Resardiv
Herr Nordic Lost in Amerikat
I really wish the fan translation of Nevada was up to scratch. There's so many russian-language mods for fallout that I want to play, but can't. I suffer.
Play all Fallout games chronologically! - Join! Continues into 2024
Baron of Arizona
First time out of the vault
Alright, just finished first Fallout. Unlike with Nevada, I don't have much to say, honeslty.
Started with 6 str, 8 per, 6 end, 4 cha, 8 int, 9 agl, 6 luck. I used gifted and fast shot, tagged unarmed, big guns and speech which I barely used since I tried to rely on guns when I could.
I tried doing evil playthrough since most of the time I play the good guy in F1 and it was better then I remember, but I wouldn't call it well developed. It was mostly me and the dogmeat, but I got Katja before going to the Glow so I could take more thing from there. I managed to keep Katja alive, but I had to leave dogmeat somewhere at mutant base so he wouldn't die, but forgot about him so he fell with the rest of the mutes. I didn't bother to reload which is probably my most evil action in the game.
While it was fun to kill Killian for Gizmo, do some jobs for Decker, blackmail the guy who sells human meat, but everywhere else there aint much to do. Khans just ordered me to kill some women and that it, would be cool if they also ordered me to kidnap Tandy or attack some caravans. Regulators quest is quite boring too.
Still, I think it's much better then evil content in most other RPGs, both old and modern. Plus you actually get more for doing evil shit, even if it's just money.
It may sound a bit contradictory to what I said above, but I really like how succinct every thing is in first fallout. There is no 100 and 1 variations of leather jacket or 10-mm pistols like it in Nevada and F2 most of which you will never use, game never throws tons of quests which you forget almost immediately because there simply too many of them. But every place has very strong vibe and people there have a strong character to them. Like BoS is one of the biggest locations in F1, there are 4 talking heads, here you get evidence to convince the Master, yet there barely any quests, you just talk to people and learn things. Love it.
I think that's about it, but I would also like to mention one more thing. I usually skip getting help from the BoS because combat is quite easy if you do most of the quests, but since I got less exp, I thought it would be nice to get their help to fight master (thought that convincing him wouldn't fit my character), but, OH BOY, was I wrong! The guy with minigun is alright, but the bastard with a rocket launcher... God, I hate him. At first, I thought that he will simply kill himself while shooting someone at point blank range, but no. This bastard kept killing me, the other guy and Katja but never himself. The bastard even reached the Master and kept killing me! I had to reload so many times that I just give up and killed him myself.
I will probably start Sonora after a few days.
Started with 6 str, 8 per, 6 end, 4 cha, 8 int, 9 agl, 6 luck. I used gifted and fast shot, tagged unarmed, big guns and speech which I barely used since I tried to rely on guns when I could.
I tried doing evil playthrough since most of the time I play the good guy in F1 and it was better then I remember, but I wouldn't call it well developed. It was mostly me and the dogmeat, but I got Katja before going to the Glow so I could take more thing from there. I managed to keep Katja alive, but I had to leave dogmeat somewhere at mutant base so he wouldn't die, but forgot about him so he fell with the rest of the mutes. I didn't bother to reload which is probably my most evil action in the game.
While it was fun to kill Killian for Gizmo, do some jobs for Decker, blackmail the guy who sells human meat, but everywhere else there aint much to do. Khans just ordered me to kill some women and that it, would be cool if they also ordered me to kidnap Tandy or attack some caravans. Regulators quest is quite boring too.
Still, I think it's much better then evil content in most other RPGs, both old and modern. Plus you actually get more for doing evil shit, even if it's just money.
It may sound a bit contradictory to what I said above, but I really like how succinct every thing is in first fallout. There is no 100 and 1 variations of leather jacket or 10-mm pistols like it in Nevada and F2 most of which you will never use, game never throws tons of quests which you forget almost immediately because there simply too many of them. But every place has very strong vibe and people there have a strong character to them. Like BoS is one of the biggest locations in F1, there are 4 talking heads, here you get evidence to convince the Master, yet there barely any quests, you just talk to people and learn things. Love it.
I think that's about it, but I would also like to mention one more thing. I usually skip getting help from the BoS because combat is quite easy if you do most of the quests, but since I got less exp, I thought it would be nice to get their help to fight master (thought that convincing him wouldn't fit my character), but, OH BOY, was I wrong! The guy with minigun is alright, but the bastard with a rocket launcher... God, I hate him. At first, I thought that he will simply kill himself while shooting someone at point blank range, but no. This bastard kept killing me, the other guy and Katja but never himself. The bastard even reached the Master and kept killing me! I had to reload so many times that I just give up and killed him myself.
I will probably start Sonora after a few days.
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Awesome! My next playthrough will also be as an evil character as I have never done that. Looking forward to it.
e: Dead Money feels like a Bioshock game.
e: Dead Money feels like a Bioshock game.
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Baron of Arizona
First time out of the vault
Another day - another Fallout. My build in Sonora is - 4 str, 8 per, 6 end, 1 cha, 7 int, 7 agl, 7 luck with one-handed and chem Reliant traits. Tagged energy weapons, barter and gambling. The idea of the build is to relly on chems to boost str and agl in combat and get better items from traders with barter which are usually locked by quests. Like in my previos builds, I avoid speech and I also won't touch repair and science which are very strong skills in Nevada band games because I'm interested in what could I do instead of them.
I think first locations are much better then in Nevada.
It all starts in the Villa, slavers kidnap most of the villagers and my padre and madre so we need to save them, but first we grab pip-boy and vault suit plus everything we can find in the villa (and there is a lot of things to find).
Visually it very close to Shady sands, but with mexican vibe: sombreros on the walls and all that, the jump in quality of new graphics compare to Nevada is big. New mexican sprite is also great, much better then F2 new sprites, honeslty. Except APA maybe.
There a lot of things you can do, I was able to get 3rd level before even leaving the place, but it doesn't take too much time.
I think the next location, Garage city, perfectly shows one of the strongest points of Sonora - very immersive world. There are a lot of stuff that you can do that isn't related to any quests: fix some night lights, reprogram the robots to defend you, heal the wounded, put together some armor for yourself, people here won't talk with you and tell their life story and town's, you need to offer them food or beer first, their lines change over the progress of the game as well. You killed their mayor? Their old lines about him been in charge of town change. And it isn't just this location, this level of detail will remain from start to finish.
The quests here are mostly good, some of them are interconnected, some require you to visit other locations, some could be started in other places and give you a reason to get back here in the future. I also really like how many ways there to learn about slavers that kidnapped our people: heal the guy and he will give you general direction, you can crack mayor's computer with science or get help in cracking it from his enemies in the city, you can ask barmen for work and he will mark the location or you can just pay to one of the locals for info. It's great, you were given many chances to move the plot forward instead of just making a note on the body of important character in case you kill him.
