Aside from the usual buggyness that comes with new vegas (the god awful default fov I managed to tweak via config files, loading bugs and some crashing) I been having a good time getting back into this game. So far I only done Honest Heart's and Dead Money currently on Old World Blues and I really forgot how so good the base game and dlc is especially Dead Money which might be my favorite story and atmosphere wise.
I think more so now I realize in terms of story building and role playing how much the recent fallout games of late have been not too great, I still believe Fallout 4 doesn't hold up compared to NV.
I was curious since this game will be a decade old soon how do you fella's feel with the 18 month development period it had does it hold up today and compared to is most recent sequels?
I think the game holds up extremely well. I recently came back to fnv as well and have been heavily modding it to enhance the vanilla experience instead of changing it into something else.
Coming back to it after not playing it for around a year was cool, and exciting. And the game wasnt exactly as i had remembered it. I was actually surprised as the graphics werent as awful as i had remembered them to be. Yes, the textures are poor and the lighting is sub-par, but it isnt too bad. The game can look pretty good at times.
After dumping another 50 hours into fnv over the past 2 weeks one thing always comes to mind. The world building. It something that FNV did so well i didnt notice it at first. I new i was playing in Las Vegas, i new i was in the mojave. But that setting never intruded on me. It didnt feel forced.
Fallout 4's setting wasnt intruding either, thats because the setting and world building was so bland and dry. Fo4's boston looks like any major american city, i see next to 0 boston world building or culture. This is not only the fault of the devs but its also the downside of the fo4 setting. Boston is a much less unqiue location than the city of desire, Las Vegas. Las Vegas has casions, prostitutes, and big flashing neon signs. Boston has buildings and some accents. This is also the case with fo3, although i do think fo3 had better world building than fo4.
FNV's gunplay is obviously outdated, it was even outdated when fnv came out. Its not awful, and its definitely an improvement upon fo3, but its basically shooting nerf bullets at brain dead npc's that also have aimbot. Gunplay is vastly improved with mods and can come fairly close to the level of fo4's combat. The thing with fo4 is that even though its gunplay was an extreme improvement upon its predecessors it wasnt perfect. Fo4 only managed to accomplish average gunplay. Nothing special. The other problem is the first person combat cant compare to the combat on fo1 and fo2. The once tactical and challenging combat is gone with the modernization of its combat and the switch to a first person perspective. Fo4's gunplay is just another aspect of it that makes it feel like a open world shooter instead of an immersive rpg. The clunkiness of fnv's combat and the fact that enemies are harder to kill in fnv makes the game more akin to the og fallout's for me. Not to say bullet sponges are a great thing. Thats why i use mods to make it so i die quick and so do enemies.
Obviously the most glaring flaw with the newer fallouts (fo4 and 76) are the stories and writing. Fo4 has a story equal to that of your average call of duty game, a meaningless mc with meaningless side characters. Every moral observation is absent and unique personalities with opinions are nowhere to be found. Upon character creation you are given a a place in life. You are a family man/woman. This is perhaps fo4's greatest flaw as it ruins nearly every role playing aspect possible. The other flaw with the intro is the pre war beginning. In previous fallout games (aside from fo3) you could be a no one, a wanderer, someone with no past and no voice, or perhaps a past you came up with and a voice you imagined.
For an example, being a psychopath in fallout. im ok with murdering everyone in the wasteland as the courier, because all i know about myself it that i once delivered packages, and the main quest partially focuses on revenge. Which tells me my character is angry, but you can also very easily play the main story differantly, you can spare benny, showing that you hold no grudge against him. Thats role playing. Something you cant do in fo4. In fnv im shot in the head because of greed for some platinum chip. When i awake maybe i prefer not to go after the man who shot me, id rather stay out of trouble. Once again, thats impossible in fo4. In fo4 i have a wife and son i love. My wife is shot in the head and my son is kidnapped, every aspect of the mc's voice shows sadness and anger towards these events. Maybe i hate my wife, but im not allowed to hate my wife in fo4. And once again, to tie it back to the psychopath role playing, in fo4 it would make no sense for me to go kill everyone in the wasteland while the life of my child son is on the line. And worst of all, you cant be a psyhopath in fo4. There are a ton of essential npc's that are immortal. Not only is immersion breaking but its also it just not fallout-like.
The story and the in ability to role play in fo4 is what truly ruins the game for me. And it what makes fnv for me. Fo3 suffers from the same flaw as fo4. While i still love fo3, and still cannot dump as many hours into it as i have with fnv.
To quickly summarize why 76 is awful ill say this, 76 shares many flaws with fo4 but it has even more. The intro and beginning to 76 shows room for extensive role playing, but it useless in the end as every other aspect of 76 shatters that role playing reality. Before wastelanders there wasnt a single human npc, and every robot npc was well... a robot, and they had next to 0 personality. Cant be a psychopath in 76 because there is absolutely no one to kill, all the robot npc's are invincible as its an online game and other players interact with said robots. Wastelanders solved nothing. Still cant kill npc's, still not much roleplay. And i must say that 76 is extremely light hearted even compared to the toned down fo4. This is why it pisses me off when people say that wastelanders turned 76 into a "true fallout experience", yeah... no. Not even close.
To conclude my pathetic essay, i must mention why the modding for fnv is superior compared to fo4 and even fo3. I think of it as a pie chart, each fallout game has a pie chart and they each are lacking in a few slices. Fnv lacks in gunplay and graphics, fo4 lacks in story and world building. Fnv can greatly improve its gunplay and graphics through modding. Fo4 isnt exactly the same case, the story cant be improved, it can be removed and it can be expanded upon, but it cannot be rewritten, which is exactly what it needs, it world building can be improved but only to very limited extent.
This to me is why fnv superseeds fo4 and 76 in pretty much everyway.
