Tale of Two Wastelands: a Review

[charwo]

I thought I'd put this out here. Tale of Two Wastelands, which is not directly supported by Nexus, is a conversion for Fallout 3 and New Vegas to run on the same engine. You DO need copies of both games, preferably the Steam GOTY and NVUE. It didn't work with my disc copy, but that was 1.3 and they're on 1.7 now

Is it worth it? Well, yes, except no. New Vegas has less horrible bugs in it than Fallout 3, greater options and stability and I found the fights were better with riders, much more in terms of gun variety and it seemed more plausible for the weapons loadout. There's a bobblehead mod that gives unique bonuses to bobbleheads in lieu of stat bonuses. That said, if you heavily mod, or like my consider heavy modding a simple REQUIREMENT to make Fallout 3 playable (I consider Bethesda games to be horrible in general MODDERS WILL FIX IT!), you're going to run into problems as Fallout 3 mods can be converted, but the process for all but the most simple is difficult and the mod community expects you to teach yourself, something I am incapable of doing. I need personal instruction to understand anything and video tutorials don't count.

There are a wide variety of ported mods available on Nexus (search by TTW), but it's not nearly all of them, especially as I like the really involved quest mods (Arefu Expanded, Quest for Heaven music version) and a bunch of environmental changers (Bond's Tenpenny Tower, Vaults Rebuilt, Bigtown Expanded), and there's no guarantee at all the modders will take pity on you, especially if it's a complicated mod. That said, most all Fallout New Vegas mods work in Fallout 3. Not tried any transport mods, but Enclave Commander NV works, as does Fallout Classic Weapons and if you teleport by console commands companions don't seem to have problems. The only one I've had issues with is Slavery simple and an attempted Fallout 3 integration. There went my hopes for a functional arrest mod...

Fallout 3 exclusive weapons tend not to have iron sights (alien weaponry) or have wonky ones (the R-91 American Assault Rifle). I recommend a NV DLC weapon integration mod so you'll see raiders caring BARs and .38 specials and 45s. Overlords tend to wield Light Machine Guns, which i think makes a lot more sense.

I recommend it if you want a more stable game and want to see a BEAUTIFUL fan made train station to go between the wastes. Or if you want to take some really cool melee weapons from the Fallout 3 autoaxe, or finally mod your Fallout 3 weapons to the hilt with a WMX addon. I'm glad I tried it, but I'm not sure I want to do it again. I need my mods, and frankly, until I actually tried it, I found there's nothing from Fallout 3 that I wanted in New Vegas except some models and textures. But if you liked Fallout 3 for being Fallout 3, then you might want to take a look here.

EDIT: There's also a HUGE problem for heavy modders when you change over. Taking out multiple mods and putting new ones in causes stability issues. Normally, even my paltry rig doesn't have too much of problems but when you have mod heavy preferences in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, you don't have enough memory to run more than about 90 mods at a time and with all the compatibility mods and such I had (NVEC, Project Nevada, WMX, MCM with all the dozen TTW plugins) I could run only a two dozen story and companion mods at the same time. Changing them out en masse (trading FO3 World of Pain for FNV World pf Pain) causes the game to get unstable. Better talented people than me may not have such problems, but they are a real hazard and pain in the butt.

If you use TTW pick your mods carefully at the beginning. And I've changed my mind: I won't be using TTW again. But I'm glad I played a great game of Fallout 3 with it.

[Ladez]

Interesting write-up. I've never bothered with TTW and - aside from the blatant disconnect in terms of story, which is one reason for me not wanting it - you've pretty much nailed the reason why. I'm a modder and understand how things work, which means I'd probably be able to make everything work the way I want it and port mods for my own use. The thing is, I just don't want to go bother with it.

Different strokes for different folks. TTW is an amazing achievement and I applaud them for making it possible. It's just not for me. :)

[charwo]

I understand the story disconnect. But I've decided in all my future games I can assume the character sheet is a team sheet: All those companions you should be traveling around with but don't because you like the fighting are all there. Swtich up as needed with clothes and weapons. In that runthrough I played the LW and the Courier as two different people, as duel protagonists.

[baddude1337]

I quite enjoy it, as to my own personal head canon my character from 3 is the same as NV (As the mod implies) and also simply for simply making it one big game. While New Vegas has a better story, Fallout 3 is much more fun for simply exploring and the like, especially with all my NV mods and companions.

I haven't had any issues in terms of mods and I run around 130ish at any given time, though I don't have big gameplay changers like PN.

I enjoy it for giving me an excuse to buy 3 on the cheap and replay it, and realise how much better the story is in NV (Although The Pitt has a pretty good story), while the worldspace of DC is great for exploring and for having some fun combat engagements.

[TJ]

I never crash with bethesda games,Which is very weird. Fallout new vegas has always hated my pc,then again it has so many bugs the modders have to fix..

[Nostil]

the story for me is: in the capital wastland, I heard an advertisment for large amount of money for a courier, so I took a train to vegas (FalloutNV) and then I can go back and forth as I please.
I relly like it, and think once it's farther along it will become essential for any player.

[Incunabulum]

The story 'disconnect' is only apparent (right now) if you start in New Vegas.

Otherwise, starting in the Capital Wasteland works pretty seamlesly (narratively). You finish up FO3's main story (incl Broken Steel), get on a train, 9years pass (in which you do 'stuff) and then get shot in the head and wake up in Doc's house.

Now, travelling back and forth - that's wierd because everything is as you left it (and not advanced in the intervening 9 years), but you could treat it as a story being told in anachronic order.

As far as mods - All NV mods *work* right out of the box, but not all take effect in the CW. But most of the *core* game effect mods that need it have TTW comp patches (PN, WMX, EVE, etc). There are several big FO3 quest mods already converted over (Alton, IL, Reyjavik, more).

http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/50009/?

And I haven't had any mod memory problems - I'm running 136 plugins (Something like 50 merged into 3 plugins) but this is very dependent on your system specs. Run 2gb RAM on a 32 bit system and you'll run into problems. I've got 4gb, 64bit, running the 4gb .exe, NVAC, and NVSR, no hi-res texture mods, and am having no problems at uGrid=7

[charwo]

All of this is true. The instability problems I'm running into are functionally ripping out a bunch of mods and putting new ones in their place. It was so buggy I couldn't walk from Goodsprings to Primm without the game crapping out on me. Now, understand I was using a LOT of console commands to jump around. Because I'd had problems getting new Vegas mods to start at the beginning of the game (more than a few have locks until you get out of Doc Mitchell's house) that I got a program to start in New Vegas, stepped outside, activated all the NVEC goodies outside Mitchell's House and coc'd back to Vault 101 exterior and played out Fallout 3, occasionally cocing back to Nevada and doing DLC when bored.

Incidentally, if you can port Their World with more grass and use Nevada Skies with it, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ does it change Honest Hearts. You get the cliffside grass cover in spades that marks the real Zion National Park (google it, it's pretty!) and it's frickin awesome. Most of the other FO3 green mods don't do anything there. Also, playing in the Las Vegas Valley or Big Mountain with BA_Restoration is a wonderous experience. Sadly, I can't justify it. I would if I could; I like green and vibrant and pretty. But....that's not the Nevada lowlands.

I may end up saving these and seeing if they work with Project Brazil. I'm pretty sure there not a chance in heck those two could play well together, but I'm not putting up with the 'burned out world' crap and all but the southern most parts of Nevada need greenscaping to be accurate.