Hot-Take: New-Vegas is probably the worst modern Fallout.

[MonkeyMummyMoney]

Before I develop this post any further I want to get my point on the game clear: I love it. I like it more then Fallout 3.

But, I think it's probably the weakest of the modern Fallouts, Fallout 4 being the strongest.

I'll explain:
Fallout 3 is a game that doesn't know exactly what it wants to be, with bad gun-play, bad world design, little-to-no immersion and almost no reactivity. On top of all that it's graphically dated, even when it came out it was dated. It's like 1980 cheap Hasbro Action-Figures without the charm of them being actual toys.

New-Vegas has all the same problems as Fallout 3 with mechanics that come off half-baked and a world and story that were so aggressively rushed any writer or developer that took even an ounce of pride in their work would have bounced once they got hit with the 18 month time-frame.

It's biggest problem though is how it tried to mix the Lore of Interplay Era with Bethesda Era: In light of Fallout 4, it makes no sense. Infact I would argue that NV shouldn't even be considered Canon because of the holes.

In Interplay Fallout the Master created Super-Mutants on the West-Coast.
In Bethesda Fallout the Master isn't mentioned outside NV and it's implied the Institute made them but then gave up at some point.

It would explain why Bethesda Era Mutants are so much dumber and crude and how they ended up in the Capital Wastelands so quickly.

Some may argue "The Wiki says The Master is mentioned in Fallout 3, therefore he is canon!"

But in reality the very excerpt the wiki uses as proof is just something Harold Said and even then he doesn't mention the master by name. At best I view it as an Easter-Egg. You wouldn't say Dr.Who is now Fallout Canon because the Tardis appears as a random encounter in the earlier games would you?

Now before people argue over which is the better writer Bethesda or Obsidian, I think they realistically aren't any different. At best Obsidian wasn't Jaded by the industry when they worked on NV, but if Outerworlds is any indicator they since have. Not ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on that game either, I enjoyed it.

If roles were reversed and Bethesda went under and Interplay came out on top, the games would largely be the same at this point. Watered down Action RPGs stripped of any degree of complexity with a unspoken design philosophy of "Why make something ourselves when the players can make it for us?" The only difference is the Lore would be different.

To summarize: I don't dislike NV or Fallout 3 or really even Fallout 4.
I just think in the context of the rest of the games in the Bethesda Era Fallouts (As I think it's awful stupid to compare Interplay era to Bethesda Era. Completely different games. One is a 1st person Action RPG, the other is a Top-Down CRPG. Both are made by different companies, both have different lores, they just share the name.) NV is the worst because it doesn't really do anything new and breaks both Fallout Universes Lore.

[MonkeyMummyMoney]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von -Leadbelcher-:

Both are equally empty and feel soulless on high end systems as they lose the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ quirks that once made NV for instance feel fun as it was. But now I grow bored of running on both of them, but FO4 is especially void of any decent feeling for me, without mods. If you add the dangerous wasteland mod

You mean Deadly Wasteland? I couldn't find any mod called Dangerous Wasteland.

That Mod (Deadly Wasteland) seems amateurish to me as there are already other mods that do the same thing. It has relative low downloads and the it's author locked the comments for literally no reason at all since it only has two comments, both from 2018.

From what it's listed as doing, it touches on AI and from experience AI mods tend to be more misses then hits. They either don't work as advertised to due to quirks in the engine (Settler Sandbox) or just make the game more annoying and not so much more difficult.

A lot of mods that "Improve" combat tend to just make the enemies spam healing items and throw grenades all the time. It actually brings back nightmares of when Fallout 4 first launched and Raiders had a never ending supply of molotovs and could throw them with pin-point accuracy from half map away and would spam the ♥♥♥♥ out of it.

I think Bethesda made extreme overreaction though as I never see any of the enemies ever use grenades in the base game.

I feel like Fallout 3 and NV had the better approach to them (Note: Better NOT perfect) Grenades were their own item, not a secondary thing and only certain enemies had them.

Pretty sure Grenades also hit harder in those games. They're basically a win-button, but you don't want them to appear too often as it might feel cheap and annoying to the player.

None of the Fallouts have gotten Melee AI right. Ideally Melee enemies should try to flank you, but they all just make a bee-line directly into your gun and Mines are a player only thing.

