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dolphinbomb
Apr 2, 2007



Grimey Drawer
Unless Sony magically decides to change their policy about mods (can only use existing in-game assets), there's absolutely no chance of it happening.

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Tankbuster
Oct 1, 2021

The_Doctor posted:

I doubt it, but I hope Fallout London can come to PS4.

it cant. PC only sorry

Arc Hammer
Mar 4, 2013

Got any deathsticks?
https://twitter.com/IGN/status/1767211654960308500?t=pispZ-Dlhf8f7_4UtVJRYA&s=19

Sure, Todd.

queeb
Jun 10, 2004

m



We're probably what, 10+ years away from another fallout? Starfield just comes out, then now elder scrolls 6 is up next, and then probably a fallout?

The_Doctor
Mar 29, 2007

"The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."
Yeah, Fallout 5 is at least 2030 away.

Arc Hammer
Mar 4, 2013

Got any deathsticks?
I'm not sure what would really need to be kept from the TV show. It's not like Fallout 5 won't have a new chapter of the BOS fighting a new strain of Super Mutants in a new junktown somewhere.

Macdeo Lurjtux
Jul 5, 2011

BRRREADSTOOORRM!
If you happen to have Prime but not a copy of Fallout 2, Twitch Prime is giving away free codes for it for the rest of the month.

tadashi
Feb 20, 2006

dolphinbomb posted:

Unless Sony magically decides to change their policy about mods (can only use existing in-game assets), there's absolutely no chance of it happening.

I also probably can't play Fallout London but it's because my Xbox One is from the first half of the twenty-teens.

Babe Magnet
Jun 2, 2008

Arc Hammer posted:

I'm not sure what would really need to be kept from the TV show. It's not like Fallout 5 won't have a new chapter of the BOS fighting a new strain of Super Mutants in a new junktown somewhere.

the showrunners probably got to see a lot of behind-the-scenes and pre-production stuff for 4/76/the next game so todd's just drawing a line on what they could use, I'm guessing

Mantis42
Jul 26, 2010

What's a good way to learn how to mod these games? I've had some ideas I've wanted to try out forever but I'm a little intimidated about starting.

WebDO
Sep 25, 2009



Not made in Gamebryo
Has characters
Has a plot
Has a setting that isn't procedurally generated

Sounds like they checked all the relevant boxes, Todd

tadashi
Feb 20, 2006

Mantis42 posted:

What's a good way to learn how to mod these games? I've had some ideas I've wanted to try out forever but I'm a little intimidated about starting.

You have to learn the mod creation kit and also understand how things are stitched together under the hood in FO4. But it looks like just modding items is something you can do by copying what other modders have done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f_suBDqYLg

Max Wilco
Jan 23, 2012

I'm just trying to go through life without looking stupid.

It's not working out too well...
I re-read the Fallout 2 LP on the Archive again, and I'm thinking about giving Fallout 2 another try, but I wanted to ask whether I should use the unofficial patch and/or Restoration patch, or just play it as it is. I've got the GOG version, which I think has the widescreen fix set up already, but that's it.

Reason I ask is because I know the unofficial patch fixes some exploits and alters some things, but I know without it, there are some bugs regarding finishing quests, getting certain endings, etc.

I'll also ask what makes for a good build. I've always tried to lean toward passing dialog checks and using Small Guns for combat, but with F1 and F2, I find I have a harder time doing that.

Max Wilco fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Mar 12, 2024

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006
I'd go with unofficial patch but not restoration for first playthrough.

For character build here's one from a GameFaqs guide:

code:
Primary Skills      Traits         Tagged Skills
--------------      ------         --------------
Strength:     4     Gifted         Small Guns
Perception:   6     Small Frame    Lockpick
Endurance:    6                    Speech
Charisma:     8
Intelligence: 9
Agility:      10
Luck:         5
(You should check out the GameFaqs guides and also this one.)

Megazver fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Mar 12, 2024

Entorwellian
Jun 30, 2006

Northern Flicker
Anna's Hummingbird

Sorry, but the people have spoken.



