So why does (almost) everyone hate Fallout: New Vegas?

[asdfpepper]

Oh please.

That religion crap has nothing to do with the damn game unless the creators of Fallout say so.

 

I'm pretty sure that some sort of deity is not controlling my want to help someone.

Edited November 7, 2012 by asdfpepper

[asdfpepper]

By the way, who is the developer for Fallout 4? Obsidian or Bethesda?

I'd really hope for Obsidian, since I don't want another post-apocalyptic shooter.

[JimboUK]

By the way, who is the developer for Fallout 4? Obsidian or Bethesda?

I'd really hope for Obsidian, since I don't want another post-apocalyptic shooter.

 

Bethesda I think, it's going to be Skyrim with guns.

[tetradite]

New Vegas is possibly my favourite game ever. It's certainly top 10.

 

It helps that I played it before FO3, what you play first always helps, but actually I wish I'd played it after FO3 and Skyrim:

 

I'd never played any TES games until Skyrim, and I bought Skyrim because of how much I'd enjoyed New Vegas. I was hugely disappointed. Yes it's beautiful but there's no choices, there are very few characters of any note, and nothing you do makes any difference to anything.

 

So, I then bought FO3, thinking maybe it was just that I didn't really enjoy the whole "swords and sorcery" thing as much as a post-apocalyptic scenario. I was disappointed again, for the same reasons.

 

Better and lengthier analyses have already been posted in this thread, but basically for me NV has a level of choice and depth that FO3 and Skyrim lack. I just cannot immerse myself in them the way I could in NV because of that.

 

By the way, who is the developer for Fallout 4? Obsidian or Bethesda?

I'd really hope for Obsidian, since I don't want another post-apocalyptic shooter.

 

Bethesda I think, it's going to be Skyrim with guns.

 

I really hope you're wrong.

I sadly expect you'll be right.

[asdfpepper]

Oh great, we can expect yet another post apocalyptic shooter.

Another option is to hope that Bethesda learned something from Obsidian and Fallout 4 turns out to be at least somewhat like New Vegas. Or let's hope that Bethesda lets Obsidian finish Fallout 4 or make another fallout game at some point.

Edited November 13, 2012 by asdfpepper

[nosisab]

NO, you don't understand. I don't want these people helping each other. I like to think of it this way: When these fallout people nuked their planet they lost their connection with God. They are now what they were meant to be, trash people. No matter how hard they want to return to their positive ways they can't because they are garbage. I remember playing Fallout 1 and seeing these bums, drunks, and druggies all over the place my thought was "good, you got what you deserved." If I had it my way, Fallout would focus on failure to help fellow wastelanders, petty arguments that escalate to killing, misery, jealousy, getting one up on your neighbor by having better stuff, materialism, illiteracy, crime culture, fashion shows, etc. Perhaps maybe the Brotherhood of Steel can be the good guys. They can dangle hope in front of the wastelanders noses and snatch it away on God's say so.

 

That's what I like about Fallout 3. Many people have something wrong with them, like the nuts from Andale and the weirdos at Dave's Republic, Tenpenny bigots and scheming Roy Philips ghouls. If the entire wasteland could be knocked down several notches like that we could have more interesting scenarios such as doctors who refuse treatment because they are racists or don't like your religion, unethical science geniuses in pursuit of the next way to exploit people in need, and much more enjoyable suffering to witness. But no, Obsidian fallout wants to foster a society of kindness and shelter because "people deserve better" instead of people surviving because they are selfish. Bah!

 

Sorry, I get late to this thread. nenina, if that is the religious view I'd rather not being religious ever.

 

First "those people" didn't nuke their planet, others did it and the reasons may be many, although resources are hinted, the real world show us that intolerance is a strong factor.

 

Still you are right and many people will show their worst whatever the situation and in this, all fallout games had a lot of "good" and "bad" people for you to label at will and be the way you want... well, least fallout 3 maybe for there is no consistent reason to be evil other than being just insane.

Edited November 13, 2012 by nosisab

[JimboUK]

Oh great, we can expect yet another post apocalyptic shooter.

Another option is to hope that Bethesda learned something from Obsidian and Fallout 4 turns out to be at least somewhat like New Vegas. Or let's hope that Bethesda lets Obsidian finish Fallout 4 or make another fallout game at some point.

 

I bought Skyrim in the hope they'd learned something from Obsidian, sadly I was wrong, the game is worse than Oblivion.

[TrickyVein]

I have to disagree with nenina as well. People didn't change after the bomb. That's the point. "War never changes." And the people who make war don't change. It allows Fallout to be social commentary. The Hubologists in San Francisco were a parody of the worship of celebrity, and the Los Angeles boneyard represented (only more outwardly) the soullessness and moral depravity that had existed there all along.

 

I love New Vegas, and it puzzles me why anyone would have the idea that people hate it, especially here on the Nexus. It actually makes me kind of sad that we have a thread called as such.

 

@ charwo

 

I am struck by some of what you say on the story-telling aspects of New Vegas and what it offers for players. I think I agree, and your musings get to the heart of the matter of what makes it a different and (imo) superior product/experience compared to other popular titles made for more general audiences.

