Cantousent

The staff provides a weak but consistent ranged attack. For the most part, if you want ranged, take a more conventional mage build and blast the crap out of stuff with spells. Arcane warrior has a bunch of thing going for it. Blood Mages can be powerful also, but it depends on how much you roleplay and what you think of going the blood mage route. Frankly, although I can hear the howls already, I would probably go for Spirit Healer/Arcane warrior. Less distasteful than Blood Mage and I went through the entire game on the hardest setting with Spirit Healer and it provided for a really powerful build. Sometimes a bit slow, but you can outlive folks pretty easily. Group heal and revival can come in quite handy. No matter what specialization, and I think you can take both SH and AW, you will be able to use a wide variety of mage abilities and mages are simply the most versatile of the classes. At least that's my take.

Definitely go for Arcane Warrior, kid. I prefer more fireball to the groin builds, but Arcane Warrior is a great build with lots of potential.

Made me laugh out loud. 6'2" broad shouldered guy in bikinimail. *shudder*

I tend to associate oversized gear and armor spiked with over the top fins and decorations with anime, but I suppose it's a trend that transcends anime. I see it also in Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40. WoW is rife with over the top kit. That's one of the things I enjoy about New Vegas. There doesn't tend to be over the top armor, even the stylized version of Roman armor and the Fiend garb appears to be functional in that it wouldn't provide substantial hindrance to the wearer. The things that people can and have used to make armor look fierce doesn't impede the function, such as feather or fangs or skins. The Legion armor looks kind of silly, but it's believable and the NCR body armor serves a real purpose. Now, because of the Dragon Age setting, I can see a lot of personality in armor because a lot of the characters would be forced to provide their own weapons and armor. The uniforms would be less constrained. In those cases, using a variety of means and materials to tinker with the armor make more sense. Same with the bandit armor in Fallout. Some forces would have stricter requirements, but there's always some way for a determined soldier to differentiate his armor, weapons, and other gear. That's true even today, although getting too far out could draw unwanted attention. That whole argument goes beyond how the devs depict mages. I don't care how someone else decides to garb his character. What I want is to avoid the tendency to have the best gear in the game to look like a shopping trip to Idiot Island fashions.

Many thanks, Lady. I didn't realize that I could even get Rex as a companion. Damn it, I never even got to all those dialogue options with the King in multiple runs. I mean, how dumb is that?! Anyhow, thanks again. Now to go help out my doggy friend. :Cant's happy to help mans best friend icon:

You might cite the exceptions, but one stroll in the mages' tower in DA pretty much tells the whole story on how mages look in the game. ...And the bloodmage Hawke looks just as goofy anyhow. No robes, but ridiculously large stylized armor pieces that don't even cover vital areas? It just looks stupid. I mean, I don't mind cloaks and hoods and other looks, but the art work in games today jsut boggles my mind. It's the animeification of games today that I find the most irritating. Over sized armor and weapons so ludicrous they defy any pretext of functionality.

I've thought that the problem with a lot of games over the past several years is that so many are designed with class v. class in mind. In some cases, the devs have spent a lot of time not only balancing the game for player v. environment, but an equal amount of time balancing player v. player. What I don't like about that is that it means that each class needs to have a fighting chance against every other class, which changes how the classes work together as a team. I mean, you can't create a class who is completely useless against other classes but fulfills a vital role in a party. I wouldn't mind seeing Dragon Age 2 makie mages a little weaker man to man, but provide unequal devastation as part of a group. ...But I would also like to see games where I can customize my mage's look to get away from flowing robes and pointy hats. Instead, maybe I want pants, boots, and a military style tunic. I don't know, but I kind of agree with mkreku about the whimpy look to the mages. I definitely agree with Gromnir that mages kick some serious ass in Dragon Age. I don't think they're underpowered at all.

I found some weapon called "pushy" that throws people all over the place. I armed Veronica with it. I just want to kill off folks as quickly as possible, though, so I usually just use my strongest weapon and try to kill them off before they can get too close. The Legenday Deathclaw was the only one that gave me problems with the blaster, though, and that's because I had to fight him and two others that came running up. Well, him and one other. I assassinated the first deathclawl right off the bat with a sneak attack. That cave puts everyone pretty much on top of each other, though.

