Fallout: New Vegas

YAY. This was one of the things I always found most annoying about the series, is that once you recruit party members they have virtually no interaction with the plot. Going so far as the full-on Bioware-style romance plots may or may not be a good idea, but I'd LOVE something like Jaheira's slaver quest in BG2 to show that my party-members are real people with histories and motivations.

Eric,

Hopefully, it'll be a bit more of a deterrent against simply pausing the game, applying the stimpak, then resuming the fight.

OOO did that, but it healed you so quickly that it didn't really matter when you used it. I'm the sort of gamer who likes a good, legitimate challenge, so this hardcore mode is quite appealing to me.

The way it was done in Fallout Wanderer's Edition I found it okay, but I also think they reduced the amount of health points stimpaks healed.

I'm not a bug, I'm a feature!

Collector's edition announced

Usually I'm not interested but Avellone-penned graphic novel with Dark Horse Comics? Count me interested.

EDIT : Also, going by the new screenshots on mags, old incredibly Hardcore Fallout fans and generally old Fallout fans (you know, there are normal ones too) will rejoice : green Super Mutants with lips and strap on their faces have returned! It appears that the yellow ones were just placeholders (not sure about the Nightkin, after all I think that the Fallout 3 scarred faces fit pretty well, and they were already reskinned to be grey-ish so..)

edited 12th May '10 12:02:51 AM by WorstUsernameEver

I'm not a bug, I'm a feature!

Since I know I'm probably going to love this unless something goes horribly wrong, I'll be picking up the PC version of the collection. I am a collector after all

The platinum poker chip sounds like it's a MacGuffin in the game.

Jonah Falcon

Mmmm unsure on the Limited Edition. A sound-track would be an automatic yes for me, but looks like no dice...

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Are you sure you want a soundtrack by Inon Zur? Sure? Instead of a graphic novel written by Mr.Chris Avellone? Sure?? Well, to each his own I guess.

I'm not a bug, I'm a feature!

Well I would like to have both.

Visit my contributor page to assist with the "I Like The Cheeses" project!

Anyone getting a cyberpunk vibe from new vegas ?

^Not really, no. I saw the screenshot of the city itself on the Game Informer mag and it doesn't really look cyberpunkish at all, not even post-apocalyptic to be honest. There's quite a bit of contrast between the Mojave Wasteland and the clean futuristic Las Vegas, with all the bright-lighted casinos. There's also apparently a Rat Pack influence there, like a casino playing Sinatra in the background etc.

I'm not a bug, I'm a feature!

Box Art◊

I'm not a bug, I'm a feature!

I wish they put new vegas in the backround rather then some beat up gas station

...That IS New Vegas...

I'm a ghost, you didn't see me.

but new vegas has lights and frank sinatra

It's just far-away...I'm sure from up close it has aplenty of Frank Sinatra and Lights...you can even see the Lucky 38, as in, the big-man of the wasteland's not-so-secret lair.

I'm a ghost, you didn't see me.

I expected something more flamboyant, but I guess they wanted to reach the FPS gamer and show some dude with a gun and a cool armor.

I didn't like that guy in the trailer and I like him even less as part of the cover art. He was only good for standing around showing off the cloth physics and here he looks generic. Ah well, the Fallout series has always had poor box art.

At least he's not wearing Power Armor. But yeah, while I like the cover, it would look much better without the guy, just showing Vegas in the background, or alternatively, they could have used the 'Made Man Vault Boy' image that they're using for promotion and as the cover of the 'Making of' DVD.

I'm not a bug, I'm a feature!

Yes, yes. I know that Obsidian is made up of Black Isle refugees, but I'm still pretty worried about the fact that the only notable games they've made in years are lackluster sequels to Bioware games that have an ending written by toddlers...

Though, that can't make it worse than Fallout 3's ending, really.

edited 14th May '10 12:53:49 PM by KalosCast

Mask of the Betrayer?

the force unleashed

amyone else think fallout 2 was the best followed by F3 and then the 1st one

No idea what the force unleashed has to do with any of this

I like all three of the main fallout games for different reasons. Fallout 1 had the best realization of the setting and despite being rather barebones it's pretty much (obviously) the definitive fallout that 3 tried to be.

Fallout 2 is a much better RPG but the atmosphere has been mostly stripped away. There are some problems with the setting and writing making no sense/too many pop culture references, and the music has been recycled too much. Still as a game it has much more quality content than FO 1.

Fallout 3 has horrendous writing that seeps into the rest of the game like industrial waste into the water supply and really brings the game down several notches. However because of the new perspective it seems a lot more atmospheric than its predecessors, even the first one. A lot of fallout fans think the turn-based combat is absolutely necessary for the game to be any good, but I strongly disagree, the decision to replace an archaic and almost painfully slow and nonfunctional turn-based system with real time did it wonders, even if it could have been a lot more functional as an FPS. VATS sucked however. It's a mixed bag but overall I'd have to say I had a lot of fun with it, even if I can't help but think it's an inferior game, academically if you get what I mean.

