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SplitSoul
Dec 31, 2000

J-Spot posted:

The FNV4GB is a must. I didn't have any issues with the minimum settings, although things got touchy when I tried moving the spawn settings into the middle range. At one point I was repeatedly getting crashes while heading near the old nuclear test site. When I finally got it to work I encountered a horde of feral ghouls. There must have been fifty of them all bunched together. Luckily I was packing a grenade machine gun.

I've always been running that, but it might have been before I figured out how to enable the 3GB switch in XP so I could actually take advantage of it. I should give it another spin.

Does it require a new game?

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achillesforever6
Apr 23, 2012

psst you wanna do a communism?

Orange Crush Rush posted:

Wait a minute, none of these corners are banked! Have the people of Obsidian learned nothing from Roller Coaster Tycoon?!
Well Primm Slim did tell us that it was a lovely and dangerous Coaster. I also hate how that the people of Primm leaving the casino after finding a sheriff got removed.

Chronojam
Feb 20, 2006

This is me on vacation in Amsterdam :)
Never be afraid of being yourself!


SplitSoul posted:

I've always been running that, but it might have been before I figured out how to enable the 3GB switch in XP so I could actually take advantage of it. I should give it another spin.

Does it require a new game?

No need to start a new game, no. There is also a 4GB loader for use with NVSE.

DogsInSpace!
Sep 11, 2001


Fun Shoe

Wolfsheim posted:

Also, I think one thing that hurt people's expectations with New Vegas is that it's a game called New Vegas but it's basically a western. Outside of the city itself there really isn't a lot of Vegas-themed stuff happening. Most of the early quests are straight out of westerns: help a small frontier town fight off an escaped chain gang....
Of course I absolutely love what we did get, but I'm wondering if they didn't just want to make Fallout: A Fistful Of Dollars instead.


J-Spot posted:

I remember liking The Dunwhich Building, the museum of technology, the national archives, some of the vaults (don't remember the numbers in 3), and the history museum. The mall wasn't really a dungeon but it was a cool combat area. Beyond that I remember there being a lot more side caves and office building you could play around it.

Dunwich I will absolutely give you. One of the largest NMA complaints was the timespan. If it was 100 years after the nukes or less I think f3 (with gameplay and main quest tweaked) could have been more well received. A goon called New Vegas post- post- apocalypse and that always fit. One thing I did like about f3 was coming across various abandoned locations that sometimes just told amazing stories. Dunwich is amazing and I loved it so much. That stood out for me. The The McClellan family townhome was my favourite. I try and pretend to be a 'ard kinda bloke but I swear I cried like a little girl when I walked in and heard the robot recite "There Will Comes Soft Rains" to empty beds of children long since dust. Cried. I love New Vegas but it never made me cry. Of course for every Dunwich, McClellan and sewer with the family broadcasting for help you had "towns" of two people with no resources they could live off of or Widdle Wampwight. I liked that last town more than anyone I've met but had to admit it was freakin goofy (I think the random dogs moving around, Biwwy and FurrytweakZip that won me over). Tons of cool locales but i could see how many were NOT typical post-apocalypse.

Still wish F3 would have had the subway and metro system be more like Metro 2033. That game had some creepy atmosphere amd loved the way that went. Sawyer mod is really the only way to play New Vegas but I wish I could put it on my 360 as well. Wish we could donate some money to get that ported over Live like a Walking Dead Game episode.

edit: The Tabitha/Rhonda happy ending does make me all :unsmith:

DogsInSpace! fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Nov 21, 2012

Merry Magpie
Jan 8, 2012

A superstitious cowardly lot.

J-Spot posted:

That's three more landmark dungeons than New Vegas had. By better designed I meant they were more fun to navigate, but the unique set pieces contribute to them being more memorable.

I meant in game play terms. I just found Fallout 3 to generally pace the action better, with most quests leading to either a unique set piece or a trip to a dungeon.