On the side note, I don't like how Sonora balances energy and heavy weapons. Many people think that lack of energy and heavy weapons in F1 and F2 is a flaw, but I strongly disagree. I like how you forced to avoid combat or use small guns/melee in early game. Makes using build that invest in different types of weapons much more unique. I really hate how NV gives you energy weapon right away since because of it there barely any difference in energy and normal guns builds. Sonora is better because to get your first energy pistol you need to either invest in repair or finish town's biggest side quest. And the next energy gun is easy to get if you don't know where to look or if you don't have high barter skill. Still, I think getting it only in the mid game without metagaming was part of it's charm.
Anyway, after I killed the mayor of Garage city for telling slavers about the Villa and helped his enemies to steal his deal with some tech traders, I went to the city of Flagstuff, a big minig town that rely on slaves, and where my people are supposed to be. Sadly most of my kin was sold there to Phoenix - the biggest town in the game, but my madre was still there. The man in charge offered me to help his men in the mine for freeing my family, but I had other plans. I went to Phoenix and used my gambling skills and barter to get some good stuff from local traders: metal armor, normal laser pistol and ammo, some grenades plus buffout and psycho (finally some drugs).
Slavers boss was hard to kill - metal armor is good at taking laser damage, two-three hits from him was enough to kill me, still a few reloads and lucky shots in the eye and he was gonner, most slavers in the place run to help him so I had to use all of my grenades. I think I never used that much resources in a single battle, but I just cleared an entire base so it was appropriate. Got a level or two from it too.
I think the best thing about the Flagstuff is how much it changes in game after slavers are dead. The mine goes empty, there are corpses on the streets, some people are getting mugged. The place is doomed and you see it, not just on ending slides but in game.
By the way, armor progression in Sonora is much worse then in Nevada or other original games because you get access to leather and metal armor at the same time, so why even use leather and what's worse is that you won't get better armor until late game, so all the armor proggression in Sonora is - from no armor to jacket to metal armor (all in early game) to combat armor (late game, plus there is a high chance you get it too late to use) to power armor (which you most likely won't use in combat because you get it too late as well and it's worth using only against BoS anyway). I used to think I could find some use for power armor in Dayglow before it came out, but I didn't since because of the carry weight limit you can't even go there with it.
You know what else is bad? Gambling. It used to be just pressing number keys to print money, but not anymore. Roulette forces you to go through a few dialogue options to win which could be fine if your max bet wasn't 10 coins, because it just takes too much time to get so little. But it isn't the worse thing, because slots have become a real torture. In order to use them, you need to put coins in the machine one by one throught your inventory and it's takes forever, I just can't understand why was it done that way. It's horrble and I will never use slots again.
Maybe it was a message against gambling or something, I don't know. The casino itself is nice tho, a bar, a singer and a few interesting people to talk with. A pity that casino quest were cut, a place doesn't feel complete without it and I wonder why it was not finished since after Sonora release we got a few new locations, not to mention a whole DLC.
I think first locations are much better then in Nevada.
It all starts in the Villa, slavers kidnap most of the villagers and my padre and madre so we need to save them, but first we grab pip-boy and vault suit plus everything we can find in the villa (and there is a lot of things to find).
Visually it very close to Shady sands, but with mexican vibe: sombreros on the walls and all that, the jump in quality of new graphics compare to Nevada is big. New mexican sprite is also great, much better then F2 new sprites, honeslty. Except APA maybe.
There a lot of things you can do, I was able to get 3rd level before even leaving the place, but it doesn't take too much time.
The quests here are mostly good, some of them are interconnected, some require you to visit other locations, some could be started in other places and give you a reason to get back here in the future. I also really like how many ways there to learn about slavers that kidnapped our people: heal the guy and he will give you general direction, you can crack mayor's computer with science or get help in cracking it from his enemies in the city, you can ask barmen for work and he will mark the location or you can just pay to one of the locals for info. It's great, you were given many chances to move the plot forward instead of just making a note on the body of important character in case you kill him.
On the side note, I don't like how Sonora balances energy and heavy weapons. Many people think that lack of energy and heavy weapons in F1 and F2 is a flaw, but I strongly disagree. I like how you forced to avoid combat or use small guns/melee in early game. Makes using build that invest in different types of weapons much more unique. I really hate how NV gives you energy weapon right away since because of it there barely any difference in energy and normal guns builds. Sonora is better because to get your first energy pistol you need to either invest in repair or finish town's biggest side quest. And the next energy gun is easy to get if you don't know where to look or if you don't have high barter skill. Still, I think getting it only in the mid game without metagaming was part of it's charm.
Anyway, after I killed the mayor of Garage city for telling slavers about the Villa and helped his enemies to steal his deal with some tech traders, I went to the city of Flagstuff, a big minig town that rely on slaves, and where my people are supposed to be. Sadly most of my kin was sold there to Phoenix - the biggest town in the game, but my madre was still there. The man in charge offered me to help his men in the mine for freeing my family, but I had other plans. I went to Phoenix and used my gambling skills and barter to get some good stuff from local traders: metal armor, normal laser pistol and ammo, some grenades plus buffout and psycho (finally some drugs).
Slavers boss was hard to kill - metal armor is good at taking laser damage, two-three hits from him was enough to kill me, still a few reloads and lucky shots in the eye and he was gonner, most slavers in the place run to help him so I had to use all of my grenades. I think I never used that much resources in a single battle, but I just cleared an entire base so it was appropriate. Got a level or two from it too.
By the way, armor progression in Sonora is much worse then in Nevada or other original games because you get access to leather and metal armor at the same time, so why even use leather and what's worse is that you won't get better armor until late game, so all the armor proggression in Sonora is - from no armor to jacket to metal armor (all in early game) to combat armor (late game, plus there is a high chance you get it too late to use) to power armor (which you most likely won't use in combat because you get it too late as well and it's worth using only against BoS anyway). I used to think I could find some use for power armor in Dayglow before it came out, but I didn't since because of the carry weight limit you can't even go there with it.
You know what else is bad? Gambling. It used to be just pressing number keys to print money, but not anymore. Roulette forces you to go through a few dialogue options to win which could be fine if your max bet wasn't 10 coins, because it just takes too much time to get so little. But it isn't the worse thing, because slots have become a real torture. In order to use them, you need to put coins in the machine one by one throught your inventory and it's takes forever, I just can't understand why was it done that way. It's horrble and I will never use slots again.
Maybe it was a message against gambling or something, I don't know. The casino itself is nice tho, a bar, a singer and a few interesting people to talk with. A pity that casino quest were cut, a place doesn't feel complete without it and I wonder why it was not finished since after Sonora release we got a few new locations, not to mention a whole DLC.
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Baron of Arizona
First time out of the vault
My run of Sonora continues, but first I would like to add to a few things I said before.
So, I missed the Blackjack table which allows you to bet up to 100 coins so my main issue of gambling been to slow for priting money was solved.
Apperantly I could get leather armor in Ranger base and in Tribal's camp before Phoenix, but from story perspective there was little reason for me to go there as I prioritize saving my madre over exploration. However some dialogue options suggest that I could get help in saving her from slavers, not sure how it works tho.
