Fallout: New Vegas PC Gamer preview scans

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Myron Rolle said:
*shrug* I'm glad to see a heavy recycling of models. I don't really want Obsidian to try and create a new game in their limited timespan. They just don't have the elbow room for it, so let them just reuse the crappy engine and graphics, at least that way they can focus on the story.

I don't agree with that. Graphics are the support of the story, and more importantly, of immersion in the story.

If you make rough and undetailed graphics, you let the player imagination do the work for you, and that's fine with me. That was the case of Fallout 1/2.
If you add more detailed parts conforming to a wider and strong artistic vision, like the talking heads or cinematics in fallout 1/2, that's fine with me, because you are strengthening the story.

If I see a NPC looking like this :
Marcus.jpg

I immediatly imagine great and epic things surrounding the background of this character, and want to know more about him.

But if I see a NPC looking like this...
screen35B.jpg

... and there are dozens of identical characters obstructing my vision, I just get bored and want to quit the game immediately, because I can't imagine a NPC designed - with very much attention to details - as the boring regular Joe will have anything interesting to tell me.


If you fill up your world with ugly over-detailed shit, and make the game first person so all this shit literally fill up the entire field of view, you just force your ugly and boring world into the head of the player, with a hammer.
The result is, as a player I don't even want to be a part of this world, because it's a f*ing mess.
You could transpose the whole Fallout 2 cities and quests into this world, I wouldn't even want to put a foot in it, because their vision of how a post-apocalyptic world would look is so damn boring.
Why should we jerk off on more detailed graphics if these graphics have strictly nothing to tell ? Why offer a detailed world if these details do the exact opposite thing we ask them to do, i.e. put an emphasis on important and interesting points of the story ?
 
Same hotlinking problems, Aus.

So, now that I'm reading it, thoughts:

- the Bethesda fellatio is nauseating but predictable. MCA's underhanded stab of "oh yeah, they totally got the look and exploration right!" and pointedly not mentioning writing and mechanics made me giggle.

- Character creation is a lame mini-game again. Whatever.

- So you get a PipBoy from a random person (why?) and he "used to live in one of them vaults before the war". What? What war?

- Story is about the faction struggle. Good, assuming it'll be nice and grey. I'm not looking forward to NCR being the good guys and Caeser's Legion the bad guys.

- Reputation is back. Good. Karma in Fallout 3 was retarded.

- I kind of like the dialogue mechanic. The problem with skills opening news dialogues is that it just becomes a "win conversation" button if you see [skillcheck] next to it. A reason I'm not a fan of [skillcheck] markers at all, but even without them it's not too hard to spot. I just wish they'd put in a penalty for failing, but I guess that's too hardcore.

- Special melee moves/upgradable weapons. Meh, whatever. It's not like it'll make combat more or less bearable. At least "fore!" is an indirect bringing back of the groin shot boyhowdee.

- Crimson Caravan woooh. Lots of familiar faces, but unlike Fallout 3, this time it makes sense.

- What the fuck are they going on about with Fallout 1 Supermutants being smarter than Fallout 2 ones? "Smart and well read"? The average supermutant in Fallout 1? Seriously, did these guys do any fact-checking? Did they ever even touch one of the original games? FFS, guys.

- 'scenic overlook' sign returns. That joke really only works once, guys.

- Good to see they understand the architectural needs. Making the Lucky 38 resemble the Stratosphere will hopefully keep the idiots who don't understand how Fallout's divergent history works at bay.

- Grenade machinegun. Fuck you. That's Bethesda-esque "kewl design!" I was hoping we were done with that.

- I don't get Helios One or why Poseidon would've built it to be a "giant friggin' laser". Energy source sure, that was their game.

- The Fantastic thing? Not funny.

- I don't get why the "room collapsed into laughing" upon seeing the laser function. That sounds like "is that his eyeball?"-level of humour from the Fallout 3 previews. It wasn't funny in Fallout 3, it won't be funny here.

- Hardcore mode sounds interesting.

So, overall? Uh, not much to say. There's things that are promising and things that are puzzling. Need to see more.
 
Arr0nax said:
I don't agree with that. Graphics are the support of the story...
But even then, they are in a relatively minor role. Obsidian needs to put together a full game in <2 years. New quests, characters, story, and location-related art are absolutely necessary. New monsters, weapons, perks, and gameplay tweaks are desirable. Replacing a monster model that they already have is pretty low on the list of priorities.
 
I'm not saying they could have done it the right way in two years.
I'm more saying the game will inevitably suck, because it will be boring and aggressive visually, because of the shitty game engine/world they are working on.

Either way, Obsidian are neither known for interesting stories, neither for strong visual design. So I don't see much reasons to be positive at all.
 
Myron Rolle said:
- Crimson Caravan woooh. Lots of familiar faces, but unlike Fallout 3, this time it makes sense.

