Fallout: New Vegas Old World Blues Reviews Round-up #5

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WorstUsernameEver

But best title ever!
"Third time's a charm" perfectly encapsulates what happened with Obsidian's latest add-on to Fallout: New Vegas, Old World Blues, which has garnered a very positive reception from the press, compared to the rather lukewarm one Dead Money and Honest Hearts both received.

GameSpot, 8.5/10.<blockquote> Fallout: New Vegas - Old World Blues' primary flaws are those that carry over from the main game. Entering VATS (the Vault-Assisted Targeting System) could result in a minute's worth of slow motion in which you never take a single shot or swipe at your target. Voice-overs might interrupt each other--a shame, when you want to savor the funny dialogue and fantastic acting. And the poor lighting and indistinct textures can make it difficult to spot mines or even quest items. But there's a good amount of content in here for enthusiasts--along with some new perks, a five-level increase to the level cap, and various weapons and clothing to take back with you into the Nevada wastes. You even earn a device called the transportalponder, which allows you to freely teleport between the crater and the desert. But the best reason Old World Blues gives you to return to Fallout: New Vegas is its nonstop humor, which is so outlandish as to make you laugh out loud, yet restrained enough to never be tasteless. At one point, you are told, "I have very good raisins for everything I do." And there is no better raisin to return to Fallout: New Vegas than this hilarious add-on. </blockquote>BeefJack, 8.2/10.<blockquote>Old World Blues, outside of the main quest, feels directionless. In an open world that can be both good and bad, depending on the kind of person you are. And while the main quest takes you all over, it doesn’t really encourage much exploration outside of that. If you love wandering around and finding new places, this is a must buy. If you just want more story content, weigh your options – but either way, the additional content works wonderfully with the core game.</blockquote>GamePlay Today, 8.5/10.<blockquote> In all, you’ll get about seven to eleven hours of gameplay out of this cheaply priced content. Considering how you’ll spend you’ll time, it’s more than worth it. Things aren’t perfect. The glitches that are present in New Vegas do occasionally make annoying appearances here and there, but the experience isn’t ruined for it. If you like a good laugh and prefer your humor on the dark side, you’ll be able to overlook the minor flaws and take Old World Blues for what it is; an engaging and deep addition to an already solid game. The quirkiness of the characters you encounter along the way is awkwardly funny and filled with the best writing seen in Fallout in a very long time. I honestly can’t remember the last time I laughed at a toaster and that’s one of the lesser strange moments. If you’re looking for the best DLC available for New Vegas, you’ll find it in Old World Blues.</blockquote>Elder-Geek, "Worth Buying".<blockquote> While Old World Blues is the best of the DLC so far, it still has some minor issues. Fighting the same enemies at such a high frequency can bog down the experience, and there is only so much you can do with a post apocalyptic testing facility, so exploring all of them one after the other gets a little old. As far as bugs go, my game froze twice, enemies popped up out of nowhere a couple times and sometimes none of my bullets would hit a particular enemy while I had a 95% chance in V.A.T.S. That could be my bad luck, but it happened about half the time so I think it’s a little more than that. There are other bugs out there, but I never experienced them personally.

Despite the minor hiccups, Old World Blues is the first great addition to New Vegas. The new, free roaming atmosphere combined with the funny dialogue and the cool new equipment make it a must buy for any fan of Fallout. While Honest Hearts and Dead Money are still fun to play, if you can only get one, get Old World Blues.</blockquote>Primary Ignition, 9/10.<blockquote> The only complaint I have, besides the standard Fallout glitches and bugs, is that the dialog sequences can be rather long. As funny as they are, I really want to move on and go explore and play the game. This is mainly just at the beginning and very end of the DLC, so I can’t really be too harsh. They do have a whole new world to introduce, after all. Originally, this DLC was suppose to be released sometime in June with the next pack, Lonesome Road, to come out this month. I am not sure what caused the delay in this DLC, but I would like to believe that after Honest Hearts, they took a good long look at how they could improve Old World Blues. Kudos to the delay which resulted in an outstanding product. Now, I am going to go back to playing Old World Blues, because after 12 hours, I still have areas left unexplored. I did all of the quests but some of the characters in my ending seem to indicate that I missed some hidden stuff in some unexplored areas that may trigger a new quest or two.</blockquote>And finally, GameTrailers has a video review, 8.6/10.
 
The only complaint I have, besides the standard Fallout glitches and bugs, is that the dialog sequences can be rather long. As funny as they are, I really want to move on and go explore and play the game
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Translation: There's too much talking in my RPG, I wanna go kill stuff and get phat l00ts.
 
I saw the first 30 Minutes of the DLC, and it was like 25 minutes of a single conversation, that is quite a little bit much.
 
The first part is the worst, after you leave the Think Tank it gets a lot better.
 
Really? I loved the inicial dialog, really good. Actually, it's so good and well writen that I didn't felt almost 30 minutes had passed.

And better to have lenghtier dialogs than respawns every 5 minutes from enemies you just have killed some seconds earlier. ;)
 
Agreed, my initial playthrough of Dead Money was similar, spent a good half an hour at the first few dialogs. Don't get why people complain about it though, I don't think people are forced to skim through all the optional dialog nodes, that's not how they work.
 
Surf Solar said:
Agreed, my initial playthrough of Dead Money was similar, spent a good half an hour at the first few dialogs. Don't get why people complain about it though, I don't think people are forced to skim through all the optional dialog nodes, that's not how they work.
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I WANT SMASH BOOM BOOM FASTUR NOOW!!!!
 
brfritos said:
Really? I loved the inicial dialog, really good. Actually, it's so good and well writen that I didn't felt almost 30 minutes had passed.

