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Holy poo poo I had no idea dropboxes even existed until now!  I mean they're functionally useless at this point but still. I really thought I'd seen everything by now, even the thorn and the vegas sewers. Edit: VVV Wasteland-style gumbo can do some crazy poo poo. MechanicalTomPetty fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Dec 26, 2013 |
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Dec 26, 2013 03:15
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I like Point Lookout but it is pretty dumb that mutated hillbillies can somehow pose a bigger threat than soldiers equipped with top of the line power armor and plasma weapons.
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Dec 26, 2013 03:23
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Internet Kraken posted:I like Point Lookout but it is pretty dumb that mutated hillbillies can somehow pose a bigger threat than soldiers equipped with top of the line power armor and plasma weapons. Bethesda really wanted to capture the TFR consumer base fantasies. 
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Dec 26, 2013 03:42
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Internet Kraken posted:I like Point Lookout but it is pretty dumb that mutated hillbillies can somehow pose a bigger threat than soldiers equipped with top of the line power armor and plasma weapons. The hillbillies are bad, but the feral ghoul reavers are worse. gently caress those guys.
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Dec 26, 2013 03:52
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SpookyLizard posted:And no, prewar America wasn't fascist. Please learn the definition of words before you use them. Uh... okay. I don't know about you but wanting to eradicate the "unclean" wasteland population and ensure that the "pure" survive sounds like a pretty fascist goal to me.
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Dec 26, 2013 05:05
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That's the Enclave as they are post-war, who claim to represent the original US government, but it's still been over a hundred years after the war for them too, so changes in policy, especially in light of changes in the wasteland, are reasonable to expect and do not necessarily reflect on the antebellum administration.
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Dec 26, 2013 05:30
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Internet Kraken posted:I like Point Lookout but it is pretty dumb that mutated hillbillies can somehow pose a bigger threat than soldiers equipped with top of the line power armor and plasma weapons. The fact that all the swampfolk got a perk that made them do 35 additional points of damage on top of every attack they did was just horrible. It made it so that the bruisers and trackers were deadlier using their fists against you than they were using their fire axes they spawn with since using their fists meant they could attack much quicker and take advantage of the +35 damage behind each attack buff better that way. Taking 39 damage from a single bb gun shot when in the hands of some point lookout swampfolk when a sniper rifle held by someone in the base game does 40 damage per shot is just loving horrid. Literal Nazi Furry fucked around with this message at 07:17 on Dec 26, 2013 |
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Dec 26, 2013 07:14
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Literal Nazi Furry posted:The fact that all the swampfolk got a perk that made them do 35 additional points of damage on top of every attack they did was just horrible. It made it so that the bruisers and trackers were deadlier using their fists against you than they were using their fire axes they spawn with since using their fists meant they could attack much quicker and take advantage of the +35 damage behind each attack buff better that way. That effect is actually on the weapons. Every single weapon added by POint Lookout, with the only condition to it's use being that it's not in the hands of the player. That right there condemned Point Lookout to me.
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Dec 26, 2013 07:39
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Oh man, I forgot how difficult it was to decide which end path to go for. I usually end up split between the NCR and Yes Man. NCR has a lot of internal problems it needs to work for, but really, they seem to be one of the few group that have some of their poo poo together. But I love the independence of the Mojave, and the fact that most of the local factions tend to not get hosed over bad if you go this way, but at the same time there's uncertainty. gently caress House and the Legion though 
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Dec 26, 2013 07:59
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Jimmy4400nav posted:gently caress House though Ungrateful punk.
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Dec 26, 2013 08:15
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Kinda torn up about the Hard Luck Blues moral dilemma. Do I save the vault dwellers, or do I shut off the radiation? I mean, saving people seems like the obvious choice here, but wouldn't that mean continued contamination of New Vegas water supply by radiation? It's hard to imagine that not having serious reprecussions down the line.
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Dec 26, 2013 10:06
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goatse.cx posted:Kinda torn up about the Hard Luck Blues moral dilemma. Sure, if you read the vault wiki those people are actually alive. But that's out of game knowledge. And when you do save them, you will find out they're selfish dicks. The reactor is leaking radiation and is poisoning the local water supply. That's not a good thing. But when they get control of the reactor of the Courier gives it to them, they don't even bother shutting it down after they freed themselves.
