Impressions of The Frontier so far?

[gmg2dave]

I've been playing the mod now pretty much since the day it came out. It was buggy as hell, honestly I think they should have released it as a Beta-build and gone from there. Probably gotten a lot less hate for the technical problems people were experiencing.

 

As far as the content? Some of it I did not like, some of it seemed to be missing parts?

 

For example, you can get a quest from a guy in the NCR camp that asks you to find his old CO in Bright-Town. It was, I thought, an interesting quest, lots of interesting backstory stuff found in the area about the events that happened there. And a bunch of smaller quests also found in the area that just added to the experience. Good stuff. Find the guy, convince him not to commit suicide and to go back to the NCR. All good, cool I thought. Except when I got back to the Fellow who gave me the quest, the options for the dialogue where limited to lying and saying he had killed himself, OR that he had been put in a cell, supposedly by the NCR. Wait, what? When did that happen? Why did it happen? And then I get a pop-up that he "will remember this?" Like, wait, is that good or bad?

 

Some of the quests had just, really 180 degree ending to them or had me thinking to myself I was doing the entirely wrong thing, but I was literally locked into that course of action by the quest giver. And there was no way to progress but by doing something that, literally, made no sense what-so-ever. Executing someone for eating cereal? WTH? I honestly felt like I was being forced to commit murder because the quest-giver was a total nut-job. Think that was one where I actually re-loaded a previous save and just did not ever complete.

 

Now, all that being said, I honestly believe that a lot of the criticism towards the mod is, well, stupid to put it bluntly. People harping on the NCR in the game not being lore-friendly, or that the "real" NCR" wouldn't do this and such is a glaring example of what I mean. OK, first off, they are NOT the NCR, that is made VERY clear to you in the opening minutes of the Mod. They are deserters who left the "real" NCR after getting crapped on and lied to by the leadership of the NCR. They where promised they where getting discharged, and then told "Oh the Legion just attacked us, go and die on the dam." So yeah, they left. Followed General Blackthorne into the Frontier to get away from the NCR. This is explained by in-game dialogue, by a (very nicely done) cutscene that you go through, all at the beginning of the mod. And still the People are whining "The authors are wrong." Or that somehow this group of literal deserters, are not enough like what some rando guy on the internet thinks is the "real" NCR. That is because they are NOT the friggin' NCR! Duh!

 

Or the part about not being able to join the Enclave. Which you have never been able to join in ANY Fallout game. Sure, in FO3 you can go along with Eden's plan and sabotage the water purifier (and genociding everyone in the DC area, just in case you forgot that part.) but it does little to change the outcome. Even if you cooperate with the Enclave and give Autumn the code to the purifier, he kills you. Not what I would call getting recruited. And if you have Broken Steel installed, there is still no way to suddenly decide to wander off to the Enclave base and join them. Feel free to try, they all try to kill you.

 

Again, the Enclave wants to KILL everyone who is not up to their "purity" standards, to include the entirety of the population in FO2, to the population of the Capitol Wasteland, and every one else for that matter. This is not some kooky thing that the authors of the Frontier came up with just to screw with Enclave fan-boys, this is actual game lore from, not one, but two Fallout games. So yeah, outside of mods you would never have this option. It is made abundantly clear through two games that the only people that the Enclave wants to keep alive, or has any right to BE alive, is themselves. Even your character in FO3, despite being raised in a vault, is not "pure enough" for them. And they keep trying to kill you through the entire game. Great recruitment policy they have going there.

 

But somehow saying "Well, I have such and such a mod installed, that means you must re-write the lore of the game to cater to my whim" is just, the height of arrogant stupidity. Fine, you want to see it, go write, code, troubleshoot, and make your own damn mod. And, btw, you will still get some entitled A&^hole, just like yourself, whining about how your mod is crap, because it doesn't fit with their ever so important view of their head-canon of what Fallout should be. You really should have submitted it to them before hand to get their approval after all.

[Sixfish11]

The biggest problem with the mod (besides all the horrible stuff with the devs) is how bloated the NCR quest line is. Cut-scenes are too long, story-line blatantly ripped off multiple other games (not in a cute homage way either), and the ending is lackluster.

 

Many of the dialogue options are lazy and give you the illusion of choice when you have none, not to mention didn't feel as intelligent and deep as the base game or some of The Frontier's competitor quest mods (Someguyseries, Th3Overseer's mods, etc...). Too many references to modern politics as opposed to the more interesting political ideologies expressed in the base game (Ganon is literally the only person in the base game who knows what the word "fascist" means and he's a well-educated ex-enclave Follower of the Apocalypse; in the Frontier it feels like half the f*#@ing characters know what Fascism and Communism are and have opinions on it SHUT UP).