It has been mentioned already, but did you forget about the Hoover Dam, Black Mountain, Helios One, or the Bison Steve Hotel? All based on real-life locations and landmarks.

The dungeons you mentioned suffered from repetition, poor design, and lack of lighting. They front-loaded their set pieces at the very beginning. Example: The Rotunda is the very first thing you see inside the National Archive building. The dungeon is anticlimactic because the player has already experienced the most interesting section. The dungeon proper is indistinct and boring.

Did you forget the "ping pong" sections of the main quest? The game literally sends you to the SE corner of the map, the far West, back to the SE corner, and finally a wild goose chase across the map. When the player is actively pursuing the main quest, the game does everything it can to pad itself out. Fallout 3 was poorly paced.

Turtlicious posted:

I simply said I liked FO3 more because the exploring felt... Effortless, (Yes, that's a poor word choice, but I am having trouble describing FO3's exploration, and I KNOW my opinion is colored with nostalgia.)

Fair enough. I wish people would support their opinions more though. Fallout 3 also had underwhelming areas. For example, does anyone remember, Rockbreaker's gas station, Drowned Devil's Crossing, F. Scott Key Trail, or Mount Mabel campground? Respectively, they were an empty lot with a sign, a broken bridge, and a pair of empty campgrounds.

Merry Magpie fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Nov 23, 2012

Proletarian Mango
May 21, 2011

Pope Guilty posted:

I think it'd be interesting to have a variant on FO3/NV where AP regenerates every five seconds, VATS doesn't reduce the damage you take, using items takes AP, and as soon as you're "in combat", you're stuck in VATS. Maybe you could elect to use a "turn" to run or something.

I dunno, it's probably a terrible idea.

This mod literally does that. http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/47149

MMAgCh
Aug 15, 2001
I am the poet,
The prophet of the pit
Like a hollow-point bullet
Straight to the head
I never missed...you

Von_Doom posted:

The McClellan family townhome was my favourite. I try and pretend to be a 'ard kinda bloke but I swear I cried like a little girl when I walked in and heard the robot recite "There Will Comes Soft Rains" to empty beds of children long since dust.
Not dust so much as thoroughly skeletonised if I remember right, but yeah. :) That location was one of the very few things I ultimately liked about FO3, though it was almost a little too heavy-handed for its own good. Still, that kind of touch is always welcome.

Tendales
Mar 9, 2012

Merry Magpie posted:


Did you forget the "ping pong" sections of the main quest? The game literally sends you to the NE corner of the map, the far West, back to the NE corner, and finally a wild goose chase across the map. When the player is actively pursuing the main quest, the game does everything it can to pad itself out. Fallout 3 was poorly paced.



In fact, FO3 is so poorly laid out that if you don't force yourself to stick to the main plot, you're likely to accidentally sequence break. FO3 lost any chance at me defending it when I found my dad before I even started looking for him. What the gently caress.

Gee, this sure is an epic quest they've set me on! I'd better explore a bit, do some sidequests to get ready. Hey, what's in this cave? OH HI DAD.

Chronojam
Feb 20, 2006

This is me on vacation in Amsterdam :)
Never be afraid of being yourself!


MMAgCh posted:

Not dust so much as thoroughly skeletonised if I remember right, but yeah. :) That location was one of the very few things I ultimately liked about FO3, though it was almost a little too heavy-handed for its own good. Still, that kind of touch is always welcome.

Well, it was an adaptation of Bradbury's short story, so no real fault on the FO3 writers there. They did a great job, I knew what was happening right away but still enjoyed the process.

