Disclaimer: Opinions and observations follow.

I'll start by saying, "I'm enjoying Fallout: New Vegas."

That being said, there are quite a few random thoughts the drift through my head while I'm enjoying this addition to the franchise.

One of the most frequent thoughts is "Loading screen, again?" I'll elaborate, I recently undertook a quest which required some running around, grabbing one item and high tailing it back to the quest giver. The whole of the quest took about ten minutes of actual game-play. The steps were thus:

Talk to quest giver and exit his room [LOAD SCREEN]. Exit his building [LOAD SCREEN]. Fast travel to nearest area [LOAD SCREEN]. Enter quest area [LOAD SCREEN]. Enter sub area [LOAD SCREEN]. Enter sub-sub area [LOAD SCREEN]. Exit sub-sub area [LOAD SCREEN]. Exit sub area [LOAD SCREEN]. Exit quest area [LOAD SCREEN]. Fast travel to quest giver's closest zone [LOAD SCREEN]. Enter first area, [LOAD SCREEN]. Enter building, [LOAD SCREEN]. Enter quest givers room [LOAD SCREEN]. Update quest giver and exit his room [LOAD SCREEN]. Exit building [LOAD SCREEN]. Exit to nearby zone [LOAD SCREEN]. Exit to next zone [LOAD SCREEN]. Enter quest objective building [LOAD SCREEN]. Pick up quest item and exit building [LOAD SCREEN]. Enter previous zone [LOAD SCREEN]. Enter quest giver's zone [LOAD SCREEN]. Enter quest giver's building [LOAD SCREEN]. Enter quest givers room [LOAD SCREEN].

That's 23 load screens. More than half the time spent doing this quest (15 minutes) was spent on the load screens. And this is a mild example. I can't find anything nearly as excessive as this in Fallout 3, and I've tried. I've played Fallout 3 a lot, excessively so, admittedly. And there's nothing that even comes close to the sheer amount of load times found in New Vegas. While the graphics received some mild polishing and animations were changed, I really don't see this constituting such a drastic increase in loading spots or load times in general. Be-that-as-it-may, the number of load zones could be forgivable if they didn't take upwards of 45 seconds for each load. Even longer if you've been playing the game for more than a few hours.

Another thought is "this game doesn't feel as expansive and "open world" as Obsidian lead me to believe. In FO:3 you can literally go anywhere on the map as soon as you exit Vault 101. That's simply not the case in FO:NV. You're forced to travel south along safe roads. You're almost pigeoned into following a specific route until you reach New Vegas. Trying to deviate from that route leads to Cazodors and Deathclaws, both of which act as moving prohibitors. Sure, once you're about level 15 you can safely scout any place you can reach on the map, but you run the risk of messing up quests that you haven't picked up yet.

Speeking of the map, I did a little test. I ran my character from the point furthest North on the New Vegas map to the point furthest South and I used a stop watch to record the time it took to travel it. Starting with my character's back against the rock facing between Brooks Tumbleweed Ranch and Horowitz Farmstead (the furthest point North on the map) and running due south to Cresant Canyon's south wall it took me 12 minutes, 23 seconds and 21 hundredths to make the trek. The path of least resistance actually carried my character in a East by South East arc around obstacles and artificially inflated my run time, but I didn't bother to adjust it.

Approximating the same test in FO:3 I ran my character from the invisible wall (maps northernmost edge) east of the Train Tunnel (Pitt xpac location) due South to the invisible wall (maps southernmost edge) south of Warrington Station. I could run directly south, no variation of trajectory from point A to point B and it took 12:22:74. But I noticed something not trivial. Your character in FO:3 moves faster than FO:NV. It's very noticeable especially when you play them back to back, both characters were in their undies. It's a noticible difference in speed. (The implication is that if your character is moving more slowly and you end up with close times, the map to scale is smaller.) Anyways, assuming the surface area of the maps are equal, then you end up with this when you overlay the FO:NV map onto the FO:3 map.

http://i340.photobucket.com/albums/o324/Muppet_Vader/FO3NVmaps.jpg

I'm not a geography major, but it looks like the FO:NV map is about half the surface area of the FO:3 map. That's not including the subterranean levels of which there were far more in FO:3.

