Non Combat Resolution Prevalence?

Anarchosyn

Anarchosyn

Still Mildly Glowing
I've been floating around this forum since Fallout New Vegas launched. I've been reading reviews and impressions, discussing finer details and exploring its depth. I even purchased the game for a few weeks before returning, unopened, for reasons exogenous to the game (though the "a few weeks" commentary regarding the patch played a role).

Today I'm poised to potentially repurchase the game but, after finally breaking down and watching the Gametrailer's review, I'm really unsure whether I can put up with another Gamebryo title (let alone a still buggy one).

My question is this: I appreciate that this is an FPS and get that, outside of missions, most of my tactical options will be to stealth, shoot or run. However, in missions, how prevalent are non-combat resolutions? I'm the kind of Fallout player that enjoys making Jinxed intellectual savants who blunder and get repeatedly murdered (e.g. my vault elected the skinny, nebbish economist to go find their water-chip). I'm not looking to.. well.. I'm not looking for Fallout 3.

Is this game for me or should I wait (it *will* get played.. the question is will I play it for $60 now, via Xbox, or cheaper later)?

Thanks in advance.
 
Well, as someone who's not into first person shooters, I found a way to play this game with very little combat. With good science, speech and medicine I'd say one can do at least 70% of the quests without getting into fights. And with the right companions and the right difficulty, you can breeze through combat. Quests are a lot more about choice, walking around and talking to people, and a lot less about going in some dungeon to kill a bunch of things. I've spend very little time in vaults, caves or even office buildings. And even then, most are memorable and kind of unique.
 
In Fallout 3 you could get by as a pure combat character. To be fair, it felt like the nukes just landed five minutes before you exited the vault, so with reasonable people so spread out it is hard to make use of conversation skills.

In Fallout: New Vegas, you can do the same, however you definitely seem to miss out on A LOT without high Barter and/or Speech, especially since humans make up a very large portion of the NPCs you face in the game.

I would argue that, yes, what Relentless said is true - you can definitely complete a major portion of the game with minimal combat skills and high non-combat skills, especially Speech, Barter, Science, and Medicine.
 
It's definitely worthwhile taking high speech/barter/science/medicine in New Vegas. A good bit of XP to be had from it, and some fun quests too.
 
I guess, even more than an acknowledgement of being able to complete those portions, are they any fun to complete that way?

For example, in Fallout 1 the conversation at the end which convinces the Master to commit suicide was fun and an interesting logical puzzle (though, truth be told, I'm unsure how explicit the dialog path was having not played the game in so many years). I remember reasoning it out and being surprised by the eventual outcome (ahh, to live in a world unspoiled by the internet :)).

Speech in Fallout 3 amounted to a means of skipping content (e.g. convincing Free Dog, or whatever the hell his name was, to not send you on errands and just tell you where you dad went). I felt rewarded that the game gave me the option to actually use a skill but horrified that I was missing chunks of gameplay through my "success".. Pretty much every speech "success" felt cut from this mold. Is New Vegas any different?
 
Stanislao Moulinsky said:
Is New Vegas any different?
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Yes, Speech is used to get extra info (and XP :) ) and/or as a different way to complete a quest. You won't skip a quest with Speech, you will complete it.
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Also, if you use perks dialogue choices like Confirmed Bachelor or Lady Killer, you might get the result for, and the next quest, but you still get to do the quest that the NPC would give you.

Like Manny Vargas when you ask where Benny went, if you use a speech of Confirmed Bachelor dialogue option, you can get the location for where he went without doing his quest, but you still can do it after the check.
 
sea said:
The closest thing to "skipping content" by way of skill checks comes when you need to perform a skill check to complete an action, i.e. to repair an object, you can either pass a repair check or go on a fetch-quest to get the necessary items. In those cases you get extra XP as well as added convenience, though personally I don't think quests give enough XP... usually you can farm the same amount by killing a couple of enemies.
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I suppose the balance comes from the likelihood that the majority of playthroughs would find the player killing enemies while completing a quest.
 
