Things you *aren't* pleased to see

90 hours in, level 30, plenty of quests done and still more to do, and I've only just last night confronted Benny.

I'm really loving the game a lot, but have to say that my heart has dropped a few times due to the lacklustre interior building designs. Going around the soulless Kings building was the first warning sign, and now that I'm in Vegas the casinos are just as empty with little to no detail. The rooms in the hotels are all identical and there's very little reward for exploring these places. At least put the beds and wardrobes in different places, dammit, and decorate with - I dunno - something.

It's a shame that the engine can't perform much better, I'm sick of having to go through all the partitions in Vegas and Freeside with a load screen in between each.

The exterior designs are all great though, like Black Mountain and the quarry and the dam, etc, even if they have noticeable pop-up when you approach them. I'm still willing to overlook these flaws but it's just a bit depressing to walk through empty corridors so many times.

 

Also, the Pack Rat perk seemed really useful, especially on Hardcore Mode, but the skill requirement of 70 barter is very harsh.

 

Uninteresting perks (+x damage with unarmed, +y damage with guns, +accuracy in VATS etc)
Some things felt kind of forced- like the presence of Marcus
VAULTS FUCKING EVERYWHERE- what was awesome about vaults is that they were mysterious, rare. Now they're everywhere, everyone knows about them and one of them is a tourist attraction.
Gameplay
Technical/engine stuff.

 

It was poorly implemented, yes, but I was referring to that minigame for changing the impression people had of your character. Too low an "impression" and an NPC wouldn't want to speak with you. By playing the mini game, or using a spell, you could make NPCs like you more and they would speak to you at greater depth.

 

Okay, some caps from me. Did about 50 hours into it. What I disliked:

- Artificial borders, you can't limb many rocks.
- Unkillable characters. Tried killing Victor in Goodsprings, he felt "unconscious". Hello Fallout 3's daddy!
- Nothing changes in dialogue for you if you have intelligence =1
- One-option replies, with no way to quit the dialogue. You are just forced to choose the only available answer. That happened quite often and began getting very annoying at some point.
- Different dialogue options lead to the same result. Tried save-loading and choosing different things.
- Over-the-top homosexual theme. Veronica is gay, Arcade is gay. There's even a gay perk. Some other things about that here and there. Especially around the Strip.
- Inon Zur's music mostly. Hoover Dam and NCR locations especially. Some subtle tunes were okay tho', but don't cry "Fallout".
- Stupid local maps that don't help anyhow in branching "dungeon" locations. It's actually Bethesda's fault, but hasn't been fixed anyhow.
- Companion AI Companions are getting lost easily, can't jump and are quite buggy in fact.
- Railway endgame. Thankfully, possible to avoid "boss" combat. But still somehow unrewarding.

 

A few dialogue lines here and there do change, like it was said by the devs. Full dumb dialogues have never been announced.

The endgame isn't more railway than Fallout 2 has been. I see no problem in here, as the end battle isn't that long anyway. Also you have very few moments in there, where you can influence things too.

 

Any good examples?

 

After playing it for a good 20 hours now I think it's been great so far, but I do have a few small problems with it.

- While the writing is vastly improved, they usually lead to the same end result.

- Vaults every where. I counted about 6 Vaults thus far., although luckily, most of them are well done (Vault 11 and 22).

- Inon Zur's music is still an iffy fit for the Fallout universe. I do like the addition of classic FO 1-2 music though.

- ED-E's mention of [spoiler:825f5a4003]Enclave forces in Chicago.[/spoiler:825f5a4003]

- Marcus seems like wasted potential honestly.

 

Oh no, there's a couple gay characters and a same-sex perk. Did you have an actual point to make?



You know, the dev's said there wouldn't be full blown "HUR I DUMB" dialogue. This shouldn't be a surprise.

Something I hate is how Legion dudes just decide to attack me. I have no reputation with them, Caeser wants to meet with me, and yet every Legion dude (unless I'm disguised as them) tries killing me.

Also, why weren't disguises implemented for the smaller factions?

If I kill a small Legion group in the middle of nowhere, how the hell does the rest of the Legion know I did and instantly hate me for it?

On the Legion again, do they really have any redeeming qualities? If all they did was unify a bunch of tribes, that doesn't work because they unified them to start a large-scale war and a slave trade. If there's a shade of gray to the legion, it's a very dark gray.


Overall though, I like the game. I loved Fallout 3 and this is basically it improved.

 

Try talking to scientists over at HELIOS 1, or to the doctor in New Vegas Clinic.

 

Ever been to a real hotel? They're all identical with, at most, minor differences.

Edit.

The rooms, that is.

 

Some problems I found when playing F:NV:

- Your SPECIAL stats doesn't have the radical impact that they had in Fallout 1 and 2. For example, strenght only increases your weight carrying capability to 10 pounds for every point taken, over a base value of 200 (5%). In F1 and 2 it increased by 25 points, over a base value of 150 (16.6%).

- Some quests are dependent on the progression of the main quest. Like the Arcade Gannon quest.

- Too many robots in the game. Right at the start you have that Victor robot in Goodsprings. In the original games you only saw robots inside abandoned military bases in late game and the average wastelander never saw one.

- It makes sense for robots to not function in the wasteland: sand would seriously damage their internal workings. Ms. House had the caps to hire some men besides robots to serve as scouts in the wasteland.

- Too much stuff in the map, like in F3. That's really a problem os seamless worlds: since you can't make the player walk over deserts for hours on end, you must pack as much stuff as possible in the smallest map.

- Weak power armor. Though it is better than F3's power armor, which were only marginally better than combat armor, it is still too weak to make you fell like a walking tank, like it did in F1 and 2. In F2 that enclave armor was some absurd shit: if you didn't have one you could never take on somebody wearing those. In F3 you could kill dozens of enclave troopers with your 9mm pistol.

- Overall small spectrum of power of endgame equipment over early game, if compared to F2 for instance.

 

No Harold.
That's all.

 

I noticed this too. Those two, that girl at Camp Carrahan, that male prostitute at Westide, it's just too much, considering as far as i'm aware the 50's were times homosexuality was looked down a lot more than today. I mean, i'm sure the nuclear apocalypse is as good reason to come out of the closet as any but you'd think at least one of them would show some inner repression or conflict or shame or something. Fortunately there's none of that but it feels out of place and over the top.

 

Huh, two people feel over the top? Seriously?

 

Err, I don't think they took ALL of the stuff 1950's American society believed and put it into Fallout.

If that were the case, there would be no black people - they wouldn't have been able to get into Vaults, meaning they would have been killed, Ghoulified, or even dipped into FEV for the sole purpose of being mindless soldiers.

 

Agreed.

That was the main issue I had.

Also how fucking hard it was to get to Red Rock Canyon.

 

You a bigot? It's ok if you are, some of my best friends are bigots. Just keep it in the bedroom if you can. I don't want my kids seeing any of that.



No, but seriously, you sound like a bigot.

 

The fact that a few non-unique weapons are only found in one place... well, the Plasma Caster to be exact...