Fallout: New Vegas: Ain't that a cuck in the bed?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Fallout: New Vegas: Ain't that a cuck in the bed?

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

Death by Cranes posted:

It was the same thing with Oblivion's DLC the Shimmering Isles. The bad/good guy Sheogorath was expertly voiced and after completion, you went back to the dreary old vanilla voice acting.

I don't know what you're talking abPATROLLING THE MOJAVE ALMOST MAKES YOU WISH FOR A NUCLEAR WINTER

# ? Feb 6, 2012 20:32

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# ? May 23, 2024 07:36

Death by Cranes: May 3, 2006; These Blockbuster bombs don't go off unless you hit them ju-u-u-u-st right.

Wolfsheim posted:

I don't know what you're talking abPATROLLING THE MOJAVE ALMOST MAKES YOU WISH FOR A NUCLEAR WINTER

Hahahah - oh god yes.
I never understood why Bethesda insists on doing this with every game their develop.
Why record the same line in 5-6 different male voices and again in female voices.
Also when speaking to an old lady for instance - her voice frail with age. Until she says "Goodbye" with the warmth and robustness of a butch 30-something woman.

VVV Yeah yeah, but the phenomena still persists.

Death by Cranes fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Feb 6, 2012

# ? Feb 6, 2012 20:53

Naky: May 30, 2001; Resident Crackhead

Death by Cranes posted:

Hahahah - oh god yes.
I never understood why Bethesda insists on doing this with every game their develop.
Why record the same line in 5-6 different male voices and again in female voices.
Also when speaking to an old lady for instance - her voice frail with age. Until she says "Goodbye" with the warmth and robustness of a butch 30-something woman.

Bethesda didn't develop this one. Obsidian did, and it's still better than FO3's.

# ? Feb 6, 2012 20:57

Opposing Farce: Apr 1, 2010; Ever since our drop-off service, I never read a book.
There's always something else around, plus I owe the library nineteen bucks.

Death by Cranes posted:

Hahahah - oh god yes.
I never understood why Bethesda insists on doing this with every game their develop.
Why record the same line in 5-6 different male voices and again in female voices.
Also when speaking to an old lady for instance - her voice frail with age. Until she says "Goodbye" with the warmth and robustness of a butch 30-something woman.

Yeah, and it gets even more weird when you start noticing that there are like half a dozen voices that show up over and over and over again, even in named NPCs.

Especially when some of them are obviously one of those guys who shows up in pretty much every game ever and always uses the same voice (hello again, Yuri Lowenthal).

Still, you can't really blame them; VAs are expensive and voice overs can take up a surprising amount of disc space, so you're pretty much inevitably going to have to start repeating stuff if you want to make the game world feel even remotely populated.

# ? Feb 6, 2012 21:02

Tweet Me Balls: Apr 14, 2009

The thing with the DLC is that you couldn't really afford to not have good voice acting. There's about five real speaking roles on average for most of them. Lonesome road had about one. And there's a real lack of average schmucks that don't want to interact with you outside of Honest Hearts, so recycled walk-by comments feel a lot less noticeable.

# ? Feb 6, 2012 21:02

AG3: Feb 4, 2004; Ask me about spending hundreds of dollars on Mass Effect 2 emoticons and Avatars.; Oven Wrangler

Wolfsheim posted:

I don't know what you're talking abPATROLLING THE MOJAVE ALMOST MAKES YOU WISH FOR A NUCLEAR WINTER

I'm not sure which bothered me most actually, this line or the arrow to the knee in Skyrim. At least the nuclear winter didn't become a massive, retarded meme (that I know of at least).

# ? Feb 6, 2012 21:41

Death by Cranes: May 3, 2006; These Blockbuster bombs don't go off unless you hit them ju-u-u-u-st right.

Nuclear winter would be awesome/metal as a tattoo.
This is just horrible..

Own hosting - and sorry if it has been posted 50 times already.

# ? Feb 6, 2012 22:10

Leinadi: Sep 14, 2009

AG3 posted:

I'm not sure which bothered me most actually, this line or the arrow to the knee in Skyrim. At least the nuclear winter didn't become a massive, retarded meme (that I know of at least).

It was sort of a mini-thing in the Fallout after New Vegas was just released, but it didn't blow up like the arrow to the knee thing (thank god).