Now to the city of Phoenix. I like how many side quests are one way or the other connected to big bad of the city, I also like how we have option similar to Garry taking us to mutant base from F1. The diversity of factions here helps to deviate this place from been second Reno, instead of gangs we got cultists, local resistance, ghouls, mexican maffia, lowlifes and one gang. However, I think gangs from Nevada had more personality to them, Striker, Luciano and Tomthon gangs specifically, only cultists come close to them in turms of quests and characters. It's also weird that there no big caravan company or something.
I also wonder where are all slaves? It mentioned that Phoenix buys them, but only places we see slaves are the slavers town (no longer exist) and Two Sun which use them for meat waves attack on robots.
Arena tho is big improvment over Nevada since now you fight somebody new with some story behind the body, plus the game doesn't spam the same model with more HP each time so fights are more memorable.
Another thing that I really liked is that people reacted to drug addiction. Now, I have no idea if it was in Fallout 1 or 2, but it was very unexpected when some people refused to talk to me after my character got addicted to buffout after arena battle. Again, immersion is the king in Sonora.
Anyway, after Phoenix I went to Two Sun where supposed to be the rest of my people. People of Two Sun are tribals that worship tech, so just reavers from Fallout Tactics, that used to be isolationsts but had to open for trade to get many slaves and use them to attack and of cource our people are among those slaves.
When I first time played Sonora back in 2020, I thought it was the best location. Mostly because the place has very cool idea behind it - tribals that worship tech trying to get into pre-war base by sending waves of human slaves agianst robots and AI that bound by his programming and forced to defend the base, but unable to deal with the source of the attacks and desperate to free himself. Much more interesting premise then city of scrappers (Garage) or city of slavers (Flagstuff), e.t.c.
Getting through old base felt like getting into the Glow for the first time, robots offer good challenge and it was fun looking for weapons and your padre in those ruins. To my surprise, ruins around the base got an upgrade and got even bigger with more stuff for you to use against robots.
Sadly, after getting into the base and saving your people, the rest of the content is much less interesting despite cool premise - finding lost tribal messanger that was killed by the ranger, dealing with escaped slavers. I think the main problem is that in those quests we can never side against tribals. Plus their first quest is their biggest quest, I think it would be better if we had to do those quests before getting into the base.
Now that all of my people were saved, I decidead to do some exploration and went to raider to get the bike. Originally, I thought that I'll just kill them all, but after remembering how disappointing raiders were in F1 I decided to try their quests and it was right choice. The raiders here remind me of Khans from Vegas, they were kicked out of their homeland as cities were changing their masters. Unlike Khans however, I actually wanted to help them because they don't want to just raid and sell drugs (they still do it tho and you can do some of it yourself), but they also want to build a new community because their leader understands that people getting more organized and will become to tough for them one day, so he sends us offer peace to nearby towns.
After getting the bike (a pity there is no video for getting it like in Nevada), I went to Dayglow, I already talked about it in Sonora thread so I only add some thoughts that I got after playing it for the second time.
The core idea of the main quest is rebuilding city for the ghouls, but the problem is that most quests is just scavenging, go to the plant, go to the old factory, go to the old base. You have two ghoul cities with diffrent ideology, remnants of mutant army and human scavengers group, yet most of their interactions are in side quests while main quest forces you to go through ruins. Why?
The most interesting quests are from Ghoul gangster, you help him to kill or buy his competitors, find him supermutant bodyguard, e.t.c.. I liked them much more then main quest because you actually interact with people instead of digging garbage.
I also really liked Pile, the supermutant companion. Right now Sonora's companions are BoS paladin, spy at the edge of the map and former raider in slavers city, they all like F1 companions - no quests, very few dialogue. Unlike them, Pile is like F2 companion, he has quest in which you help him return to his old supermutant squad, he comments on quests and locations and will help his brothers if you attack them. Sadly, he won't leave Dayglow and I wish Sonora had at least one companioin of same quality.
Oh, well. With Dayglow out of the way, I'm close to an end of Sonora.
So, I missed the Blackjack table which allows you to bet up to 100 coins so my main issue of gambling been to slow for priting money was solved.
Apperantly I could get leather armor in Ranger base and in Tribal's camp before Phoenix, but from story perspective there was little reason for me to go there as I prioritize saving my madre over exploration. However some dialogue options suggest that I could get help in saving her from slavers, not sure how it works tho.
Now to the city of Phoenix. I like how many side quests are one way or the other connected to big bad of the city, I also like how we have option similar to Garry taking us to mutant base from F1. The diversity of factions here helps to deviate this place from been second Reno, instead of gangs we got cultists, local resistance, ghouls, mexican maffia, lowlifes and one gang. However, I think gangs from Nevada had more personality to them, Striker, Luciano and Tomthon gangs specifically, only cultists come close to them in turms of quests and characters. It's also weird that there no big caravan company or something.
I also wonder where are all slaves? It mentioned that Phoenix buys them, but only places we see slaves are the slavers town (no longer exist) and Two Sun which use them for meat waves attack on robots.
Arena tho is big improvment over Nevada since now you fight somebody new with some story behind the body, plus the game doesn't spam the same model with more HP each time so fights are more memorable.
Anyway, after Phoenix I went to Two Sun where supposed to be the rest of my people. People of Two Sun are tribals that worship tech, so just reavers from Fallout Tactics, that used to be isolationsts but had to open for trade to get many slaves and use them to attack and of cource our people are among those slaves.
When I first time played Sonora back in 2020, I thought it was the best location. Mostly because the place has very cool idea behind it - tribals that worship tech trying to get into pre-war base by sending waves of human slaves agianst robots and AI that bound by his programming and forced to defend the base, but unable to deal with the source of the attacks and desperate to free himself. Much more interesting premise then city of scrappers (Garage) or city of slavers (Flagstuff), e.t.c.
Getting through old base felt like getting into the Glow for the first time, robots offer good challenge and it was fun looking for weapons and your padre in those ruins. To my surprise, ruins around the base got an upgrade and got even bigger with more stuff for you to use against robots.
Sadly, after getting into the base and saving your people, the rest of the content is much less interesting despite cool premise - finding lost tribal messanger that was killed by the ranger, dealing with escaped slavers. I think the main problem is that in those quests we can never side against tribals. Plus their first quest is their biggest quest, I think it would be better if we had to do those quests before getting into the base.
Now that all of my people were saved, I decidead to do some exploration and went to raider to get the bike. Originally, I thought that I'll just kill them all, but after remembering how disappointing raiders were in F1 I decided to try their quests and it was right choice. The raiders here remind me of Khans from Vegas, they were kicked out of their homeland as cities were changing their masters. Unlike Khans however, I actually wanted to help them because they don't want to just raid and sell drugs (they still do it tho and you can do some of it yourself), but they also want to build a new community because their leader understands that people getting more organized and will become to tough for them one day, so he sends us offer peace to nearby towns.
The core idea of the main quest is rebuilding city for the ghouls, but the problem is that most quests is just scavenging, go to the plant, go to the old factory, go to the old base. You have two ghoul cities with diffrent ideology, remnants of mutant army and human scavengers group, yet most of their interactions are in side quests while main quest forces you to go through ruins. Why?