Max Wilco posted:

I re-read the Fallout 2 LP on the Archive again, and I'm thinking about giving Fallout 2 another try, but I wanted to ask whether I should use the unofficial patch and/or Restoration patch, or just play it as it is. I've got the GOG version, which I think has the widescreen fix set up already, but that's it.

Reason I ask is because I know the unofficial patch fixes some exploits and alters some things, but I know without it, there are some bugs regarding finishing quests, getting certain endings, etc.

I'll also ask what makes for a good build. I've always tried to lean toward passing dialog checks and using Small Guns for combat, but with F1 and F2, I find I have a harder time doing that.

I highly recommend using the restoration patch. It's kind of similar to the restoration content for the unofficial Vampire: Bloodlines patch: The quality of the new content is haphazard, but none of it feels like it was out of place or inappropriate (a couple of the new locations were pretty good, even.)

Rappaport
Oct 2, 2013

Max Wilco posted:

I re-read the Fallout 2 LP on the Archive again, and I'm thinking about giving Fallout 2 another try, but I wanted to ask whether I should use the unofficial patch and/or Restoration patch, or just play it as it is. I've got the GOG version, which I think has the widescreen fix set up already, but that's it.

Reason I ask is because I know the unofficial patch fixes some exploits and alters some things, but I know without it, there are some bugs regarding finishing quests, getting certain endings, etc.

I'll also ask what makes for a good build. I've always tried to lean toward passing dialog checks and using Small Guns for combat, but with F1 and F2, I find I have a harder time doing that.

The officially patched F2 is playable to the end. There are a couple of ending slides that are messed up similarly to F1, but :shrug: F2 by itself is already a big game, and while some of the areas that the restoration patch adds are cool, I'd say you weren't missing anything essential. The game features some companions you can recruit, and the restoration patch adds some quest content to one of them in particular that might be worth it for a second run, depending on if you pick them up and like them on your first time around.

The quintessential F1/2 build is the smooth-talking smart sniper. This lets you access most content and gives you non-shooty options every now and then. F2 lets your companions pick up some slack when it comes to non-combat skills such as repair and healing (depending on what the companions are good at, they'll let you know), but this isn't incredibly well implemented and e.g. the science-skill-themed companion usually can't help you with the most meaningful science skill checks since those happen inside dialogue rather than 'using' a skill by clicking on an object in the game world. Which is to say you might want to invest in passive skills like speech and science if you are interested in seeing that kind of content, there are a few places in F2 which are not utterly ruined by thermo-nuclear warfare and where knowing some science might be helpful. That said, you can just shoot your way through pretty much all of the game if you want.

Weapons-wise small guns are good all the way through the game, you eventually get late-game small guns skilled weapons that are absolute monsters (and late-game enemies have some of these too). There are more than 3 big guns skill weapons in F2, unlike in F1 :argh:, and they're OK to overpowered, but most chew through ammo and are liable to kill any friends you took along. Energy weapons are great, but some of the better ones have an annoying death animation :ohno: that makes your dead enemies drop their loot on the ground and if you want to get it, it's a pain in the rear end.

Agility is the most important ability, since it translates into action points directly. Intelligence determines your skill points per level, and even though F2's level cap is 99, more skill points is still nicer in the early game. There are also intelligence checks for some dialogue options. Charisma's big sell is that it determines how many companions you can lug around simultaneously; if you want five buddies at once, you can, but the engine does start to creak a little with that set-up. Also the risk of friendly fire increases :ohdear: I'm basically just re-iterating the smooth-talking smart sniper here, but a talky main character with violent friends is a-okay too. Vice versa not so much.

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006
I spent some time watching reactions to the Fallout trailer on Youtube (while doing other stuff), trying to find people who haven't played the games. None of the reactions are terribly interesting in themselves, but I wanted to see what the general reaction of normies who don't really play videogames or RPGs was.

They seem to think the trailer was cool, which bodes well for the show.

Gnome de plume
Sep 5, 2006

Hell.
Fucking.
Yes.

Had you read the other one though

Entorwellian
Jun 30, 2006

Northern Flicker
Anna's Hummingbird

Sorry, but the people have spoken.




