Why is Fallout New Vegas considered good?

[Camel]

FNV has the best memes and good writing. Pity Obsidian while they were quality devs have to use the Gamebryo abortion of an engine. Sawyer's grounded and dour style suits post-apocalypse setting of Fallout.

 

[430am]

 

[GrafvonMoltke]

Thank God I don't take gaming advice from memes

 

[laclongquan]

I've seen people elsewhere say Fallout 1 has bad writing, and it's usually because they're narrowly focused on dialogue or quests. "Oh wow, I'm tasked with killing a bunch of scorpions. What an original concept Interplay!" and so forth. The merits of Fallout 1's writing aren't immediately obvious, for example the missing caravans quest. At first it's apparently a deathclaw problem, and the quest is likely the player's introduction to that enemy, but then you learn that super mutants were responsible, so what you thought was a side quest is actually linked to the main quest.

Please note that in my criticism, I compare Fallout 1 to Fallout 2 and Fallout New Vegas.

To say F1's writings are worse than F2's or FNV's is not the same as saying it's bad.

I know, bad-worse-worst sounds all the same to some people who have troubles with reading comprehension.

To be even more clear, this is me saying 2nd best RPG of all time has worse writings than 6th and 7th RPGs. I know, that sound very much against Codex hivemind~

 

[GrafvonMoltke]

You literally said that they were "not comparable"

 

[Not.AI]

I didn't like it either when it came out.

I feel like people like it for what it could have been rather than what it truly is.

This.

There was an interview by Warren Spector of some other developer (forgot who it was) that argued that several beloved games were liked for this particular reason and not really any other, best example being some early mmorpgs. Many games are really enjoyed, he said, because if you can imagine what XYZ 2 could yet be, while playing XYZ 1, just released, and you think you would like what could be in XYZ 2, being very optimistic, you will probably like more whatever is actually in XYZ 1, much more than if you evaluated XYZ 1 based on only what is actually present in XYZ 1.

Deep marketing insight.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Ironic that Spector said that, because that's what I felt after finishing Deus Ex. While the qualities people describe as good examples of game design are there, most of the game is not like that. It's not as disastrous as Bloodlines though, where the game quite literally shits the bed halfway through.

 

[laclongquan]

You literally said that they were "not comparable"

I know. And I even said "I know, bad-worse-worst sounds all the same to some people who have troubles with reading comprehension."

Ironic, innit? You guys just keep popping up to jump into headlight...

 

[Ibn Sina]

Why is F:NV very popular with Trannies?

 

[GrafvonMoltke]

You literally said that they were "not comparable"

I know. And I even said "I know, bad-worse-worst sounds all the same to some people who have troubles with reading comprehension."

Ironic, innit? You guys just keep popping up to jump into headlight...

If the two are incomparable why are you using a comparative to compare them?

 

[Trithne]

Why is F:NV very popular with Trannies?

Autism.

 

[NecroLord]

It's "good" because it is inspired by Interplay Fallout. Many of its design choices reflect this. You also get pretty good characters like Joshua Graham, Mr. House and even the megalomaniacal edgelord Caesar.
Still flawed, but leagues ahead of Fallout 3 and Fallout 4.

 

[laclongquan]

Why is F:NV very popular with Trannies?

I dont know if it's popular with Trannies.

I do know it can be very popular with Lezzies and Gays, what's with the high ratio of that kind of characters, and the high quality dialog reserved for Lezzies or Gay characters. Say Arcade and Christine. (Not Veronica ironically despite many insists. Veronica is more like a Bi tomboy than pure Les like Christine).

 

[Bigg Boss]

Why is F:NV very popular with Trannies?

It has lots of fags in it.

 

[Levenmouth]

It's "good" because it is inspired by Interplay Fallout. Many of its design choices reflect this. You also get pretty good characters like Joshua Graham, Mr. House and even the megalomaniacal edgelord Caesar.
Still flawed, but leagues ahead of Fallout 3 and Fallout 4.

Word. I played FO4 way after FNV and the only character I can remember off the top of my head is the Irish alcoholic. FO3 I remember Liberty Prime. I think there was also your dad. Both games are ridiculously forgettable.

 

[Silverfish]

NV is considered good due to perfect timing more than anything. Fallout 3 was relatively fresh in the public consciousness and (despite my gripes), NV curbstomps it in terms of setting, characters, and whatever storyfag metrics you go with and it had the good fortune to come out a year before Skyrim took over the world, turning it into an underdog, despite being successful in its own right, which also answers Ibn Sina's question from above.

 

[NecroLord]

It's "good" because it is inspired by Interplay Fallout. Many of its design choices reflect this. You also get pretty good characters like Joshua Graham, Mr. House and even the megalomaniacal edgelord Caesar.
Still flawed, but leagues ahead of Fallout 3 and Fallout 4.

Word. I played FO4 way after FNV and the only character I can remember off the top of my head is the Irish alcoholic. FO3 I remember Liberty Prime. I think there was also your dad. Both games are ridiculously forgettable.

The protagonist's dad in Fallout 3 is voiced by Liam Neeson. There's also Liberty Prime. Other than that, it's such a really forgettable game.

 

[curds]

I happen to be replaying it at the moment.

It has better quest/faction design than many other RPGs of this century. 4(?) Paths through the main story, working from within rival factions to weaken them covertly, disguises, multiple solutions for most quests. Afaik you can complete the game with 0 kills and you can also kill everybody you meet and still complete the game. Many people crave those sorts of things in RPGs and there aren't many RPGs from that era that feature all of those elements at once, if any.

