4861

OK, so I finally “finished” Skyrim (not really, never fast traveled, my style and kick from these open world games is wandering the world, but probably 500 hours, LOL, I see I posted in this thread back in 2012 that I was about to finish Skyrim and try this one!) and I am now wandering the wasteland of NV. I am level 34, all Guns, I just sell energy weapons and ammo. Even though I’m at 34, I have not yet entered New Vegas. My plan is to leave that for absolute last. Finished the Honest Hearts DLC, thought it was just OK, and thought if I heard my companion say the same thing ONE MORE TIME I was just going to shoot him in the head and throw him in the river. Nice concept, just felt it could have been more developed. Took the choice to not wipe out the “bad guys” but rather leave the area. Probably about half way through Lonesome Road, and other than blowing my legs off a lot from mines I just can’t see (wish I’d taken the perk to not set off mines/traps) I’m actually enjoying the “heavier” feel. Really bummed, though, when U. took ED-E and suddenly I have all of his carrying capacity of stuff he was carrying for me that I have to drop here, cause I can’t carry it! Argh! I assume that is just going to be gone now.

Oh, playing on the 360, got the bundle that has all the DLCs and GRA, etc. Never fast travel, again, I role play the wanderer/explorer. I’m really enjoying it. I have had, in my hours up to level 34, maybe 4 or 5 freezes on the 360, but each of those were OK when I reloaded and started again, so no hangs or bugs so far that impact the game play.

And just finished reading this entire thread! I wanted to reply to a lot of the posts in here, but felt replying to a post from 2011 is probably not productive. ;)

4862

Leaving New Vegas until late is a bad idea in the base game, since it’s the quest hub, and all the really interesting stuff opens up once you start talking to people there. The various factions don’t really care about you until you’ve gone into New Vegas.

However, since you have all the DLC, you have a lot of interesting stuff to do without touching the main storyline at all. I’m surprised, though, that you’ve made it to 34 by just doing stuff outside New Vegas, Honest Hearts, and most of Lonesome Road.

You’re playing on the 360, so mods aren’t an option, but one mod I really liked was one that added a “Detect Traps” perk. If you’re crouching and have the perk, mines, tripwires, and the like glow green. The idea being that even if you as a player don’t notice the mines, your character is more perceptive. It’s very much in line with the Light Step perk from vanilla, only it felt more RPG-ish to me since you still need skills to disarm the traps.

4863

The DLC story is in the order of: Honest Hearts, Dead Money, Old World Blues and then Lonesome Roads. You are already so powerful it probably doesn’t matter what order you do them in, but that order is also preferred for story reasons.

4864

Old World Blues comes before Dead Money. Both in recommended level (15 vs 20) and story, since you encounter written messages in Old World Blues that refer to characters you meet in Dead Money. Hints about them are less interesting if those characters already have their story lines resolved.

I don’t think it matters that much, though. The only DLC order issue is that you should do Honest Hearts at level 10-ish, because it doesn’t scale well to more powerful characters.

4865

Yeah, the way I play these (including Skyrim) - I am not focused on “Winning” anything. I love these games as my role playing sand box. I’ve got stories developing in my mind as I wander the world. Since I don’t fast travel anywhere, I do a lot of killing as you run across a lot of stuff. I find a lot of locations since I’m wandering the whole world without fast traveling (although I don’t think I’ve found more than 70% of the locations outside of New Vegas so far.) I have done quite a few side quests, and of course Honest Hearts, and part of Lonesome Roads. I have also picked a lot of locks, opened a lot of safes, etc. Thus my ability to get to level 34 without doing much of the main quest. Heck, I was at level 50 in Skyrim before I did the Dragonborn DLC and I never did do the Mages Guild Quest (and left quite a few of the Dragonborn side quests undone.)

4866

I’m not really thinking about “winning” so much as feeling like doing questy type stuff is the interesting part of these games. I like having goals.

4867

Oh, I’ve always got a number of open quests I am pursuing at any one time. Even without going into New Vegas I end up with enough open quests I have to try to remember where they came from when I look at them in the PIP!

4868

Yeah, I have much the same approach to Bethesda sandbox type games. I just wander around doing whatever, come what may, and don’t sweat doing anything in particular. I enjoy the challenges that come my way and my own little struggle in the often hostile world. The Fallout games in particular are so great for that. Fuck, maybe it’s time for another playthrough since I never did finish the NV DLC.

4869

I think Gus means that, as a quest hub, you can probably expect to get sent out on missions to locations you likely will have already found and depopulated, which may be weird from a story perspective. All roads lead to New Vegas.

4870

I was mostly thinking that once I once I finished the prison, Primm, Nipton, Novac, and Boulder City, the quest lines all seemed to originate in New Vegas. I wasn’t really thinking that you’d be re-visited old ground, but Pogue has a point about that, you will do that once you start the New Vegas stuff.

There’s a lot of stuff in there that has nothing to do with the main quest line. Last time I played, I delayed finishing Ring A Ding Ding for a long time and did stuff for everyone else in New Vegas instead.

4871

OK, I am in the very last quest of the Dead Money DLC. And I have to say, if I had known this was what this DLC was going to be like, I would have never started it. It is extremely rare for me to dislike, at this level, a DLC for a game that I love like I love F:NV.