J-Spot
May 7, 2002

Merry Magpie posted:

The dungeons you mentioned suffered from repetition, poor design, and lack of lighting.
I didn't say Fallout 3's dungeons were the paragon of level design, merely that I thought they were better than the ones in New Vegas aren't as bad or worse. NV did have some decent outdoor combat areas such as Black Mountain and Quarry Junction, but the indoor dungeons are unmemorable at best and confusing slogs at worst.

quote:

Did you forget the "ping pong" sections of the main quest? The game literally sends you to the NE corner of the map, the far West, back to the NE corner, and finally a wild goose chase across the map. When the player is actively pursuing the main quest, the game does everything it can to pad itself out. Fallout 3 was poorly paced.
I can't tell if you're just dead set on disparaging Fallout 3 or white knighting New Vegas. Perhaps I have forgotten moments in 3 that have you bouncing back and forth between locations with nothing to engage you in between, but there's a difference between sending the player all over the world map throughout the main quest and a single quest that goes like this:

King: Go talk to Orris
Two loading screens later
Follow Orris
One loading screen later
Brief cutscene. Return to the King
One loading screen later
King: "Go to the Mormon Fort"
Three loading screens later.
Go back to the King.
Three loading screens later.
Go back to the Mormon Fort
Three Loading Screens later
Go talk to Elizabeth
Three loading screens later
Go back to the King
Three loading screens later
Pacer's gone rogue! Go back to Elizabeth.
Two loading screens later
Talk to Elizabeth OR 20 second fire fight. Go back to the King.
Two loading screens later
King: "It's time for a little more talkin' and a little less fightin'."

I am aware that at any time you can open fire like a mad man and have every NPC in the area attack you, so no need to point that out.

Tendales posted:

In fact, FO3 is so poorly laid out that if you don't force yourself to stick to the main plot, you're likely to accidentally sequence break. FO3 lost any chance at me defending it when I found my dad before I even started looking for him. What the gently caress.
Much like how you can head straight to the strip start of New Vegas to find Benny, completing skipping the first act of the game.

Chronojam
Feb 20, 2006

This is me on vacation in Amsterdam :)
Never be afraid of being yourself!


J-Spot posted:

Much like how you can head straight to the strip start of New Vegas to find Benny, completing skipping the first act of the game.

To be fair, New Vegas puts cazadores and deathclaws in any of the logical, easy, straightforward paths for that. It also has a (albeit laughably low) credit check or pass purchase for the strip itself, and you don't neccessarily know where on the strip to look. It's hard to accidentally do it while just walking around, and you'll need some combat skills and weapons to have a chance of pulling it off.

I, too, found dad by mistake. I thought it was just a cool vault.

Lord Chumley
May 14, 2007

Embrace your destiny.

Chronojam posted:

To be fair, New Vegas puts cazadores and deathclaws in any of the logical, easy, straightforward paths for that.

This. You can sneak past Black Mountain and get to the strip, but you gotta watch your rear end constantly to do it. Really difficult to get there unless you know how.

Chronojam
Feb 20, 2006

This is me on vacation in Amsterdam :)
Never be afraid of being yourself!


Rushing to Benny is a lot more comparable to a bee-line for Navarro, come to think of it.

Turtlicious
Sep 17, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Chronojam posted:

To be fair, New Vegas puts cazadores and deathclaws in any of the logical, easy, straightforward paths for that. It also has a (albeit laughably low) credit check or pass purchase for the strip itself, and you don't neccessarily know where on the strip to look. It's hard to accidentally do it while just walking around, and you'll need some combat skills and weapons to have a chance of pulling it off.

Because that's what Fallout games need big rear end barriers forcing you on a linear path. (Just pointing out that I HATED this about New Vegas,) and if I wanted to go to New Vegas I shouldn't have to go ALL the way around the map until I'm strong enough to fight Deathclaws. It's just limiting and a dick move, also, you pretty much KNOW Benny's going to New Vegas, you just know it, not even with meta-game knowledge but a guy in a suit is going to stand out SO HARD anywhere BUT there, you're going to New Vegas the whole time because you know, you just know Benny's there. You didn't need 3 or 4 ham fisted clues to tell you that!

Shirkelton
Apr 6, 2009

I'm not loyal to anything, General... except the dream.

Turtlicious posted:

and if I wanted to go to New Vegas I shouldn't have to go ALL the way around the map until I'm strong enough to fight Deathclaws.

