To me considering anything even remotely shit, even if just a little, it means it's a bad game with good things. It's the polished turd basically. And that's not how i consider New Vegas.
I consider New Vegas a good game with several flaws, some actually being somewhat big, like the crappy gameplay inherited from Fallout 3.
Some games compensate for their flaws, and others don't. Every Fallout game has them, and usually major ones at that. 76 isn't flawed, because that implies that there's something positive about it. The whole thing is trash. There is literally nothing it does competently.
Saying Fo3 and Fo4 are exactly the same is false equivalency. They can both be shit (not my view), but there are numerous ways that Fo4 is worse. Fo3 lazily brought the Enclave over to the east coast. Fo4 tanked their entire plotline with a news story about their secret oil rig retreat. Fo3 made ghouls into zombies. Fo4 made ghouls into potato zombies. Fo3 retconned the lore of previous titles. Fo4 can't even keep its own lore consistent. Etc
I disagee. They did a superb job crafting a scoop of FO3 into a grand RPG. It's art—art made from poop. For all its accomplishments, it is still an upgraded FO3.
*shrug* I guess we have completely different definitions of what a polished turd is.
To me polished turd is basically modding the hell out of Skyrim. You can make it look better, improve gameplay and do other stuff to improve the vanilla experience. It's still a turd at its core because the quests sucks, the writing suck, the perk system sucks, the exploration sucks, the caves and castles are poorly designed and the dragon fights are terrible.
Can't say the same for New Vegas. New Vegas isn't a modded Fallout 3. It has a new story, quests, overworld, characters, a different skill check system and several other things Fallout 3 didn't had. Only similarity is the gameplay really and even then it's better by making it less floaty, the weapons no longer feeling like toys and different ammo types. Saying New Vegas is a polished turd is like saying Majora's Mask is a polished turd because it uses the same exact engine as Ocarina of Time, which is ridiculous honestly.
I'll just agree to disagree since i don't think this will lead to anything.
We have a difference of opinion on the term Modding.
*Also: Obsidian made New Vegas while on the Bethesda leash; using their FO3 kit. They were even forbidden certain subject matter (that Bethesda reserved for themselves); not to mention retaining the FO3 core game mechanics—but tweaked.
No no... —ANY— non-isometric Fallout; but then that's a given.
*Though Isometric in most cases (these days) erroneously means point & click 3D from a high angle. Even the developers of the Witcher described their game as isometric... though of course it isn't; ( and neither is Fallout
To me considering anything even remotely shit, even if just a little, it means it's a bad game with good things. It's the polished turd basically. And that's not how i consider New Vegas.
I consider New Vegas a good game with several flaws, some actually being somewhat big, like the crappy gameplay inherited from Fallout 3.
I know you don't want to pursue this discussion any further, but I'd like to present you some points made from another perspective; that which I can make after acquiring more experience with other games of same genre.
Having played arguably much better Action-RPGs, I have to say that New Vegas had a lot of shitty parts. Not that I disagree with you that New Vegas is a good game, but to me it doesn't have just several flaws, but rather it has several glaring flaws. Just few months ago, I've played and finished Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Gothic 1, AND Gothic 2 for the very first time, and I have to say any similar gameplay mechanics and features New Vegas has, the three older games did them much, much better. The Gothic games obviously did Open-World mechanics and exploration much better, no contest, and I also think the Gothic games way of making the players "play to the rhythm of melee gameplay" is how melee in EVERY Action-RPGs should work. But for the sake of making my arguments simpler, I'm just going to elaborate briefly on what V:tMB did better than NV, since this two games are quite similar in a LOT of ways.
Gameplay translation from its P&P RPG mechanics to computer + action gameplay are much, much smoother and solid. Character sheet and development left much to be desired, you can read my impression on it here. But I still prefer V:tMB's style of Action-RPG gameplay than that of New Vegas.
I don't exactly know if there's any dice-rolls/RNG involved in combat gameplay of V:tMB, but judging from in-game explanation on Combat feats and elsewhere, there might be some, so even combat gameplay of V:tMB rightly depends on character's skills instead of player's reflex. There's even a Defense feat that allows your character to become good at evading enemy attacks!
Lockpicking and Hacking performed solely by the character, while all the player has to do is hold down/press some buttons, instead of some shitty minigames is a HUGE plus for me. There's also an Inspection feat that works like how I think [Perception] stat should be in first person/third person perspective RPGs, which allows your character to notice extra items by themselves and relayed to the players by way of the items glowing.
