Gods of writing? I disagree. Flame me all you want but I have an MA in creative writing and can say their writing (especially structure) is horrid.

Well compare their writing to most other main stream titles now a days.
In that sense, they are gods.

This is probably one of the more lol-worthy things I've seen here. #1: Your MA in creative writing impresses nobody. At all. #2: Let's see you 'structure' thousands of lines of dialog tree that has to survive the countless possible orders a player might do the game in. You have exactly zero clue as to what you're talking about and....creative writing............degree does not somehow mean you do.

I'm loving NV's writing. The quests and writing and whatnot are done amazingly, IMO. Much much better than Fallout 3.

Not true at all. I'm impressed by it. Just because devoting one's time to studying the craft of storytelling doesn't, presumably, interest you is no reason to believe it's of no interest to no one.

A Masters in writing does warrant some respect.

I haven't played Vegas yet but I'm guessing the writing will be good. I think what Hurlockscale was getting at is in terms of actual writing it is nothing to scream about. I do however see that when compared to most contemporary video games it probably does stand out.

This is speculative from me though having not experienced the writing myself.

This. If you want a truly great experience you need to combine the best of both worlds which should appease most everyone. Though in my opinion NV exploring is better then the dungeons of Fallout 3.

I have to say, F:NV is amazing, but it seems all of the world building was more focused on the places you were likely to run into, Goodsprings, NoVac, Nellis AFB, Hoover Dam etc. But Fallout 3 had an equal level of detail, while this definately made a lacking in feelings of the settlements livelinesses, the whole world was beautiful as a whole.

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I think F4 should be a joint production, Beths open world/world building, with Obsidian doing the character/story writing.

Wow, another great and one of the ones I've been waiting a long time to read and say 'I told you so'.
Before NV was released the 'hardcoe' among these forums (or rather the ones that prefer Fallout 1 & 2 and anyone who disagree's know's nothing) went on how this would be so much better than Fallout 3 because it has people who helped create the originals.
Well what a suprise it's Fallout 3.5 and they've only done what any other developer would have done with a sequel and progressed bits herer and there. It's hardly the Fallout 1 3D that people thought it would be.
For the record I prefer Fallout 3 and NV to the originals. Not that I don't like the originals but, it seems as soon as you admit this on these forums you instantly lose your voice and credability.


I hope they make another Fallout in DC too as I loved the location.

In case you haven't noticed, he's lying to make his opinion more reasonable....

I've had completely the opposite feeling.. The game feels downright crowded. Towns actually feel populated and there's tons of them. F3 is where I ran in the wastes for days without seeing a darn thing.. F:NV there's something around every corner. And the interiors are amazing in comparison. The Mcarrin base is just massive.

Perhaps. But too many cooks and all that...

There is not much to alleviate my own feelings of NEW VEGAS being "not quite there yet". I got to Westside yesterday . . . it's two shops, 4 NPCs and a portal to the Mormon fort. It works as an ideal of desolation, of mankind just hanging on but I expected the outskirts of Vegas itself to be livelier: isn't there a storyline about how refugees are moving through there? Throughout mankind's history, people have always congregated in easily defensible settlements.

And there is a whole bunch of new agriculture going on just outside that zone: who works the fields? I don't believe they use robots to farm all that land - and if they do, where are they? And if so, where are the people doing robot maintenance? It just doesn't add up, all that emptiness.

It seems to me that Obsidian developers are not comfortable with just adding a random building/dungeon/Vault without a good explanation why it is there and why it has not been looted yet.

For example, right at the beginning of the game they felt necessary to explain why there is a locked safe in the Goodsprings school. A single locked safe. Yes, the reason seems sort of far-fetched: the lock can be picked with Lockpick 25, i.e. 15 + Locksmith's Reader – what, they really have no-one who can do it? Especially if the Courier has Lockpick 15 from the start? But the explanation is still there. Probably Bethesda wouldn't hesitate to add a whole ruined building somewhere near Goodsprings with low-level monsters or raiders and no explanation whatsoever why these mobs were not killed or driven away by the locals yet.

On the one hand, this approach is more realistic and true to original games of the series. It's a Wasteland. It was nearly destroyed by the nuclear war and time. What was not destroyed, was picked up by scavengers. And you, the PC, are certainly not the only Wasteland badass over there who decided to enter the Ayleid ruins Nuka-Cola Factory, kill all the Nukalurks and loot all the good stuff. So how can these Mirelurks still exist there? Some people may even find all those crawls through generic dungeons just a chore they have to do to advance the storyline.

On the other hand, many people actually enjoy killing dozens of Super Mutants, exploring dungeons and finding interesting things everywhere, even if it doesn't make sense. And they'll probably like F3 better. If the game has emphasis on questing, players will exhaust all content at some point, since the number of quests is limited, and after a quest is finished all suspense and fun of searching for solutions and wondering what's next are gone. While dungeons are numerous and fun to replay, if they are done right.

I personally like both FO3 and FO:NV, but I think I like FO:NV better.

I think Fallout 3 had more junk encounters. More bloatflies and molerats and wild dogs around every bend and over every hill. I like the current design of the wasteland and how it's populated. It feels more realistic. Shouldn't be crowded IMO. NV could stand to have more going on though. Way too many empty buildings. Too few people and def could stand to be cleaned up a bit. Shouldn't be grass growing right in front of the main entrance to the strip. Should be cleaned up and by all means the streets shouldn't be all chewed up like they are. It's been many years and people are pretty industrious and they don't like their roads all chewed up....shrug.

