Fallout series

[Unimaginative Username]

Personally, I don't like any of New Vegas's DLCs because I feel that either the feel differs too much from the base game or else the hook that gets you into the DLC doesn't fit with the main story.

Honest Hearts fits in with the rest of the game best, but I don't see how anyone's suspension of disbelief can survive the idea that the Second Battle of Hoover Dam could happen any day now and you're just going to go AWOL from whichever faction you're backing so you can fuck off to Utah for a month with a trade caravan and will suffer no consequences for doing so. We all know that the main quest is event-timed instead of clock-timed, but exposing it so blatantly when the rest of the game does a pretty good job of hiding it rubs me the wrong way.

Lonesome Road sort of fits in with the base game, but its message is delivered with all the subtlety of a super sledge to the face, Ulysses and his endless monologues are insufferable. The way it places nuclear missile launch controls outside (completely unguarded, BTW) where you'd normally expect door controls, then forces you to activate them, just so Ulysses can scold you for doing so is unforgivable. And once again it involves you voluntarily leaving the Mojave with the big battle looming in the very near future.

The less said about Dead Money, the better. It does at least have a hook that involves you making a small detour to check out an abandoned bunker only to get shanghaied, so it avoids the question of why you're putting the main quest on hold while a rival faction potentially claims the Mojave for itself. I appreciate how the base game is designed so that a wide variety of character builds can beat it, so I don't appreciate how this DLC expects you to build around the Light Touch perk so you don't need to worry about all the hidden bear traps and the Rad Child perk so that you can regenerate health faster than the Cloud can strip it away from you. Even taking the partially collapsed buildings into consideration, the Sierra Madre was always designed as a maze instead of a resort, and Duke Nukem 3D had more believable maps than this a decade and a half earlier. Playing this game is neither fun like the base game, nor rewarding like Dark Souls (where having a boss beat your skeleton into aquarium gravel a few dozen times while you learn his movesets is not fun, but it at least feels really good when you finally see the magic smoke start pouring out of him), it's just tedium punctuated by sadism.

Old World Blues starts off with a decent hook, since you again make a small detour, this time to search a crashed satellite for loot, and get involuntarily teleported to Big MT but getting shanghaied twice in one game is so lazy that you'd think Emil wrote more for this game than just the manual. Unfortunately, it doesn't really fit the theme of the main game and outright contradicts part of its story. Mr. House tells you how he spent years having the route between his Sunnyvale factory and Vegas searched for the Platinum Chip and its essential Securitron upgrades, but someone decided that having a self-loathing miniature Securitron would be funny (spoiler: he's not) and changed the story to imply that the Securitrons were designed at Big MT instead. The only good thing I have to say about it is that I enjoy breaking the economy of the game, so being able to hoard half a ton of corn and empty bottles and then have the machines at the Sink increase their value by an order of magnitude by turning them into salient green and bottles of purified water almost makes up for the machines' primary outputs being cringe dialogue.

 

[R00T]

Honest Hearts fits in with the rest of the game best, but I don't see how anyone's suspension of disbelief can survive the idea that the Second Battle of Hoover Dam could happen any day now

It’s why I play it prior to entering New Vegas. It’s a moment in which the gears haven’t all aligned and all the chips aren’t down yet. Caesar’s attack on the Dam can’t start until he’s ready and story wise unless you side with him that moment is when the NCR is ready. The NCR can’t be ready until House is as well. It’s this paradox that House controls the pace of them as well since he holds the keys to Vegas and the NCR wants that settled prior to the fight. In the case of Legion while siding with House NCR or Yes Man it’s written off as Legate taking his time to travel to the front lines, amassing more troops and honing their skills. It’s this weird thing where Caesar is the frontal scout for Lanius instead of the other way around. The game also has you crossing the breadth of the Mojave to drop off a refrigerator magnet of House asks you to. I don’t know how many times you’ve crossed the desert but on foot it takes quite a while to do so. The dam has been turned into a major spectacle with the NCR and Legion taking the chance to show off their unmitigated power. Neither side is going to pre-emptively strike while the other party isn’t all in as well.