And better to have lenghtier dialogs than respawns every 5 minutes from enemies you just have killed some seconds earlier. ;)
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Or magic +50 damage bonuses from recolored Raiders and Hillbillies.
 
Surf Solar said:
Agreed, my initial playthrough of Dead Money was similar, spent a good half an hour at the first few dialogs. Don't get why people complain about it though, I don't think people are forced to skim through all the optional dialog nodes, that's not how they work.
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This really bothers me, you know, NV has one thing inherited directly from FO1/2: the freedom of choice.

You can roam the world killing everything OR you can do only side quests OR you can only make the main quest OR you can only side with one faction OR side with every faction OR talk instead of fight OR fight instead of talk OR different ways to acquire things and tools OR...

...talk with some people, while killing others, then playing triple-side with the factions until you decide who you want to join, while making sex with every character available to you and in the meantime go into some killing missions and if you want, you can simply skip most of these and collect things for the sake of collecting.
You actually can roleplay the game in different ways.

This is a good thing? Hell no, because we need to force the player to choose one playstyle.
Having many choices and deciding things for yourself - and own the consequences for your actions - is a bad thing.
So in the end we are reduced to stats and XP.

Gosh, I ranted, sorry about that. :mrgreen:
 
Surf Solar said:
Agreed, my initial playthrough of Dead Money was similar, spent a good half an hour at the first few dialogs. Don't get why people complain about it though, I don't think people are forced to skim through all the optional dialog nodes, that's not how they work.
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Well, I can pretty much understand it. Especially OWB was a long talk about trivial stuff most of the time, which could have been moved to sometime later as well. Reducing the initial dialogue from 20 minutes to 10 minutes would have been enough. And no, just "not using the other dialog options" is a stupid move, because I could have missed out some serious information. Skipping the lines is a stupid advice as well, because I don't want to skip them.
 
But isn't that the point of optional dialog nodes, that you dig deeper into informations, but aren't forced to? I can understand if those nodes are arbitrary to go through, but I don't think they are in this particular example.

I agree that the amount of background informations could be divided into more future npcs though, but only if it makes sense. I kind of appreciate this "introductionary" conversation to learn a whole load of stuff what's going on there from a narrative point, so I don't find it that bad.
 
I would agree with those who feel that the initial dialogue sequence is too long. I love dialogue in RPGs and I think the writing and acting in OWB is genuinely funny. But starting with a sequence like that (especially with how the convo system looks in these games, just staring at a face) is risky. And as much as I like Avellone's writing, I don't think the pacing holds up there with the jokes and everything that gets fired at you.

It's not really a problem later when you can talk to the members of the Think tank because you as the player controls the flow of conversations. You can leave and still have any dialogue options you didn't explore available to you. Whereas an opening convo like the one you get has a lot of dialogue that you don't have any option to access later.

So, I'm totally fine with lots of dialogue, I welcome it. But, could've been structured in a more pleasant manner. Though I think the writer probably relished the fact that he had these different personalities bickering with each other, whereas you speak to them individually later on.

I think Dead Money worked better in that regard just in terms of the dialogues. The opening dialogue with Elijah can be rather long but it didn't feel as lengthy as the Think Tank.
 
I think the problem wit h the opening dialogue is twofold.

First: It's not really visually dynamic. Games, even roleplaying games, have gotten away with larger dialogue dumps. Persona 4 opens with a huge segment of the protagonist arriving in town, meeting his classmates, getting used to the sedated atmosphere, etc, etc. But the reason why it can work there is that it is visually interesting, spans a decent amount of time, etc. Things happen, the setting changes. The OWB dialogue doesn't even involve different camera angles, probably owing to engine limitations. You just stare at Klein the whole time, which makes it seem like less is happening.

Second, it comes like, two minutes after the opening slideshow, which is an unskippable monologue. Granted, the slideshow isn't nearly as long, but it leaves you feeling like you just want to get into the fucking game.

I think that the former could have been solved if there were more of an element of interactivity. Maybe moving the brains out of The THink Tank and to their respective labs? Having the player shuffled between them?
 
I would have enjoyed the opening dialogue of OWB a hell of a lot more if it had actually switched to show who was saying what, would have made things a lot less confusing.
 
This would have been an annoying rotationmess in that engine. :>

The intro was a problem for me too, due to it being unskippable because of how it is made (technically). Normally I wouldn't have a problem with it, but this time, just right after I had been finished with talking to the Think Tank 'n stuff after around 30 minutes, my game crashed and I had to do everything *again* - here I skipped the dialogue lines now, but the intro I had to watch again and it's not short.
 
Lexx said:
This would have been an annoying rotationmess in that engine. :>
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They could have at least swapped the names out so you knew which doctor was saying what, it's kind of hard to keep track of them all before you've even seen their faces. For a second I wasn't sure if it was the different doctors talking or if the one just had multiple personalities.
 
Courier said:
Lexx said:
This would have been an annoying rotationmess in that engine. :>
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For a second I wasn't sure if it was the different doctors talking or if the one just had multiple personalities.
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Still haven't played it (but will, today ;) ) but from what I've read about the Think Tank I could imagine that this is intentional, confusing you wether it is some merged personality, or rather a few single ones etc.
 
Courier said:
They could have at least swapped the names out so you knew which doctor was saying what
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Not possible in that engine. They would have needed to modificate some heavier shit for it and I doubt it's worth the time. The only way to do something like this would be to kill the dialog and start a new one right after + replacing the character in front of you, but this would always come in combination with a break of a few seconds and probably moving screen. Most likely would have been much more annoying.

At least they used a different text style for the different characters, so it's not *that* hard to get by after you have realized this.

Btw. they explained this with "all speaking through the same speaker" if I remember correct. :>
 
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