Fallout: New Vegas

[Calbeck]

I can't play Fallout 3 anymore without the massive list of mods that do in fact make it much more immersive.

One of these is "Global Travel System", which DOES give you a motorcycle and DOES give you the opportunity to have random encounters while fast-traveling, and CAN shut down fast-travel altogether.

It also allows for the implementation of what amount to DLCs; GTS contains a map of the world and you can create a new "worldspace" (the whole of the D.C. Wasteland, for example, is a worldspace) to plunk down anywhere on it. Someone made an Iceland mod that goes well with this, just find yourself a boat and go fight some feral ghouls in Reykyavik over a choice bit of rotted shark. New Vegas has already been invaded by the modding community as well, who are creating new content as well as porting over older mods from FO3.

With any luck, I'll soon be hanging about Vault 21, shooting six-breasted double-cocked anthropomorphic dolphin wizards with my trusty Automatic Mininuke Launcher.

 

[Dectilon]

One of the reasons I like fast-travel is because of a thing you mentioned in your review/pseudo-LP session. Sometimes you reach your destination only to have to walk around the whole damn thing looking for the way in. I'd say the real problem here isn't the fast travel so much as the terrible map though.

 

[Levethian]

if you don't like fast travel...
...why just not use it?

He said. It's too slow & boring to justify the potential for parallel-adventuring. Surely there must be some poor stupid mutants that players could hop on to get around faster. Or like a taxi service. Ran by some New Vegas mob that pimps them and sells them as well as offers their transport services.

Heck, bicycles would do.

I downloaded two pairs of sunglasses that make running speed 3x and 6x faster. When I encounter a road I use the 3x glasses and make 'vroom' noises, and on railways I use the 6x specs and make 'chuff-chuff' sounds.

Unfortunately, the twitchy physics can catapult you hundreds of feet into the air if running too fast over a bump. It also prevents auto-saves from working their magic, and a game as moody as F:NV needs auto-saves frequently to avoid re-treading ground.

Bored of the game now. Why castrate New Vegas from the wealth of mods for Fallout 3? They should be united. Like World of Xeen.

 

[Harmondale2]

I know what he means about the fast traveling, I generally try to avoid using it all together as I always regret it at the end of the day.

 

[DeadlyYellow]

if you don't like fast travel...
...why just not use it?

He said. It's too slow & boring.

I think it's more the idea there aren't any alternatives. In Oblivion you get the horse yes, but it's still slow and monotonous.

Plus the fact you couldn't fight while on the horse. You could either slowly dismount while the beasties take potshots at you and your steed, or run. And depending on the difficulty (and excluding specific mounts,) the horse could either die or flee, leaving you back to square one.

 

[Imp Poster]

Isn't this article a bit exigent? Yeah, you can go look up what that word means. Just to say it would feel more roleplaying if you had a vehicle go faster than walking instead of fast travel in a video game.

Alas, you are better at this than I am, give you that. But that does not excuse you for taking a trite issue into some eloquent writing that makes the reader feel dumber than you are.

 

[OceanRunner]

Yahtzee made a good point about open-world travel, and like he saaid before there is a difference between a game world that feels big and is big. Shadow Of The Colossus for example is half about riding to your next encounter, and the ambient soundtrack, terrain design, and gorgeous graphical style make this an absolute joy.

 

[Levethian]

I think it's more the idea there aren't any alternatives.

Exactly Just edited that.

Imp Poster, 'article' should be between 'Isn't this' and 'a bit'. Then it would be a sentence.

Ooh KITTENS!

 

[KDR_11k]

When you instant fast travel in games like Fallout 3 you miss out on the adventure. If you had to ride a horse or a motorbike to your destination you might have an exciting encounter with NPCs, or catch a glimpse of something so intriguing on the horizon that you decide to take a detour to investigate it on a whim. Surely the whole point of the sandbox or open-world model is to give the player the chance to fill the gaps between major events with adventures of their own.