Unfortunately, it doesn't really fit the theme of the main game and outright contradicts part of its story

There isn’t contradiction and the theme is solid. It ties into the idea of letting go, the Think Tank are stuck in the past and this can either be exploited by the courier or addressed. All this amazing tech that could help the wastes and rebuild just languishing in a crater because the ghost of pre war can’t move on. It’s about looking towards the future and why the good and neutral karma ending twist the meaning of “Old world blues” into “New World Hope.” Instead of sticking in the past it’s better to continue working towards a brighter future, and that’s ideally what the courier is doing as the story builds up to the Dam.

The less said about Dead Money, the better. It does at least have a hook that involves you making a small detour to check out an abandoned bunker only to get shanghaied, so it avoids the question of why you're putting the main quest on hold while a rival faction potentially claims the Mojave for itself.

Aside from the first time I played Dead Money I have never had an issue with health management and avoiding the traps becomes a fun challenge. You just have to use your eyes.

Lonesome Road is the one I agree on but because it’s clearly a self insert which forces you into a situation counter to a lot of the appeal of the base game. You’re just a courier ensuring the job gets done. You build the name for yourself. Then you go to LR and all of a sudden civilizations are springing up in your wake and it’s just really off putting.

 

[Symbol of the Chud]

Personally, I don't like any of New Vegas's DLCs because I feel that either the feel differs too much from the base game or else the hook that gets you into the DLC doesn't fit with the main story.

It's all that hack Avellone's fault.
FNV and its DLCs have different writers, which is why the DLCs are so tonally different to the base game.
The theme of "letting go" that Avellone decided to hamfist into the DLC has the possibly least suited protagonist for such a message, a man who was shot in the head twice and crawled his way out of the afterlife in order to track his would-be killer across the entire wasteland to enact his terrible vengeance upon him does not make for a good candidate for "dude just let go and stop living in the past lol".
"Letting go" wasn't really the theme of New Vegas at all, only becoming painfully shoved in your face in the DLC.

Avellone wrote one (debatably) good story with Planescape Torment (his best story is heavily reliant on the fuckin amnesia cliche, but that's a discussion for another time) and now his fans treat him like the second coming of christ. End of the day, Avellone is an incredibly verbose and long-winded writer who takes two paragraphs to get a message across that could realistically be conveyed in a sentence. He also has clear mouthpieces he uses to get his own personal thoughts across that you will be forced to listen to. I swear to fuck if I ever have to hear some smug up their own ass faggot say either "Akshually, have you considered that THE FORCE IS BAD???" or "BULL BEAR BULL BEAR" I am going to lose my fucking mind.

 

[scathefire]

Honest Hearts fits in with the rest of the game best, but I don't see how anyone's suspension of disbelief can survive the idea that the Second Battle of Hoover Dam could happen any day now and you're just going to go AWOL from whichever faction you're backing so you can fuck off to Utah for a month with a trade caravan and will suffer no consequences for doing so. We all know that the main quest is event-timed instead of clock-timed, but exposing it so blatantly when the rest of the game does a pretty good job of hiding it rubs me the wrong way.

I don’t think this problem is unique to New Vegas whatsoever unfortunately, pretty much any game that has a main quest with life-or-death seriousness to it conflicts with the player deciding to ignore it indefinitely and do side content for however long. I don’t know if it’d be better or worse if at the beginning of Honest Hearts they were like “I’ve heard of you before, this seems like it’d be a bad time for you to neglect the current events in the Mojave” or some shitty hand wave like that, despite the fact that you’re doing the DLC anyhow. This problem is even worse in Fallout 4 for instance because your character is canonically panicked and desperate to find his or her son while the player can just fuck off indefinitely and go to Far Harbor or build settlements or whatever else while their only child seems to be in immense and unknown jeopardy.

Mr. House tells you how he spent years having the route between his Sunnyvale factory and Vegas searched for the Platinum Chip and its essential Securitron upgrades, but someone decided that having a self-loathing miniature Securitron would be funny (spoiler: he's not) and changed the story to imply that the Securitrons were designed at Big MT instead.

I don’t think it was meant to say that House’s Securitrons originated in Big MT, just that Doctor 0 was obsessed with hating Mr. House and trying to surpass and outshine him. The Securitrons on the Strip never go beyond Mark II but at the Deconstruction Plant they’ve been upgraded all the way to Mark VI somehow (despite all being broken and completely berserk), in a quite botched attempt to try and outdo RobCo.

