Okay Dr. Hammond.

Yes, thank you for catching the Jurassic Park reference. :tops:

The east has a different feel than the west. On the east people survive not thrive. They dont look at the big picture. On the west civilization is being reborn. New Vegas wasnt even hit by nukes. I agree it will be less of a wasteland and more of a hellhole. Less destroyed buildings, and more violence, war, six, and gambling.

Ah, wasn't it Ian Malcolm who was promoting the "doom and gloom" angle who always pointed out that "life always finds a way?" Hammond was convinced he was in control, 'twas Malcolm trying to tell him otherwise.

But back on-topic...I don't really severely disagree with anything that's been said here, but I think just how hopeless or depressing the setting seems is a synthesis of what the devs do with/to the setting, and one's own take on it.

I didn't find Tenpenny Tower to be such an "out-of-place cheery playground," as much as an even-more-depressing "oasis of insanity." An insular cell of cluelessness not unlike Andale, populated by people living in a deliberate and willful state of denial. How depressing it was seemed to me to depend on whether you saw these people as "intelligently hopeful" or "desperately praying nothing shattered the delusion they knew full well they were living in." Did they actually believe they were untouchable in their little ivory tower, or did they live in constant fear of being forced to see the reality they knew was outside the fence? And I got a different feel from various residents...some indeed thought they'd found a safe heaven, while Dashwood knew the real score- note that he walked around "heaven" with his gun at the ready. He'd found a nice comfortable campsite to retire in, but wasn't confused as to the reality. :shrug:

More Fallout-y :mellow:

Very true, but unfortionately a lot of people have become too used to having every minscule detail provided for them that by comparison they can't fill out the rest as imaginatively as we used to be able to do.

To give an anology. Take Horror films.

Classic Horror films likes of Hitchcocks films implied a lot but showed little, leaving it up to our imaginations to provide what was implied but not shown.
Modern Horror films tend to show everything in viscerial detail and leave nothing to the imagination, and I think suffer due to that.

I didn't really get a 'depressed' feel from FO3. Sure, the beggars were an attempt to add to the feel, but you wouldn't taste any conflict, any attempt to rebuild. There wasn't enough failure, enough suffering, enough conflict, enough desperation. But maybe that has been resolved in NV? Prostitution is a last resort, and a plea for help from all. Watching people attempt to enter the strip would demonstrate the embers of hope being extinguished, as their entrance to heaven was denied by a merciless god.
Drug addicts show dependancy on escapism, trying to deny the harsh reality that is the modern Mojave. Insanity would be symbolic of the true strife that had ran through the west coast, and still is despite the best attempts from the NCR. If all of this is in the game, then it will truly have the depressed feeling that the series needs to rekindle.

They tried that in New Reno, and I just got it as a sense of a city to lazy to try and just stick to what they know without thinking outside the box. :shrug:

I don't think Fallout 1/2 suffered all that much because of limitations; they conveyed the state of despair the world was in relatively well, and (in my opinion) much better than Fallout 3 did. The decent writing and all of the lost souls and undesirables crawling around the ruined cities were things that Fallout 3 was sorely lacking. There were no orphaned children having to steal to get by, there weren't cities with drug addicts and prosttutes littering the streets etc. Fallout 3's world felt much safer and cleaner than the worlds of its predecessors; at times it felt like Bethesda was intentionally sanitizing Fallout in order to avoid a media backlash. Fallout 3 had a more depressing art direction, but it didn't really have any substantial content that I felt made the world seem hopeless. Fallout 3 wasn't a painting; it takes more than fancy art to convey things like depression and survival in an interactive world.

From what I read in Ausir's rather insightful preview of New Vegas, the city of Vegas actually resembles New Reno from Fallout 2 quite a bit. New Reno, as over the top as it was at times, was a very depressing place overrun with crime and vice. Now I'm not expecting the same lawlessness that we saw in New Reno since the place is run by one man with an army of security machines, but I doubt it's going to be as bright as you think. Personally I interpret the more vibrant colors and in-tact structures as a stark contrast to what we'll actually experience in the game world. Unlike the Capital Wasteland Vegas has moved on, but that doesn't mean NV will be any less depressing than Fallout 3 was.

Depends, it'll still have oversized mutated scorpions and the common outlanders and mutant wanderers, but perhaps something entirely new emerging from the sand itself, a Tremors type beast, he he. Given the engine I doubt it, but it would sure keep your butthole tight knowing that any step you take could trigger enemies popping out of the sand around you. lol


Andale at least explained where the food was coming from, and the residents, clearly insane, were obviously making a conscious effort to live a pre-war life in a messed up world. Willfully disregarding the Wasteland and shutting out anything that shattered their little world. But Tenpenny - The residents clearly worry about the Ghoul problem, so much so they don't shut up about it, but once handled they mill around saying good morning and prancing around without a care. There is no willful ignorance as in Andale just, everything is fine.

Rivet City residents wander around in the same way but in their exchanges you get a sense of the danger. "Did you hear those noises last night?" "I heard gunfire across the river this morning." "We need a guardrail on the flight deck before someone else falls." Megaton: "They horde the water and charge outsiders for it." "I came here to be safe, but there's so little room." Tenpenny: "Good morning." "Hello." "Generic line, generic line, everything is fine." I suppose it's entirely down to the player, but the other settlements for me gave a hint of the underlying stresses a Wastelander has, no matter he lives. Tenpenny is way off the beaten Trader path and for me is like walking around the Enterprise or something, you assume everything's fine because they must have Replicators to generate food and pre-war clothing or something. Even if the guards had those quick dialogues, and not the residents, it would have worked to give a sense of the residents' delusion. Guards saying "I can't believe we have to make another run just for their booze! We lost two guys on the last outing." :shrug:

I personally find seeing what actually happens to a person when getting shot, stabbed, run over, etc. to be far more scary then having to leave it up to my imagination not that I couldn't imagine it but I prefer all the cards right out on the table, graphic horror containing gore & maiming is far more terrifying because you can put it more in a context relating to yourself. :tops:

I personally hate (not hate but they do scare the crap out of me) the kind of horror movies where the killer is in fact just a normal serial killer (No super human/super natural Michael Myers or Jason Vorhees) its so realistic that in fact, I can't stand watching them because its much more of something that could happen to me or someone I love.

I liked the visual presentation of Fallout 3 (except for the green tint) quite a lot, I thought it was the best part of the game. There were times where you were out in the Wasteland, seeing the ruins of DC in one direction and the wastes in the other, where it really succeeded in pulling you in.

But the problem is that the setting is just so two-faced. It's been brought up many, many times, but... You have a world that *looks* like Bethesda wanted to have the wasteland very shortly after the nuclear war. And yet, we are 200 years after the blasts. It's a world where resources are supposed to be rare, and yet... you find food absolutely all over the place. Even with all the gangs of raiders, settlers, mutants, ghouls etc etc around. Food that is still fresh... after 200 years. And then you have places like Little Lamplight which makes *no* sense whatsoever.

As good a job as Bethesda did on bringing the visuals of Fallout to a new engine (and I really want to stress that, environment wise it's excellent), they really dropped the ball on making the gameworld consistent *at all*. To the point where I feel it's really jarring at times and severely hurts the game and setting.

I really hope New Vegas will bring some *logic* to its gameworld.

I can only agree. :thumbsup: