This is why I prefer New Vegas. Why or why dont you?

Don't get me wrong, I love NV but dear god the invisble walls and Dead Money just kill it for me at times.

>Did you like having fun?
>Well just to make sure, we're going to remove all your hard-earned items
>Oh and here's your complimentary bomb collar
>If you don't listen to Hitler he'll kill you because why not
>Have fun navigating through some of the world's worst level design
>Radios are for cool people, it's not our fault they make you blow up
>Did we mention you can't kill anything unless you sever a limb?
>You're also not allowed to have money
>Instead you can use these whacky casino chips to buy only a few useful things at vending machines
>But you won't get anything good until you find the proper recipes
>If you don't like Melee or Energy weapons you can go fuck yourself with a rake
>Basically you're going to start the game over from scratch and you're gonna like it
>We hope you enjoy spending time with an autistic Nightkin because his perk is mandatory
>Oh and if you let your companions die then everyone dies
>You didn't want your stimpaks anyways, did you?
>Welcome to Dead Money, the DLC where everything's fucked up and the chips don't matter
>By the way, the air around you is full of menstrual blood
>Now you too can experience what it was like to get gassed to death in a concentration camp!
>"LOL GIT GUD XD HAHAHA DLC OF THE CENTURY :^)"

I mean, story's cool and all but I don't know what kind of fucking drugs they were on when they made this. I wanted to do Honest Hearts first, and at least the weight limit isn't crippling. Dead Money is the most anti-fun bullshit in the game, and the story isn't going to excuse it no matter how good it is. I can get through it, it's just infuriating is all. If you don't think that they made several poor design choices then you're talking out of your ass. And I'll excuse it, because it's JUST the first DLC. One of them has gotta be shit, so probably this one.
 
Dead Money is the best DLC to me. I really don't mind getting my items removed as I didn't pay 10 dollars to one hit ko everything in the new location. Dead Money also enforced survival and rationing items.
 
Walpknut said:
Dead Money is the best DLC to me. I really don't mind getting my items removed as I didn't pay 10 dollars to one hit ko everything in the new location. Dead Money also enforced survival and rationing items.
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One of the things I like best about Fallout is when the game gives you the feeling that you're vulnerable, that you're in over your head, and that you need to pay attention and be careful. When the game manages this, it's really the best part of post-apocalyptic games. Given how New Vegas is structured, you can only maintain this feeling for so long (eventually you're going to level up, find good items, and end up with a surplus of meds, ammo, etc.)

DM's whole point is to try to give you back that feeling, at least for a little while, no matter how high level you are, and I think it does this masterfully. Were I able to show up to the Sierra Madre in power armor with a plasma caster it would have been a lot less entertaining.

It's sort of telling that one of the most common complaints about DM is "you don't get very good loot."
 
Dead Money is anti-fun bullshit? It's probably the most interesting part of the entire game for me. You see, I get that a lot of people dislike Dead Money, either because they think the level design is confusing, or that the cloud and enemies are unfair. But there's a subtle magic to it. Right from the start, you lose everything, and are dropped into a suspicious place, with a strange old man talking to you, antagonizing you into doing what he wants.

The first thing Dead Money does right is bring you back to square one. It's easy for games like this to fall into power fantasy loops in the late-game and DLCs tend to be useful to throw you into something different or at least explore the gameplay with another perspective. This makes you think, think about how to navigate, think about how to kill, and most interestingly, teaches you how to scavenge. Because in Dead Money scavenging truly means something because you need to be smart about how you use what you have - you can't just rely on your supply of 100+ Stimpaks or your overpowered SMG, you have to rely on what you can scrap along the way, and more importantly your intelligence and how you build your character to face this challenge.

And you know, even though there is barely anything to help you, it makes every person on your team important. It's crucial that you know how to deal with your companions, because it's very likely they can stab you in the back or refuse to help you depending on what you say, or do. And the game makes you well aware of that.