That sounds like Minecraft. Of course that game, too, has a fast travel option. It involves literally opening a portal to hell and traveling through a world full of ghastly monstrosities. But it's faster because every step you take in hell is equivalent to 16 steps in the real world.

 

[Mr_Vorhias]

Huh.

Yahtzee was just about the last person I expected to be making a "Monkey Magic" reference.

 

[Unesh52]

Well..., yeah..., then..., if you don't like fast travel...

--- WARNING! MAJOR REVELATION AHEAD! ---


...why just not use it?

Because the game would take forever. The point isn't that there shouldn't be fast travel, it's that the fast travel system should allow you to make detours and take in the scenery. It's about creating the illusion of a huge, vibrant, believable world, while still addressing the practical problem of needing to get to the actual content. It could be better -- that's all I'm saying.

Anyway -- I've always been a glutton for role play. On my first play through of Oblivion (before I'd seen all the side of the road stuff) I never used fast travel. On my first play of SotC, I almost never made my horse run when I was traveling to the next colossus (it might have gotten tired!). And I loved it. Sure, had I used the faster methods I could've done the same things in half the time, but I also would've wanted to stop sooner. I'm not sure how to explain it, but doing the normal things that you don't even think about in life, but in a game just makes it so much more involving.

 

[The_ModeRazor]

Funny, when I play New Vegas, I wait till it's night, and go sneaking. (very hard difficulty, hardcore mode on)
And then I hunt

Spoiler

shitheads (ha! REFERENCE!)

.

 

[Imp Poster]

Imp Poster, 'article' should be between 'Isn't this' and 'a bit'. Then it would be a sentence.

Fixed, thanks.

 

[Netrigan]

The use of the fast-travel system is often a clue to how much I'm enjoying a game.

In Red Dead Redemption, I only rarely used it... usually only when the game was sending me all the way to the other side of the map for some bullshit quest or in the event I just needed to buy an item not readily available in the town I was in.

I constantly used the taxi in GTA IV because driving around simply wasn't fun. Between the twitchy car handling and the occasionally protracted police chases that could stem from a simple fender bender, I took taxis virtually everywhere... which seriously spoiled the illusion when you're taking a cab to a hospital shoot-out.

Saints Row didn't have a fast travel system (apart from taking advantage of the save game function), but I never missed it. Getting from Point A to Point B was always fun and I knew any cops I acquired on the way over could be easily ditched on the other end (simple vehicular fun & games rarely got me over a one-star wanted level).

As of yet, I've not sunk my teeth into Fallout 3 (beyond getting to the Wal-Mart stand-in) and a lot of that is simple game pacing, but also trying to figure out exactly what sort of skills I should invest in early in the game, since they give me about five billion options and I have only the vaguest notion what half of them would be useful for. So far, I've not built up the enthusiasm to overcome this immersion hurdle, so I play around with games that have a faster in to, not only the action, but the point as well.

 

[Falseprophet]

...when playing Arkham Horror with my friends...

+1 awesome point, although I wonder how you get time to ever do that. Takes an hour just to set up the board.

That's provided you don't own any of the expansions. I do loves me some Arkham Horror...

FACT: When my friends play without me, the world ends at the hand--er, tentacles of some uncaring Elder God. When I play, we always stop the horror well in advance.

It'd be possible to make different aspects of an MMORPG, I mean other than killing mobs, into a game of it's own. To stick with crafting, the whole thing would be worthwhile if crafted items were on par with or better than items gained from churning through PvE content, and cost less to make so you can sell it for about the same. And if the act of building something was a mini-game of sorts, rather than a click of a button, that might be fun in it's own right. If made properly; for example, forcing players to level their characters in order to be allowed to try new crafting recipes (as if proficiency with weapons had anything to do with proficiency with a set of tools) is NOT very helpful in allowing for creative game play.

This is why WoW doesn't appeal to me: it emphasizes the parts of D&D that I've always hated. Namely, i) random encounters with no real narrative purpose and ii) loot & gear accounting.