My favourite LP of all time <3

Max Wilco
Jan 23, 2012

I'm just trying to go through life without looking stupid.

It's not working out too well...

Entorwellian posted:

I highly recommend using the restoration patch. It's kind of similar to the restoration content for the unofficial Vampire: Bloodlines patch: The quality of the new content is haphazard, but none of it feels like it was out of place or inappropriate (a couple of the new locations were pretty good, even.)

I already started a playthrough without it, but if I'm feeling up to it, maybe I'll go through it again with the restoration patch.

Speaking of the restoration patch, I decided to read through the Fallout Bible after not having looked at it in years, and something occurred to me: does the EPA sort of read like the first draft of The Sink from Old World Blues?



I've read that one, too.

TROGG CAN PUNCH BETTER! :downs:


Rappaport posted:

The quintessential F1/2 build is the smooth-talking smart sniper. This lets you access most content and gives you non-shooty options every now and then. F2 lets your companions pick up some slack when it comes to non-combat skills such as repair and healing (depending on what the companions are good at, they'll let you know), but this isn't incredibly well implemented and e.g. the science-skill-themed companion usually can't help you with the most meaningful science skill checks since those happen inside dialogue rather than 'using' a skill by clicking on an object in the game world. Which is to say you might want to invest in passive skills like speech and science if you are interested in seeing that kind of content, there are a few places in F2 which are not utterly ruined by thermo-nuclear warfare and where knowing some science might be helpful. That said, you can just shoot your way through pretty much all of the game if you want.

I ended up copying the build from the LP (just at character creation), but both it and the recommended build from the Nearly Ultimate Fallout 2 guide make use of the Smooth Talking Sniper build.

I think I was using the same build on a playthrough I started on my old computer. I had managed to get ahold of the Highwayman and was doing quests in New Reno. I think where I ran into a roadblock was trying to get into the Sierra Army Depot (there's supposed to be some trick to get past the turrets, but I couldn't figure out the path.

For this current attempt, though, I've made it to Vault City and picked up Cassidy, so I've got him and Sulik backing me up (I didn't free Vic yet). Here's my current stats:

code:
       				 FALLOUT
                         VAULT-13 PERSONNEL RECORD
                       30 September 2241  0502 hours

  Name: Max                Age: 32               Gender: Male
 Level: 06                 Exp: 15,960       Next Level: 21,000

 ::: Statistics :::
       Strength: 05         Hit Points: 050/050         Sequence: 05
     Perception: 08        Armor Class: 016         Healing Rate: 01
      Endurance: 05      Action Points: 09       Critical Chance: 006%
       Charisma: 06       Melee Damage: 01          Carry Weight: 150 lbs.
   Intelligence: 09        Damage Res.: 020%
        Agility: 08     Radiation Res.: 010%
           Luck: 06        Poison Res.: 025%


 ::: Traits :::
  Gifted
  Bloody Mess
 ::: Perks :::
  Awareness
  Quick Pockets

 ::: Karma :::
  Karma: 228 (Wanderer)

 ::: Reputation :::
  Arroyo: Idolized
  Klamath: Liked
  The Den: Accepted
  Vault City: Neutral
  Gecko: Neutral
  Modoc: Idolized
  Ghost Farm: Idolized

 ::: Skills :::                ::: Kills :::
  Small Guns ..... 101%        Men ............ 002
  Big Guns ....... 006%        Women .......... 001
  Energy Weapons . 006%        Radscorpions ... 016
  Unarmed ........ 065%        Rats ........... 056
  Melee Weapons .. 056%        Plants ......... 012
  Throwing ....... 022%        Geckos ......... 005
  First aid ...... 026%        Giant Ants ..... 012
  Doctor ......... 076%
  Sneak .......... 019%
  Lockpick ....... 024%
  Steal .......... 014%
  Traps .......... 018%
  Science ........ 032%
  Repair ......... 020%
  Speech ......... 084%
  Barter ......... 015%
  Gambling ....... 020%
  Outdoorsman .... 036%