The most interesting quests are from Ghoul gangster, you help him to kill or buy his competitors, find him supermutant bodyguard, e.t.c.. I liked them much more then main quest because you actually interact with people instead of digging garbage.
I also really liked Pile, the supermutant companion. Right now Sonora's companions are BoS paladin, spy at the edge of the map and former raider in slavers city, they all like F1 companions - no quests, very few dialogue. Unlike them, Pile is like F2 companion, he has quest in which you help him return to his old supermutant squad, he comments on quests and locations and will help his brothers if you attack them. Sadly, he won't leave Dayglow and I wish Sonora had at least one companioin of same quality.
Oh, well. With Dayglow out of the way, I'm close to an end of Sonora.
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Keep the reports coming! Sonora wasn't available in English when I begun this endeavour but I will get to it after New Vegas.
----
Dead Money down.
As I wrote Dead Money feels like a Bioshock game. You find yourself in this decayed pre-war environment that is now inhabited by Ghost People instead of the intended crowd of gamblers. Getting supplies from vending machines also felt like it was lifted from Bioshock.
A weakness of the DLC was that it got boring to fight the same enemy type over and over again. Could the Ghost People have been explored a bit more? Given a few more variations? And what if you actually felt scared when they emerged and you would rather sneak than confront them? Now it was just a tedious shore to shoot them in the head several times.
I love playing RPG:s and I don't mind reading a lot, that's actually why I tend to like games like Fallout. However something was off with this DLC because I most often got annoyed when the NPC:s wouldn't stop talking. It was like every conversation dragged on for a bit too long. It was actually a pleasant contrast to meet Christine, the mute, who didn't speak at all (at first).
Ok so now you finally get to meet this Elijah character that Veronica was talking about and who left the BoS after the defeat at Helios One, I had been wondering about him. And you also get to meet Veronicas ex-lover who for some reason decides to stay at the Sierra Madre rather then returning to BoS after the DLC is complete. It would have been nice to talk a bit more with Elijah and Christine about BoS and what happened before they left and why they didn't want to return. Elijah (and others) kept talking about the Big Empty, the Divide and "the other courier". I had no idea of what they were going on about, even the end slides were about that.
It was very easy to collect Sierra Madre chips. You get the Sierra Madre Souvenir Aficionado-achievement after only collecting 500 of them. What's the challenge in that? Seriously. That's not an achievement. Had the challenge been to collect 2500 Sierra Madre chips maybe then the achievement would have actually been something you had to work a little for. That was very lame.
Dead Money was ok and maybe I will have some more to say about it once I have gotten the time to think about it some more. But right now my mind is empty. But maybe it should just have been a bit more haunting in regards to atmosphere and the characters should have talked less...
---
Old World Blues and then Lonesome Road?
----
Dead Money down.
As I wrote Dead Money feels like a Bioshock game. You find yourself in this decayed pre-war environment that is now inhabited by Ghost People instead of the intended crowd of gamblers. Getting supplies from vending machines also felt like it was lifted from Bioshock.
A weakness of the DLC was that it got boring to fight the same enemy type over and over again. Could the Ghost People have been explored a bit more? Given a few more variations? And what if you actually felt scared when they emerged and you would rather sneak than confront them? Now it was just a tedious shore to shoot them in the head several times.
I love playing RPG:s and I don't mind reading a lot, that's actually why I tend to like games like Fallout. However something was off with this DLC because I most often got annoyed when the NPC:s wouldn't stop talking. It was like every conversation dragged on for a bit too long. It was actually a pleasant contrast to meet Christine, the mute, who didn't speak at all (at first).
Ok so now you finally get to meet this Elijah character that Veronica was talking about and who left the BoS after the defeat at Helios One, I had been wondering about him. And you also get to meet Veronicas ex-lover who for some reason decides to stay at the Sierra Madre rather then returning to BoS after the DLC is complete. It would have been nice to talk a bit more with Elijah and Christine about BoS and what happened before they left and why they didn't want to return. Elijah (and others) kept talking about the Big Empty, the Divide and "the other courier". I had no idea of what they were going on about, even the end slides were about that.
It was very easy to collect Sierra Madre chips. You get the Sierra Madre Souvenir Aficionado-achievement after only collecting 500 of them. What's the challenge in that? Seriously. That's not an achievement. Had the challenge been to collect 2500 Sierra Madre chips maybe then the achievement would have actually been something you had to work a little for. That was very lame.
Dead Money was ok and maybe I will have some more to say about it once I have gotten the time to think about it some more. But right now my mind is empty. But maybe it should just have been a bit more haunting in regards to atmosphere and the characters should have talked less...
---
Old World Blues and then Lonesome Road?
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Baron of Arizona
First time out of the vault
Sonora finished.
Before I talk about main story, I would like to question map design and location placement. Nevada had this issue too with Las-Vagas. In Sonora those locations are Fisher's settlement and Farmer's town, both under control of the Brotherhood placed in Puerto. When you reach those places you already finnished most of the game and I really couldn't care less for finding some treasure map or helping farmers with their overgrown plants problem. It's the one thing when games offer you a choice to go in different places like when I could go to Rangers before finnishing with Flagstuff if dealing with slavers would be to hard, but I don't think you can go to those places naturaly without metagaming. There is also Mexican base (which got harder compare to 2020), but it mostly for combat characters to use their guns and power armor so I have nothing against it.
There are also some other small locations, but I have nothing interesting to say about them.
Another problem with the map are the encounters, most of them are boring and doesn't offer much variety, friendly encounters are rare, I think I met caravan only once or twice and both times it had nothing to sell so what even the point? Special encounters are much better then in Nevada tho, I like the Legend city which allows you to boost one of your stats or some guy that got captured by weed or some pre-war rich people killing each other after their frozen sleep is over.
But back to the main plot, I learn that BoS is behind all major movements in Sonora and while I really like how BoS is used here, I wish we had a new faction, something like wasteland illuminati. Here we can also do some side quests which are much better then in small locations I mentioned above because they give you one of the ways to get into BoS base and also offer some challange - go on raider hunting missions with strong tactics vibe and investigation of missing squad.
Also. as somebody who played Sonora in 2020, it's a pleasure to see this place getting more challenging for combat character, I could finally put my power armor to good use.
I killed BoS general and half of the crew, looted the key to a bomb inside the ship after which BoS base followed the fate of mutant base in Fallout 1. And it seems nuking of the base was also updated, old video was boring, you get the view of the beach and the city(which didn't even looked like post war ruins) then explosion and that's it, you couldn't even see the ship, but now it looks great as it should be.
After all that I get back to the villa and for my effort is appointed as a new leader so now I'm tasked with finding alliance with the rangers, but I choose to kill them as I killed the Brotherhood. Sadly, that was rather unsatisfying, rangers offer little challenge, there are no uniue sprites, no cool video of dam destruction. I think getting through mexican base was more satisfying.
Now with no big players left Viila could become major force in Sonora.