 

The post-game is barren from what I've seen, it looks like most of the quests that were available even outside of the main 3 questlines kinda break down and are undoable after you finish one of the questlines. But that's pretty standard, same thing happens in the base game and with the DLC so no biggie there, just with 7 years working on it you'd think they could throw in some interesting stuff to do after it all ends.

 

However, besides all that, the mod is a technical masterpiece. The vehicle mechanics are incredible and represent the pinacle of the Fallout: NV system and what it can handle. The world space in incredible in it's size, detail, and quality. The gameplay is fun (when you're not being railroaded as part of a questline that lasts an hour too long *cough* vault 9 *cough*). The characters are mostly likeable. The voice acting is superb. I'd have to say it's easily in the top 5 best fallout quest mods and top 10 best mods ever made for the site.

 

I'd say I'm looking forward to improvements by the team over time, such as to the companion quest-lines and scaling down the NCR questline, but it looks like this project will die a slow death of minor hotfixes and quality scaledowns due to having to remove all of what Zu added.

 

It's all so sad.

[Jackawobbee]

It is worth the time, (there is a quickstart option if you want to start a char just for it) I just want to see some of the writing cleaned up and unfinished quests removed. I literally travelled all across the map for a quest that was missing it's final NPC. I have been loving the atmosphere of the mod although the radio is usually best left on mute unfortunately. I am amazed they did not reach out to some writers to edit, prune and fix some of these basic issues. I'm sure some people out there would have done it for free in this pandemic, unfortunately I don't believe the mod team took the time to fix the campaigns and unfinished stuff because of things that happened years ago leading to time constraints.. I don't blame them for wanting to finish an aging mod but they are now paying the price for that decision. (Honestly the dev team could spend 5 more years on it and probably still have more work uncovered.) You just have to be willing to see that some of the writers were more focused on being edgy than being nuanced and telling good stories. This goes against the New Vegas feel so hard if you can't block these moments out and find the "good" writing (mostly in the city center areas in the Legion and Crusade factions as well) your time will be ruined unfortunately. (Hopefully one day someone makes a mod to skip the intro quest with the NCR as it is a bit of a pigeonhole RP-wise.)

 

We just have to hope the files are released to be worked on further if the team decides to give it up completely. Although it is great to see so many people caring about New Vegas again this mod does not quite do the original justice, despite the valiant effort, I recommend this for hardcore Fallout 3 and NV fans only.

[ashtonlp101]

From what TGspy said, most of the NCR questline is attributed to one guy - Devilswish.

The biggest problem with the mod (besides all the horrible stuff with the devs) is how bloated the NCR quest line is. Cut-scenes are too long, story-line blatantly ripped off multiple other games (not in a cute homage way either), and the ending is lackluster.

 

Many of the dialogue options are lazy and give you the illusion of choice when you have none, not to mention didn't feel as intelligent and deep as the base game or some of The Frontier's competitor quest mods (Someguyseries, Th3Overseer's mods, etc...). Too many references to modern politics as opposed to the more interesting political ideologies expressed in the base game (Ganon is literally the only person in the base game who knows what the word "fascist" means and he's a well-educated ex-enclave Follower of the Apocalypse; in the Frontier it feels like half the f***ing characters know what Fascism and Communism are and have opinions on it SHUT UP).

 

The post-game is barren from what I've seen, it looks like most of the quests that were available even outside of the main 3 questlines kinda break down and are undoable after you finish one of the questlines. But that's pretty standard, same thing happens in the base game and with the DLC so no biggie there, just with 7 years working on it you'd think they could throw in some interesting stuff to do after it all ends.

 

However, besides all that, the mod is a technical masterpiece. The vehicle mechanics are incredible and represent the pinacle of the Fallout: NV system and what it can handle. The world space in incredible in it's size, detail, and quality. The gameplay is fun (when you're not being railroaded as part of a questline that lasts an hour too long *cough* vault 9 *cough*). The characters are mostly likeable. The voice acting is superb. I'd have to say it's easily in the top 5 best fallout quest mods and top 10 best mods ever made for the site.

 

I'd say I'm looking forward to improvements by the team over time, such as to the companion quest-lines and scaling down the NCR questline, but it looks like this project will die a slow death of minor hotfixes and quality scaledowns due to having to remove all of what Zu added.

 

It's all so sad.