Well it would make a lot of sense. Faction armour is a great idea. makes sense, adds depth. As does factions who oppose each other, that you have to choose between.

But then, Fallout New Vegas has many, many awesome things that bethesda failed to notice or ignored deliberately. Because it's a real rpg. With consequences, a logical world, factions who oppose each other and you choose between, npcs who act and look like people, companions who don't die and act properly, and many, many, other things.

At least he doesn't work for Bioware. Or else Skyrim's ending would be

"Okay. Jagar Tharn never existed, The Ghost of King Lysandas never haunted anybody, the Nerevarine never existed, Dagoth Ur was a myth, the blight ended through natural causes. There never was an Oblivion crisis, Uriel Septim died of old age, Martin died from an accident, the mythic dawn never had an impact anywhere, there never was a civil war, the Thalmor don't exist, there never was a White-Gold Concordiat, and dragons have always been around, you just couldn't see them on the ground. Everything has been a figment of your imagination. Now have a spectral ghost boy to tell you that you are fat and your prophecies are false."

I'll give you the win on the PS3 side of things. Yeah, PS3 ports typically are more buggy across the board but it appears that they got the worst of it with Skyrim. But, honestly, I don't care about PS3. The only two platforms I play anything on are Xbox and PC (because PS3 is a red-headed step child to the gaming industry).

And 360 is the overweight, snarky child of the gaming industry that can beat up the red-head, but still fails to realize it's own faults.

Sorry, I had to say it.

My point was go check the reviews on Xbox, PS3 and PC for them if you'd like. You'll find an equal amount of bug complaints for both Skyrim and New Vegas. Whereas New Vegas has a complaint about crashing with 2 of 7 PC users agreeing, Skyrim has a similar complaint with 15 of 42 Xbox users agreeing.

Are you really gonna say one is buggier than the other? Seems pretty dang even to me...

TBH I think it's a non-issue. It always seems to crop up in the context of -

NV did X better and Bethesda should have taken that on board

But NV was buggy and Osidian make buggy games so Bethesda wins

- it always crops up in threads that aren't even talking about bugs. You can guarantee it's going to be dredged up every time anybody says the writing/game design of NV was superior.

NV could have been the buggiest game in history - what bearing does that have on faction armour or whatever?

That's a valid assessment. LOL.


Right, but that's because the NV fanatics start off the conversation with, "why didn't Bethesda let Obsidian do it". And that's where the problem of memory kicks in. Obsidian is bloody notorious for putting out products with massive amounts of bugs in them, even without the Fallout engine. I always loved the [original] Fallout games but I'm not going to deny that they were buggy. I still played them. However, NV took the cake and ran with it one hundred miles down the beach before grappling to a space shuttle and flying to the moon for me. I consider the quality of NV an absolute embarrassment and if that's the best that an Obsidian/Bethesda partnership can put out there, then I don't want any more of it.

Now, if the NV team could start a thread without making the ridiculous comparison between Skyrim and New Vegas when they want to speak for enhancements, I'm all for it and will probably agree with most of it. But the minute someone in a state of silliness decides to mention New Vegas as a template, I'm going to react negatively.

So yeah, back on topic...

Why is faction armor missing? The companion wheel? Companion's ability to calculate height so I don't have to waste 8 minutes trying to push a stuck J'Zargo off a tiny ledge?

"J'zargo moves when J'zargo wants to move."

And Bethesda ISN'T?

Dude you said it yourself: go check Metacritic.
If you think Oblivion and FO3 didn't have stability issues and weren't released with major bugs (vampire cure quest anyone?), then YOU are the one with your head in the clouds.

So let me get this straight - Skyrim shouldn't have faction armour because New Vegas had bugs. Is that your argument? It's what you seem to be saying.

Not game-breaking bugs, my friend. New Vegas wins hands down in that market. In fact, most 1-star reviews are fans of the series that just couldn't take the game-breaking bugs (like me). Skyrim has bugs, there is no denying that... but other than what PS3 players are facing, no where near the amount of *crippling* bugs that New Vegas had. I wish you wouldn't deny the reputation that New Vegas has and try to project it onto Skyrim to prove your point. You know full well that New Vegas has a reputation for being a lemon.