Unfortunately, since I've only finished the game once, I think I won't be able to elaborate on replayability as a point. But just to mention it, V:tMB allegedly lends itself to replays, DESPITE how linear the game is. Each of clans plays out VERY differently, so you're not easily trapped to play usual baseline character build that a lot of people fell to in NV (and even the classic Fallouts, of Small Guns-Lockpicking-Speech archetype). They don't meme "Every time you mentions Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines, someone reinstall it" for nothing.
Story in the two games are not comparable and rather subjective, and I love each for different reasons. But narrative and quests designs are rather on par, so by virtue of gameplay mechanics alone V:tMB won by a thousand miles and showed us how to do Action-RPGs properly. And to reinforce my points on why New Vegas's shitty parts are real and mustn't be overlooked:
To me polished turd is basically modding the hell out of Skyrim. You can make it look better, improve gameplay and do other stuff to improve the vanilla experience. It's still a turd at its core because the quests sucks, the writing suck, the perk system sucks, the exploration sucks, the caves and castles are poorly designed and the dragon fights are terrible.
This exact same logic applies to New Vegas as well. Obviously, I'm not talking about quests, writings, perk system, and exploration. But everything else, gameplay mechanics, whether combat and noncombat, all the way down to moment-to-moment gameplay (which have been argued millions of times in this very forum), had to be modded. Pure vanilla ranged shooting sucks, lockpicking and hacking must be done through some shitty minigames, and all this had to be overhauled by way of mods. Perk system of New Vegas rocks, I'll be honest that perk arsenal is absolutely bigger and better than Fallout 1&2, and yet gameplay translation of SPECIAL-Skills system doesn't hold a candle to V:tMB's.
And we haven't even talked about looks. New Vegas's vanilla looks aged very, VERY poorly in my eyes. I absolutely MUST get some texture mods to make New Vegas looks acceptable for me, and then there's also the question of the game's stability. In comparison, however, V:tMB looks readily acceptable out of the package. All the mod you really need is just Wesp5's UP's Basic Patch for first time play (and UP+ for consequent playthroughs), and boom. My laptop is dying, New Vegas's framerate would drop down to 15-20fps not even 10 minutes after booting it up, and yet V:tMB rocks that silky smooth 60 fps.... most of the time, with several drops here and there, but STILL.... much better than New Vegas.
Oh, not to mention V:tMB has what I'll say as arguably THE best facial animation in FPP/TPP RPGs of all time, maybe even in games in general! (Yes, even Half-Life 2 doesn't have better facial animation in my eyes, suck on it Valve!). And if you want to bump up the looks of V:tMB, all you need is this:
just force Anisotropic Filtering + highest AA you can from your GPU. If you have Nvidia card, get Nvidia Inspector and force 16xS AA (2x2 SSAA + 4xMSAA) + Transparency Supersampling. Don't know what Radeons can do, probably not much but you should be able to get at least 8xMSAA.
Once again, I know you don't want to pursue this discussion any further, and I also agree to disagree in the end. Especially since I understand that most of New Vegas's shitty parts are inherited from Fallout 3 or the best Obsidian can work around them. Still, I just want to offer my perspective, having relatively fresh experience of playing other (and arguably better) Action-RPGs.
I haven't played it, but judging solely by the cover of the book, I'm not sure if I can stomach it if the day comes for me to play it. Maybe cinematic-esque, camera-moving-back-and-forth between player character and NPCs in general is just not for me. The only games I've played that uses this format and I can stomach them are the Gothic games I've just finished few months ago, and they has zero facial animation beyond the mouth opening and closing as the character speaks.
With LA:Noire, it was the fundamental feature of the game; [expressive facial movement]. A principle of the gameplay is taking facial cues to detect lies.
Okay, actual good thing; If you buy those games from GOG / Steam ... (or already have three copies of them including the original 'big box' releases) you never need to buy Fallout 76 and support a travesty of a game and deny Bethesda a financial reward for doing bad things.
The classics are being sold by 3.49 Australian dollars (roughly $2.45) each at the moment on GOG (75% off).
Bethesda really likes to spend big on their cheated fans.
Not to mention, they are offering those games to console players too. Many of those don't even play games on PC, so they won't play the classics. While Bethesda didn't lose the potential future sale.