To riff off your example, what if you could focus on crafting skills and unlock recipes that allowed you to make some of the best items in the game? Everyone talks about the guy wielding Excalibur, Durendal, Masamune--what if you could be the guy who forged it, renowned through the land as the greatest of smiths like Weyland or Hephaestus? Of course, to get the best materials, you'd need to brave dangerous places--or send other PCs after them.

 

[iblis666]

FEAR MY LVL 20 "six-breasted double-cocked anthropomorphic dolphin wizard" AND +6 QUARTERSTAFF OF SODOMY

 

[mexicola]

I got much more of a "sandbox world" feel from playing Gothic 1 and 2 than from any Bethesda game to date. The "world" in Gothic is smaller, but it's highly involuted so you don't have to travel very far in order to find something. There are many interesting things to mess around with.

I'm curious to try Risen and Arcanis (Gothic 4) if I ever have the time/money.

Edit: Gothic also has no fast-travel until quite late in the game, when they start having you run all over the place in order to finish off main-plot quests. The teleport system actually feels like a reward you earned instead of a gimmick for lazy gamers.

I agree with this, Gothic 2 (along with the expansion) is my favourite open world RPG by far, I spent so much time in there... And if you are wondering about Risen it's a Gothic game in all but lore and setting. It's happening on a kind of fantasy Mediterranean island and while the premise isn't as great as being a prisoner in a strange penal colony back in Gothic, any fan of the series will most likely enjoy it.

 

[thebreadbinman]

You mentioned in your Saboteur review that you didn't like the parts where you had to drive all the way from one side of the map to the other. Now, although the Saboteur world that is Paris wasn't the most amazing and immersive game ever, it did have interesting visuals and free-running as an alternative to driving a car, so you can't then complain when a MASSIVE game offers the chance to move from one part to another that would take around 3 hours real time in a matter of seconds, you can't complain that it 'takes away from the immersion'. Be honest, if you had to treck for hours just to do a mission that turns out is pointless, you'd be pretty damn pissed off and stop playing that game...

 

[Tiamat666]

...why just not use it?

Because the game would take forever. The point isn't that there shouldn't be fast travel, it's that the fast travel system should allow you to make detours and take in the scenery. It's about creating the illusion of a huge, vibrant, believable world, while still addressing the practical problem of needing to get to the actual content. It could be better -- that's all I'm saying.

Okay. You're right. I get it now.

But if you're a good roleplayer, you should be able to compensate for that limitation in your mind. Such as in taking an ingame walk to the "Wasteland Taxi Service" and "buying a cab".

But who am I fooling... I also prefer Morrowinds game-integrated travel system to Oblivions.

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

NEW RULE: THERE SHOULD NEVER BE RANDOM ENCOUNTERS IN ANY SANDBOX RPG EVER.

Ok so you're playing Fallout 3, and you want to explore the lavish landscape and find all kinds of cool stuff that you couldn't find before, and perhaps battle some raiders and stuff. And EVERY THIRTY GODDAMN SECONDS you get attacked by a bug or an ant or a scorpion or something. They pose zero threat, all they do is use up your ammo and your weapon maintenance level (which is much more important in the Fallout universe anyway, you'll end up with enough ammo to kill half a dozen Ant Queens before you've reached level five, but you can't stop your weapons from degrading). What the hell are you supposed to be playing, rent-o-kill man??!!!

Besides random encounters being an annoying chore, they take the fun out of exploration. How about having a lot of specific encounters that require tactics and strategy to work out? A large raider den, for example? Something where you have to work out to snipe the first raider from a distance, then run-and-gun his friend before the others catch on, before luring the rest into a landmine or two?

And a final point - random encounters make it imperative to level up your combat skills as quickly as possible. What if I don't want to play a combat-oriented character?

(Corollary rule: you should never be able to fast-travel into a monster respawn point.)