Overall I think Sonora is much better then Nevada, but just like Nevada it's endgame is the weakest part of the game. And if it's still fun getting on the BoS ship and fighting your way in through robots and paladins, if you join BoS, you will be sent to deal with rangers and fighting against them is just boring as hell, especially if you finished DLC or fought against mutants on one of the BoS missions or encountered mutant battle platform.
I'm not sure, but I will probably try New Vegas next or switch to some other games for a time, I need a break from classics so I will play Fallout 2 and 1.5 much later.
Before I talk about main story, I would like to question map design and location placement. Nevada had this issue too with Las-Vagas. In Sonora those locations are Fisher's settlement and Farmer's town, both under control of the Brotherhood placed in Puerto. When you reach those places you already finnished most of the game and I really couldn't care less for finding some treasure map or helping farmers with their overgrown plants problem. It's the one thing when games offer you a choice to go in different places like when I could go to Rangers before finnishing with Flagstuff if dealing with slavers would be to hard, but I don't think you can go to those places naturaly without metagaming. There is also Mexican base (which got harder compare to 2020), but it mostly for combat characters to use their guns and power armor so I have nothing against it.
There are also some other small locations, but I have nothing interesting to say about them.
Another problem with the map are the encounters, most of them are boring and doesn't offer much variety, friendly encounters are rare, I think I met caravan only once or twice and both times it had nothing to sell so what even the point? Special encounters are much better then in Nevada tho, I like the Legend city which allows you to boost one of your stats or some guy that got captured by weed or some pre-war rich people killing each other after their frozen sleep is over.
Also. as somebody who played Sonora in 2020, it's a pleasure to see this place getting more challenging for combat character, I could finally put my power armor to good use.
Now with no big players left Viila could become major force in Sonora.
Overall I think Sonora is much better then Nevada, but just like Nevada it's endgame is the weakest part of the game. And if it's still fun getting on the BoS ship and fighting your way in through robots and paladins, if you join BoS, you will be sent to deal with rangers and fighting against them is just boring as hell, especially if you finished DLC or fought against mutants on one of the BoS missions or encountered mutant battle platform.
I'm not sure, but I will probably try New Vegas next or switch to some other games for a time, I need a break from classics so I will play Fallout 2 and 1.5 much later.
Congratulations!
I know the feeling of longing for some different gameplay. Maybe Tactics or New Vegas then?
I know the feeling of longing for some different gameplay. Maybe Tactics or New Vegas then?
Baron of Arizona
First time out of the vault
I'm not sure about Tactics, since my recent builds for Nevada, Fallout 1 and Sonora were made around combat, I don't think there will be much difference between them so I will go with Vegas next or take some break from Fallout and play something else.
Dr. Sep
Keeper of the G.E.C.K.
Here's some screenshots of my Fallout 3 playthrough.
I started New Vegas a few days ago with the same stats. I took the Built to Destroy and Good Natured. I don't know which ending I'm going for this time, maybe a House or NCR.
I started New Vegas a few days ago with the same stats. I took the Built to Destroy and Good Natured. I don't know which ending I'm going for this time, maybe a House or NCR.
Just beat Old World Blues.
Didn't kill Mobious. Got my brain back and my original body parts and let the Think Tank stay in the crater. The end screens hinted at me not having found one of the secrets of Big MT. Is there something to find deep down?
This DLC was ok with it's lobotomites and roboscorpions. The exploration was also pretty good. However I don't understand why it would be dangerous to allow the Think Tank to leave? They would just be blasted to pieces by some raiders or whatever. I have to allow Dr Klein to get his will the next time so that I can get some understanding of that ending.
In this DLC you get some pre-history to Elijah and I would probably say that you should do Old World Blues before Dead Money. Then you would understand more of what Elijah is saying. There's also this Ulysses guy that I assume plays a role in Lonesome Road, which I will do next.
Didn't kill Mobious. Got my brain back and my original body parts and let the Think Tank stay in the crater. The end screens hinted at me not having found one of the secrets of Big MT. Is there something to find deep down?
This DLC was ok with it's lobotomites and roboscorpions. The exploration was also pretty good. However I don't understand why it would be dangerous to allow the Think Tank to leave? They would just be blasted to pieces by some raiders or whatever. I have to allow Dr Klein to get his will the next time so that I can get some understanding of that ending.
In this DLC you get some pre-history to Elijah and I would probably say that you should do Old World Blues before Dead Money. Then you would understand more of what Elijah is saying. There's also this Ulysses guy that I assume plays a role in Lonesome Road, which I will do next.
Alphons
National Beholder
Thanks! I take it that they would operate remotely and not visit the Mojave in person.
I'm replaying the series this year + arcanum, however i rather play only the official titles since theres so many mods and a lot of them have no translation patches or anything remotely close to that.
I just finished Fo1 to start with, went with a thief character, finished with 8 kills and mostly tried a non lethal approach, no reloads for failed stealings if i failed and was caught i tried to sneak out of a zone, its usually enough to not aggro the whole city, if it doesnt work i just abandon the city and ignore the quests in there
I ignored tandi in Shady sands
Sided with gizmo after stealing Killian's storage in Junktown
Joined the thieves circle in the hub/stole the merchant's necklace
Joined the BoS just to steal a bunch of shit and then never returned
in my second time in the Hub i got caught trying to steal and had to leave the city for good (one of the characters wouldnt forget so i couldnt just quit like i usually do)
After that i went to necropolis and tried to sneak into the vault to get the waterchip, but i was caught by Harry
in the military base i kept refusing to give info about my vault and then i ran to the locker in the upper part of the room and stole the key, it happens that i wasnt fast enough so they took my equipment and took me as a prisioner. i've never been locked up like that so i had no idea how to recover my stuff (oof, my eletronic lockpick and stealth boys
)
I had to run away with only 3 stimpacks and a gun i found on a corpse that was at my room (guess they are too stupid to check the room before locking me in) and no combat abilities, as i was playing on hard, i basically had close to no chance to hit, had to search for everything i could to help me but after way 25-30 minutes i got out of it.
i had to basically live from scrap and junk i could find after that, i noticed i needed money so i went to LA and searched for a quick job to get money without the need of combat skills.
as a result i stole a dynamite and accepted the job to get rid of Razor
i Killed her by planting C4 at her pockets, got 2K out of it +500 for going "extra"
I insulted the followers but offered to help them afterwards
Because of it i found more about the cathedral and as such i ve infiltrated the place as a child. because of the follower's scouts i mostly failed my first infiltration attempt, but after all of them died, i finally dressed up as a child and went down the whole thing, for some reason even if i had lost the key i still could set the bomb on using my repair skills (which i didnt have, i think the script is broken?) and destroyed the cathedral.
All i had to do afterwards was infiltrating the military based dressed as a child, set the whole base to explode and get out of there.
I ended my playtrought at L7 (print was from an earlier save)
As for my impressions:
Some of the things i liked:
+ Pacing is immaculate. theres not a single area that overstay its welcome, everything is sweet and fast, it also gives you a lot of agency as to how you can approach problems and quests, which adds to the feeling that its not combat heavy nor dialogue heavy.
