Fallout New Vegas

More info

http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/in...1&st=0&start=0
  • First-person action RPG with the same engine as Fallout 3.
  • Set in the Mojave wastelands. Vegas didn't get many nukes. More intact buildings, as well as desert vegetation. Vegas itself is mostly intact.
  • The Hoover Dam is in the game and is supplying electricity to the city.
  • You don't play a Vault Dweller (or descendant of one) but a courier, left for dead and saved by a friendly robot.
  • The overarching story is a struggle between the locals, Caesar's Legion (a faction of slavers from the east) and the New Californian Republic.
  • NCR base is the McCarran Airport, Caesar's Legion is based in the Vegas Strip, while super mutants are based in a place called Black Mountain. There is also a town called Fremont and another called Primm. A topless revue is mentioned as being in the latter.
  • Both karma and reputation are tracked. If I'm reading it right there's separate reputations for each of the settlements, as in Fallout 1 and 2.
  • All dialogue options are shown to all players, regardless of whether you have the stats to succeed or not, though there's no punishment for failure.
  • Skills have a bigger effect on conversation choices. e.g. someone with a high Explosives skill may be able to have a conversation about explosives where appropriate.
  • Bartering is not just lower prices but negotiating for better rewards.
  • VATS returns, and melee weapons have special moves in it. The golf club has "Fore!", which is a shot to the golf balls (so to speak) that knocks the opponent down. Weapons also now have knock-back upon death, with shotguns sending mans flying.
  • Super Mutants return, but in two varieties - the smarter ones from Fallout 1, and the idiot ones from Fallout 2. On at least one occasion you can convince them to fight amongst themselves.
  • New weapons include what appears to be an M4 and a grenade machine gun.
  • Followers can be managed through a context-sensitive menu, with orders like "follow", "stay" or "attack".
  • Hardcore Mode! In this mode, Stimpacks heal over time (as opposed to instantly), combat is tougher, ammo has weight and you can suffer dehydration, so keep some water on you! Normal mode is more similar to Fallout 3 gameplay.
  • There is a quest to rescue a ghoul from some super mutants. The ghoul can then become your companion.
  • The Geckos are back.
  • One of the screenshots has a Super Mutant with a blond wig and pink heart-shaped glasses.

More context for somethings:

  • You're a courier, wounded and left for dead in a shallow grave. A friendly robot, Victor, digs you out, and his doctor owner Mitchell patches you up. You take a "vigour test", which is some sort of electric parlour game. This decides who you are and sets up SPECIAL. You can also take some Rorschach tests, but the mag says this is for fun. The Doc then gives you a Pipboy as he was once a Vault dweller.

  • "Hoover Dam", and "Helios" (a solar plant, confirmed by the mag to have been built by Poseidon) are fought into and then you can direct the power to wherever you choose. In the case of Helios you can also keep the plant for your self use the energy to call down a powerful laser, or even try to distribute to all equally, however there is a risk of overloading the reactors.

  • There is a "reputation system", in which all three factions (NCR, Caesar's Legion and the locals) will either see you as good or bad toward them individually.

  • There is a screenshot of three Capital Wasteland mutants running toward the player, who is wielding what *looks* to be a heavy incinerator, but has a TV screen and no flamer fuel tanks. He's also wearing NCR combat armour, which is in gold/mustard colours.

  • There are two separate screens of supermutants that look to be more local, grey skin, and the two are wearing very different clothes. One is Tabitha, who is hearing a blond wig and love heart glasses. The mag implies she's "not all there".

  • One that quest, you rescue Raul, a ghoul who Tabitha kept alive to fix her favourite robot. He appears to be a follower, as the mag says you can give him items, and also commands, such as "stay, follow or attack", and also tell him to switch to melee, in which case he'll mutter "sure, I'll put away my rather effective gun, and switch to this piece of um, metal tubing here".

  • From what I read, the "all dialog" thing seems to imply there will be failures for skill checks as well as speech checks, though, as the mag states, there is no penalty for failing a skill check. In fact, the mag gives an example: A woman who the player tried a Sneak skill attempt on in conversation failed when convincing her an ambush would help the town be rid of a gang of raiders. She simply says ""Good luck with your, uh, ambush"

J.E. Sawyer (Project Director)

Quote:
This is how it works. Each skill-based dialogue option has two different texts: one for high skill (which will result in success) and one for low skill (which will result in failure). If you do not meet the required threshold, you see the latter.
Quote:
There are a few reasons for including this:

  • In the same way that a locked safe beyond your Lockpicking skill indicates, it lets the player know that there's an option here.
  • Some of the NPC responses to low skill checks can be pretty entertaining.