There's a certain beauty in being able to create an actually eerie game environment. It's more difficult than in a movie, or a television show. I've never been scared by Resident Evil or Silent Hill, but Dead Money managed to make me uncomfortable. It's not about just throwing scary monsters and difficult situations in your face. The way you slowly learn about the terrible history of the Sierra Madre, living among what became of it and its residents, having to face increasingly more dangerous enemies and realizing what became of those tortured souls. Every terminal carrying bits of the story, every new information you learn from dialogue, it's all so carefully positioned to make your experience more complete.

The effectiveness of the Dead Money plot comes into place when you see how they integrate the themes into the game. The main idea of the story is told to you explicitly, but its presence in the world is told in a nuanced way. It's a common theme seen in the entire New Vegas game. Many things in the game are about moving on. Veronica questions her loyalty with a decadent Brotherhood that refuses to let go of its codex and move on. Boone is obsessed about what happened to his wife and can't seem to let go and move on. Raul is conflicted about his past and his role in a new world, he's not sure whether to let go and move on. Lily knows that if she takes her meds full dose she'll forget her memories, but should she let go and move on? Arcade is conflicted about his father having been in the Enclave and whether he should stand by them or let go and move on with the Followers of the Apocalypse. Cass is holed up in the Mojave outpost because her caravan got her sacked but she values her ownership of it so much she's hesitant to let go of it and move on.

The groups and factions are a part of this as well: the symbols of the old world, the past, have no place in the new world. They are the beacons of society as it was a long time ago, may it be ancient Rome or a "modern" era Republic. The ghosts of the old are haunting the past, which will prevail? Or will something new be created in the process, clashing with the old, forming a synthesis?

These details are all there in the base game, but Dead Money decides to tackle them as the backbone of the narrative as opposed to just one depth among many. God/Dog is he manifestation of the Hegelian dialectics Caesar talks about. His two different, clashing sides can combine into one into a synthesis, a new individual who lets go and moves on. Dean Domino is so obsessed with the Sierra Madre treasure that he stops at nothing to try to get it, unable to let go. Christine is so filled with vengeance against Father Elijah after what he did to her and the Brotherhood that it clouds her judgement.

It's all about the conflicts that define us as humans. It's a fight between ideals and realities, opposing forces, past and present, dreams and possibilities. Dead Money isn't the kind of mindless game where you just follow objectives and try to uncover a simple story, it carries a common theme. New Vegas also carries its own themes, and each DLC as well, and yet another one if taken together.

Even the Sierra Madre itself has its own story separate from the one you're playing. You have two protagonists, Vera and Sinclair. You sneak around holographic projections of Vera's last moments. You can tell she feels betrayed, lonely, and abandoned. It's hard not to feel sorry for her. You hope that whatever happened to her, she at least died in peace. Then you stumble across her suite. There's a skeleton on a chair in the corner; it's Vera's. She sitting there, surrounded by Med-X and Stimpaks. You realize she probably died a horribly slow death, abandoned in an empty hotel, her last moments spent desperately injecting herself with various drugs. No redemption, no honor, no ceremony. Just left to rot in a chair in her bedroom. As for Sinclair, he is killed in a pointless exercise, fixing pipes, a complete contrast to how he saw himself and everything in his life, because his greed didn't allow him to look at simple details. And even knowing all that, characters like Dean and Elijah still only care about themselves. Hell, even you, the player, probably thinks, "How do I bring all those gold bars with me?"

Ah, Elijah. Using him as the antagonist for Dead Money partly because you can already learn so much about him in the base game, with Veronica or with McNamara, and for the whole time you create an image of this character. When you finally "meet" him... you don't actually meet him, but a projection of him giving you orders with mysterious objectives. You already knew from the start that Elijah's thirst for technology has turned him into what some may call a monster. But interacting with him throughout the quests, and that final conversation where he explains all his plans, and ties in elements from the game's backstory to quests in the base game to the current storyline and even to future DLCs... it all clicks together in a brilliant form.

Dead Money turns gameplay on its head with a whole different setup that still uses the same design principles as the rest of the game, but makes you rethink how to play when you don't have your sniper riple and power armor, and builds a world that, while much smaller, carries so much depth. And it ties all that with rich characters and some of the most interesting worldbuilding and writing in the game. How could I not love Dead Money?
 
