As for the discussion of setting. I'm not from the US and haven't been to either location, but I vastly prefer the setting in new Vegas. I thought fo3 did good and I really liked the game, but the setting felt more like a series of "cool" locations randomly inserted into the map. There was no connection between the different places with a few exceptions.

 

New Vegas has a whole other level of cohesiveness. The different locations really feel like they're part of the same world. I also find a lot of them to be much more interesting than the fo3 ones. Sure, fo3 had more recognizable vistas, but apart from the visuals, there was very little meat to the locations (again with a few exceptions).

 

Or to put it simply, Bethesda is much better at visual story telling, Obsidian are better writers. I prefer well written locations visually interesting ones.

 

Neither am I from the US, I find DC boring as hell. I just have a lot of issues with cities that have the roman structure of straight and orthogonal streets. I had to constantly check the map to see where I was. In FO3, dungeons were too big and often boring too (with some exceptions) like the Hamilton hideaway, the Statesman hotel, ...

I liked FO3 globally, it is an enjoyable game, but not one I would consider a game I would play again and again.

FONV gives more replayability with the factions and a world less boring to explore. Some interesting characters and above all, it avoids the pretty pathetic vide for "drama" that has been too present in RPGs for ten years. I agree that many things are not perfect in FONV (and I don't talk about glitches or bugs) like the lack of motivation for the main story, the lack of balance between factions when considering available quests and the lack of depth in the Legion as it appears in the game.

I have to agree with Gorgon about Camp McCarran being badly designed. It just felt.. unnecessary and vast for no apparent reason. It was especially apparent with all the fetch quests you could do in there. The quick travel took you to outside the main gate to the McCarran camp, and then you had to cross this vast field, enter a huge building and then wander inside of it to the opposite side, before you finally reached the quest giver (who was always walking around in the most inconvenient places for me).. who immediately sends you out to fetch something else.

 

Like how they placed the entrance to the only meaningful building in Camp Mojave so that you enter a gate and then have to walk around a pile of sandbags just to get to the door. Who does that?! It's just not how people build real stuff. It makes it feel like an obstacle course instead of a place used and lived in by humans.

 

Only a few areas felt that way though. I've seen a lot of very good areas too, like Vault 22, Vault 34 (if you like mazes), Searchlight, the southwestern part of Vegas (don't think it has a name, but it's where three of the Fiend leaders are located), the cave where you find the Ratslayer (forgot the name), the hotel in Primm, and so on.

I'm generally okay with the sprawling outdoor areas, even if they involve a bit of legwork - the minimap covers it well enough and I'm not one who pokes around every nook and crevice. I don't even bother entering the generically named houses in each town. Mccarran just needed a second fast travel point and it would have been a non-issue (like they did with Nellis base). It's more the mundane indoor areas that are built like labyrinths by architects who are apparently high on Jet. Upstairs at the Kings' Club and the whole of Gomorrah come to mind, but most large buildings suffer from this - having to cross a steel walkway to get the the technicians in the HELIOS power plant for example.

 

 

 

As for crashes - it's been weird - there was a point between about the 15th and 25ths hours of playing that I'd crash every couple hours or so at least. I played on and have notched up almost another 10 hours after that without a single crash.

Edited November 16, 201015 yr by Humanoid

I was actually lying in bed last night thinking about the vastness of McCarran and a few other areas in the game, such as the inside of Hoover Dam, I get the feeling there was supposed to be more going on in these locations than ended up in the game, I don't have any issues with the layout but having to trek all the way to the end of the airport to find the supply depot is a chore, realistic, just not the best idea from a gameplay perspective.

I got lost in the Hoover Dam for almost an hour at one point, it was frustrating. Still, I felt the locales had a ton more personality than FO3. There weren't any towns with two people, at least.

I haven't posted in here since a while, as I am too busy and can't read up all the new posts. But...

 

My (first and wip) try at Ulysses clothes. :>

 

Also I've made a barber mod, by the way.

i felt like fallout 3 was written with the intent to make the player feel a certain way when the credits rolled, that kind of emotional hit that fallout 1 so ably evoked on its completion. That part 3 completely and embarrassingly fell on its face in attempting it is better left forgotten for the sake of everyone involved... just be glad we have new vegas (which although it doesnt pack much of an emotional punch compared to the original either, it certainly didn't miserably fail to ape it, but merely went a different direction altogether).

