The NCR soldiers insult me if I got "hated" by them, well, most of the time they shoot me

Maybe because they don't give two [censored] who you were before? It's not like General Shu, or 99% of NCR troopers would know that random guy who was working for the Mojave Express

What they do care about, acknowledge and react to, is what you do and what you become throughout the game, through your interactions with or against them.

If I was from the NCR I should know who the NCR are and not need to have them explained to me over and over again. If I was a former solider in the NCR then they should extend a certian degree of trust to me. Same goes with legion if I was formerly legion - and if I had been legion than the NCR should hate me already.

If I was ex-Brotherhood then I should be able to bring up that fact when I meet Veronica

Instead, my character was dropped down from Mars and doesn't know who anyone is, where anything is (odd for a courier to not know his surroudnings), and has no connection to anyone.

"I'm looking for my father. Middle-aged guy, maybe you've seen him?" :blink:

Yeah, you're right- shouldn't have compared'em.



Lack of emotion? Yeah, I'm cold and dispassionate since nothing really bad happened to me, I was just shot in the head and left for dead by a power-mad weasel. Nothing to get emotional about. :facepalm:

Have you even talked to Craig Boone about why he is the way he is? Considered why Rex is acting strangely? Veronica's dilemma? Hell, any one of the Companions' stories has, IMO, more emotion to it than all of Fallout 3. Minus the ridiculous "No, I'm immune to radiation and you got me out of that accursed cell so I owe you, but you have to enter the Irradiated Chamber of Death? yourself to keep the melodrama factor up in this hackneyed story" thing, of course.

This is something that's always been very important to me, and why I sorely missed the Reputation system from the first two games in FO3. Had that system been present there, nuking Megaton would likely have instantly gotten me to 'Vilified' status with a large percentage of the communities since I just wiped their neighbors off the map without a second thought, but instead nobody even knew, much less cared, that one of the largest settlements on the map no longer existed. The only time anyone acknowledged it at all was when I talked to James in the control room of the Purifier, and even then all I got was a 'you did a bad thing' from him.

If I decide to wipe out a location in F:NV, the rest of that faction finds out about it and treats me accordingly, up to and including issuing a KOS order, and it tends to be difficult at best to change their opinion of you from that point on. If I try a similar stunt in the first two games that location hates me forever and will shoot to kill if I ever go back, with no way to change their opinion whatsoever.

As a result I have a hard time attacking most locations, since the NPCs there feel like people and it wouldn't be right to me to wipe them out without provocation. Hell, I even tend to spare the Fiends in Vault 3, aside from Motor-Runner's guards, even though they're psycho crackheads, since I always get in by convincing them I'm a friend and I feel like scum if I backstab anyone who hasn't earned it. Sure, one could argue they already have earned it as their buddies topside tried to ventilate me, however you find out that the ones in the vault threw out the ones outside cause they were too whacked for even the Fiends to put up with, so I tend to treat them as two different groups.

There's a difference between a lack of emotion, and a lack of melodrama. New Vegas had plenty of the former, but not much of the latter, and I personally consider that a good thing. Fallout 3 had far too much melodrama for my liking.

I've never understood what is so wrong with that line. Maybe they should've used Oblivion style and just have "Father" instead :hehe:

I find that some of the people in this game have very sad stories that got me attached to them, the prime example being Veronica.
Others include Jason Bright, Raul, Major Knight, Christine (DM), Chief Hanlon, Melissa and heck, even Benny (when he was tied up and stuff, in my latest playthrough I gave it some thought and I eventually killed everyone at Fortification Hill and let him run)

You just gotta use the old noggin and do some old fashioned pretendin' then. The most fun playthrough I've had on New Vegas so far was my NCR ranger groupie. She was dumber than a 1 IN brick and hung on to Rangers like the chicks that used to stand in line outside of Poison's tour bus. By the end of the game she was so deluded about who she was that she actually *thought* she was a real Ranger. And she had a mad crush on Ranger Anders. She still doesn't know why he vanished after she nursed him to health and helped him out of vault 3.

So the game didn't support all my fairy-tale pretend story. I used what did and ignored the rest, or found some kind of rational for it. That's called "role" playing, and it's the closest you can get with single person CRPGs.

-Gunny out.

