Fallout: New Vegas

I gotta say, Obsidian perfectly captured the attitude of people who try to explain everything through dialectics. When asked about it, Caesar sounds exactly like every other snooty jackass I've ever heard rambling about the power of dialectics.

Edited by Balmung on Jun 9th 2019 at 8:49:01 AM

THE HOUSE HAS GONE BUST!

A Great Tragedy Has Befallen All Mankind

"A Great Tragedy Has Befallen All Mankind" is hilariously self-serving.

I also made a point of completing the A Slave Obeys challenge, courtesy of our good friend, Driver Nephi.

But did you kill him with the golf club?

I just said I did, didn't I?

Edited by Balmung on Jun 9th 2019 at 1:50:41 PM

Never mind, I need to sleep

O Oooo I need to do that one.

And I love how House clearly designed ALL THE INPUTS for your Pip Boy, hence why that pops up. So meta. And so IC for the asshole.

Though I do still intend to run a playthrough as his Dragon, just because I like being the cyborg cowboy henchman.

House is dead, as is Sallow and all his named commanders apart from Lanius. I am doing a run that takes a different approach to the story than usual so I will probably kill Oliver and Kimble as well.

And Cassie Moore if that evil bitch gets in the way. Or probably even if she doesn't, if l am being honest. I really hate her that much.

Yeah she's a Karma Houdini if you don't proactively DO something.

You're doing a proper "Clean the slate" run through aintcha? Independent ending but making the point to the major powers "Don't Fuck with Aria".

It's something like that, but I'm doing a run where rep with the vanilla factions doesn't really matter too much - most of them will not be a factor by the end. Plus Boone's dead - I didn't do the "recruit him" thing, so when my new faction smooshed Novac, he bit the dust. I'd say more but it's a Loverslab thing, and there are not many folks on this thread that do that kind of playthrough. Though I am also combining it with a Coito Ergo Sum run - that's available on the New Vegas Nexus and is as adult as you want it to be. One of the features of the said run is that one of the hookers you can recruit is in a pretty bad way because of the NCR/Legion war and wants Sallow and Kimble dead. And I hate to disappoint a lady.

Note - even though I've wiped out most of Novac, I'm still Friendly with them, and my Karma rating is Messiah.

I've been waiting for this and now FO 3 and NV are on sale on Steam, I'm getting them. I've been wanting to do this for years . Played the games on console and now I can finally explore the world of mods and then have nothing work and te ar my hair out.

As somebody who is basically computer illiterate and has no experience at heavy modding in a game, how hard would it be to just get Tale of Two Wastelands up and running? That and Ties That Bind are the mods I care most about. Everything else is flavor.

I'd like to try out some companion mods and I might need some extra stuff since some mods use other mods ya know. But TTW and TTB are the ones I absolutely want/need.

Only thing to be very aware of is that NV is more unstable with mods. Unofficial patch, plus some other comparison checks, to ensure mods don't try to overwrite the same assets, or load in the correct order is the safest bet.

I modded NV heavily - whole graphics overhaul, some scaling adjustments and a few extra missions (New vegas bounties) but I tried to avoid going overboard too much. Never tried TOTW- I don't think it has many clashes, save perhaps with other major overhaul mods. Faction mods may clash with it, so check the compatibility versions or "known issue" elements.

And as with all Bethesda titles: it's mod load order. Core, central mods and graphics mods up front, cosmetic gameplay mods last, I believe.

I used the Load Order Optimization Tool (LOOT for short) to keep mine straight. It's one tool that works for NV, FO 3, and Skyrim. I didn't try it with anything else, but Oblivion might be there too.

Kay thanks for the advice everyone. Of course now I gotta wait to buy an Xbox 360 controller because apparently my generic PS 4 gamepad doesn't work or something. Sad.

Watching this always makes me want to side with House.

When you look at the Bo S they have strayed a LOT from their original mission, and fallen in love with their own mythos.

When the world was more a wasteland they had their place... and their chance. But they do need to modernise or at least think of a bigger plan beyond "stop technological evils" - as he says, they don't really restore much in the way of tech, nor make the world BETTER. They just... stop people carrying lasers. by threatening them WITH lasers.

And then they deploy a nuke throwing robot... despite being founded as a society that seeks to eliminate the use of nukes and unethical experiments...

Do you post on Space Battles? There's somebody with that exact same avatar and in the exact same threads as you and I'm not sure.

But my point is, there was a thread on that forum about villains who would NEVER get along. And I pointed to Caesar and House. It's hard to think of men who fundamentally disagree more than those two. And yet...

