 2 as my favorite game in the series and has a couple of my favorite expansions ever. I'm still surprised to this day that they made it in just 18 months.

Kthulhu · Sep 17, 2017

I had no idea Project Brazil was now called New California.

I've played a beta version of the mod and it's pretty solid so far. They probably should alter the part in the beginning where

the Enclave invade your vault and are almost impossible to get past. That dream sequence was a pain in the ass too.

Everything else is on point though. It almost feels like a legit New Vegas expansion.

UserDoesNotExist · Sep 17, 2017

Afrocious said:
I thought this would be about KOTOR 2

Same. Honestly a better game than the original, with the exception of the ending.

Anyway, in my mind, the love for New Vegas is simple to understand. Despite all the bugs and the rushed nature of it, it's clear that Obsidian intended to make a proper Fallout game, not just a game set in the Fallout universe. The same can't be said for Fallout 3, even though I very much enjoyed it and it's a good game on its own merits.

JCtheMC · Sep 17, 2017

Wulfram said:
Wow, there are a lot of puff pieces about Obsidian lately

It's almost as if they finally hired a decent PR firrm.

SoCoRoBo · Sep 17, 2017

New Vegas was such an amazing game; really a case of bottled lightning.

Phrozenflame500 · Sep 17, 2017

New Vegas was definitely my favourite RPG in a very long while, and I'm very happy whenever it gets recognition.

chemicals · Sep 17, 2017

I play New Vegas a couple of times a year. I just love it. The different things you can do... It's just so freaking fun.

AlphaDragoon · Sep 17, 2017

Yeah, for me there's a glaring difference between the freedom I felt in F4 and NV in doing quests and exploring. However, there is one thing I really loved in F4.

My favorite thing in F4 ended up not exploring the world, not doing the quests, but getting a bunch of housing mods and turning it into The Sims on steroids with the settlements and rebuilding towns to normal, non-wasteland status. My Sanctuary Hills was completely cleaned of trash and debris and I replanted healthy trees, completely changing the look of the place to an autumn forest city. I built a multi-story apartment complex with amenities for each settler, and a bar/restaurant for people to hang out in. I wired everything for power just like it would be in the here and now. I built a stone gate around the perimeter (and a bunch of laser defenses) to ensure raiders and the like couldn't get in.

That was where I got my enjoyment from in F4, and I'm glad I played it for that reason. But when it came to actually going out into the world, it wasn't nearly as fun as NV. Even when I modded the hell out of it I couldn't change much about how you go about things (on the subject of F4 mods, the one that makes you not Shaun's parent and actually modifies voice lines to reflect that is the GOAT in my opinion).

In modded New Vegas, I could do quests all sorts of different ways (and that's just from what was there in vanilla) and have all kinds of different characters who had to do things completely differently. I made a doctor who is averse to killing and found ways to complete quests without doing so, instead rendering enemies unconscious and leaving the area. I made a fully melee-oriented character who didn't use guns and had found an old Pre-War laser katana from an imagined Japanese resistance against China (I made the weapon myself, it's actually fairly popular on the NV Nexus).

There was just way more freedom to me. I liked that there was a path that they intended for you to take if you are starting out but would not restrict you in the least from just tearing through the Deathclaws and going straight to New Vegas. I liked how many ways a quest could be completed. I liked that your character was a blank slate that YOU decided the story for, instead of "Shaun's middle-aged parent who was in the military and married with a robot butler in Sanctuary Hills". That was why when I got done building my settlements, I stopped playing F4.

_Aaron_ · Sep 17, 2017

New Vegas is awesome. Would love to see a follow up with Obsidian given a proper amount of time to work on it.

Meowster · Sep 17, 2017

Afrocious said:
I thought this would be about KOTOR 2

Honestly? Same but I'd probably list both games in my top ten and above their original games.

Harmondale · Sep 17, 2017

Thinking I need to pick this game up

Although, I bought F3 late, like in 2013, and made it out of the vault but gave up pretty much directly because I had to talk to "someone" in a quite big junk yard of a city and I was running around for 30 minutes talking to every npc without finding the right one and I was like nope screw this I dont have time for it

Will the same thing hapen for me in new vegas?

I would love the concept of just walking around , find interesting places, gear up, creat my "own story" kind of Skyrim which I loved. Is this possible in new vegas or will I have to follow a quest line and do side quests which i dont find that interesting to do in order to "progress"?

