My issues with New Vegas

[Threepwood]

If there was one thing that Fallout 3 did right, it was to portray the sense that there was a genuine conflict occurring in the wastes, disparate to the PC's involvement, and this perpetual war was taking place constantly, regardless of where or what you were doing.

For example, the Mall and central DC areas are full of talon Mercs battling Mutants, the sub urbs consist of BOS, Outcasts and Raiders battling one another, and throughout the entire wasteland these factions are constantly fighting each other, trying to achieve their objective.

However, despite the premise, and constant build up of the talk of battle between the NCR and the Legion, after about three extensive playthroughs, i've seen maybe four none scripted battles between said forces, and this is while actively roaming the areas id excpect to see such battles.

On the rare occasion I witnessed such things, it was merely an extremely small skirmish between patrols. What about Novac? We are led to belive there is a constant threat, snipers are on gaurd, a full force could overwhelm the city at any time...But no, I haven't seen a legionary within three miles of it.

It's quite hard to buy into this idea of callosal all out war, when the largest conflicts consist of patrols firing at each other from behind rocks once every blue moon...

The most disappointing thing may have been Hoover dam, I mean really? The battle was literally, running across the Dam? What about the first battle wherein hundreds died, and Boulder city was blown to bits, why is this battle, supposedly involving hundreds, if not thousands of them, set on a linear shooting gallery corridor?

The engine can support around thirty on screen models before frame rate dips, the ending for independent New Vegas shows us Obsidian could, and have, utilised limited AI to have exceeding amounts of characetrs on a screen at a time without frame rate drop, so why then couldn't the battle have been spread over a much larger area, have involved more troops, and say, presented a vista of battle between distant mindless troops for effect?

I found the war to be very anticlimaxing in short.

 

[Faceless Stranger]

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.

 

[Threepwood]

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:d4865ef8b8]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:d4865ef8b8]. 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.

[spoiler:d4865ef8b8]I have to disagree, at the timeof the conflict Nelson has just been taken, Nipton has just been taken, there are Legion camps constantly being set up, theyv'e set up cottonwood cove over the river, Searchlight was attacked by radiation bombs, the monorail was the focus of a bomb plot, and the reason there is such a lack of NCR troops is constantly attributed to Legion aggression. I think the game tries to, but fails in perveying the warfare. I'm fairly sure 25-30 is a reasonable level for it, on the initial entrance to Vegas you have a buffed population consisting (from my counting) of 25-30 guys, and theres even more in Kimballs speach, which ran fairly smoothly.

The Hoover dam battle feels just like FO3's Liberty Prime going down the road bs.[/spoiler:d4865ef8b8]

 

[kaelef]

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.

 

[Faceless Stranger]

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...

 

[Falloutsurvivor]

orc O_o?

 

[Brother None]

I'm with Guybrush Threepwood on this one. Every instance where the game is set up to handle a battle of any scale, not just Hoover Dam but also - say - the retaking of Nelson, it's just a half dozen NPCs versus one another.

You'll note Fallout 3 didn't do much better in actual scale, but did a much, much better job in presenting it as if it were of much greater scale. Yeah, it's a bit of chicanery, and there might be just slightly too much OMGWTFBBQ EPIC stuff, but the Liberty Prime sequence in Fallout 3 certainly feels a LOT bigger than Hoover Dam sequence.

Just blaming the engine for that is ignoring how Obsidian did a fairly poor job at handling the engine's limitations. As designers, you can't just throw up your hands and go "nevermind then" if faced with an engine that can only handle two dozen actual running NPC AIs. Work around it!

 

[Threepwood]

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...

Ofc there was fleshing out needed, the lore/backstory wasn't the aspect was done well, I mostly attributed the battles to territorial nature, the fact the Enclave were setting up bases, and the BOS were not was indicative, to me, that the BOS had significantly less man power.

 

[Faceless Stranger]

orc O_o?

Orc

Super Mutant

 

[Threepwood]

I'm with Guybrush Threepwood on this one. Every instance where the game is set up to handle a battle of any scale, not just Hoover Dam but also - say - the retaking of Nelson, it's just a half dozen NPCs versus one another.

You'll note Fallout 3 didn't do much better in actual scale, but did a much, much better job in presenting it as if it were of much greater scale. Yeah, it's a bit of chicanery, and there might be just slightly too much OMGWTFBBQ EPIC stuff, but the Liberty Prime sequence in Fallout 3 certainly feels a LOT bigger than Hoover Dam sequence.

Just blaming the engine for that is ignoring how Obsidian did a fairly poor job at handling the engine's limitations. As designers, you can't just throw up your hands and go "nevermind then" if faced with an engine that can only handle two dozen actual running NPC AIs. Work around it!

This basically, I remember clambering to a vantage point in FO3, activating a console, consiquently triggering an artillerey barrage, which caused a dozen or so Talon Mercs to advance, and consiquently be hit by an Enclave bombing run, and then Super Mutants surged at them.

There are so many possibilities to enhance the atmosphere and feel, the Boomers were offensivley underused, they dropped one bomb on Hoover Dam, which on my first run through, killed ME -.-

The Ncr Emergancy Radio was a cool concept, but just, again, unfufilled.

It dosen't help that the rendering is utterley horrible which works against the sense of scale.

The use of 2d sprites, drone AI's, audio and visuals to create a pseudo wide spread battle, are all easily implimented features. The first Call of Duty games had dozens upon dozens of allies charging forwards, only to die, but it was possible to render such numbers as they were all but AI-less.

 

[Ausdoerrt]

I'm with Guybrush Threepwood on this one. Every instance where the game is set up to handle a battle of any scale, not just Hoover Dam but also - say - the retaking of Nelson, it's just a half dozen NPCs versus one another.

You'll note Fallout 3 didn't do much better in actual scale, but did a much, much better job in presenting it as if it were of much greater scale. Yeah, it's a bit of chicanery, and there might be just slightly too much OMGWTFBBQ EPIC stuff, but the Liberty Prime sequence in Fallout 3 certainly feels a LOT bigger than Hoover Dam sequence.

Just blaming the engine for that is ignoring how Obsidian did a fairly poor job at handling the engine's limitations. As designers, you can't just throw up your hands and go "nevermind then" if faced with an engine that can only handle two dozen actual running NPC AIs. Work around it!

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).

 

[Crni Vuk]

Just blaming the engine for that is ignoring how Obsidian did a fairly poor job at handling the engine's limitations. As designers, you can't just throw up your hands and go "nevermind then" if faced with an engine that can only handle two dozen actual running NPC AIs. Work around it!

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.

 

[Enclave 86]

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."

 

[DForge]

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)

 

[Empty09]

Unless you're that Vault Dweller.

 

[Stanislao Moulinsky]

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.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

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.

 

[Enclave 86]

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.

 

[Crni Vuk]

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.

 

[Threepwood]

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.

Ehh, not really.

I mean, we have some fantastic game engines out there at the moment, if anything the more technoligy progresses, the more limitations are cast aside, heck, even 8-Monkey Labs cheap in house engine supports hundreds of on screen models. It's just that Bethsoft know exactly what they're doing with the Gamebryo engine, which was fine in Morrowind back then, but is just simply outdated now.

I assume it's since been abandoned, god help us if it hasn't, and that the next Fallout game will ship on a pre-existing, or custom made in house engine that, given the tech avalible in a couple of years, should run everything it needs to.