Old World Blues preview on Gamergaia

Brother None

This ghoul has seen it all
Orderite
Gamergaia previews the upcoming New Vegas DLC Old World Blues, mostly by summing up known information. They put the release date at "June 14th, 2011", though what that's based on I do now know.<blockquote>Previous DLCs have kicked off with a new quest marker in the Mojave Wasteland leading to a point of no return, not allowing us to revisit the New Vegas map until we’ve completed the add-on’s quest objectives, so we can assume a similar plot progression for Old World Blues. It looks like gunplay and other technical aspects won’t receive any major upgrades, but that’s what we expect from DLC – seldom do add-ons make vital changes to established game mechanics (I was left gaping when Honest Hearts, using Skyrim’s new dialogue system, had Joshua Graham fluidly cleaning his guns as he spoke to you, rather than standing ramrod-stiff and staring soullessly at you as Fallout characters tend to do). New enemies are always lots of fun to discover, and the crazed “Lobotomites,” victims of experiments gone awry, sound like they’ll do justice to the series’s track record with horror.

You will not be stripped of your equipment, a feature of previous DLCs that had players (rightfully) up in arms, and as with all New Vegas add-ons, the level cap is bumped up by five to give you room to grow. You’ll receive a perk option to cap yourself at your current level, thus ramping up the challenge, as well as the opportunity to rework your character’s appearance and abilities in case your Courier is, like mine, horrifically ugly.</blockquote>
 
Previous DLCs have kicked off with a new quest marker in the Mojave Wasteland leading to a point of no return, not allowing us to revisit the New Vegas map until we’ve completed the add-on’s quest objectives, so we can assume a similar plot progression for Old World Blues.

We can not, as it was stated already that you can move from the Mojave to OWB worldspace whenever you want to.

(I was left gaping when Honest Hearts, using Skyrim’s new dialogue system, had Joshua Graham fluidly cleaning his guns as he spoke to you, rather than standing ramrod-stiff and staring soullessly at you as Fallout characters tend to do

What. That's just an animation that is played when the NPC is interacting with some world object... and it continues if the player talks with him in that moment. Nothing new in here, that was already in the other games.
 
Alphadrop said:
Brother None said:
DLCs that had players (rightfully) up in arms.</blockquote>

This comment has me up in arms.

Yeah what is up with the thing being dropped every time somebody talks about DLC.

only 2 of the Fallout 3 let you keeps your guns. and 1 was a different area of the game. the other 3 took your crap away. People seem to forget these things.
 
This was hardly worth posting. We learned nothing new... and she's obviously not even familiar with the newer installments of the series.
 
Am I really the only one who likes gear stripping in DLC? With all the powerful weapons and armor you get in the main game, you'd think everyone would be happy to have a reason to use the new stuff.
 
It's just hard on suspension of disbelief when it keeps happening again and again, especially given some of the strained explanations they've used to get your things away from you (and, at the end of the run, conveniently back into your hands), and it gets to be old hat after a very short while. I wouldn't mind if each and every DLC offering stripped me naked and dumped me in a peat bog, so long as they could come up with original, plausible ways of doing so each time. They can't, though. Not because it's beyond them, but because getting away with it even once requires some collusion and willing blindness on the part of the player.
 
Alphadrop said:
Brother None said:
DLCs that had players (rightfully) up in arms.</blockquote>

This comment has me up in arms.

Yeah. You know, part of the reasons games are fun is because they impose certain limits, and you have to perform under these constraints. Sometimes the most fun comes out of doing something really inventive with those limits, or using pure skill to obtain some high-level armor/guns early on, and so on.

Taking all your equipment lets producers program a more even experience in this regard. Some of us want a challenge, instead of blowing through dialogue and mini-nuking anything that moves. We can always choose to leave our equipment behind, but yeah, this reaction by some is so sad...
 
WelcomeToNewReno said:
Am I really the only one who likes gear stripping in DLC? With all the powerful weapons and armor you get in the main game, you'd think everyone would be happy to have a reason to use the new stuff.

Gear stripping isn't a bad idea by and of itself. The two DLCs so far handled this very well, IMO.

DM was built around the idea of a survival horror with scarce resources. Stripping gear was necessary - seeing as how the weapons in that DLC are generally inferior to the NV ones, they'd never get used. Also ruining the difficulty and ultimately making the area a run of the mill dungeon crawl fragfest. Stripping weapons in this case added some much-needed difficulty.

HH had a pretty sensible solution too - flat weight that can be raised by a skill check. 34/45 kg seems like a very reasonable limit given the circumstances. It actually made sense in-game, unlike the pretty dumb reasoning for DM.

For those not familiar the explanation given is that the casino's automatic entrance system thingy doesn't let anything even slightly radioactive enter the complex.
 
TwinkieGorilla said:
You'd be surprised (would you?) by how many FO3'ers have absolutely no interest in the concept of "challenge".

It's a trend that applies to gaming as an industry and no, I'm not surprised, I'm disappointed.
 
"DUUUUUUDE! This new vegas DLC suuuuucks! Why can't it be like 3, the best game EVAAARRR!!!11!1!1!, and let me bring my plasma powered, rocket shooting minigun?"
 
WelcomeToNewReno said:
Am I really the only one who likes gear stripping in DLC? With all the powerful weapons and armor you get in the main game, you'd think everyone would be happy to have a reason to use the new stuff.

I like it too, I really don't understand all the hatred for it. Why would you spend money on new content if you don't want to use the new content?
 
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