This and Metal gear rising could be my gems from 7th gen that I would love to play again on the xbone

_Aaron_ · Sep 17, 2017

Harmondale said:
Thinking I need to pick this game up

Although, I bought F3 late, like in 2013, and made it out of the vault but gave up pretty much directly because I had to talk to "someone" in a quite big junk yard of a city and I was running around for 30 minutes talking to every npc without finding the right one and I was like nope screw this I dont have time for it

Will the same thing hapen for me in new vegas?

I would love the concept of just walking around , find interesting places, gear up, creat my "own story" kind of Skyrim which I loved. Is this possible in new vegas or will I have to follow a quest line and do side quests which i dont find that interesting to do in order to "progress"?

This and Metal gear rising could be my gems from 7th gen that I would love to play again on the xbone

Fallout: New Vegas doesn't have a slow beginning like Fallout 3.

The opening cutscene establishes the premise and your mission for the game. Benny shoots you. You survive. Now go find Benny and enact your revenge. New Vegas' storyline and world is cleverly designed but you don't have to follow it. As soon as you leave the Doc's house you're free to explore the world.

New Vegas has way better options for roleplaying a particular character and creating your own stories than F3 does imo.

dlauv · Sep 17, 2017

This game is amazing.

I think I still preferred Fallout 3's theme park world map, but New Vegas had locales with a real sense of place. Legendary Items felt more special because of it.

I'm sure there's some happy marriage of the two, and I'm sure that marriage would have been more time and budget for Obsidian.

Of course, besides World Map, New Vegas is better in most other accounts.

Sanpei · Sep 17, 2017

Switch version is my dream...

Acerac · Sep 17, 2017

Brerlappin said:
I felt like Obsidian fanboys just went over fucking board hyping the shit out of it because they hated Bethesda more than FNV being a genuinely great game.

This is a very sane opinion.

Alexander DeLarge · Sep 17, 2017

DocSeuss said:
People refusing to acknowledge that Bethesda are one of the best developers on the planet, ignoring all the amazing bits of game design that go into making their games so wildly successful... it's hard not to see those people as grumpy assholes who can never be happy about anything. New Vegas feels like a game that gets a lot of love for what it could have been, rather than for what it is, which is a dissatisfying shooter with awful world design and a boring story.

Josh Sawyer in 2003 while working on Van Buren said:
"We're not trying to make a game for everyone. Really, we aren't. But we're not making a game just for you and ten other angry guys with tastes that are narrower than a hallway in a camp of pygmy dwarves."

Fallout fans have a history of doing this but I don't think this quote was intended to be used to attack people who were upset that their roleplaying series got acquired by a company who used that IP to create a loot shooter with the conversational complexity of YES, NO, SARCASTIC YES and TELL ME MORE.

We may be grumpy assholes but it's not like we'll never be happy. Generally speaking, the same people who love Fallout New Vegas revere Morrowind. It's the continual "streamlining" of mechanics, the technology that can't sustain the concept (cities are 10 buildings with 12 NPCs placed around), is a pain in the ass for modders and the open world design that we take issue with. Skyrim in particular feels like a missed opportunity. The concept art looks nothing like the game. No survival mechanics for a game that takes place in a winter wasteland, remember this was a year after Obsidian shipped FNV. No spears, dumbed down magic, fundamentally flawed world design, boring one dimensional quests, you can be the leader of all the guilds and all of the factions on a single character, the list goes on and on and on and this has been covered extensively by 2 hour long videos on YouTube.

The thing TES/3D-era Fallout games thrive on is immersion but Bethesda's recent output are designed around mechanics that break any sense of immersion people can have. Especially the invisible quest markers so people can mindlessly complete content. Sure, you can disable it but because of the lack of information NPCs give you, you'll be wandering around with no idea as to what to do. It seems the industry had their mind blown that Breath of the Wild succeeded despite the game not holding the player's hand every step of the way. Why wasn't Bethesda proving that with every release?

