Fallout: New Vegas

Can't wait to shoot someone's arm off into the atmosphere.

@Nik: I'd only side with Caesar as a Scourge of God thing. The NCR has its problems, and House has his own issues. Strengthening the Legion and aiming them at the NCR could be seen by certain characters, especially ones who read about the END of the Roman Empire, as a means to cutting out the fat in the NCR.

Personally I'd roll with House. I do get caught up in rhetoric too, but not to the extent that I've ever given Sallow a chance. There's just no real good in that idea. House? He's a part of the Mojave, he probably pays well, and he reduces the NCR's need to plant soldiers in the area. Which is good, because the NCR is stretched too thin as it is and they need to get their house in order.

He also keeps the Vegas area tamed, and does a decent job from what I can tell.

I generally go either Independent or House.

Never NCR or Caesar.

"Why save the world when you can rule it?" fits most of my evil characters.

But even the good guys think they can do a better job than NCR.

My morally ambiguous antiheroes generally side with House as, while he's an asshole, he's slightly better than the majority of the people in the Wasteland.

Mr. House pretty clearly has the best ideas of anybody in the game. But at the same time...I just don't like him. He's scarier than Caesar to me. House is a man who seems to hate being a man and has plenty of his own mental issues, even beyond his megalomania and egoism. ("I'll dress the cannibals up like 60s mobsters. That's civilization! Also have you met my girlfriend whose brain I put in a robot" I think that's what he did anyway)

House is not a man to inspire the passions or loyalty. Hence why his subordinates are all machines and his only human underlings generally try to backstab him.

As far as I can tell, only Benny. When the others hear of Benny's treachery, they go as far as allowing you to execute him right in his own penthouse.

In the meantime, Caesar's unnecessary brutality and occasional downright petulance make him the unilateral enemy of the West. The Burning Man still haunts the dreams of Legion soldiers, they say.

Pfft, rule the Mojave? What part of "No gods, no masters" was unclear? This here desert is being re-organized into an anarcho-syndicalist commune.

I find House a lot more personable, honestly. Caesar is better at commanding a legion — House's follow House because it is financially better for them and they don't want to upset the status quo — but House is someone you can have a genuine one-on-one relationship with by the end, even if mainly as an 'employee-employer' thing. Caesar constantly threatens you, expects blind obedience and will raise his voice if you ever step a toe out of line. I've had conversations like that, where someone is essentially using you to entertain themselves. Look at his lecture on his goals:

Caesar is condescending. The {}s are the voice directions in the script, and its clear from his tone of voice that him telling you is more about talking himself up and talking you down. There's an overt implication right there that the Courier isn't well-read and is stupid(er than Caesar). If you fail in any way, he'll outright tell you he should put you to death, and is only making an exception because you remain of use to him. This is probably Arcade's baddest ending:

Imagine the relationship here. Caesar is fond of Arcade but uses him almost as a toy. After this, Caesar is genuinely saddened — but doesn't seem to aware at all that he's driving a man to suicide. That's the kind of sense of power dynamics I end up feeling when I talk to Caesar. He's constantly making it clear that he could have you put to death at a moment, to the point its the first thing he emphasises the moment you start talking (even in the guise of something of a joke).

edited 3rd May '18 8:13:14 PM by Lavaeolus

@blkwhtrbbt

The Omertas were doublecrossing him too, weren't they? And of course at least a few folks in the White Gloves are cannibals again.

I never explored the Omertas. The WGS is slipping back into cannibalism, yeah, but still keeps it under wraps, either out of respect or terror for their host.

The Omertas are working with the Legion to betray him, yes, though I suppose it's worth a mention that House is kind of aware of this already and sends the player to put a stop to their plans. The majority of the White Glove Society seem to like the current state, it's a handful that want to return to cannibalism — though obviously the fact they can switch their sides so easily should make it clear they're not really that loyal either.

But then, House doesn't really care if someone badmouths him. He doesn't really want personal loyalty from everyone; all he cares is that Vegas runs semi-functionally and no one overtly can oppose his will. Caesar will punish anyone who isn't loyal and indoctrinates people from birth. House is content to just make resisting him and his relatively few commands not worthwhile. Money if you obey, Securitrons if you get in the way.

edited 3rd May '18 8:22:30 PM by Lavaeolus

Personally I go for the NCR despite their flaws, the legion are a pack of monsters and while I agree with House on some matters, I just don't trust his ego and Control Freak mentality.