+ Main story is quite well written and often foreshadow a lot of intricacies regarding the setting. it feels like much of the writing is more about the setting itself than a main narrative but the little there is about a central conflict is really well done, specially how well major areas like the Hub and Boneyard ties to it all.
+ I always liked the combat system, its very simple but decent. killing enemies feel great due to the gore system and you can use skills at strategic value quite a lot (sneak to run from combat or commit stealth kills, planting C4 at people's pockets to engage combat, setting up explosives at the ground and luring enemies to their doom, using alcohol to lower people's perception before engaging at combat,etc..), its a lethal combat and it ends fast, even if you have high HP, crits are frequent and lethal so things usually wont live to see the light. The quality of each combat encounter usually depends on the layout of areas, the most places to manuveur you have, the better. in general its quite fun.
+ Non combat itemization is rather good. Money isnt a very big issue in Fo1 so while economy isnt a real struggle (if you dont go for skill books), the ammount of useful items is quite impressive. you have a bunch of things for skill increases that are helpful tools in non-combat gameplay such as the lockpick kits, Stealthboys, Med-Kits and a lot more for other play-styles, i actually felt satisfyied once i obtained my first eletronic lockpick and making me feel good for getting something that isnt equipment is an accomplishment.very few games focus on Non-Combat itemization, this is one of my issues with Age of decadence for example, here its very well done.
+ Level progression system is rather great, the Special system is not only simple, elegant and cool but also great from a progression perspective, at levelling up you dont have a simple 1 point per level to distribute into a bunch of different things, you have multiple skill points and at each 3 levels a perk (which is an unique game-changing advantage). its probably still my favorite build system in eletronic Rpgs.
+ Talking heads have a great deal of characterization and are memorable enough to make you remember them. in particular i really liked what they did with Decker, Killian, Maxson and the Master (obviously)
+ I dont care how many Beth fans shittalk the endslides. they are great and a good reason to replay the games.
+The end section is great and easily the best part of the game, theres a lot of different stories you can get out of trying to blast throught mariposa and the cathedral and the entire finale is such a strong gut-punch.
Things i didnt like:
- Itemization is a bit lackluster in terms of combat itemization, theres only 3 Big guns. Minigun is worse than Gatling laser, RL is not as strong as you may think and the only standout is flamer. Armor has only 1 slot and it doesnt make much sense at times (Robes should have higher AC than heavy armor),etc...
- Party members are useless after early game since they cant level up nor equip armor. (Their a.i is quite bad either).
- You cant play as an evil char without being a mass murderer bc of the forced karma gains by completing the main story or killing mutants. You barely get negative karma by doing bad actions in quests, so you often will not be able to be evil unless you start killing people for no reason. I tried in this playtrought but couldnt, none of my past tries at evil playtroughts worked without going on genocide mode. Even then, the reaction system is buggy which means you wont be able to properly get evil chars to react to your evil PC.
- Ammo types are bugged. Everything deals the same damage as JHP which reduces tactical depth.
- Some areas are really messy and have not a lot of content. Boneyard for example is clearly less polished than other areas. A bunch of npcs in there with very few actual content in the area, from the few quests that there are, one of them is bugged and can never be finished (followers) and the other revolves around a huge town conflict that is buggy because its very easy to friendly fire an npc, which are not codded correctly and will turn on their enemy flag very easily.
- Half of the skills are worthless or just underwhelming (Big guns, Unarmed, Traps, Outdoorsman, first aid, science, Barter, Throwing,etc...)
- Theres a bunch of reactivity lacking on important parts. Very early on you can explore V15 as an order from the overseer and find nothing. You may try to return to V13 and tell him, however a dialogue recognizing that was never coded. Later on you may save tandi and when talking to her boyfriend after that, he wont notice, i didnt do that in this save, however i faced a lot of other moments of ghost reactivity.
- Some funny things are a bit lore breaking such as the terminal Joke about the interwebs. You can get it by a science check in a V13 educational terminal. It mentions cats and "interwebs" which was a term for the internet. The internet cant exist in FO universe, nor cats in the wasteland (althought the later is excused since its more explored in Fo2)
- diplomatic routes feel much more like metagaming instead of a proper playstyle, specially since Speech isnt as powerful as you may think. Theres only 15 speech checks in the game. Diplomat route is better in Fo2, even if you have to actually kill horrigan in that one. This became quite obviously since now that i have done a fully stealth route, the sneak route isnt like that at all, which means that from all the 3 main styles, Diplomats are the least well developed ones.
- Choice and consequence is a bit lackluster. The only in game consequences in Fo1 are Npcs getting hostile towards you, the best example outside of it would be leaking your vault's location. This was patched day one however. The other CnC is all found within the ending slides (some being buggy), so its not that much for the simulation aspects.
- some worldbuilding is a bit ilogical. It tries to do worldbuilding much more by visuals instead of telling us like i recall Fo2 doing, however this results in a bunch of unexplained things such as the fact that Gizmo runs an cassino that uses eletricity, but theres no power generator/supply in Junktown. Want a less nitpicky example? Gun runners literally live across a river full of radioative barrels/toxic water. To reach there you need to fight deathclaws, however its still somehow implied they receive caravans in order to get their material to make weapons. How? They couldnt live there less so have average merchants going in and out of that mess as their heart desire.
I enjoyed my time with Fallout and despite its issues, its still a quite solid title, i would rate it 7/10 as of now.
I just finished Fo1 to start with, went with a thief character, finished with 8 kills and mostly tried a non lethal approach, no reloads for failed stealings if i failed and was caught i tried to sneak out of a zone, its usually enough to not aggro the whole city, if it doesnt work i just abandon the city and ignore the quests in there
I ignored tandi in Shady sands
Sided with gizmo after stealing Killian's storage in Junktown
Joined the thieves circle in the hub/stole the merchant's necklace
Joined the BoS just to steal a bunch of shit and then never returned
in my second time in the Hub i got caught trying to steal and had to leave the city for good (one of the characters wouldnt forget so i couldnt just quit like i usually do)
After that i went to necropolis and tried to sneak into the vault to get the waterchip, but i was caught by Harry
in the military base i kept refusing to give info about my vault and then i ran to the locker in the upper part of the room and stole the key, it happens that i wasnt fast enough so they took my equipment and took me as a prisioner. i've never been locked up like that so i had no idea how to recover my stuff (oof, my eletronic lockpick and stealth boys
)I had to run away with only 3 stimpacks and a gun i found on a corpse that was at my room (guess they are too stupid to check the room before locking me in) and no combat abilities, as i was playing on hard, i basically had close to no chance to hit, had to search for everything i could to help me but after way 25-30 minutes i got out of it.
i had to basically live from scrap and junk i could find after that, i noticed i needed money so i went to LA and searched for a quick job to get money without the need of combat skills.
as a result i stole a dynamite and accepted the job to get rid of Razor
i Killed her by planting C4 at her pockets, got 2K out of it +500 for going "extra"
I insulted the followers but offered to help them afterwards
Because of it i found more about the cathedral and as such i ve infiltrated the place as a child. because of the follower's scouts i mostly failed my first infiltration attempt, but after all of them died, i finally dressed up as a child and went down the whole thing, for some reason even if i had lost the key i still could set the bomb on using my repair skills (which i didnt have, i think the script is broken?) and destroyed the cathedral.