I also do want to clarify what is meant by "no penalty for failure". All it means is that you won't wind up in a worse position than you were before selecting it. If a dude bursts in and is intent on killing you, he's still going to want to kill you if you fail the Speech check to talk him out of it.
 
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  • It shows the command wheel for followers, with 8 commands: toggle melee/ranged, open inventory, toggle stay close/keep distance, back up, toggle aggressive/passive AI, use stimpack, toggle wait here/follow me, return to normal dialogue.

  • Scripting is wittier, characters more distinct. Example from vigour test word association: mother-human shield.

  • Opening inventory consists of a kit from the doc, adapted to your starting stats (like Fallout 1).

  • The Nevada area is less affected by the nuclear war, so it has plant life, relatively unspoiled houses, and in visual presentation has saturated colours and a bright sky.

  • There's a tutorial (led by a character named Sunny who looks a lot like Moira Brown), but unlike Fallout 3, it's optional, so you can hit the open game in 5 minutes from starting.

  • NCR and Caesar's Legion are the confirmed faction, article assumes Brotherhood of Steel will be in but they weren't not mentioned in the presentation.

  • "In New Vegas it's all about the player examining the ideologies of the various groups that are controlling the area and supporting one over the others," explains Sawyer. "Each of the ideologies will have something good that you can relate to, but will also have massive flaws."

  • When asked about PS3's Fallout 3 being inferior to the others and if New Vegas will do better, Obsidian devs make no promises but indicate it was a learning process and they're working with all 3 platforms and all have problems.

  • The New Vegas strip is still in construction but will have gambling, variety shows and concerts.

  • Electrical power is key in the faction struggle.

  • Radiation is still a problem, there's a nuclear test site to explore north of New Vegas.

  • The soundtrack will blend "Rat Pack style tunes with more Western numbers".

  • New Vegas doesn't tell a single-player story, but weaves decision into the gameworld and gives you greater power to influence things than Fallout 3 did.
 
When asked about PS3's Fallout 3 being inferior to the others and if New Vegas will do better, Obsidian devs make no promises but indicate it was a learning process and they're working with all 3 platforms and all have problems.

That doesn't sound too good :???:
 
Hardcore mode sounds hella fun, I wonder if that means the lockers will have a weight limit though possibly since I was always a packrat with any bullets/energy cells I found.
 
That's sort of a crazy question: 'Hey, would you mind biting the hand that feeds you and tell us if you can make a game better than Bethesda's much-acclaimed Fallout 3'?

What sort of answer did they expect? 'As far as we're concerned, New Vegas will be the true Fallout 3 and will make people forget about Oblivion with guns. NMA forever!'
 
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It'll be xbox exclusive for a short while and then it'll show up on the other platforms. Not really a fan of the exclusive DLC trend.
 
D'oh, I wonder if that excludes pc as well, got mine preloaded on steam already. I guess not a huge deal since it will probably take me a while to complete the main campaign anyways.
 
as i said in another thread i bought this for the pc at gamestop and i can't play cause of steam. Really upset
 
I played through the X360 version of Fallout New Vegas on Hardcore mode, completing it in roughly 40 hours. Going into the game I set a goal to participate in a fair amount of side quests while mainly focusing on the main storyline so I could finish up by Monday. Although I did complete the game, I'm afraid I didn’t even get to do half of the side quests--this game feels big! Though it’s not apparent at first, it sinks in about 10 hours into the game how much stuff there is to do in the Vegas wasteland. Anyway I'm writing up a very detailed review but here is what it all boils down to for the curious (remember, this is a brief overview).
Let’s just get this out of the way--Fallout New Vegas is a really good game. I think it actually surpasses the original Fallout 3 (proper, not including the DLC) in terms of its writing and plot, but falls behind technically because of bugs and hitches (more on this later).

I know this may sounds odd to hear but for an open world game the layering of main quests and side quests is well placed. Its structure allows for a nice flow of gameplay and story, and seeing (participating) in it unravel is really enjoyable in all aspects of a game. The sidekicks are more interesting than Fallout 3s as they demonstrate more personality and side quests for you to participate in (at least mine did.)