For the longest time I personally felt AI was something that could never really be all that good and the best you'd find would be in Simulation games.

But, with the recent explosion in AI technology, perhaps one day a game will come about that integrates some form of AI into their system to control NPCs. That way the game starts to feel more realistic and the AI actually starts to behave like you would expect an actual person would.

The AI is fed only information that is relevant to the combat of the game and is tasked with controlling everyone that is not a player character with tags set with general traits the developers would like for a faction (Raiders: Hostile, Use Chems. Melee Raider: Attached to Raider, only use Melee)

IT would make Difficultly far more organic. The game would start off fairly easy, everyone is kind of bad. But, the more you battle against the AI, the more it learns and the more challenging the game gets. No one fight would ever go the exact same way.

Perhaps even remove leveled lists entirely and instead let the AI chose what gear someone uses.

The actual Difficulty slider just being something that controls how well the AI learns and how often the AI lets you win. If someone has the difficulty set to very easy, it's probably never a good idea to throw extremely cunning, borderline special-forces trained raiders at them.

[Salamand3r-]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Live, Laugh, Love-Craft:

too long to quote

Just to be clear, Bethengine actually has an extremely robust AI system - it's just mostly unused. A lot of it dates back to the Morrowind days, and was never fully taken advantage of in any game since.

[clarkeveritas]

Fighting over this is very stupid. Everyone has preferences and opinions. I prefer NV because of the more branching paths and I prefer the writing. Having Caesar talk me out of killing him was so unexpected and amazing. There is no "best" or "worst", it's just what you prefer.

[Carl Brutananadilewski]

I think my favorite part of 4 is the scream you let out when using psycho.

[MonkeyMummyMoney]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Salamand3r-:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Live, Laugh, Love-Craft:

too long to quote

Just to be clear, Bethengine actually has an extremely robust AI system - it's just mostly unused. A lot of it dates back to the Morrowind days, and was never fully taken advantage of in any game since.

It's Oblivion when they started to beef it, not Morrowind. It's because of how lifeless they viewed Morrowind's world that Radiant was created.

They stripped Radiant down not because it was smart, but because it didn't really work. You'd have NPCs killing other NPCs for absolutely no reason.

The Radiant AI people talk about now isn't usually the same one people talked about back then. What we got was very basic with much of it's features even further stripped down.

For example: In the early days of Oblivion there is an Argonian in Bravil if I remember correctly called "City-Swimmer" or something like that, that for most players would be dead upon first visiting the city usually with a stolen loaf of bread on her body.

Players thought this was scripted, but it was actually the AI breaking. When Oblivion NPC's don't have food in their inventory, they go and buy it. there is a hidden trait called "Responsibility" that governs their moral alignment and if that alignment was too low, they would just steal the food. The guards would then react to them stealing the food. but NPC can't pay bail and the AI doesn't know to arrest them, it instead perceives them as running from the law, which is met with them trying to kill you.

The AI for the NPC that is now being chased by the guards doesn't know it can leave the city so it either runs or fights back depending on it's cowardice level, but always ends up dying.

So to get back to CitySwimmer, people would arrive in Bravil with her already being dead. The entire exchange happening off screen.

The Goblins were probably where Radiant was at it's peak. If you steal a Goblin Tribes Totem without killing the shaman and drop it somewhere, a war party from that tribe will storm across Cyrodil and try to take the Totem back.

It doesn't always work and depending on how far away from their lair that you are it can take quite some time for them to show up and there is always the chance the party will die in transit to it.

I view Radiant as a sort of "Tree falls in the wood" type of situation. If most of the AI's actions take place off screen, is it really something worth bragging about.

Radiant isn't all that impressive if it weren't for people saying it was suppose to be impressive. It doesn't matter what something was suppose to be, what you got is the reality.

A fairly underwhelming AI that has since been stripped down to the bone.

I would love a Fallout or TES where they let Radiant loose again, but I also know that will never happen. Todd has stated he's not interested in making complex games anymore. He's a sell-out, basically. Or, he didn't so much sell out as much as he bought in.

But they should sell Radiant to someone else who actually will use it.