All i had to do afterwards was infiltrating the military based dressed as a child, set the whole base to explode and get out of there.
I ended my playtrought at L7 (print was from an earlier save)
As for my impressions:
Some of the things i liked:
+ Pacing is immaculate. theres not a single area that overstay its welcome, everything is sweet and fast, it also gives you a lot of agency as to how you can approach problems and quests, which adds to the feeling that its not combat heavy nor dialogue heavy.
+ Main story is quite well written and often foreshadow a lot of intricacies regarding the setting. it feels like much of the writing is more about the setting itself than a main narrative but the little there is about a central conflict is really well done, specially how well major areas like the Hub and Boneyard ties to it all.
+ I always liked the combat system, its very simple but decent. killing enemies feel great due to the gore system and you can use skills at strategic value quite a lot (sneak to run from combat or commit stealth kills, planting C4 at people's pockets to engage combat, setting up explosives at the ground and luring enemies to their doom, using alcohol to lower people's perception before engaging at combat,etc..), its a lethal combat and it ends fast, even if you have high HP, crits are frequent and lethal so things usually wont live to see the light. The quality of each combat encounter usually depends on the layout of areas, the most places to manuveur you have, the better. in general its quite fun.
+ Non combat itemization is rather good. Money isnt a very big issue in Fo1 so while economy isnt a real struggle (if you dont go for skill books), the ammount of useful items is quite impressive. you have a bunch of things for skill increases that are helpful tools in non-combat gameplay such as the lockpick kits, Stealthboys, Med-Kits and a lot more for other play-styles, i actually felt satisfyied once i obtained my first eletronic lockpick and making me feel good for getting something that isnt equipment is an accomplishment.very few games focus on Non-Combat itemization, this is one of my issues with Age of decadence for example, here its very well done.
+ Level progression system is rather great, the Special system is not only simple, elegant and cool but also great from a progression perspective, at levelling up you dont have a simple 1 point per level to distribute into a bunch of different things, you have multiple skill points and at each 3 levels a perk (which is an unique game-changing advantage). its probably still my favorite build system in eletronic Rpgs.
+ Talking heads have a great deal of characterization and are memorable enough to make you remember them. in particular i really liked what they did with Decker, Killian, Maxson and the Master (obviously)
+ I dont care how many Beth fans shittalk the endslides. they are great and a good reason to replay the games.
+The end section is great and easily the best part of the game, theres a lot of different stories you can get out of trying to blast throught mariposa and the cathedral and the entire finale is such a strong gut-punch.
Things i didnt like:
- Itemization is a bit lackluster in terms of combat itemization, theres only 3 Big guns. Minigun is worse than Gatling laser, RL is not as strong as you may think and the only standout is flamer. Armor has only 1 slot and it doesnt make much sense at times (Robes should have higher AC than heavy armor),etc...
- Party members are useless after early game since they cant level up nor equip armor. (Their a.i is quite bad either).
- You cant play as an evil char without being a mass murderer bc of the forced karma gains by completing the main story or killing mutants. You barely get negative karma by doing bad actions in quests, so you often will not be able to be evil unless you start killing people for no reason. I tried in this playtrought but couldnt, none of my past tries at evil playtroughts worked without going on genocide mode. Even then, the reaction system is buggy which means you wont be able to properly get evil chars to react to your evil PC.
- Ammo types are bugged. Everything deals the same damage as JHP which reduces tactical depth.
- Some areas are really messy and have not a lot of content. Boneyard for example is clearly less polished than other areas. A bunch of npcs in there with very few actual content in the area, from the few quests that there are, one of them is bugged and can never be finished (followers) and the other revolves around a huge town conflict that is buggy because its very easy to friendly fire an npc, which are not codded correctly and will turn on their enemy flag very easily.
- Half of the skills are worthless or just underwhelming (Big guns, Unarmed, Traps, Outdoorsman, first aid, science, Barter, Throwing,etc...)
- Theres a bunch of reactivity lacking on important parts. Very early on you can explore V15 as an order from the overseer and find nothing. You may try to return to V13 and tell him, however a dialogue recognizing that was never coded. Later on you may save tandi and when talking to her boyfriend after that, he wont notice, i didnt do that in this save, however i faced a lot of other moments of ghost reactivity.
- Some funny things are a bit lore breaking such as the terminal Joke about the interwebs. You can get it by a science check in a V13 educational terminal. It mentions cats and "interwebs" which was a term for the internet. The internet cant exist in FO universe, nor cats in the wasteland (althought the later is excused since its more explored in Fo2)
- diplomatic routes feel much more like metagaming instead of a proper playstyle, specially since Speech isnt as powerful as you may think. Theres only 15 speech checks in the game. Diplomat route is better in Fo2, even if you have to actually kill horrigan in that one. This became quite obviously since now that i have done a fully stealth route, the sneak route isnt like that at all, which means that from all the 3 main styles, Diplomats are the least well developed ones.
- Choice and consequence is a bit lackluster. The only in game consequences in Fo1 are Npcs getting hostile towards you, the best example outside of it would be leaking your vault's location. This was patched day one however. The other CnC is all found within the ending slides (some being buggy), so its not that much for the simulation aspects.
- some worldbuilding is a bit ilogical. It tries to do worldbuilding much more by visuals instead of telling us like i recall Fo2 doing, however this results in a bunch of unexplained things such as the fact that Gizmo runs an cassino that uses eletricity, but theres no power generator/supply in Junktown. Want a less nitpicky example? Gun runners literally live across a river full of radioative barrels/toxic water. To reach there you need to fight deathclaws, however its still somehow implied they receive caravans in order to get their material to make weapons. How? They couldnt live there less so have average merchants going in and out of that mess as their heart desire.
I enjoyed my time with Fallout and despite its issues, its still a quite solid title, i would rate it 7/10 as of now.
Did you get the water chip after Harry caught you?
Awesome write-up and I agree with a lot of your points, especially on world building and reactivity.
Did you play vanilla?
Awesome write-up and I agree with a lot of your points, especially on world building and reactivity.
Did you play vanilla?
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Yeps i got the waterchip after i returned
And yeps, i plan to play all of them vanilla, only exception are compatibility mods such as High res or Sfall, no unnoficial patches, fixt or stuff tho
Respect!
You're welcome to post here and it doesn't really matter to me. I gladly read Arcanum impressions and I will replay that game myself in the future. Maybe you can compare it to Fallout in different aspects?
Create a new thread if you want more engagement around Arcanum otherwise I think people might miss it.
Create a new thread if you want more engagement around Arcanum otherwise I think people might miss it.
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Lonesome Road done! Now I just have to beat the main game.
