2house2fly posted:

I was thinking about my least favourite quest, Can You Find It In Your Heart, and wondering what it would have involved given more development time (as it is you literally just kill half a dozen ants and get a reward) and I sort of suddenly realised that even as small and insignificant quest as that is telling you something. The ants aren't a big threat (they're like one step up from radroaches and there's just a few of them) but the NCR is strained and bogged down with bureaucracy to the point that they can't even get it together to handle this. So they hire the Courier to do it, and they're so hard up they can't even afford to pay you but a pittance for it. Hell, they can't pay you at all; the guy in charge basically steals some food and ammo and gives it to you. Even that tiny bullshit quest is informing you, or challenging your perceptions, or reinforcing them, about the NCR in the Mojave, building on your personal "shandified" story.

Anyway, as for the world revolving around the Courier and the sheer power of the character, that's a hallmark of RPGs in general and Bethesda games in particular, so I can't really hold it against New Vegas. Hell, they people complained about there being a bunch of tough monsters right outside Goodsprings. It's one of very few Bethesda-style games where you can't just pick a direction at random right from the start, walk that way and see cool stuff while effortlessly slaughtering anything that gets in your way.