I'd say it goes 1 > 2 > 3 in terms of importance and actual quality but I had more fun with 3 than I did 2.

Confession time : I prefer Fallout 2. Yeah. The tone was better in Fallout 1 but that's really the only thing I find better. Even the writing in Fallout 2 is more memorable than the pretty shallow writing in Fallout 1.

As for being worried about Obsidian I'm not, mainly because I'm judging the game by what I see in the previews not their past career (I liked their Bioware sequels, by the way). And people like Josh Sawyer and Avellone are pretty passionate and want to correct the errors (mainly rushed/buggy games) they've made in the past, with the passion boost gained by working again on a Fallout title, something they probably didn't think it would be possible again. So Yeah

I'm not a bug, I'm a feature!

Fallout 2 was mechanically a superior game to the original, it would be hard to argue otherwise. The first game had the better story, really, but that's just how sequels tend to go. The second one was no slouch or anything, it was still engaging and interesting, but it's main strength was that the gameplay was better. Little things like how you could trade with and alter the behavior of your teammates, and the fact that there was just more to it, content-wise.

I liked Fallout 3, I never really had a complaint about it no longer being isometric and turn based. Turn based isn't an easy sell. It was actually Fallout that made me receptive to the idea of a turn based game; if you'd tried to convince me to try a turn based game before that, you'd be fighting an uphill battle.

There were problems with the change in perspective, but it's not really the developer's fault. Every first person or otherwise high-detail RPG tends to suffer from the distinct feeling of graphical repetition. It's sort of like with FPSs; back in the day, no one batted an eye that all your enemies had the same face, but now that we have near photo-realistic graphics, fighting an army of clones is suddenly very weird. It's the same principle, but applied to RPG things. When you're in an isometric, low graphic quality environment, it never seems weird that every cave, dungeon, or military base has a similar layout with the same exact colors and architecture, or that every merchant looks sort of alike. Your imagination fills in the blanks for the simplistic graphics. But when you're in a modern game with all it's polygons and particle effects, the fact that all the caves and shanty towns look very similar and that every person you meet has a similar body shape becomes a lot more noticeable. Especially so in a game like Fallout 3, where they try to make a lot of content, which means a lot of suspiciously similar metro stations and bombed out buildings. I don't really have a solution for this problem, there's only so many hours in the day and so many resources a developer has, so I don't hold a grudge against them for it.

The main problem I had with Fallout 3 was that it had a very strong feeling of being made by fans. Which I guess technically it was. They were trying very hard to make it like the originals, and as a result, the story felt a little like a knockoff. Vault dweller, water problem, enclave with the same basic plan, brotherhood of steel and super mutants thrown in just for good measure; that sort of thing. I guess I shouldn't complain too much, when they did get creative, they made things like the rock-it-launcher and the fat man.

Along with that, I felt like they were trying very hard to remind you that, yes, you are in fact in a nuclear wasteland. It would seem like once you get to the point that your grandfather wasn't alive before the war, you wouldn't be so hung up on the whole nuclear war thing. Just a fact of life. Like in Fallout 2, you got the impression that people were really moving on. You had tribals that had gone back to the basics, and you had NCR, which was rebuilding a government. And the originals didn't try so hard to sell the alternate history angle. There were bits and pieces to suggest the pre-war history was a little different, but it always felt like more of an aesthetic choice to evoke the feeling of the early cold war than anything else. It was a lot more subtle.

There were other little things, like the heavy weapons being ineffective, and how a lot of the side quests required you to aimlessly hike into the wilderness to find, which doesn't make sense in the context of the game. If I was in a search for my father, why would I just wander into nowhere, unless I was prompted to, or would help my quest in some way? But enough bitching. As much as I complain, I really did enjoy it.

I can't really rate either of the first two ahead of the other, because they both had their strengths. The third one would be after them though.

I'm not really sure where Fallout: Tactics would fit into that, though. It wasn't really an RPG, so it's sort of in its own class. I did like it though, it had it's own charm to it. It's too bad that they never got to work on the intended sequel. I read about it on the Fallout wiki. The premise was that an irradiated GECK had been used somewhere in the southeast, which spawned a sort of toxic jungle that was overtaking the wasteland, with all sorts of poisonous plants and new mutants. There were going to be crocodile men, I believe.

Out of curiousity, did anyone here ever play Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel? I'm not really a console player, but even if I was, everything I ever heard about it sounds terrible. Plus, I hear if you play it, the folks over at No Mutants Allowed come looking for you. With bats and crowbars. And they'll be angry-drunk.