Obsidian pitched this game as being "as big as Fallout 3, but with more things to do..." So, I started scrutinizing the map locations and here's what I've come up with. Fallout 3 has about 50% more unique locations over Fallout New Vegas, except the guys at Bethesda didn't put a map marker on every single camp fire and shack in the wasteland. Not to mention, at least a third of these named locations in NV contain nothing of interest, or maybe a Star Cap to pick up.

Side quests are kind of hit or miss too. Granted there's more of them, but it almost feels like they (Obsidian) took some side quests and broke them into their smaller parts and made each subquest it's own "sidequest" or the adverse, and they added filler subquests to inflate certain subquests. I mean, that's a design decision, but it's not one I personally care for as a gamer.

On quests I haven't picked up yet, I've actually thought, "Why are they informing me that I failed a quest I'm not even on?" Is it supposed to make me go, "OH! There's a quest there, I better reload and do that differently so I don't miss that quest!" or what? If it's become unavailable to me through my actions, why bother informing me of it in the first place? It takes away some of the mystique of the next play through, that's for sure. I don't like it when game developers don't know what a spoiler alert is.

Which brings me to this tangent: You know the plot of the story before you even reach New Vegas because the developers leave in dialogue options that just appear for no reason. Here I am asking about House and the character has never mentioned him to begin with, nor has the player character heard the name from any previous NPCs.

I like the weapon modding. Not such a big fan of the ammo tables though, it seems a little tedious to me and honestly, with the prolific amount of ammo in the game, making your own is almost moot, save for the special handloads. But that requires a perk and skill allocations which again pigeon your character if you want to have access to them.

Another thing, on the topic of character development: Why do I need 30 levels in Fallout: New Vegas? Most of the quest difficulty in this game is scaled to level 20 and experience isn't dynamic, nor are the enemies encountered. So why bother going all the way to 30? It takes a drawn out time to get to that level (unless you glitch or exploit) and it starts to sap a bit of the fun out of it. The main motivation to reaching level 30 is to get all the perks you can to fill out your build.

I personally would have rather had 20 levels and 20 perks to work with. With an extra 10 perks coming along with a DLC level cap adjustment a la Fallout 3.

Obsidian didn't take into consideration what made Fallout 3 successful in terms of character development. They were too stuck on the old franchise roots and a return to that versus looking at the new environment they had to work with and adapting to that. A perk every other level isn't really a hurdle if your character has 400 HP by the time you hit level 26. Magazines were added to differentiate the games but little thought was placed on how they would affect game-play. So, rather than having a permanent skill at 100, I have it at 80 and about 20 magazines for the skill in my inventory for that rare occasion when I need more of that skill. It's a bit contrived and unnecessarily complicated and really does nothing to make the game "better" in terms of game mechanics. The underlying mechanics are the same, you're just forced to go about using them differently and it's less fun.

Going back to the whole 20 perks, 20 levels thing, Obsidian adjusted the way intelligence works towards skill points. So some may argue that the Perks (half of which are useless to begin with) gain more value by being acquired every other level, I counter with, skill points become more valuable when you only have 20 levels by which to acquire them. It's a trade-off, but it's my opinion that Obsidian went too far in trying to "devalue" the mechanics Bethesda put in place in order to trump up their idea of what the next Fallout "should be".

I'm here to have fun. Obsidian, like it or not, is playing in Bethesda's sandbox now, but I can't help but feel like they used it for kitty litter. Which isn't fun.

Technical merits not withstanding, this game is as buggy as Mississippi swamp in June. When I was watching the BestBuy live stream and they were showing game-play footage I kept wondering why the girl was playing exclusively in 3rd person mode. It occurred to me shortly after getting home with the game that they (Obsidian) were fully aware of the floating hands, shifted aiming, disappearing guns, etc when they were demoing the game.

They were sitting there, talking up the game, fully aware of game breaking bugs and were intentionally using the 3rd person mode to keep those flaws hidden. That's deceptive in the least, downright dirty on the par. Way to bend the consumer's over the barrel, yup.