You don't.

rope kid posted:

Even as recently as the reddit AMA, people were asking me why New Vegas was designed to be so linear since you "couldn't" go to Vegas at the beginning but were "forced" to go around the mountains to the south.

The creatures north and east of Goodsprings were put there as challenges. If you can't figure out how to get around Quarry Junction or Scorpion Gulch, I'm not the person you should be mad at.

Shirkelton fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Nov 22, 2012

Merry Magpie
Jan 8, 2012

A superstitious cowardly lot.

J-Spot posted:

I didn't say Fallout 3's dungeons were the paragon of level design, merely that I thought they were better than the ones in New Vegas aren't as bad or worse. NV did have some decent outdoor combat areas such as Black Mountain and Quarry Junction, but the indoor dungeons are unmemorable at best and confusing slogs at worst.

I can't tell if you're just dead set on disparaging Fallout 3 or white knighting New Vegas. Perhaps I have forgotten moments in 3 that have you bouncing back and forth between locations with nothing to engage you in between, but there's a difference between sending the player all over the world map throughout the main quest and a single quest that goes like this:

I am aware that at any time you can open fire like a mad man and have every NPC in the area attack you, so no need to point that out.

Much like how you can head straight to the strip start of New Vegas to find Benny, completing skipping the first act of the game.

Are you seriously complaining about an optional multifaceted quest? A quest which specifically requires seeking out an NPC and asking for work in the area? Are you complaining about talking to NPCs while investigating a series of violent incidents? The quest itself ties into the political tensions raised by the NCR's presence and ends in a violent gunfight. In comparison, the optional quests in Fallout 3 suffer from poor pacing.

You have picked a poor example. Yes, "there's a difference between sending the player all over the world map throughout the main quest and a single quest that goes like [that]," and it highlights the poor design in Fallout 3.

Turtlicious posted:

Because that's what Fallout games need big rear end barriers forcing you on a linear path. (Just pointing out that I HATED this about New Vegas,) and if I wanted to go to New Vegas I shouldn't have to go ALL the way around the map until I'm strong enough to fight Deathclaws.

It is not required. I have repeatedly made it to New Vegas at level 1. Skirt around Black Mountain and head north. Even easier, use the pair of guaranteed Stealth Boys in Goodsprings to simply run straight past the Deathclaws. At the lower difficulties, it is entirely possible to simply run past the Cazadors with a stimpack.

There are plenty of mechanics in game that would enable a player to reach New Vegas.

Merry Magpie fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Nov 22, 2012

Turtlicious
Sep 17, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Dan Didio posted:

You don't.



Yeah... You do.

The only way they could have possibly make you go MORE out of the way, is if they made you go up the river before they got you to New Vegas.

Shirkelton
Apr 6, 2009

I'm not loyal to anything, General... except the dream.

Turtlicious posted:



Yeah... You do.

The only way they could have possibly make you go MORE out of the way, is if they made you go up the river before they got you to New Vegas.

I've made it to New Vegas on a fresh character, level 1 or 2 by going up around the back of Quarry Junction/past Vault 19 and through the South Vegas Ruins multiple times. Sorry, you're just not trying hard enough. It's perfectly doable.

EDIT: I'm not even particularly good at this game.

Turtlicious
Sep 17, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Dan Didio posted:

I've made it to New Vegas on a fresh character, level 1 or 2 by going up around the back of Quarry Junction/past Vault 19 and through the South Vegas Ruins multiple times. Sorry, you're just not trying hard enough. It's perfectly doable.

EDIT: I'm not even particularly good at this game.

My point is that the game is actively discouraging from exploration, sure you can glitch it out, but....

Wait, (not being a dick) can you show me what you mean? How do you get past the Deathclaws? Using a Stealthboy?

EDIT: Hopefully I'm not sounding angry or petulant, I've just didn't like having my hands slapped for going where I KNOW the guy is. And I felt like the situation was exacerbated by the fact that it's really hard to get over there without doing some sort of Game abusing type thing.

