Fallout: New Vegas

[TinCow]

They could use Bethesa's code and modify it, however, unless they have full-backing from Bethesa or ZeniMax, that will never happen.

That will never happen. Bethsoft want the MMO rights for themselves, and they will get them if Interplay fails to make the game.

[Monk]

Bethesda would need to create a new engine for an MMO. If they tried to use the FO3 one it would immediately put me off, which is what i'm feeling toward New Vegas at the moment.

When it comes to Fallout 3 i'm suffering from severe franchise fatigue, Bethesda milked that game dry with all the DLC: Point Lookout, Broken Steel, the Pitt, and Mothership Zeta (am i forgetting one?). I did so many things, encountered so many new places, people and events just within the base game and its add-ons. At this point, any game that comes along sharing the same engine is simply going to feel like more of the same, and that is something I don't want. FO3 had a good run but right now i'm craving innovation, and so far i'm not seeing it.

[Beskar]

Bethesda would need to create a new engine for an MMO. If they tried to use the FO3 one it would immediately put me off, which is what i'm feeling toward New Vegas at the moment.

When it comes to Fallout 3 i'm suffering from severe franchise fatigue, Bethesda milked that game dry with all the DLC: Point Lookout, Broken Steel, the Pitt, and Mothership Zeta (am i forgetting one?). I did so many things, encountered so many new places, people and events just within the base game and its add-ons. At this point, any game that comes along sharing the same engine is simply going to feel like more of the same, and that is something I don't want. FO3 had a good run but right now i'm craving innovation, and so far i'm not seeing it.

Could be worse, you could be picking up Dwarf Fortress then you will be begging for Fallout3.

[Monk]

Could be worse, you could be picking up Dwarf Fortress then you will be begging for Fallout3.

No, because then i'd be blind!

[Lemur]

Bethesda milked that game dry with all the DLC: Point Lookout, Broken Steel, the Pitt, and Mothership Zeta (am i forgetting one?).

Operation Anchorage. Zing!

[rvg]

Chris Avellone is an RPG God which makes me cautiously optimistic about FO:NV

[miotas]

Anyone in america played it yet?

[Prussian to the Iron]

Due to the Steam requirement, I'll wait this one out til its like 20 bucks. that way in case it stops working like Empire did, I don't have to worry about having wasted 50 dollars.

[Fragony]

Reviews are great, sounds like an improvement on everything, better writing, more brutal and tighter gameworld. Can't wait to play the hardcore mode Fallout 3 was way too easy even very hard, only deathclaws were a threat once had the slish-kebab you could rofl your way through till the endgame.

[miotas]

More bugs too from the sound of it

I'll still be getting it when it's out here though. I'm getting it on PC this time (I got 3 on xbox) so I can play mods

[TinCow]

Played for about 5 hours so far, and I like it a great deal. Despite living in DC, I like the new setting better than the DC setting for Fallout 3; it just feels more authentic. That, along with lots of minor changes to the game make it feel a lot more like FO1/2 than FO3 did. I very much like Hardcore mode. It's nowhere near as nasty as the name makes it sound, and in fact feels very well balanced. The changes are:

1) You have sleep, hunger, and thirst levels. Like with radiation, as they get higher you start to incur penalties to your stats. The levels increase at a very appropriate pace. I find that I have to eat food and sleep about once per in-game day and drink a few bottles of water (or other thirst relieving stuff) per in-game day. That's not difficult to do at all, and gives a real purposes to food and drink, which it didn't really have in FO3. It makes the game feel a bit more real and the world a bit more dangerous without causing too much inconvenience. Food and drink are never hard to find, if you don't mind incurring a few rads. If you want clean food and drink, you'll need to pay attention to them and plan ahead.

2) Healing occurs over time, instead of instantaneously. 'Over time' means over the course of a few seconds, rarely more than 10 seconds. So, this makes no difference at all for a lot of the game. The only impact it has is that you can no longer be taking a massive amount of damage, pop into the pipboy, use 5 stimpacks, and be perfectly fine and continue the battle. You'll need to be somewhat safe for at least several seconds. This seems to me to be simply removing a rather cheap aspect of combat in FO3 (and FO1/2 for that matter) and makes you consider tactical positioning a bit better during fights.

3) Stimpacks don't heal crippled limbs anymore, you have to use doctors' bags. Bags heal cripples limbs instantly and (as far as I can tell) without fail. The only difference is that they are harder to find and weigh more. So, this is a minor change that will mainly impact your inventory and shopping priorities, with the added complications if you find yourself crippled and out of doctors' bags and far from a friendly settlement.

The crafting system looks very interesting as well, but I haven't done much with it yet so I don't have much to say about it.