I get what the developer was going for, even more after reading his comments:

And even though the open world nature is what I most love about games like NV, Skyrim, Oblivion, etc. I liked the Lonesome Road DLC, was OK with the Honest Hearts DLC, and haven’t yet played OWB. I enjoy F:NV enough that I’m at level 42 and haven’t even been in New Vegas yet, just exploring and doing all of the other quests and, well, exploring.

But, while I appreciate the desire of the developer to make the player feel naked and vulnerable again, scrounging every corner and grateful for a bottle of water or a few bullets, I am finding nothing enjoyable about this. Wandering around mazes where the challenge is just stumbling into the right location after walking around a maze forever, trying to find hidden speakers and reloading over and over while trying to find some dumb speaker, and then often finding it is not destroyable, toxic clouds that I can’t do anything about, more mazes, etc. etc. And when I DO somehow solve the puzzle of the quest, there’s no real feeling of satisfaction, just relief.

I’m about to start the actual heist, and I looked in the Wiki to see what I am about to face, and I read this:

"The Courier can push a barrel onto the catwalk to the left, jumping on it and jumping in the air while on the barrel will allow you to shoot the emitter on the roof of the first structure (oddly enough, after you move said barrel, it will disappear and become visible again after you touch it and will repeat in this way), alternatively this can be achieved by exiting the room towards the gap in the walkway the Courier came from, hopping onto the rail and attempting a jump shot into the emitter, this will make the holograms hostile so run. "

Yeah, that sounds like exactly what I want in an open world exploration/combat game like NV. Sigh. Well, I came this far, so I will finish it, but I wish I’d never started it. Ugh.

4872

Dead Money is generally poorly regarded. I can’t recall anyone saying much positive about it.

That said, I have no idea what that Wiki is talking about, because I never had to do anything like that. Inside the casino is much better than the outside. Yes, you do have to deal with invulnerable holograms, but I didn’t find that hard or frustrating at all. Usually it’s a matter of either very simple timing, or using terminals to re-route the holograms.

Unfortunately, there are still those stupid, awful beeping neck collar puzzles in one area. It’s the combination of a timed puzzle and the penalty for failing the puzzle being death that’s so irritating. I had to consult a guide to get past that aspect of the Theater area.

4873

I recall us having a discussion about it, and me liking it a lot, though.

4874

I am using a video walkthrough to complete the last stage, and I’m not sure I’d be able to finish it without that - too many hidden things that require perfect timing or you die (heck, there’s a couple where the video shows how I need to run somewhere, jump over something, then walk out and turn around and shoot the speaker a split second before my head blows off and it STILL took me 5 tries! Ugh!)

4875

I don’t remember anything like that, and I completed it without a guide. I think your annoyance with it is leading you down false conclusions, or the guide is. I am almost willing to be good money that there are other ways to do it without having to do things that require split second timing.

4876

Yeah, that was my memory of it as well. My money is on it being a bad guide. About the only timed thing I remember was post-vault, and even that isn’t remotely split-second if you know what you have to do. That, unfortunately, is one of those things where foreknowledge from a prior death comes into play.

4877

I remember Dead Money being divisive.

4878

Well, I decided to try it without the guide after reading these, and yeah, I died a lot, in ways I find kinda irritating (e.g. things you cannot figure out by observation and logic, you just have to run somewhere, die, then try something else.) But my distaste for the DLC comes a long time before now (I am actually in the vault with the gold as I type this.) Everything leading up to this was just drudgery (to me.)

What is regrettable is that I actually think the story itself is very, very good. The characters are very interesting. I just wish the gameplay had matched the story and characters rather than being the opposite (varied and fascinating and interesting characters, great story, boring and dull gameplay.)

4879

Hunt-the-radio was just a bad idea from the start. If I were to design something with a similar mechanic, I’d use the radios as a form of temporary barrier. If you heard beeping, that would mean don’t go there right now. You’d always be able to destroy / deactivate the radio from a place of safety, no timing required. Then it’s a puzzle with clear boundaries. Dead Money’s neck collars suck because you almost always have to run into an area and hope you spot the speaker, and yet there are areas where you can’t do that yet, so it’s designed to make you die repeatedly trying to solve something that can’t be solved.

I hate the Ghost People too. I hate that they’re bullet sponges, I hate that they dodge-teleport. Dump the dodge-teleportation, which makes the slow-moving throwing spears a poor weapon against them, and make the limbs vulnerable enough that traps like mines and the like are effective on them.

4880

Yeah, here I am level 42 with guns at 100, and I’m pretty helpless as they swarm me.

So - finished without killing any of the companions, which resulted in a nice epilogue. Also managed to get out with all the gold, which took a LOT of experimenting. Now I need to fast travel to my room in Novac (I never ever fast travel, but this will be the exception. Hmm - maybe first to Gun Runners where I’ll pick up ANYTHING I WANT CAUSE I’M RICH! Then Novac, then to my last DLC, OWB. Then after that, into New Vegas.

Again - the whole Treasure of the Sierra Madre movie theme is a great concept, and the characters were great. The story was great. The gameplay just sucked. I’d love to have seen that story/concept in a well crafted DLC.