 

 

on a personal note: fallout 1's ending is quite possibly my favorite game ending of all time. which gives me an idea for a thread....

What emotion did you feel Fallout 1 evoked? I had Bloody Mess the one time I played it and I thought the result of that perk was fitting for me.

 

Fallout 3 most certainly did not try emulating that aspect of the ending. It didn't give me anyone to shoot.

i felt like fallout 3 was written with the intent to make the player feel a certain way when the credits rolled, that kind of emotional hit that fallout 1 so ably evoked on its completion. That part 3 completely and embarrassingly fell on its face in attempting it is better left forgotten for the sake of everyone involved... just be glad we have new vegas (which although it doesnt pack much of an emotional punch compared to the original either, it certainly didn't miserably fail to ape it, but merely went a different direction altogether).

 

 

on a personal note: fallout 1's ending is quite possibly my favorite game ending of all time. which gives me an idea for a thread....

What emotion did you feel Fallout 1 evoked? I had Bloody Mess the one time I played it and I thought the result of that perk was fitting for me.

 

Fallout 3 most certainly did not try emulating that aspect of the ending. It didn't give me anyone to shoot.

 

 

honestly its a little hard to put into words. going through all that effort to save your home only to be turned away again out into the wastes... particularly after I lost dogmeat and tycho while storming the masters lair... it was a bittersweet moment, and then the music starts to play as you saunter off into the sunset, damaged and shoulder-slumped... I guess the emotions were a bittersweet mixture of melancholy, hope, ache, resignation, resentment, defeat, and a forlorn desire to find some peace out there, but a deep knowing that there will be no such peaceful end for you, nor any other great adventures lying in your future - all mixed with a big spoonful of loneliness.

So, what I get is that your response wasn't "I'll kill you!"

lol no

 

i was really invested in my character as he was proposed by the opening of the game, a normal guy (with excellent speaking skills and marksmanship) who literally drew the short straw to go out into the wastes to save his friends and family.

I got lost in the Hoover Dam for almost an hour at one point, it was frustrating. Still, I felt the locales had a ton more personality than FO3. There weren't any towns with two people, at least.

I actually gave up on the quest to save the president because I knew it meant going more than one level into hoover dam, and I would rather put out a campfire with my face.

 

 

At one point I even tried dumping a trail of low cost gear like Hansel and Gretel.

Saving the President didn't require anything other than topside.

Ohh... Well the moment the ranger guy said to do a security sweep I was out of there. Hoover dam is like that movie 'The Cube'

lol!

Ohh... Well the moment the ranger guy said to do a security sweep I was out of there. Hoover dam is like that movie 'The Cube'

I can understand the trepidation. I did their ending once, tried doing the optional objective and ran in circles for two hours.

Edited November 16, 201015 yr by Tale

Tired of playing labyrinth? Toggle the console, type "tcl" and problem solved. That's how I managed to get through Vault 11 & Vault 34 without losing my sanity.

I thought part of the fun and tension of those quests was being lost and in pretty aweful shape. Vault 34 especially, which was probably my hardest part of the game. Vault 11 was one of the highlights, I don't really get the whole black humour assisiated with that quest, I understand the joke but the logs do such a good job of personalising the characters that it's pretty sad (but that's great, as I said it was one of my favorite things in the entire game). How many people managed to get all the way through that one? It took me around 60 stims and a lot of cowering in the corner while my henchmen handled things.

Edited November 16, 201015 yr by Serrano

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.

I think a couple of times FNV tried to do the whole Fallout ironic black humour but either overshot it or made it too obvious - V11 is one of those, that's the one with the elections right? The premise felt pretty stupid at the end... but then, the way the story unfolds through terminals, etc as you go in was so effective that it was still quite enjoyable.

 

I'm a real sucker for getting lost in 3d spaces in games, but I felt when you do a couple of sweeps around the vaults or Hoover Dam, it's fine. Much more annoying is the walking you need to do in McCarran, Golf, AFB, Dam. I already installed a mod to put a fast-travel at Lucky 38, maybe if I can figure out how to do it for myself...

