FNV was a better Western than it was a post-apocalyptic adventure. I spammed a bunch about this on my (non-linked) blog, but it boils down to this: the Fallout milleu has aged too much to keep the same stuff we loved in FO1. Everything, including the hard-to-get stuff, should have been scavenged long ago, up to and including those curiously age-and-doomsday-resistent ruined-house 2x4s. And yes, somebody would have swept those floors. And no, salisbury steak doesn’t last for 200 years. More like 50.
ZekeDMS
3262
I just presume all the food, water, wood, etc. was irradiated, killing the bacteria and viruses present. You know, as evidenced by the whole +2 rads thing from all the food, low level latent radiation from after everything else got zapped.
It’s not an unreasonable presumption, I think, that the surviving microbes in places that got hit are the ones brought in from creatures as they came in/ones that managed to survive the vaults. They’ll spread, but when’s the last time you saw someone in fallout who was sick from anything that wasn’t raw radiation poisoning? Even the bad water in Vault City was a case of radiation.
nKoan
3263
I fully agree. Just after Novac was when I finally fell for the game. From Good Springs to Nipton, I was getting the feeling of “Been there, done that” from FO3. Between Nipton and Novac, I started to feel like it was coming into its own, and then the next quest I took after Novac, is what really hooked me on the game. That took me about 6-8 hours IIRC, which I may not have slogged through, if I wasn’t such a fan of FO1/2. The game definitely starts out very slow.
Yup, totally agree with all of this. My ‘frame’ for the game was quirky-clunky stat-based cowboy shooter and I had a blast; contra “this is a fallout RPG”.
There are several facets at play here. What people mean when they say NV has more soul than 3 is the NPCs. Character interactions are much more engaging and interesting. What you are talking about is atmosphere and setting. Bethesda has always done a marvelous job at making the setting interesting, but is quite frankly terrible at character design. Obsidian (and all previous incarnations of them) have always been good at making groups of people interesting and dynamic, but their atmosphere sometimes is a bit bland. Bioware does a superb job of making individual characters meaningful and fun sometimes at the cost of making cohesive factions interesting and definitely at the cost of freedom of exploration.
I would love to see a game where those three companies got together and each worked on where their strengths lay. it would be spectacular.
I always cringed a bit at the idea that people were actually eating 200-year-old mac’n’cheese.
If it is kraft, they might be ok.
For me it was the Salisbury Steaks. That has got to be rancid as hell.
I ran into what I think is a pretty major bug, subtle though it is. I wonder if anyone else had this happen and how I can fix it?
Put simply, my reputation with factions is disappearing. For instance, I was accepted by Legion, Idolized by NCR, etc. Now neither even appear in my list and I am neutral to both. I haven’t really progressed the main quest line far enough to close off their respective quests. But I need high NCR rep to complete the quest “No, Not Much”. I have done every Camp McCarran quest and Colonel Hsu blanks me every time. Infuriating. Any place I can cheat my NCR rep back up?
jpinard
3270
Question for you all. I was wandering around and picked up Veronica as a sidekick. Happy to dump the insulting Miguel. However there are dialogue options with her of people/things I havent come across yet: (Brotherhood of Steel and some guy - Elijaah?). Did I mess up the game by coming across her too early? I haven’t been to Novak and only got to this town she’s in by exploring NE of Blackrock - which I’d taken great care to clean out.
I just came across Camp Searchlight, but if I should be doing something else due to messing up the story/Veronica I’d prefer to do that.
Thanks!
nKoan
3271
Are you wearing any faction armor as a disguise right now? Normally reputations can’t go down, but when wearing a disguise, you lose your reputations until you go back to normal armos.
Naw, you didn’t screw up. If you had run across the Brotherhood of Steel first it would make more sense, but the game allows for finding her first and actually makes meeting the brotherhood much easier.
jpinard
3273
WHEW! Thanks :) Should I just not use those talk trees with Veronica until I come across those people?
nKoan
3274
No, I think you have to travel with her for a bit, and complete a few quests before her personal quest opens up. I gave up for a while, but then randomly brought it up much later and it triggered the quest
Have you made it to Vegas yet? Your rep gets zeroed out with major factions once you get there and a couple things happen. You get a clean slate.
For me when I got to the clean slate part, it only neutraled out my rep with the faction I was really low with, The other one continued to love me just as much as always.
ShivaX
3277
It might be faction armor as well. I think once in a while it’ll bug out and you wont get your faction back after you remove it. Assuming of course you’re not still wearing it.
I’m pretty sure theres console commands to set your faction rep to whatever you want.
Unless you’re on a console, then ummm… theres a lot of NCR quests, so I guess do those?
Just chat her up as much as possible. It will all make more sense once she opens up and you get to meet the Brotherhood.
My Powder Gang faction got all messed up, but in a fun way. I destroyed enough of them they were they marked on the map as Hated, including their prison nearby. I visited that prison, looked around, though I’d try to sneak in the back way, no suck luck. So I went in the front door, thinking what the hell, I’ll see what happens. The guy at the front door says, basically, “We know about you…so here’s a badge and don’t do anything dumb or we’ll be angry…” Even though I literally just shot up some of his gang to get here. It was strange…but it made that quest a lot easier (finding the new Primm sheriff. “If you do wrong, I’ll kill you.”).
Loving this game… getting destroyed by legion assassin gangs…then was jumped by a local gang right after. Killed them all, but was limping and wondering what I’m going to do…then I find some more Legion and right before I go to kill them, they get attacked by horrible Night things. I start helping them and they all die and I just make it out. This place is DANGEROUS!
Thanks everyone, it was the faction armor…I was wearing that awesome NCR Ranger armor from the box cover. Funny that my rep would disappear with NCR, wearing their elite ranger armor.
As a side note, I love that if you are disguised so Fiends don’t attack, they ask you for drugs…quite politely. They don’t seem quite so insane anymore.