 ::: Inventory :::
  10x Healing Powder       1,042x Money             1x Vic's Water Flask   
  4x Stimpak               3x 10mm JHP              1x Trapper Town Key    
  1x Crowbar               1x Xander Root           1x Combat Knife        
  1x Tool                  1x Fuel Cell Regulator   1x Cat's Paw Magazine  
  3x 10mm AP               1x Shovel                1x Fuzzy Painting      
  1x .44 Magnum JHP        1x Rope                  34x Plant Spike        
  1x 10mm Pistol           1x Leather Jacket      

                                      Total Weight: 74 lbs.
-

I was going to save this for a later post (maybe once I finished the game), but I started jotting things down earlier, and I wanted to share while it's still fresh in my mind.

The issue that I've had with the classic Fallout games (which might not be exclusive to it, but also a lot of other RPGs) is actually getting going in the game. To give an example, about a year or so ago, I finally played through Morrowind, and while it was a little rocky at first (I think it was the third time I tried starting the game), I got to a point where I was finally able to get over the early-game hump, and hit a stride where I was really having fun with the game.

With Fallout 1, I started the game maybe a half-a-dozen times, but I've only ever finished it once. What I recall from that playthrough is that immediately prior to it, I scrapped a start where I had made it to Vault 15, only to realize I hadn't put enough points into Strength to wield the rifle that you find in the Vault.

However, I think my problem isn't figuring out a build during character creation; there's recommended builds out that help with that. The issue is figuring out leveling. Since I've got a IN of 9, I get 18 skill points whenever I get a level. However, I don't really know how to distribute the points in a way that feels efficient. I put three or so into my Tag skills, but then I don't know how to distribute them with the rest of them.

For example, I know I want to bump up Small Guns since that's my main combat skill, so that takes priority so I can dispatch enemies without fuss. Then I put points into Speech so I can either resolve quests peacefully, get better rewards, or save money. Doctor's good because I can use it to heal myself and my companions, and it's also a skill check that can be used to complete quests. However, there's points where I need use of other skills (locked doors, traps, repairing things, etc.) and that's when I'm not sure how much I should be spending, and where.

I think the problem is how skills are scaled. In F3/FNV, the skills scale from 1-100, so I feel like it's a bit easier to try and balance everything. You still get the bonus in putting points in your tagged skills, but it feels like you still have good amount of points to put into other skills as needed. In F1/F2, though, the skills scale to 300%, so it doesn't feel as clear how much you need to keep pace, especially as you progress later into the game.

Like, let's say you decide to put all my points from a level into a single skill. If you've got Small Guns at 45%, and it's tagged, then those 18 points are doubled, and you've got 81% after you're done. However, if your Science skill is 21%, and it isn't tagged, then it's just the flat 18 points, and it goes up to 39%. It's still a pretty decent boost, but you're probably not going to dump an entire level of skill points into untagged Barter.

Plus, once you hit 100% in a skill, the cost to buy further points goes up to two, and then to three once you hit 200%. There's a section in the Nearly Ultimate Fallout 2 Guide (that I just found while writing this section) that says:

quote:

As a rule, it's not worth it to raise most skills above 101%. Combat skills can be improved beyond that for an extra edge until you reach the point where you get the maximum 95% chance to hit against all opponents and from any reasonable range (which takes a bit longer if you practice the art of aimed shots or blows).

Maybe the game manual has some more details that I'm not aware of, but the fact they can be raise about 100% makes me assume that you need to keep boosting them to keep pace with the challenges the game throws at you (or I guess to minimize failing rolls and having to reload, depending on the situation).

As said, Fallout 2 has a level cap of 99, so there's room to gain a lot of levels and raise the untagged skills (I know there's a perk that let's you tag a 4th skill). However, the challenge there is racking up the EXP to do that. Early on, I was able to do stuff like fix the well in Arroyo and help Torr guard the brahmin to get exp that way. However, when I tried fighting the plants infesting Hakunin's garden, I had to run back to him to heal so I could get through the fight (which, maybe you're supposed to do?). Then I tried taking on the geckos to the west to save the dog, but I found I couldn't survive fighting two geckos at once. I had to come back with once I had gotten the 10mm pistol and Sulik to make it through.