There is a difference between criticizing something and being an outright dick about it. I joined this site despite reading a lot of negativity about it, about how members are hostile to fans of the Bethesda FOs. I have openly admitted to playing and even enjoying 3 and 4, and nobody here has been cruel toward me. In fact, I'll say nobody really gives a damn.
Well, you've been a very polite and nice person from what I've seen so far. There's a difference in saying you enjoyed it verse trying to stir the pot by creating threads and telling all of NMA they need to get over themselves. I don't know why anyone would come to a site with a known general distaste for something to try to convince them otherwise. You haven't seem to have done that.
Also, I find it hilarious Bethesda is handing out the "Fallout Trilogy" to buyers of 76. If you preordered Fallout 76, you already got that. If you bought the games on GOG/Steam over the years when they've been dirt cheap and even free at points, you already got that. If you bought the games back in the day, you already got that. At this point, anyone who ever wanted to play 1 and 2 could have spent like a maximum of 5 USD. Maybe 7 if you include Tactics and I feel like you might have found them all bundled for cheaper and that's pushing it.
Honestly, it's not much of a gift to the fans they've done such a disservice to. If you wanted those games, you've probably already got them. A bunch of people who will never enjoy them have access to them in their Bethesda launcher, yipee...
Who knows, maybe a few players will get into it. That's cool though. Won't be many if you were to ask me. I know plenty of people who can't play anything that is older than the Xbox/Xbox 360 and even those games "aged poorly" and are "inaccessible." That's fine, it just seems pointless to even try to appease to fans this way.
I can only imagine that someone who loves fallout 76, whould also stay with someone who beats them in a relationship. That's what Fallout 76 does to your brain.
*shrug* I guess we have completely different definitions of what a polished turd is.
To me polished turd is basically modding the hell out of Skyrim. You can make it look better, improve gameplay and do other stuff to improve the vanilla experience. It's still a turd at its core because the quests sucks, the writing suck, the perk system sucks, the exploration sucks, the caves and castles are poorly designed and the dragon fights are terrible.
Can't say the same for New Vegas. New Vegas isn't a modded Fallout 3. It has a new story, quests, overworld, characters, a different skill check system and several other things Fallout 3 didn't had. Only similarity is the gameplay really and even then it's better by making it less floaty, the weapons no longer feeling like toys and different ammo types. Saying New Vegas is a polished turd is like saying Majora's Mask is a polished turd because it uses the same exact engine as Ocarina of Time, which is ridiculous honestly.
I'll just agree to disagree since i don't think this will lead to anything.
You have to approach this from a different angle really.
You have to look at this from what the intended experience is. With games we have a very unique way of comparing them, as they actually do not fall (very much) under nostalgia. You can take Fallout 1 and simply throw it next to Fallout 3 or New Vegas. This is much more difficult with movies for example or books.
The developers of Fallout 1 made concious choices why they chose the view and gameplay, those are not trivial, they matter, it's not merely about visuals either. Graphics can be updated, it would be easy for any developer to make a modern game that plays exactly like Fallout 1, but with a much better engine. The Graphics are just the look. At the end of the day though, what counts is the experience. In that sense, yes even Wasteland 2 is not a 'real' successor to Wasteland 1, but actually a spiritual successor to Fallout 1 and 2. You can not just seperate gameplay and design choices like the view point and say, oh well the experience is the same! Because it isn't. And that's a subjective view point not an objective one. Subjective is what ever if you like or don't like the mechanics, like if you prefer First Person over Third Person or Top Down View, just as how you prefer the taste of Vanilla over Chocolate and Strawberry ice cream. None of them is inherently 'better' than the other, as it's a matter of taste. But there can be no discussion about the fact that a fried chicken is a different dish compared to icre cream and thus offering you a different taste. The best friend chicken in the world, can't be the same experience like icre cream And that's what you have when you compare Fallout 1 and New Vegas directly to each other. It's NOT a question of quality, but experience.
Don't really know where else to put this, but I'm done with this game now. After 3 fucking hours, I'm bored to fucking tears. The only good thing I can say about this... it has a better opening than any Bethesda game since Morrowind. You just get up and fuck off. Feels so nice.
But nah, I'm just done. I'm not even upset or angry, the game just sucks. The best thing to come out of this game was the dank memes.