bartholen said:
And less than 3 hours later I'm already bored. I can't for the life of me see where the supposed depth of this game is supposed to lie.
I played F:NV about 200 hours when it came out over four different characters, and picked it up in the recent Steam sale to experience the DLC and just play it again for my own edification. My first character since picking it back up was a high-INT, high-LUK build; I'm playing on Very Hard hardcore mode, no companions (for obvious reasons); thus far I went to the Strip at level 2, got kicked out of all the casinos and got my implants, and went to Big MT at level 6. Considering I'm playing a Guns (specifically, shotguns) build, boy howdy was that a Really Bad Idea.
First, look, you have to remember this game came out in 2010 and was developed by a mid-tier studio. I'll be the first to admit that mechanically, it has not aged well. I mean, the game's big selling point on combat and mechanics was it introduced iron sights to the franchise for God's sake. So, if you're comparing it to later games, or playing it with the perspective of someone who has seen the advancements of game design in the past decade, of course you're going to be disappointed. That said...
The first critique of your point I noticed, is that you're complaining you must tailor stats, skills, and perks for specialism from the beginning of the game in order to play as a specialist from the beginning (low level characters can't snipe or get sneak melee kills, neither statement is actually true but we'll take the argument at face value). And/or, to have that level of specialism requires sacrifice in generalist skills and perks. To which I must say...no shit? It's an RPG. Character planning, understanding the strengths and deficiencies of each build
as they progress as a consequence of the choices you have made during character creation and leveling up, and playing to those strengths while mitigating their weakness is kind of the point of, well,
the entire genre.
And, with that said, mechanically the biggest strength of F:NV always has been the diversity of builds through a wide selection of traits and perks. The game easily accommodates min-max builds, theme builds, RP builds, and everything in between. They can be as specific, or as general-purpose, as you'd like, and there really are no traits or perks so powerful they're must-have across any build. But, character building and developing in F:NV requires sacrifice, understanding said sacrifice is a consequence of your choice, anticipating shortcomings, and adapting.
This current playthrough where I went to Big MT at level 6, and this is my first time playing Old World Blues. I had
planned a more leisurely development, focusing on general-purpose and secondary skills, getting my ability to access and carry loot up, sustaining myself with advanced crafting recipes, and using sneak as a tactical advantage to overcome my character's deficiency in straight-up combat until I could pick up key combat perks. In other words, I had the
worst possible build for that DLC, let alone at that character level, at the hardest difficulty in hardcore mode.
It's nothing I can't handle, but I had to throw my entire build plan out the window. Due to how something specific to that DLC works, I had to completely forget sneaking as any kind of tactical advantage and focus on what I had to do right then and there just to survive lobotomite and roboscorpion encounters. I needed Hand Loader ASAP to punch through enemy armor and health pools, but that meant I didn't have enough ammunition because I had to break down standard rounds. That forced me to pick up Scrounger, which I never planned on getting in the first place, to make sure I had enough components to make the hand-load ammo I needed. Hand-load ammo tends to degrade weapons faster, so my next priority was Jury Rigging to ensure my best weapons and armor stay up to par.
I've already anticipated my next problem is going to be armor durability. Went in with Reinforced Combat Armor, and swapped to Christine's COS Armor when durability on that ran low. I don't have the caps to have Sink repair them, and medium armor is notoriously scarce in OWB, so I'm going to have to downgrade to light armor which means I will need to pick up defensive perks next. That one's going to hurt, since I need damage perks yesterday but can't afford to take them quite yet, and at the point I can the enemies in OWB will have hit their next tier.
But I know what guns start showing up at that point. They're my absolute favorite guns in the game bar none, and I was already planning on this character being a cowboy build. When I get there --
and I will -- I won't be locked in Big MT with a bunch of lobotomites and radscorpions; they'll be locked in there with
me.
And, in the course of scrambling to develop my character in such a way I can survive OWB in that difficulty and game mode, I had to sideline basically every other secondary skill for several levels now, chiefly Science, Medicine, Survival, and Speech, which has soft-gated me on progression through the DLC's actual plot and severely restricted my consumable use. That is the least of my worries, since I went into the DLC with plenty to last and am now at a point where I can craft food, water, and stimpacks to spare...but in the hour or two before I got the auto-doc, biological research station, and sink turned back on, I was going through so many consumables I actually managed to run low.
Is this a situation I got myself into thanks to overall ignorance of the DLC's content? Yup. Is this the most fun I've ever had in F:NV?
Oh yeah. So, I hope that illustrates exactly how important build planning, resource management, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and adapting accordingly really are (well, can be depending on difficulty and game mode) in FNV's long term.
Minor points:
Perception heavily determines the PC's detection range. ED-E and Boone negate it, but the player can easily figure out where enemies are by learning what their detection range is in accordance with their PER, and looking around to figure out where they're likely to be since the game actually has decent NPC initial positioning and patrolling.
NCRCF is the first real "dungeon" players are likely to encounter, by following breadcrumbs from either Goodsprings or Primm. You can talk and/or sneak your way completely through it even if you kill Joe Cobb. Unless you're talking about the various caves in the area populated by insects, abominations, and/or animals, in which case...no shit? Even then, this only halfway passes muster since the Animal Friend perk makes the inhabitants of several of those caves non-hostile and you can walk right past them.
Speaking of, if you're looking for gear to fundamentally change game play experience, you're completely barking up the wrong tree. Traits and perks are what diversify and change play style in FNV, not gear.
The beginning of the game provides the player with enough consumables (chems and skill magazines) any build can pass the earliest skill-based challenges. You just have to look for them. Even the hardest early-game skill challenge -- repairing ED-E -- is laughably trivial considering the components required to fix it absent requisite Repair and/or Science
are in the same room.
Last, I-15 between Goodsprings and Sloan is riddled with cazadores and deathclaws? Well,
yeah.
The entire point of that is to push
new players through Primm, Mojave Outpost, Nipton, Camp Searchlight, Novac, HELIOS One, 188 Trading Post, the Crimson Caravan Company, and Freeside before entering the Strip in their search for Benny. This puts the player in direct contact with the NCR and Legion, their ancillaries, independent factions, and establishes the backstory and nature of the conflicts between them while highlighting the benefits and drawbacks of each faction. Therefore, by the time the player gets to the Strip, they know what's happened and what's to come, and formed their opinions on who is right or wrong, which faction's vision may be best for the Mojave in the long run...then, in the course of resolving the initial conflict with Benny, does the player learn there's a third way.
Or you can walk straight to the Strip at level 1, which is not just doable but outright
easy...once you've learned the map and the major landmarks to avoid. Literally, the key to it is "don't Leeroy the cazadores on I-15". That's only something you're likely to do once you've played the game through a first time, meaning
you already know the game's backstory, world, and central conflicts, rendering the narrative purpose for the long way around obsolete.
It's not a "beefgate". It's good game design, and
excellent world-building and storytelling.