But yeah I do hate Ulysses though, due to him being insanely pretentious and never shutting the fuck up. Thank god the plan to inflict him on us as a permanent base-game companion didn’t work out, it’s not a shame at all.

 

[Breadbassket]

But yeah I do hate Ulysses though, due to him being insanely pretentious and never shutting the fuck up. Thank god the plan to inflict him on us as a permanent base-game companion didn’t work out, it’s not a shame at all.

Think of all the "Bear and Bull" whinging we would've missed out on.

 

[Unimaginative Username]

I don’t think this problem is unique to New Vegas whatsoever unfortunately, pretty much any game that has a main quest with life-or-death seriousness to it conflicts with the player deciding to ignore it indefinitely and do side content for however long.

I know, but Honest Hearts is conspicuously bad, since you're locked into the DLC until you complete it and the members of your caravan actually take the time to say that it took two weeks to get to Zion before they get killed by scripted events, so it's going to be an in-game month spent away from the main quest and it's all done by choice. At least with the usual side quests, you can put them on hold for as long as you please, so they don't have the same feel of distracting you from the main quest.

 

[R00T]

I know, but Honest Hearts is conspicuously bad, since you're locked into the DLC until you complete it and the members of your caravan actually take the time to say that it took two weeks to get to Zion before they get killed by scripted events, so it's going to be an in-game month spent away from the main quest and it's all done by choice. At least with the usual side quests, you can put them on hold for as long as you please, so they don't have the same feel of distracting you from the main quest.

The story of New Vegas takes place over months. It's not feasible to have it any other way. It's a war between two major groups. It's not just going to "kick off" tomorrow since if it did the side kicking it off would lose. It's one of the things the game does surprisingly well. The Legion isn't going to make moves until it tries to:

1. Win the support of the families on the Strip. This is a critical part of the battle as it causes chaos and fires the NCR will have to deal with
2. Fiends and Great Khans. It won't be hard to convince the Fiends to put up an attack on McCarran but they won't cause enough damage, again just unrest. Now if the Monorail goes down and they're unable to move troops quickly from the Strip to McCarran and vice-versa. Getting the Khans onboard will help as well. Should've also included the Powder Gangers in that as well and there might be some connections there but I honestly don't remember.
3. The push from the south. The idea is to choke out the NCR on *both* sides of the Dam with a rapid push up through Camp Golf via a route from the South. Worst case is this is a small band that starts at Cottonwood Cove and just does damage (if Cottonwood Cove is even around still). Best case is a sizeable force positioned not from Nelson but from the former Forlorn Hope. If Golf falls quickly (and Hanlon will have a hand in that) then the Dam is all but lost.
4. House. He has to be removed. For Caesar this is his Rubicon. A simple but audacious move that will be exacting and perfect.

This isn't stuff that happens in five minutes. It requires planning, effort, coordination and a lot of footwork. We're talking months of work. Karl was *living* with the Khans. The MC suffers from MC syndrome and just makes everything happen faster at an unnatural speed. The courier ducking out for a month makes complete sense. Place it before they even make it to Vegas and it makes perfect sense. Courier needs caps, hears a call, goes for it. They're not getting through the gate to Vegas without the cash either way. What it was like 50 caps for the Kings to escort you across Freeside? Winding up with 2k on a whim isn't something entirely natural for the average joe. House only gives you 1,000 caps for delivering the chip. Guess what? That's FOUR times what you were to be paid for the trouble.

Prior to you walking into the Lucky 38 you are a Grade A nobody. the only person really keeping a tab on you is House through a few Securitrons scattered around that Victor can jump to (Victor shoulda played a bigger role). House probably doesn't even expect you to make it to his door. Watching you pack up and head for New Canaan probably makes more sense to him than you just waltzing through the gate of Vegas. And this same logic applies in almost every occasion. Okay you killed Benny or he slipped away. Go to the Fort and get the chip back. If you suddenly just appeared there he'd probably say "How the hell did you get here so quickly?!" The large scale stuff in New Vegas quite literally just works. It makes complete sense if you view it as a narrative rather than a game with a quest marker. The only thing up for debate is the motives and actions of various characters.