Still, it is annoying. Particularly because there is actually a loving ridiculous amount of "barks"/one-liners for NPCs. Even after replaying the game a lot I still hear a lot of lines that I never heard before. But some of the lines just seem a lot more prevailent (the nuclear winter one for example)

# ? Feb 6, 2012 22:15

vyelkin: Jan 2, 2011

One of my favourite New Vegas things ever happened a couple weeks back:

You know that quest for the King when you have to investigate the shady 'escort' who protects people in Freeside for money? Well you're supposed to pretend to be a naive newbie who's just arrived in town and ask for his protection. You're definitely not supposed to let him know what you're up to. I played my part, and was walking along behind him when up runs a member of the Kings, stops me, and yells "HEY YOU'RE THAT GUY THAT'S BEEN HELPING OUT AROUND HERE RIGHT? THE KING SAID TO GIVE YOU THIS," and handed me some lovely item.

Luckily Obsidian didn't think to program anything about this in, so my faithful guardian didn't notice and just kept on going.

# ? Feb 7, 2012 00:05

ClearAirTurbulence: Apr 20, 2010; The earth has music for those who listen.

The King's little gifts crack me up. I imagine him eating dinner with his gang when there's one molerat steak left, nobody wants it, so the King tells someone to give it to you. It would be funny to meet whoever the King used to give stuff to before you showed up, maybe he'd be hungry because he'd come to rely on the King's little snack deliveries.

# ? Feb 7, 2012 02:22

resting bort face: Jun 2, 2000; by Fluffdaddy

I just noticed that the marquee outside The Tops changes after you complete Talent Pool. Also discovered the cavern full of lakelurks & an NCR survivor, north across the river from Caesar's camp. I'm on my 5th playthrough.

ClearAirTurbulence posted:

The King's little gifts crack me up. I imagine him eating dinner with his gang when there's one molerat steak left, nobody wants it, so the King tells someone to give it to you. It would be funny to meet whoever the King used to give stuff to before you showed up, maybe he'd be hungry because he'd come to rely on the King's little snack deliveries.

Usually it's like pinto beans or whatever, but one time I got a stimpack from the King. Aww, King, I didn't help you out for gifts. I just wanted to hear you talk some.

# ? Feb 7, 2012 06:59

Pope Guilty: Nov 6, 2006; The human animal is a beautiful and terrible creature, capable of limitless compassion and unfathomable cruelty.

A King ran up to me and gave me a potato. At least in Megaton they used to give me stimpacks and ammo.

# ? Feb 7, 2012 07:00

cat with hands: Mar 14, 2006; When I shit I like to scream "WORSHIP THE GOD EMPEROR ON HIS GOLDEN THRONE." Mom hates it.

How long production time did FNV have and how large was the team?

# ? Feb 7, 2012 09:33

Smol: Jun 1, 2011; Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus.

cat with hands posted:

How long production time did FNV have and how large was the team?

18 months. I don't know exactly how big they are, but I'd guess around 150, with 50-75% of them working on FNV.

# ? Feb 7, 2012 19:13

Police Automaton: Mar 17, 2009; "You are standing in a thread. Someone has made an insightful post."
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"It's a pretty good post."
HATE post
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Leinadi posted:

It was sort of a mini-thing in the Fallout after New Vegas was just released, but it didn't blow up like the arrow to the knee thing (thank god).

Still, it is annoying. Particularly because there is actually a loving ridiculous amount of "barks"/one-liners for NPCs. Even after replaying the game a lot I still hear a lot of lines that I never heard before. But some of the lines just seem a lot more prevailent (the nuclear winter one for example)

Honestly and without irony, I could totally go without any voice acting in most videogames alltogether if that means I get more flavor text.

# ? Feb 7, 2012 19:18

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

Police Automaton posted:

Honestly and without irony, I could totally go without any voice acting in most videogames alltogether if that means I get more flavor text.

It would be seen as totally unacceptable in this day and age, but I agree. And not to suck Morrowind's dick, but having main events/characters be voiced and everyone else just have a bunch of text would be fine with me. The trouble with Morrowind is that the game used this to make everyone a walking encyclopedia, not full of personality.

But oh well, never gonna happen outside of niche indie games now.

# ? Feb 7, 2012 19:28

RagnarokAngel: Oct 5, 2006; Black Magic Extraordinaire

Police Automaton posted:

Honestly and without irony, I could totally go without any voice acting in most videogames alltogether if that means I get more flavor text.

I doubt that's what would happen though. I mean if you want flavor text, books are always an option, in any game. Elder Scrolls keeps a lot of flavor text in books. Fallout could use more notes in the pip boy but basically there's nothing stopping a text dump even with fully voice acted games, it's just the fallout games don't really do it for some reason.

