IMHO, the FONV game seems the most restricted at the beginning when you are at your weakest.

Sticking by the roads and doing the side quests along the way is your best hope for survival until you develop your gear and the skills to use it. Even in the beginning though, it's far from linear, you can still pick and choose which quests you want to pursue and leave the ones you don't quite want to do yet in the backburner.

It's the risk that you can die by making a wrong turn that makes the Mojave Wasteland much more realistic for me. Although I haven't quite played through the whole game yet because I restarted my character/game twice to tweak my stats, I would have to say that by the time you hit mid level and reach the NV strip, the majority of the game world "opens" up to you.

You still have to be careful with those Deathclaws though... =p

I didnt say it was linear. I said it feels linear because the game softly guides you along the path I stated and I think its hard for anyone to deny that.



Its ridiculous that you claim that your statement wasnt a gross over exaggeration and im hardly being harsh. Im being realistic.

You start at Goodsprings..



Is that harsh and untrue? The road is almost always void of enemies to fight and it even shows up on your PipBoy encouraging you to follow it.

For the people with bad reading comprehension who think im saying this game is linear: Im not saying that. Im saying its open, but feels linear due to a few reasons (terrain, tough enemies, etc)

i dunno maybe its just me....i just didnt get the same oomph or sense of accomplishment when it was all said and done.....i did feel a little pushed into working with one faction as opposed to the others. the only real choices i found were work with the legion or NCR. Even with wandering around looking for hidden places i found it to fall a bit short to the hype. but thats just my 2 cents..

Whatever justifies invisible walls to you is fine by me.



You mean like 50? 100? Or more like 22-23?

Just to address the Subject line:

No, I didn't find it linear at all. I'm not at the end yet but I've been to most places on the map and criss-crossed the Mojave wasteland many times now doing different things. I just don't think 'linear' when I play. I find it more like a spider web I think. Things keep criss-crossing and there are many layers to the story.

Sure, when you're level 20+ you can trample any which way you like over the highway, but before that? Getting to the stage where you can take on Deathclaws takes many, many hours, and 'till that point any time a quest giver at one end of the map sends me to fetch a Macguffin at the other end, I know what route I have to take. Round the U-bend again. I venture off-road but the geography, the topography of the map simply isn't as amenable to that kind of rambling. I ca't climb that hill on the horizon 'cause it's covered in invisible walls. Remember how difficult it was finding Oasis, what a circuitous route you had to take? Every third location in Vegas feels like that to me. This is not a good thing.

With Fallout 3, I don't understand what you mean? The minute I leave the vault I'm free to walk in any direction I want. I could head up to Raven Rock if I so wished it. Are youy talking about the Vault itself? That takes an hour or so. I'm stuck doing the loop in Vegas for however many hours it takes to get deathclaw- and cezador-ready. That's probably twenty hours. Hardly comparable.

So the deathclaws and cazadores should be cakewalks straight from the beginning.... or hidden in the farthest corner on the map so you don't accidentally stumble to their turf early on?

Honestly, I didn't notice the linearity until people started mentiong it on forums. During my first playthrough I went down South anyway, so I didn't encounter Deathclaws or thosse flying wasp-type things...

But, in my opinion, New Vegas opens up more as you progress.

No, not at all, I think it's great that they're actually challenging again, and that there are places in the world which will be lethal if you enter at too low a level. I'm not arguing for Oblivion-style level scaling. All I am arguing for is more freedom in the map to go around such obstacles.

I get fed up of having to stick to the roads is all. I want to gambol over the hills...

I don't know how much more freedom there could be without the natural obstacles (tough animals and mountains) feeling redundant. I went straight to Red Rock Canyon from goodsprings (using the hills to get past the cazarors) and only had to fight some mantises on the way. And to Vegas from there, sneaking in nighttimes past the fiends. And later on to Jacobstown. It did require some patience and preparation, but I didn't see it as restricting me in any way other than me being at too low level to toggle the little Rambo in my head on. :shrug:

I do feel it's a bit linear. I feel like I'm being herded down a carefully laid out cattle gap so that I take my character in the direction they intended me to in order to keep the story straight. Some of it by high level creatures, some by invisible walls, I even feel led to some of the random places scattered about. But it's not even close to being as linear as most shooters are or some other RPGs I've played. And while I do prefer a more open world with a few leveled enemies (stronger ones which spawn after you reach certain levels work for me like in MW) I have to say that this game has a good enough story and is well tied together in it's side quests enough that I really like the game despite it being more linear.

I am much more concerned with the simplistic quests. "go throw that switch then go over there and fix that generator then go upstairs and hit another switch and run down and talk to the man" or "go fetch me three escorts for odd sixual encounters." type quests just seem a bit boring to me. I like for every step of a quest to have a bit of human interaction and something to think about rather than just fetching and pushing buttons.