Was anybody else bothered by the whole "Yes Man - Giant Robot" speech? To me, it seemed like a deliberate slight against Bethesda's designers by the Obsidian developers. I get it, "Obsidian did it first, blah blah blah..." What I don't get, why go to the extra effort of demeaning Fallout 3 when Bethesda was gracious enough to give you chance to be at the helm again? I'm wondering if anyone at Bethesda caught that and was like, "wtf is this?"

Ah well.

I don't think I'll be buying anything else with the Obsidian brand on it. The reputation the company has built for itself is one of lackluster effort coupled with shoddy craftsmanship. I really hope Bethesda goes back to what made Fallout 3 so much fun with the next installment of Fallout.

In the meantime, I am having a fair amount of fun playing New Vegas. But I really think that's because I was starved for more Fallout 3 content.

I'll give you the map size and overall number of visit-worthy locations. However; I think Obsidian has improved on just about every other aspect. To many Obsidian actually took Fallout and made it more of an RPG. More of an actual Fallout game. However; it all does come down to opinion.

I personally hope Bethesda learns from Obsidian and does everything they did but use their own talent of telling stories with scenery.

I actually like Fallout New Vegas over Fallout 3 but I will agree with you on the map size, Obsidian could have put more in there

I just hope Beth and Obisidian stay partners just for more Fallout games, and with the recent addition of ID into Bethesda, they actually have a good, stable, engine to build the new games on.

Most of the problems FO3 and NV have stem from the GameBryo engine being a complete pile of gooey dog feces.

I hardly ever notice the load screen because it usually doesn't last more than a few seconds, maybes it's your pc/console.

I've noticed installing the game to the HDD for Xbox 360 helps those load times quite a bit.

you can get rid of some of those load screens right off the bat.... don't fast-travel. The added benefit is that the remaining ones won't seem so close together.. :goodjob:

2 load screens were fast travel screens. If I hadn't fast traveled I'd have had to go through three other load screens instead. But thanks for trying. lol

The only thing I agree with you on is the quest failing thing when I kill an NPC. Every time I kill an NPC and I see a big "QUEST FAILED" thing come up, I feel annoyed and reload the game so I won't miss that save.

WOW I agree on almost all parts... I think they could have done such a better job just by listening to fans and learning from the mistakes in fallout 3... they also could have waited to release the game rather then release it with tons of glitches... Why are their game testers so terrible at their jobs!

After a couple of hours playing , restart the console, the loading times always go faster. For me anyway.

Counterpoints:


1. Just a general note: why the hell would anyone play this kind of game on a console?? Navigating all those menus, trying to aim, etc. Do yourself a favor and get the game on PC.
2. FO:NV probably doesn't have as much content as FO:3, but like I have said elsewhere: I can't believe anyone expects that it should. Bethesda had way, way more people working on Fallout 3 than Obsidian had working on FO:NV. The studios just employ a vastly different number of employees.
3. Having said that, FO:NV actually has a deceptively large amount of content. Which is to say, I think the way Obsidian designed the gameworld makes it seem like it doesn't have as much to do as FO:3. All the abandoned shacks with just a couple metal boxes lying around, all the map markers that seem to exist merely to give your toon something to fast travel to. I understand the gripe here, but I think the game makes up for the slightly lower amount of actually explorable terrain by giving some interesting and varied quests, making the gameplay a tad deeper with things like repair benches and hardcoe mode, and making the economy work much better than it did in FO:3.

This last point is something I would like to bring attention to, actually. I don't know if things are different in non-hardcoe mode, but has anyone noticed that the economy works much better in FO:NV than it did in FO:3? It was so easy to amass Bill Gates-esque wealth and have just way way more stuff than you'd ever use. Granted, I'm only level 16 at the moment, but I don't have nearly as much money as I had in FO:3 at that level, and I find that I actually try to conserve ammo and avoid getting hit because armor (and to a much lesser extent, ammo) is a serious expense. Having said that, there is some good money to be made if you're clever enough, but I like how being clever in that regard seems to be rewarded more than in FO:3, where just clearing out a few certain facilities gave you more ammo and expensive things to sell than in twice that number of places in FO:NV. Now, this could be because I'm playing hardcoe (should this game be played any other way??), but I absolutely have to say that Obsidian has nailed--as well as as any RPG developer has ever nailed--the concept of keeping the world low loot, making junk not worth much, giving it weight, and thus not ruining the economy. Again, everything I said in this paragraph probably goes out the window in non-hardcoe mode.