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Dec 26, 2013 10:35
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Jimmy4400nav posted:Oh man, I forgot how difficult it was to decide which end path to go for. I usually end up split between the NCR and Yes Man. NCR has a lot of internal problems it needs to work for, but really, they seem to be one of the few group that have some of their poo poo together. But I love the independence of the Mojave, and the fact that most of the local factions tend to not get hosed over bad if you go this way, but at the same time there's uncertainty. I'm playing through the game for the first time, and at an absolute snails pace as I can generally spare 2-3 hours a week for it, so I can't say for certain who is or is not a good group of people, or how things end up for them, but I'm pretty certain that while I'm trying to maintain a firm sense of independence and individualism throughout the Mojave I'm just making things worse for everyone. Case in point, I was helping the Powder Gangers at the NCR prison, since I figured nothing wrong with trying to set up their independent bastion against the wasteland, only all of the sudden they're getting invaded by the NCR; well, I think, that's their fight, I'm all for their being independent but I'm not getting killed to that end, so I sneak off an watch the NCR storm the compound. Once they enter the admin building and have a few minutes, I thought I'd follow them in and loot the remains, but apparently the firefight indoors doesn't start until the courier enters as well, and I find myself standing in the middle of a half-dozen hostile NCR soldiers. I popped a stealth boy so as to not get Swiss cheesed, and they ran into a small room to attack the Gangers, and I toss in a couple sticks of dynamite since they're all clustered together. After the fact, I find out the Gangers had run into the room as well, and I had blown up everyone in the building with those dynamite sticks. Left plenty of sellable loot, but now everyone in the prison is dead but me. Whoops. I'm really bad at it, but this game is awesome. TLDR: I tried to support everyone's independence while not choosing sides, and wound up loving over and killing everyone. 
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Dec 26, 2013 18:03
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Lotish posted:That's the Enclave as they are post-war, who claim to represent the original US government, but it's still been over a hundred years after the war for them too, so changes in policy, especially in light of changes in the wasteland, are reasonable to expect and do not necessarily reflect on the antebellum administration. 'Fascism' is a slippery word (cue Orwell quote about how it's someone I disagree with) but pre-War America was pretty obviously a oppressive hellhole. Between Lonesome Road and Old World Blues, it's stated that the US performed horrific medical experiments on prisoners of war, and when those ran out, anti-war protesters. The very first image in all of Fallout is an American soldier executing a Canadian protestor. They're basically every terrible thing America has ever done, all at once and twice as bad. NCR isn't even close.
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Dec 26, 2013 18:30
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Thinking about it, Bethesda is bashed a lot for their story telling, and rightfully so since their plots tend to be nonsensical and their character two dimensional. However, I think they are very good at creating interesting environments and settings. I think Fallout 3 has a horrid plot but thinking about it there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the setting that it couldn't of been good. The stage is set for a very interesting story to play out, but their character writing tends to fall so flat the plot sucks anyways. I think if Bethesda was just willing to get some new writers with more experience with character development their stories would be just fine. Raygereio posted:It's not much a dilemma. The courier has no way of knowing when that SOS message was written and when we go in, the place is filled with ghouls and post-apocalyptic logs about how everything went to poo poo and there were riots. It's a pretty safe assumption that those people are dead. Yeah that choice always felt really lame to me since it comes out of nowhere and feels tacked on. You don't have any logical reason to save the vault dwellers since there is little reason to believe they are alive and the repercussions for not getting rid of the radiation will be big.
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Dec 26, 2013 18:36
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I have to wonder what Bethesda's internal hierarchy looks like. If it's a company run by technicians who value good coding practices etc., but do not give a poo poo about those darn liberal arts majors and their stupid writing skills, it's not a hard science  The following is my imagination of Skyrim's conception:  "Boss, we can render a giant world and populate it with any number of semi-intelligent actors, and I have the design document to prove it!" : "Don't forget that we've finally ironed out the bugs people hated in our previous games." : "And computing technology is now advanced enough to make the whole world look really good! No more compromises!" : "Sound real good boys, get to work." : "But we don't have any content to make the game world look alive, or the staff required to make and compile such content.": "Whatcha talkin' about, whippersnapper? Don't we keep some of them no-good unpaid interns around?"
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Dec 26, 2013 19:21
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StashAugustine posted:'Fascism' is a slippery word (cue Orwell quote about how it's someone I disagree with) but pre-War America was pretty obviously a oppressive hellhole. Between Lonesome Road and Old World Blues, it's stated that the US performed horrific medical experiments on prisoners of war, and when those ran out, anti-war protesters. The very first image in all of Fallout is an American soldier executing a Canadian protestor. They're basically every terrible thing America has ever done, all at once and twice as bad. NCR isn't even close. Executing a protester as they wave to the camera like they're on vacation or something. I always thought that said everything you could ever need to know about their attitudes and the political climate.
