Fallout New Vegas's ending didn't give enough detail (spoilers)

[Ronald Nand]

I recently finished New Vegas, supporting Mr House and decided to have a look at the other endings on the Fallout Wiki, and I found the game didn't give enough detail on the resolution of the main plot threads but gave good detail on the other stories of companions and the individual towns.

I had three main issues with the ending:

1- The way you handled Lanius and/or Oliver wasn't incorporated into the ending, rather than fighting Lanius and Oliver I chose to talk them down expecting that to affect my ending. For example I told Lanius he couldn't hold the east and west, their should be a slide showing him bringing this wisdom back to Caesar and having Legion being stronger for it, if I killed Lanius their should have been a slide indicating the Legion being disorganised. The best I can do is infer and guess what happens.

2- I think their should have been slides dedicated to the factions of Legion, NCR and maybe Mr House. The slides should state the status of the faction, what happens to the leaders, and what they do the future or what they plan to do. They could do a bit of a memorial for House or describe his triumph depending on whether you killed him.

3- What happens to New Vegas overall should have been described better, for the Legion and NCR ending seemed to address this one okay but for House and Independent was pretty vague to me, all House's ending indicated the status quo was kept and Independent one indicates theirs anarchy. What about House's plans to create a connecting monorail over New Vegas or space travel, that should be indicated in the ending? If the developers can describe the far future of the Great Khans leaving the Mohave why not these more major factors.

However I did like the way the game payed attention to detail for the side quests, for example recognising if you passed both the science and speech check or just passing one check in the Nightkin cure quest.

Also some minor nitpicks I had were not mentioning Westside and some slides missing for me like the Ranger slides even though I completed return to sender.

 

[dyre]

Yeah, FONV isn't exactly well-written. I like the choice between factions that each had their merits (except Caesar's Legion, those guys suck), but the game really makes little effort to fully explore House's and Caesar's factions. And in terms of having interesting characters, a well developed world, and difficult, meaningful choices, it's not exactly KOTOR 2. Though admittedly FONV's ending wasn't nearly as bad, heh.

While we're on the subject of the endings of old games, did anyone else think that the last few hours and the ending cutscenes of Arcanum were really rushed? It's like they ran out of money and just tied up as many loose ends as possible.

 

[Roxas1359]

The reason the endings are a bit ambiguous is so that they can build off them in the future. Fallout 2 did the same thing with it's multiple endings. One of the endings will be chosen as canon and the series will spring off of that ending.
Heck in one of the endings from Fallout 2 you completely destroy the NCR and make it that they have no chance of ever forming up again, but that ending wasn't made cannon so that they could then build off of those endings for another game.

As for everything, if you literally do every quest in the game, and that includes the companion quests and or requirements, then you get a more complete ending.

 

[Tom_green_day]

I thought there was way too much detail, it went on for too long on each of the individual characters you met. I preferred FO3's method of delivery where it was much more ambiguous and detail was left to the imagination, and for you to decide depending on exactly how you treated the towns. Or at least do what the original Fallouts did and be selective about what you talk about.
Although I'll say Old World Blues was much worse. I don't need a slide dedicated to a toaster, thank you.

 

[BrotherRool]

I hate having a lot of detail in these. F:NV is an incredibly manipulable world that you can own, I don't want to be told what happens, I want to decide for myself. When I make a decision I don't want it to be so that I can trigger X ending line in the last cutscene, I want it to be because I believe it will cause something I want to happen to the wasteland.

And that's such a human thing, to not know what the future will be but hope for it anyway.


I really hated it in Mass Effect 3 when it describes exactly what Shepard does in the control ending. Heck no! I had a detailed idea of what my Shepard would do with the Reapers. She was going to take them far into dark space, too far away from civilisation to hope of turning them back, and set them free with new guidance on how to be a species unbound by this constant command to destroy.

And then the ending ruined all that. Same with the Krogan's. I decided to cure them despite having Wreave as a leader because I figured the Solarian Special Task Groups could assassinate him and let a new person come to the table. But no, the ending just slaps me down. 'Nope, it happened exactly like the writers say it would. Stop trying to do your own thing'

So I'm glad New Vegas somewhat avoids that

 

[Kyrian007]

I thought there was way too much detail, it went on for too long on each of the individual characters you met. I preferred FO3's method of delivery where it was much more ambiguous and detail was left to the imagination, and for you to decide depending on exactly how you treated the towns. Or at least do what the original Fallouts did and be selective about what you talk about.
Although I'll say Old World Blues was much worse. I don't need a slide dedicated to a toaster, thank you.

I also liked FO3's method as well. Most Bethesda rpg's I treat as a framework for my OWN story anyway, so 3's endings worked better. I loved NV, but the story of "my" courrier and that of the NV "canon" courrier were vastly different.

But come on, the toaster slide? In a game as frankly dour as NV, I appriciated OWB even more because of moments like the toaster slide.