I highly doubt it will ever reach levels of immersion (I try to avoid using Complexity as only idiots admire complex things.) that modern AI is theoretically capable of doing, but I would still love to see what it's capable of doing in the hands of experts that actually care about the product.

The most outlandish story I've heard about Radiant is that Guards would get hungry and leave to get food while on post and other guards would then arrest them for desertion, but the AI again doesn't know about arresting, so it just kills them leading to towns that are devoid of guards, over time leading to NPC's stealing from merchants.

BUT

They would just be stealing what in their inventory (Pick-pocketing) and what they have on display. Merchant Goods are stored in a chest, usually that chest underground somewhere. it doesn't even have to be in the same cell as the merchant.

Emal even told a story about how early in development there was a Skooma dealer and not far from him was a gang of skooma addicts (I'm 90% certain I know who he's talking about.) The dealer is required for a quest, I think it's the thieves guild, but testers would go to him only to find he was dead. What the developers realized is the skooma addicts would use their skooma, then go kill the dealer and take his skooma.

And the madness is even more extreme. There were stories of None of the merchants actually having any thing in stock because people would wander in and buy their entire inventory (Probably a good thing in some ways as most Oblivion Merchants always had a few items you'd never buy, ever) There were towns with no guards because Guards would kill eachother, Shops had no clutter on display as people would steal it with no guards there, and Skeleton Groups or Bandit Gangs would wander into towns and slaughter everyone. So it wasn't uncommon for testers to go into major cities and literally everyone would be dead. OR everyone would be dead but the essential NPC's fighting the Skeletons or Deadra or Bandits or what have you.





The Version of Radiant we got was... Laughable, and was stripped down even further with later patches. But despite all that, Oblivion still has a certain element to it that none of the other TES games have ever been able to replicate and I suspect because Radiant was still in the picture. Even the smallest traces of it that we got.

It's something that needed more time and Zenimax was not willing to give them it. I assume Zenimax anyways, it's also possible Todd himself didn't want to waste time on it. enlight of his recent views on watering down and stream-lining as much as possible, I suspect if that's not it, it's at least half. Half Him/ Half Zenimax not wanting to probe Radiant and see what it can actually do when given more robust functionality and the quirks ironed out.

[MonkeyMummyMoney]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Live, Laugh, Love-Craft:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Salamand3r-:

Just to be clear, Bethengine actually has an extremely robust AI system - it's just mostly unused. A lot of it dates back to the Morrowind days, and was never fully taken advantage of in any game since.

It's Oblivion when they started to beef it, not Morrowind. It's because of how lifeless they viewed Morrowind's world that Radiant was created.

They stripped Radiant down not because it was smart, but because it didn't really work. You'd have NPCs killing other NPCs for absolutely no reason.

The Radiant AI people talk about now isn't usually the same one people talked about back then. What we got was very basic with much of it's features even further stripped down.

For example: In the early days of Oblivion there is an Argonian in Bravil if I remember correctly called "City-Swimmer" or something like that, that for most players would be dead upon first visiting the city usually with a stolen loaf of bread on her body.

Players thought this was scripted, but it was actually the AI breaking. When Oblivion NPC's don't have food in their inventory, they go and buy it. there is a hidden trait called "Responsibility" that governs their moral alignment and if that alignment was too low, they would just steal the food. The guards would then react to them stealing the food. but NPC can't pay bail and the AI doesn't know to arrest them, it instead perceives them as running from the law, which is met with them trying to kill you.

The AI for the NPC that is now being chased by the guards doesn't know it can leave the city so it either runs or fights back depending on it's cowardice level, but always ends up dying.

So to get back to CitySwimmer, people would arrive in Bravil with her already being dead. The entire exchange happening off screen.

The Goblins were probably where Radiant was at it's peak. If you steal a Goblin Tribes Totem without killing the shaman and drop it somewhere, a war party from that tribe will storm across Cyrodil and try to take the Totem back.

It doesn't always work and depending on how far away from their lair that you are it can take quite some time for them to show up and there is always the chance the party will die in transit to it.

I view Radiant as a sort of "Tree falls in the wood" type of situation. If most of the AI's actions take place off screen, is it really something worth bragging about.

Radiant isn't all that impressive if it weren't for people saying it was suppose to be impressive. It doesn't matter what something was suppose to be, what you got is the reality.