Bug-wise, there are many bugs and I see one at least every hour. That said, they're generally the same bugs from FO3, largely dealing with clipping issues and textures and such. They're annoying, and hard to ignore when you encounter them, but (so far) they're not game-breaking.

[Fragony]

What system are playing it on? PS3 version of Fallout 3 was well polished if you can forgive some popup and the odd muddy textures. The only bug I can think of is that sometimes it has long loads in Megaton, booting up the menu for a reload fixes it. Happened 4 times or so no biggie.

[TinCow]

What system are playing it on? PS3 version of Fallout 3 was well polished if you can forgive some popup and the odd muddy textures. The only bug I can think of is that sometimes it has long loads in Megaton, booting up the menu for a reload fixes it. Happened 4 times or so no biggie.

I'm a PC-only guy. I can't comment on what bugs were in the console version of FO3, only that I'm experiencing the same issues in New Vegas that were common in FO3. For that matter, those same bugs were pretty common in Oblivion as well, so it seems clear to me that it's an engine issue, at least on the PC.

[Fragony]

That is reassuring, engine seems to feel right at home on the consoles, for a game that wants to immerse you in it's gameworld bugs are really unfortunate. Gawd why are they doing this to me, 3 great releases in a week. I will probably be getting this but Medal of Honor and Vanquish look so yummie. Bit dissapointed to hear that hardcore isn't all that hardcore I like my rpg's hard as nails. At least reviews claim you won't have such an easy time maxing out and really have to consider your build.

[TinCow]

That is reassuring, engine seems to feel right at home on the consoles, for a game that wants to immerse you in it's gameworld bugs are really unfortunate. Gawd why are they doing this to me, 3 great releases in a week. I will probably be getting this but Medal of Honor and Vanquish look so yummie. Bit dissapointed to hear that hardcore isn't all that hardcore I like my rpg's hard as nails. At least reviews claim you won't have such an easy time maxing out and really have to consider your build.

Hardcore mode is separate from difficulty. Hardcore just enables the stuff I listed above, but there's a difficulty level that can be adjusted independently of Hardcore mode. There are five difficulty levels: Very Easy, Easy, Normal, Hard, and Very Hard. On lower difficulties, enemies do less damage and take more damage. On higher difficulties, enemies do more damage and take less damage. Hardcore mode can be enabled on any of them. I am currently playing on Hard difficulty with Hardcore activated. I have died a few times and have received crippled limbs many times. I got totally pwned once by a monster (Giant Radscorpion) that I simply didn't have good enough weapons/skills to kill

If you want a difficult game, go with Very Hard difficult with Hardcore mode on. If you're good at FPS games and played FO3, you'll probably be able to get by in Very Hard, as long as you don't mind reloading a lot. It's far from 'impossible' for those kinds of gamers, but likely to be enough of a challenge to cause you to die repeatedly.

[miotas]

Have you encountered Caesar's Legion yet? I think I read somewhere that they were going to use correct latin pronunciation. Maybe not a huge feature, but certainly a nice touch if it's true.

[TinCow]

Nope, not yet. So far I've only visited two 'settlements' near the starting area, plus the starting town, as well as some random exploration in between those areas. The factions I've encountered so far are the neutral inhabitants of two settlements, a group called the Powder Gangers, and a few NCR Army types. Seeing the NCR again is pretty nice, and it helps make the game feel a lot more connected to the world of FO1/2. The Brotherhood of Steel never really felt right in FO3 due to their location, but NCR fits in perfectly in New Vegas. I've also met several people from The Hub, which is another nice shout-out to the originals. Oh, and I've made Healing Powder out of the same ingrediants needed to make it in FO2. It's little stuff like that that makes New Vegas seem to fit better into the FO1/2 world than FO3 did.

[Kekvit Irae]

I've been playing it on and off since launch. It's much closer to Fallout 1/2 than 3 was, with the re-introduction of "Pick up to two traits at the start" and the fact that Wild Wilderness trait gives you random encounters that are more along the lines of the weird stuff you find in F1/2, such as

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Indiana Jones in the fridge

.
The only damper to the game is the HORRIBLE optimization they did. You even look at a group of NPCs and the game drops from a steady 60 fps to 5 fps. I haven't found a fix yet.

Have you encountered Caesar's Legion yet? I think I read somewhere that they were going to use correct latin pronunciation. Maybe not a huge feature, but certainly a nice touch if it's true.

One of the early NPCs you meet in the game (Easy Pete, I think...) says something along the lines of "See-sir's Legion... or Kay-sar's Legion" when he's regarding how it was pronounced.

[Kekvit Irae]

Temporary fix to anyone suffering NPC slowdowns (re: any combat with more than one NPC): http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloa...e.php?id=34778

It may not work for everyone, but it's worth a shot.