On top of that the writing is very decent, (if tad dry at times - although that suits the setting), gunplay is pretty satisfying once you've attained respective skills/perks, main conflict is relatively interesting/believable. It's not the best looking game but it's not as ugly as some seem to think. I think NV is worthy of its respected status

 

[blessedCoffee]

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.

Ghosts were a thing in Fallout, so Anna Winslow is fine as is.
Try to burst fire the townsfolk at Shady Sands (while playing european edition) and get labeled as a child killer if-



-you had bad luck and the lil' ghosts were wandering too close to your gun muzzle, or to the people you targeted — something you simply can't tell, as the censorship removed their sprites.

On a serious tone, I don't think this ghost NPC is a big deal, as there is stuff in the first game which don't make a whole lot of sense, as that “helmet” you can rob from the Master prisoners, to avoid the debuffs in the corridor which leads to the final boss. This corridor also don't make sense to me.

 

[Just Locus]

is OP just mfkndggrfll's alt?

 

[9ted6]

I wanna take this into the new year and say how shit Old World Blues is.

The premise is shit and makes no sense with the rest of the setting. Yeah there's just this untouched ultra hightech prewar military base in the middle of an open desert and nobody's noticed, not the Brotherhood who aggressively hunts for tech and not House who probably could've picked up its energy signatures or something and not the Enclave who would've already known it was there.

The writing is shit, what's allegedly humor is the same couple of reddit level jokes told over and over again. It rivals 2 which was just as bad in most ways but at least 2 was in a few rare instances serious.

The tone is shit and it's all over the place clashing with not only the base game but within itself.

The design is shit, you have to sit and listen to jokes at the start for literally 20 minutes before you can even play. You're fucked if you like Guns more than Energy Weapons or Explosives and besides that there's barely any worthwhile loot.

The enemies are shit, they're all reskinned base game enemies with bloated HP and damage resistances. Everything is confined and linear and the engine sucks for it.

If they had revised the design of it, made more unique enemies, been less reliant on combat and locked the zany jokes behind Wild Wasteland or least had some restraint it would've been tolerable. Bethesda got blasted for Zeta and its tonal clashing jokes, dumb lore and terrible linear shooting gallery levels that don't work with the engine, then Obsidian did just that but longer and minus aliens. Big MT might as well be an alien world and the scientists Zetans.

That one DLC brings the entire game down. It's shit.

 

[Lemming42]

I'd love to know who wrote OWB, was it Chris? Whoever it was deserves a punch in the teeth, not only is the writing supremely unfunny but it's also presented to the player in such an awful fucking way, constantly intrusive and jarring (obviously the very lengthy and boring intro scene where the Think Tank people come to talk to you, but then shit like the constant stream of unfunny jokes over the PA system in the school, the Stealth Suit never shutting the fuck up, the conversations with the furniture being so bad that they put you off playing half the DLC, etc).

The only part I really liked was having to convince your own brain to rejoin your body, but that was more fun in concept than execution given that, like everything else in OWB, the conversation with the brain quickly turns into the same bad joke repeated six times.

The DLCs are pretty odd in general honestly, for both 3 and NV. There's something kind of cool about tonally different mini-adventures but in practice they all just come across as weird and slightly shit, even the more interesting and higher quality ones. They also just feel weird as fuck in terms of the wider narrative - I'm a postal worker looking for the man who shot me, why am I suddenly going on a multi-week trip to Zion?

 

[9ted6]

The DLCs are pretty odd in general honestly, for both 3 and NV. There's something kind of cool about tonally different mini-adventures but in practice they all just come across as weird and slightly shit, even the more interesting and higher quality ones. They also just feel weird as fuck in terms of the wider narrative - I'm a postal worker looking for the man who shot me, why am I suddenly going on a multi-week trip to Zion?

FNV desperately needed a Broken Steel DLC instead of OWB or any of them really, all that effort but put into making a proper post Dam continuation setup.

None of them make too much sense narratively in either game, though they make more sense in FNV given that once you find Benny you're pretty much a mercenary at that point doing whatever. They're still all inconsistent in just about every category but I'll say that DM, HH, PL and TP all have great worldspace atmosphere.

As bad as LR's writing and metaplot are the Divide is also really cool in how it feels and looks.

 

[Butter]

Dead Money is far and away the best DLC for any Fallout game (lmao, as if the Bethesda ones are in contention), even with its poor enemy variety.

 

[Lemming42]

They're still all inconsistent in just about every category but I'll say that DM, HH, PL and TP all have great worldspace atmosphere. As bad as LR's writing and metaplot are the Divide is also really cool in how it feels and looks.

I like Point Lookout and Dead Money, the others are a bit too uneven IMO, even in atmosphere. LR is kind of cool visually but yeah, the writing gets downright abominable.

Honest Hearts and The Pitt are both ones I really want to like more than I actually do. The characters, ideas and settings are cool on paper but The Pitt just turns into a standard Bethesda jankfest, especially after you abduct the baby and everyone turns hostile and starts throwing grenades at themselves or whatever, and Honest Hearts just feels dull all the way until the finale, which itself sort of fizzles out.

None of them make too much sense narratively in either game, though they make more sense in FNV given that once you find Benny you're pretty much a mercenary at that point doing whatever.

True, there was some talk about it in a thread not long ago but NV's big unanswered question is why the Courier does anything they do after the end of the first act, including staying in the Mojave at all. So I guess going on a holiday to Zion or running off to Lonesome Road makes about as much sense as everything else that happens in the latter parts of the base game. And at least with MZ, DM and OWB you get abducted, so you have no choice in going off on the bizarre side-adventure (although lol @ Boone/Cass/Veronica et al just standing and doing nothing while you're whisked off before their eyes, especially in DM where there's no explanation given at all as to why they just watch you get carried away).