How was Vault 11 black humor? It seemed pretty serious. Aside from the typical Vault Boy "that guy is way too laid back for the apocalypse" at the end, but that's an established element of the franchise and setting. Otherwise it was as serious as a funeral.

Edited November 16, 201015 yr by Tale

Isn't it the one

with the reverse elections for sacrifices and later you find they should have stopped it to begin with? Or hang on, is it the one with Blue vs. Red?

If the latter, I never really found out the full story, just a cryptic message about how "we will never find out exactly why"

Isn't it the one

with the reverse elections for sacrifices and later you find they should have stopped it to begin with? Or hang on, is it the one with Blue vs. Red?

If the latter, I never really found out the full story, just a cryptic message about how "we will never find out exactly why"

The former.

 

How was Vault 11 black humor? It seemed pretty serious. Aside from the typical Vault Boy "that guy is way too laid back for the apocalypse" at the end, but that's an established element of the franchise and setting. Otherwise it was as serious as a funeral.

Well, yeah, it was serious. The humor comes from the juxtaposition of all that serious brutality with the

golly-gee tone of the final message from the Vault's mainframe

. It's really the same kind of irony-based black humor that has been in Fallout since the opening credits of the original game. (Particularly the bit with the My Lai style execution by 'peacekeeping' soldiers happily waving to the folks at home.)

Edited November 16, 201015 yr by Enoch

It's the former.

Only the first Overseer knew about the sacrifice when they were all locked into the vault. The system was such that the people must vote on a sacrifice or all die. Well, since they felt the overseer betrayed them, they voted him in as the sacrifice. This tied the two positions for the vault's duration. Political parties (referred to as voting blocs) started forming to leverage their power. Due to the particularly disgusting actions of one voting bloc, a woman went on a killing spree to reduce their voting power and ensure she would be voted in as overlord. She used this position to try to eliminate the the overseer/sacrifice connection for after she was sacrificed. This caused a civil war that killed all but 5 members, who simply got tired of it all.

 

 

The political posters were "wut?" but other than that, humor was pretty absent.

 

How was Vault 11 black humor? It seemed pretty serious. Aside from the typical Vault Boy "that guy is way too laid back for the apocalypse" at the end, but that's an established element of the franchise and setting. Otherwise it was as serious as a funeral.

Well, yeah, it was serious. The humor comes from the juxtaposition of all that serious brutality with the

golly-gee tone of the final message from the Vault's mainframe

. It's really the same kind of irony-based black humor that has been in Fallout since the opening credits of the original game. (Particularly the bit with the My Lai style execution by 'peacekeeping' soldiers happily waving to the folks at home.)

It was definitely irony, but I won't go so far as to say it was humor. It should make you recall the entrance and be soul shattering. Not funny.

Edited November 16, 201015 yr by Tale

No, I found out all that. I think mainly, the first thing you find - the idea of electing other people - put me off a bit because it seemed like too obvious a reversal of the election process to parody the political institutions today (you can see this in the language they use). After that, I got into it again as I kept finding out more and searching the Vault, but at the end when you find out from the cheerful computer message the truth - I just thought "well that's way too pointlessly ludicrous to be serious".

 

I'm sure it will have worked differently for others. I did get that "Oh God" feeling of hopelessness when it all wrapped up, but it stood right besides that WTF feeling.

I think you can tweak the Fallout humor slightly this way or that in order to get more dramatic impact. Vault 11 is clearly dramatic but I also think it's a perfect example of the Fallout humor. You can have a line of humor run alongside a dramatic thread, which can be a great effect.

 

 

I mean, if you were to strip away the dramatic elements of Vault 11 then it becomes more easy to see, the cheesy posters, the hilarious soothing walk towards the light, the nicely set up chair and table in front of the screen, the movie which plays and talks about looking back on your life, the complete overkill of having all that machinery killing one person and the cheeky voice explaining the reason for it all. All that is plain humor. Add to that the thread of knowing how the Vault experiments operated and the personal story of those involved, then it gains a level of drama.

 

 

Fallout 1 definitely had a sense of humor about itself but not to the point where you didn't take it seriously (though I also think it didn't quite do the same kind of drama like V11). I think that humor was a bit lost on the other entries in the series where it got more "silly" humor which made the setting a bit more of a mouthful at times if you ask me.