I think it's an issue with a build not being heavily geared towards combat. If you don't have enough points in a combat skill to do decent damage or hit targets consistently, or you haven't gotten access to decent armor, then combat is either going to be a slog, or you're not going to survive past the first round for some encounters. That's where having companions come in; they pick up the slack when it comes to combat. (That said, even with companions, a shotgunner may still target you twice at the start of a fight and you end up dying (which happened when I got into an encounter on the way from Modoc back to The Den). Sulik's the first companion you encounter, but to recruit him, you have to pay off his debt, and it's here where I've got another issue.

It feels like there's a sort of linearity to how you have to approach things. To be able to get through the rat caves or the geckos in Arroyo, you need Sulik backing you up, but to do that, you need to be able to pay his debt, which means scraping up the cash, which means doing one of the other quests in Klamath to get items you can sell for money to pay that debt. I'm not saying, 'Oh, the freedom to go wherever and do whatever in Fallout is a lie'; I know there's a way to build a character so you can head down south and get a suit of power armor from Navarro or somewhere to trivialize the early game, and I realize that with a different build, I could go through the rat caves and fight the geckos without Sulik's help. What I'm saying is almost feels like you have to meta-game to progress.

To use New Vegas as an example, in the beginning, you're told you have to take the Long 15 to get to The Strip, because the direct path up north is too dangerous because of deathclaws and cazadores. You can take the direct path if you build the character right, find certain items, or use certain techniques. However, in taking the intended long route, you learn about the world, complete quests, gain companions, and acquire new gear. The difference between that and Fallout 1/2 is that with FNV, it doesn't feel like you're really gated at each area or settlement, where you have to complete quests to get enough EXP in order to survive in the next area. If you decide you don't want to deal with things in Primm, you can move on down south to the Mojave Outpost without fear of running up against a wall (at least from what I remember, it's been a while since I played FNV, so maybe there are some level requirements with the route).

-

There's more I want to talk about, but it's getting late, so to condense a really long, whiny, and stupid post down, a lot of the time I feel like I'm playing classic Fallout "wrong", where it feels like I'm almost fighting against the game, and I don't know if it's because of my approach, my attitude, or just flaws with the games.

Max Wilco fucked around with this message at 07:53 on Mar 16, 2024

Rappaport
Oct 2, 2013

I think we may have a small communication disconnect hazard here, since I grew up with F1&2 and conversely found New Vegas kinda scary with its slightly different level up scheme :ohdear:

Anyway, general impressions for F2, F1 just has less of everything so less variety to exploit utilize: Tag 3 things you want to be good at, dump most of your early skill points in those. If none of the three is a combat skill, invest in one of those to the slight detriment of your tagged skills. There is a thing to this if you know where a lot of Guns & Bullets magazines are, and you can probably get decent (~100%) melee skills from the Army Depot.

The skill thing has a bit of an "early era game design" thing going on where the game doesn't exactly telegraph which ones actually need >100%. I think the manual (!) listed the pre-requisites for high-level perks like Sniper, but other than that it's guessing or metagaming. Shoveling points into a gun skill (or even two) pays off until the late game since the Enclave dudes and super mutants + sundry remnants of the Master's army are bullet sponges, but most passive or interact-with-environment-skills don't necessarily benefit from 100+%. To get the best buddy out of the Army Depot you want something like 121% science, and meta-gaming that means ignoring the skill for some time since you only start running into science books around the middle of the mid-game. There's some others, like getting a decent Outdoorsman for finding the Alien Blaster and some Repair skill checks, and of course Speech, but I'd say in general for non-combat skills you can just choose your priorities (do you want to loot boxes, loot people, talk to people, gamble keep a number key pressed down for 5 minutes for a lot of money, etc.) and level them up in order accordingly to 100%. Maybe above that later on once you're rounded out sufficiently for your tastes. Funnily enough the F4 leveling up scheme reminds me of this, even if it gate-keeps higher level lock-picking and hacking behind level limits :argh:

This is another flavour argument I suppose, but F2 isn't as much on rails IMO as it just presents most green blobs, I mean locales, as fairly individual areas to explore and utilize. Of course there are several multi-location quests and these dictate a lot of your ending slides (!), but let's look at some examples. Modoc is more or less its own thing, but frustratingly you have to interact with Karl in the Den in a specific way to get most of it going, and this hinges on the player doing the old-school "click on everything" approach to games. Klamath has a lot of poo poo to do, and eventually you will want to clear out the rat cave etc., but there is just enough money and sellable loot in town that you can just raise Sulik's bail money and get out of dodge if you want to. Of course the player doesn't know this beforehand, so this counts as meta-gaming or expecting the player to interact with every bookcase and box in town. The Den is mostly self-contained quests, Vault City and Gekko are a pair, etc. Redding is the hub for a lot of quests involving other green blobs, but that location not-so-subtly hints that you shouldn't tackle it very early on anyway even if you stumble into it by accident, and the game's early phase arguably ends with getting the car which makes the multi-location quests less of a pain in the rear end.

F2 has more content that benefits from meta-gaming than F1. I think it's more feasible to go in blind in F1 with a "diplomat" character (just not the stock one!) and have an OK time, assuming one doesn't mind reloading a bunch when Ian turns them into a fine paste. F2 is straight up a meaner environment from the get-go, traveling from the Den to Vault City can involve running into six guys in decent armour and wielding machine guns and that is game over (reload), even with all the companions available up to that point. Coincidentally this is also where 10 AG pays off even with a character planning to tag a 4th skill in a gun type at level 12, you can run away from the high-level raiders! Meta that, dumb pixel pirates :laugh: This is why the diplo small guns dude is a good first guess for a character, really, you can try and shoot your way out of fights where you're under-leveled by save-scumming and less meta strategies that the dumb-as-bricks enemies won't counter. (They just have enough fire power to gib you at every turn) And it's also meta-game knowledge, but F2 has more gun options for non-physical characters; of course even F1 has the power armour that straight up gives the player 3 (?) points of ST and then you can wield most guns, F2 also has a perk to by-pass the ST reqs on guns, etc., and it even kind of fits The Plot™ that you'd be a punchy spear-owning tribal and learning to use guns during your adventure :unsmith:

The isometric Fallouts in general are meaner games than the Baldur's Gates, to use a contemporaneous comparison, and especially in F2 you'll feel more like the D&D 1st level weakling until you're about a third of the way in to the game world. I can see how this'd feel like a major potential frustration point, especially 30 years after the game came out and with subsequent generations of nicer (as in less mean :colbert:) games.

What bugs me is that the game subverts its own expectations. The game has rooms full of containers you can interact with, and a lot of them are just empty. This is explicitly wasting the player's time, since other locations do reward checking places. This inconsistency is present in a lot of places in the game. A lot of the early game has you dealing with enemies while only having fairly weak or low range guns yourself, so it feels like going up against several bullet sponge enemies at once. Some level 10-ish characters can legit die to the "a pack of wolves" ambush event, and that thing takes forever even with the combat animations at max speed, and just :argh: It's not a "skill issue" as the children these days say, F2 is just a rough ride at the start no matter what you do (unless as you say you metagame it to hell and go pick up power armour and a late game gun in the first 20 mins). I don't really mind, but I do notice it in myself that I'm more reluctant to pick up a completely new gaming experience these days :corsair: if it keeps kicking my teeth in 15+ hours into the experience, so obviously the nostalgia goggles are a factor.

Rappaport fucked around with this message at 07:57 on Mar 16, 2024

Max Wilco
Jan 23, 2012

I'm just trying to go through life without looking stupid.

It's not working out too well...

