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Why is Fallout New Vegas considered good?

Chippy

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Didn't they want to flesh out New Reno a bit more in F2?. In any case, NV felt a lot more put together. Look at all the cut locations in F2: https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout_2_locations

Edit: Josh Sawyer didn't think Area 51 would be fun location for NV.
"When asked why the base was not included in Fallout: New Vegas, Joshua Sawyer expressed that the land between New Vegas and Area 51 was not close nor interesting enough for inclusion. In addition, he remarked on the popular culture association between the base and extraterrestrials, which had been covered in the Fallout 3 add-on Mothership Zeta."

:littlemissfun:
 

Fedora Master

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FNV is actually extremely tedious after 20 hours or so.
People consider it a classic because the writing is ever so slightly above the norm for videogames and because Fallout 3 is a disaster. FNV is the final Fallout game that we will get that is anywhere close to the setting they envisioned with Fallout 1.
Also like Stealthfags, RPGfags will eat any old slop as long as it is slightly better than the last bowl of slop they ate.
 
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I thought FNV was very meh. Definitely overrated. I found F3 to simply be more fun to explore. The main quest with House has some nice C&C and ties in nicely with everything, but it wasn't enough to elevate it beyond :3/5:. Its a Soyer game. It won't be bad, but its going to miss the mark.
 

SpaceWizardz

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Gold standard in quest design, factions/reputation system, and cohesive worldbuilding IMO.
If any Fallout on here is overrated, it's 2.
 

Tweed

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Pathfinder: Wrath
Ryzer continues to prove that he's a waste of a cardiovascular activity.

You should get get out of here before a house falls on you.

EDIT: Also, kill all faggots who say Fallout 3 is better. They're nothing more than NPCs and they all say the same thing: "HURR DURR EXPLOARR!" You thick-wits think being walled off by piles of rubble and being forced to explore the same train tunnel 500 times is better than roaming the Nevada desert which proves you need to be dragged through it.
 

laclongquan

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Didn't they want to flesh out New Reno a bit more in F2?. In any case, NV felt a lot more put together. Look at all the cut locations in F2: https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout_2_locations

Edit: Josh Sawyer didn't think Area 51 would be fun location for NV.
"When asked why the base was not included in Fallout: New Vegas, Joshua Sawyer expressed that the land between New Vegas and Area 51 was not close nor interesting enough for inclusion. In addition, he remarked on the popular culture association between the base and extraterrestrials, which had been covered in the Fallout 3 add-on Mothership Zeta."

:littlemissfun:
He's right, though. if people do an Area 51 mod they will see that the thing resemble Mothership Zeta too much. And if you circle around that and design in another direction they will find it resemble Bioshock. And if they go another circle, Alien vs Predator.

It's damn hard to do alien thingy these days.
 

SpaceWizardz

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He's right in that Aliens actually being a thing in Fallout's canon is a terrible idea.
Another instance of Sawyer using kid gloves when dealing with Fallout 3 fans.
 

Vic

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things that are fine:

- mutants
- ghouls (including glowing ghouls)
- guy falls in toxic waste and emerges a super genius (where did I hear that before :smug)
- robots
- giant mutated lizards
- giant mutated rats
- giant mutated scorpions
- laser guns
- bottle caps as an actual currency (lol)
- magical vaults that let people live in them for hundreds of years

things that are not fine:
- aliens

:deathclaw:
 

Butter

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things that are fine:

- mutants
- ghouls (including glowing ghouls)
- guy falls in toxic waste and emerges a super genius (where did I hear that before :smug)
- robots
- giant mutated lizards
- giant mutated rats
- giant mutated scorpions
- laser guns
- bottle caps as an actual currency (lol)
- magical vaults that let people live in them for hundreds of years

things that are not fine:
- aliens

:deathclaw:
Yes.
 

Lemming42

Arcane
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The Satellite Of Love
things that are fine:

- mutants
- ghouls (including glowing ghouls)
- guy falls in toxic waste and emerges a super genius (where did I hear that before :smug)
- robots
- giant mutated lizards
- giant mutated rats
- giant mutated scorpions
- laser guns
- bottle caps as an actual currency (lol)
- magical vaults that let people live in them for hundreds of years

things that are not fine:
- aliens

:deathclaw:
Replying to this mostly just for fun, since I get the point you're making:
-Mutants: FEV is explained in-universe, and works broadly consistently. Yes, it's a pulpy idea, but the setting as presented in Fallout 1 is already pulpy.