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Dec 26, 2013 19:29
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steinrokkan posted:I have to wonder what Bethesda's internal hierarchy looks like. If it's a company run by technicians who value good coding practices etc., but do not give a poo poo about those darn liberal arts majors and their stupid writing skills, it's not a hard science You *have* played FO3, right? (Or are we blaming all the crashes on Gamebryo as delivered?)
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Dec 26, 2013 23:30
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I've always pictured Bethesda as being a bunch of "ideas guys", only with actual talent and resources to work with. So their design documents are a bunch of cool ideas they randomly come up with and then shove into a game. So they have all these neat environments filled with interesting set pieces. Then when it comes time to come up with a plot to tie all their ideas together they just kind of scribble on a piece of paper before going to back to designing more random crap.
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Dec 26, 2013 23:40
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I gotta say, Old World Blues might have dethroned Point Lookout as my favorite Fallout dlc ever. I absolutely adore this new stealth suit, and the Big MT is filled with interesting things to explore. One particular thing I enjoyed was going to Little Yangtze and seeing where the Dead Money Collars and jumpsuits came from. I still have a decent bit of the world left to explore, so I'm definitely looking forward to that. Everything about this dlc is just so fun and exciting.
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Dec 27, 2013 00:53
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What's weird though is that I loving love Elder Scrolls lore. A lot of it is a mess, but a lot of it is pretty well realized. I love reading in-game texts and the wikis. I love Elder Scrolls lore for the same reason I like what New Vegas does with the Fallout lore. It's all bonkers and crazy, but in a way that makes thing feel real because history is bonkers and crazy. But the narrative in the games as you experience it always feels like the most generic fantasy crap. Like on paper, the Civil War and who the Stormcloaks turn out to be are really awesome ideas. Like I was reading the wiki on Windhelm and was like, this sounds really cool. But it doesn't execute well. Honestly, while there is so much talk about the viability of Fallout 3's settlements, I don't think that's the bigger issue. Skyrim's setting is incredibly well realized, but there's still something dead about the world. I think that Bethesda fundamentally fails when it comes to character. And I think that--above all else--is the real success of New Vegas. There was talk about the Legion and how realistic or how goofy it is. I think the thing that sells me on the Legion though is when you talk to Caesar, he is an interesting and multidimensional character. So is Joshua. So is even Lanius. Despite looking like mannequins. There is a care put into their characters that makes them feel real, and those micro things make the broader part of the world they represent feel more real as well. It's a world that seems to be built from the characters up. You experience the Brotherhood of Steel from Veronica or the NCR from Boone. Their very personal stories tell you so much about these silly video game factions and make them feel so very real. And that's why part of me is excited for Fallout 4 because I do enjoy Skyrim, but I don't want to set myself up for disappointment because I know they won't do what would make that game perfect. I loved New Vegas because it was a world that let my play as someone who was able to express his/her feelings, past, and character. I was able to make choices that obscured strict moral dichotomies. And more importantly, the characters I met were not just utilitarian. They were the most important part of building the world around me.
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Dec 27, 2013 02:22
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steinrokkan posted:If it's a company run by technicians who value good coding practices I'm replaying Skyrim now and I'd like to point out our language doesn't even have a word for how wrong you are.
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Dec 27, 2013 03:40
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I've been tooling around with a Shotgun user right now and it's a lot of fun. Shotgun Surgeon and all the assorted ammo types keeps shotguns viable against all enemies, while the knock down from And Stay Back triggers surprisingly often and gives you plenty of breathing room for reloading. I'm using a Hunting Shotgun with tube upgrade (even though Dinner Bell does more damage), and most things go splat with regular buckshot. If things get hairy, I can sweep dudes off their feet with a beanbag round followed by a dragon's breath  I love how there's 3 distinct builds and associated perks just within the Guns weapon lists: the high-DMG low-DPS manual action Cowboy guns, the high-DPS low-DMG automatic Grunt weapons, and shotguns. Keeps things interesting after so many replays.
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Dec 27, 2013 05:55
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King Doom posted:I'm replaying Skyrim now and I'd like to point out our language doesn't even have a word for how wrong you are. Let's be honest, Skyrim existing is a pretty impressive technical feat. It's a world the size of Grand Theft Auto only even more interactive (ie with a fully working physics engine and everything interactive). Additionally, GTA5 had approximately twice the budget. Outside of the showstopping stuff like Skyrim flat-out not working on PS3, I'm fine with Gamebryo's low-level bugs.