The first impression you get is the great view overlooking the fascinating abyss that is the Divide. And you wonder what you will encounter here. Lonesome Road has a fascinating landscape and in my opinion this is what DC in Fallout 3 should have looked like, I mean properly nuked. Ravaged lands and destroyed buildings everywhere. Post-war DC designed by Bethesda was far too intact with no explanation given.
The inhabitants or the Divide, the Marked Men, weren’t hostile to me. Probably caused by some mod from Viva New Vegas, however it took a while for me to realize they were supposed to attack you. It was quite pleasant walking about and having them mind their own business taking no notice of you. By the end of the DLC some of them started to attack me though. I will make sure they are hostile from the beginning the next time I play Lonesome Road. The other inhabitants caused enough of a challenge to provide a good balance between combat and exploration.
I understand the gameplay reasons for having warheads scattered everywhere but aren’t the explosions far too weak for being nuclear bombs? I much prefer the design of these nukes over the bomb seen in the center of Megaton in Fallout 3. Bethesda used WW2 designs for 21st century weapons whereas Obsidian got a better idea of how they should look.
I didn’t find all the nukes or all the Ralphie posters. However quests like that are just boring shores that are meant to nudge you into exploring every nook and cranny of the map. I really don’t like the idea of that. If you are a designer and want me to go exploring then make that into a reward itself.
Will the Tunnellers bring down post-war society? It certainly seems like it.
Of the four DLCs I hold Honesty Hearts in highest regards. It is the truest to what I like about Fallout. The story is about a war among different tribal groups where the aggressor is supported by a major power. The story is about the world and what happens there. However in Lonesome Road (and Dead Money) the story is about one person, a megalomaniac, and his perception of the world. The Divide and its inhabitants are just a back-drop to that.
Ulysses didn't make much sense to me and his motivations were very unclear, although the voice actor is very good. However, by his end speech I suddenly got the impressions that it was all just metaphors and allegory used to describe what had happened to Fallout after what Bethesda did to the established Fallout lore with the release of Fallout 3.
Ulysses talks about the two couriers and to me that’s an allegory for the two game developers Bethesda and Obsidian, both who deliver their respective messages, just like couriers. When Bethesda released Fallout 3 it was like the bomb delivered by the Courier that destroyed Hopevill and ravaged everything. Bethesda caused serious damage to established lore and divided the community into those who prefered Fallout 1&2 versus the new fans of Fallout 3. It’s impossible to bridge the Divide and make Fallout whole again. And maybe you have to do like Ulysses and just nuke everything.
However in the allegory NCR and the west symbolizes Bethesda whereas Caesar and the east symbolizes Obsidian. And Ulysses is probably Avellone himself. He switched east and west in the allegory to make it a bit more subtle. However certain quotes are like metaphors themselves and can be interpreted in other ways but in the same context.
His line about the courier not being able to resist one final delivery is about how Obsidian couldn’t stay away from Fallout.
-----------
Anyway I would rank the DLCs like this:
Dead Money is character driven and the events are driven forward by a megalomaniac that talks too much. However the Sierra Madre and it's surroundings are believable as a world space and the story is as much about the location and it's history as of Elijah and his schemes. The pre-war story you uncover about Dean Domino, Sinclair and Vera gives the DLC another layer, which is nice.
Old World Blues was good, nothing much to say about it. Crazy robots, lobotomites and fun exploration.
Lonesome Road was just you making your way towards the end zone with some lengthy interjections from Ulysses. It was ok but not that exciting. The ravaged land was very well designed even though I prefer open landscapes to chasms. You are too railroaded when you walk the bottom of a chasm.
The first impression you get is the great view overlooking the fascinating abyss that is the Divide. And you wonder what you will encounter here. Lonesome Road has a fascinating landscape and in my opinion this is what DC in Fallout 3 should have looked like, I mean properly nuked. Ravaged lands and destroyed buildings everywhere. Post-war DC designed by Bethesda was far too intact with no explanation given.
The inhabitants or the Divide, the Marked Men, weren’t hostile to me. Probably caused by some mod from Viva New Vegas, however it took a while for me to realize they were supposed to attack you. It was quite pleasant walking about and having them mind their own business taking no notice of you. By the end of the DLC some of them started to attack me though. I will make sure they are hostile from the beginning the next time I play Lonesome Road. The other inhabitants caused enough of a challenge to provide a good balance between combat and exploration.
I understand the gameplay reasons for having warheads scattered everywhere but aren’t the explosions far too weak for being nuclear bombs? I much prefer the design of these nukes over the bomb seen in the center of Megaton in Fallout 3. Bethesda used WW2 designs for 21st century weapons whereas Obsidian got a better idea of how they should look.
I didn’t find all the nukes or all the Ralphie posters. However quests like that are just boring shores that are meant to nudge you into exploring every nook and cranny of the map. I really don’t like the idea of that. If you are a designer and want me to go exploring then make that into a reward itself.
Will the Tunnellers bring down post-war society? It certainly seems like it.
Of the four DLCs I hold Honesty Hearts in highest regards. It is the truest to what I like about Fallout. The story is about a war among different tribal groups where the aggressor is supported by a major power. The story is about the world and what happens there. However in Lonesome Road (and Dead Money) the story is about one person, a megalomaniac, and his perception of the world. The Divide and its inhabitants are just a back-drop to that.
Ulysses didn't make much sense to me and his motivations were very unclear, although the voice actor is very good. However, by his end speech I suddenly got the impressions that it was all just metaphors and allegory used to describe what had happened to Fallout after what Bethesda did to the established Fallout lore with the release of Fallout 3.
Ulysses talks about the two couriers and to me that’s an allegory for the two game developers Bethesda and Obsidian, both who deliver their respective messages, just like couriers. When Bethesda released Fallout 3 it was like the bomb delivered by the Courier that destroyed Hopevill and ravaged everything. Bethesda caused serious damage to established lore and divided the community into those who prefered Fallout 1&2 versus the new fans of Fallout 3. It’s impossible to bridge the Divide and make Fallout whole again. And maybe you have to do like Ulysses and just nuke everything.
However in the allegory NCR and the west symbolizes Bethesda whereas Caesar and the east symbolizes Obsidian. And Ulysses is probably Avellone himself. He switched east and west in the allegory to make it a bit more subtle. However certain quotes are like metaphors themselves and can be interpreted in other ways but in the same context.
His line about the courier not being able to resist one final delivery is about how Obsidian couldn’t stay away from Fallout.
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Anyway I would rank the DLCs like this:
- Honest Hearts
- Dead Money
- Old World Blues
- Lonesome Road
Dead Money is character driven and the events are driven forward by a megalomaniac that talks too much. However the Sierra Madre and it's surroundings are believable as a world space and the story is as much about the location and it's history as of Elijah and his schemes. The pre-war story you uncover about Dean Domino, Sinclair and Vera gives the DLC another layer, which is nice.
Old World Blues was good, nothing much to say about it. Crazy robots, lobotomites and fun exploration.
Lonesome Road was just you making your way towards the end zone with some lengthy interjections from Ulysses. It was ok but not that exciting. The ravaged land was very well designed even though I prefer open landscapes to chasms. You are too railroaded when you walk the bottom of a chasm.
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