Here, I'm doing a long-form analysis type thingy of New Vegas. If you're curious and feel like hearing me prattle, I can post a link when I'm done (it'll be a while). It'll get a bit more tighter in focus as I go on, but right now it's looking at: how the game creates space / designs its world^note E.g., fixed item locations and a few non-scaling enemies, open-world, ability to pick up irrelevant items like brooms, etc., and how that impacts how the player engages with it; similarly, player expression and how the player is impacted by other gameplay elements and quest design; how story is explored and affected by the aforementioned, and how this creates a plot / storytelling structure that would be traditionally weak/unheard of in other mediums; and, finally, more general thematic analysis both related to the gameplay and story, particularly focused on themes of what to take of the past and issues of governments/nationbuilding (how are they formed, how do they act, how do they interact, how should they be constructed?). What it isn't going to be is a look at much of the DLCs (except to support other points), a review or a discussion of what makes New Vegas good or bad, or a comparison between other Fallout games and NV.

Now, I didn't utter out that splurge of words just to try and sound smart, nor do I believe any of that was particularly insightful on their own, but I do have a few things to ask. I don't expect you to actually do my research for me, but if you've encountered any particularly interesting analyses / discussion of the game I wouldn't mind a link. This isn't anything formal, so I don't really mind if whatever you saw is just some random Tumblr/forum post or whathaveyou.

But what I'm curious about: what is New Vegas to you? You can take that as a genre question, or a question more about your personal experience to it. Is there anything specific you think of when you remember the game? Cazadores, combat, exploration? A crash, or even a mod that dramatically changed the gameplay? Any specific scenes that shaped how you think of the game?

edited 6th May '18 10:15:32 PM by Lavaeolus

Among many other things, excellent and deliberate LGBT representation.

A piece of solid entertainment I can't help but look back to fondly (especially since I'm not too hot with Fallout 4) that's still perfectly servicable as a game.

It was also IMO a goldmine for roleplaying.

I remember reading way back an article by Patricia Hernandez, 'Gaming Made Me: Fallout 2'. It's essentially a personal recount about what Fallout 2, and the options and agency given to her, meant to her growing up. It touches on a lot of things, and a lot of it shows that by-and-large the positive impact it had on her was probably frequently accidental, but one of the big bits mentioned is the option to sleep with and marry a woman, which reshaped both how Hernandez played the game but also how she viewed the world. There's other stuff to unpack in the article, and I do recommend reading it if you haven't, but I think it's an interesting look at the kind of possible impact of representation.

And to be clear here, I don't think Fallout 2 is a particularly mature look at sex and representation. The bit is, essentially, a quick, cheap joke about the player engaging in sex and suddenly being forced into a silly Shotgun Wedding. Your spouse is a silly nuisance who forcibly joins the party, can't level up, and will respond to any attempt to alter their tactics to even just be at a slight distance to you with something like 'No, no, sweet pea. I need to be close to you.' You can get divorced by giving a priest a bottle of vodka, and if you tell their father about the divorce later he'll immediately have a heart attack out of shock. It's also got this line from the father on the lesbian option:

The only thing that particularly makes this moment stand out — other than demonstrating Fallout's willingness to engage in sex comedy and its oft-cynical approach to romance — is, of course, that it accounts for players of different orientations. There's a male and female spouse (located nearby to each other), and each are available to both men and women. It is, then, possibly the first example of same-sex marriage in a video game, both male-male and female-female.

But despite the irreverence of the scene and its other issues, it still ended up meaning a lot for Hernandez. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I think by New Vegas the series had become a bit more mature about sex and sexuality. There's still jokes in there, FISTO and characters making entendres or potshots at the Legion, but there's also a genuine look at, say, the sexual agency of prostitutes at the Atomic Wrangler and Gomorrah. And of course, outside of just sex, there's more devotion to genuinely giving life to LGBT characters and exploring them, both in relation to their sexuality and otherwise with it as incidental, minor parts of their character. This goes for both the companions and a lot of the other NPCs around. You have the NCR supply person who faces some tensions due to his sexuality; you have Arcade who is gay but is generally a solitary person; Jimmy, a slave who probably would've been killed for engaging in a homosexual relationship with a Legion Centurion; Veronica, Corporal Betsy, etc.

edited 7th May '18 2:24:52 AM by Lavaeolus

For me New Vegas is an engaging game with a ton of replayability.