The first half: "I'm looking for my father." No problem. But then it turns utterly farcical: "Middle-aged guy, maybe you've seen him?" Think about it...how much information did the Lone Wanderer have on the outside world, yet assumed (for god knows what reason) that there could only possibly have been one "middle-aged guy" in Megaton recently? Hell, a good fourth of the town's population looks middle-aged, so basically any one of them could fit the description.

Reminds me of the Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor classic "Silver Streak," where a police officer tells Richar Pryor "We're looking for a criminal- a white guy." Pryor replies "If I see one, I'll let you know!" and moves on through the train station filled with 90% caucasians. The difference? Silver Streak was intentional comedy as opposed to "incidental comedy through mediocrity in writing."

Well, when you put it that way, yes it's silly. "I'm looking for my father, seen any strangers in town lately?" for example could've been a better way to put it. But Bethesda's games are all about the gameplay, which is good becuase they frankly svck at storywriting :shrug:

BioWare/Obsidian writing on a Bethesda game... :drool:

I think that a lot of it is the decision by the developers to rely heavily on Reputation, rather than Karma, in FNV.

In Fallout 3, there is one main quest: Project Purity. At the end of the "vanilla" game, you are allowed three options, and two ways to carry several of them out.

1. Save the wasteland.
a. Die in the process
b. Survive, but the game still ends
2. Do nothing for the wasteland (let the purifier blow).
3. Exterminate the wasteland.
a. Die in the process
b. Survive, but the game still ends

Your ultimate accomplishment can range from a heroic, sacrificial act that saves countless lives, all the way to a monstrous, despicable act, then walking away presumably to join a tyrannical totalitarian regime. That is, I think, because the game is centered on good and evil.

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In New Vegas, the line is a bit blurrier. Caesar's Legion, admittedly, still occupies the "evil" area. Despite their supposed morals (honestias, prudentias, industrias), they butcher towns for no good reason, hang relatively innocent people on crosses to die slow deaths, and practice six discrimination and slavery, concepts that belong on history's trash heap of really really bad ideas. In return, they appear to provide little or none of the awesome advances in quality of life that the original Roman Empire provided. Remember that many tribes that Rome expanded into were only too happy to join the Empire: for them, tribute and conscription was a fair trade for Rome's security, food, and entertainment.

However, the other three are a bit more ambiguous: NCR provides democracy and rule of law, but at the price of taxes, bureaucracy, and lawlessness in places. If they annex the Strip, they will be stretched even thinner. Independent Vegas is just that, independant, but from what I can read between the lines of the ending, it also replaces democracy and rule of law with general anarchy. Anarchy is the kind of growth medium where fiends and powder gangers thrive. Finally, House is a despot who can be ruthless when it serves his interest. He plans to establish a dictatorship of sorts, though his long-term intention is the restoration of civilization. Can he do what he says? And if so, for who? The Enclave's intent in poisoning the water supply was also done with the intent of restoring humanity, but only for a precious chosen few.

----------------------------

As far as emotion goes, more of FNV's was in the backstory: Boone's tragic decision concerning Carla, the horror at Bitter Springs, and the Legion's atrocities in Nipton to name a few. These, however, were things that were beyond your control. You couldn't sneak in and rescue Carla the way you could with the Lamplighters at Paradise Falls, or carry a message to First Recon and tell them not to shoot, and all you can do at Nipton is avenge the atrocities by putting a window in Vulpes Inculta's skull and scrambling the diseased contents. Fallout 3, by comparison, allowed you to do good in the here and now, even if it was often on a smaller scale: giving water to a thirsty beggar, rescuing some hapless wastelanders from super mutants, making a stand with some escaped slaves, and finding a new home for an orphaned child.

Well, you're not forced to ask. IIRC all of the "what is this ncr thing" dialogues were optional.
And the quiz in freeside that you have to take? That was really satisfying for me, you'd have a hard time getting two of the questions right without having played the originals.

Not really, your average footsoldier wouldn't know you unless you served in the same squad, let alone commanders. And since you don't (can't) mention having been a soldier, they won't find out either. There are a few dialogues that let you say that you're *with* the NCR, for what it's worth.

At this point your own roleplay interferes with the parts that are given by the game, i mean why would a Brotherhood member or a former Legionaire be delivering mail? Are you even allowed to leave the Legion alive?

This conversation is turning quite interresting, it's like softcoe fan fic!

Agreed. Cheers :foodndrink:

@ Oddish and Arrow Slayer you are right.

I like not having a background story, but the rest of it about the quests I agree. There's too much past tragedy and not enough being able prevent things.