Now, some points I would definitely harp on:

1. The first several hours/character levels of the game. Instead of funneling the player south and then back north, Obsidian should have made a radius around Good Springs more hospitable to low-level characters. As it is, going north even a little at the beginning of the game gets you viciously mauled, unless you're really lucky with the positioning of the creatures. I understand why making the beginning of the game more open might be difficult in theory to do well without making creatures level to you, but with the paucity of quests from Good Springs to Novac, it seems to me that the developers were intentionally trying to instill in players the idea that hey, this is a wasteland with NOTHING in it. Honestly, I was "you have got to be kidding me" until I got to Novac. I tried going further south, I tried going north, I tried going east - I just got annihilated by everything. Everything just seemed so railroaded. I kept thinking, god this is gonna svck when I replay it. Probably the wrong attitude to have - since I would never take that attitude with another game (how much replay value will this have). But with embryo engine games I tend to think, how could I have approached this differently? In any event, the game really does pick up after Novac (or even a bit later?) and your quest log really fills out beautifully. There are honestly tons of cool little things to find; they just may not present themselves as readily as they did in FO:3.

2. The bugs. I have only experienced a few minor ones myself, namely
-my armor disappearing after buying it from Blake at the Crimson Caravan
-creatures getting stuck in the land
-becoming randomly unable to use arrow keys to select items in menus (I avoid mousing as much as possible to stave off the RSI)
-coyotes and geckos with 0 health not dying, etc.
These are annoying and/or immersion-killing. Thank god I haven't experienced anything on the order of the game losing my savegames, clearning out my bank account, etc. I feel especially sorry for XBOX360 people but again, you really ought to be playing this on the PC (so user-made patches and mods are at your disposal.)

3. The radio music: while what is there is good, there just isn't enough of it. Although I was not the kind of person who left the radio station on in Fallout 3 wherever I went, it was occasionally nice to tune into the different broadcasts and listen for a bit while I ran across the vast wasteland. It's been said before many times by many people but, the radio needs more lovin' in this game. However, I think the game's "soundtrack", composed by Mark Morgan (who did Planescape: Torment and the original Fallouts), is excellent. Sure, there are some arrangements ripped straight from Aphex Twin and I think I even recognize a snippet from Jeremy Soule's work in Oblivion, but the musical style in the game just really meshes with the atmosphere of the game and my musical taste in general.

4. The interface and menus. Why do I have to download http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1135390-wipzbeta-darnified-ui-nv/ for every gamebryo engine game I play? Why doesn't Bethesda/Obsidian approach this guy before the game is released and pay him to make their menus much less irritating for PC users? This mod has VASTLY improved my gamebryo-engine game experiences. You need this mod if you play this on PC.

There are a few other little things to nitpick here and there, but overall I am having a blast with this game.

For those of you out there who haven't gotten out of Novac yet and you're thinking, "god... am I going to be railroaded like this throughout the entire game?", just keep going. There is much, much more out there.　Just avoid asking, "which game has more areas to explore, FO:3 or FO:NV?" because I'm pretty sure FO:NV loses in that respect (but let's be honest, FO:3 just almost had TOO much content).

Sure there are things that need improvement and let's hope the game gets them but really...there's lots to enjoy in the meantime.

I like the kind of linear approach to the first few hours, it reminds me of the original games.

It makes it satisfying to level up, then go back to an area and annihalate the nasties who were previously kicking my ass.

How would you have it, then? Normally, when people die they can't interact with you anymore so... quest failed. Be careful who you kill.

Why do you feel sorry for the 360 users Ylurien? Yes it does svck for us that we don't have acces to the G.E.C.K. or modding in general, but some of us just prefer to do our gaming on consoles.
Me personally, I have never been comfortable while playing games on the P.C., I just don't care for the keyboard style of gaming. I have played some games on the P.C., but truthfully with shooters it just isn't for me.
No, I'm not offended by your statement... just curious about what you meant.