A fairly underwhelming AI that has since been stripped down to the bone.

I would love a Fallout or TES where they let Radiant loose again, but I also know that will never happen. Todd has stated he's not interested in making complex games anymore. He's a sell-out, basically. Or, he didn't so much sell out as much as he bought in.

But they should sell Radiant to someone else who actually will use it.

I highly doubt it will ever reach levels of immersion (I try to avoid using Complexity as only idiots admire complex things.) that modern AI is theoretically capable of doing, but I would still love to see what it's capable of doing in the hands of experts that actually care about the product.

The most outlandish story I've heard about Radiant is that Guards would get hungry and leave to get food while on post and other guards would then arrest them for desertion, but the AI again doesn't know about arresting, so it just kills them leading to towns that are devoid of guards, over time leading to NPC's stealing from merchants.

BUT

They would just be stealing what in their inventory (Pick-pocketing) and what they have on display. Merchant Goods are stored in a chest, usually that chest underground somewhere. it doesn't even have to be in the same cell as the merchant.

Emal even told a story about how early in development there was a Skooma dealer and not far from him was a gang of skooma addicts (I'm 90% certain I know who he's talking about.) The dealer is required for a quest, I think it's the thieves guild, but testers would go to him only to find he was dead. What the developers realized is the skooma addicts would use their skooma, then go kill the dealer and take his skooma.

And the madness is even more extreme. There were stories of None of the merchants actually having any thing in stock because people would wander in and buy their entire inventory (Probably a good thing in some ways as most Oblivion Merchants always had a few items you'd never buy, ever) There were towns with no guards because Guards would kill eachother, Shops had no clutter on display as people would steal it with no guards there, and Skeleton Groups or Bandit Gangs would wander into towns and slaughter everyone. So it wasn't uncommon for testers to go into major cities and literally everyone would be dead. OR everyone would be dead but the essential NPC's fighting the Skeletons or Deadra or Bandits or what have you.





The Version of Radiant we got was... Laughable, and was stripped down even further with later patches. But despite all that, Oblivion still has a certain element to it that none of the other TES games have ever been able to replicate and I suspect because Radiant was still in the picture. Even the smallest traces of it that we got.

It's something that needed more time and Zenimax was not willing to give them it. I assume Zenimax anyways, it's also possible Todd himself didn't want to waste time on it. enlight of his recent views on watering down and stream-lining as much as possible, I suspect if that's not it, it's at least half. Half Him/ Half Zenimax not wanting to probe Radiant and see what it can actually do when given more robust functionality and the quirks ironed out.

Reactivity is huge for me. It's probably for that reason I view Fable 1 as the best RPG made in the last 20 years. Say what you will about the story, The Game-play, PM's weird lies. The reactivity out of that game is something I think most RPG's should aspire to replicate in their own way.

The consequences for your actions were there, they literally showed in your face.

While I may doubt the claims people have given Radiant, I still praise it because the reactivity it offers. The immersion it offers. And I don't mean Immersion in the sense of "I have to drink water every few hours because this gauge says I'm thirsty" I mean true Immersion. People are actually doing things.

Traders are wandering roads (Well... I don't think in the Unmodded game Traders do, But People are on the roads) Imperial Foresters are out in the Forest hunting deer. I've seen them do that a few times. And I'm not talking "Slightly off the road" No, I mean deep woods. Like... Banjo's are playing Deep Woods.

They aren't this static thing in a camp, in the woods that only react when a hostile creature shows up. They're actively doing stuff.

I think one of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R.S had something similar where Camps would actively trade hands. Although I will admit it's been a very long time since I played any of them, so don't hold me to that. But I'm wanting to say I saw the different factions fight for territory on their own.

[私たちが出会ったのは]

New-Vegas is probably the worst modern Fallout well that is a way to make fans mad at you all I can say Is good luck to you

[Unseen]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von 【X】【-】【R】【®】:

New-Vegas is probably the worst modern Fallout well that is a way to make fans mad at you all I can say Is good luck to you

So frickin what? Does anyone know these people, are they gonna come drag them out of their homes?

I'm gonna say it again, So frickin what? BTW I logged over 260 hours in NV and love both it and FO3 and the whole FO series. And I don't give a damn if I catch hate from any internet randoms for any opinion.