Morrowind vs Skyrim said:
"Nuleno Tedas gave me directions to Urshilaku camp. The camp is due north from Maar Gan, but high ridges lie in the way. Follow Foyada Bani-Dad, a deep ravine just north of Maar Gan, northwest to the sea. A shipwreck at the seamouth of the ravine is a landmark. Swim east around the headland. Pass east through the ruins of Assurnabitashpi Shrine. Urshilaku Camp lies east of the ruins, inland in a low hollow."

vs

"stare at your compass and point towards the quest marker then hold W for 10 minutes (assuming you hadn't stumbled onto it earlier allowing you to fast travel)"

CloudWolf · Sep 17, 2017

carlsojo said:
I dunno New Vegas is far from perfect. It goes from an open world in Fallout 3 to a game that corrals you into a specific path to get to New Vegas. And the actual city of New Vegas was such a huge letdown.

The writing was definitely not a complaint though.

I will never, ever understand this complaint. New Vegas is much more open world-friendly than Fallout 3 and 4. In Fallout 3 and 4 if you somehow manage to get into a place the main quest says you shouldn't be in yet, you will find yourself for a locked door which can only be unlocked if you trigger a certain story-event.

New Vegas suggests a path for you to New Vegas which takes you by every major faction and introduces you into the world, which is kinda needed because they didn't put scaling enemies in the game à la Bethesda and narratively it's much stronger than just throwing the player out there and saying "Well, go figure everything out on your own". But literally nothing is stopping you from skipping all that and running to New Vegas immediately. You can easily evade the Cazadors and Deathclaws if you know what you're doing and the game will even acknowledge you got there ahead of time (characters will say that they didn't expect you yet and the main quest will skip the early quests you didn't do by beelining to New Vegas). Last time I played Fallout: New Vegas I managed to be in New Vegas within twenty minutes of starting the game.

MartyStu · Sep 18, 2017

Acerac said:
This is a very sane opinion.

It would be if it were not attached to the rest of the post.

And it is important to question WHY sections of the cRPG fanbase began to dislike Bethesda's RPGs. Especially since many of those people probably love Morrowind.

It is not out of some inane fanboyism. Bethesda has, and continues to, make decisions in their RPGs that are antithetical to what they expect from RPGs. That is a fair gripe to have with a company and their gaming output.

Ivory Samoan · Sep 18, 2017

This is "reinstall NV and mod it up and play it for 200 more hours" the thread for me haha.

Triteon · Sep 19, 2017

Alexander DeLarge said:
We may be grumpy assholes but it's not like we'll never be happy. Generally speaking, the same people who love Fallout New Vegas revere Morrowind. It's the continual "streamlining" of mechanics, the technology that can't sustain the concept (cities are 10 buildings with 12 NPCs placed around), is a pain in the ass for modders and the open world design that we take issue with. Skyrim in particular feels like a missed opportunity. The concept art looks nothing like the game. No survival mechanics for a game that takes place in a winter wasteland, remember this was a year after Obsidian shipped FNV. No spears, dumbed down magic, fundamentally flawed world design, boring one dimensional quests, you can be the leader of all the guilds and all of the factions on a single character, the list goes on and on and on and this has been covered extensively by 2 hour long videos on YouTube.

I don't see why loving NV means shitting all over Bethesda. I generally consider FONV to be my favourite modern single player game but I think my love is built on a foundation of Bethesda design decisions. The biggest being FPS. its just far more immersive for me than isometric and I have a hard time going back to isometric even when the games are new. But there are smaller decisions like the doubling down on the 50's motif that I think work to better the series.

Also Bethesda's modern games, while not necessarily rising (IMO) to Vegas's heights have been some of my favourite games. I like being in their worlds. Bethesda has moved away from traditional RPG and into more of a open world sandbox style of game and a lot of people seem to like this style of game. I do wonder if their next project, or at least their next fallout will take into consideration the apparent backlash to FO4 and reverse some of their streamlining or if they will continue to move into a more narratively focused and action driven sandbox style of play. I also wonder where my personal "line in the sand" is for their streamlining because for all my grievances toward FO4 I still enjoyed my time with it.

Do I wish they would put more emphasis into story, character, roleplaying elements and stat based gameplay? Sure. am I part of the problem because I buy all their shit? Sure. But apart from Witcher 3 (and even then I'm not fond of the defined character and third person camera and doesn't exactly scratch the same itch) there is little to no competition in the space, maybe that's the real problem.

Diprosalic · Sep 19, 2017

So glad we got one final good Fallout game before the franchise is damned to eternal mediocrity under Bethesda.

