Fallout: New Vegas

[Labadal]

I guess I will be using Lily as much as possible. Hoping for a romance option.

[sorophx]

you guys can brag all you want, I'm sticking to Cassidy all the way for old times' sake, and the robodog of course. man, this is gonna be FO2 redux for me

Edited September 15, 2010 by sorophx

[Pop]

It's nice that they've included unique perks when having a companion on your team - that was an aspect of KOTOR2 I really liked. MotB's were all about stat checks from what I recall, so it was less cool.

 

By the by, do we know if CHA will affect the number of companions you can have, ala Fallout 2?

Edited September 15, 2010 by Pop

[WorstUsernameEver]

By the by, do we know if CHA will affect the number of companions you can have, ala Fallout 2?

 

As the article says it's still 1 humanoid companion and 1 non-humanoid companion.

[Tale]

How many non-humanoid options are there?

[sorophx]

yeah, I'm curious about it too. they make it sound like it's more than one

[Slowtrain]

Lockpicking being a choice is not something I exactly buy. The rewards in most games for lockpicking are grossly disproportionate to the costs. Not only do you get more money and equipment, you also get more XP, making up for the initial investment. Deus Ex I can give a pass because it tended, more often than not, to include a key somewhere.

 

That's why I think they tend to go to the minigame route. With the tendency for it to always be worth it, it stops being a choice. If games are designed so that the cost/reward of the choice is a little more inline with the other choices, I can see myself changing my opinion.

 

It's a little different for party based games. It's stll not a choice to have it for the group, but group resource allocation makes it a choice of who to have it for.

 

 

Minigames are fine, EXCEPT, in a rpg in which there is a lockpicking skill. If there is a skill, then players who invest in a skill should get an advantage in the area of that skill over other players who do not invest in said skill.

 

In a game like Bioshock or Thief, where there are no character skills and all characters are functionally the same, mingames that rely mostly on player skill are perfect.

Edited September 15, 2010 by Slowtrain

[vault_overseer]

How many non-humanoid options are there?

 

Rex and ED-E

[Tale]

You can get an Eyebot companion? I think I love these guys.

[vault_overseer]

Hell, you can get a black-grandma-turned-nightkin-pacifist companion

[Tale]

Can you romance her?

 

What?

[WorstUsernameEver]

I am wondering what Vault 17's experiment was and where it was located.

[entrerix]

i thought those vault experiment things were an eastcoast only phenomenon?

[WorstUsernameEver]

i thought those vault experiment things were an eastcoast only phenomenon?

 

Not at all.

[entrerix]

i dont remember them in fallout 1 and 2... what were they?

[WorstUsernameEver]

i dont remember them in fallout 1 and 2... what were they?

 

The concept of the social experiments was introduced in Fallout 2, but there certainly were experiments in the first two game too. Just think of Vault 12, it was precisely designed to have radiation leaking through its not-at-all-closed vault door. Or Vault 15, which was designed to study the interaction between people of differing ideologies, races and religion. If anything, I'd argue that Fallout 3 introduced the concept of Vaults as military experiments.

[Lexx]

I am wondering what Vault 17's experiment was and where it was located.

 

I hope Vault 17's experiment was that there was no experiment.

 

 

This experiment crap is going far too far.

[Nepenthe]

i dont remember them in fallout 1 and 2... what were they?

 

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_Wiki

[Pop]

If anything, I'd argue that Fallout 3 introduced the concept of Vaults as military experiments.

I don't think it's that big of a stretch. Both Vault-Tec and Poseidon were heavily involved in gov't. affairs pre-war, and Poseidon bigwigs were the progenitors of the Enclave. It's not obvious in Fallout 1, but Fallout 2 introduced a heavy corporatist element into the nightmarish pre-war political scenario. What Fallout 3 introduced was the idea of Vault-Tec as being intimately involved in FEV research, which is a leap, but not as big of a leap as one might assume, given the depth of military-industrial incest that was apparent when the bombs fell. It's just a matter of establishing that Vault-Tec and Poseidon and the Military were all connected.

Edited September 16, 2010 by Pop

[WorstUsernameEver]

If anything, I'd argue that Fallout 3 introduced the concept of Vaults as military experiments.

I don't think it's that big of a stretch. Both Vault-Tec and Poseidon were heavily involved in gov't. affairs pre-war, and Poseidon bigwigs were the progenitors of the Enclave. It's not obvious in Fallout 1, but Fallout 2 introduced a heavy corporatist element into the nightmarish pre-war political scenario. What Fallout 3 introduced was the idea of Vault-Tec as being intimately involved in FEV research, which is a leap, but not as big of a leap as one might assume, given the depth of military-industrial incest that was apparent when the bombs fell. It's just a matter of establishing that Vault-Tec and Poseidon and the Military were all connected.

 

Military experiments weren't a stretch by any means, and I wasn't implying so, just noting that the concept wasn't present in the first two games.

[mkreku]

Minigames are fine, EXCEPT, in a rpg in which there is a lockpicking skill. If there is a skill, then players who invest in a skill should get an advantage in the area of that skill over other players who do not invest in said skill.