I've been working on a plot to do a technical pacifist run (convincing other people to kill my enemies, detonating any conveniently placed bombs, turning turrets on them etc is OK), so far I've only identified a handful of quests that I can't talk or sneak my way out of of, usually because the quest is either 'bring me this guys head' or would involve sneaking past something that is nigh unsneakable (bugs and abominations mostly, I might be able to pull these off with stealth boys). All of the quests for the main plot can be accomplished under these rules.
The wasteland travel is what is screwing up y plans, some places just aren't accessible without stomping on a Radscorpion or some Cazadors, and I don't think I can get enough stealth boys for point A to point B stuff.
 
AWildmann said:
Like Manny Vargas when you ask where Benny went, if you use a speech of Confirmed Bachelor dialogue option, you can get the location for where he went without doing his quest, but you still can do it after the check.
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This is a bad example. Manny Vargas doesn't actually give you any quests. He tells you where to go to get a quest.
 
Brother None said:
AWildmann said:
Like Manny Vargas when you ask where Benny went, if you use a speech of Confirmed Bachelor dialogue option, you can get the location for where he went without doing his quest, but you still can do it after the check.
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This is a bad example. Manny Vargas doesn't actually give you any quests. He tells you where to go to get a quest.
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Indeed. Hacking his computer achieves the same effect.

The whole "technical pacifist" thing I think is fine if you have to stomp a few cazadors on the way: They're not human (or ghoul or supermutant).

And hey, the "bring me this guy's head" quests usually gave you the option of going to said guy and saying, "hey, these people don't like you. Buzz off and I'll lie to them on your behalf."
 
If you stick to mostly the main quest, you might not have to kill anything at all, or at least almost nothing, especially if you go with the Yes-Man ending. You can supplement that with a bunch of the non-combat quests (which are plenty) and you will still probably end up on a pretty decent level. You obviously aren't going to complete quests like Bleed My Dry too easily and something like Three Card Bounty will be impossible, but those are optional.
 
Brother None said:
AWildmann said:
Like Manny Vargas when you ask where Benny went, if you use a speech of Confirmed Bachelor dialogue option, you can get the location for where he went without doing his quest, but you still can do it after the check.
Click to expand...

This is a bad example. Manny Vargas doesn't actually give you any quests. He tells you where to go to get a quest.
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I think I might have got things wrong in this case, what got me confused is that I got the quest from No-bark the first time, and the second time I convinced Manny and I happened to get the quest a little after that.

Still, even with check-skipping, you can go after the quests you avoided at first.
 
Without posting in-depth spoilers, there are some very interesting and funny dialogue options with some of the skill checks, like when dealing with the head chef in the Ultra-Luxe or going to the third floor of REPCONN HQ.

As for how complex and enjoyable puzzles are because of skill/speech checks? I'll have to play through again as a Charisma/Speech/Barter-heavy character before I can say for sure.
 
Kallisti said:
...The wasteland travel is what is screwing up y plans, some places just aren't accessible without stomping on a Radscorpion or some Cazadors, and I don't think I can get enough stealth boys for point A to point B stuff.
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Isn't there a friend of animals trait or something that makes it so wild animals don't attack you unless provoked? Might be a good trait to take on a "no combat" type playthrough...
 
Idiotfool said:
Kallisti said:
...The wasteland travel is what is screwing up y plans, some places just aren't accessible without stomping on a Radscorpion or some Cazadors, and I don't think I can get enough stealth boys for point A to point B stuff.
Click to expand...

Isn't there a friend of animals trait or something that makes it so wild animals don't attack you unless provoked? Might be a good trait to take on a "no combat" type playthrough...
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Also, Charisma greatly increases party member combat effectiveness, so if you are boosting the stat anyway you can equip all the best weaponry, armors, and ammos on your companions and have them do all the work while you go hug a Broc flower plant and kiss a Big Horner or something.
 
though if your companions do the combat can this still be counted as a non-vioalant solution ?

I always had the impression that non-hostile actions can be considered as pacifistic approach ~ like the way how a character could handle the situations with the Mutant Army and the Master if he had very high social skills.
 
Pacifist aproach is doable in civilised palces but you can't skip the combat during the traveling even on roads; no survival skill trick like in FO 1 and 2 and even damn highways are not patroled; I wonder how NCR keeps all those garisons and towns suplied... Besides sneaking entire game is no fun at all.
 
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