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Dec 27, 2013 06:40
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Byzantine posted:Maybe Boston, but the isle of Manhattan should be a twisted mass of rubble far, far worse than any part of DC. They could make it like a giant and even worse version of the Courier's Mile. I was actually underwhelmed at how quickly I sterilized that place, but then again I'm a level 50 Lord Death of Murder so
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Dec 27, 2013 06:42
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Yeah, but you could pull a similar to Vegas type Missile Defense System in place. Enough nukes got through to gently caress poo poo up, and the subsequent panic killed the majority of the population, but at this point, the rubble has mostly been reclaimed by nature or restructured by the new societies of the East. Or you could have the Isle of Manhattan is a huge rubble heap, unlivable, very dangerous from rads alone, but filled with relics of the Old World, that people will pay top dollar for.
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Dec 27, 2013 06:53
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moot the hopple posted:I've been tooling around with a Shotgun user right now and it's a lot of fun. Shotgun Surgeon and all the assorted ammo types keeps shotguns viable against all enemies, while the knock down from And Stay Back triggers surprisingly often and gives you plenty of breathing room for reloading. I'm using a Hunting Shotgun with tube upgrade (even though Dinner Bell does more damage), and most things go splat with regular buckshot. If things get hairy, I can sweep dudes off their feet with a beanbag round followed by a dragon's breath A lot of the time I find damage to be really swingy and to suddenly shift dramatically for non-obvious reasons. The Hyperbreeder completely destroyed everything in HH, especially the plant enemies transplanted from Vault 22, but a couple levels later in OWB it barely scratches them despite having an extra ~15 points in Energy Weapons. On an unrelated note, it's hilarious to take Super Slam, arm yourself with Love and Hate, pump yourself up with Rushing Water and Turbo, and then proceed to slo-mo air juggle a sentry robot.
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Dec 27, 2013 12:09
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Timeless Appeal posted:What's weird though is that I loving love Elder Scrolls lore. A lot of it is a mess, but a lot of it is pretty well realized. I love reading in-game texts and the wikis. I love Elder Scrolls lore for the same reason I like what New Vegas does with the Fallout lore. It's all bonkers and crazy, but in a way that makes thing feel real because history is bonkers and crazy. But the narrative in the games as you experience it always feels like the most generic fantasy crap. Was it Michael Kirkbride or someone else who left post-Morrowind/during-Oblivion that provided the best bits of background?
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Dec 27, 2013 12:16
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Just finished up OWB and fully upgraded the sink. It looks like the presidential suite has been reduced to a museum showing off my collection of companions, snow globes, and miscellaneous dlc items displayed on the desk and shelves of the bedroom. That was an amazing dlc, even better than Point Lookout in my opinion, which is saying quite a bit. I guess it's onto Lonesome Road now. Anything I should know before going in? Also, the upgraded war club with rushing water and turbo is absolutely insane.
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Dec 27, 2013 16:16
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Paracelsus posted:I never noticed Shotgun Surgeon doing very much for me, and sometimes armor-piercing in general seems to not work right; I'll shoot a Mister Gutsy in OWB with This Machine using both JSP and AP ammo, and neither will do very much unless it's a crit, even though the AP should cut their DT by 60%. It often feels like the only way for guns to do decent damage to armored enemies is to max out the number of crits you're doing. I think the sheer inflated health of Old World Blues' enemies will minimize the effect of specialty ammo, or any Guns weapons for that matter. FWIW the last time I took a Guns character through OWB, I burnt through my 1000 round stockpile of .308 after the first few groups of roboscorpions and just buckled down with the X2 antenna and the sonic emitter for the rest of the DLC, even though I had meager melee and energy weapons skills.
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Dec 27, 2013 16:34
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Sergeant_Crunch posted:I guess it's onto Lonesome Road now. Anything I should know before going in? Unlike the rest of the DLCs for New Vegas, Lonesome Road doesn't require you to stay in its area; you can go back to the Mojave any time. It's a lot more linear than OWB or Honest Hearts or even Dead Money.
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Dec 27, 2013 16:49
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Internet Kraken posted:I've always pictured Bethesda as being a bunch of "ideas guys", only with actual talent and resources to work with. So their design documents are a bunch of cool ideas they randomly come up with and then shove into a game. So they have all these neat environments filled with interesting set pieces. Then when it comes time to come up with a plot to tie all their ideas together they just kind of scribble on a piece of paper before going to back to designing more random crap. This is the best way of describing Fallout 3. It's a bunch of self-contained "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if..." scenarios with no attempt whatsoever to connect them with the game world at large. And they're not even really developed beyond the "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if..." stage at all, with stupid things like the Republic of Dave and Little Lamplight being the most egregious. Bethesda seems like they're extremely lazy more than anything.
