Would you have rather gotten Van Buren but no New Vegas?

Vault Dweller Donny

Vault Dweller Donny

Explorer of the wastes
This is definitely a tough question, New Vegas was my entry into west coast fallout. but with a seamless open world you are ultimately limited to an overall smaller geographic area in comparison to Fallout 1 and 2. imo van burens main quest beats out New Vegas, and I actually like the more sci fi focused aspects of Van Buren as a creative direction, I think overall in the grand timeline in a storytelling aspect, that Van Buren would've been better storywise
 
To be honest I think I’d rather have a fully developed and realized New Vegas over Van Buren. As fun as the design documents for Van Buren are to read, you gotta understand a lot of that stuff probably wouldn’t have made it into the game as planned. Even some of the cooler docs like Circle Junction was scrapped before the design documents were even finished. We will never actually know what Van Buren would have looked like in the end, we just have broad speculation and hindsight based on design documents and a leaked demo. Whereas New Vegas is a great game as-is and would only be bolstered if Obsidian were given the time to properly implement their plans. There’s an ocean of cut content that’s restoreble via mods that I feel makes the game better, and that’s just the stuff that was salvageable.
 
Van Buren for me.

I'm old-school and a PnP RPG fan (my favourite gaming type), so I'm not really into 1st/3rd person perspective or real-time combat in my RPGs. I'm also not a fan of shooters or player-skill based minigames for stuff the character should do using their own skills, attributes and abilities (lockpicking and hacking for example).

Another thing I don't care for much is the equipment having durability, like I said, I am old-school and a PnP RPG fan, so having equipment break or needing "maintenance" is something that usually isn't used on PnP because equipment is many times considered a reward for the player's efforts and work. Doing something dangerous and hard to be able to get some noteworthy (or even unique) equipment deserves to be rewarded (and many times that is the only reward), and having to keep repairing that same equipment dilutes that same reward.
 
Depends on how much of Van Buren and how it would be realized. It was really interesting to read dev docs, but it really hard to say how game would ended up be. That been said I'm more inclined to VB because I prefer gameplay of original games and strongly belive that RPG shouldn't pretend to be shooters.
 
Based on what Interplay was dishing out before Van Buren I would go with New Vegas. Tactics was okay but not a good Fallout per say, and BoS was just something else entirely. I think that a fully realized and finished New Vegas would have been much better than what a finished Van Buren would have been.
 
HELL YES.
New Vegas was watered down and neutered van buren, with bethesda putting hefty limitations on what obsidian could do, plus time constraints.
 
Yes. New Vegas contained many ideas from Van Buren, but is marred by having to use Fallout 3's mechanics. It'd probably have been pretty amazing.
 
Hassknecht said:
Yes. New Vegas contained many ideas from Van Buren, but is marred by having to use Fallout 3's mechanics. It'd probably have been pretty amazing.
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This. I'd also add that it's marred by 3's leftover bugs/jank. Truth be told, I might not have ever gotten into the Fallout series without having first played 3, though for the sanity of the fan base, I'd happily have missed out.
 
It's funny some people out there claiming that Fallout 3 walked so that New Vegas could run, when in reality everything New Vegas did well had nothing to do with Fallout 3, and all the bad parts of New Vegas are solely there because it was made in Fallout 3's garbage version of Gamebryo.
 
Norzan said:
It's funny some people out there claiming that Fallout 3 walked so that New Vegas could run, when in reality everything New Vegas did well had nothing to do with Fallout 3, and all the bad parts of New Vegas are solely there because it was made in Fallout 3's garbage version of Gamebryo.
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It's nice to see someone else not outright blaming the Gamebryo engine, but rather the defective version assembled by Bethesda.
 
I used to blame the engine itself for the many problems Bethesda games had since Oblivion, but playing the Scholarship Edition of Bully (which uses gamebryo) and that game not crashing once, nor bugging out, nor having its framerate go into the single digits, made me realize that it's Bethesda itself that can't properly use and optimize an engine to save their lives.
 
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Hell yeah, had Interplay/Black Isle project Van Buren been allowed to continue and become Fallout 3 we would have got a third Fallout AND a brand new game engine built specrfically for Fallout RPG gameplay.

Obsidian, composed of many of the same people that had been working on Van Buren, used it as a starting point but had both constraints on areas Bethesda would let them cover as well as time in which to make the game, due to that as good as New Vegas is, the best of the bethesda era, it is still a pale shadow of what it could have been.
 
No. I would've hated the gameplay of van Buren. Real time with pause is ass. I would've preferred a properly worked on new Vegas and the dlc deal with the more esoteric or interesting van Buren factions.
 
Yossarrion said:
No. I would've hated the gameplay of van Buren. Real time with pause is ass. I would've preferred a properly worked on new Vegas and the dlc deal with the more esoteric or interesting van Buren factions.
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The game would have options for both RTWP and turn-based combat. And the developers said the focus was on turn-based, they even had a couple of teams play the PnP version of it.
 
Risewild said:
The game would have options for both RTWP and turn-based combat. And the developers said the focus was on turn-based, they even had a couple of teams play the PnP version of it.
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In a game like Van Buren I'd have preferred turn based anyway, as rts style games with squads are generally too much for me to handle. It's the same reason why I've always played Tactics turn based.
 
Would you rather take the chance of an unknown outcome over a real and enduring gaming milestone?

No.
I may like New Vegas but I'm not a gambler. Besides, isometric games have a level of detatchment to them anyways. Isometric NV likely would not have the same impact. Perspective and interactivity matter.
 
Risewild said:
The game would have options for both RTWP and turn-based combat. And the developers said the focus was on turn-based, they even had a couple of teams play the PnP version of it.
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Only ever heard it being real time. If there was going to be turn based I would prefer that.
 
Traeger91 said:
In a game like Van Buren I'd have preferred turn based anyway, as rts style games with squads are generally too much for me to handle. It's the same reason why I've always played Tactics turn based.
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I used to play Tactics that way and let me tell you, It is sooooo much easier in real time. I know that sounds wrong but it was only play tested in real time and for some reason using turn based makes the game harder.
 
Dr. Sep said:
I used to play Tactics that way and let me tell you, It is sooooo much easier in real time. I know that sounds wrong but it was only play tested in real time and for some reason using turn based makes the game harder.
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I only go turn-based in Tactics because I play it solo with a melee/unarmed character. If I played real time I wouldn't be able to go far in that game.
 
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