It is and it's completely illogical and lacks objective thinking.

Just because someone praises New Vegas does NOT mean they're praising it's stability.

The Plebeian, I invite you to go back in this thread and see who brought up bugs and stability. I promise you it wasn't the New Vegas camp. Hell, it was probably YOU.
We're here to discuss faction armor, companion AI and other improvements that were made from FO3 to NV, but mysteriously went missing from NV to Skyrim. Improvements from Oblivion to FO3 made it into Skyrim, and just because Obsidian is a different developer doesn't mean Bethesda should look the other way. Those improvements are equally as beneficial as the Oblivion to FO3 ones.

*Critical* bugs? Aren't you living a bit of denial? And shouldn't you be at work? Oh, wait... does Obsidian have any projects going on right now?


You're right. That would have been illogical had that been what I said. Thank God it wasn't.
The thread title states very clearly, "If New Vegas could do it...". So, um... if New Vegas could do what? Introduce a world record for how many *critical* defects they can fit into a single release? The very first comment on this thread is a direct comparison. If you want to talk about enhancements, let's leave the dreamworld behind and talk enhancements to Skyrim. But if you're going to put them in context of New Vegas, I'll keep reminding you that New Vegas *couldn't* do it without introducing a plethora of *critical* defects.

I don't object to your ideas, I object to the implication that it should be easy for Bethesda because it's already been done before by the wizard masters at Obsidian. If they are doctors of development, they are Dr. Nick from The Simpsons.

It's because New Vegas was buggy. That's why none of those things could be in Skyrim.
In fact, it's the bugs in New Vegas that make Skyrim's writing so bad - if the writing was as good as New Vegas it would keep crashing.
Or something.

Hope that helps.

The Pitt had to be re-released because it critically failed.
Oblivion had a bugged vampire quest for a long long time.

And as I said, check Metacritic. Just because you don't have critical bugs (I've yet to have a *critical* bug in FO3, Oblivion, NV or any other; doesn't mean they don't exist) doesn't mean everyone is so lucky. They're prominent in every single one, crashing to desktop is a regularity of Bethesda titles that any Bethesda vet would tell you, and you just happened to get dealt a bad game with New Vegas. Pure coincidence, it could've equally have been any Bethesda title.

Faction armor would interfere with the 'go where you want, wear what you want, do what you want' policy. Plus, it's not gimmicky and useless enough for Skyrim. Ooh, Radiant quests and random events putting nobles who won't talk to you on the road. Ooh, a thief hands you an axe.

Wear what you want, hm? Doesn't play into Realism well. Wear a swastika armband in the street and see if you don't get attention.

I'm probably in the minority (have't read the whole thread), but I found that the faction armor implementation in New Vegas to be more of a negative then a positive. Some of it was realistic like wearing NCR armor to a Caesers Legion camp and having them attack (although this doesn't really matter after a certain point in the game). FNV just restricted me from wearing certain armors which I felt was completely wrong. I couldn't wear the Brotherhood of Steel Power Armor that I worked hard to get because the NCR immediately thought I was working for them even though I had already done a whole host of quests for the NCR. Other annoyances like this made me dislike Faction armor in a lot of cases. Like I said, sometimes it made sense, but in the long run I felt it kind of removed some of the fun for me.

Maybe in Skyrim people don't immediately attack you because they're in a more civilized world. If I see somebody wearing a shirt that has a Nazi swastika on it I don't go and punch him in the face because my grandfather fought against the Nazi's in WWII. Same goes for the factions in Skyrim. If a Stormcloak was so brazen as to walk up to General Tullius then obviously something more is going on and the Legion would want to hear him out.

Ironically enough you typed this as I was typing my reply. If you wear a swastika armband you will get attention, but a whole mob of people won't come up and start beating on you. At least not where I live.
----------------
Also, what is this about companion AI? FONV did nothing to selectively improve the AI of any of the companions just as Skyrim does nothing to selectively improve the AI of any of its companions. Skyrim as a whole has some improved AI, but not to a radical degree. I've seen my companions jump off ledges and before we forget Obsidian had to implement that HUGE immersion breaking computer console at the freaking Gun Runners, Lucky 38, etc because the companions got lost so much. They couldn't think of a way to fix it, so they just slapped this freaking computer in frequently traveled places so you could fire your companion because they got lost somewhere.