Edit 2: Can you find me a youtube video of how to do that by the way? I have a feeling it's kind of game abusing, but I'd rather not judge until I've seen it myself.

Turtlicious fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Nov 22, 2012

Tendales
Mar 9, 2012

J-Spot posted:



Much like how you can head straight to the strip start of New Vegas to find Benny, completing skipping the first act of the game.

It is in fact the complete opposite, thanks for noticing! In NV, you have to intentionally skip ahead in order to skip ahead. You know that New Vegas is right there. You have to intentionally buck the path of least resistance. You can't do it on accident.

In FO3, there's no loving path. It's just a blob. And if you go to the wrong chunk of the blob, bam, cut content without warning!

Tendales fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Nov 22, 2012

Turtlicious
Sep 17, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Tendales posted:

It is in fact the entire loving opposite, thanks for noticing! In NV, you have to intentionally skip ahead in order to skip ahead. You know that New Vegas is right there. You have to intentionally buck the path of least resistance.

In FO3, there's no loving path. It's just a blob. And if you go to the wrong chunk of the blob, bam, cut content without warning!

Yeah, but I like that :ohdear: I like that a lot, because it'll make my next playthrough that much more satisfying, and most quests will have cut content because you didn't know what to do.

Shirkelton
Apr 6, 2009

I'm not loyal to anything, General... except the dream.

Turtlicious posted:

My point is that the game is actively discouraging from exploration, sure you can glitch it out, but....

Including a challenge to overcome is not discouraging exploration. Exploration is pointless if consists solely of walking wherever you want to go. That's not exploring, that's just travelling.

Turtlicious posted:

Wait, (not being a dick) can you show me what you mean? How do you get past the Deathclaws? Using a Stealthboy?

Stealthboy's help, but I've done it once or twice without one.

You basically have to be careful, be aware of what's coming up and use the terrain to your advantage.

You head out the back road of Goodsprings, either sneak past the Cazadores and sometimes a Deathclaw will wander nearby, or kill the Cazadores with Victor's help.

Turtlicious posted:

EDIT: Hopefully I'm not sounding angry or petulant, I've just didn't like having my hands slapped for going where I KNOW the guy is. And I felt like the situation was exacerbated by the fact that it's really hard to get over there without doing some sort of Game abusing type thing.

Edit 2: Can you find me a youtube video of how to do that by the way? I have a feeling it's kind of game abusing, but I'd rather not judge until I've seen it myself.

I can't find one of the route I usually take, but here's one made almost right after the game's release that takes you by Black Mountain, I believe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcl44pZqAqQ

Shirkelton fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Nov 22, 2012

Tendales
Mar 9, 2012

Turtlicious posted:

Yeah, but I like that :ohdear: I like that a lot, because it'll make my next playthrough that much more satisfying, and most quests will have cut content because you didn't know what to do.

Quests that play out differently depending on how you approach it? Great. Main plotline quests that are completely spoiled by the very same exploration they encourage you to do? loving unforgivable. If they wanted you to stumble across your dad on accident, then they should have written the main quest with that in mind. Leave some clues scattered around, great! But the whole meaningless quest chain as it is is just stupid.

Cream-of-Plenty
Apr 21, 2010

"The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering."

Tendales posted:

Quests that play out differently depending on how you approach it? Great. Main plotline quests that are completely spoiled by the very same exploration they encourage you to do? loving unforgivable. If they wanted you to stumble across your dad on accident, then they should have written the main quest with that in mind. Leave some clues scattered around, great! But the whole meaningless quest chain as it is is just stupid.

Yeah, I spoiled about half of the main quest in FO3 by stumbling across my dad while I was wandering the wasteland, playing with my dick. It was kind of cool but it really truncated the whole experience. It didn't really feel like the game was aware of my serendipity so much as it felt like I had stepped behind a curtain and saw things I wasn't yet supposed to see.

