From the top:
New Vegas is now unplayable for me. I've put around 20-25 hours into my first run-through, and spent a lot of time levelling (to 30) and performing side-quests while avoiding the main storyline as much as possible. The hard finish on F3 ruined the experience for me, and I wasn't prepared to make the same mistake again.
Having got to a suitable stage, I decided it was time to enter The Strip and finally hunt down Benny. However, on passing the Securitron guards outside the North Gate the following happens:
- I get onto The Strip and see the NCR soldier throwing up to my right.
- A Securitron is standing still to my left, at the end of the fence, and to my right, by the gate.
- After a few seconds, another Securitron appears from behind the fence to my left. This robot is obviously Victor, but is not named as such - and only certain dialogue branches actually refer to him as Victor or make an implied connection.
- Eventually, "pseudo-Victor" trundles off towards the Lucky 38 and invites me to follow him to meet Mr House.
- As the dialogue ends, I notice a Securitron corpse on the steps leading up to the L38. This seems to appear during (i.e. be trigger by) the dialogue with pseudo-Victor.
- Following the robot I just spoke to, I see he disappears at the door to the casino - presumably going inside.
- The robot corpse that is sat on the steps is named as Victor's corpse - but no Victor character has been stood there in the first place, and certainly no-one has been killed. The corpse contains 1x Scrap Metal, 200 x 10mm rounds, and 20 x missiles.
- On entering the L38, there are four Securitrons in the lobby. One of these is Victor (alive) and, crucially, ALL FOUR of them are HOSTILE.
- If I skip past the inevitable combat and jump into the lift, I can proceed to either floor - Mr House's office or the hotel room I assume he should ultimately gift me.
- If I enter the hotel room, it's buggy as hell as obviously it isn't my room at that point.
- If I go to Mr House's office, his "secretary" robot is immediately hostile and attempts to kill me.
At this point I've given up, as everything is obviously up the creek. I stopped playing for over a month, waiting for the long-awaited patch for PS3. I finally got around to downloading that this afternoon (V1.02) only to find that it hasn't fixed a single thing. All of the above still happens, and the save file I have put over 20 hours into is, to all intents and purposes, useless.
First up, I'd like to offer my most sarcastic thank you to Bethesda and Obsidian for wasting my time and my money while simultaneously destroying this once-great franchise. Secondly, I'd like to offer a pre-emptive, genuine thank you to anyone who may be able to help me salvage the save file and continue in a manner approaching normal. On the off-chance someone tells me that all those robots are supposed to be hostile, irrespective of earlier actions or reputation, then I can honestly say that the whole episode is ridiculous. However, I'm pretty certain that the way it plays out for me (ten times in ten for me now, including two post-patch) is the result of a bug and not remotely intentional.
Regards,
Annoyed of Bristol.
