My issues with New Vegas

The reason that there are so few battles is because the Legion and the NCR had reached a stalemate by the time the game takes place. [spoiler:3dff39c54e]The battle for Hoover Dam, from what I understand, was just the Vanguard of each assault: Legionairies sneaking in through the intake tunnels, or you leading said vanguard[/spoiler:3dff39c54e]. The engine is not able of handling THAT many NPCs before performance drops. So it essentially comes up to you ending the battle before it really begins.

 

Plus: you do see some Legion types sneaking around the outskirts of NCR territory. You just never see much in the way of battles.

I agree: this is one area where FO3 did things better.

 

But there was no story as to why there were Talon Company fighting the orcs in the Mall. And while the Enclave were setting up camps everywhere, the BoS were nowhere to be seen...

 

orc O_o?

 

Orc

Super Mutant

 

I have to say, I felt that way during my "indep" playthrough, but during my legion run the battle actually felt pretty massive. Sure, it was maybe a dozen NPC fighting it out on every section of the Dam, but spending a while fighting off the waves of the enemy felt pretty big.

That said, this is what battles for minor towns should've been like. It's a bit too weak to be the culmination of the game. They could've really made it a lot cooler if they added several specific battle objectives, have enemy mobs constantly respawn one after another, and having it last a bit longer (pretty much designing it as an FPS "assault" style MP map).

 

How do they say, its the artist that makes the tools not the tools the artist.

The only thing I am actually waiting for is modders eventually working on that increasing the size of the strip (somewhat) and also making the NCR and/or Legion biger. Hmm ... not even sure if someone is working on something like that.

 

Personally I would rather have a smaller but more serious and realistic conflict like that the final battle as opposed to the ridiculous cannon fodder "battle" for Project Purity.

I enjoyed the final battle at Hoover Dam, I had my Enclave troops and the NCR Rangers were ordered to go ahead and get killed like they should, it was good. Better than spectating dozens of supposedly elite, well-trained US Army soldiers pathetically shoot at a 50 foot robot, people don't even take cover in Fallout 3 for fucks sake...

Okay it was a tad anti-climatic, it had been billed as a huge, make or break battle but it was good, stop-and-pop shooting fun as you slowly advanced up to the Dam, you had an active part in the battle unlike the spectator-fest which was "Take it back."

 

Realistic limitation. Putting 1000 NPCs in a tight place would make the game a lagbomb. It's not that they can't - they didn't because of obvious reasons.

Although I do agree that the magnitude was different. Let's see...

FO1 - Destroying a super mutant creator that threatened the whole wasteland
FO2 - Destroying remnants of old government that wanted to evaporate all living beings from existence
FO: NV - Destroying a small army of cosplaying soldiers in order to save a dam (assuming you took the side of NCR)

Much less "global" plot, good and bad at the same time. Doesn't feel epic, but is way more realistic (1-man-saving-earth isn't exactly logical, mind you)

 

Unless you're that Vault Dweller.

 

While the battle of Hoover Dam wasn't that great I liked the atmosphere of the setting. The Legion is putting a foot in NCR territory but the latter are denied or can't provide the manpower and equipment to fight them, and it shows in the "we are doomed" attitude most NCR soldiers have.

 

While I like to see things like the Battle for Hoover Dam as local conflicts, I really would like to see something on the scale of The Master, the Enclave or Dr Presper again.

While all these daily things are taking place, a larger shadow conspiracy is unfolding in the background and only the player and a few others know about it, being the only ones who can stop it.

 

Yeah, New Vegas did kind of sacrifice a story for the Faction based gameplay, which I liked but even Fallout 1 & 2 had factions and an over-arching "conspiracy" story. Maybe it's the limitations of the engine, anchoring the game to one well detailed area as opposed to F1 & F2's Cities connected by a map screen.

 

is it just me or does it really feel that way that the more "modern" (visualy speaking) games become the more limitations appear.

I mean both F1 and F2 managed in my eyes at least to give you a level of detail and sense of "size" regarding its content and story not something I could say either about F3 or Vegas in that matter simply cause the "engine" (which many say) limits the "design" so heavily. This kind of thoughts never came to me while playing the previous games. It never feelt "limited" in that way to me. Hard to describe what I mean. But locations and NPCs feelt natural. The locations as well like with the fast travel over the map and such. Feelt like exploring a huge state not just a rather small cramped area and NV is pretty small even with all the walking in it, I am talking about the distance between the comunities. I mean the characters are well written most of the time but quite a few locations seem to small for their importance like Prim beeing mantioned as some kind of trading hub and yet it was easily overrun by 20 raiders (and has only 4 or 5 NRC guards in front of it ...) not to mention the size of the strip which was dissapointing. This all together with the small size of the "battle" between the NCR and Legion which gets mentioned all the time. Dont get me wrong I am not saying Vegas is a bad game it just seems to have the same issue I feel in many games today beeing somewhat more limited in their content to past games where the visuals have been more or less secondary.