Turtlicious
Sep 17, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Dan Didio posted:

Including a challenge to overcome is not discouraging exploration. Exploration is pointless if consists solely of walking wherever you want to go. That's not exploring, that's just travelling.

You basically have to be careful, be aware of what's coming up and use the terrain to your advantage.


Wait, what?

Ok, I think we have different ideas that are way too alien from each other for us to see eye-to-eye on this. Personally, I believe exploration is just that, exploring the wasteland to see what's there. If I have to know the placements of the Deathclaws and Cazadores in order to get through safely, that's not exploring, that's exploiting previous knowledge to sequence break. (Opinion, obviously.)

Shirkelton
Apr 6, 2009

I'm not loyal to anything, General... except the dream.

Turtlicious posted:

Wait, what?

Ok, I think we have different ideas that are way too alien from each other for us to see eye-to-eye on this. Personally, I believe exploration is just that, exploring the wasteland to see what's there. If I have to know the placements of the Deathclaws and Cazadores in order to get through safely, that's not exploring, that's exploiting previous knowledge to sequence break. (Opinion, obviously.)

You don't have to know in advance, I did it completely blind, what I mean is 'you have to be paying attention'.

Sorry, poor choice of phrasing.

Lord Chumley
May 14, 2007

Embrace your destiny.

Turtlicious posted:

If I have to know the placements of the Deathclaws and Cazadores in order to get through safely, that's not exploring, that's exploiting previous knowledge to sequence break. (Opinion, obviously.)

So finding out where poo poo is isn't part of exploring? :psyduck:

J-Spot
May 7, 2002

Merry Magpie posted:

Are you seriously complaining about an optional multifaceted quest?
Sorry, dude. I didn't realize optional quests were off limits for criticism. From now on I'll only complain about the two quests that absolutely is required of every play through, which if I recall right are leaving Doc Mitchell's house and meeting Benny.

None of the options the game gives you in the Rorschach tests look like the images they show you. That bumps my review of this game down to 84%.

Tendales posted:

It is in fact the complete opposite, thanks for noticing! In NV, you have to intentionally skip ahead in order to skip ahead. You know that New Vegas is right there. You have to intentionally buck the path of least resistance. You can't do it on accident.
If you're following the main path no quest marker is going to lead you in that direction prematurely. You would have to intentionally set off to go exploring. It's no different than in New Vegas except there are harder monsters in the way so that makes it okay.

VocalizePlayerDeath
Jan 29, 2009

Tendales posted:

Quests that play out differently depending on how you approach it? Great. Main plotline quests that are completely spoiled by the very same exploration they encourage you to do? loving unforgivable. If they wanted you to stumble across your dad on accident, then they should have written the main quest with that in mind. Leave some clues scattered around, great! But the whole meaningless quest chain as it is is just stupid.

This is the same as in Morrowind with Dagoth Ur and people sing its praises all day long.

It seems odd for people to call Fallout 3 crappy for immersion inconsistencies like not having realistic trade routes when you are exploiting Deathclaws AI to speedrun to New Vegas at level 1. That doesn't seem very immersive or much of a roleplaying experience.

i am tim!
Jan 5, 2005

God damn it, where are my ant keys?! I'm gonna miss my flight!

Turtlicious posted:

Wait, what?

Ok, I think we have different ideas that are way too alien from each other for us to see eye-to-eye on this. Personally, I believe exploration is just that, exploring the wasteland to see what's there. If I have to know the placements of the Deathclaws and Cazadores in order to get through safely, that's not exploring, that's exploiting previous knowledge to sequence break. (Opinion, obviously.)

Except you don't NEED any previous game knowledge to pull it off. The towns folk will keep telling you "Don't go north, the Cazadores and Deathclaws will murder you." You can easily figure out where they are just by taking it slow, sticking to high ground and keeping an eye out.

Hell, my first time going into that stretch of New Vegas was on a brand new character sneaking by. The only advice I had was "Bring a Stealth Boy" and that is easy to figure out. It is a VERY reasonable gateway for exploration, which is nice. Sorta like avoiding the mountain in Morrowind until you're a higher level.

