Is New Vegas crippled by bad writing?

Walpknut said:
And that's why no one takes Fallout 3 fans opinions seriously.
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And this is why objective people like me think you're blinded by nostalgia. I'm perfectly willing to call out 3's generic story and Bethesda's attempts to distract me from its flaws by giving me a sandbox to play with when I'm bored. New Vegas didn't give me that courtesy. Saint's Row gave me distractions that broke the game up every once and a while and I could repeat them if I wanted to.

And that is kind of the insidious thing with Obsidian. It relies on the nostalgia of the older fans because you guys will give it a pass a deride Bethesda even when it did some good things. And the Fallout 3 fanboys will like it because its essentially Fallout 3: Vegas Baby! And they liked it and likely Skyrim, which is a different story for me. Then there are people like me who are analytical who will point out the flaws in 3 and NV.

As for defending 3, why wouldn't I defend it a little more. NV is my other modern alternative and I think it is worse. Even considering that 3 bastardized Fallout 2 a lot and threw in some of Fallout for good measure. I will call both games out for their short comings and celebrate the shit they did right.
 
I would expect someone who register to bother to actual read what people actually have to say instead of repeating "nostalgia" ad nauseum, like before they even came.
 
woo1108 said:
The worst thing that make NV crippled is beth's horrible quest marker and auto journal.
even non-linear plot become linear with those idiotic tools.

For writing, NV did better job than Gothic3 in my opinion.
but for gameplay, G3's game play is far more non-linear and attractive and mysterious even NV's character, factions, sub quests are written more attractive than G3.

why? because unlike NV, there aren't no system to add walkthrough in the game at G3. the biggest feature of RPG is solving mystery. so if there is any spoilers, the RPG will be spoiled.

unfortuantely, beth add stupid walkthrough(+spoiler) directly in game since oblivion.

even Obsidian did great job on making game (far) better than fo3, that stupid walkthrough spoil the game.
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I'm also against quest markers in principle, but then again I'm sometimes glad that they exist. For example, the guy in San Francisco who asks you to get his spleen back. You can't even ask him where is the guy he lost it to, what does he look like, all you know is his name and that he's a merchant. A merchant where? On the vagrant tanker, in chinatown, maybe even a caravan trader? And when you finally find the guy, he's in a building that has absolutely nothing in its appearance pointing to the fact that it's a store, and he looks like half the NPCs in chinatown.

Another example is Morrowind. I'm told by a guy that I have to find X at Y, and given vague instructions as to where Y is? Why doesn't he just mark it on my map? In such a situation, a quest marker showing you where Y is would have been completely acceptable, while one showing you where X is would have been superfluous.

A good alternative to a quest marker would be a system similar to the one in Mount and Blade, where you could ask any lord where another lord from his realm was. And he could answer that he was last seen in location X Y time ago or that he doesn't know. Only in a game like Fallout or Morrowind it could work much better because the NPCs never even move!
 
I think Quest markers can be a not so bad element, as long as they aren't so exact. Finding specific people in towns with a quest marker? Not that bad, as long as your mission isn't "Find the missing person" or "I am looking for someone in another town who did X". In which case you should only get a "General area" marker for the town and go by clues and hints to find the person or object. Same with scavenge hunts in Vaults.
 
Walpknut said:
I think Quest markers can be a not so bad element, as long as they aren't so exact. Finding specific people in towns with a quest marker? Not that bad, as long as your mission isn't "Find the missing person" or "I am looking for someone in another town who did X". In which case you should only get a "General area" marker for the town and go by clues and hints to find the person or object. Same with scavenge hunts in Vaults.
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Dragon Age: Inquisition did something interesting with this idea. Your quest marker would point you to the specific area, and unless it was something really unambiguous (like "go to [town]") when you got close to where the quest marker was pointing you, the mini-map would be fogged out so you'd have to look around for it. I thought this was a pretty good mechanic. The quest markers betraying information the PC has no reason whatsoever to have always bugs me. I shouldn't know exactly where the HEPA filters are in Vault 22 even if I know they're there. This was especially egregious in Skyrim, a la "Your delivery got waylaid by bandits and lost en route? I know *exactly* what random hole they took it too!"
 
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I never like the quest markers in Oblivion, 3 and New Vegas more because of inaccuracy rather than why should I know where something is. This is more of an Oblivion/3 complaint since New Vegas didn't have interiors that really led to this being a problem. If you were in a multistory building/environment in Oblivion and 3, you could literally be right on top of the quest marker, but not find what you were looking for because the thing was up a couple of flights of stairs. This was annoying because the markers are supposed to help you, I would have been perfectly content with the quest marker leading me to the building I'm looking for, but leave the rest to me, because the marker just served to confuse and infuriate me. From what I remember, Skyrim didn't have this problem, but that could be set design as well as fixing bugs. It is better to just give me the general location of a thing if I don't have a fast travel point near by since the markers are relatively useless beyond that.
 
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