1. Load screens are annoying
2. I sometimes do feel like I'm running back and forth(go do this-ask him-go back-okay go ask again-come back- good job)
3. Some of the locations that seem pointless at first come up in quests(Caravan wreckage)
4. I miss random encounters
5.I like the more RPG elements so its all good
6. I have experienced a glitch that altered how i finished a quest
7. I had to attack the guy in the Aces Theatere to get him to talk to me(we col tho)
8.
9.

I really like the game, so I take the bad with the awesome)

I guess what I said came across a bit blunt. The main 2 reasons why I personally would prefer to play this on PC is that:

A. Mods can't be used with the Xbox 360 version (as far as I know??). This means you have to wait until / if the developers release a patch for the problems that bother you. PC users can download user-made fixes and patches, which are often released much more quickly than official patches (but, admittedly, sometimes introduce new problems). Plus, there are some fantastic mods that add content, sometimes even years after a game's release. If you're an Oblivion fan, check out http://www.nehrim.de/startEV.html to see what I mean.
B. I just HATE trying to aim at something with just my thumbs (using controller thumb sticks). I feel like I'm trying to pick up water with my feet. Maybe it's because I just svck with controllers lol. But I can whip around and headshot a mob behind me in a nanosecond with the mouse and keyboard , and keep my aim easily trained on moving objects' heads. The mouse/keyboard is just a better input device for games requiring precision aiming. On the other hand, playing like this has given me some mild RSI (repetitive stress injury) that REALLY svcks but I just love it too much to stop.

Wow... This again.
Some people CAN'T get it for the PC. <_<

I play this on my console, I don't see any problems with it apart from the obvious lack of mod capability. Menus aren't difficult to navigate as you have claimed and the pick up and play aspect of it makes it more rewarding and convenient for myself.

Opinion does not equal fact.

Anyways back on topic, I would really like a collaberation of Bethesda and Obsidian on the next Fallout in terms of game design and story. With ID engine they could make the game look like a AAA title not just play like one. I love the game but the animations do take away from the experience.

It seems that people who are pleased with innovations in FNV never used mods in FO3. I have +30 mods in FO3 without any stability issues and they not only cover the innovations we see in FNV but add plenty more. Soon it will be the same for FNV, as new mods are being made on a daily basis, but the point is that innovations in FNV can hardly be considered as such since they already exist in FO3.

Obsidian did a great job on voice acting and almost every quest-related NPC seems to have a unique voice which was not the case in FO3, this is something that mod can't do. But then they ruin the impression with annoying NPC monologues they repeat over and over again, you know what I mean: "Patroling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a Nuclear winter." Also, in FO3 I could often hear two NPCs having random conversations but in FNV after about 50 hours I can't recall any such moment except for occassional "Hi!" when they pass each other by. Enviornment sound effects are also too repetitive and especially during the night.

Recently I've discovered one radio signal in FNV where instead of a voice I was hearing a static noise with the on-screen text of what was apparently being transmitted. This was a bit let down considering how FO3's radio signals were all voice recorded. Regarding the size of the map, the Mojave Dessert is not as big as the Wasteland DC but it seems even smaller because of all previously mentioned barriers that leave us no option but to follow that main road until we reach higher levels. I find my self fast travel much more often in FNV too, because I hardly see any action on my trip if I'm passing through an area I've visited before and at lvl 27 it usually means I did, due to a such map design.

All in all, FNV is still a good game and I've already invested more hours in it than I did in most other games, and I' still haven't reached the endgame. It is just that I had more fun playing FO3.

going back to the OP:

*Game alerting you that you failed a quest b/c you killed some NPC (and other actions) - W T F. No, thank-you, I really did not need you to alert me about future quests I cant take. THAT is for me to find out on my own in future run-throughs, or figure out by intuition later on that there was a quest involving that NPC or whatever. And regardless it's a completely needless and immersion breaking thing to do.

*Perks and the 30 level progression poorly thought out. I agree with what he said on this point almost word-for-word.

*Game plot already being a part of your dialogue options before your character would even have known about it, yep. Again...wtf.