This problem is even worse in Fallout 4 for instance because your character is canonically panicked and desperate to find his or her son while the player can just fuck off indefinitely and go to Far Harbor or build settlements or whatever else while their only child seems to be in immense and unknown jeopardy.

Spoiler: My current F4 playthrough

In my latest playthrough I started with some settlement building before going to Diamond City and got the Fort up and running. I passed this off as being a stranger in a strange land and only Preston as a friend so I worked with him to establish a bit of a safe territory and restore the Minutemen. Then I went and started doing stuff in Diamond City up to and killing Kellog. I stopped upon the return to Diamond City and learning about the Memory Clinic (I don't like the exploration of Kellog's head. It's just time consuming and I wanted to start Far Harbor.) In my plot of my playthrough This was the moment that broke my character. Finding out my child was completely missing and the only hope was maybe using cybernetic enhancements left me quite shaken, finding out my child isn't a baby any more completely wrecked me. At this point while at Valentine's office I learn from Ellie about this family trying to find their child who ran off and while Nick is going to the Memory Clinic to discuss things with the doc I decide to take on a case on my own and wind up getting wrapped up in the troubles in Far Harbor. My family might be broken, but maybe I can put this one back together. After getting there and taking stock of the situation I established some settlements, devoted a ton of effort with Longfellow to winning the graces of the Harbormen, and eventually had to make some big decisions. Dima had to face the consequences of his actions, and so I left it to the people of Far Harbor. I was a bit disappointed they killed him but I convinced them to leave Acadia alone, if not for the synths for the understanding that we might lose the island if the condensers go down. Against maybe my better judgement as someone who tries to find a solution I snuck into the Nucleus one last time (I'd won their trust) and activated the key to doom the Children of Atom. While I did think Tektus was a dangerous zealot who would've doomed the island my bigger concern was the things I saw in the Fog. Walking the path of Atom showed me something. The Mother of Shadows may have just been a hallucination... but at the end of the day I can't be sure. Regardless, what was revealed was something that shook me, and no one should be following that darkness.

At the end of the long journey Kasumi is reunited with her family. I managed to make it work this time. Maybe in my own story I can make it work as well. I've taken some down time to shore up supply lines and now I'm gonna crack down and get to the Memory Den IF THESE FREAKING SETTLEMENTS WOULD STOP HAVING ISSUES.

Fallout 4 is a terrible RPG, but with a little imagination you can still find it compelling.

 

[Peasant]

Narratively, I think it works best if you do Honest Hearts, Dead Money, and Old World Blues all before you even make it to Vegas, with Lonesome Road being sometime after you start getting seriously involved in the political situation. It fucks with the pacing something fierce, but it helps explain how the Courier becomes known as an unstoppable force of nature. By the time Benny lays eyes on them again, they're a cybernetically enhanced veteran of a tribal war who's cut their way out of a city of the dead and has enough old world technology to make the BoS look like a bunch of chumps. At that point, the deference that the NCR and Legion give them is completely justified.

 

[R00T]

Narratively, I think it works best if you do Honest Hearts, Dead Money, and Old World Blues all before you even make it to Vegas, with Lonesome Road being sometime after you start getting seriously involved in the political situation. It fucks with the pacing something fierce, but it helps explain how the Courier becomes known as an unstoppable force of nature. By the time Benny lays eyes on them again, they're a cybernetically enhanced veteran of a tribal war who's cut their way out of a city of the dead and has enough old world technology to make the BoS look like a bunch of chumps. At that point, the deference that the NCR and Legion give them is completely justified.

The idea of Benny locking eyes with the schmuck he left in a grave and saying "What in the God-damn?" As a hulking half terminator wearing an amalgamation of Tribal bones, weaponized bear traps and a stealth suit asking if she looks fat does sound appealing.

 

[Illuminati Order Official]

Actually KotOR 2 is great and it's a good example of Obsidian's historical strengths as a studio, building off a previous game and world from another angle. You couldn't have KotOR 2 without the first one.

When I play Obsidian games, I want Avellone's pseudo-philosophical self-fellating sperging. This is what made Torment, KotOR 2 and New Vegas unique, memorable and fun. Without it it's just a generic RPG, usually with some really bad technical issues.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I like tackling Honest Hearts before entering New Vegas proper.