"The worst impulses of mankind, concentrated in one insane, backward tribe. The Brotherhood seems to have formed not long after the great atomic war. It's hard to know - they care little for history. Some of the Brotherhood scribes we captured further East didn't even know the name of their founder, Roger Maxson. They like to pretty up their mission with trappings of chivalry, but the truth is they're horders. They horde technology. It's been 200 years, and they still have the mentality of scavengers. They say they're preserving these technologies, but for what? They have no vision. They offer no future. They're a dead end."

Also I can't help but think the writers inserted a bit of obvious hypocrisy for the audience. House labeling the BOS "emotionally unstable techno fetishists" and Caesar talking about being backward and a dead end.

Edited by Nikkolas on Aug 9th 2019 at 4:12:59 AM

I do indeed - I like consistency!

And they are like the fading heroes of legend - the world has begun to pass them by. And New vegas does a good job of showing that; the Brotherhood quets are a bit broken in that you can get them to lift the lockdown but they're still trapped (Veronica's questline).

They're going extinct, they know it, but they won't or can't change for some reason.

And yes, the weird shared opinion of Caesar and House. I never played the Brotherhood of Steel game, but at least that chapter learned to evolve to survive - to adapt. Would you want them running things? No, they're a military unit first and foremost. But they're also a strange parody of those military 3rd world dictators given a history and then a mythos, but with a sprinkling of US jingoism over the top.

I mean, can you imagine turning around to amodern day US army company and saying "ok, so, we're changing the rank names and structures to "knights", won't that be AWESOME?" and not have half of them just laugh in your face...

If they actually did more with their tech, they'd be amazing, but they don't build or really CHANGE anything.

Well, that's the thing with the Brotherhood. Getting their shit together doesn't necessarily make them into a force for good, it just makes them more effective tech-bandits.

See: Fallout 4's BOS aka what if Caesar's Legion had power armor and a giant murder robot.

Edited by Nikkolas on Aug 9th 2019 at 5:34:05 AM

Yeah, not saying the Midwest Brotherhood were the good guys of the entire world. I wouldn't want them running a real life country. But they were the good guys of their story and if you're not going to go with Protagonist-Centered Morality or Unreliable Narrator, they were exactly what their area needed at the time. A stable force of high tech soldiers who were willing to accept and help outsiders in order to get the mission done. I don't know what they've evolved into over the century or two since their game, but in the beginning they could have been the good guys. They'd been shipped off because they wanted to help outsiders to begin with.

I think in the Wasteland, a handover to a proper ruler or authority would work; but as we've seen that doesn't guarantee success. The NCR has become corrupt and run by special interests; the Capital Wasteland has essentially a military feudalistic dictatorship (Service guarantees citizenship!)

Having the Bro's as a military arm, but one that works in tandem with an effective civilian and perhaps more civil infrastructure element would work; have them as the specialist arm of a military, perhaps (Much like how the Rangers became an army of the NCR).

But they need to let go of that mission statement, or at least adjust it for a changing time period. Or DO something with it. Well, I suppose in F4 they DID do something with it. Just they went full scary.

I haven't actually beaten the game, and even the J Sawyer run Jon did never talked about the Brotherhood with Caesar because Jon killed Caesar during surgery. So all I've heard about the possibility of the Midwest still existing is that history line that was posted. Which doesn't really matter? Most medics aren't Arcade. They don't study history. They study medicine. For all we actually know, the Midwest Brotherhood did adapt to the extent of improving medical tech within their territory, or even possibly having a Civil arm to deal with the non-Brothers. We really need a canon game set in that region, but I doubt Bethesda would leave the East Coast in their games.

I don't think it's fair to compare the Brotherhood of Steel to Caesar's Legion. They're racist (well, not really racist but you know what I mean), but they're not out committing atrocities like the Legion. They're eradicating what they see as monsters, and we're not talking about somebody with a different skin color here. Ghouls can become bloodthirsty monsters at any time. The vast majority of Super Mutants want to eradicate humanity. Synths are under the control of the Institute, who are indeed using them for infiltration and assassination. The Brotherhood is far from perfect, but they're not just out murdering and enslaving people like the Legion.

There is the whole "taking Rivet City's reactor to power the Prydwen" thing, that loses them a few points in my book.

TBF that's mainly speculation. All there is on that is one line where it's mentioned that the Prydwen's reactor came from "an old aircraft carrier" - that leaves open the possibility that they're talking about a different ship, or that they gave Rivet City something in exchange, or any number of things.