And this is why I mentioned Dungeon Lords earlier, as it was based on both player skill and in-game skill.

 

Unskilled lockpickers get a mini-game that's impossible (unless it is the easiest lock type), no matter the player skill.

Skilled lockpickers get a mini-game that's easy (unless it is the most difficult lock type), no matter the player skill.

 

Everyone in-between will struggle or breeze through, depending on lock type and player skill. Crude locks are possible for unskilled players and a breeze for skilled players. Complex locks are impossible for unskilled players and possible for skilled players. It still is the best lockpick solution I've seen in any game. It only had one flaw: when you were a super-skilled lockpicker (in-game skill), it would take longer to open a crude lock than it would for an unskilled lockpicker (due to the way the mini-game was set up), even though it was impossible to fail the game. They should have added an automatic lockpick function for unfailable locks/lockpicking skill combinations.

[Enoch]

I had always felt that lockpicking was kind of out-of-place as a skill in the Fallout games, anyway. Loot access is a powerful element of an RPG, which makes it very difficult to balance a skill that governs it. My preference from back when we were suggesting new rules for Van Buren was to make locked doors and containers much less common, eliminate lockpicking as a skill, let boots/crowbars/shotguns/explosives open what they logically should be able to open, and otherwise govern basic locks with Repair and electronic locks with Science.

 

That said, I didn't hate FO3's minigame. The whole "lockpicks snap like breadsticks, so you'd better bring a few dozen" thing wasn't particularly strong in the verisimilitude area, but the overall balance between player skill, character skill, and resource management wasn't bad. (And the game itself was a lot less annoying than the one they made for Oblivion.) The problem was that, as I mentioned above, loot access is too important to leave to a player's skill allocation to decide-- the game simply required you to put piles of points into lockpicking.

[Slowtrain]

Minigames are fine, EXCEPT, in a rpg in which there is a lockpicking skill. If there is a skill, then players who invest in a skill should get an advantage in the area of that skill over other players who do not invest in said skill.

And this is why I mentioned Dungeon Lords earlier, as it was based on both player skill and in-game skill.

 

Unskilled lockpickers get a mini-game that's impossible (unless it is the easiest lock type), no matter the player skill.

Skilled lockpickers get a mini-game that's easy (unless it is the most difficult lock type), no matter the player skill.

 

Everyone in-between will struggle or breeze through, depending on lock type and player skill. Crude locks are possible for unskilled players and a breeze for skilled players. Complex locks are impossible for unskilled players and possible for skilled players. It still is the best lockpick solution I've seen in any game. It only had one flaw: when you were a super-skilled lockpicker (in-game skill), it would take longer to open a crude lock than it would for an unskilled lockpicker (due to the way the mini-game was set up), even though it was impossible to fail the game. They should have added an automatic lockpick function for unfailable locks/lockpicking skill combinations.

 

 

That sounds like a good system, and a nice way to please bth people who like minigames and people who like character skills.

[Slowtrain]

I had always felt that lockpicking was kind of out-of-place as a skill in the Fallout games, anyway. Loot access is a powerful element of an RPG, which makes it very difficult to balance a skill that governs it. My preference from back when we were suggesting new rules for Van Buren was to make locked doors and containers much less common, eliminate lockpicking as a skill, let boots/crowbars/shotguns/explosives open what they logically should be able to open, and otherwise govern basic locks with Repair and electronic locks with Science.

 

 

I'm totally on board with not having lockpicking as a skill, and if gameplay mechanics require lockpicking of all characters, then having a "skill" for it is pretty bad game design.

 

That being said, ideally, in a crpg loot acquisition and infiltration through lockpicking is a route that is only really accessible, especially at higher levels, to stealth type characters. For a combat character, they don't need to be able to pick locks since they can loot the piles of dead enemies they leave behind, nor do they have to worry about sneaking through the back door. Combat characters just go right through the front door with the weapon of their choice. And a diplomatic character likewise has their means of proceeding through the game.

 

So yes, loot access is a powerful element of a crpg, but all skills, ideally, generate their own ways of acquiring loot.

 

That said, I didn't hate FO3's minigame. The whole "lockpicks snap like breadsticks, so you'd better bring a few dozen" thing wasn't particularly strong in the verisimilitude area, but the overall balance between player skill, character skill, and resource management wasn't bad. (And the game itself was a lot less annoying than the one they made for Oblivion.) The problem was that, as I mentioned above, loot access is too important to leave to a player's skill allocation to decide-- the game simply required you to put piles of points into lockpicking.

 

 

The problem with using FO3 as an example is that, while it IS a skill-based crpg, skills are so easy to raise that disntinctions between different character builds disappear pretty rapidly as the character levels. The early game of FO3 plays like a skill-based crpg; while the mid and later gameplay is more like a Far Cry-esque shooter.

Edited September 16, 2010 by Slowtrain

[Oner]

And a diplomatic character likewise has their means of proceeding through the game.

Not to mention they sell their loot high and buy stuff dirt cheap.

Edited September 16, 2010 by Oner