There is the Camp Forlorn Hope/Nelson quest, the family in Cottonwood, the Omerta quest and the Van Graff quest that don't directly link into the main quest. I understand the allure of the older games, the quests that hinted rather than had action, but large organizations like the NCR and Legion aren't going to be doing the small scale, espionage quests that hint at bigger things. They would still engage at times, whether the Rangers liberated some slaves or the Legion took the fight to the NCR supply lines. There is a lot of power in telling and not showing, but show me some stuff too to get me interested and invested in the plot.
 
Wait what? Camp Forlom Hope connects directly to the Legion/NCR conflict, the Omertas are planning on bombing the Strip when the battle of Hoover Dam breaks loose to ensure an easy occupation for the Legion and the Van Graffs expands on the west and even has implications of the Legion starting to have an interest in Energy Weapons.... How don't they connect to the main quest?
 
Warhawk said:
New Vegas is swell until you hit the wall and realize the game is over. There are only so many combinations, so many outcomes, and like F3, there are plenty of broken and dead-ending quests, pointless story arcs that have fudged endings, and ultimately the big elephant in the room:

Invisible walls preventing you from exploring a world you just know is incredibly large. A world you cannot touch. A world the NPCs harp on about but never allow you to see. A burgeoning nation-state here, a tribal empire there, but you just can't touch it. You find much more coherent and intriguing lore in New Vegas, but by the end of the day, whether you're staring across the naval yard from Rivet City, or out across the desert landscape from the farthest Boomer lookout tower at Nellis, you know in the back of your mind that there is simply nothing rendered there. No meaning. No sense. At once a blank slate, ripe for creation, and a truly barren wasteland without a shred of potential. How depressing is it to follow rail lines to broken bridges, even though the lore claims that there are trains pulling NCR reinforcements up? How pitiful that you can see highway overpasses that you cannot touch, power lines stretching to nowhere, the occasional road that bends around a hill and stops, or that highway leading out of Mojave Outpost that disappears in plain view behind an arbitrarily locked gate?

Earlier Fallouts felt like good ol' RPGs to me. These games made me want to explore, and left me hanging.

That leaves you with one option: Invest in the location. But you simply cannot. Your character, no matter how omnipotent, stat-bloated, plot-armored and lucky, can't so much as pitch a tent, build a wall, start a family, raise an army, build a country. The lore and NPCs claim that they are, and yet all you see are sun-baked roads, random fauna, and inaccessible buildings which may as well be giant cubes dotting the landscape. For a game supposedly allowing people to live out post-apocalyptic fantasies of freedom and creativity, it really doesn't leave much to work with. And the more I attempt to tweak it with mods and the console, the less real it gets.
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not to mention characters you cant actually kill... much freedom. that being said, it is a fun game. it's just not the absolute best it could be imo
 
All games must end.... no idea how that can be a negative... it's kind of a weird one "There are only so much combinations" well duh? what game has infinite content (that isn't just generic fetch quests)?
 
They want repeatable missions where some NPC randomly spawns, comes to you with a quest, then you go kill something. As long as a new person comes to give a new fetch quest it has unlimited content.

Or you find something and then take it to some arrow on a map. Maybe another NPC gives you an unlimited amount of bounties to go kill NPC's that are spawned specifically for that encounter.

Radiant AI! Dynamic Volumetric Lighting! New and Improved!

Buzzwords. No better than Blast Processing.

New Vegas is better than Fallout 3 in practically every way. Some don't like the western theme, but I think it was appropriate. The factions were way better than Fallout 3 - more believable, fleshed out, faction specific quests, reputation, etc. But I feel due to many factions not being present in a large capacity- Enclave, BoS, Mutants - the Fallout 3 fanboys didn't take to it as well.

Despite what the Bethesda fanboys say they play New Vegas, (all of the F3 modders mod for FNV), so whether they admit it or not they see New Vegas is a better game overall. It's somewhat a testament to how good the game is since even some of it's detractors see the quality there when compared to Fallout 3.

If you throw in the DLC New Vegas annihilates Fallout 3 with a .223 to the face.
 