I like to play New Vegas with the slavery mod.

 

[foreman 89]

I like to play New Vegas with the slavery mod.

What mod?

 

[R00T]

i hope in the Fallout 3 remake if it is real they just stick a random field of corn next to Megaton just to make autists seethe. Fuck it put a field of corn on the deck of Rivet City, and a field of corn in the Republic of Dave, have a field of corn being eaten by Fire Ants in Greyditch.

 

[Myron]

i hope in the Fallout 3 remake if it is real they just stick a random field of corn next to Megaton just to make autists seethe.

Considering there were no additions/changes like that in the Oblivion remaster I don't see it happening and even if Fallout 3 is a remake rather than remaster (which it ideally would be but 100% wont be) the best we would get would be some tiny patches of mutfruit gardens like in Fallout 4. You should expect the Fallout 3 remaster to be as lazy as possible and then even more lazy than that.

 

[30+GameOvers]

i hope in the Fallout 3 remake if it is real they just stick a random field of corn next to Megaton just to make autists seethe. Fuck it put a field of corn on the deck of Rivet City, and a field of corn in the Republic of Dave, have a field of corn being eaten by Fire Ants in Greyditch.

You're insane if you think the gooks that made the Oblivion demaster, likely the same ones who worked on the Fallout 3 demaster, will do anything that takes actual effort aside from changing gender to Type A/B and giving players an auto heal factor.

Considering there were no additions/changes like that in the Oblivion remaster I don't see it happening and even if Fallout 3 is a remake rather than remaster (which it ideally would be but 100% wont be) the best we would get would be some tiny patches of mutfruit gardens like in Fallout 4. You should expect the Fallout 3 remaster to be as lazy as possible and then even more lazy than that.

The best part is that the demaster doesn't matter. Capital Wasteland Project for Fallout 4 is still in active development, Point Lookout is 1:1 ported into Fallout 4 already and Pitt is up next, sooner or later we will get an actual remaster made by fans that care and it's going to be free, that is unless the mod is hit with a DMCA(which I doubt since SkyBlivion wasn't when the Oblivion demaster hit the shelves).

 

[R00T]

You're insane if you think the gooks that made the Oblivion demaster, likely the same ones who worked on the Fallout 3 demaster, will do anything that takes actual effort aside from changing gender to Type A/B and giving players an auto heal factor

>I hope they put a corn field on a destroyer deck

Are you just incapable of processing other people’s statements?

 

[30+GameOvers]

>I hope they put a corn field on a destroyer deck

Are you just incapable of processing other people’s statements?

You're a moron if you think the Fallout 3 demaster will put any effort into changing anything. That is all I said and that's all it took to make you mald, but considering that you're a Fallout TV show avatar(I think), I'm not surprised.

 

[G.G. A-Log]

You're a moron if you think the Fallout 3 demaster will put any effort into changing anything. That is all I said and that's all it took to make you mald, but considering that you're a Fallout TV show avatar(I think), I'm not surprised.

Is the 30+ Game Overs referring to the amount of abortions you survived, you blind retard?

 

[Myron]

>I hope they put a corn field on a destroyer deck

Are you just incapable of processing other people’s statements?

Maybe I'm incapable of it as well. Are you saying it's actually a crazy and ridiculous idea to attempt to grow crops atop a now-city aircraft carrier and you're only tongue-in-cheek "hoping" they do it because it would be funny?

 

[30+GameOvers]

Maybe I'm incapable of it as well. Are you saying it's actually a crazy and ridiculous idea to attempt to grow crops atop a now-city aircraft carrier and you're only tongue-in-cheek "hoping" they do it because it would be funny?

He made a bad joke and then got triggered when I made a factual statement("You're retarded if you're expecting anything out of this remake"), yes.
Not that it would solve any problems with Fallout 3 mind you, that game needs a complete overhaul in some aspects and adding a few farms won't even begin to untangle the mess that is straight up nonsensical, retarded at times worldbuilding. You would be making a whole new game at this point, but Fallout 3/Bethesda fans hate being reminded that their games are, at their core, broken and badly written pieces of shit so therefore, so puzzle pieces start flying.