-Ghouls: Famously, Cain and Boyarsky disagreed on whether or not Ghouls are the product of FEV or just radiation. I think they make sense if you assume they're created by FEV, less so if you assume they're created by radiation. Either way, their presence is explained in-universe.

-Master: Same as above.

-Robots: We have those in real life! Robobrains don't seem like a huge stretch to me.

-Giant mutated animals: Again, it's a deliberately pulpy 50s B-movie idea of how radiation would work. I think it's alright so long as it follows a relatively stable kind of logic, which it does - radiation consistently causes gigantism and aggression in the animals you listed. Fo2's geckos and NV's Cazadores work under the same logic. The only one that's slightly bullshit is the Deathclaw, which simply doesn't make sense as a radiated iguana, but hey - they're meant to be rare, at least, before they started showing up absolutely everywhere post-Fo1.

-Laser guns: We have prototypes of those in real life!

-Caps as currency: Made sense in Fo1, was wisely changed in Fo2, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever in FNV.

- Magical vaults: How are they magic? Most of them are so shit they don't even last the full expected timespan. The plot of Fallout 1 happens speciifcally because Vault 13 breaks down after under a century!
I think the reason aliens feel odd is because they're not integrated into the setting's internal logic in the same way this other stuff is. The problem isn't simply with the idea that aliens have discovered Earth, the problem is that nothing's explained beyond that - they've been here since at least pre-war (as of Fo1) or since pre-19th century (according to Mothership Zeta). What are they doing? Why are they here? Where are they from? What's their opinion about the nuclear war? Why did they keep coming back after the nuclear war?

You list Super Mutants and Ghouls but we understand both of those groups and their place in the world - we know what they believe, where they came from, what they're doing, we can befriend or alienate them as we speak to them, and so on. That's not true of the Zeta aliens.

They weren't objectionable as the crashed ship easter eggs in Fo1 and base Fo3, as players could either choose to ignore them as a joke (as with the crashed Enterprise shuttle) or take them as canon but completely mysterious - aliens know of Earth and two ships have accidentally crashed with all hands lost, but that's all we know. But Mothership Zeta ruins any appeal they had - you see way too much of their ship and learn far too much about their activities.

And the real problem is that you learn that they suck, because Bethesda leaned too far into the 50s B-Movie alien send-up idea. They're literally Greys who kidnap people to probe them and carry old-style rayguns, that's all there is to them. There's no uniquely Fallout twist on the idea, the aliens don't really occupy any other role in the setting or timeline. You can't talk to them to learn about their faction, you can't learn anything useful about them through exploring their ship, and there's absolutely nothing interesting done with the idea at all. It's like if the Ghouls in Fo1 had literally just been zombies - no Set, no peaceful underground faction in Necropolis, no Harold, just zombies who shuffle towards you and attack, as seen in old B-movies.

I feel like Zeta wasn't a great idea to start with but it could have worked if you maybe discovered some kind of ideological schism going on aboard the ship and could assist a mutineer faction, or if there was a different, enslaved race aboard the ship who you could seek assistance from, or something like that - just anything at all to give the aliens some texture and and to justify the presence of these guys in Earth's orbit. And crucially, you'd have to tie them into the actual Fallout setting in some way - explain what they were doing at Earth, what their opinions on the war were, etc. You could go for some kind of twist like they're benevolent peaceful aliens who were about to grant Earth incredible technological and medical boons, but the war happened and they decided "fuck it" and retreated to just observing from orbit to see if humanity ever recovered. But instead it's a shooting gallery with nothing to it, so people react badly and correctly conclude that the idea is dumb and boring.
 