BigTnaples · Sep 19, 2017

DocSeuss said:
I love how hardcore gamers get mad that Fallout 4 is dramatically more successful (and higher rated on metacritic lol) than New Vegas.

While I have great admiration and respect for Obsidian, I think people forget how genuinely awful New Vegas is in basic moment-to-moment gameplay because there's more reliance on RPG stats than there should be in a fuckin real-time video game. It's got a couple great quests and mostly mediocre writing throughout. There's just not that much of a difference between what Bethesda and Obsidian did.

Could Obsidian have made a better game than they did? Yeah. They had basically no time to make the game. Can't hold it against them.

But people like Bethesda's games more because Bethesda makes dramatically better worlds and systems. *shrug*

Wish Obsidian had the time to make something great, but other than the one cannibal quest in New Vegas, and the overall aesthetic, the game really isn't that great.

People refusing to acknowledge that Bethesda are one of the best developers on the planet, ignoring all the amazing bits of game design that go into making their games so wildly successful... it's hard not to see those people as grumpy assholes who can never be happy about anything. New Vegas feels like a game that gets a lot of love for what it could have been, rather than for what it is, which is a dissatisfying shooter with awful world design and a boring story.

This man knows what's up.

New Vegas was good, but all to often people act like it has some amazing jump in quality from FO3 or even 4.

Just isn't the case.

Drillary Clinton · Sep 19, 2017

I'd donate both kidneys for a remake of New Vegas with $4's gameplay and visuals...

CecilRousso · Sep 19, 2017

New Vegas is definitely my favorite RPG. And that is despite:

*A bit bland world design.
*The limitations of the engine.
*A pretty boring start.

I can somewhat understand those who unfortunately fell of the game quickly because of that. But there's a big difference between saying that you didn't see the qualities of the game, and proclaiming that it barely has any, like some says.

The story and the premise of the game is great, to have this battle about a specific area of the world, rather then the typical Jesus focused "the whole world is at stake" stories that plagues the genre.

Loved the factions in these games, and how they played out against each. During my first playthrough I sided with Mr. House until

he demanded that I would destroy the Brotherhood of Steels presence in the area, which I tried to talk him out of, and ended up killing him instead after deciding that I wouldn't do that for him, with me having befriended them earlier.

And while the world design might have looked bland, there was so much to the map to discover and so much to the locations. Vault 11 is still one the best experiences I've had in the genre, and I discover that one long after my first playthrough. That Bethesda put so little focus on this aspect in Fallout 4, and just filled every location with the same enemies over and over again, really made me loose faith in them.

And Obsidian also put attention to one detail, that even CD Projekt fails at - they made the game world seem to actually be able to function. The Witcher games are great, but it always bothered me about how hordes of nightmarish creatures seemed wander just a few steps from the lives of every day civilians. Where the super mutants in New Vegas are mostly contained to hard to reach mountain areas, and the presence of Death Claws and Nightkins near settlements are considered to be something out of the ordinary in the game, The Witcher 3 had civilizans organising a horse race just next to a ghoul nest, or had people working out in nighmarish swamps filled with drowners.

New Vegas still suffered from the typical weirdness of modern Fallout games, with people not interested in cleaning out burnt books or moving burnt cars a bit to the side, but they at least not had people dining with skeletons like Fallout 4 had.

All in all, New Vegas have some short coming, but still had an attention to details and quest design, that should but unfortunately doesn't seem to inspire that many other RPG devs.

Sgt.Pepper · Sep 19, 2017

New Vegas is legit one the best rpg game I've ever played. The amount of options are great.

Joshmyersbv · Sep 19, 2017

I loved New Vegas, its the only fallout game I ever beat. I replayed it several times picking different factions each playthrough. I never finished Fallout 3 because I didnt care about the main story.

I didn't even get to The Institute in Fallout 4. Having to micromanage settlements and seeing them constantly get under attack turned me off big time. I consider myself a perfectionist so when a settler died I instantly reloaded the game lol. I couldn't play that s*** anymore, it drove me crazy. Not to mention the main story I didn't care about for I had no attachment to the main character's child at all.

TheRedSnifit · Sep 20, 2017

BigTnaples said:
This man knows what's up.

New Vegas was good, but all to often people act like it has some amazing jump in quality from FO3 or even 4.

Just isn't the case.

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