Never the less, I do really like this game beyond any question.

This. The only "vaguely linear" feeling I've perceived had nothing to do with where I could/couldn't go, but where I could go and cut loose and kick ass without getting my own inevitably and thoroughly kicked in the process.

”go fetch me three escorts for odd sixual encounters”

Come on, it is one of the few quest which think about the characters you have encountered is actually quicker than following the markers blindly.

Most games that have a plot will have some sort linearity to them through a sequential progression (i.e. I’ve completed A, now onto B, then the critical path concludes with C). But with all stories and plots, you usually have a beginning, middle and end, in other words, structure. So scratch that. The game doesn’t restrict you to a high predefined path either… you can EASILY get sidetracked doing other things. The world building doesn’t suggest any sense of linearity either. You have a map to play on and you generally move in a counter clock wise fashion for the critical path until you reach the strip. At no point have I felt the game shooing me along to go and do ANYTHING. I come and go as I please, can take my chances fighting deathclaws at level 2, can try to find star bottle caps, build up relations with factions, explore interesting locations like Vault 11, etc.

You can skip any number of the steps of the first half of the main quest and the story still makes sense. As with Fallout 1, the steps you follow to reach your goal are information-oriented. You go to Point A to learn about going to Point B, which leads you to Point C, but at these locations you're not doing anything that changes the world in a way that's necessary to continue to the story. Nothing prevents you from going to... the place where the water chip is... right after leaving Vault 13. It's just difficult. And that's the way F:NV's crit path is set up. You're just physically closer to your goal in Goodsprings than Vault 13 is to the water-chip-place.

The second half of the main quest is more open in terms of the order in which you do things, but you are required to do more things to advance the MQ.

"Dude," did you actually read my post before you replied to it? I'm not sure you did. That's ok, though, because it's obvious based on your other posts here that you're not interested in a conversation and you're just going to dismiss anyone that doesn't agree with you. When I talk about it making sense and being believable I mean the people, the places, the world...things have reasons to exist and justifications for their continued survival. Although I loved some of the locations in Fallout 3 I spent a lot of my time thinking, "ok, it's kinda neat, but there's no way this place could ever actually exist, especially not 200 years after the war, and not here, and not like this." Why were places that were steps away from one another seemingly completely unaware of each other? The Capital wasteland is a theme park full of rides for the player. It's not trying to be a place...it's a bunch of disconnected attractions that you happen to "walk" between. That's fine and I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm just saying it's not a believable place.

Story telling the only good thing? I'm beginning to think you haven't played the game. Even someone that hates NV could rattle off a list of at least 5 or 10 things that were objectively improved. Hyperbole is great in humor and when you're trying to insult someone, but in an actual argument it doesn't work...it just makes the argument take longer.


So, NV isn't Fallout 3? I agree. In my opinion it's much better. Sorry it didn't meet your expectations. :shrug:

As far as the game being linear, again, the quests in FO3 were a LOT more linear, so I'm not sure where that's coming from. It's more difficult to cut corners traveling in the game world in NV compared to FO3, but that's not game linearity. I see why someone would call that "linearity," I guess, but it's not the same thing.

I think a lot of the complaints about New Vegas' linearity are due to that U-bend at the start of the game - there's no question that this game definitely steers you onto that path much more than FO3 ever did at any point of its main questline. Fallout 3 really didn't "start," for all intents and purposes, until you had escaped the Vault.

However, once you hit the Strip, New Vegas opens way up. Taking it further, you could argue that NV really doesn't "start" until you hit the Strip. In that light, the "Vault sequence" in NV lasts much longer.

And from a sense of what an actual post-apocalyptic world would look like, New Vega's approach makes much more sense. It's only logical that the settled areas would tend to spring up along the old transportation corridors, and that those areas would be much safer than the hinterlands beyond. The settlers would clear out enough of the wildlife to create a defensible perimeter and that would be about it. The critters would get pushed back into the hills and the less traveled areas, and anyone who would venture into those areas should expect more encounters with them.

And the New Vegas setup has its advantages as well. When my low level character had just finished his first visit to the Mojave Outpost and saw the Mesquite Mountains Campsite off in the distance and decided to do a little exploring with his crappy weapons and pathetic skills, he got absolutely owned by the giant radscorpions crawling all over the place. Just last night, I took him back as a Level 21 with a Guns score in the mid 90s, armed with a fully repaired Sniper Rifle loaded with armor piercing rounds, and the ownage was exactly in reverse. :foodndrink: Felt damned good to get some payback.

Isn't that basically the jury rigger perk?