I just hope it will be big. A real caravan office and not this one-brahmin-two-people caravans from Fallout 3. They don't have to run around all the time, but at least the Crimson Caravan camp should somehow show that this is not a small amateuer firm.
 
Lexx said:
Myron Rolle said:
- Crimson Caravan woooh. Lots of familiar faces, but unlike Fallout 3, this time it makes sense.
I just hope it will be big. A real caravan office and not this one-brahmin-two-people caravans from Fallout 3. They don't have to run around all the time, but at least the Crimson Caravan camp should somehow show that this is not a small amateuer firm.

They probably tagged along with the NCR, no?

Arr said:
Either way, Obsidian are neither known for interesting stories

Uhhhh...?
 
Myron Rolle said:
They probably tagged along with the NCR, no?

Yes.

My point is just that in Fallout 3, everything was and looked small. A "huge town" got like 10 people, caravans are not even a hand full of people, etc.

I am not saying they should add 1000 people everywhere now, just that I get the feeling that Bethesda didn't even tried to give it a kind of "there are much more people! really!"-feeling.

The Hub in Fallout 1 didn't featured that many people too. Still, the location feels big. NCR in Fallout 2... really not that many people to see. Still, it looks big. And so on... The only place in Fallout 3 that gave me a kind of this feeling was the Brotherhood citadel.
 
Black said:
Let's hope they don't waste their precious time with unnecessary minigames. A lesson from KOTOR 2.
Well, the article already said that there's a Rorschach test "just for fun," so...
 
Lexx said:
My point is just that in Fallout 3, everything was and looked small. A "huge town" got like 10 people, caravans are not even a hand full of people, etc.
To a large extent, it should have looked small. For the sake of comparison, FO3 essentially took place in the Boneyard and the area immediately surrounding it, and New Vegas probably won't be much different.

And there may be technical limitations. A big caravan could be pretty taxing in an open-world game.
 
Myron Rolle said:
- Grenade machinegun. Fuck you. That's Bethesda-esque "kewl design!" I was hoping we were done with that.

There are automatic grenade launchers in the world.

They're big, loud and excellent for wide-area suppression.

Provided that big gun from the scans is that grenade launcher, I have no problem with it.
 
w...t....f....are they serious?

This will be the most un-fallouty game ever! Mutants with wigs? Thats just effing stupid!

M4s? Doesnt fit with the timeline
Grenade machine guns? Gonna be like f3 where raiders have miniguns with millions of rounds of ammo so that by the end of the game you have enough weapons and ammo to start the war over again?

A city with wide spread power....very unfallouty. F3 was bad enough with all the working computers, they are taking it to a whole new level. Making it just like any other game.

I am sad, very sad. F3 so far seems to be a better game to me.
 
Dionysus said:
To a large extent, it should have looked small. For the sake of comparison, FO3 essentially took place in the Boneyard and the area immediately surrounding it, and New Vegas probably won't be much different.

Even Adytum was bigger than Rivet City or Megaton. :p
 
Myron Rolle said:
- What the fuck are they going on about with Fallout 1 Supermutants being smarter than Fallout 2 ones? "Smart and well read"? The average supermutant in Fallout 1? Seriously, did these guys do any fact-checking? Did they ever even touch one of the original games? FFS, guys.

In Fallout 1 supermutants were soldiers in an organized army, not to mention, some supermutants were damn intelligent (Marcus, Lieutenant, the Nightkin etc.). In Fallout 2, the second generation mutants are mutated Redding hicks, whose braiin got fried.

I see the difference easily.
 
Tagaziel said:
In Fallout 1 supermutants were soldiers in an organized army, not to mention, some supermutants were damn intelligent (Marcus, Lieutenant, the Nightkin etc.). In Fallout 2, the second generation mutants are mutated Redding hicks, whose braiin got fried.

I see the difference easily.

What about the ones in Broken Hills? They were the ones from Master's army and pretty smart to me.
 
Tagaziel said:
In Fallout 1 supermutants were soldiers in an organized army, not to mention, some supermutants were damn intelligent (Marcus, Lieutenant, the Nightkin etc.). In Fallout 2, the second generation mutants are mutated Redding hicks, whose braiin got fried.

I see the difference easily.


Marcus' backstory took place around/after Fallout 1, but his only appearance was in Fallout 2.
 
Slammy said:
M4s? Doesnt fit with the timeline
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/M16A1
if you take it that what doesn't contradict canon becomes canon.
Slammy said:
Grenade machine guns? Gonna be like f3 where raiders have miniguns with millions of rounds of ammo so that by the end of the game you have enough weapons and ammo to start the war over again?
See: hardcore mode
Slammy said:
A city with wide spread power....very unfallouty. F3 was bad enough with all the working computers, they are taking it to a whole new level. Making it just like any other game.
Are Vault City, NCR and New Reno unfallouty?
 
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