I think going back to it would be kinda awkward. Good voice acting really adds a lot and I wouldn't exchange all the redundant voice clips in new vegas if it meant losing Ulysses or The Think Tank's Voice actors. Those added so much character to them. I don't think the Think Tank would really "work" without being fully voiced.

Cut back on the frequency of the random quips and it probably wouldn't be as noticeable.

# ? Feb 7, 2012 19:50

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Wolfsheim posted:

It would be seen as totally unacceptable in this day and age, but I agree. And not to suck Morrowind's dick, but having main events/characters be voiced and everyone else just have a bunch of text would be fine with me. The trouble with Morrowind is that the game used this to make everyone a walking encyclopedia, not full of personality.

But oh well, never gonna happen outside of niche indie games now.

Eventually, someone will develop the text for on-the-fly speech synthesis that sounds at least as natural and emotional as what games are getting from the D-list actors that fill out their 'extras'. (This, more than aynthing that can be done with graphics or novelty controllers, is likely going to be the next revolutionary advance in computer gaming...I wonder who's seriously working on it already...)

# ? Feb 7, 2012 20:13

Leinadi: Sep 14, 2009

Replaying this game... And it's pretty amazing how much choice is given in certain quests. The King's Gambit is an excellent example. Do you use your connections with the Kings (if you've done their quests) to broker peace? Do you kill Pacer openly or by making use of his heart problems? Do you kill him in such a way to put the blame on the Van Graffs (several ways to do this also).
Do you use diplomacy via Colonel Hsu, or do you go straight for kill by doing what Colonel Moore asks you to do. This will even "fail" the quest and give you negative rep with NCR but still allow you to continue working for them.

The main thing that is a shame is that most of the quests that are laid out for the main factions aren't as open as this. You can kill the Boomers right away of course, but if you want their help the quest is very linear (gaining reputation with them has optional content but not much choice). Sort of the same situation with the BoS.

King's Gambit is just such a delicious quest in that you can really get creative if you choose to dig in. The first time I already had done the King's questline and solved it that way, and I was pretty surprised at just how much choice there is there when I replayed the game as NCR for the second time.

# ? Feb 7, 2012 23:32

fronz: Apr 7, 2009; Lipstick Apathy

Easily my favorite quest is Arizona Killer. I saved before it and assassinated Kimball in at least 5 different ways before I moved on, and I'm sure there are more.

# ? Feb 8, 2012 00:11

Jorge Bell: Aug 2, 2006

Thranguy posted:

Eventually, someone will develop the text for on-the-fly speech synthesis that sounds at least as natural and emotional as what games are getting from the D-list actors that fill out their 'extras'. (This, more than aynthing that can be done with graphics or novelty controllers, is likely going to be the next revolutionary advance in computer gaming...I wonder who's seriously working on it already...)

This has been a long sought-after thing in UI development, alongside recognizing natural speech patterns. Siri for the iOS is probably the most prevalent example of it being done well, but I'm not sure how much of that is canned response.

A point that needs to be made is that an actor's ability to emote and understand subtext is critical to good voiced dialogue, and actually delivers something that meaningful text alone or synthesized voice actors can't bring to the table.

Jorge Bell fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Feb 8, 2012

# ? Feb 8, 2012 03:35

Sam.: Jan 1, 2009; "I thought we had something, Shepard. Something real."

doggiebiscuit posted:

This has been a long sought-after thing in UI development, alongside recognizing natural speech patterns. Siri for the iOS is probably the most prevalent example of it being done well, but I'm not sure how much of that is canned response.

A point that needs to be made is that an actor's ability to emote and understand subtext is critical to good voiced dialogue, and actually delivers something that meaningful text alone or synthesized voice actors can't bring to the table.

This. Voice acting is just as important for making a good character as writing. Ulysses or Joshua Graham wouldn't have been half as good if their dialogue was text-only or synthesized.

# ? Feb 8, 2012 03:50

Pope Guilty: Nov 6, 2006; The human animal is a beautiful and terrible creature, capable of limitless compassion and unfathomable cruelty.

doggiebiscuit posted:

A point that needs to be made is that an actor's ability to emote and understand subtext is critical to good voiced dialogue, and actually delivers something that meaningful text alone or synthesized voice actors can't bring to the table.

Good point! On the other hand, the history of video game voice acting by humans.