I'm still early in my game so I'm thrilled to hear it opens up a bit more later. My character was having a bit of a struggle but is finally handling things quite nicely.
While I have your attention, might I say that you folks did a great job of making the NPCs interesting. I love listening to their back stories. A lot of laughs hidden in there. Thanks for a great game.

Is it just me or does everyone think it's really cool that the project director for the game is milling about on the forums?

Definitely saves a ton of speculation on my part since someone like him can clear up what the intentions of the developer was in the game. Not to mention that the staff actually seem to care about the game as opposed to the other companies that seem to just squirt out a product and leave it to the masses to figure out before releasing a sequel.

I suppose so. You wanna know a linear Final Fantasy game? Try Mystic Quest, you seem like you've been around a while so you should know what that is. I actually like it tho, incredibly linear, over simplified, but it's funny as hell.


You have to look at it from a design perspective. Not everyone that plays your game will be quick on the uptake. Gonna use WoW as an example because it's good for this. Back in the day, before it started catering to casual players, you use to have to actually quest to quest. You got a quest and you HAD to read it to figure out where to go and what to do, there were no arrows pointing you in the right direction. (Unless you downloaded addons) Fast forward to the present, you dont have to read [censored]. Ever. Just pick up a quest and go to the ? on the map. Pretty damn straight forward. Why did they do this? Because as the game's user base grew people were complaining quests where to hard to find/do. And resorting to addons. Blizzard does not like addons, although they allow them. But they do everything in their power to make them obsolete. With that said, you can turn off that [censored]. If you wanna actually quest during your quest you can still play like you did in vanilla. They have just added the option to show you where to go for the lazy/less experienced gamers. Maybe Bethesda/Obsidian should take a page out of that book and allow you to toggle quest tracking.


Maybe that's not what you're saying, but that's how it comes off. At the very least, that's how i interpret what you're saying.


I should hope so. But that's not how I meant it. You may understand what it is you want. But when you relay that to other people, they may see it differently than you tell it. I myself am an example, as I don't think what you want is how I understood it to be.



And how exactly does that make the game feel linear? After putting a good amount of hours into the game it makes perfect sense. Should they have lowered all the enemies levels so you could walk wherever you want, whenever you want right from the start? Had they done this rather than saying "the game feels linear" which is essentially you saying you think the game is linear, you would be saying the game is too easy. There is no challenge. There is no balance. You can own all the enemies from level 1. Granted, the first time I ran into a deathclaw I was pissed, first thing I did was hop on the forums and rant about it. [censored] deathclaws beat my ass, how do I kill these damn things? Omg omg it's not fair...ok I didn't say all that. Still you get the point. The invisible walls DO piss me off right much tho. The game tries to keep you from areas you shouldn't be going at early levels, could they have done it differently. Sure. But it's a bit unfair to say the game is linear over it. And you CAN kill those rad scorpions at low levels, it just requires a lot of running and kiting on your part. But like another person said,you could consider that an extended"soft" tutorial. I didn't take the "usual" route my second time around.

OP,

I do feel it is linear, overall. Later replays do feel a lot like the previous ones. And all the different paths largely feel like "which slideshow do I get". But so what?

It is still a cool game world, you can sneak past the invisible walls and do stuff out of order if you really want to, and there is a lot of replay value in terms of character builds and concept characters. The game has an awesome vibe, and it is a ton of fun. I've put in 156 hours so far across 3 different characters (each with at least one re-roll after reaching level 20)+. And I'm still having a ton of fun.

Add argumentitive skills along with reading comprehension to the list of things you are bad at. Trying to tell me what im "thinking" and "going to say" doesnt back up your point and actually makes you look like a fool. You even prove my point with your last sentance.



Ive never seen such a large amount of people who reply to things they dont read on a single forum before.

I didn't get through all the pages, just a few. One thing I've noticed in this war over which game is better that seems to be endless around here ... is that people often take the tack that you must denigrate one game to like the other. That's not the case. If you like the story in FONV better, that doesn't mean you have to crap all over FO3's story and vice versa. It's taken me a little to warm up to FONV, but warm up I have and I really love both games though for slightly different reasons and I actually love them both for a lot of the same reasons too. Tilecounts and number of settlements aren't really useful in gauging the worth of either game, only the difference.

Just my two caps. I'm going to go play now.

I didn't try and tell you what you were thinking, whose comprehension skills are bad? ""the game feels linear" which is essentially you saying you think the game is linear" is not me saying what you think. It is me saying what it SOUNDS like you think. And seem to be in denile about it. Should I have said "the game feels linear" sounds like you're saying the game IS linear? Would that have helped you comprehend it more? I have been trying to be respectful of your opinion, while stating my own. I have called you no names, nor have I attempted to insult you. I have been showing you respect, regardless of the fact i don't agree with you. And I'd appreciate if you did the same. I would hate to report you over something so trivial.