Fallout New Vegas should have been re-released then because, at least on PS3, the bugs upon initial release were ridiculous. A Gamestop employee (who I find to usually be dullards) told me that a lot of the bugs were patched (I was picking it up again much later), but to still understand there could be a lot of bugs and this was when the game was only costing $20. It wasn't like I was losing out on $60, he was warning me over $20 and potentially giving up a sale.

I happen to encounter a very disturbing bug on Skyrim yesterday on a particular quest that lands you in jail, the jailkeeper didn't open the gate so the quest can continue, the only way is to kill the jailkeeper with console code, and somehow I can't draw my hands to kill her myself. What if I were on Xbox or PS3 that don't have console command? Even worse what if I don't have a save beforehand? I'll be stuck on that jail forever.

Yes I've often considered faux medieval worlds with cannibal cults, a special pillar to sacrifice your friends at and bukets for toilets to be more civilised.
A better anology would be wandering into Berlin in 1944 wearing a British army uniform - people would tend to react. This is a war, not people making confrontational fashion statements like Sid Vicious wearing a swastika t-shirt.

And no, you couldn't wear what you wanted where you wanted. This is the point longknife made - it's the fear of restricting the player in any way becaus they might be upset they can't wear their snazzy new armour in the base of that faction's enemy. Instead, we have a nonsense world where you can do the equivalent of walk up to Winston Churchill dressed as a German paratrooper waving your gun about.

Really? What quest puts you in jail? (Just point me to where to start it, no spoilers please. )

How about we just ignore the Plebeian?

It seems blatantly obvious he's the only one with the hang-up on bugs. There's not a single New Vegas supporter in the Skyrim forums who claims New Vegas is incredibly stable, and I don't think there's ever been a time a single New Vegas supporter ever said "Skyrim is so buggy, needs to be as stable as New Vegas."

We're arguing completely different subjects, but the Plebeian apparently isn't incapable of OBJECTIVE THINKING and seems to think that "New Vegas had an excellent companion system" means we're saying New Vegas is the most stable performing game in the history of forever, and then we end up in another stupid, trivial argument about if New Vegas bugs are equal to Bethesda bugs.

Let's get back to improvements left out in Skyrim.



Faction armor typically had non-faction counterparts in later DLCs, by fan request. NCR Ranger got Desert Ranger armor, Brotherhood armor had normal TB-51 armor as the counterpart, Legion got Lanius' armor (and in a sense, normal legion armor) from Lonesome Road. The counterparts looked similar enough to appease players like you while looking different enough to send a clear message of "I'm not with them."

As for Skyrim being more civilized, that theory would hold if everyone didn't say "next imperial I see is dead."

Companion AI included the fact they could calculate jump height, could be told how much distance to keep between you and them, the companion wheel was (imo) much easier to use as an interface, and although it was definitely NOT perfect in New Vegas, you could make them passive or aggressive (though in New Vegas it was at times trivial. Biggest bonus was for stealth users, cause as long as you weren't found, passive meant your companion wouldn't Leroy Jenkins and give you away).

Skyrim has some odd occurances, like companions drawing their weapon EVERY TIME you do, often walking the long way around ledges and the like.

As for the terminal, I can't recall if they DID fix it or not; I never had the bug. I think they implemented it because there were Xbox players who wanted to start Honest Hearts but had lost ED-E somewhere BEFORE the bug was fixed. Thus, they couldn't start Honest Hearts on their oldest character. The alternative was re-releasing Honest Hearts completely and changing it so the beginning of it automatically dismissed your companion. Needless to say, it should've been like that to begin with, but faced with re-releasing Honest Hearts for such a tiny change or just adding the terminal as a general "just in case" they chose the terminal.

Markath.

That's not odd. If a guy you were following suddenly drew his weapon, wouldn't you follow his example in the event of an impending attack?