Fallout: New Vegas

Neo Kojiro

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Mar 19, 2008
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Wait, the eye of a storm is calm; wouldn't the eye of a sequel storm, therefore, have no sequels flying about?

Actually, now that i think about it, i'm gonna edit something else in: New Vegas is already episodic. Episode one: you wake up in Goodsprings and get your barrings, killing geckos and maybe bandits while asking about Benny. Episode two: following the Benny lead south, you find convicts have taken over the Bison hotel, or whatever, and the next info link needs to be rescued.

I forget the rest of the main plot line, but i'm sure it follows the same line of extended fetch quests for information. If that doesn't do it for you still, you could play the opening movie and the credits roll before and after each quest section.
 

Midniqht

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Jul 10, 2009
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I get his point that one could miss out on some content by using fast travel all the time, but at least you can't fast travel until you've already been there. I usually don't use fast travel in Fallout (or Oblivion) unless it meets my 3-prong system:

1) I've obviously already been to the area (otherwise I wouldn't be able to fast travel)

2) It's far enough away on the map that I'd end up spending a considerable amount of time walking across other landmarks and towns on the way that I've already seen.

3) I'm avoiding having to cross something I can't or don't want to deal with yet (aka that whole family of deathklaws waiting over the hill)


That said... sometimes it's just convenient. You have to explore to some extent to be able to do it anyways though. And with Hardcore mode in New Vegas, at least there's some negative effects to using fast travel.
 

Calbeck

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Jul 13, 2008
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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

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Sep 20, 2007
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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

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Nov 22, 2009
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Tiamat666 said:
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

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Nov 18, 2009
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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

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Levethian said:
Tiamat666 said:
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

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Sep 16, 2010
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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

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Mar 18, 2009
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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

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Nov 22, 2009
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DeadlyYellow said:
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

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Feb 10, 2009
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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.
 

Unesh52

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May 27, 2010
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Tiamat666 said:
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

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Jul 29, 2009
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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
shitheads (ha! REFERENCE!)
.
 

Netrigan

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Sep 29, 2010
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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

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BlueInkAlchemist said:
The_root_of_all_evil said:
Yahtzee Croshaw said:
...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.

unwesen said:
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

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