Well, yeah! I mean, if his default weapon is so good that you have a hard time finding something better.... well, that's terrible! hehehe

I'm tellin' ya, alien blaster to the eye takes all the fight out of tall, dark, and nasty. Up close? I've never gone in much for up close, but if you're a melee type, you could put down a path of frag mines and lure the baddies over it I guess. I have never been able to get Boone's damned quest line to start, and it's starting to piss me off. On the other hand, I like Boone's lines. In my current run, I accidently put him in my scope sights. He said, "yeah, let me aim my weapon at you and see how you like it." I still haven't found a lot of joinable npcs, though. I think I could get that deranged super mutant to join, and some blond haired doctor in the Ol' Mormon Fort. I wonder if I could get that idiot stick who thinks he's a ghould to join me. The one from the Come Fly With Me questline. So far, I've only had ED-E, Boone, Veronica, and Cass join me. It would be so much easier if I could take two people instead of just ED-E and one other chump.

Good Natured is almost broken. Even if you don't want to break the skills, the benefit in points by far outweighs the cost. I mean, most players probably use one or two weapon skills and you can invest in those weapon skills right away to make up the difference. Meanwhile, unless you don't use a variety of non-weapon skills, you'll definitely use most of the skill bumps you get. I went the exact route you suggest. In that order. :Cant's wide grin icon:

I love the high speech option for the ending anyhow. I mean, I did have to fight all the Legion folks anyhow, but I convinced both the Legate and the general to back off without a shot fired between us. My most recent build is 10 int and built just to see how easy it is to break the skills. Not to be a jerk about it, just out of curiosity. Frankly, even if I do break the skills, it won't be grounds for bitching anyhow.

I have yet to purchase 'DLC' for any game so far. If I counted WoW expansions, I suppose I could say I've downloaded DLC for WoW. Just the expansions, though, not the special mounts and crap like. I thought about getting the FO3 DLC but didn't get it. I got one Dragon Age DLC, but it was free with my purchase. At this point I'm likely to get the New Vegas DLC, but I haven't decided. First of all, it would have to come out for the PC. Second of all, I tend to be leery of low priced DLC that play more or less as low quality mods. That's why I've only bought full expansions. I'll be keeping an eye out on this and listening to what folks say. The other thing is, I have no interest in bragging rights. If the game's only claim to fame is that it let's you play in brahmin husbandry level where you have to make a survival check every time you take a crap to make sure you didn't get an infected paper cut on your ass, then I have no desire. If it adds some tactical complexity and interesting things to do and see, then I'm all for it.

Yeah, but in the case of perfect endings, they're right. PS:T is my favorite game, but I don't think it's perfect. For one thing, the writing would be as good with 1/3 less. In fact, the writing would be better with 1/3 less. ...But it's still an awesome game and probably why a bunch of us starting hanging around this joint. Not the game ending, but the end of Floyd in Planetfall was awesome. Poor bastard robot.

I have to admit that I saw you posting and waited until you were done to see what you had to say, Gromnir. :Cant's wry grin icon: I think what you had to say is fair enough. I'm enjoying New Vegas more than Fallout 3, but, at the end of the day, it is essentially the same game. Some things are better. Some things are different. If I agreed regarding the DC wasteland, I suppose I could say some things are worse, but... *shrug* You would expect the next game in the series to have improvements, so you can't make too much out of the improvements that are there. I'm one of the folks who really favors the factions, but there are problems with them. I believe they are wonderfully done as a concept, but they're also buggy. I don't expect every faction to be equal in strength, so that argument has never impressed me. I do think it's really easy to break the factions in terms of all the quests. On the plus side, there are tons of faction quests. You get the feeling that every side is working towards an internally reasonable goal, although I actually think one of the major factions, the Legion, is on the odd side in terms of its own internal logic. What it comes down to for me is that Fallout 3 was one of my favorite games when it came out. New Vegas is one of my favorite games, even beating out the last rpg I played, which I think was Dragon Age. In terms of time spent playing, I have played Fallout New Vegas for more hours than Fallout 3 and Dragon Age combined, which is telling since I toyed around with both of those games for quite a while. Basically, New Vegas has eaten up virtually all of the free time I could muster since I bought it. It might even beat out Fallout 2 as my series favorite, although I refuse to make that a firm statement until it's been out for at least a year.