SpaceWizardz

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- mutants
- ghouls (including glowing ghouls)
Obvious allegories.
- guy falls in toxic waste and emerges a super genius (where did I hear that before :smug)
Bad writing, could've easily been explained much better by Richard hooking himself into the Vault's database, he needed the computers to speak in the first place.
They exist.
- giant mutated lizards
- giant mutated rats
- giant mutated scorpions
Unintelligible animals that bring a necessary variety to combat.
- laser guns
They're cool.
- bottle caps as an actual currency (lol)
Water Merchant's using it as a temporary substitute is well enough.
- magical vaults that let people live in them for hundreds of years
Blame Fallout 2 for pushing the timeline so far ahead.

It shouldn't need to be explained why ayys are a bad fit for a setting with themes of societal developments bringing existiental crises, "War never changes".
Spare us the idiot contrarian's case for "Mothership Zeta was good, actually".
 

Lemming42

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The Satellite Of Love
That's Restoration Mod content, isn't it? Even has Killap as an NPC. (EDIT: Ninja'd)

I think the most egregious one in the base game was the Guardian of Forever, though it was quite clever.

Got a genuine laugh out of the Chosen One saying "Oh no, not another pop culture reference" after seeing Darth Vader, and then somehow running into a Red Dwarf reference before even reaching Vader.
 

Butter

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This isn't vanilla content. Even the Fallout 2 devs thought this was going too far.
But talking Deathclaws isn't?
There are a bunch of things in Fallout 2 that were going too far, talking deathclaws among them. Most of San Francisco was going too far. The ghost in the Den was going too far. The Monty Python bridge encounter was going too far. Prank calling the Enclave from the Gecko reactor was going too far.
 

Lemming42

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I like the Enclave prank call a lot. The talking Deathclaws aren't inexcusable, they do follow the logic of FEV, it's just not at all clear what the fuck the Enclave were thinking in making them (though anything to do with the Enclave and their motivations is a mess, they make no sense as a faction).
 
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There are a bunch of things in Fallout 2 that were going too far, talking deathclaws among them. Most of San Francisco was going too far. The ghost in the Den was going too far. The Monty Python bridge encounter was going too far. Prank calling the Enclave from the Gecko reactor was going too far.

I like the weird shit in Fallout 2. What i disagree is the guy saying that Fallout 2 is less retarded than New Vegas, in fact it's a lot more retarded, the writers were basically trolling the players and the game is unplayable without the bug fixes mod, unlike New Vegas.

New Vegas gives old west vibe, which may put some people off, it gives uniqueness to the game, the same way that the immersion breaking stuff gives uniqueness to Fallout 2.
 

Butter

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I like the weird shit in Fallout 2. What i disagree is the guy saying that Fallout 2 is less retarded than New Vegas, in fact it's a lot more retarded, the writers were basically trolling the players and the game is unplayable without the bug fixes mod, unlike New Vegas.

New Vegas gives old west vibe, which may put some people off, it gives uniqueness to the game, the same way that the immersion breaking stuff gives uniqueness to Fallout 2.
I agree that Fallout 2 is more retarded than New Vegas. New Vegas takes itself seriously for the most part (inb4 someone says "FISTO" like it's a big gotcha), and it has a level of restraint that Fallout 2 doesn't. The result is a more coherent and believable setting that's easier to become invested in.
 
Self-Ejected

MajorMace

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How is this even a debate.
New Vegas has an open-ended structure with such an attention to player's agenda that you find yourself regularly in the following situation :
"I wonder if I can pull that out"
"Damn I can"
"Damn the rabbit hole goes even deeper somehow".

And this is what makes New Vegas post-Benny encounter so endearing. It feels like its story is to be explored rather than just witnessed or observed on the way.
It doesn't necessarily have an astounding amounts of paths to chose from, but they're all rather interesting to explore and experiment with.

And that's it, really. That's why New Vegas was and sometimes still is considered a good game, and a good fallout. Especially since it followed Fallout 3 absolutely railroaded experience, culminating in some of the most obnoxious cases of "shut up and get in there" moments, including the PC mandatory selfless sacrifice at the end of the game. This contrast only helped the case of New Vegas.

Now the reality is, I have attempted two or three times to replay through New Vegas since 2010 and have always failed to reach the Strip in any of those.
I believe the game is only good once, despite its open-ended design. Which is ironic. The gameplay is just way too fucking slow and clunky, and the actual interesting bits appear way too late in the playthrough.
 
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