Rappaport posted:

This is another flavour argument I suppose, but F2 isn't as much on rails IMO as it just presents most green blobs, I mean locales, as fairly individual areas to explore and utilize. Of course there are several multi-location quests and these dictate a lot of your ending slides (!), but let's look at some examples. Modoc is more or less its own thing, but frustratingly you have to interact with Karl in the Den in a specific way to get most of it going, and this hinges on the player doing the old-school "click on everything" approach to games. Klamath has a lot of poo poo to do, and eventually you will want to clear out the rat cave etc., but there is just enough money and sellable loot in town that you can just raise Sulik's bail money and get out of dodge if you want to. Of course the player doesn't know this beforehand, so this counts as meta-gaming or expecting the player to interact with every bookcase and box in town. The Den is mostly self-contained quests, Vault City and Gekko are a pair, etc. Redding is the hub for a lot of quests involving other green blobs, but that location not-so-subtly hints that you shouldn't tackle it very early on anyway even if you stumble into it by accident, and the game's early phase arguably ends with getting the car which makes the multi-location quests less of a pain in the rear end.

I mentioned I got killed trying to go back to The Den from Modoc, and that was because I forgot to talk to Karl. I had just left The Den and started heading east to Vault City and found Modoc, and when I reported back from the Ghost Farm, Jo went, 'But what about Karl? Maybe they killed him!', and gave me a month to try and track him down, or they would attack the farm. Once I reloaded back at the Ghost Farm, I went back to The Den first and talked to Karl, then went back to Jo so I could finish the quest. A little annoying, but at same time, I like that the game takes that into account. I just didn't think to talk to Karl because I stupidly forgot to read that in the guide, but discerning who's an NPC you can converse with and who's just a generic citizen is difficult. You get the quest from Becky to collect money from Fred, but the message box text doesn't identify him as 'Fred', but as 'a citizen of the Den'.

I dunno how much of what I sold to get the cash for Sulik came from looting the containers or from selling the radscorpion tails I got. Cashflow is actually another one of the issues I'm having. The Nearly Ultimate Fallout 2 Guide says that at point, you don't have to worry about cash, but I haven't gotten to that point yet. It's why I didn't pick up Vic while I was in the Den. You have to pay $1000 to free him, and that would have left me with only like $100 or so left over. I thought maybe I'd get a lot of loot off the guards at the church once they were defeated, but you don't get a lot from them.


Rappaport posted:

What bugs me is that the game subverts its own expectations. The game has rooms full of containers you can interact with, and a lot of them are just empty. This is explicitly wasting the player's time, since other locations do reward checking places.

I noticed too that there are a lot of empty containers, and areas that are just kind of sparse. Trapper Town has a lot of ground to cover, and the building are a bit of a maze, but there's only a small handful of things to pick up.

One issue I have is that I'm not sure which things count as a container, and which aren't. You can hold Shift to highlight pickups on the ground (don't know if that's in the vanilla game, or if it's added by one of the patches), but containers aren't highlighted, so you just have to mouse over things and see if you get the Hand icon to interact with them. I was trying to figure out where you find some of the items in the rat caves because it says to check the pile of bones, but I didn't think that was a container (although to be fair, I spent so much time trying to find it because I progressed to the next floor of the caves, and was looking in the wrong place).

Part of the problem could be that I'm playing the game in widescreen, and so some elements end up really small. When doing the Temple of Trials, I could only barely see the pressure plates you have to disarm. At the same time, though navigating overall is a lot easier when you can see the entirety of an area at once, instead of having to scroll constantly.

Rappaport posted:

It's not a "skill issue" as the children these days say, F2 is just a rough ride at the start no matter what you do (unless as you say you metagame it to hell and go pick up power armour and a late game gun in the first 20 mins). I don't really mind, but I do notice it in myself that I'm more reluctant to pick up a completely new gaming experience these days :corsair: if it keeps kicking my teeth in 15+ hours into the experience, so obviously the nostalgia goggles are a factor.

I considered doing this, because when I finally played through Arcanum, I went with the cheese build where you just spam the Harm spell to get through encounters. I ended up really liking the game, but I realize part of that was because I went with that build to help make combat less of a chore. Additionally, Arcanum has the real-time/turn-based toggle, which you can also exploit.