Okay, ladies, take off yer dresses and quit yer damned whinin'. Go play an ol' skool text adventure if you want see some confusing mazes. ...And Vault 21 in Vegas actually confuses the player on purpose. If you listen to the floating dialogue you keep hearing the gamblers saying, "did you get turned around." I thought that was clever, but I'm easily amused. I didn't have too much of a problem finding my way anywhere, but I agree that the local map is fairly useless most of the time. It's not only inside places, either. In perfectly reasonable fashion, you might have to spend a lot of time finding a path up or down to various locations outside.

I agree about the Twilight Zone feeling of a lot of the stuff in New Vegas. And there were comedy Twilight Zone episodes too. I mean, I think it was meant to be humorous in a dark sort of way, and I think it succeeded well enough at that, but it was also meant to be serious. The circumstances surrounding the one female candidate struck me as sad, though, and that feeling stayed with me.

I'm with you, Serrano. I didn't think of vault 11 as darkly funny. I thought of it as depressing. Well done and interesting, but sad. I guess it was a little funny, but after I got a feel for the characters, particularly the woman, it was one of the real dramatic moments of the game. When I got to the end, I had a large amount of a specific type of damage, and that was bad luck for the folks who fought me. Kind of funny, but I didn't end up doing the vault on the second run because of a decision I'd made regarding the BoS I think. I agree about the large spaces at the airport and the AFB. I mean, it's kind of a pain from a development standpoint in that you have to show that it was an air force base. There is a lot of empty space around hangars and all. At McCarran, it is a military base and so there will be some space between the gate and the front building. That's why the first thing you see when you come through the gate is an armed guard behind a barricade. After the first few times entering, though, it just eats up extra time running to the front of the building. Good representation, but I can see it annoying folks.

Okay okay For my sins, I'm part of the PS:T crowd also. I'll also throw in with American McGee's Alice. I don't think the cinematic was all that great, but getting the 'good' ending on Painkiller was pretty cool. Also getting the good ending on Max Payne 2 was awesome, and the attending cinematic was also good. hmmm, what else? I guess I could throw in the ending for Diablo where you stick the gem in your head and run off to the east. I also liked the ending to Ultima 4. The ending of Zork III was great. Not so much for the ending but because I knew it was the end of the trilogy. I also liked the ending for Zork Nemesis.

I think the most glaring mistake I saw was when the boy does the voice over for one of the factions and not only where there errors in the text, he made other, different errors in the voiceover. ...And I'm in the minority around these parts in that I liked dear ol' dad in Fallout 3. I was sad at the end. Of coruse, I agree that the ending with the whole 'sacrifice' imperative was ridiculous, forced, cheap, and trite. I still liked most of the NPCs in Fallout 3. Moire was funny. Three Dog was a goofy and entertaining. I took them for what they were and had fun with them.

The combined Fallout 3 critic score is a little higher than the combined New Vegas score. I think the former is 91 and the latter is 86, so five points. Both games have been commercially successful. I simply don't have a lot of interest in making a blow by blow comparison between the games. It's difficult to quantify terms like 'breathing' and 'immersive.' I believe we've come to agree that those particular ideas tend to be highly personal. However, from a literary perspective, I cannot see how folks don't favor the npcs and story in New Vegas. No, it's not a Russian novel. Fair enough, but I tend to believe that New Vegas would fare better under academic scrutiny than Fallout 3. That's my gut instinct after putting in over a hundred hours in each game, but I'd be willing to take a crack at defending that position. I mean, I guess one