It gets kinda sickening to me, people who can't speak their mind or opinions without angering some fans, in any game. Games are not our family, its entertainment and some people get paid money for bashing these games. So what? Good for them, good for anyone making money and surviving in this world off anything short of hurting people.

Who frickin cares if anyone online gets mad? People should be allowed their opinions on entertainment and NV isn't a bad game at all, its not the greatest rpg ever made either and I'll stand by that 100% played hundreds of rpgs from zelda to final fantasy to diablo. This whole stance of, best rpg ever made...

NV was a popular game, that brought some of the old creators back, its padded for lots of gameplay. Has tons of good weapons, multiple story outcomes (this isn't the first game like this, bioware?), and has a lot of good stuff going for it. It also has terribly boring expansions besides lonesome. Don't care how much anyone hates lonesome been through that xp about 4 or 5 times and never gets old. HH was decent but nothing special, the other 2 suck sorry just how I feel after multiple times through them they are cringy and irritating and they make me long for even operation anchorage. Insisting that dead money is good isn't going to make it good and the reviews speak for themselves. OWB's is full of terrible jokes, and boring goals but the profit gains nice so it forces you to slog it. The stealth suit is also irritating, and no one but the badguy from futurama is even one bit likable.

Then there's the main game, which honestly is about 10 times better than those 2 terrible expansions but nowhere near as epic as FO3, don't care how mad my honest opinion makes any NV fan cause I'm also a fan but that doesn't mean I hold this game above hundreds.

[Shug Dynamite]

I am still playing NV to this day (shout out to Viva New Vegas), I cant't even get through the tutorial of Fallout 4 anymore. I'd rather play Fallout 3 than 4 any day. Based on this, I think Fallout NV is the best.

[Unseen]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Dead Horse:

I am still playing NV to this day (shout out to Viva New Vegas), I cant't even get through the tutorial of Fallout 4 anymore. I'd rather play Fallout 3 than 4 any day. Based on this, I think Fallout NV is the best.

If you won’t finish the tutorial how can you claim it’s bad? That’s like me playing the training level of nv and saying it sucks cause I’ve target practiced bottles before.

[Salamand3r-]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Unseen:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Dead Horse:

I am still playing NV to this day (shout out to Viva New Vegas), I cant't even get through the tutorial of Fallout 4 anymore. I'd rather play Fallout 3 than 4 any day. Based on this, I think Fallout NV is the best.

If you won’t finish the tutorial how can you claim it’s bad? That’s like me playing the training level of nv and saying it sucks cause I’ve target practiced bottles before.

You missed a word in there. "anymore".

[Unseen]

Well I don't skip around series would rather finish 1 and 2 before 4, but the gameplay trailers I saw looked pretty awesome.

[BOXman]

Fallout 4 by modern standards has the most casual and easy combat. Other than that, the story and RPG elements are completely simplified. Nothing is complex.

[Khanically Evil]

Bait bait bait

[Myr]

So far I find the constant references to the first 2 games to be tiring, it feels like they are trying too hard to link everything in New Vegas to the first 2 rather than making this game world stand out as its own thing, I can't see NV as its own game as its pushing being a sequel too hard.

Also when it comes to canon issues, so far I've encountered a few things that seem worse than Fallout 3 / 4 and I've not left the southwest desert yet. A small thing with a larger impact is the deathclaw omelette lady basically doing a "remember this wink wink" comment about the protagonist killing the Deathclaw mother in 2 which added to the other references to things they decided to make canon is basically forcing whatever choices they wanted to happen from the first 2 games to happen. Yet I remember people complaining about Macready in Fallout 4 mentioning the good ending of Fallout 3 was canon (because obviously it was), so why doesn't New Vegas get even worse scrutiny about this?

Also I just finished the Camp Searchlight area and I have to say if that was in Fallout 4 I am positive people would ridicule it as "Bethesda doesn't understand ghouls / radiation" People complained about a kid locked in a fridge yet people don't complain that 2 barrels of nuclear waste can be opened like all the other radioactive barrels around the world but these two somehow cause an "energy explosion" (according to Edwards) which irradiated the entire town and instantly turned everyone who didn't die into ghouls most of which went feral instantly? I'm positive that isn't how ghouls work.