Walpknut said:
The only thing that makes F3 quests long is the walking and the "bring me x thing from this building across the map for no reason" shit they love to do in TES so much.
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Where they only have you go to that building for the purpose of that quest and theres no other reason to even be there ever. Yeah
 
TomJ said:
I personally preferred 3. Mostly because there was more action going on. Many of the side quests felt like grind in New Vegas, "go here, find this and bring it to me". Fallout 3 wasn't much better, but I wasn't expecting what happened in the letter delivery quest, having to deal with a group of reformed cannibals or how Big Town related to German Town and Paradise Falls. In New Vegas, I didn't get those links as much.

Don't get me wrong, there were things in New Vegas that I really liked. Like the companions having backgrounds and side quests, the Courier having a vague backstory like in TES games. But there just wasn't enough of it to make me happy. The game map was sparse compared to Fallout 3. I know someone will point out the copy/pasted locations in 3, but that's at least some incentive to explore. Instead of Fallout 3: Let's go to Vegas. You're herded to Vegas and kept there by the lack of much outside of it. Hell, I only go back to Primm or Goodsprings when I've run out of people to sell junk to, not as a launch point for more exploration.

I also didn't like how you are guided into either supporting an independent ending or the NCR. The NCR is the easiest because they're everywhere and will kill you. And House is the only person with redeeming value. As for being led down a path, look at it this way, only about 2/3 of the map is accessible and 80% or more of it has NCR people running around in it, who will shoot you for siding with the Legion. I'd rather have no choice in whom to side with then get bashed into siding with one person, or alienating the entire map and most companions.

Another thing I like is how the NCR is a caricature of pre WW2 USA, but it was made to feel one dimensional. As someone who has no nostalgia for the old games, this makes them look bad in my eyes because New Vegas is compared so highly with the old games, and I don't see it as a good game. It has satisfying bites, but not enough of them.

I know Vegas is an empty region to begin with, but you shouldn't make it feel more empty and restrict me to Vegas proper. There are and could have been other things going on in the Mojave that had nothing to do with Vegas, but that didn't happen. I generally rate open world games based on the world and story more heavily than other mechanics like companions and side factions. New Vegas at least to me, had a worse map and a half baked story. I felt no investment to the four main factions/stories. I was more invested and like the Kings and Followers and wished there could have been a Broken Steel like post main quest DLC involving them cleaning up after the NCR and Legion have been pushed out of the Mojave.

I know this post will get a lot of shit from the nostalgia driven purists that hate Bethesda, but they did make a decent game. You wouldn't have gotten NV to fawn over if it weren't for them. So be grateful there are new Fallout games to come and new fans to share experiences and complaints with.
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It sounds like you want a game where, no matter what your choice of faction is, you get the same gameplay every time. FO3 is perfect for you
 
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I once read a Beth fanboy that said that New Vegas is more rail roaded because quests close off if you hep the Quest giver's enemies... That's like... just... full retard.... no..... beyond full retard....
 
Walpknut said:
I once read a Beth fanboy that said that New Vegas is more rail roaded because quests close off if you hep the Quest giver's enemies... That's like... just... full retard.... no..... beyond full retard....
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You were reading a response from the average Bethesda fanboy. Usually they haven't sprouted chest pubes yet.
 
The most depressing thing of all is when you go read the comments section of any youtube video about 3 vs. NV. The number of people who actually think that 3 had a better story is equal or greater than those who think NV was superior in that regard.
 
LordAshur said:
The most depressing thing of all is when you go read the comments section of any youtube video about 3 vs. NV. The number of people who actually think that 3 had a better story is equal or greater than those who think NV was superior in that regard.
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There are certainly more plot points in Fo3 that are memorable to people who aren't really paying attention than there are in NV. I think that's the likely explanation for this phenomenon.

Almost all of the best bits in New Vegas are things that require you to pay attention and notice details. I guess some people have trouble with that, and their video game preferences reflect that.
 
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It's funny how the same nerds that will criticize Michael Bay are the same type of people who measure writting by one liners and set pieces.
 
LordAshur said:
The most depressing thing of all is when you go read the comments section of any youtube video about 3 vs. NV. The number of people who actually think that 3 had a better story is equal or greater than those who think NV was superior in that regard.
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I feel like the majority of people who comment on Youtube are kids or retards.
 
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