Playing Hardcore mode I had braced myself for a very strict challenge in provision and health management, but I was shocked to find that I really only hit a consistent wall with inventory management--particularly because of the ammo (which I would promptly ditch since I had so much). Hardcore mode isn’t as crazy as I thought it would be, but it was a fun. I think it's a nice feature that made the overall experience more exciting and interesting. At one point in the game I had no water resources on me; I was completely dehydrated to the point where it had a negative physical effect on me and I was scrambling. I was rushing through dilapidated rooms of an old apartment looking for ANYTHING to drink, and running into one room I eventually found a sink. Despite the inevitable radiation affects I just gulped down a few bucks worth. Relieved I stepped back, flipped on my Pipboy flashlight to loot the room and was disguised to find what I had done--drank out a goddamn toilet. It was awesome that Hardcore mode drove me to that ridiculous of a point. :)

A quick rundown--what else is cool?

Skill checks that effect dialog trees--or better yet, ones that have no effect--are now clearly marked with a red box. You can save your game at any point--even when enemies are nearby. Work Benches allow you to create cool stuff, like bombs and stimpacks, from all the junk in your backpack. The Reloading Bench allows you to create more powerful ammo that's great to switch to for tougher foes (but will wear down your weapon more quickly). Perks can be unlocked via in-game achievements, so for instance killing 75 bugs unlocks the Bug Stomper perk increasing damage. You can have one sidekick in your party along with Rex (the dog, who kind of weak). All Vegas table games are really well done (some of the best I've seen in a video game) and very fun to participate in.

The game, overall, has a warmer feel to it due to the blue skies, the soft electric glow of signs (electricity!), the amber UI and in some cases less destruction to the terrain. Weapons now have a DPS rating so it's much easier to see what your real damage output is.

The technical issues I experienced were pretty crazy. The game crashed several times on me forcing a restart (as in, rebooting the X360). One time the gambling interface completely disappeared on me and I was no longer able to play blackjack until I reloaded a previous save game. One time I picked some berries and the ground texture suddenly transformed into a gigantic blurry mess. Several times enemies got stuck in environmental pieces like walls or a rocks. Load times can, at times, reach ridiculous levels even when installed on the 360s HDD. The worst offender of it all was the degradation of the frame rate over time. Twice I had to clear the cache on my console, reboot it and then everything was fine for a while, but there were certain moments in the game where the hitching was bad despite this. If just feels like it could be a little more optimized technically.

Also I want to add a note that the cursing in the game got to a point where I was sort of winced. It’s not that I’m offended by foul language when it has its place, but there were times in New Vegas where it felt forced and unnecessary. Fallout 3, I felt, was able to get their point across without any cursing whatsoever. So fair warning to those sensitive about this stuff. I'm usually not bothered by this sort of thing and for whatever reason it was a bother in a few places.

Overall the game is great! It doesn’t feel like it could have been Fallout 3 DLC, but has its own place as a proper sequel. It's got new weapons, tons of interesting characters to chat with, a (seeming) million places to visit and an interesting plot. There are some truly epic moments in the game that everyone open-world gamer should experience. The factions add an exciting effect to your place in the world, and at the very least add another interesting dimension to it all. Listen, if you loved Fallout 3 then you will love Fallout New Vegas--possible more so if you can get through the glitches.
 
Looks really ugly on consoles. Probably not that much better on PC so I'll wait some time until graphic mods arive to make it shine like Fallout 3 with mods (or without).
 
Well I expect buggy crash laden games from Bethesda, but I love their games anyways so I don't care, playing it day one. If I could endure the issues in Daggerfall, then I'm sure I'll be able to endure this games issues. It is a shame that the game hasn't graphically improved though, but I'm hopeful it's because they put their resources to the next Elder Scrolls game.
 
Don't really care too much for the visual quality. I'm glad for any RPG that doesn't take me for an imbecil. It actually lets me role play in my role playing game. Hardcore mode in particular sounds pretty damn awesome to me.
 
I'm actually thinking of going the PC route on this one, but right now I have too many games to finish, and Fable 3 is coming next week. I'd say Dragon Age runs a bit better on my computer than it does on console, and I'm guessing Fallout New Vegas would run pretty well.
 
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