What I don't agree, or feel as strongly as the OP about is world size. He had a point with the false advertising-ish way the world size was presenting before release, however, being smaller than FO3 didn't piss me off really, as what was there was good, and FNV is not even part of the numbered series so I'm not tripping tbh.

Also frankly, I feel FNV has more of a "soul", so to speak than FO3. The way it played through gave me more RPG value. There are minor good things that Bethesda can take away from this game and keep in mind if there is ever a FO4.

I don't get this whole PC obsession to be honest. I first got Fallout 3 for my 360 and got all the DLC's, played it till my eyes bled etc... Then seens as everyone on here went on about how amazing the PC version was, the GECK, the improved graphics etc I thought I'd buy it all again for my PC.

I maxed out the graphics and really it was nothing to shout about. Barely noticeable. Anyone who says differently is being anol, it makes no difference to the overall look or the immersion. Then came the Mods...
I spent hours on ehre reading threads ont he best mods and I downloaded about 60, maybe more and tested them all and one by one I got rid of them all. They are the buggiest, most disappointing things ever to disease my PC with.
Were these made by Fallout fans? They seem to have nothing to do with Fallout. Everyone seems obseesed with new weapons, wow that's going to add hours to my gaming time. Another weapon...

They are rubbish and your missing nothing.

Above all, I just didn't have as much fun playing it on my PC as on my 360. Was it that I wasn't sitting on my bed? Was it 'cos the sound wasn't in 5.1 or I was viewing it on a turdy little 22inch widescreen instead of my 42inch HD?

I have a 360 pad so that was alright (I dispise headshot, headshot, headshot, lighting 180 mouse gaming).
It just didn't feel the same and I didn't find it as fun.

Maybe it's just me but, don't be pressured to join the big crowd because it's not what they make it out to be and that's the truth.

Bold.
But they didn't.
They did for the PC community.
But for the other two thirds, 360 and PS3 crowd, they are fresh and new.

Can you elaborate on this?

Well, for starters, I own Fallout 3 on the PC and the 360. My experience with the 360 version was better for a few reasons. First and foremost being: I still don't have a stable Fallout 3 to play on the PC. While my PC is very capable of playing FO:3 and should be able to run it on the highest settings with no problem, I'm still crashing at load screens and V.A.T.S. This is after applying the updates and using MODs to attempt to fix the problem. So, I chose to go with the 360, I don't find the controls hard to use at all, nor are the menus difficult to navigate in the least. The 360 version of Fallout 3 was superior to me because I was able to actually play it. Your suggestion on getting it for the PC already crossed my mind, more than once. I did myself a favor and used my previous experience as a compass to direct my choice.



I expect that it should because Obsidian went about blowing their own horn and every other statement from them was to this regard. If the developer says "It's going to have so much more content..." You're led to believe it's going to have more. You're running into people that heard that claim and are now crying foul.



Did you actually look at the map overlay in my link? That's not a "slighty lower amount" it's more like "less than half". The repair benches and work tables are optional features, features that require perk expenditure to get the most out of. I have two play throughs that I didn't even touch the work benches on because they weren't needed.



It goes out the window in hardcoe mode too. I have a character that hasn't been to Vegas yet, is in HC/VH about 26 hours in, has almost 80k in caps and I haven't gambled, played caravan or used any exploits. It's very, very easy to get caps in this game.



I agree, Novac makes things interesting unless you've figured out the hilltop hop to avoid Deathclaws before they get you. :whistling:



Why should someone have to pay full price for a game then expect the user community to fix it? No, the truth here is that Obsidian and Bethesda pitch out a bugged game and it's NOT up to the user community to fix their errors that responsibility lay at the feet of the developers. Your insistence that people play this game on the PC doesn't take into account that Bethesda marketed this game to the XBox 360 in the first place.



I agree 100% with this statement. Yay! We agree!



You were just on about how the PC was the superior method of enjoyment, then you say this? You're sending out mixed signals. But thank you for taking the time to present your thoughts and counter points.



I would have it this way: They don't broadcast you missed a quest at all. Period. There's no reason to. If you don't meet someone in real life you don't get a text message saying "Potential Romance Failed". I'm just saying, if the quests aren't in the quest log, I shouldn't be aware of them on any level.