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On character system, combat, and the overall difficulty
S.P.E.C.I.A.L. has been taken for yet another spin. I have described the system and the difference between the original and the, uh, “reimagined” SPECIAL in my Fallout 3 review, so you want more info, click here.
Obsidian did a pretty good job tweaking stats, skills, and perks. You get less skill points (the effect of INT on it is minimal, unfortunately) and gain a perk every other level. Stat-raising bobble heads and skill-increasing perks are gone (except for Tag). You’ll have to work with a lot less in New Vegas.
Josh Sawyer’s dream of combining all “bullet-shooting” weapon skills into one has finally come true. Can’t say it bugs me much. Once again, weapons have minimum STR requirements and armor has Damage Threshold, which makes DMG (damage per hit) as important as DPS (damage per second).
<table align="left" width="305px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table>Outdoorsman makes a surprising comeback as Survival and it comes with its own survival mode, perks giving you an edge, and cooking recipes to help you survive. There is a fairly detailed ammo crafting system. There is a lot of cool and well designed, well thought-through stuff. There is just one little problem:
The game is easy. Even on Hard mode. The ammo is plentiful. I really, really liked the ammo crafting system. It’s a beautiful thing, but why bother crafting when I have loads of ammo? Ok, maybe a SMG addict would find it really useful but unless you have a habit of emptying a clip into everything that moves you won’t NEED to use the crafting system and having to use it to survive is kind of (or at least should be) a big deal in a post-apocalyptic game.
It would have been nice to scavenge for ammo, having to rely on less practical (in theory) melee weapons, while searching for a handful of shells to take them apart for components, but the artificial balance considerations dictate that melee should be every bit as good as ranged and ensures that ranged characters can fire as much as their trigger-happy hearts desire.
Food and medical supplies are plentiful as well. Obsidian gives you the means to cook your own food and clean your own water, but not the reasons to do so. Most fridges (as well as some enemies) have food, so finding something cooked to eat isn’t a problem. I killed a few bighorners (best steaks ever) for their meat just in case I run out of food, but never did. You can drink dirty water and even eat raw rat meat. Got too much radiation? Fast travel to a nearby doc and pay him $100 to heal you completely and without any side effects.
The combat system got some tweaking too. VATS no longer provides protection and the addition of iron sights make the shooting aspects more enjoyable. The beginning of the game is definitely more challenging than in Fallout 3. Unfortunately it doesn’t last long and once you gain a few levels and get more weapons, the challenge goes down and you become an undisputed king of the wasteland. Well, when deathclaws aren’t around, at least.
Combat just doesn’t feel like the hard way of doing things, it never makes you feel like exploring the wasteland is a dangerous occupation. I guess mainly it’s because the combat system inherited with the engine is that of a shooter and the emphasis on stats and skills is fairly small. You do more damage and shoot more accurately if your skills are high, but you just as deadly if your skills are low. In most RPG low skills mean that you have very little chance against high level enemies. In Fallout 3 and New Vegas, much like in any shooter, getting killed simply means that you weren’t paying attention. You reload and armed with the knowledge of what’s about to come quickly kill your enemies.
I was replaying Gothic 2 Gold before starting New Vegas and the difference is huge. In Gothic 2, even if your character is level 15, taking on 3 well armed bandits (the lighthouse gang, for example) is a very dangerous task that will most likely get you killed no matter how many times you reload, which is fairly realistic. In New Vegas you can kill 4-5 raiders in the blink of an eye, without ever thinking that you’re in mortal danger, which makes raiders nothing but walking bags of loot. While I can think of a few hard firefights, the majority of combat encounters are easy and often jarring.
For example, when I came close to Nelson, a small settlement taken over by the Legion, a few NCR rangers asked me to infiltrate the settlement and kill the NCR hostages to take away the Legion’s advantage in an upcoming battle to retake Nelson. Sounds pretty ruthless, but logical. Sneaking wasn’t my thing, so I just strolled into the town hoping to recreate the Butch Cassidy vs the Bolivian army scenario. Instead of an army I was greeted by several Legionnaires who died fast. I went building to building and killed a few more. In the last building I turned down an offer to help the Legion instead and killed the leader and three legionaries. Then I untied the hostages and let them go. This situation kind of felt like a grown up walking in on children playing war, quickly winning the battle, and setting the “prisoners” free because it’s dinner time.