Chronojam
Feb 20, 2006

This is me on vacation in Amsterdam :)
Never be afraid of being yourself!


VocalizePlayerDeath posted:

This is the same as in Morrowind with Dagoth Ur and people sing its praises all day long.

It seems odd for people to call Fallout 3 crappy for immersion inconsistencies like not having realistic trade routes when you are exploiting Deathclaws AI to speedrun to New Vegas at level 1. That doesn't seem very immersive or much of a roleplaying experience.

Bartering for devices that make you turn invisible to sneak past scary bad guys is not exploiting the AI. Am I exploiting Benny's low armor class when I throw a hand grenade at him that I exploited past his casino's security by hiding it in my pocket?

Cream-of-Plenty
Apr 21, 2010

"The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering."

VocalizePlayerDeath posted:

This is the same as in Morrowind with Dagoth Ur and people sing its praises all day long.

It seems odd for people to call Fallout 3 crappy for immersion inconsistencies like not having realistic trade routes when you are exploiting Deathclaws AI to speedrun to New Vegas at level 1. That doesn't seem very immersive or much of a roleplaying experience.

You don't have to do any sort of exploiting the get to New Vegas at a low level. Toss some dynamite at the Cazador-infested camp north of Goodsprings, get them to frenzy and murder each other, kill the (weakened) survivors, and boom: You've cleared most of a route to New Vegas.

The difference between "stumbling" across major plot pieces in Morrowind and Fallout 3 is that in the former, you have to march up goddamned Doom Mountain and jump into Satan's mouth to get there, whereas in Fallout 3, you walk into a loving garage. The barriers to entry on the former are immense; not so much with the latter.

Wolfsheim
Dec 23, 2003

and god is on your side
dividing sparrows from the nightingales
I literally hit Vegas at Level 2 on my first character just because I could. If you stick around Goodsprings to kill Joe Cobb he always carries a stealth boy, and you may also find one in the safe at the school. But assuming you don't want to do that quest or consider stealth boys cheating or something, here's some other handy ways around:

-If you're quick enough you can run past the cazadores north of the graveyard, and even though you're likely to run into a stray deathclaw or a Viper gang you are almost certainly not ready for, you can lead them into each other, which should distract them all sufficiently to make your escape. You'll be coming up to Vegas through fiend territory though, which can be tricky at a low level.

-To the east of the Deathclaw-filled quarry is Black Mountain, and while I wouldn't advise trying to fight them, it's easy to sneak past a couple of the checkpoints to get through. That one trap with the Indiana Jones boulder that comes barreling at you? Past that you can pretty much walk straight north without anything serious trying to kill you.

-A bit to the east of Hidden Valley is a narrow passageway filled with scorpions. They aren't very fast or smart and if you don't try to fight any of the giant ones and instead run like hell you emerge out near Helios One. I like doing it this way because you get a huge XP bump at Boulder City (both completing They Went Thataway and Boulder City Showdown) and I like to drop off some stuff at Novac.

-Similarly, a ways behind the NCRCF is Primm Pass, and if you can deal with the one blind deathclaw there (and if you've been killing powder gangers and hoarding their little powder charges, you should be able to) you'll emerge very close to Novac. This method is interesting because it's actually the only one where you can't just use a stealth boy and call it a day even if you wanted to, because blind deathclaws don't need to see you to murder you :unsmigghh:

I mean, maybe that guy was confused because in Fallout 3 combat is literally always the answer? But still these are all fairly doable and not terribly exploity.

Grand Gigas
Jul 2, 2006

True heroes always show up late.
And even if you don't want to, y'know, use combat to be exploity or whatever, you can just loving run. I made it past New Vegas into the Honest Hearts entrance area at level one. All you have to do is run and don't get too cocky.

Shirkelton
Apr 6, 2009

I'm not loyal to anything, General... except the dream.