Rappaport
Oct 2, 2013

I don't think there is any way of high-lighting containers. The game only has so many graphics for them, so you sort of get used to it, but sometimes there are random things like mangled corpses you have to interact with. More 90's game design where they expect the player to mouse over / try to mash everything in sight I guess. Fun and absolutely useless bit of trivia: If you try to insert a coin into a Nuka-cola machine, some of them give you a Nuka-cola. You can get addicted to Nuka-cola. And sometimes the machine has a malfunction and it shoots the bottle at you, and you might lose a hit point or two. Exciting!

I think sometime after you hit Reno you don't need to sweat about cash that much. Also, it's possible to murder Metzger and his goons right after you get into the Den; steal the shotgun from Metzger himself, and if you really don't mind save-scumming you can steal some 10 mm ammo from the goons too, give Sulik the SMG and hope for the best :ohdear: It's a little bit tedious since you will have to reload a bunch, you're kind of relying on criticals to take out Metzger and preferably some of the drugged up goons ASAP. But, again, this is meta information and only feasible for some characters.

I'm playing with the Steam F2 install, and if I go to the game options from the main menu, I can adjust the display options to scale the resolution by a factor of two, so it blows up the sprites and graphics to twice their size even on a sensible resolution. I think this might be from the high res patch?

Babe Magnet
Jun 2, 2008

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_7jXPMu0Nk

what in the gently caress

Arc Hammer
Mar 4, 2013

Got any deathsticks?

You mean "what in the goddamn?", surely.

Babe Magnet
Jun 2, 2008

didn't want to drag benny into this

acidx
Sep 24, 2019

right clicking is stealing

That was more than a little cheesy. Gonna be weird watching this show when my wasteland is full of concentration camps, nuka raiders, and factories for turning dead bodies into jet.

Splorange
Feb 23, 2011


Wellp, that vibes like a TV show in a TV show.

The_Doctor
Mar 29, 2007

"The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."
Definitely not the first scene unless they immediately do a “well, how did we get here?”

Rinkles
Oct 24, 2010

What I'm getting at is...
Do you feel the same way?
what's with PA voice?

Rappaport
Oct 2, 2013

The_Doctor posted:

Definitely not the first scene unless they immediately do a “well, how did we get here?”

"Hi. Yes, that's me in the blue jump suit. You may be wondering how I got here..."

Entorwellian
Jun 30, 2006

Northern Flicker
Anna's Hummingbird

Sorry, but the people have spoken.




Whoa boy... That looks bad :(

edit: actually that is pretty on par with Fallout 4's dialogue.

Entorwellian fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Mar 21, 2024

Rinkles
Oct 24, 2010

What I'm getting at is...
Do you feel the same way?
i'm sure it still cost a lot, but it looked cheaper than i expected

steinrokkan
Apr 2, 2011



Soiled Meat

Entorwellian posted:

Whoa boy... That looks bad :(

edit: actually that is pretty on par with Fallout 4's dialogue.

"THEY CAN FLY NOW? THEY CAN FLY NOW!"

Babe Magnet
Jun 2, 2008

not a big fan of the arm jets, even if it looked good (it does not lol)

the paradigm shift
Jan 18, 2006

still haven't watched it because it's 2024 and there's no captions on the video

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006

Babe Magnet posted:

not a big fan of the arm jets, even if it looked good (it does not lol)

It's how the actual jetpacks that we have currently have work.

They're also about as graceful.

Tankbuster
Oct 1, 2021

steinrokkan posted:

"THEY CAN FLY NOW? THEY CAN FLY NOW!"

They don't say that do they?

Arc Hammer
Mar 4, 2013

Got any deathsticks?
I dont know how any of you can say that looks bad when it's clearly Walton Ghoulggins having a ton of fun listening to and looking at all the goofy stuff happening around him.

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Megazver
Jan 13, 2006
Yeah, I'm gonna say I am feeling good about this as well.

Ella Purnell is obviously a dork, but that's her character. The power armor guy looks goofy, but that's fine. (Just based on what we've seen in the trailer, I suspect it's the third lead wearing the armor for the first time after the rest of his squad got wrecked by the yao guai.) Walton Goggins is great as expected.

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