The sad part is that Obsidian has clearly put in a lot of effort into the game and the attention to detail is in evidence everywhere. Unfortunately, the low combat difficulty often makes these efforts wasted. For example, Charisma’s increases the armor and damage of your companions. Without questioning the ancient elven magic powering such a mechanic, the issue is that you just don’t need any help killing things, which means that you don’t need high Charisma. If combat was harder this would have been a nice way to assist more pacifist style builds.
Karma is still there and still useless. The game still insists that taking owned items is wrong, even if you legitimately killed their owners, so the game will reward you for killing the Gangers but will frown upon you looting their base. Fortunately (or unfortunately), its sole purpose seems to be to make appropriate noises when you do something good or bad, so you shouldn’t worry about it.
The Reputation system goes a bit deeper and tracks both your good and bad deeds for many locations and factions. Your score never goes down, only up, as you will have two sets. For example, being very helpful will make you “idolized”, while being unhelpful (i.e. a murderous scum) will make you “vilified” and turn a faction hostile. Being very helpful and occasionally unhelpful will make you a “good natured rascal”, while being mostly (but not exclusively) unhelpful will make you a “merciful thug”. It does a better job and can even get you shot on sight or reward your loyalty (the NCR, for example, gave me a radio to call on them in case of emergency – if only the game was challenging, if only…), but overall, it’s functional, but not one of the highlights of the game.
On dialogues
<table align="right" width="305px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table>While the dialogue design doesn’t have the depth found in Fallout 2, Planescape: Torment, and Knights of the Old Republic 2 (you won’t find conversations similar to those you had with Ravel or Kreia), it gets the job done.
Skill checks are widely used, which is always a plus. Speech is a dominant skill that does a great job handling or avoiding difficult situations. If you want to see many of the game’s alternative scenarios, it’s a must-have skill. Outside of trading, Barter is often an alternative to Speech and supports different builds quite well. Even combat skills will have a use in dialogue on occasion.
The only issue is the “transparent” design of the skill checks. You’re shown the exact skill level required to pass the check (i.e. 45/60), which:
<center>[ Page 1 ] - [ Page 2 ] - [ Page 3 ]</center>
On character system, combat, and the overall difficulty
S.P.E.C.I.A.L. has been taken for yet another spin. I have described the system and the difference between the original and the, uh, “reimagined” SPECIAL in my Fallout 3 review, so you want more info, click here.
Obsidian did a pretty good job tweaking stats, skills, and perks. You get less skill points (the effect of INT on it is minimal, unfortunately) and gain a perk every other level. Stat-raising bobble heads and skill-increasing perks are gone (except for Tag). You’ll have to work with a lot less in New Vegas.
Josh Sawyer’s dream of combining all “bullet-shooting” weapon skills into one has finally come true. Can’t say it bugs me much. Once again, weapons have minimum STR requirements and armor has Damage Threshold, which makes DMG (damage per hit) as important as DPS (damage per second).
<table align="left" width="305px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table>Outdoorsman makes a surprising comeback as Survival and it comes with its own survival mode, perks giving you an edge, and cooking recipes to help you survive. There is a fairly detailed ammo crafting system. There is a lot of cool and well designed, well thought-through stuff. There is just one little problem:The game is easy. Even on Hard mode. The ammo is plentiful. I really, really liked the ammo crafting system. It’s a beautiful thing, but why bother crafting when I have loads of ammo? Ok, maybe a SMG addict would find it really useful but unless you have a habit of emptying a clip into everything that moves you won’t NEED to use the crafting system and having to use it to survive is kind of (or at least should be) a big deal in a post-apocalyptic game.
It would have been nice to scavenge for ammo, having to rely on less practical (in theory) melee weapons, while searching for a handful of shells to take them apart for components, but the artificial balance considerations dictate that melee should be every bit as good as ranged and ensures that ranged characters can fire as much as their trigger-happy hearts desire.
Food and medical supplies are plentiful as well. Obsidian gives you the means to cook your own food and clean your own water, but not the reasons to do so. Most fridges (as well as some enemies) have food, so finding something cooked to eat isn’t a problem. I killed a few bighorners (best steaks ever) for their meat just in case I run out of food, but never did. You can drink dirty water and even eat raw rat meat. Got too much radiation? Fast travel to a nearby doc and pay him $100 to heal you completely and without any side effects.
The combat system got some tweaking too. VATS no longer provides protection and the addition of iron sights make the shooting aspects more enjoyable. The beginning of the game is definitely more challenging than in Fallout 3. Unfortunately it doesn’t last long and once you gain a few levels and get more weapons, the challenge goes down and you become an undisputed king of the wasteland. Well, when deathclaws aren’t around, at least.