I actually disagree with you, Boo. I find the stories and characters in the Fallout series as interesting as other series. I mean, there are some games that are heavy on npc interaction, such as PS:T and KotOR. Sure, the player spends more time hashing out the story with the NPCs in those games, but I still grow attached to the NPCs in all of the Fallout games. As far as story light, I disagree completely. The story behind the NCR and the Legion is not light compared to most computer games. I would agree that the player may, if he so desires, ignore the story, but the story is there. It's generally well considered to varying degrees between games. I think the strength of Fallout 3 was the exploration, but there was a story as goofy as it struck me sometimes. Where I will agree completely is that the setting is limited. I mean, one of the gripes folks have is because of the weird sort of stasis that has taken hold of the setting because folks still expect the series to stay true to the first Fallout. Buildings are eternally shabby but never actually fall down and return to the earth. No one, even in relatively stable areas, spends much time cleaning things. Basic services haven't returned after literally hundreds of years. The setting is quite limited, but I have had more fun with the Fallout series than probably any other crpg franchise. To get back to New Vegas, the complexity is really kicked up a notched. In the previous Fallout games, the PC could choose to favor one side or the other and maybe take a number of avenues to complete the game. In New Vegas, the double dealing is truly amazing. One of the factions wanted me to check on someone spying on one of the other factions. When I saved her, she thought she was working for yet a third faction because there was a spy in that faction working for the first faction. You can work for every side for a while and sometimes get the same quests. Were similar things possible in the other three games? Yes, but not like it is in New Vegas. Anyhow, to get back to the story angle, I distrust 'story' arguments altogether. The backstories for some action rpgs are actually quite developed, but because those are 'action' rpgs, folks act as if the stories themselves are simple. My favorite game of all time is probably still PS:T, but that doesn't mean that I expect every game to face me with the same amount of text nor do I want it. As long as I have a good story that unfolds properly within the game, I'm happy.

I'll do the message board version of recusing myself from the setting debate. I'd like to think that I'd be happy with the wasteland feel of New Vegas regardless, but I've always been upfront about the fact that I was excited about the Las Vegas Setting. As far as the faction enmity, though, I don't have any direct tie to either the NCR or the Legion. It's not like I'm an NCR citizen in real life and so I favor it. Frankly, it's hard on me in that I'm sided with the City itself. Inasmuchas I really don't like any of the factions for looking out for the city (including the city factions), I end up making a lot of compromises. However, I do agree that the last minute 'forgiveness' from the major players was funny. Particularly when the PC is in such good standing with one side. I mean, I can see the other side trying to coopt you. I'd still think it was kind of jarring, but this is real politics here. The Legion would still have tried to coopt or neutralize me. I can see see the head guys being pragmatic, even though keeping their dogs at bay would be problematic. That sort of stuff I just chalk up to the player's duty to work with the designers in enjoying the game. The NCR, however, wouldn't need to forgive me when I've always helped them anyhow. What their guy could have said was, "Hey, you've always been a great friend and we could use your help now. Come and see us?" I was... I think liked by the NCR on the only other run, and they told me they'd forgive me. I'll see what happens this run where I'm idolized. Still probably just one of those 'chalk up' moments, but weird nonetheless. I've been vilified by the Legion virtually this whole game. In fact, I decided as much as I hate the Powder Gangers and have been vilified with them as well, I would rather see them punished than enslaved. So, I was pretty much vilified by both factions at about the same time. The Powder Gangers vilified me for defending the town against their rabid dog holligans. The Legion vilified me for freeing two Powder Gangers and then killing the guards who attacked me. I don't think I have ever come across Powder Gangers who have not attacked me, but the Legion sometimes attacks me on sight and other times just hurls insults at me. The NCR has radios, so that explains why they know me pretty much on sight. I assume the Legion has runners and other methods of getting out the news. I also don't know if dressing in faction clothing helps disguise the PC. I do know dressing as the wrong faction draws fire from its enemies. The game is explicit on that and I'm so damned stupid I actually couldn't figure out why the BoS kept attacking me. The real advantage I give New Vegas over Fallout 3 is the factions, though. I think they are clever and more defined than what Fallout 3 had to offer. I also think that the individual NPCs are much better developed by and large. Of course, I enjoyed Fallout 3 also, so I win out either way. In fact, I would say that New Vegas has rekindled much of my interest in Obsidian.

The Legion is a sort of idealized Roman movement, by which I mean the Legion is self idealized. As I read it, the devs didn't really intend to suggest that the Legion represents Rome. Rather, as it seems to me, the Legion patterns itself after Rome. The Legion makes a caricature of itself. If the devs intended to create such a caricature from an outside view, it would not only be flat, it would be pathetic. With that in mind, I think Marcus has the best take in game when he points out that Caesar has the misguided goal of changing human nature. I don't know what can change the nature of a man, but I do know what can change the nature of mankind... nothing. I enjoyed the Legion somewhat, but it didn't quite work as well as I'd hoped. On the other hand, I sided against it and I'm hoping I have a better view after I play the game again working more with the Legion.

I thought Hurlshot was Eldar's alt.