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[Kilroy the Grand]

While we're singing NV's praises, I would like to gripe about my single biggest complaint with it, story-wise. Since there are some folks here just giving it their first play, I'll spoiler it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There is, as presented, VERY little reason to ever sympathize with the Legion. I realize this had to be time constraints, but it's still glaring in a choose-your-path plotted game.

I think it was supposed to be: Yeah, the legion army are misogynist rapists. We get it. They also managed to bring order to a large chunk of Utah. If you utterly break the Legion's might as portrayed (Lanius and Caesar both dead can't leave anyone reasonable in charge), you are dooming that entire area to despair and chaos again. The NCR is already overtaxed; they can't help. House doesn't care. Wild Card might be worse off for the Mojave in the long-term than either of those options, let alone former Legion lands. The price for stability is many lives, security, and infrastructure in Utah.

What we got: A few traders saying it's easier to do business in Utah than the Mojave.

Also, there wasn't NEARLY enough Joshua Graham. That is all.

I was so disappointed I couldn't help out

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

the brotherhood of steel

and let them have control.

They were such bros ;_;

[Rakonas]

While we're singing NV's praises, I would like to gripe about my single biggest complaint with it, story-wise. Since there are some folks here just giving it their first play, I'll spoiler it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There is, as presented, VERY little reason to ever sympathize with the Legion. I realize this had to be time constraints, but it's still glaring in a choose-your-path plotted game.

I think it was supposed to be: Yeah, the legion army are misogynist rapists. We get it. They also managed to bring order to a large chunk of Utah. If you utterly break the Legion's might as portrayed (Lanius and Caesar both dead can't leave anyone reasonable in charge), you are dooming that entire area to despair and chaos again. The NCR is already overtaxed; they can't help. House doesn't care. Wild Card might be worse off for the Mojave in the long-term than either of those options, let alone former Legion lands. The price for stability is many lives, security, and infrastructure in Utah.

What we got: A few traders saying it's easier to do business in Utah than the Mojave.

Also, there wasn't NEARLY enough Joshua Graham. That is all.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

While I personally never supported them, Caesar's Legion is like some kind of Nietzchean utopia, where anyone who is weak simply dies. It's not a stable society (Caesar isn't immortal), and it's terribly underpopulated (IIRC, it was said that there were something like 3,500 Legionaries in the whole of the Legion) because of the slaughter of most tribes. The reason that there's no crime isn't so much as that they police the wastes efficiently, but that they've slaughtered so many people that there are no potential criminals. That said, I still consider them a viable choice for some PC's and certainly not a black and white choice, even though if you're operating on an altruistic level they're blatantly the worse choice. I would have liked if there was some kind of Followers of the Apocalypse choice, but Wild Card is close enough.

I woulda liked a little more linearity (heresy).  Aside from a very few things, like deathclaws and cazadores and the BoS, I felt like NV didn't have much difficulty.  You could do /most/ things in any order...and when that includes sniping obscenely-powerful supermutants and annihilating the main enemy faction, something is lost.  But then, maybe that just means I need to play the game with less sniping.

...I'm roleplaying my current character as a member of the IHEMT (Involuntary Human Extinction Movement).  Screw quests, I'm going to try and kill every single named NPC in the game.  Challenge is shanking the doctor who's supposed to sell you stat upgrades, then walking into the Strip with guns blazing.  Or fists pounding, whatever.  Of course, it feels like this playstyle is the only way to get any mileage out of the "instakill sleeping people" and "cannibalism" perks.  It'll also keep me from leveling past the challenge of every area, since ideally I'll slaughter every town I come across without dodging around and doing quests first.

I did this one time, but I went to join the Legion first thing, and instead

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

killed that one guy in Cottonwood Cove with the amazing armour and gladius

after which I went to Camp McCarran and slaughtered everyone, feasting on flesh to replenish health, and this was all at or before level 5. Needless to say I didn't bother to continue.

[mainiac]

NV just didn't feel apocalyptic. You have way too many towns, cities, and others. It evoloved ' Oblivion With Guns '

That's because the bombs feel 200 years ago.  The world's supposed to be well on the way to recovery by now.

[MorleyDev]

I use mods to make the game more difficult. This is just something I've accepted I'll have to do with most modern "RPGs" Publishers consider dying a bug, not a feature.

I decided to download a backpack mod, and scripted it (5 minute job) so it was a portable container and lowered my carrying weight significantly. Turns out your "bottomless ammo supply" is useless when you have to drop a backpack to get at it, and can only spare room for a few clips in your actual inventory...

[Sowelu]

I use mods to make the game more difficult. This is just something I've accepted I'll have to do with most modern "RPGs"

I decided to download a backpack mod, and scripted it (5 minute job) so it was a portable container and lowered my carrying weight significantly. Turns out your "bottomless ammo supply" is useless when you have to drop a backpack to get at it, and can only spare room for a few clips in your actual inventory...

Hmm, that could be pretty interesting when combined with inventory slots on your clothes.  Deck yourself out with six vest pockets, and decide for each: do I want to keep a couple clips in here, or one whole gun?  Do the Matrix thing and load yourself up with six SMGs, throwing them away as you empty them...  And eject whole clips instead of reloading two bullets into a 30-round clip whenever you want, for crissake!

Oh well, I can dream.

[automaticsquid]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

i kind of got the feeling that the distinction was supposed to be that the legion were successful assholes while the ncr were principled and failing but it didn't work out at all or maybe I'm reading too much into the ncr failures as stated and that was never the intention but as it stands not only does the legion not have a ton to motivate joining it actually hurts you in terms of losing npcs like arcade and boone and it seemed to me there were more ncr aligned places then legion where you would end up getting shot at so the game sort of punishes you for it.