Combat just doesn’t feel like the hard way of doing things, it never makes you feel like exploring the wasteland is a dangerous occupation. I guess mainly it’s because the combat system inherited with the engine is that of a shooter and the emphasis on stats and skills is fairly small. You do more damage and shoot more accurately if your skills are high, but you just as deadly if your skills are low. In most RPG low skills mean that you have very little chance against high level enemies. In Fallout 3 and New Vegas, much like in any shooter, getting killed simply means that you weren’t paying attention. You reload and armed with the knowledge of what’s about to come quickly kill your enemies.
I was replaying Gothic 2 Gold before starting New Vegas and the difference is huge. In Gothic 2, even if your character is level 15, taking on 3 well armed bandits (the lighthouse gang, for example) is a very dangerous task that will most likely get you killed no matter how many times you reload, which is fairly realistic. In New Vegas you can kill 4-5 raiders in the blink of an eye, without ever thinking that you’re in mortal danger, which makes raiders nothing but walking bags of loot. While I can think of a few hard firefights, the majority of combat encounters are easy and often jarring.
For example, when I came close to Nelson, a small settlement taken over by the Legion, a few NCR rangers asked me to infiltrate the settlement and kill the NCR hostages to take away the Legion’s advantage in an upcoming battle to retake Nelson. Sounds pretty ruthless, but logical. Sneaking wasn’t my thing, so I just strolled into the town hoping to recreate the Butch Cassidy vs the Bolivian army scenario. Instead of an army I was greeted by several Legionnaires who died fast. I went building to building and killed a few more. In the last building I turned down an offer to help the Legion instead and killed the leader and three legionaries. Then I untied the hostages and let them go. This situation kind of felt like a grown up walking in on children playing war, quickly winning the battle, and setting the “prisoners” free because it’s dinner time.
The sad part is that Obsidian has clearly put in a lot of effort into the game and the attention to detail is in evidence everywhere. Unfortunately, the low combat difficulty often makes these efforts wasted. For example, Charisma’s increases the armor and damage of your companions. Without questioning the ancient elven magic powering such a mechanic, the issue is that you just don’t need any help killing things, which means that you don’t need high Charisma. If combat was harder this would have been a nice way to assist more pacifist style builds.
Karma is still there and still useless. The game still insists that taking owned items is wrong, even if you legitimately killed their owners, so the game will reward you for killing the Gangers but will frown upon you looting their base. Fortunately (or unfortunately), its sole purpose seems to be to make appropriate noises when you do something good or bad, so you shouldn’t worry about it.
The Reputation system goes a bit deeper and tracks both your good and bad deeds for many locations and factions. Your score never goes down, only up, as you will have two sets. For example, being very helpful will make you “idolized”, while being unhelpful (i.e. a murderous scum) will make you “vilified” and turn a faction hostile. Being very helpful and occasionally unhelpful will make you a “good natured rascal”, while being mostly (but not exclusively) unhelpful will make you a “merciful thug”. It does a better job and can even get you shot on sight or reward your loyalty (the NCR, for example, gave me a radio to call on them in case of emergency – if only the game was challenging, if only…), but overall, it’s functional, but not one of the highlights of the game.
On dialogues
<table align="right" width="305px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table>While the dialogue design doesn’t have the depth found in Fallout 2, Planescape: Torment, and Knights of the Old Republic 2 (you won’t find conversations similar to those you had with Ravel or Kreia), it gets the job done. Skill checks are widely used, which is always a plus. Speech is a dominant skill that does a great job handling or avoiding difficult situations. If you want to see many of the game’s alternative scenarios, it’s a must-have skill. Outside of trading, Barter is often an alternative to Speech and supports different builds quite well. Even combat skills will have a use in dialogue on occasion.
The only issue is the “transparent” design of the skill checks. You’re shown the exact skill level required to pass the check (i.e. 45/60), which:
- breaks the immersion; makes it more about hitting the right level than about saying something “persuasive” to an NPC.
- is too gamey; the +10 magazines (in addition to rare magazines permanently increasing skills by 3 points, you get no-so-rare magazines giving you +10 to the corresponding skills for a short period) invite you to abuse the system. The magazines won’t help you if the level is too high, but every time you see a dialogue line showing that you are 5-10 points short, there is no reason not to reload, read a magazine, and try again.
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