[Fragony]

Have you encountered Caesar's Legion yet? I think I read somewhere that they were going to use correct latin pronunciation. Maybe not a huge feature, but certainly a nice touch if it's true.

That would be quite the feature as nobody knows how latin is pronounced

[LeftEyeNine]

First patch out.

10 mins of great impressions so far. "Better leave it to the masters" is the motto, that's for sure.

[TinCow]

Have you encountered Caesar's Legion yet? I think I read somewhere that they were going to use correct latin pronunciation. Maybe not a huge feature, but certainly a nice touch if it's true.

I had a couple run-ins with a few groups from Caesar's Legion yesterday. Those guys don't mess around, that's for sure. They pronounce Caesar as 'KAY-SAR', which I gather is proper Latin pronunciation.

I continue to run in to FO1/2 references in this game. Met two people last night with connections to FO2. One was a singer in New Reno and has a backstory involving Mr. Bishop. The other claimed to have been a vertibird pilot a long time ago, but retired after she crashed outside of Klamath. She won't comment on it any further, but that refers specifically to a crashed Enclave vertibird in FO2. It's amazing how much impact these little touches have on my perception of the game. They make it mesh so well with the original storyline.

I have a new complaint though: the radio music is WAY, WAY too repetitive. It was bad enough in FO3, but it seems like in New Vegas there are only about 4 songs on the radio and I'm already stupendously sick of them. If I hear the song about the man with the big iron on his hip one more time, I'm going to go on a murderous rampage. I really hope the GNR radio modders are working hard to fix this horrid situation.

[LeftEyeNine]

Atleast3characters

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

One of the very initial quests mentions about some Ringo who has taken refuge in Goodsprings being hunted. However I have yet to find any quest entries about him, nor any place markers. I got a Yahtzee memorial, Quarry and Great Khans encampment by taking a quick exploration around. Anybody help with spotting Ringo please ?

Edit: Über-Silly me.

[Veho Nex]

Is it just me or does the map feel very small compared to FO 3. I feel like im just walking around Inner DC without the ability to visit the wastelands.

[Kekvit Irae]

Atleast3characters

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

One of the very initial quests mentions about some Ringo who has taken refuge in Goodsprings being hunted. However I have yet to find any quest entries about him, nor any place markers. I got a Yahtzee memorial, Quarry and Great Khans encampment by taking a quick exploration around. Anybody help with spotting Ringo please ?

Edit: Über-Silly me.

If you took the time to read the dialogue about where he is, you would have found him by now. :P

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

He's in the gas station next door to the doctor.

[LeftEyeNine]

I never saw that indeed. Thanks.

By the way, isn't it, uuh, wrong that no dialogue logs nor quest markers show up after such dialogues ? Or does it bolster Vault Dweller's exploration enthusiasm ?

[Kekvit Irae]

I never saw that indeed. Thanks.

By the way, isn't it, uuh, wrong that no dialogue logs nor quest markers show up after such dialogues ? Or does it bolster Vault Dweller's exploration enthusiasm ?

Quest markers only show up if you're on an active quest. Since the quest to defend Goodsprings starts from him, you obviously wont get a marker before then. It was the same in Fallout 3; you're going to have to search around for the people to start quests if you want the markers.

[LeftEyeNine]

Quest markers only show up if you're on an active quest. Since the quest to defend Goodsprings starts from him, you obviously wont get a marker before then. It was the same in Fallout 3; you're going to have to search around for the people to start quests if you want the markers.

Having played Fallout Disasthree no more than 10 minutes, I never knew that as well. Arigatou.

[al Roumi]

Despite the lacklustre review on RPS, comments from those who took the plunge early convinced me to get NewVegas over the weekend. I'm a few hours in, up to about level 5 or 6 and I'm really enjoying it. More than I have any recent releases like civ5, and more than Dragon age (which I was trying to start up again and gave up in favour of NewVegas) -that's probably also due to not anticipating the game before the release (I wish i could remain immune to the same with other franchises like civ or TW..).

What really put me off starting DA:O again, and which I like about NewVegas, is that there isn't actually much of a preamble. It takes all of about 10 minutes to get your character sorted and be awarded your freedom to explore the wasteland. It's several hours in DA:O and almost an hour in Fallout3 (if memory serves), while I may appreciate the preamble the first time I play a game, it's pretty frustrating on subsequent playthroughs.

So, a few hours and 5 or so levels in, I'm having a riot exploring the wasteland. I can't see how the RPS review was written, it looks like they game the game to the wrong player.

[Fragony]

I really liked how Fallout 3 set you up, 'growing up' was a really nice touch. I like it when gamey elements are so will integrated in the gameworld's reality. Once the game really starts you already have a bit of a history, beats -bumped my head who the hell am I-