That's overly sharp, I guess- some games have had excellent acting, and some games with mostly bad acting have had some good actors. But overall the state of video game voice acting is pisspoor, and a lot of the time it almost seems like the creators don't care. Sunny Smiles is a great example. She's likely the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th person you talk to in New Vegas (depending on whether or not you talk to Victor or Easy Pete) and her voice actress is loving awful. She sounds bored. This isn't just annoying because it's bad acting, it's annoying because it's obvious that nobody cared enough to say "Look, pretend you care about what's going on or we'll hire somebody else" and this is for the character who is showing you how the game works. Of all the people to be voiced by somebody who doesn't seem to care or be able to emote in the least, Sunny Smiles is an atrocious choice to fall down on.

# ? Feb 8, 2012 04:27

Father Wendigo: Sep 28, 2005; This is, sadly, more important to me than bettering myself.

Pope Guilty posted:

Good point! On the other hand, the history of video game voice acting by humans.

That's overly sharp, I guess- some games have had excellent acting, and some games with mostly bad acting have had some good actors. But overall the state of video game voice acting is pisspoor, and a lot of the time it almost seems like the creators don't care. Sunny Smiles is a great example. She's likely the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th person you talk to in New Vegas (depending on whether or not you talk to Victor or Easy Pete) and her voice actress is loving awful. She sounds bored. This isn't just annoying because it's bad acting, it's annoying because it's obvious that nobody cared enough to say "Look, pretend you care about what's going on or we'll hire somebody else" and this is for the character who is showing you how the game works. Of all the people to be voiced by somebody who doesn't seem to care or be able to emote in the least, Sunny Smiles is an atrocious choice to fall down on.

I haven't heard anyone complain about Sunny's VA before; I thought the actress did a good job as a teenager in over her head. Now the guy who voices General Oliver... the sentry bot's hostile dialogue has more emotion than almost any of that guy's roles.

# ? Feb 8, 2012 05:03

Wolfsheim: Dec 23, 2003; "Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

Pope Guilty posted:

Good point! On the other hand, the history of video game voice acting by humans.

That's overly sharp, I guess- some games have had excellent acting, and some games with mostly bad acting have had some good actors. But overall the state of video game voice acting is pisspoor, and a lot of the time it almost seems like the creators don't care. Sunny Smiles is a great example. She's likely the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th person you talk to in New Vegas (depending on whether or not you talk to Victor or Easy Pete) and her voice actress is loving awful. She sounds bored. This isn't just annoying because it's bad acting, it's annoying because it's obvious that nobody cared enough to say "Look, pretend you care about what's going on or we'll hire somebody else" and this is for the character who is showing you how the game works. Of all the people to be voiced by somebody who doesn't seem to care or be able to emote in the least, Sunny Smiles is an atrocious choice to fall down on.

The weird thing about Sunny Smiles is that her VA is hilariously bad, but that same VA is much more decent when voicing other characters.

Also, I would say while the regular lines range from terrible to forgettable, vanilla New Vegas has some really great choices for prominent characters. All the followers are really good, especially Danny Trejo, whoever did House, Caesar and the King are all amazing, and Dave Foley as Yes Man is probably the pinnacle of perfect casting.

# ? Feb 8, 2012 08:59

cat with hands: Mar 14, 2006; When I shit I like to scream "WORSHIP THE GOD EMPEROR ON HIS GOLDEN THRONE." Mom hates it.

Leinadi posted:

Replaying this game... And it's pretty amazing how much choice is given in certain quests. The King's Gambit is an excellent example. Do you use your connections with the Kings (if you've done their quests) to broker peace? Do you kill Pacer openly or by making use of his heart problems? Do you kill him in such a way to put the blame on the Van Graffs (several ways to do this also).
Do you use diplomacy via Colonel Hsu, or do you go straight for kill by doing what Colonel Moore asks you to do. This will even "fail" the quest and give you negative rep with NCR but still allow you to continue working for them.

The main thing that is a shame is that most of the quests that are laid out for the main factions aren't as open as this. You can kill the Boomers right away of course, but if you want their help the quest is very linear (gaining reputation with them has optional content but not much choice). Sort of the same situation with the BoS.

King's Gambit is just such a delicious quest in that you can really get creative if you choose to dig in. The first time I already had done the King's questline and solved it that way, and I was pretty surprised at just how much choice there is there when I replayed the game as NCR for the second time.

What makes it funny is when people (in charge of much more people and money) claim it's "impossible" to make next gen non linear games.

