3681

I’m still on my first play-through, though I’ve made it to level 24. I like that they made some effort to make Barter a worthwhile skill. For its plain vanilla effect, it’s no more worthwhile than in FO3, since you’re swimming in loot and you can take the casinos for ~40k caps if you have luck 7+. Not even the super-expensive implants were enough to soak up the excess caps for me. But now that they’ve added some dialog skill checks for Barter, it has other uses.

One thing that does bug me is it seems like the Survival skill is neigh-useless, even if you’re playing Very Hard + Hardcore. Food and water is plentiful, as are healing items, and the other effects from high-level food don’t seem that important. True, Survival does unlock a couple of perks, but the perks are kind of specialized, and since you get half the perks you did in FO3 perk slots are at a premium. Seems like the only reason you’d go with a high Survival skill is purely for flavor reasons.

3682

I’ve been playing RPG’s forever and the good ones always manage to be challenging. Back in the day that was a matter of providing inetresting strategic and tactical choices. Today that’s often a matter of mixing in interesting, RPG-flavored action gameplay. Either way is fine, but I do require at least a little bit of gameplay in my RPG.

FO:NV is terrible at that. The percentage of content that is nothing but fetch quests is astounding for a modern game. Give me Demon’s Souls, give me Diablo, or heck give me Nethack or BG2. If you can’t do that then Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Fable 2, were all far better games (for me) even if they weren’t perfect either.

Remember, (most) game design is about presenting the player with challenges and AI that are designed to put up a convincing fight and then lose gracefully. That’s true regardless of genre.

I don’t necessarily disagree but even by that cynical measure, FO:NV simply fails to be convincing.

3683

I’m noticing the microstutter this time around. Is it possible that something changed and it’s new to me in FNV, or is it more likely that I just never noticed it before? I think I’m trying to be lazy about attempting to fix it, since there’s no guarantee I can get it to go away.

3684

Just finished this and it was ok. I liked Fallout 3 more. New Vegas was fun though. And big, seemed like there were a zillion places to encounter and this coming from a guy that explored most of the places in the first Fallout 3.

It was just ok for me. As someone noted, the fetch quests were incredibly prevalent. No real bugs that I can recall, so I guess I got lucky there.

3685

Really. It works.

3686

I’m in a sweet mod! I did the voice for Mr Franco, the questgiver in this mod here: The Collector. Find him (me!) in the Tops Casino.

Check it! :)

3687

That worked pretty well, thanks. I got rid of the max FPS thing and it only hitches sometimes in certain scenes.

I see they never fixed the occasional slowness for VATS to come up, and also the weird voice mixing where certain lines of dialogue are quieter than others. That’s fine though. I think I’m ready to play now.

3688

I’m wondering how far I’m into the game. I’ve done tons (I think most of them) of side missions outside of New Vegas Strip, and the next step in the story is to go to the Tops casino IIRC.

So, how far in the game am I? Do new areas open up after the strip or am I close to the finale?

3689

You’re most of the way there. There are a few quests you still have to do but if you choose you can get through them pretty fast. Then again, you can putter about quite a while within New Vegas and the end game areas if you want. There’s only a couple of new locations after The Strip.

3690

. . . and there’s about fifty quests inside the strip, too. I did the same thing you did, and once I entered Freeside I found I had a hundred new things to do.

3691

When I got to the Strip the first time I had about 75% of the game still to do. To a certain extent you can push through the main line story missions if you want and finish early, but if you’re following quest breadcrumbs instead of randomly exploring the quests don’t really start to open up at all until you’ve hit the Strip.

  • Gus
3692

I did the same thing as Mixuk (everything possible before entering The Strip). I just checked my extensive save game timestamps and if one continues solving every quest available there is almost exactly 1/6 of the game left at that point. After the work mentioned above, if one just rushes through the absolutely mandatory quests the game can be finished in less than two hours, maybe even less than one.

3693

You’re not saying much of anything here. If I want to tool around in a modern, post-apocalyptic wasteland I have two real choices and neither of them include the Mass Effect series, Dragon Age or the Fable series. While I myself may choose Fallout 3 over it’s goofy cousin, New Vegas is still a pretty solid RPG with a terrific world to explore.

3694

Are there any plans from Bethesda/Obsidian to release more patches for the game?

I loaded up my game not too long ago and turned it off almost immediately after walking outside when I came to a house full of stuck Brahmin poking out the walls.

If there is going to be no more post-release support (as per usual with Bethesda titles), are there any unofficial patch mods that fix up the game?

3695

Try this

3696

Nice thanks a lot. I love how dedicated Bethesda’s modding community is when it comes to fixing up games.

3697

Wow, Fry’s has a sale on this. New Vegas for $30. Picked it up tonight. Let’s rock!

3698

So while they still haven’t announced the one released DLC for anything other then the 360, it appears at least a few more DLCs are planned for New Vegas. And there are rumors that the plan is for about seven or eight altogether, released over the next two years.

3699

Just announced. Dead Money is coming to PC and PS3. 3 more DLC coming, and released on all platforms simultaneously.

3700

Well, that’s it for my adventures in New Vegas. I’m about 30 hours in, wandering the wasteland, and I just hit level 17 after completing Ring-aDing-Ding. (I’ve totally held off on doing the main quest.) My game now consistently crashes 4-5 minutes after I talk to Yes Man. Obviously, there’s something in my file that’s messed up, but I am unwilling to go back and retrace my steps.

Thanks, Obsidian. Sigh

I’m shelving this and moving on until I feel like starting it up again from scratch. Too many games coming up to dwell on this.