[mainiac]

The two sides aren't supposed to be symmetrical.  Just because the Legion is evil as a product of their environment instead of being evil for the halibut doesn't mean that they are actually supposed to be justified.  It's just a tradition in the fallout series to let the player be evil if they want to be evil.  The wastelands are supposed to be a harsh environment full of bad people.  Just like you can let the mutants destroy civilization in fallout 1, you can let the legions do it in fallout:NV

[MorleyDev]

Actually it's been stated Legion were originally intended to be a dark shade of grey, instead of flat out evil. A darker shade of grey, but something you could understand why people would view as "necessarily evil".

They had to cut a lot of the content that would of expanded that, such as an extra companion who presented the Legion point of view. That companion who eventually got re-imagined as Ulysses in Lonesome Road.

The Legion would be presented as something that works. Raiders are crushed swiftly and brutally, whilst the men are given their bread and circuses and the women and captured slaves beaten and broken beyond risk of a rebellion.

The whole reason they want to capture New Vegas is to turn it into New Rome, a centre to build a true empire around that can last past the death of a Caesar (heck, if he got his hands on Mr. Houses life support system, he could potentially set it up so he will never die). It's horrible, barbaric, immoral, cruel, efficient.

In Fallout 1 and 2, the evil villain's plans are doomed to fail. Super Mutants are sterile, and the Enclave will kill everybody but themselves and weren't really populous enough so the lack of genetic diversity would kill humanity in a few generations. Legion are a break from this tradition, in that their plan actually could work. Sure it's doomed to collapse under it's own weight eventually, but so are the NCR. Heck, the NCR are argued in-game to already have over-streched.

Instead you have a dilemma: Is it better that man continues to circle the drain in the hope of finding the plug (NCR), or man does something that will work, no matter the cost (Legion)? That's Legion's perspective. Essentially, Legion are the Borg.

[Darkmere]

I could never really accept that the Legion was more than Caesar. He's oppressed everyone else into brutal ignorance and has no compunction about using all the forbidden technology for himself and no one else. When he dies (and one way or another, he will), what's left? Lanius exists only to kill. Vulpes might have the brains to lead well, but he also seems more of a sadist than senator. Graham certainly had the brains, but he's not a member anymore.

Maybe things would have been different with Ulysses (if his voice actor hadn't been so maddeningly bad) as the Legion-supporting companion in the Mojave. Missed moments of awesome, I guess.

[nenjin]

Instead you have a dilemma: Is it better that man continues to circle the drain in the hope of finding the plug (NCR), or man does something that will work, no matter the cost (Legion)? That's Legion's perspective. Essentially, Legion are the Borg.

I saw it as a comparison between (quasi) democracy and totalitarianism. Except, like you said, in the context of a future that will be bleaker than the present.

[MorleyDev]

I could never really accept that the Legion was more than Caesar.

Basically that's why he wants New Vegas: So he can make Legion more than himself leading an army of savages, using it as the New Rome to unite the people around as a true empire he can pass on to a successor. Instead of fighting for the Caesar, they'd be fighting for New Rome.
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Caesar#Philosophy

[mainiac]

Sure the Legion has an end goal and Caesar has a fleshed out philosophy behind his plans.  That doesn't prove any sort of moral standing though, that just shows that Caesar is an intelligent villain.  Plenty of real life intelligent leaders have come up with much more sophisticated philosophies and historical theories and still been quite villainous.  I'd even go so far as to say that the more a leader see's his own role as part of a historical evolution, the more likely he is to be a killer and a thug.

[Sensei]

Lol new engine and Bethesda? Creation Engine is their 'newest technology" but i swear its the same damn thing.

As I pointed out in the Skyrim thread, weapons in Skyrim, when viewed with the Creation Kit/Engine/Toolset/Imagination-Station or whatever, all have a "Base VATS accuracy". It's 0, but still, that's irrefutable proof that they re-used some code. Must have been pretty lazy not to clean something like that out too.

[Sowelu]

Lol new engine and Bethesda? Creation Engine is their 'newest technology" but i swear its the same damn thing.

As I pointed out in the Skyrim thread, weapons in Skyrim, when viewed with the Creation Kit/Engine/Toolset/Imagination-Station or whatever, all have a "Base VATS accuracy". It's 0, but still, that's irrefutable proof that they re-used some code. Must have been pretty lazy not to clean something like that out too.

Meh, Half-Life was based on the Quake engine.  You never really build things from SCRATCH from scratch.  The only thing they kept in the end was some simple file I/O, but.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Lol new engine and Bethesda? Creation Engine is their 'newest technology" but i swear its the same damn thing.

As I pointed out in the Skyrim thread, weapons in Skyrim, when viewed with the Creation Kit/Engine/Toolset/Imagination-Station or whatever, all have a "Base VATS accuracy". It's 0, but still, that's irrefutable proof that they re-used some code. Must have been pretty lazy not to clean something like that out too.

The new Creation Engine is a graphics engine to replace the Gamebryo engine they were licensing before. The Creation Kit is a tool created internally to make it easier for designers to work on the game. Bethesda associating the two is just a branding exercise, and similarities in item definitions actually doesn't have any relevance to the core graphics engine being similar or different.

Bethesda's publicly released editors are actually MUCH more polished and have far fewer vestigial features than most internal editors that I've seen (not in Bethesda specifically, in any game company). Imagine requiring 1-on-1 lessons with the programmer who built the tool to actually learn it, your files save as non-customizable strings of seemingly meaningless numbers and letters, and having lovely exchanges like:

"Oh, and don't press the button with three boxes on it."
"Okay, but what does it do?"
"It crashes the game and corrupts the file you're currently editing."
"Why not remove it or disable it?"
"Eh, I'll probably do that eventually. For now, just don't press it."