Funny to see how the "really devoted fan's".. Well, actually not [censored], rather hypocrites, go all screaming whenever someone says that there should be an open ending. A la "everyone is entitled to their opinion but only if it is the same as mine".
It'd really be helpful if the people bleating for freeplay after the end could articulate what, exactly, is so much worse about simply reloading a previous save. Considering their position requires the devs to take time, resources, and energy away from making new content just to appease a gaggle of people who apparently can't read this enormous message box.
Unless you're one of those people who ignored the huge box that said "This is the final mission! Make sure you've saved and done everything you want to in the Mojave, because the game is ending!" and thus didn't save.
And frankly, changes to Mojave after that mission are pretty minimal, compared to the changes needed to be done to Capital Wasteland.
Yeah. We should've seen huge and wide reaching changes in the Capital Wasteland as a result of turning on PP. Unfortunately, what we should've got and what we actually got are two totally different things. "Hey, water for everyone!" "Can I have some water bottles? I'll give you karma!"
In FO3 the end game meant changing several in-game locations to something totally new or significantly changed, nothing similar however changes in FNV.
...What? A bunch of water barrels showing up in the citadel and the purifier isn't "significantly changed." Further, to properly do the NV endings justice, you'd have to do far more than that. Take the legion ending. You need crucifixes everywhere. Crucifixes for everyone in goodsprings. Crucifixes for everyone in Primm. You need to totally redo the strip since Caesar wouldn't allow a city of profligates to keep up with their hedonistic lifestyle.
For the NCR ending, you'd have to first off toss out all the legion presence. Then you'd have to dramatically increase NCR presence everywhere. You'd ideally have grumbles about taxation, and the eradication of most fiends and hostile wildlife as they move in to pacify the region. Unfortunately, that makes for bad gameplay, especially since NV vanilla is rather sparse on things to shoot to begin with.
Even the house and yesman endings need more drastic changes than what we got in BS. Evicting the NCR? Absolutely necessary. Better hope you finished all those NCR quests beforehand!
Only thing what changes there are the clothes what people wear. If NCR wins, most locals would wear either NCR uniform or their farmer clothes. Legion wins - their uniforms instead. Mr. House or player wins - usual, casual rags all around. That's it. Replace several cookie cutter NPC's with a bunch of other, differently clothed cookie cutter NPC's, record few line of voice and done. That's how much the "dramatic end mission" really changes at the end of FNV. Bethseda pulled off quite a bit bigger thing with their "open ending", Obsidian though was just lazy so they put a cork on it.
I find it pretty funny that you talk about Obsidian being lazy when your solution is the laziest thing since lazy came to lazyville.
And yeah, it does really make more sense in the game world indeed. You know, the situation where you have done everything what there is to be done in the game, only thing left are the final missions, the "oh so important final battle which will decide the fate of Mojave and New Vegas" and... which is put on hold for months.
How's this any different from making Sarah Lyons stand around for ingame years before sending Liberty Prime out on his
ingame cutscene march? It's a bad idea to complain of hypocrisy and then drinketh in that well yourself, you know.
Yes, for months. That's how long ago I finished everything with my last char and for how long the game is literally been collecting dust. All because I am waiting for DLC's. Because I cannot play them "later", if I want to have some logical playthrough, because "later" the game will be "closed". So there my char sits, for many months by now, and for many months to come, beating the messengers from Legion, NCR and mr. House away with a stick, since he knows what those messages say: "Oh please mr. Courier, can we FINALLY start this big war between us on Hoover Dam, we've been ready and on standby for months now, and are just waiting for your move!".
Or you could just complete the game, see the endings, then start a new character. Considering the way the game is designed, there is no possible way to see everything with one character anyway... So your point here is pretty crap.
And all I can send back to them is "Sorry mr. Kimball/Lanius/House, but your decisive war has to wait for several more months in addition to so many months which have passed already, because you see, someone in their limited wisdom decided to close off Mojave after that upcoming battle at Hoover Dam and so I need to wait until all of the DLC's are finally released, I have finally received them and played through them. So, my apologies mr. Kimball/Lanius/House, but you have to wait for another unknown amount of months before you can decide the fate of so many, until I am done with DLC's and can finally come to your stinkin' dam!".
Yeah, really smart option indeed.
That's a conceit of pretty much every RPG ever, and it's a necessary one in the interests of gameplay, since otherwise you end up with the player being unable to actually finish the game. I know of only one game offhand that did what you ask for, Mechwarrior 1, and it svcked epically in that respect because by the time you were ready to actually complete the final mission, the opportunity had already passed you by.