Just wondering if I'm the only one who finds some of F:NV's more extreme colorspaces rather annoying. The relentless sepia around Camp Forlorn Hope is the worst example. I understand the whole concept of setting mood with color, but making the place look like the aftermath of a wildfire with basically no color whatsoever is kind of going too far. It's hard to tell in places how colorful things are supposed to be, or might have been at some point, due to this extreme leeching. Or color *shifting*, especially underground, with a decided favoritism toward the color blue.

Also: The flip side to oppressing the hell out of our eyes by playing with the colors is that there should be places that don't, and feel like utopia by comparison due to the lush natural vibrance. Try and remember what old fluorescent lighting was like, and how much of a relief it was when you came outside and things stopped being a sickly green. I don't really get that impression anywhere in F:NV. The Strip has some shiny colors, but it's also visual chaos and not really a relief at all.

I think Forlorn Hope serves its purpose. I walk around there and I'm... just, I don't know if I want to say "bored," but when color starts coming back as I move away, I'm simply excited to have left the place. I get to a point where I really don't want to visit Forlorn Hope. But it's bloody called Forlorn Hope, so that's the entire point. It makes you forget happiness.

Just another in a long line of overused effects IMO. Happens in both games and movies...like how the techonology to do it came along and suddenly George Lucas had to remaster every large explosion in the Star Wars series to throw off a big expanding halo. Now Fallout has to have custom overdone color tweaks for every "special" area.

I especially love how they occur like flipping a light switch, myself...start up the winding switchback road past Neil's shack, and suddenly *POOF!* "Uh...what just happened to the lights?"

In short, to the original question: Yes, I find them annoying as hell myself. Maybe if they were only used about 10% as often, they wouldn't come off like such an overused in-your-face gimmick.

Quoted for absolute truth.


There was a great article on Cracked.com about "the 6 movie tricks that make every movie look the exact same" and it included color-balancing on there as well.

A cool effect is cool the first time, by the 50th time it's getting old though.

I'd like to see some NEW visual tricks.

Honestly I think that's one area where FO:NV fell down, sadly. I understand they were keeping to real-world geography, but if they started you out in Novac and up the deathclaws where boulder city is now and had you round the map clockwise instead of counterclockwise you'd have constantly had glimpses of the Lucky 38 in the distance as you were working your way across the map, like a shining grail-shaped beacon guiding you to your destiny.

How cool would THAT have been!?

The freeform nature of what I'm calling the "hardcoe sandbox RPG" (the Elder Scrolls and bethesda/obsidian fallout series) ruins a lot of the best visual design techniques from art and gaming, that are used to frame your goals and rewards and use the setting to both look great and guide gameplay subtly.

In a traditional game the "end loot" of a "dungeon" is up on a platform, light ringing it, you see it when you come in but you can't get through that gate or up that ledge so you go the long way, prize constantly in sight. Even Oblivion did this a LOT.

In a modern FO game the "end loot" of a "dungeon" is sitting in a back corner on a shelf next to a bottle of water and a dead guy, with no fanfare. Not only is it anticlimactic it's poor design because it removes the visual punch and the attention drawn to the loot. I actually missed Ratslayer the first playthough because of poor dungeon design.

Actually I don't mind the color trick, though I think if you help them out and finish the quests, the color should get closer to normal as camp is in better shape.

Black Mountain on the other hand is very well done.