That's my biggest complaint with the game, not enough NPCs in some areas. Where are all the slums that are just little metal shacks tucked up against the outer walls of New Vegas? Where are all the extra NPCs inside the casinos? All those NCR on the strip, and you don't see any inside? Go into Gomorrah's lower level of Brimstone and there's maybe 6 or 8 total NPCs in there. In a place like Rivet City or Underworld in FO:3, there would be more like 12-15.

The world just feels under-populated, especially in the downtown areas of New Vegas.

For the same reason the dungeons have not been cleared out in your latest TT AD&D session. Sure, there are lots of people, but very FEW heroes such as yourself. A dungeon/factory/haunted forest what have you always exists in RPgs and always will. It hasn't been cleared because there are so few heroes in the world.

I recall an area or two in fallout 3, where a skeleton was in a bathtub and there was a piece of paper on the floor as well as a knife.

Thus hinting at suicide. Fallout New Vegas is missing little things like that, that... well makes it a memorable experience.

True, these are essential to any RPG.

But it's also true that D&D campaigns usually don't begin with the party deciding to just go in any random direction, hoping to stumble across a dungeon in the middle of a forest with a legendary treasure in it. And if they do, the dungeon master is not obliged to comply and not just throw a bunch of high-leveled mobs at them.

Besides, in Fallout universe you're not a hero with an epic destiny guided by gods. Some people may consider you a Chosen One or whatever, you're surely an extraordinary person and end up doing things that are truly great, but it's not like you're the only person who can kill a bunch of poorly-armed bandits.

I think so too, I'm finding that a lot of the FNV side quests are really small. In F3 they would simply be unmarked, yet in FNV it appears in the Pip-Boy quest list. That's fine in itself, just as long as its not mistaken for having more content. Upon leaving Novac I've already racked up about 10 pending quests in my Pip-Boy list.

One of the early side quests that I've done in FNV was 'Go from A to B, see what is happening at B, then report back to A'. Quest over, 20 mins max. Whereas side quests in F3 were epic adventures (at least for me) that would last an entire evening.

I'm also glad that others are finding that its 'stick to the main roads and go anti-clockwise, or die quickly'. For a while, I thought that was just me. I couldn't go north from Goodsprings, or north of Sloan without meeting a grisly end, especially at such a low level. I can see why the game has been made this way, but it does take away the complete freedom aspect that F3 had. After all, if you wanted to head straight for Old Olney right from leaving Vault 101, you could.



This post (#19) is one of the most eloquent posts I've ever read here. I kind of agree, certainly with what I've seen so far. I'm only 9 hours in, but have travelled from Goodsprings to the 188 Trading Post, picking up Boone on the way. I certainly feel that there are less colourful characters so far, no Moira, Charon, Eulogy, Dogmeat etc. Maybe they will appear later. Or maybe the companions will have more detail. So far I've only met Boone, and kind of like him, though he doesn't say much. And back to my original point - the quest to get Boone appears as an actual side quest in the Pip-Boy, but the quest to get Charon is unmarked and handled entirely through dialogue. Yet its basically the same thing, whether it appears in the Pip-Boy or not.

Exactly! Those small things I miss in NV. There are lots of locations, but they are empty. No NPCs, no loot, no things to find.
I hit nearly 80 hours and I have done all. There is nothing to explore, nothing to do more.
Doubt I am going to replay the game soon, not very interested on other factions. Probably I will continue to play my main character from Fallout 3, with over 200 hours.

The person i really care in New Vegas is Veronica, its prolly the best companion ever made.. those little dialogs,her feelings her consciousness with her looks and her dress and her hinting of how much she is fond of the character the other thing i love is vault 24.. I think thats the vault with all of spore plants...thats prolly one of the best vaults ever with a storyline. Other than them i wasn't too attached to anyone or anything else except Ed-e.. Must praise them for the ED-e and Veronica followers...bestest ever of all fallout series...

The feeling of emptiness in a desert? Who would have knew?

Although, I do get a small sense of disappointment when I hit a new new marker location and there is really nothing to do there...

NV feels a little more bleak at times than F3 but i think obsidion has nailed the atmosphere. it is a desert so its going to be empty! job done

Often the bane of "big open world" design. The recourses have to go somewhere and this time it was not the surrounding random areas (which is good in my opinion). Though I have to agree with the "emptiness" complaint to a certain degree, not that there should've been more random stuff, but that the map should've been somewhat smaller with less of those meaningless places and more of those that matter.

Maybe it would've been for the better if the series had just sticked with the "worldmap with nodes" system, where the "actual" map is divided into chunks to which the content is then centralised (both exploring and quests). Would prevent the "feels empty" complaints, offer bigger possibilities of consistent variety and easier design of "playareas" that don't feel too cramped or empty due to lesser need of fillercontent. No going back with the existing titles, but Bethesda or whoever develops the next further Fallouts, should at least take into consideration the possibilities of such system.

I would agree with that except the "more enemies" part. There are almost too MANY enemies in FO3. It got comical and ridiculous like Saints Row 2 with high wanted level/notoriety.

As much as I've been on the pro NV side of the debate, I think one area NV is lacking is respawning baddies. Once I clean out an area, I can walk through there without ANY concern which is silly (like no bad guys are ever going to be in the area again?). It gets to the point where it's useless for me NOT to fast travel if the trip is on a path that is already well traveled by my char.

I'm on level 26, 67 hrs in and have a que FULL of quests still to do. But for the moment, as much as I've liked this game, I've become a little disinterested and have been playin NBA 2K for the past 3 days (for a couple hours in the evening, not all day. LOL ).

I'll probably resume when a few more patches are released.



I would love this. However, I've attacked CL at their base camp, killed scores of them including their leader and have yet to see a hit squad........or even a strongly worded letter of complaint.