VocalizePlayerDeath posted:

It seems odd for people to call Fallout 3 crappy for immersion inconsistencies like not having realistic trade routes when you are exploiting Deathclaws AI to speedrun to New Vegas at level 1. That doesn't seem very immersive or much of a roleplaying experience.

Countless people have posted, over the course of all the New Vegas threads, how it is possible to do this without glitching or abusing any aspect of the game.

Hell, I just posted a quote from the Lead Designer of the game about how those were not insurmountable obstacles and were designed to be overcome.

Why are people still perpetuating this fallacy?

Merry Magpie
Jan 8, 2012

A superstitious cowardly lot.

J-Spot posted:

Sorry, dude. I didn't realize optional quests were off limits for criticism. From now on I'll only complain about the two quests that absolutely is required of every play through, which if I recall right are leaving Doc Mitchell's house and meeting Benny.
The dungeons in Fallout 3 were generally worse than the ones in New Vegas. Repetition, poor pacing, and incoherent world design sabotage Fallout 3's efforts.

My comments were related to your argument. The main quest of Fallout 3 sends you back and forth across the wasteland for no logical reason except to pad out the length. The G.I. Blues quest is entirely optional content that is firmly rooted in the game world.

It is fine if you enjoyed Fallout 3 more than New Vegas but stop making overreaching claims about the content. At the very least, support your arguments.

Merry Magpie fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Nov 22, 2012

Miruvor
Jan 19, 2007
Pillbug
I kind of like the design in New Vegas in encouraging you to go south, as well. I like the sense of progression, seeing the rest of Nevada, making the journey to Vegas pretty extensive and more characterful.

FO3 is pretty overwhelming in just putting you out the front door, the school on your left, the broken freeway on your right, not many signs in-game of where to go and what to do besides Megaton, it doesn't feel like the capital wasteland is a complete, living environment.

That, and D.C. suffers from Oblivion's Imperial City syndrome.. I got so involved in going through the subways, doing all the sidequests in such a compact area that I leveled ten times or more, while barely touching the rest of the game.

Lord Lambeth
Dec 7, 2011


On the topic of Fallout 3, are there any mods worth getting that aren't FWE?

VocalizePlayerDeath
Jan 29, 2009

Chronojam posted:

Bartering for devices that make you turn invisible to sneak past scary bad guys is not exploiting the AI.

If that's how you did it I admire your creativity and foresight.
Most methods that I had seen people do were to simply run across the mountains edge which causes the Deathclaws to run in place while they are unable to find any pathing to you.

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Wolfsheim
Dec 23, 2003

and god is on your side
dividing sparrows from the nightingales

J-Spot posted:

I can't tell if you're just dead set on disparaging Fallout 3 or white knighting New Vegas. Perhaps I have forgotten moments in 3 that have you bouncing back and forth between locations with nothing to engage you in between, but there's a difference between sending the player all over the world map throughout the main quest and a single quest that goes like this:

King: Go talk to Orris
Two loading screens later
Follow Orris
One loading screen later
Brief cutscene. Return to the King
One loading screen later
King: "Go to the Mormon Fort"
Three loading screens later.
Go back to the King.
Three loading screens later.
Go back to the Mormon Fort
Three Loading Screens later
Go talk to Elizabeth
Three loading screens later
Go back to the King
Three loading screens later
Pacer's gone rogue! Go back to Elizabeth.
Two loading screens later
Talk to Elizabeth OR 20 second fire fight. Go back to the King.
Two loading screens later
King: "It's time for a little more talkin' and a little less fightin'."

I like that your example of a bad quest is one with optional combat and multiple ways of getting through it that takes place entirely in one town. Hell, the Orris bit has like five different ways of completing it.

I guess it would've been a lot better if it was like any Fallout 3 quest: run to random spot on map, kill <enemy type> that is guarding <item> and bring it back to the questgiver. At some point, there might be a speech check, either to talk down the boss enemy after killing your way to him, or to try and get more caps out of the questgiver. LIMITLESS POSSIBILITIES

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