For me, it had to be the odd attention to detail in just how heavily logistics can effect the course of a war. Or how despite Caesar's Legion was hyped up to be this army that might spell certain doom for Mojave and the NCR, in reality each ending (even their victory) showed the legion is beginning to run out of steam and risks over-extending themselves. Can't think of many videogame plots that had owning too much territory and pissing everybody off be a downfall for the bad guy faction, excluding turn based strategy titles like Civilization or anything Paradox makes.

But then again, I think that's more of an Obsidian thing. That company has a talent for writing outstanding plots and giving nuance and depth to story tropes that are typically treated straight, and if Pillars of Eternity or Tyranny is any indication they still have the magic. Gameplay-wise, it was certainly good, but the combat system for Fallout ultimately boiled down to carrying the most overpowered equipment capable of dishing out insane DPS versus Deathclaws and Legionnaires. Actual tactics often didn't apply unless you were dealing with the rare random who had a Fat Man and needed to be flanked. Sadly, Fallout 4 still seems to suffer the same issues... but I'm getting off point.

EDIT: Oh, and that too. The first playthrough had me siding with House; I found the man's habit of forgetting that people are people to be really worrisome and potentially indicate that this guy may wind up taking things down a disturbing post-human path in the future, but he arguably had the best intentions for the Mojave in mind, and is still arguably the smartest man on the planet. The guy did predict the nuclear war's zero hour so accurately that he was only off by a few days. And I kinda admit to cheating a wee bit; I downloaded a mod that allowed me to spare the Brotherhood from House's originally intended slaughter.

The second playthrough had me siding with the NCR, but... yeesh, Colonel Moore makes carrying out their will way more painful than it should be. Talk about the worst officer for the task, ever.

edited 7th May '18 7:08:25 AM by SgtRicko

It should be noted that Caesar is aware of this problem and is actually planning to fix it by his conflict with NCR. His plan isn't to conquer NCR but to establish Vegas as his capital.

Then the two nations will become more like one another.

The Legion going from being the Spartans to being civilized Romans while NCR will have to become a more ruthless conquering power.

Whatever group comes out on top will be the best of both (in his deranged mind).

edited 7th May '18 3:20:02 PM by CharlesPhipps

For me, it's everything. From the first moments I was engaged in the game, I wanted to play it through to the end... then I wanted to do the plot again but better... and I've stuck with it. The game never feels like it's holding your hand, the bullet in your brain justifies your vengeance quest and the tutorial, but you can totally ignore the Tutorial missions and just... be...

The Mojave while empty is beautiful in its emptiness, but with brief moments of life in Caravan traders or the occasional assassination party.

Fallout: New Vegas is my second favorite Western video game.

What's your first?

It's clearly gonna be Red Dead Redemption.

Does Wasteland 2 count as a Western?

I've said it before but possibly the most memorable part of NV for me was arriving in Nipton. The game was fun up until that point but getting to Nipton was a serious wake-up call and got me motivated. Vulpes' voice-actor was picture perfect, as was his dialogue. I can still remember to this day my Courier said "I admire the purity of the Legion's justice."

In fact, I was so enamored with what he said I just spent some time looking at the crucified people and then went on. It never occurred to me to explore around. I never found all the clues that he was lying, or the surviving Powder Ganger who is remarkably lucid and talkative for a man who just had sledgehammers taken to his legs.

Also nobody likes that first Powder Ganger. I mean, people hate the Legion and decry its barbarity but they show no sympathy for a guy who is understandably manic with joy at surviving. I wish I still had that GIF of him getting his head shot off.

But yeah. New Vegas' faction element was something that highly intrigued me going into it. In fact, factions was part of what made me finally start playing WRPG's. Everyone I saw on forums were talking about Mages and Templars, Stormcloaks and Imperials, the four groups in New Vegas, the groups in FO 4.... I wanted to be part of this discussion and give my own ideas on who was best and why. I loved Fallout 3 but New Vegas kept me more invested in what was happening because there was just so much happening.

Of course there was the main plot but then there were the DLC's which were superbly woven together with the main story, enforcing its themes and ideas.