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Dec 27, 2013 18:25
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SpookyLizard posted:Yeah, but you could pull a similar to Vegas type Missile Defense System in place. Enough nukes got through to gently caress poo poo up, and the subsequent panic killed the majority of the population, but at this point, the rubble has mostly been reclaimed by nature or restructured by the new societies of the East. I think the scale is going to be hard though. It's worth remembering that Vegas and DC are pretty tiny cities in the grand scheme of things. Boston isn't too big either, but it's surrounded by other cities. New York is loving massive. Even in the 50s, it's urban sprawl, encompassing what is essentially five separate cities and then also surrounded by smaller cities like White Plains and Jersey City.
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Dec 27, 2013 18:54
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You could look at it such that the nukes that got through didnt cause much obhsical damage, but did utterly ruin the chance for life. Sure the buildings are mostly in tact, but the radiation is so persistent it makes living in the sarcophagus at Chernobyl NPP look to be a good idea. Several hundred years later its still rad crazy, but you can do okay if youre careful and limit your exposure. E: yeah NYC is massive, so youd have to be actually fairly careful and use some good design sense and a better engine. If some skyscrapers had fallen due to neglect or weather or the bombs, you could bypass chunks of landscape that way or with some subway tunnels. Alternatively, new york is now a parking lot, with a supposedly intact and tech rich subway. SpookyLizard fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Dec 27, 2013 |
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Dec 27, 2013 19:38
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Timeless Appeal posted:I think that's a trick you really can't pull of more than once because it does diminish the horror of the war. I agree, it's bad enough that DC survived the war so intact. A five kiloton nuke hitting the White House would snap the Washington Monument like a twig, and that's puny; a third of the Hiroshima bomb. I know having cool areas and striking visuals outweighs realism in vidyagaems, especially with Fallout's SCIENCE! aesthetic, but I think having the skyscrapers of New York survive nuclear war and 200 years of rot will be pushing it too far. I mean, nothing in New Vegas was hit by the bombs (mostly because of House, but Zion/the Sierra Madre/Big MT/Hopeville escaped too). San Francisco and Los Angeles are livable, Pittsburg halfway dodged the bombs, Adams Air Force Base (where Air Force One is stationed) was fine, Point Lookout wasn't hit...if New York City is still intact, what the hell were the Chinese aiming at?
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Dec 27, 2013 21:15
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moot the hopple posted:I've been tooling around with a Shotgun user right now and it's a lot of fun. Shotgun Surgeon and all the assorted ammo types keeps shotguns viable against all enemies, while the knock down from And Stay Back triggers surprisingly often and gives you plenty of breathing room for reloading. I'm using a Hunting Shotgun with tube upgrade (even though Dinner Bell does more damage), and most things go splat with regular buckshot. If things get hairy, I can sweep dudes off their feet with a beanbag round followed by a dragon's breath If you're up for using a mod, my absolute favorite shotgun for synergy with And Stay Back is the Big Big Boomer, which turns the Big Boomer sawed off into a four barrel custom monstrosity that fires off about 28 pellets at once, basically guaranteeing anything you can hit with the thing is going to either die immediately or rag-doll hilariously, and usually both.
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Dec 27, 2013 21:48
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Honestly, it would've been way cooler if nearly the entire city Washington DC had been reduced to a crater, and all the survivors of the fallout were living in the unearthed subway system. (which incidentally, means no annoying samey copy/pasted dungeons to traverse DC)
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Dec 27, 2013 22:35
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Byzantine posted:I mean, nothing in New Vegas was hit by the bombs (mostly because of House, but Zion/the Sierra Madre/Big MT/Hopeville escaped too). San Francisco and Los Angeles are livable, Pittsburg halfway dodged the bombs, Adams Air Force Base (where Air Force One is stationed) was fine, Point Lookout wasn't hit...if New York City is still intact, what the hell were the Chinese aiming at? 
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Dec 27, 2013 22:47
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Lonesome Road has a lot in common with the Half-Life series, right down to blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearances of a mysterious figure. But mostly it's in the level design.
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Dec 27, 2013 23:45
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LividLiquid posted:Lonesome Road has a lot in common with the Half-Life series, right down to blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearances of a mysterious figure. But mostly it's in the level design. wait, what?
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Dec 28, 2013 00:09
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