# ? Feb 8, 2012 10:05

RagnarokAngel: Oct 5, 2006; Black Magic Extraordinaire

cat with hands posted:

What makes it funny is when people (in charge of much more people and money) claim it's "impossible" to make next gen non linear games.

Who says this?

I mean some publishers may argue that your average audience isn't going to appreciate an open experience as opposed to being told exactly what to do (Which to some degree they're probably right) but I don't think people say it's impossible. Companies like CD Projekt still offer open ended experiences, you're just not gonna really find it in say, an fps.

I'd blame it more on the genres. RPGs are one of the few genres where an open ended approach works well, but we have what 4 companies in total who make western rpgs? Obsidian, Bioware, Bethesda and CD Projekt, I think, with Troika dead and all (R.I.P. :smith:

)

RagnarokAngel fucked around with this message at 10:33 on Feb 8, 2012

# ? Feb 8, 2012 10:26

net cafe scandal: Mar 18, 2011

Pope Guilty posted:

Sunny Smiles is a great example. She's likely the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th person you talk to in New Vegas (depending on whether or not you talk to Victor or Easy Pete) and her voice actress is loving awful. She sounds bored.

"Cheyenne stay." :geno:

# ? Feb 8, 2012 14:10

MrL_JaKiri: Sep 23, 2003; A bracing glass of carrot juice!

Wolfsheim posted:

whoever did House

Rene Auberjonois

# ? Feb 8, 2012 14:19

Orange Crush Rush: May 7, 2009; You don't need thumbs for revenge

Leinadi posted:

Replaying this game... And it's pretty amazing how much choice is given in certain quests. The King's Gambit is an excellent example. Do you use your connections with the Kings (if you've done their quests) to broker peace? Do you kill Pacer openly or by making use of his heart problems? Do you kill him in such a way to put the blame on the Van Graffs (several ways to do this also).
Do you use diplomacy via Colonel Hsu, or do you go straight for kill by doing what Colonel Moore asks you to do. This will even "fail" the quest and give you negative rep with NCR but still allow you to continue working for them.

The main thing that is a shame is that most of the quests that are laid out for the main factions aren't as open as this. You can kill the Boomers right away of course, but if you want their help the quest is very linear (gaining reputation with them has optional content but not much choice). Sort of the same situation with the BoS.

King's Gambit is just such a delicious quest in that you can really get creative if you choose to dig in. The first time I already had done the King's questline and solved it that way, and I was pretty surprised at just how much choice there is there when I replayed the game as NCR for the second time.

Beyond the Beef is another good example, there's about a million ways to finish that one.

You can bust Ted out and expose what's going on, you can try to hide what happened, you can kill Ted and frame Heck, you can find a substitute for Ted, including one of your human companions, hell you can work with Heck to just Straight Up Murder everyone.

# ? Feb 8, 2012 14:45

Mr E: Sep 18, 2007

I'm having an odd bug regarding slowdown with the game on my laptop. I have 3 gigs of ram, a core 2 duo at 2.26 GHz, Windows 7 32-bit, and a Geforce 9400M. Not the greatest computer, but it runs fine on medium-high settings, except when I'm looking toward or talking to an NPC. It doesn't slowdown when looking at monsters, just human characters. I've tried turning settings down all the way, and removing all of my mods, but nothing seems to fix the problem. Any ideas what could be causing it? I have the latest drivers, so it's not that.

# ? Feb 8, 2012 19:34

cat with hands: Mar 14, 2006; When I shit I like to scream "WORSHIP THE GOD EMPEROR ON HIS GOLDEN THRONE." Mom hates it.

RagnarokAngel posted:

Who says this?

Squareenix japan comes to mind

# ? Feb 8, 2012 20:55

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

RagnarokAngel posted:

I know Fallout has basically established it's a permanent desert world over but given there's pockets of green is it wrong I'd like to see some nuclear winter areas? Maybe in the American Northwest/East? I don't think we get enough cool snow areas in games and it'd be a nice change of scenery from all the brown.

I imagine Fallout 4 will basically be Fallout: Skyrim, so ..

# ? Feb 8, 2012 21:37

Octavian: Mar 29, 2007

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

I imagine Fallout 4 will basically be Fallout: Skyrim, so ..

Fallout: Kansas

# ? Feb 8, 2012 23:28

Mercury Crusader: Apr 20, 2005; You know they say that all demons are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Pyro Jack and you can see that statement is not true, hee-ho!