 

I am curious to know how you came to regard Avellone's Fallout Bible as seemingly sacrosanct, or responsible for misleading or - dare I say - wrong information? My reading differs from yours on the cause of ghoulification, for instance, and the most recent edition seems to take your and others' criticism into account. And what of the Enclave in Fo2 not being implemented fully, or coming off half-baked? I would love to hear a different opinion on how this part of Fo2's story should have been handled.

 

Also, the part of me that took maybe two anthropology courses at university jumps at what you said about New Vegas being loose in its language regarding tribes, and maybe how there's a more meaningful distinction between the factions of New Vegas that ends up being obscured or pushed to the side through blanket application of this term. Who knows if the writers at Obsidian really were aware a 'cultural-evolutionist' model and thought 'tribe' really was the appropriate term as opposed to 'band' or 'chiefdom' to describe the factions inhabiting the Strip or those at Nellis. The NCR certainly is a state, however, and it would be interesting to take a fresh look at the conflicts in New Vegas as essentially borne from the differences between different stages or modes of social organization.

Edited November 13, 2012 by TrickyVein

[charwo]

Well, Tricky, the issue I take with the Fallout Bible are a couple:

 

1. That World War III went on for 11 years without nuclear exchange except at the end. At first, the notion appalled me. Then the issue of it being about oil comes to mind. At the beginning yes, but then there's this notion that it was at the end? Come'on, it's a fig leaf. Then, then comes the next point: America is storming Beijing and the nukes launch and no one cares who launched, and no one knows? While this is a more than plausible explanation, it destroys any theme of mutual responsibility. CHINA invaded first CHINA enslaved Asia, CHINA did the first chem attacks CHINA did the biological weapons first, nd it was CHINA who launched because the Americans had no reason at all. And there's no description of why the launch involved EVERYONE. The big issue here is that although by the nature of things everything must justify 2161, the opening of Fallout, Avenollone half assed the alternate history of things, not even thinking about how Communism could be maintained in Russia and China (it couldn't, not in an y version of Cold War doings, Diem style reforms at least had to happen in both) nor is the Commonwealth system explanation possible. Nothing can justify the Commonwealth in the 1960s, the transistor MUST be invented at nearly the same point in the early 50s to have household robots by 2020. Although here, the Commonwealth having so soon was a bulls*** choice by Bethesda, and when I make my Fallout 3 mods, the 50 star variant will by on any American flag earlier than 2020 and probably later. What's more is what he refused to comment on. The demographic decline and the end of perpetual economic growth I could see in 1999. The racial aspect is unforgivable. If you want to have a retro future, it needs to BE retro future. 120 years of cultural stasis is simply not possible: It has to be what I call retrogration, where a doomed society cannibalized itself for ideas. 19th century Chinese Confucianism, the absolutist ambitions of the late Empire of Russia, the Hellenistic school in Mistras in the 15th century Byzantine Empire, etc, etc. And no comment on race, particularly the loss of White plurality and the Hispanic Bloc, which racially is featured in post war ethnic compositions but how we got over that is not even alluded too. Race was an issue in the 50s, and what this American society learned from the real 50s in Blacks vis Hispanics needs to have at least a passing mention.

 

Then there's SCIENCE! Oh God how I hate it! In Fallout everything that looked SCIENCE! could and was justified by by mutagens and FEV, not radiation and California looked dead because it was drought ridden and global warming plausible. Ghould were a result ultimately of mild FEV exposure and they only appeared in California in the years after the apocalypse. Fallout should have the pulp look, but never, ever, EVER the pulp science. No matter the media, authors have a duty to do their scientific research and not say the laws of physics work differently. If that were true, the first ghouls would have appeared not in late 2077 but late 1945. Ghouls were completely unknown before 2077.Make your universe make sense in sequence. In Chronological order.

[TrickyVein]

Hmm.

 

Now, before this conversation goes on and I respond, let me say that I am in no way, shape or form defending Avellone's views or even agree with the man and I am not necessarily setting my own views in opposition to yours. (I feel like these things have to be said explicitly on the internet.)

 

But I don't find the inconsistencies in the timeline very troubling when compared to the conceit - in the first place - that the universe of Fallout really is different from ours. So does it matter that it seems unlikely that communism would have been sustained for so many years up to the Great war? Not really. This is missing another, more important point:

 

Consider that actually, the implausibility of the social, demographic, and political landscape of Fallout - all of which you mention - right before the war is consistent with the equally irrational vision of the future held by so many Americans following WWII: the red menace was here to stay, so of course it would still be around in 2060. Largely white America didn't anticipate much of the social reform of the 1960's and couldn't have predicted the demographic shift we are now facing. Science could do anything and was largely misunderstood by most people (remember those cigarette ads approved by oh so many physicians?). It would have been completely out-of-line to have seen these shifts in the timeline of Fallout - that we experienced as a nation. It's that naive, unexamined, eternally optimistic view of the future which existed at that point in time that lies at the heart of so much social commentary. In some ways, I agree with you. Fallout is a world that could never have existed (and not for more obvious reasons), because Americans's vision for their future was never realistic.

 

Also, the last point you make about ghoulifcation being FEV-derived seems to be out of date. From Fallout Bible IX:

 

...radiation caused most of the other giant-style mutations you see (scorpions, rats, ants, etc.) and some of the others (ghouls)

 

I agree that ghouls should have been around and since Nagasaki and Hiroshima.